Featherless Bipeds by Richard Scarsbrook

open chest, my heart throbbing now. Maybe I shouldn’t be doing this. Whatever is in there is none of my business. I suspect that ignorance is bliss when it comes to a parent’s past. I should just stand up, put the stuff back on top of the chest, and walk away, but I reach out and gently pull the blanket off.
    On top is an old Faireville High yearbook. Both Mom and Dad’s photos are in the “Seniors” section. Dad appears in pictures of the Debating Club, The History Club, and the Chess Team, and Mom is in the Drama Club, the Glee Club, the Brass Band (trumpet), and the Visual Arts Club. As different as two people can be, even then. I wonder what made it work for them all those years ago? It seems that some of the other boys at Faireville High were wondering the same thing, judging from the numerous declarations of affection scribbled in the yearbook’s inside covers.
    Tucked inside the back cover of the yearbook is a yellowed certificate, which reads:
    Faireville District High School
proudly presents this certificate to
Jessica Wilder
for
Highest Class Standing
in
Gr. 12 Visual Arts
    I put the certificate back into the yearbook, then peer into the chest again. Beneath a few other yearbooks and trinkets are a bunch of artist’s canvases. I slide one of them out, an impressionist-style landscape painting. Even in the basement’s dull light, it bursts with colour and life. The trees seem to move, and the painting’s sky warms my face with its radiant orange sun. My mother’s signature, J. Wilder , is in the corner of the canvas.
    I pull another painting from the box. It’s a realist portrait of a young man I don’t recognize. Maybe it’s one of Mom’s old high school boyfriends, someone she dated before she met Dad. It’s painted with the precision of a Renaissance artist, with those liquid eyes that seem to gaze right at you from no matter what angle you approach the piece.
    One by one, I look at the paintings, which vary in style, theme, and mood, but invariably shine with talent. The paintings of Jessica Wilder, before she was Mrs. Arthur Sifter, before she was Mom. Why aren’t these framed and hanging upstairs where everyone can see them? Why isn’t she still painting? Why are these works all hidden away in a locked box in the basement?
    â€œDak,” Mom’s voice calls from upstairs. “Dinner’s almost ready. Come wash up.”
    I place the paintings and other things back into the hope chest, close the lid, position the old Underwood typewriter over its footprint in the dust, stack the camping gear back on top, and snap the lock closed.
    At the dinner table, Dad glares at me, but says nothing. Mom rearranges things on the table as we eat, avoiding eye contact with my father and me. My sister is working this evening at a local doughnut shop, and for a change I miss our pointless squabbling. Anything would be better than this silence, so complete that my chewing rumbles like an avalanche in my eardrums.
    â€œSo, Mom,” I finally manage, “Dad was telling me that you went to University for a year. What did you take?”
    â€œArt,” Mom blurts out, caught by surprise. “Visual Art. Painting, mostly.”
    â€œHow come you quit?”
    Mom looks shaken. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought this up.
    â€œOh, painting isn’t all that useful in the real world, I suppose,” she says. “Besides, I wasn’t very good at it.”
    I want to tell her just how good she really was, but I don’t want to let on that I’ve been snooping around in her hope chest downstairs.
    Dad places his fork and knife in their proper positions on either side of his plate. His chair creaks as he turns to face me. “Dak,” he says crisply, “your mother has sacrificed everything for you.”
    â€œOh, Arthur,” Mom says, “let’s not overstate things.”
    Strangely, Dad doesn’t look at Mom