Two White Queens and the One-Eyed Jack

by Heidi von Palleske

  “It is not okay,” informed Blanca. “We are not freaks!”

  “I thought you two were in costume for the film,” the ex-girlfriend replied.

  Gareth went to grab Clara’s hand, to move her away, but she was wringing her hands and biting her lip.

  “Fuck off, you PIGmented waste of skin!” she yelled with such a sudden rage that Gareth was taken aback. Where did that come from? One moment, shy and sweet, the next it was as though her one-hundred-and-ten-pound frame could rip the head off a giant. Her whole body was tense. In a situation of fight or flight, it was clear which choice Clara would make.

  “Yeah, you better look scared, because I’ll put a hex on you, bitch.” Clara made a V with her fingers, first pointing at her eyes and then to the ex-girlfriend’s.

  “It’s okay, Clara. Against stupidity even the gods fight in vain,” Blanca announced. Wasn’t she the one who started all this?

  Gareth’s fantasy of the shy and awkward kiss evaporated. And yet, he found her, in her rage, all the more beautiful.

  He took the hands of both the twins and led them to the projection booth, away from the stares of the lingering audience.

  Gareth hung the painting back up on the wall. Art has a way of speaking, of revealing truths and of changing the course of history, often personal history.

  “We should talk about that sometime soon,” his mother said.

  “What is there to say about it? I knew that the woman killed herself by drowning and I knew she was Clara and Blanca’s mom. The rest is imagination.” Gareth knew whatever dark secret his mother held on to could change his relationship to Clara and Blanca. He had ceased calling them the twins weeks ago.

  “But why the eye?”

  “Because they are the mirrors to the soul. Right? Or you could say, because they have a way of showing up in all my work. Gee, I wonder why?”

  Elaine wondered how much her son might know. Certainly, the painting didn’t give anything away, but it did speak of an uneasiness in a questioning soul. She had bits of the story, the bits that were missing in the painting and perhaps those bits, like missing puzzle pieces, could fill in the parts left out. She had heard things, fragments from Faye, as she awoke from her treatments. Usually the patient was quiet, worn out afterward, their body feeling like they had undergone a strenuous workout, every muscle tensed and released, worked over until only exhausted rest could remain. But the brain doesn’t let go as easily as the large muscles of the thighs and arms. The brain releases in its own individual way. And Faye had spoken her release, her words painting a picture of her memories. An Impressionist painting, made up of seemingly different strokes so that the story only made sense when one stepped back far enough to see the whole picture. Elaine had done that. She stepped as far back as she dared until it became clear to her that Faye should never have been there at all. She had been put there to be kept quiet, out of the way, proclaimed as crazy so that her indicting words could not hold power.

  “I think you like those girls and so you need to know this. Under that sweetness and that vulnerability there has to be some bottled-up rage. They are the product of rape.”

  Clara still could not understand why they were suddenly going off to Europe, running away, right when everything seemed to be happening for them here, at home. Their portfolios would surely get them an agent. They had booked a few gigs as Bleach, and even an A&R guy had tracked them down to talk about recording a demo tape. Why leave now? Why run away from opportunity?

  Why run away from the sweetest love?

  Clara had written those words in a new song she’d been working on, chording with her left hand on the piano, harmonizing with the right hand, and working out the song vocally. She knew it was silly. A first love. A young love. Perhaps nothing at all had happened, and surely, she would be over it quickly, but still it was an experience that was being whisked away from her before she had a chance to experience it. It was as though Clara had been invited to a feast and then told she couldn’t eat.

  Esther was impressing upon her, once again, that it was an opportunity like no other, that Bleach was a nascent start to other things. Better things. Never mind the career opportunities, it was a chance to see the world.

  “Yeah right, see the world. You know we only have forty percent vision.”

  “All the more reason,” Esther replied. “And with that forty percent you’ll have a chance to see more of the world than anyone else in this town. What you lack in vision, you make up for in talent. Do not hide that in the dark. Go into the world. See the world. My time for adventure is over. It is your time now.”

