The Painting

by Charis Cotter

  “It’s wonderful,” she said, beaming. “I’m going to have a show in New York. This fall. It’s a really big deal, Claire, something I’ve been wanting for years. I’ve been planning and Hortense has been negotiating for me and now it’s settled. This is a really big breakthrough. And it comes at just the right time, because I really didn’t know how I was going to make ends meet this year. Hortense is sure I’ll sell lots of paintings there.”

  Hortense was a gallery owner in St. John’s who sold Maisie’s paintings and helped publicize her work.

  “Well?” said Maisie. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

  I looked at her. She hadn’t looked that happy in a long, long time.

  “It’s great, Maisie,” I said.

  She jumped up and spun around the room. “It’s fantastic! New York! Who knows what it could lead to? And we’ll be there, Claire, this October for the opening. New York!”

  I tried to take it in. New York? We’d actually go there?

  Maisie stopped twirling and came over to me.

  “There’s one thing we need to talk about, Claire,” she said, her face solemn. “It’s about the work I’m going to be showing.” She took my hand and pulled me out of the chair. “Come upstairs.”

  I let her pull me along, the sense of dread returning. When we got to her studio, she stopped and looked at me.

  “This may be difficult for you, Claire, but I think it’s time.” Then she opened the door and drew me in.

  The painting of Annie in her blue pajamas stood on the easel.

  “Maisie?” I faltered, turning to her. She put both hands on my shoulders and looked into my face.

  “I’ve been painting Annie, Claire. Ever since she died. And those paintings are going to be in the show.”

  I just stared at her. Then I began to shake my head.

  “No,” I whispered, and the room seemed to tilt on one side. “You can’t.”

  “It’s time, Claire. We have to move on. This will be good for both of us.”

  I stepped backward, still shaking my head. “You can’t. Everyone will know.”

  She frowned at me. “Know what?”

  I couldn’t speak. I stumbled out of the room and down the stairs. I could hear her coming after me but I just kept going. I felt like the house was closing in on me and I couldn’t breathe. I burst through the kitchen door and out into the cool, damp fog. Then everything started to tilt again, and I stumbled over something and lost my balance. The road rose up to meet me and I went down hard, banging my head on rock. The world seemed to be spinning out of control and I was lost in the darkness.

  “I see nobody on the road,” said Alice.

  “I only wish I had such eyes,” the King remarked in a fretful tone. “To be able to see Nobody! And at that distance too! Why, it’s as much as I can do to see real people, by this light!”

  THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS, AND WHAT ALICE FOUND THERE

  ANNIE

  AFTER DINNER I helped Dad load the dishwasher, and then I picked up the book of Newfoundland paintings to take it up to my room. Just as I stepped onto the staircase, the phone rang.

  Dad picked it up in the kitchen. I waited on the stairs, listening.

  “Yes…What’s happened?…and her heart rate?…I can be there in fifteen minutes.”

  A wave of fear washed over me. I heard him hang up the phone.

  “Dad?” I whispered.

  He came to the door. His face was white. “It’s your mom, Annie. She’s had a little trouble breathing. I need to go down there.”

  “Is she…?” I began. “Is she…?”

  He came over and put his arm around me. “She’s okay. They’ve put her on a ventilator. But I need to be there.”

  I looked up at him. “I want to go with you.”

  He hesitated.

  “Please, Dad,” I said. “I need to see her.”

  He nodded. “Okay.”

  I kept the book of Newfoundland painters clutched to my chest as we drove to the hospital. When we got there, my dad strode ahead and I had to hop a bit to keep up. He nodded to a few people in the hall when we got to the fifth floor, and then stopped outside the ICU.

  “Just let me go in for a minute, Annie, and then you can come.” He went in, closing the door behind him.

  I waited. I could hear voices inside. I felt like I’d been holding my breath since the phone call, that something was frozen inside me and if I let go of it something terrible would happen to Mom.

  The door opened behind me.

  “Come in, Annie,” said Dad. “She’s okay.”

  A nurse brushed by us, giving me a quick smile.

  He led me into the ICU and behind the green curtains. Mom was lying very still, just like the last time I saw her, only this time she had a big tube in her mouth that was hooked up to a machine on wheels beside the bed. Her face was very pale.

  “That’s the ventilator,” said my father. “It’s helping her breathe. It’s all under control, Annie. You can sit with her for a minute. I’m going to talk to her doctor.”

  I sat down beside the bed and took her hand. The thing inside me that was stuck moved with a jerk and I felt a burning in my chest.

  “Mom,” I whispered, “don’t leave me. I know about Little Annie and Crooked Head and Maisie. I know all about it. Please don’t go.”

  Then I put my head down on the bed and began to cry.

  CLAIRE

  I COULD HEAR MAISIE calling me. Slowly the world stopped spinning. My head was pounding.

  “Claire! Claire, are you okay?”

  I turned over. Maisie was bending over me in the fog.

  “Did you hurt yourself?”

  I sat up. I still felt sick and my hands were stinging. I shook my head.

  She helped me to my feet and we went inside. She got a wet washcloth and held it against my sore hands and the graze on my forehead, just like when I was little and hurt myself.

