Cal had had a picture of Aron in a pot of flowers. Cal no longer has a picture of Aron in his pot of flowers.
Aron is the sort of unbearable tragedy that wrenches someone straight out of their character, into nude vulnerability and then naked reality. Losing Aron's picture is just one fraction of this nightmarish loss, but it is enough to bring Cal into a frenzy.
Aron's pictures are everywhere, black-and-white images of what had once been awash in color. But this one picture means a lot to Cal. The rest of the house is not Cal's terrain. But this picture, in this pot of flowers, in this room— well, it means that Cal is sorry, that he has not forgotten Aron. He at least owes Aron that much.
The problem, then, is that Cal has forgotten Aron's face. He'll see Aron in his dreams and everything is normal, but when he wakes up, Aron's picture begins to look distant. Cal is only able to logically place that Aron is depicted; if he thinks too long on it, Aron's features begin to swim. They mutate into a stranger.
Cal needs this picture. He needs this image. Cal finds himself emotional, rash— these are the worst parts of him, the parts that allow him to get hurt and to hurt others and above all to hurt himself. He does bad things, cruel things, when he's upset, but he isn't upset yet.
Cal ransacks his room. He never looks at Aron's picture; it's simply a formality. So why, then, can't he find it?
An entire day sees Cal upturn everything, go through all his clothes and his trash bin and through every drawer. And when he doesn't find the picture, he does it again.
At the end of it all, Cal still has not found the picture. Cal sits on the ground, reflects on the past. Amongst all the mundane misfortunes he'd inflicted upon others, there are the more grievous ones: his father's stroke, Aron's death. Cal never meant for these things to happen. He'd overheard Lee and his father speak once about Cain and Abel, about how they'd almost went with the names. He hadn't thought much of it— at the time it had seemed to be just two people, trying their best to be give something new— but now he reflects on it more.
He determines, then, that Lee is a liar. Perhaps Cal was always going to be this way; his prayers, repeated consistently over the years, clearly hadn't been answered. Cal finds himself angry now, but there is nobody left to be cruel to. He regrets it sincerely, but regret cannot bring health back to the wan.
Cal is quickly boiling over; he needs some sort of release. There is nobody left to be cruel to, except of course himself— so he punches the flower pot.
It shatters in slow motion. Cal watches it and then picks it up, cuts his hand on the shards of pottery left behind. Afterward he climbs into bed, exhausted and without the photograph. Cal didn't know he'd needed it so much, but then, he hadn't known he'd needed Aron so much either.
Cal thinks one word over and over again: Violence. And with it, the implication that things were always going to turn out this way. He thinks he must be weak, stupid, emotional. Surely he must be— it just never occurred to him before, because he'd never been alone like this before. As he lays there, he convinces himself that somehow he is everything left unsaid.
A/N: It's given that Cal was clever, and that he had the tendency to be cruel to Aron at times. I agree with this, but given Cal's tendency to be somewhat misguided in his self reflection (ex. the idea that he is bad and will be bad because of his mother rather than his own actions), it is easy to believe that once he is all alone, he would view himself as a plethora of bad things. To me it seems likely that he would turn cruelty inward after Aron's death; surely he would feel guilt even after Adam's blessing, especially since we see guilt as such a presence in his character (second only, perhaps, to want).
Perhaps I am wrong. But hey, why not write some fanfiction on it? There isn't enough East of Eden fanfiction, after all. Anyway, a review would be lovely. Have a great day and stay safe.