  Blanca was nodding. It seemed that the plan had been devised behind Clara’s back and she resented the fact that she never seemed to have a say when it came to their musical decisions. It was always Blanca and Esther. Wasn’t she the one who wrote the majority of the music? Wasn’t she the one who played the piano? Oh, it was easy for Blanca to agree to apprentice with an opera company in Berlin because she wasn’t the composer, she wasn’t the musician. For her it was all about vocals.

  “Besides, you should spend some time in a proper city,” Esther continued.

  “Toronto is a proper city.”

  “No, only cities that have rivers running through them are proper cities. Paris, Budapest, Vienna, Berlin …”

  “What about the Don River?”

  “Hardly a river! There are no cafés alongside it. No artists painting on its banks. No museums. There is a whole world beyond what you know and now you have a great chance to experience life, while you are young.”

  It was something Esther had hoped for them, even before Blanca had sat down with her and explained how they needed to go away, and soon. Blanca thought that Esther would be sad to think of them going, but she wanted it for them, had secretly been reaching out to her European friends, hoping that the twins would leave their home in order to grow and become what they were destined to be.

  Clara could cry. She didn’t want to leave but she knew that she couldn’t stay behind, alone.

  John saw the wrapped gift and wondered if he had forgotten something. It wasn’t his birthday. Not an anniversary, was it? Jean had dates for everything.

  “Don’t you remember that was our first kiss?”

  “That was the first time you stayed over.”

  “That was the first time we met at school.”

  “That was the first time you slid your hand under my skirt,” which was, of course, weeks before that first kiss. Wow, it almost made him horny for her all over again, thinking of how he had explored and learned all about those other lips before he had kissed, or even touched, the usual lips.

  He picked up the small, narrow gift. There were no hints what it was for. What was he forgetting?

  He could hear her in the kitchen. It wasn’t usual for her to cook, she was too career-minded, hoping to be a school principal within a couple of years! Yes, she was a woman with ambition, which was why they had become so used to TV dinners with their little compartments. Here is the meat and, over here, a serving of fake potatoes. And here is the mystery vegetable in the smallest compartment. What is it? Anemic peas with cubed, mushy carrots? She usually gave him the Salisbury steak. How misleading was that? You’d expect it to be steak, of sorts, and it turned out to be just a fancy way to say hamburger! She almost always opted for a chicken pot pie. And then jelly or pudding for dessert. It wasn’t like the meals Hilda would plan and make. Hearty, substantial, and everything from scratch. But then, Hilda didn’t have a job, so it was to be expected.

  “Smells good in there. Are you cooking?”

  Jean emerged with a big, shit-eating grin on her face. A cat-who-ate-the-canary look of smug satisfaction.

  “I am making you something special to celebrate! Homemade spaghetti and meatballs. And I have chocolate cake for dessert.”

  “You made a chocolate cake?” John was incredulous.

  “Don’t be daft, John! I picked it up at the IGA. But freshly baked, y
ou know?”

  “What’s the occasion?”

  Jean had wanted him to wait. To be sitting with her perfect homemade dinner and a glass of wine and then, only then, the opening of the gift, but she couldn’t contain herself any longer.

  “Oh, just open it!” she enthused. “You’ll see.”

  He shook it, looked curious, and then slowly, gently removed the tape from the bottom. He slipped it out of the wrapping paper. It was a stick of sorts. Plastic. Blue on the bottom and white on the top. And there was a little oval window. Inside the window there were two lines. One quite purple. But the other line, the second, more telling line, was a pale lavender.

  Jean threw her arms around his neck. Kissed him with more passion than she had shown him for a few months.

  “Isn’t it wonderful? We’re going to be parents!”