  “Claire, I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know it would upset you so much.”

  I stared ahead. I couldn’t speak.

  “We need to talk about this,” said Maisie. “It’s time we talked about Annie.”

  I shook my head.

  “Look,” said Maisie, sitting beside me. “Annie’s gone. We both miss her. We’ll always miss her. But we need to move on with our lives. This show will help. I know it will.”

  “It will help you,” I whispered. “It won’t help me.”

  “It will,” she said. “It will bring it out in the open.”

  I shook my head again. “I don’t want it out in the open. I don’t want people to know.”

  “But people do know, Claire,” said Maisie. “People know about the accident. People know you had a sister who died—”

  “People know—” I stopped and swallowed. My throat was aching and each word I said seemed to rip at it. I tried again. “But if we don’t talk about it they forget. If you show those paintings, it will all come up again. Everyone will be talking about it. Talking about me.”

  “The paintings aren’t about you, Claire. They’re about Annie. No one will be talking about you.”

  I stood up. “Oh yes they will! Talking about the accident, talking about how I was the one holding her hand, talking about the dog. Maisie, those paintings are all so weird, people will think you’re crazy, painting all those pictures of Sammy, making Annie older every year—”

  Maisie’s eyes narrowed. “Wait a minute. You’ve seen them?”

  “Yes I’ve bloody seen them!” I shouted. The more words came out, the better my throat felt. “Ever since you started. They’re horrible. I hate them.”

  Maisie was standing up now, her eyes blazing. “You have no right to look at my work. I’ve told you a hundred times to stay out of my studio.”

  “I don’t care about your stupid work! You spend all your time on that and none on me. Why shouldn’t I look at it?”

  “You’ve been spying on me.”

  “S
o? How else am I going to know what’s going on? Now you’re going to take those awful paintings and use Annie and use the accident to make yourself famous, and you don’t even care what it will do to me or—”

  “Claire, this is how I’m working it out. It’s not to make me famous. It’s my art. It’s how I survive, by painting what I feel.”

  “But what about what I feel? Don’t you even care?”

  “Of course I care. I love you.”

  “Then prove it. Don’t show those paintings.”

  We stood in the kitchen, our eyes locked. Then she shook her head.

  “I’m sorry, Claire, I have to show them. It’s important to me. And we need the money.”

  “Then don’t ever speak to me again,” I said, and walked out of the room.

  ANNIE

  I LAY WITH MY arm flung over Mom. I could feel her chest rising and falling gently as she breathed. She was warm. I stopped crying after a while, and then in the silence of the room, I could feel her heart beating steadily. And then I could hear my heart, and it seemed like we made a circle, Mom and me. A circle of light.

  “Mom?” I whispered. “Claire?” There was no answer. She was far, far away. I heard footsteps behind me and I sat up.

  “Annie?”

  My father was standing behind me, with a woman in green scrubs.

  “This is Dr. Minto,” said Dad. “She’s going to take a look at your mom.”

  Dr. Minto smiled at me. She looked tired.

  “Maybe you could go to the quiet room to wait,” she said, nodding to the nurse who was hovering behind them. I picked up the Newfoundland art book from the end of Mom’s bed and went with the nurse.

  The quiet room was a few hallways away. It had comfortable chairs, dim lighting, a few magazines on a coffee table. It was empty.

  The nurse gave me a quick nod and said, “I’ll come back for you when your dad’s finished with the doctor.” Then she left.

  I sat down, hugging the Newfoundland book to my chest. Everything was very still. Outside this room the life of the hospital hummed.

  I closed my eyes. I felt a warmth spreading through me from the book in my arms. Like it was a light, slowly growing stronger. Filling my body with a soft white glow.

  Someone came into the room. I opened my eyes. It seemed like the room was filled with light and I couldn’t see for a moment. Then my eyes adjusted and I found myself looking up at a little old lady with soft white curls and wire-rimmed spectacles.

  “Mrs. Silver? What are you doing here?”

  She sat down opposite me and smiled. Today she was wearing a pale-blue dress and a gray cardigan.

  “I spend a lot of my time here, Annie. I’m a volunteer. Are you visiting your mother?”

  My eyes skittered away from her. “Yes.”

  “How is she doing?”

  “She’s…um…She’s having trouble breathing. They had to put her on a ventilator.” Mrs. Silver shook her head. “Oh dear. How distressing for you.”

  I nodded.

  Mrs. Silver looked at the Newfoundland book.

  “And how’s your study of Newfoundland art going, dear?”

  “I…uh…okay.”

  “I just wondered,” she said, drawing some frothy pink knitting out of a big blue bag, peering at it, and then starting to click-clack the needles together as she began to knit. “I just wondered because I had a feeling, the other day in the library, that you were completely transported by the painting you were looking at.”

  “Trans…transported?” I asked.

  “Yes, completely. That painting seemed to have a great significance for you.”

  She looked over her spectacles at me, as if waiting for me to say something.

  I didn’t know what to say. It seemed like she knew what was happening to me with the paintings, but how could she?

  “It’s this one artist,” I said. “Maisie King.”

  Mrs. Silver nodded her head. “Your grandmother.”

