Early Sunsets over Monroeville

I ended up leaving pretty quickly after Katelyn announcing her pregnancy. Frank started off quietly saying how fucking delighted he was. I’m quoting him there, “fucking delighted”. Then Katelyn lost her sweet expression and started getting really pissy over the fact that Frank never cares about anything and that’s when they began to fight. Not physically, but like lawyers. As soon as they broke into the legal jargon I accepted the job and told Katelyn to keep me informed before showing myself out. In the hall I could hear them growing louder shouting things like, “Your afore mentioned statement is blatantly untrue!” and “I object, you are putting forward ideas of the most obscene!”
The only legal cases I’d ever seen were Judge Judy and ones in movies. They never sound like that. Maybe that’s why lawyers like them get paid so much is because they need to learn an entire extra vocabulary.
The blow of the statement only hits me when I get home. I slide the bolts on my door and collapse onto the main room floor. I don’t cry. I’m too shaken to cry. To see Frank again was like a kick to the chest but this. What the fuck Katelyn Iero. She must have known something and to really salt the wound of her husband’s guilt she wanted me there. You know in case he didn’t feel bad enough.
He’s too young to be a dad. He has said before he wants to be a dad but not yet. Part of me hopes that he wants be a dad but not with Katelyn as the mom. I guess that ship has sailed.
Catholicism won’t let her get an abortion. She wouldn’t want one anyway.
I lie on the floor for several hours before rolling into the kitchen part to search for alcohol. I find a bottle of Bourbon in a pot in the bottom drawer and open it without getting off the floor. I drink it and smoke several cigarettes lying vertical. I wouldn’t suggest doing this, I nearly choked several times.

I wake up at about eleven the next day still lying on the cold linoleum of the kitchen floor with a pain in my back and a load of bourbon staining my shirt. I shake ashes out of my hair and sit up straight. Honestly this is a pathetic life.
I shower for a half an hour but I can’t get rid of the smell of drink. I don’t realise until I get out that I’m crying. Oh.
When I check my phone to my dismay I find a voice message from Katelyn. “Hi Gerard it’s katelyn Iero. Just wondering if you could come over today at about three o’clock to discuss the mural? Thanks.” She couldn’t even give me twenty four hours to wallow in self-pity, what a bitch.
I search for twenty minutes until I find clean clothes and then throw a whole load of dirty ones into the washing machine with enough washing powder to make me smell like apricots permanently. Apricots smell nicer than I currently do.
I decide to walk to the Iero’s to clear my head. I stop for coffee three times on the way and by the time I get to the entrance hall of their building I’m close to pissing myself.
“Hi Gerard, come in,” Katelyn answers. I wonder if Frank’s here. Maybe it would be better if he wasn’t.
“Hi, Mrs Iero. Before we start, may I use your toilet?” I’m all but hopping up and down.
“Uh… Yes, it’s through there.”
“Thank you!” I waddle over to the bathroom.
When I return Katelyn is sitting pleasantly on her couch reading Women’s weekly. “Okay?”
“Eh yea… You have cool monogrammed towels,” I say awkwardly.
“Thank you. I’ll show you the wall. Now, I don’t know yet if it’s a boy or a girl and really this is planning greatly in advance. But I would like something unisex, and pretty. Specifically very adorable, something that wouldn’t scare the child as it goes to sleep.”
I follow her into the small cream room. Gold skirting here too. The poor child has to live with the same cream and gold, there is no escape. I hope it goes through an emo phase and paints the room black and hangs up posters of Taylor Momsen and Andy Biersack and scares the shit out of its mother. “So nothing that could possibly give them nightmares means basically nothing with a face…”
“I guess.”
“Well you really ruling out a lot.”
“Possibly.”
“And again, the gold is really limiting my pallet.”
“Perhaps.”
“So what do you have in mind?”
“I was thinking maybe a scene again. Maybe a mountain top with a night time sky? Lots of little farms and sheep and things, nothing intimidating.” The kids growing up in New Jersey. I grew up in New Jersey, I’ve never personally seen a sheep.
“Okay sure,” I pull out a sketchpad and pencil and begin to sketch a general drawing. “Do you think I could maybe change the colour or your skirting?”
“Why?” she asks indignantly.
“Um because gold goes with like nothing.”
“You made it work with the other paintings.”
“Well if you want mountains then you want greens. If you want more than one shade of green I don’t think you want gold skirting.”
“What would you even change it to?” She folds her arms.
“Baby blue? A very neutral colour, for boys and girls. Then I can make the greens very soft whereas if there’s gold they’ll have to be very vibrant. If they’re very vibrant the baby will have difficulty sleeping.” I put my hands on my hips.
Katelyn sighs, “Very well. You may do that.”