  * * *

  From the deck one could see the horizon on three sides. When Siegfried squinted he could see where the land and sky met in a hazy line. Purple rock to the north and water to the south. On some days the blue of the sky and the water blended so that he could not tell where one started and the other ended. If he had been a boy growing up in such an open land, would he have wanted to bike or run to where the two met, land and sky? Or would the openness and vastness be as intimidating as it was to him now? Siegfried wondered how much the landscape moulded one’s character. He looked at the infinite space before him, the flat fields, then the gentle roll of the hills, then horizon so far away and unattainable because, once you travelled toward it, it became farther and farther from your grasp.

  When he didn’t fixate on the distance, on the horizon, when he looked closer to where he stood, he saw Hilda’s cherry trees and apple trees a little farther off. When he first arrived, it was cherry season. Sour, semi-sour, and a few sweet. The sweet ones never made it as far as the kitchen door — Jack and his friends would grab them as soon as they’d ripen and fill their mouths. What they didn’t eat was consumed by birds. Starlings, finches, and fat, oversized robins that looked nothing at all like their smaller, more delicate European cousins. Just one more thing he would have to adjust to. The birds also ate the semi-sour ones, but the sour ones were, for the most part, spared. Hilda would pick first thing in the morning and breakfast would be hot coffee and cherry soup. Yes, she had found a balance of sorts, bringing her German recipes with her and adjusting them to the raw materials at hand. She was like the coyote she fed, adaptable. But when she arrived, she was so much younger than he. She came at an age when one is just starting to create and define life, while he was set in so many of his ways. He would have to balance his life, not so much by bringing the old world with him but by keeping one foot in each world. It was a conversation they would have to have.

  He had one more thing to make his time with her possible. He would have to make her agree to an important promise. He would first tell her how much he loved her, ask if she felt the same and then, with that established, explain to her that she would have to make a difficult promise that she couldn’t break. A promise she would remember, always. A promise that meant more to him than almost anything else. One that would give his life meaning. Meaning beyond the infinite and unattainable. A gesture filled with significance.

  He sat on the top stair of the deck, the lawn spreading before him. The late-August sun had warmed the wood so that he could feel the heat through his light summer trousers. The sun was still to the east, but already powerful in the morning. How easy it would be for him to suggest that they sell this place, get a home together without the past of her first marriage colouring their surroundings. But as he sat breathing in the morning air, he started to see the land, the orchard, the lake, through her eyes, not his, and he knew that this land had indeed shaped her, moulded her into something that held both the mythology of Bad Oldesloe and the possibilities of the southern Ontario countryside.

  Yes, he would go back and forth. He would find his home in her while in Canada and be home when he was in Germany. Perhaps, in time, she, too, would split her time between her past and her future and, in doing so, find balance and contentment in the present.

  “Did you hear? I’m going to have a new brother or sister.” Jack announced, plonking himself down beside Siegfried.

  “No, I hadn’t heard that. Your dad and the schoolteacher?” Siegfried carefully kept any joy or relief from entering his expression.

  “Jean. Yes. Three months now.”

  “And how do you feel about this?”

  “Okay. I mean, I’m off to university in a few weeks, so I’m pretty much out of the drama here,” he laughed. “Hey, take a look at these and tell me what you think. They are for my friend Gareth. I’m going to get a coffee. Need a refill?”

  Siegfried nodded and took the stack of pictures. He flipped through the first few — large but impressive paintings, especially for one so young. Then he saw that Jack had done a series of details, extreme close-ups of sections of his friend’s paintings. This Siegfried found more interesting. The zooming in of every brush stroke, every thought expressed with a bit of paint. But it was the next few pictures that really caught his attention. Close-ups of miniature paintings. Eyes painted with such precision, such expression, such feeling. Who was this boy?

  “You want cream in it, Siegfried?” Jack was yelling from the kitchen.

  “Ja, danke. And bring a coffee up to your mother. She is sleeping in for a change!”

  Jack would be a few more minutes now. Siegfried laid all the photos of miniatures along the deck so that he could look from one eye painting to the next. There it was, right in front of him.