  I gasped. “How did you know that?”

  Mrs. Silver kept knitting. “Oh, I know a lot of things. About your mother. And her sister. And your grandmother, who still lives at Crooked Head.”

  “But how—? I don’t understand. Are you a friend of my grandmother’s?”

  “In a way, yes, I am.” She put her knitting down in her lap and looked over her spectacles at me again. “Never mind about that now, Annie. What’s important is that your mother is in a very bad way and you’re the only one who can help her.”

  I stared at her. “How?” I whispered.

  Mrs. Silver nodded at the book. “By going back into the paintings.”

  CLAIRE

  I SAT WRAPPED IN my red blanket, staring out at the fog. My head ached worse than ever. Maisie had left me alone for about an hour, then called me for supper like nothing had happened. When I didn’t answer, she came up and stood beside my chair, looking down at me.

  “Claire, we need to talk. You need to eat.”

  I looked into her eyes, then turned away.

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” she said, and left the room.

  And then I just sat there until the light dimmed and everything went dark.

  The next morning, I went down and made my breakfast as usual and went to school, with no sign of Maisie. We were socked in with the fog—Mrs. Matchim said there were onshore winds that were going to keep us in fog and rain for a few days. Then she used that as a jumping-off point to give us a lesson about weather patterns, low air pressure systems, and why the rest of Canada had heat waves in June and we had miserable fog and cold.

  When I got home that afternoon, Maisie was waiting for me. I tried to brush by her to go upstairs, but she grabbed my arm.

  “Claire, you can’t keep this up. We need to talk.”

  I turned and sat down at the kitchen table, refusing to look at her.

  “Claire, you’re being childish. I need to have this show. We can talk about how to make it easier for you—”

  I examined the scratches on the old table.

  “Claire! Will you look at me when I’m talking to you?”

  I looked up at her then, my lips firmly clamped shut.

  “All right then,” she said, getting up. “Be like that. When you decide to act your age, we can discuss it.”

  I got up and went to my room.

  That night, when she called me for supper, I went down. I ate the mashed potatoes, greens and pan-fried cod she put in front of me.

  But I never said a word.

  I kept it up for three days. Maisie didn’t handle it well. After trying to get me to talk a few times, she’d lose her temper and yell, then simmer down and glare at me. She tried ignoring me, but after a while she’d lose patience and start yelling again.

  I felt like I had a rock inside my stomach. I didn’t know how long I could go on not speaking to her, and I didn’t know if it would make her change her mind. But I was so furious with her that I stuck to it. Even though I got lonelier and lonelier, and the silence in the house was as thick and heavy as the fog outside the window.

  “Annie,” I whispered, sitting in my chair. “Annie, come.”

  ANNIE

  “YOU KNOW,” I said. “You know about the paintings.”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Silver, picking up her knitting again. “And you must go back.”

  “Then I’m not dreaming,” I said. “It’s real.”

  She gave me another look over her spectacles. “You know very well that it’s real, Annie. Whether it’s a dream or not, it’s still real.”

  I looked at her, knitting away as if this was just an ordinary conversation.

  “You left the book for me. At the library. Alice.”

  She twinkled her eyes at me. “Yes.”

  “You wanted me to read about the Red King. About his dream.”

  She laughed. “I knew you’d figure that out. You always were clever.”

  “My parents don’t think so.”

  “They will. In time.�
��

  “So is that what’s happening? Mom is like the Red King, dreaming about her life in Crooked Head? And I’m falling into her dreams somehow?”

  “Something like that. The important thing is that you keep going there with her. She needs you to see what happened.” Mrs. Silver gathered her knitting together and put it into the bag, then stood up.

  There was a noise at the door. I looked up. It was the nurse. She gave me a quick, efficient smile.

  “Your dad says you can come along now and see your mother.”

  I scrambled to my feet and turned back to Mrs. Silver.

  She was gone.

  I looked around. The room was empty. I stuck my head out into the hallway, but it was empty too.

  “What are you looking for?” said the nurse briskly.

  “That little old lady who was here a minute ago.”

  The nurse frowned. “I didn’t see anyone.”

  “She was right here. I was talking to her when you came in.”

  “I don’t think so,” said the nurse. She seemed to be in a hurry.

  I looked around the room. There was a door at the other end.

  “Maybe she slipped out this way,” I said, crossing the room and opening the door. It led into a different empty hallway.

  “Annie?” said the nurse. “Your father is waiting and I need to get back.”

  I followed her down the hall. “You really didn’t see anyone? She was sitting right there opposite me. Knitting.”

  She glanced at me, her mouth tight. “You were alone when I came in.”

  Weird.

  Dad was sitting beside Mom, holding her hand. He looked up at me.

  “There you are,” he said, getting up.

  “What did the doctor say?” I asked, my eyes on Mom, who looked the same as she had when I left. Pale and still.

  Dad looked away. “She’s okay. It’s a setback, but she’s okay for now. We—we can talk about it when we get home. It’s late.” He walked to the door.

  My heart clenched inside my chest. There was something he wasn’t telling me.

  “Can I say good-bye to Mom?”

  He nodded, and left the room.