Webs

Lord Roger Rennold moved out of the city a week after his 45th birthday. He had come home on the evening of his birthday, drained of energy, desiring nothing more than to take off his shoes and shut his eyes. He opened his front door to a lit house, yellow candles glimmering and guests scattered about his floors. Rennold paled, dread wrinkling his skin as people took notice that the special guest had finally arrived.

"Where have you been?" his wife asked in a low voice as she moved toward him in a purple silk gown. "Don't tell me you forgot."

Rennold looked at his wife's face with flushed features.

"You know I hate these things," he said.

"Like I care. Now stop looking like you walked into a haunted building."

He tried to swallow his dread and attempted to pull on a smile, giving a quick face-to-face conversation with his patrons.

He stopped in the drawing room and looked at the scene displayed before him and wondered when he had gotten so bitter. Groups of people sat in the dining room and drawing room, engaged in local gossip, admiring Catherine's taste in décor. Rooms full of faces he didn't recognize. He did not attend the social gatherings anymore where new faces circle in and different bonds were made. He no longer took an interest in the chatter, watching the thoughts and opinions play on repeat.

After he greeted all the guests who offered him kind words and congratulations he found himself standing at the end of the dining room, exhaustion hitting him again. Catherine stood at the other end of the room with a mocking grin. He wondered then when his wife had grown so cruel. He grabbed a bottle of rum from the kitchen and snuck upstairs.

Rennold took a seat in a lounge chair in his study, bottle resting loosely between his fingers. He looked over to the shelf-lined wall stuffed with papers and textbooks and novels. Some he had had with him since childhood, picture books he kept in the right hand corner, pages of colorful animals and young children, curly letters constructing simple words designed to teach a molding mind. There were leather-bound books on history and philosophy, textbooks collected from university stuffed with notes, and boxes stashed with letters. He never tossed any of them, the papers in an organized timeline that mapped out his life. There was a telescope by the window and a large wooden desk with an ornate inkwell and quill pen set. Along the other wall was an easel, worn and chipped, with canvases stacked behind it.

Rennold looked at the canvases and felt disappointment wrap around him. So many paintings sat unfinished, collecting dust; such beautiful images in his head, some replicated beautifully, others forming only as sketch marks—a single silhouette or stripe of landscape taking a small form before the images became too blurry, growing with frustration that he couldn't pin them down. The glass of the windows were dirty, smudges across the surface and scratches around the pane. He found it harder to draw inspiration from the streets.

There was a shout from below, the guests carrying on in Rennold's absence, and he pushed himself from his chair and approached the artwork that used to be his life's work. He had known from a young age that being an artist was not an option for him, but that didn't stop him from picking up a brush. That's what he noticed most about his work as he tracked the canvases through time: his loss in the use of color. His earliest works were almost all finished, displaying open skies and the detailed landscapes that he grew up in. Flowers blooming, horses grazing beneath an oak tree. His paintings were sloppy in the beginning, an untrained hand and simple eyes not yet capturing detail or understanding how colors behaved when blended. But skill began to shine through his work, practice leading him to create images that looked captured from the eye. He would copy some of the details, in others he would create his own take on the scenery. There was one piece he remembered doing when he was 12. It depicted his mother's large garden that bloomed at the end of the house he grew up in. There were vegetables and fruits grown together, and among the leaves and vines, he created massive bugs crawling across the plants. Beetles crawling over squash and large grasshoppers munching on the leaves of a strawberry. His mother's face was painted in the corner, her eyes comically big and her mouth open in shock as she watched her plants being devoured.

When he first moved to Birmingham, he tried to continue his work, but the pieces came out blurry, many only tracings as he got frustrated and gave up. It took time to adjust to a new atmosphere, but he continued to paint what was around him. His canvases became covered with tall buildings and busy markets. Green life became infrastructure and man-made creations. He could add exquisite detail and shading, capture a perfect image, but the world was gray. The glow of light drained away. He looked at the piece he had been working on a few months ago, nothing but black and white, giving form to an unhappy couple bunched together in the rain. He had seen the pair from his study window, touched by their closeness. He began the piece with great passion, but it didn't last and he was unable to keep the image steady. The faces were wrong, their shoulders too high, damp clothing not properly falling down the huddled forms. He had tossed the canvas to the ground in frustration, creating a small tear between the couple. After a moment he picked up the canvas, looking at the tear. He placed his finger on the hole, then ripped it through the rest of the material, tossing it to the ground again.

