When Madeline left, she took everything but his art supplies and easels. "Let your art keep you warm, cook for you and fuck you. That's all you love and care about, Topanga," she said, bitterly as she slammed the door upon leaving. The house was stripped down to its bare necessities. He would be lucky to find a spoon. She left him the worn out queen size mattress but took the brass bed frame. Topanga didn't need much, as Madeline was right about one thing-his emphatic love of his art!
As the city's most famous artist, he didn't starve for work, work starved for him. He had more commissioned paintings to finish than the hour had minutes. When he married Madeline, he explained to her how important his art was to him, that it came before anything else, even his beautiful young new bride. After six months of wedded life, the idealistic Madeline realized that he had meant what he said, and became jealous of his devotion to his art. Realizing that she could not change him any more than she could the moon, she decided that divorce was her only option.
Of all the valuables that she took, she left an important one, which was his love for her. It filled the empty rooms and illuminated the walls. Half finished paintings lay scattered around him on the floor, as he sat in front of an easel, holding a blank canvas. As he lifelessly stared at it, all he could see were Madeline's brown doe eyes and lush thick black hair. His art suffered from the pain in his heart. Madeline was all he could think of and no amount of will power could get him interested in his work. He had lost the power to create. Now his days were full of pain, tears and hungering for Madeline. What time he spent away from staring at his empty canvases, envisioning her face, he slept and dreamed of his life in its hopeless turmoil without Madeline. This went on for over a fortnight.
At night he always had dreams of Madeline. The dream, which was on of great morbid sadness was repeated every night. In it he searched for her in a long dark hallway with many rooms, calling for her and hearing nothing but echoes, as tears streamed rivers down his face. All the doors were gray and locked, with the doorknobs burning his hand when he touched then. In the dream one dark night he heard a voice calling his name saying, "Topanga, my Topanga, why have you forsaken me?" He cried her name in joy, "Madeline, my belle, I am here!" He ran down the hated hallway, looking for the gray doors that were always locked but not finding them. He heard the silken voice again, "Topanga," it asked, "why?" He stopped to stare at the walls and ceiling, realizing that the voice was not that of Madeline. "Who are you?" He cried!
A crack of light appeared as a door opened at the far end of the hall. The brilliance of it blinded him, as a force more potent that any he has ever known drove him towards the light. Shielding his eyes from the blinding brightness, he stood at the entrance of the door. The voice hummed in his ear, "Topanga, come to me." His eyes beheld a lush fertile paradise more bountiful than any mortal could ever imagine or dream about. His artistic mind drank in the viridian, cerulean, carmine and gold of the surrounding trees, sky and flowers. For a brief moment, he glimpsed the feminine form of the most perfect woman that his eyes had ever beheld in all his forty-five years. But before he could make a mental imprint of her upon his brain, he was wretched from sleep.