Archive for May, 2025

That Old Silhouette (short fiction)

Thursday, May 22nd, 2025—Film

Michael had never seen himself as an artist. Yet there he was, for the second Tuesday evening in a row, at an easel by the windows, overlooking traffic on the busy street below.

The studio was one of those rooms that had plenty of natural light but still managed to look grungy: a marked-up linoleum floor that assumed years of dirt as part of its permanent makeup; off-white walls punctured many times over with thumbtacks holding up a rotating gallery of sketches. Even the easels had their share of scrapes and scars.

Michael heard the clack of heeled boots as the model walked in. She had long, greying hair that hung past her shoulders, and a dark wool coat slung over her arm. Her boots didn’t leave wet marks on the floor. She must work in the building, Michael thought; it wasn’t possible to walk around downtown Ottawa in mid-winter and not pick up any snow or sludge.

She smiled at the instructor, then disappeared behind a Japanese screen at the back of the class, emerging in a lightweight gown. “Everyone, this is Marianne,” the instructor said, closing the classroom door. “She’ll be posing for us today.” Marianne swiftly gathered her hair in a loose topknot before removing the gown. Michael lowered his eyes as the pale linen spilled around her feet, not raising his gaze until she’d had time to arrange herself on the wooden block in the centre of the room.

The class warmed up with a series of gesture drawings, then moved on to the longer pose. The instructor didn’t offer much guidance. She wandered the room and occasionally murmured quiet praise to the students. But in the end, as she’d explained during their first session, it was a life drawing class for beginners; showing up and putting charcoal to paper was all the start they needed.

For the full-body drawing, Marianne’s back was to Michael. She sat with her hips canted, legs tucked together and bent at the knees, extending behind her so her feet trailed out, like a mermaid perched on a rock. He tried not to overthink his sketching. That was what Sandra had said to him: that he was too much in his head. He tried instead to let each stroke flow freely.

It was new for him to look so closely at someone. To notice the calloused outer edge of her big toe, the rougher skin tracing the outskirts of her heels. He wondered if that was what marriage would be like—that intimacy, that familiarity. Growing up with a single mother, there wasn’t much for him to draw from.

Michael let the charcoal trail over his paper, leaving behind it the dark outline of Marianne’s torso. He thought of what he’d seen when she’d faced him in an earlier pose—the sinuous stretch marks and soft folds on her abdomen. Probably from pregnancy.

His hand slipped, smearing the lines of Marianne’s legs. He wiped his blackened palm against the bottom of the paper, then did what he could to repair the sketch.

At the end of class, Marianne stiffly stood up and pulled the gown on, stretching for a moment to shake off the pose. When she re-emerged from behind the screen, she strode across the room and popped a quick kiss on the instructor’s cheek. Then, winding a red scarf around her neck, she whirled out of the room just as Michael was leaving, his rolled drawings tucked carefully under his arm.

“Oh!” she said, barely dodging the collision.

“Sorry,” Michael said. “After you.” He held back, letting her slip out the door. “Thank you, by the way. For posing.”

“I don’t do it for free,” she said with a wink. “I hope you enjoyed the session.”

She went down the stairs, and Michael headed to the restroom at the end of the hall. Washing his hands afterward, he wondered what to pick up on the way home for a late dinner.

As he walked through the main floor lobby, he noticed the small poster advertising his class—the same one that was tacked up in his office building. He’d seen it the day after Sandra told him she was pregnant and going to stay with her mother in Toronto while she finished her PhD thesis.

He stopped behind the heavy double doors to bundle up. He could already feel the draft from outside; February had been bitter, so far. As his zipper stitched his coat together in one rippling vibration, he heard the frenzied squeal of tires under hurried brakes, and then an awful, echoless thud, like the end of something.

Michael rushed out of the building and down the icy stone steps. After sliding and nearly falling, he grabbed hold of the thin metal railing for support as he skidded along the remaining stairs. From there, just beyond the stone wall that bordered the building, he could see the commotion. It was roughly 30 metres away, around one of the trees that lined the sidewalk. And a station wagon with its front half straddling the sidewalk. And a person in between.

