The Art Class

6. The Statue

On Friday at the end of art class, Eddy had asked his art teacher if he may take home his materials for his statue to work on at home.

The art teacher was probably old enough to be Eddy's grandfather. He smiled back at Eddy as he replied;

"Eddy, it doesn't matter if you take a bit longer to finish it, you don't need to take it home for homework."

"Sir.. I.. I get frustrated when I feel like I'm falling behind. Please, may I work on it a little bit over the weekend and bring it in on Monday so that I could finish it up with everyone else?"

The art teacher gave Eddy a warm smile.

"Okay. Sure, if that's what you want, of course you can Eddy."

"Thank you, Sir"

That Friday afternoon after art class, Brett had come over to Eddy's place to hang out. Brett excitedly asked Eddy if he wanted to start coming back to orchestral practice on Saturdays.

"Eddy, we could play two boys, one violin style! You could participate in orchestral practise!"

Eddy shook his head.

"I don't think that would be appreciated by everyone.. I don't want them to think we're fooling around."

Brett, unlike in art class when he backed off after one offer, persisted;

"Eddy, I kid you not, we actually sounded pretty decent. With a bit more practice we would probably sound better than most of them."

Eddy was flattered but still could not bring himself to give a nod. It just didn't feel right. He didn't think he could play the violin in front of everyone in the orchestra like that. It felt too intimate. Besides, he felt it wasn't fair on Brett to compromise his playing either.

"I don't feel comfortable playing like that at orchestral practice.."

Brett furrowed his brows and gave Eddy a look that Eddy struggled to comprehend. Eddy further stammered;

"B, but I.. I'd like to keep practising with you like that when we can meet up.. if that's okay with you. It would help me keep up with the stuff you do at the orchestra. Besides, I really enjoyed it.. I can't believe I.. well, we could make my violin sound like that. I really missed the sound of my violin."

Brett smiled.

"Okay Eddy, I understand. And sure, if you ever want to practice, just let me know. I'm happy to do it."

So it was Saturday and Eddy would've been at orchestral practice had he not had his accident, but now since he had nothing better to do he thought he might as well try to get some of his artwork done.

Eddy was going to construct a small statue from his pieces of materials. Some were brought home from the art studio like the small piece of timber and the thick wire that was meant to become his stand.

He had to attach other materials to it to build his statue. Some stuff he brought home from the studio like a couple of ping pong balls and some bottle caps. Eddy also raided the recycling box at home in the kitchen to find some cardboard from some cereal boxes.

It was tricky to hold the pieces up against his stand and secure them in place but he didn't want to ask for help from anyone in his family. Even using a pair of scissors was a joke with just one hand, he actually needed something, preferably a functioning left hand to hold the cardboard still! He was initially working at his small study desk but soon got frustrated with the difficulty in holding things in place and started to work on his bedroom floor instead.

He realised it was actually much easier working on the floor since he was able to use his whole body to hold things, for example, between his chest and chin, his legs, he even used his left hand with his stiff, immobile fingers which remained frozen rigid. He sat and clamped the piece of cardboard between his feet to hold it up as he cut it with a pair of scissors. After a while, Eddy was actually starting to enjoy coming up with various ways to get things done. Even his left hand, he found could be used to stop the statue from falling over.

Once he managed to put together his materials to construct a small fox, he took his paints and his statue to the bathroom and started to paint it. He spread some pages he had torn off from an old magazine on the bathroom floor and he mixed up some orange and brown paint. After he applied the paint to one side of his fox, he used his left arm to nudge it along to turn it around in order to paint the other side. He had to rotate his left shoulder to swing his left arm around in order to do this.

It was then he noticed that his left hand was in a different shape. His fingers had moved into a slightly different arrangement. Eddy must have not noticed it happen till now since he had been so focused on his artwork. He stopped painting and put his paintbrush down on the bathroom floor. He then grabbed his left wrist with his right hand to stared at his left hand.

Once completely frozen and unable to move any of his fingers, it now looked as if his hand was shaking. In fact it wasn't, but there was an ever so slight movement returning to his index finger and thumb. Eddy was able to wriggle them ever so slightly, making them look like a tremor.

His left hand went out of focus as tears welled up in his eyes. Eddy quickly wiped his tears with his sleeve and looked at his left hand again. The movements were very, very subtle. But it was a movement that Eddy was executing and commanding his fingers to do and they were responding. It was not some random tremor as he had initially thought. For Eddy, going from zero movements to this ever so slight controlled movement was simply epic.