I come back the next day with two tubs of white paint, a tub of baby blue paint, brushes, and a shit ton of old newspapers to cover the floor. Frank answers the door and pulls me in. “My wife will be back any second,” he says quickly.
For a second I’m convinced he’s going to kiss me. Or knock me to the floor on top of all the tubs of paint and newspapers and fuck me. But he doesn’t. “I really like you and I’m not sorry we kissed. But we can’t. Katelyn must have known something was up or else she wouldn’t have hired you for this. She wants both of us to suffer for it or something. But now I’m going to be a fucking dad and there’s no backing out so I’m sorry.”
I nod slowly, still holding all the things.
“Um, need a hand?” Frank asks. I nod and shove a tub into his hand.
“Will you help me lay out these?” I ask shaking the stack of newspapers slightly. I got them off Bob whose mother is a hoarder. These date back to the early 00’s.
“Yea sure.”
We line the floor with old papers. Katelyn comes home at one point and checks in on us. She doesn’t offer to help just goes into her office. When the floor is no longer visible Frank offers to help me paint the skirting.
“Sure it’ll need at least three coats,” I say. We roll up our sleeves and chat pleasantly about our first concerts and get sort of covered in paint. When the first coat is on we go into his kitchen for coffee, giving it a chance to dry. “Um, by the way, why do you really shop in my Walmart?” I have been meaning to ask this for a while.
“Ah.” He flushes slightly, “Well um. Okay. Don’t think of me as a fucking stalker…”
“What?”
“I wanted somewhere new to shop anyway okay. And then Mikey said he picked you up from around there so I thought, “hey, why not go shopping there where you might see that cute guy with a good music taste.” I promise it’s not as stalker-ish as it sounds.”
I laugh to try and cool my cheeks which are currently on fire. “That does sound pretty stalker-ish but I’m glad you did.”
“I’m glad I did too.”
We stand there awkwardly sipping our coffee until I say we should check on the paint. It isn’t ready so we end up sitting together in the middle of the room. He shows me photos on his phone of when he met one of the Ramones before they died and I showed him a picture I took of Justin Bieber from behind when I spotted him in New York.
Its eleven o’clock by the time three coats of white are dried and the blue applied. I walk a few meters down the street until cabs become visible again. Tomorrow I’m going to draw out the mountain shape and the lambs and shit. I wanted to be a comic book artist. If not that some kind of dark and deep artist who paints graveyards from his dreams. I never ever envisioned myself as the great portrait artist of lambs.

Notes

Howdy.
I was worried for a while i wouldn't actually get this done because i had so much on my to do list. But yea i wrote this instead of my math homework... Oh well. At least i got my history projects done which are due tomorrow. Mine are on Elvis Presley and Punk. Honestly it was the best assignment we were ever given and for once i'm looking forward to presenting it. My one on Punk will probably take my class by surprise because i have the image of the quiet, studious, smart girl and now i'm going to be lecturing them on the Sex Pistols and the Misfits :3
Anyway thanks a million for leaving all the lovely comments, sorry if the last chapter was a bit of a bombshell. Merci for reading and i'll update again tomorrow so let me know what you think! :))