He went back to his chair and took a large swing from the bottle, turning his head away from the artwork. He tried to swallow the emotions attempting to rise to the surface. He was losing a part of himself as he pondered on the essence of his existence. His house was full of people downstairs, but how many of them would remember him when he was gone? He felt cold, empty.

Rennold looked at the expensive globe that sat by his desk, only used as a decoration that Catherine thought tied the room together. He scrunched his nose at it. Beneath his feet was a fox rug, the splashes of grey and orange disgusting him, and he smeared his mud-coated boots across the fur, then tossed them off his feet in relief.

The door to the study opened and Rennold did not bother looking to see who it was before he shouted: "Go away!"

"Now, Lord Roger," said the familiar voice, "is this any way to behave on your birthday?"

Rennold turned to see his friend Walter Attwood standing at the door. He was only a few years younger than Rennold but he did not look it. His black hair had yet to produce the silver strands of age, his face still tightly molded and his eyes glistening instead of sinking into his skull like his drunk friend.

"Oh, don't try to pull me back down there, my friend. I won't budge. You know better than most that I hate these kinds of things," Rennold said. "I don't give a damn about any of those strangers."

"But Roger! Those people are not strangers! Many you have known for years, people you have seen on numerous occasions—"

"Yes, I know many of their names, I have seen them many times, but that does not mean I care for their company. Such boring trifles! That Lord Wolfe Darnell will not shut up about his writing. He thinks he's a literary genius! I have read his work and I can tell you one thing, and that is that man has no talent for the literary arts. His work is dull and leads in predictable directions."

Attwood took a seat on the chair across from his friend. "I remember a time when you enjoyed social events. You had such energy around people!"

"When I was around the right people. Those people are not here now. That is what makes these events all the more morbid in my eyes. Most of the people who cared about me are dead or gone. My memory is erased more and more, those spots for valuable companions replaced with blank molds."

"It's sad to see how life has deteriorated you."

Rennold looked at his friend with a twist of insult and humor. "Is that such a thing to say on a man's birthday?"

Rennold placed his chin on his hand. "I was just young. I grew into an introvert in my old age. Quiet and content, as my father was, and I don't mind that. Everyone changes. Each year passes a little faster than the one before. I remember when I started at Durham, walking down those halls. Then I blinked and twenty years went by! I look back and see a space, meaningless moments. I have made no stamp on the world."

Attwood frowned. "Does it still upset Catherine?"

Rennold hung his head and nodded. It had been years since the news was definite, but Rennold had known for a while that Lady Catherine would not be able to bear children after she miscarried 3 pregnancies. After each one, she built up a wall that pushed people away from her, including her husband. As acceptance set in that she would never be a mother, her kindness curdled and she grew sour, trying to blame her sorrow on anyone but herself. But she still tried to keep up appearances and kept a social circle. Rennold had seen her interactions with friends and acquaintances and was impressed by the mask she was able to conjure. She smiled, laughed, and gave her full attention. No one would guess the storm folding beneath the surface. 

"It breaks my heart to see her with all of this despair, but I struggle to find an answer to the problem," said Rennold. "What more can I give her, Walter? What more can I do? The more I try to help, the more she despises me."

A frown grew through Attwood's face, creating a grim shadow across his features. "She does not despise you. She struggles to say what she feels and does not want to admit her own emotions, because I don't think she has ever felt such things before. Growing up with Catherine, I will admit I thought her cold inside. She was intelligent and logical, but people used to say she had a block of ice in her chest. No empathy was shown through her until she met you. It was like all those things she should have felt when she was young came flooding back to her all at once. You opened a gate for her, which turned her into the woman you wanted to spend the rest of your life with, but that gate also opened up her ability to feel things distasteful and disastrous. I think this circumstance has forced her to learn new things about herself. It was only after you that she dreamed of having a family."

Attwood looked at Rennold, his head still low, sorrow seeping through his skin.

"You know what you need?" Attwood said suddenly in a perky tone. "A change in scenery. You've lived in this house for almost twenty-two years. You two have grown into an uncomfortable situation and you need to break into a new mold. Start something fresh."

"You think Catherine would ever agree to move? She loves this place."

"You can talk her into liking anything as long as it's got a nice dining room and she can have free reign on the décor."

There was another laugh from downstairs. Rennold rolled his eyes.

"Sounds like it's getting exciting down there," said Attwood as he got to his feet. "I hope I'll see you down there."

Attwood shut the door to the study and Rennold turned back to his bottle and did not emerge from his study until all the guests had gone.