Cloudbursts

Cloudbursts by Scott Dorsch      You are special.      Right now, you are in the middle of the living room with your hands out in front of you like a conjurer. Just above your brow is a cloud about the size of a rabbit, raining miniature rain onto a potted lemon tree. A black sheet hangs from the ceiling behind you and scrolls under your feet. It is coarse and sodden with rain. Your feet, too. Holding this pose is painful, but you do it anyway for your father. Your neck and shoulders ache and that familiar sharp bloom of sparks, of a hand gone numb, is back. But you must stay focused. Be still.       You are your father’s favorite subject. You were a subject before you could walk. The uncanny prints of a child producing miniature clouds sell like hot cakes at fairs and gas stations all over the Midwest and make your father just enough money to afford the oils and canvas and printing fees. But it is the commercial jobs that earn him a living. Spray guns, ventilators and satin-finish eggshell are Monday through Friday. This latest portrait could change all of that. It could be a showstopper.       The sun radiates over your father’s shoulder onto the easel like a spotlight, illuminating ancient dust above, waves of hair that could be your mother’s. It’s a dramatic illumination: the deep, crow-black shadows in the background, contrasted by the bright, angelic subject summoning rain onto lemons in the foreground. The raindrops clinging to the rinds are bright and phosphoric. The cloud, a near-black. The subject, bored.       So baroque yet so surreal, critics would say. Perhaps they will comment on the inspiring use of light, the emphatic, no, deft chiaroscuro. But your father’s aim is more specific than that. His vision is more tenebrous, more Caravaggio, more dramatic than just simple deep shading for the sake of depth of field. He thinks this portrait could make him into something more than just a sideshow amongst the beer-can artist at the fairs. He may be hailed as the surrealist Rembrandt of Michigan. Perhaps he could sell more than just postcards and 10x12s, earn an honorary degree from Western or be invited to shows in high-rise New York or the Tate Modern. It could wretch him out of the gaff tape scrum and suffocating fumes of another credit union. Out of this sad cabin, north of town. Perhaps even your mother will come back. Perhaps.       It has been ten days and oil has yet to touch more than just swatches and thumbnails. A house is only as strong as its foundation. His eyes dart from subject—you—to the parchment laid in his lap. He crosshatches your cheeks with charcoal in rough, staccato strokes, lifting the portrait to the light every so often to check his work. Satin-finish eggshell forever ornaments his curly black hair (it’s where you get your curls). Satin-finish eggshell hazes his jeans and even his bare feet. Satin-finish eggshell is his scent, his aura. You can’t remember a time when he wasn’t pocked with paint. He works in near silence. Never speaks. Music is distracting. Kids are distracting. You find his new mustache distracting. It seems to be an extension of his wispy nose hairs.       Look away. Don’t laugh. Don’t look him in the eye. He hates that. You don’t want to agitate him. He moves like the weather in November. Mercurial, cold. Warm when you don’t expect it. You never know what father you will get.       Producing clouds—controlling clouds—requires deep focus. Keep watching the dust dance in the light like krill. Imagine you’re at the bottom of the ocean, the cloud a turtle. Ignore the pain in your shoulders and feet.       The feeling has always been ineffable, this making of clouds. You tried to explain it to your mother when you were eight. She was looking out the window when she asked about it. You told her that you could sense the clouds in the room like fish tugging at a line, and you just need to pull them into view.       Like this, you said, lifting your hands overhead. A small loaf of a cloud appeared. She smiled.       It kind of itches. Stings sometimes. Like static, you said.       You’re losing the cloud. Concentrate. There’s a meaty scar on your lower lip from biting it. Tongue the scar tissue and stay grounded. Listen deeply to what’s around you. You can’t lose this rabbit-sized cloud. Your father is so happy with this one. He said it is perfect. Focus on the pencil strokes, the ticks of rain on the lemon leaves. On the texture of the black sheet below you. Your feet. The fan whirring in the other room. The clicks of juncos outside. The brawl of grackles and blue jays. The crying of gulls overhead.       The gulls are inland. Storm is coming. Or is it you? Sometimes you can’t tell the difference. The birds make you restless.      Behind your ear is a tickle, an itch. You swear it’s a spider. A thick one, like the ones that splay your windowsill at night. Wait for a break in the glances from your father before moving to check. You don’t want to upset him.       Minutes pass before your father finally huffs, looks away, and bends to swap his charcoal pencil for a tortillon. He pushes up his glasses and tugs at his mustache. As he rubs his eyes, reach to inspect your nape.       “Don’t,” he says without looking.      You stop. Shudder. The rabbit-sized cloud expands by an inch, as if it were shocked, hair now standing on end. The rain tightens into a finer mist. Your father raises a brow.       Deep breath. Focus. The grackles in the yard.       The rain expands. It’s audible once again on the floor, the