  What a morning! Jack’s father was having another child. No chance of him coming back into Hilda’s life now. And Jack’s best friend was brilliant at painting eyes.

  Siegfried looked out to the horizon. It no longer seemed quite as far away.

  “I am here to see the eyes.”

  Elaine took in the ocularist for the first time. Not as tall as she had envisioned. Handsome, yes, but not in that healthy, boyish way that had become popular in North America. There was an all-American look that said, I am the same man as I was in high school; I am a boy-man. Like Robert Redford, who was so different from those earlier male stars, with his naughty smile, tousled blond hair, youthful, wiry body. There no longer seemed to be a large differential between the young and the mature, neither in Hollywood nor in real life. Life had become more relaxed. Clothing was casual wear. Khakis or jeans instead of proper trousers. Lacoste shirts with their little alligators and turned-over collars, which were no more than a dressed-up and expensive T-shirt, acceptable because, instead of slogans or pictures of rock bands, they were pastel colours, subdued and calm. And the alligator was discreet, although oh-so present. Even her husband had taken to wearing the alligator casual wear. Fridays, at work, were casual days for him now and he always went in soft denim jeans and his light pink or turquoise-blue Lacoste T-shirt. Happy to be out of his monkey suit, and well worth the two-dollar donation for some charity, tossed into an office money jar! But what kind of a lawyer dresses himself like a kid? If she had dressed like that at the psych ward when she was a nurse, what confusion there would have been! No, there were uniforms and accepted dress for a reason.

  Here, before her, was a throwback to an earlier decade. A man in summer linen trousers, slightly wrinkled from his drive over in the heat, an open neck, proper button-down shirt, and a light cotton jacket thrown over the top. A bit warm for the jacket, but, perhaps, he was wearing it because he was visiting someone new. He was, likely, a man aware of first impressions.

  “Ah, you must be Siegfried. I was wondering when I would meet you. Hilda has been hiding you away, keeping you to herself.”

  “No, not really,” he answered, not understanding the New World familiarities.

  “So, you want to look at eyes? Did Jack mention something to you about Tristan’s blindness?”

  Siegfried once again had no idea what this pleasant but strangely confusi
ng woman was on about.

  “The paintings,” he stammered then gestured with his hands that they were small. Tiny, in fact.

  “Oh! You mean Gareth’s work? My mistake. I knew you were an optometrist or something so I assumed when Gareth said you were coming over that you wanted to look at Tristan’s eyes!”

  “No, I am an ocularist, not an optometrist. There is a huge difference. I wanted to see Gareth’s paintings. He invited me.”

  “Yes, he is upstairs listening to music. He’s a bit lost. It’s almost September and we haven’t heard from the college. So that is a stress.”

  Again, Siegfried was confused. Had Jack’s friend not been over just a few days ago, railing on about his acceptance, talking about how he had burned the letter without so much as opening it? Something about gatekeepers and mediocrity. Something about selling out and being lost in a world of mass-produced objects. How cynical for someone so young! And yet, the more Gareth had spoken, the more convinced Siegfried had been that he had found a kindred spirit in the boy.

  “Why?” Gareth had asked. “Why settle for passable? Why say something is nice or pretty, without seeing a deeper meaning in it? Yes, technique is important, and sure I could learn better technique at the college, but what about the other thing? That intangible thing? What about that?”

  “Do you mean, the soul inside the work?” the ocularist had asked the boy.

  “If that is what you want to call it. I prefer the word essence.”

  Siegfried had then glanced over at Jack, who was sitting uncomfortably with it all. Left out. He was staring at his plate, moving his last two potatoes lazily from one side to the other, one chasing the other, in a pointless cycle. Siegfried doubled his efforts to bring Jack back into the conversation.

  “It is hard to know if that essence was something I saw because of your paintings or because of Jack’s great ability as a photographer.”

  “Only one way to know. Come by my house and see my paintings! I think you might like my miniatures,” Gareth had enthused, a charming smile spreading across his face.