He didn’t understand at first. Then he registered a flash of red fabric, the trailing edge of her scarf, and saw that the person pinned against the tree was Marianne. An older man stood tense close by, and a younger one paced in tight circles, his breath puncturing the cold.

Michael edged toward them. The men stood on the fringes—the driver and the witness—framing Marianne. Michael could see that her legs were trapped by the car, suspended in the before-and-after of the accident.

Already, more people gathered around. There were shards of conversation:

“Marianne?” The older man. “It’s okay. Help is coming. You’re going to be okay.”

“Did anyone call 911?”

“He skidded on black ice. It happened so fast.”

The older man asked if anyone had called Marianne’s husband. A woman offered to get his number and raced into the building.

Sirens were drawing near; Michael could no longer dismiss their wail as part of the ringing in his ears. An ambulance pulled up, followed closely by a fire truck. The paramedics introduced themselves to Marianne and asked her full name. “Marianne, you’re doing great.” “Do you know where you are, Marianne?” “I’m going to take your pulse, Marianne.” “I’m touching your thigh, Marianne, can you feel that?”

Michael stood back with the growing crowd, ushered aside by the firefighters. The woman who went off in search of the phone number had returned, talking into her mobile. “Which hospital will she go to? I have her husband on the phone.” One of the paramedics let her know.

The police arrived and approached the devastated driver before directing traffic away from the collision site. Michael watched as the paramedics readied the stretcher next to Marianne while the police pushed the station wagon off the sidewalk, freeing Marianne from its hold. In one smooth movement, the paramedics swept her onto the stretcher and into the ambulance.

Then the doors closed and they were gone, and the fire truck drove off, and the crowd was left to listen to the cruiser’s idle hum as the police and the driver spoke inside the patrol car. The older man lingered, on standby to give a statement, while the others slowly dispersed.

At last, Michael headed home, no longer thinking of dinner. All he wanted was to phone Sandra and tell her what he’d seen. But he still wasn’t sure what to say about the baby, and he didn’t think he should call until he knew.

He took a hot shower and went to bed early.

An hour later, he was hungry enough to get up and rummage through the kitchen. There was a serving of lasagna left over from two nights before. He microwaved it and managed a few absent bites, then put it back in the fridge, unwrapped.

The next day, after work, Michael went to the hospital, stopping on the way to pick up flowers. It was nearly Valentine’s Day, and as he walked toward the hospital’s information desk, he was distracted by a boy playing with a red heart-shaped balloon. It was shiny, like mellowed tin foil, and not fully inflated, so it didn’t properly maintain its form; there were little dents and folds. The child tossed his heart up, then watched as it slowly sank down until he bopped it again, or until it was relaunched by a wheezing air duct or someone walking briskly through the corridor.

“Can I help you?”

With a start, Michael turned toward the woman at the information desk, which he’d nearly stumbled into. “Yes, sorry. I’m looking for a patient, Marianne Lauder. She was admitted yesterday.”

The woman peered through her glasses, searching the name on her computer. She nodded once, brusquely. “She’s in the trauma unit.”

“Should I leave these here for her?” He lifted the bouquet of pink roses.

“You can bring them up yourself. She’s been taking a few visitors.” The woman told him Marianne’s room number and directed him to the elevators.

When he arrived at her room, Michael found the door open. He peered around the frame and saw Marianne lying in bed. A bearded man sat silent in a chair beside her, cradling her hand in both of his.

Michael had seen this before, or parts of it. A small bed in a dim room. A woman lying there in a daze, unable to get up. For days, for weeks at a time—longer than he could understand at such a young age. He didn’t know when it ended, only that it began when his father drove off. Michael’s attempts to rouse his mother—the misspelled notes; pansies plucked from the neighbour’s garden, dirt still dangling from their roots—only left him feeling foolish.

