At the end of eight grade, my mom had a painting I did in Mrs. Schmidt’s art class framed. “I love this painting so much,” she said as I held it out in shame before me. The only problem was I didn’t paint it. Nor did I have the courage to tell my mom the truth. I had no idea how long this one little white lie, meant to cover my tracks from a single missed assignment, would follow me throughout my life: from my teens to my twenties, thirties, and beyond.
To back up for a moment and reveal the true artist behind the painting. A Pillow did paint the painting, but his name was Ben, not Jeff. Unlike yours truly, Ben did the class assignment. Not only that, he painted an extra — of which I became the heir to one.
“Everyone turn in your homework,” Mrs. Schmidt had said that fateful Monday back in 1993.
“Oh, shit,” I said under my breath. Looking toward Ben who sat next to me in art class, I searched for someone else who’d failed to do their art homework over the weekend. But as Ben and everyone around me — front, back, left, and right — presented their homework from their binders and backpacks, I realized I was alone. I was the odd man out.
“I straight up forgot,” I said to Ben. To which he said something that would soon haunt me for the next thirty-plus years.
“I did two. Couldn’t figure out which one I liked more. But I’m going to turn in this one. You can have the other. Hadn’t even signed my name on it yet.”
“I can’t do that,” I said.
“Sure you can, and if you don’t, you get an ‘F.'”
He had a point. A very good point.
So I signed my name, handed in my (Ben’s) painting of a mad scientist with his eye cast on world domination, received an ‘A’ for my (Ben’s) efforts, and approximately one month later had it showcased in the 8th Grade Art Show at Longwood University — and not a day goes by that I don’t regret not just taking the ‘F.’ Ben, coincidentally enough, would get a ‘B-‘ on the work he turned in, to which he said, “I should’ve given you that one instead.”
And maybe had Ben given me the B- painting, none of what would transpire would have transpired. But that’s not how it all went down. Instead, I pretended in an impromptu moment of desperation. As punishment, I’ve had this lie that won’t end hanging over my head for decades.
And because I didn’t come clean when I should’ve, I received it in a frame as a gift, after which my mom had me hang it on a wall in my bedroom so my lie could serve as a reminder that only I (and Ben) knew about. And when I’d move the painting elsewhere in my childhood bedroom, like behind the door or in the closet, really, anywhere out of sight, my mom would seek it out and again it would reappear in full view in a place, in my room, I couldn’t escape its sight.
“Oh, I love this painting you did,” she’d say to the point I even wondered, “Does she know?” and “Is she messing with me?” But how could she? And she didn’t in all reality. She really did just love the drawing. And so, when I went away to college, then got married, and bought my first house, it was this cursed painting my mom wrapped up and gifted me as a housewarming gift.
How did she ever unearth it from the bottom of a cardboard box in my childhood bedroom where I’d purposely buried it in the hopes it would never see the light of day again?
And when my wife, who coincidentally enough was in Mrs. Schmidt’s eighth grade art class with me, saw it, she said, “Love it! It can go in our bathroom.”
And I thought, Oh God, no. I’m going to have to keep this lie going until I’m on my deathbed, and even then, I probably won’t be able to confess my sin and if I don’t confess to the truth that it was Ben who painted “The Mad Scientist,” what if someone brings this fraudulent painting to my funeral and places it next to a photo of me or worse yet decides to bury it with me inside my coffin (even though I’d like to be cremated despite not really digging the whole fire thing) but at least it would fry that damn painting, right?
So when my mom gives me this housewarming gift, I don’t spill the beans. I shamefully say, “Thank you,” and my wife does hang it up in our downstairs bathroom and after about three months in, my wife starting to show in pregnancy, I let it out. I can’t take it anymore. It’s like a beating heart under a floorboard.
BA-BUMP. BA-BUMP! BA-BUMP!!
And I tell her the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
“I didn’t paint that,” I said.
And she, my loving wife, pregnant with our first child in the womb, hearing the truth, my truth, finally after all these painful years, says to me, “But it’s got your name on it.”
And I can’t believe what I’m hearing so I say it again as plainly as I can, “But I didn’t paint it.”
And then I share the entire history behind this dreaded artwork. And my wife looks at me, looks at the painting on our bathroom wall, and says, “Well, we can’t have a lie hanging on our wall” and removes it from the nail.
And I say, “It is a cool drawing.”
And she says, “But it’s a complete lie.”
And I say, “Yeah, I know. But it is kind of cool.”
“It’s not going back up, ever,” she said.
So after my daughter was born, when we decorated the nursery, I snuck it up on her wall and Allison immediately said, “Our daughter’s first image will not be of a lie.”
And I said, “But it’s not a lie anymore. I confessed the truth. It’s over. It’s finally over.”
And she said, “Did you to your mom? Because this painting still has your signature on it.”
And she was right. I hadn’t. I never admitted the truth until now:
I DIDN’T PAINT THAT PAINTING, MOM.
The one of “The Mad Scientist.”
Ben did.
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