Page 11 of Trailer Park Billionaire
It takes about an hour, and it looks…
how I feel.
“Well… fuck,” I say, staring at the sad drawing and then at my grandpa. “This sucks.”
He doesn’t respond.
“I blame you.”
Still nothing.
“Guess I’ll have the last word from now on, huh?”
Nothing.
Bright colors,I think.This calls for bright colors. He would have wanted bright colors.
“This might be the worst birthday we’ve had so far. Although the one where you got stabbed is probably a close second.”
Dada stays dead with what I assume is silent approval when I dig out his set of neon acrylics from the desk drawer.
“Then there were all those birthdays I had to visit you in prison. Those weren’t all that great either. Or those where you had to visit me. Not much better.”
I add a colorful party hat and one of those party horns in his mouth. In the painting, it’s being blown one last time. From where I’m standing, it’s pointing straight at the tits on the wall.
He would have liked that.
When I’m done, I clean the brushes, put them away, and eventually look at the finished painting on the easel.
It’s a good painting.
He really would have liked it.
The black, the splashes of color.
It’s whimsical.
Tragic.
I sigh.
Then I put my fist through the canvas.
The easel falls over. The painting goes flying and lands on my grandpa.
“You don’t give a shit anymore, do you?”
I look at him as the tears refuse to roll down my face, and anger keeps building in my belly.
Then I place one last kiss on his forehead and leave.
Down in the lobby, Sienna, Robyn, and Paul are waiting for me. Sienna asks if she can take me home, but I brush her off. A walk will do me good right now. So I head past them and out the doors. The rain from earlier, that had turned to hail, is now thick, wet snow. The cold is a relief.
I start walking briskly, with no place in particular in mind. I just walk. And walk. And walk. Until I run into a group of people coming out of a restaurant.
The party.
I forgot about the birthday party.