Just as Michael started to retreat from Marianne’s doorway, she glanced over and they locked eyes.

“Hello,” Michael said. “I’m sorry to intrude. I was in the art class yesterday. I saw what happened and… I wanted to see how you were doing.”

“Come in,” the man said. “I’m John, Marianne’s husband.” Michael shook his hand and introduced himself. “These for Marianne?” John stood, reaching for the roses. “I’ll get them in water.”

Michael’s gaze flickered down to the blanketed outline of Marianne’s body. The shape ended just short of where her lower legs should have been.

“Would you like to sit?” she asked, her voice thick.

“Please do,” John called from the sink, over the sound of running water. “I’m leaving soon to get the kids. I’d rather Marianne have company.”

Michael took the seat by her bedside. “I wanted to say how sorry I am,” he said. “I was hoping…”

She smiled tightly, lips shut. “So was I.” She peered at where her legs now ended. “They had to amputate below the knees.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

She smiled again, softer this time. She closed her eyes. “I have John and great friends. The neighbours are feeding our kids.”

John placed Michael’s flowers among the others, perched above the radiator, and leaned in to kiss Marianne on the forehead. “And I’m about to bring them back to you.” He squeezed her hand and kissed her lips firmly, lingering a moment. “I love you.”

Marianne’s chin folded. Fighting tears, John left them alone.

Michael fiddled with the gloves on his lap. “How many children do you have?” he asked.

“Two.”

He nodded.

“You have kids?” she asked, her words lazily following one another.

“No. But I just found out my girlfriend is pregnant.”

“Oh. Congratulations.”

He took a breath. “Thank you.” He loosened his coat, realizing at last how warm he’d gotten.

“When are you expecting?” Her gaze drifted somewhere between her bedsheet and the ceiling.

“Ah, she’s – Sandra, her name is Sandra, she’s due in the fall. We haven’t sorted everything out yet. She’s having the baby, but… I’m not sure where things stand. We’ve only been together a few months.”

Marianne looked directly at him. “A new baby is a much better reason to be in hospital than a double leg amputation.”

“Of course. I’m so sorry.” He shifted in his seat. He noticed a pair of tubes coming out of her right arm and hand. One of them connected to a monitor, which punctuated their conversation with a steady, incessant bleat, like beeps at intersections, announcing that it’s safe to cross.

“My daughter was born in this hospital,” she said.

“How old is she?”

“Nine.”

Michael nodded. He glimpsed the bouquets on the windowsill, their petals cringing at the radiator’s blast. He wondered how the world would look now for Marianne, who had to present a new body that had changed so suddenly and without her control. “I think you’re very brave,” he said.

“It’s like everything else, I guess,” she said, watching him through hazy eyes. “One day at a time.”

“I should let you rest.”

Her gaze floated away again. “There’s no ramp into that building.”

“Pardon?”

Footsteps hammering along in a hurry got louder and louder, until an older woman burst into the room. The cool winter air still about her, she leaned over Marianne, enveloping her hands. “Oh my god,” the woman said. Marianne’s chin crumpled again.

“I’ll get going,” Michael said, standing.

Marianne turned to face him. “Thank you for coming.” Her voice wavered. “It was kind.”

As he walked down the hall, he could hear sobs coming from Marianne’s room. He wasn’t sure which of the women was crying.

When Michael got home, he went straight to the rolled-up drawing from yesterday’s class and let it unfurl. The paper slowly revealed Marianne’s feet, her ankles and calves, right up to her thighs and the rest of her. She had been whole, fully intact, 24 hours earlier. It didn’t seem possible that he had held her body in his gaze just moments before it came apart.

His grip loosened and the paper collapsed partway back onto itself until it showed only Marianne’s lower body. He thought of Sandra and the life forming inside her. And of his mother, who made her way back. And his father, wherever he’d gone.

Michael had never seen himself as a parent. Yet there he was.