Jonah’s grandma died so his dad gives us $50 each and a twelve pack of Coors Light to repaint the interior of her house. He wants it all white, he explains, waving his hands in the air. All white.
The inside of Jonah’s grandma’s house smells like warm dust, cigarettes, and cat piss, depending on the room. All the walls are currently a shade of dingy pink. The rooms are in varying states of being packed up. We put on a playlist and silently help each other move everything that’s left into the center of each room. All the furniture feels sticky and the sticky has a layer of cat fur. I can’t stop rubbing my palms on my thighs.
I’m sweating because it’s hot and because I’ve been taking Adderall all summer that I bought from some kid that used to date my ex and we fought each other once at the skatepark but we’re cool now. I’ve been riding dirty for the past six months and I tell myself I should set aside my $50 for my registration but I know it’s going to end up going to my ex’s ex. But he gives me good deals—we really are cool now.
Jonah’s really quiet and it’s either because he’s baked or he’s sad or both. I ask him if he’s sad and he pauses spreading down a clear plastic drop cloth and shrugs a little before saying he’s not that sad, but he feels bad about not feeling that sad. I tell him I don’t think I’ll be that sad when my grandma dies either, if I’m being honest. I offer him an Adderall and he takes it and then we don’t talk for awhile after that.
Outside the last door down the hall, Jonah asks me if I can paint the bedroom by myself and he explains how his grandma had depression and just stayed in bed all day for years toward the end and I think it sounds weird to hear someone’s grandma had depression. I ask him if that’s how she died, y’know, did she off herself, and he gets annoyed with me and says no you fucking asshole it was a stroke. Then he storms down the hall and slams himself inside what used to be his grandma’s quilt room but had also become the cat room. The smell of piss burned my eyes in there so I’m glad he’s locked himself in alone while he’s being a little bitch.
I step into Jonah’s dead grandma’s bedroom and it’s the same brownish pink as the rest of the house, the same teal, cat fur coated carpet all pockmarked with the legs of the furniture that used to fill the room.
I stand in the center of where the bed used to be and stare at the wall. It’s more discolored than the rest of the room and I can picture Jonah’s little old grandma just sitting in bed chain smoking in the same spot, day after day, adding layer after layer of sticky, tarry filth above her head. But what makes it worse is that the entire wall is covered in crucifixes. They hang crookedly in every possible size, all crowded in next to each other. I can’t picture chain smoking with dozens of dead Jesuses hanging out right over my shoulder.
I frown and start spreading out a drop cloth, careful not to turn my back to the Jesus wall. I clench my teeth hard and wipe sweat from my forehead onto my sleeve and then I start taking the crucifixes down from the wall and stacking them in a haphazard pile in the center of the room.
Except when I’m done it doesn’t look like I’ve done anything. There’s so much cigarette tar on the wall that the shapes of all the crosses are still there, pale pink paint untouched by years of Jonah’s dead grandma’s chain smoking, protected by Jesus himself. If I were religious, I’d think this was a testament to God’s omnipotence or whatever. I might be really moved. I stand there for a while, staring at it in something similar to awe, this opposite-shadow, this tableau of faith. Then I paint over it all in pure, clean white without another thought.
When I’m done, I go to the cat room and stand in the doorway with the collar of my shirt pulled up over my nose. I ask Jonah if I can take the crucifixes. I explain how I think it’d be cool to set the pile of them on fire and record skateboard videos with it.
He looks at me for a long time and I notice how tired he looks, and I almost say forget it, never mind, but I don’t and he sighs and he says sure man yeah, take them. I tell him thanks, that he’s a good guy. I tell him he and his grandma are probably both going to heaven.
