by Matt Ferraz
“Pets are welcome,” said the butler, and added, “She thought you would ask that.”
“Swell!” said Grandma Bertha. “Talk to you soon!”
She hung up and started packing. The dogs looked at her with curious faces. “Remember what I told you about good people and bad people?” said Grandma Bertha, folding her clothes over the table. “We’ve just been invited to stay with a good one.”
At least she was the last time I saw her, Grandma Bertha thought. People change so much over time, and they hadn’t seen each other for decades. But it was better to remain an optimist. After checking out, Grandma Bertha sat in reception waiting for the car to pick her up.
The purple octopus was far from her mind. But she could still remember the things it had said.
An Asymmetrical Mystery
1
To Manfred House, few things were as boring as the kind of social event where rich people walk around in a large house looking bored, champagne glasses in their hands, not a trace of artistic ability or taste in any of them.
Though he wasn’t doing badly himself financially, Manfred had a particular dislike for rich people. He used to separate the ones who came into his art gallery into two categories: ones who loved art but knew nothing about it; and those who didn’t really care for art, but wanted to impress guests at dinner parties.
The worst thing for him, by far, was when a rich person decided they wanted to do some art themselves, then invited him to the unveiling of their new painting. When that happened, Manfred considered inventing a disease or a trip – anything to keep him from the unveiling, and the boredom. Unfortunately, Marina Larch was one of his oldest clients. If she had decided she could paint a decent watercolour, it was his duty to be there and pretend to be impressed. It was important to stay in character. There were photographers walking around, and one of them might capture the boredom in his face.
He walked into the hall after giving his coat to the butler, and shook Marina’s hand when she offered it.
“Manfred, darling!” she said. “So glad you’re here! I know this must be a bore for you!”
“Are you kidding? I love these unveilings!” he said. “I see you have a full house today.”
“Oh, the same old high society!” she said, walking beside him into the hall. Marina was old enough to be Manfred’s grandmother. She was wearing a sparkling black dress and a pearl necklace so heavy it made her bend forward. “Tedious, tedious people,” she continued. “I wanted tonight to be special, so I’ve invited an old friend I haven’t seen in ages. A celebrity!”
“A celebrity?” asked Manfred, stepping into the hall. He didn’t have to look hard to find the person who didn’t belong there. Among all the men in tuxedos and women in fancy dresses, there was an old lady in an orange dress sitting in a corner. She must be about Marina’s age, but she had had no plastic surgeries. She had no teeth, and wasn’t talking to anyone. Manfred raised an eyebrow when he realized she was knitting and had a can of beer by her side.
“Let me introduce you,” said Marina. “Hey, Albertha, this is my good friend, Mr Manfred House.”
Manfred offered his hand. “How do you do?”
“Oh, I’m doing awesome!” she said, shaking his hand. “It’s been decades since I’ve seen my dear friend Marina!”
“How did you meet?” he asked.
Marina smiled at him. “We went to the same school, a long time ago.”
“Fifty-seven years!” said Grandma Bertha, without ceremony. “We were as thick as thieves. Remember, Marina, you always told me you were going to become a journalist—”
“And you were going to become an explorer!” completed Marina. “Albertha here wanted to swim across the Channel, can you believe it?”
“I still intend to do it,” said Grandma Bertha. “But, anyway, we got on with our own lives. After I started to appear in the papers, Marina managed to find me and invited me to be her guest. I figured I could do a little detour on my trip and come and see my old friend.”
Manfred looked intrigued. “Why were you in the papers?” he asked.
“Albertha has solved a few murders,” Marina said. “She’s being compared to that old lady from the fifties… what was her name again?
“Are you some kind of detective?” asked Manfred, genuinely intrigued.
“Oh, no!” said Grandma Bertha, taking a sip of her beer. “I just happen to be around when people get murdered. Lord knows why!”
“Why don’t you two have a nice chat?” said Marina, seeing that a new guest had just arrived. “I have to be everywhere at the same time this evening.”
Grandma Bertha offered Manfred a smile and a can of beer. “Want a cold one?”
“That’s not what they usually serve on these occasions,” he said.
“Oh, I brought my own supply,” she said. “I keep it in my bag. So, tell me more about yourself.”
“Well, I’m an art dealer,” he said. “I deal mostly with landscapes, but sometimes I get to sell a portrait.”
“You should sign a contract with Marina!” she said. “You’ll see how good she is tonight.”
Manfred had his eyes on the canvas resting on an easel at the far side of the hall. It was covered by a grey sheet that would be removed at the climax of the evening. “Have you seen the portrait?” he asked. “Is it really any good?”
“I’m no art expert, Manny,” she said. “But I like her style. And it’s good for her. After all, she lost her husband less than a year ago, and she needs something to occupy her. It might not be high art, but it’s important to her. Painting is good for the memory too.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Marina’s mother died almost thirty years ago, and there are no pictures of her left. They were all destroyed, I can’t remember how. So, doing a portrait of someone she hasn’t seen in such a long time is great exercise for the brain.”
“I didn’t know she was painting her mother!” said Manfred. “She just told me she was doing a portrait.”
Grandma Bertha finished her beer and put the empty can back in her bag. “Do you know the people here?” she asked. “I feel so out of place not knowing who’s who.”
Manfred look around. “Yes, I know most people. That guy over there – the bald one with the red tie – is Craig Erickson. He owns a fast-food chain. His wife usually comes to this sort of thing. She must be indisposed tonight.”
“I see,” said Grandma Bertha, pointing to a young blonde in backless a yellow dress, who was attracting most eyes in the room. “That woman by his side, is she his daughter?”
“Yes. Daisy. She’s his biggest treasure. Most guys find her gorgeous, but she’s got a leash on her.”
“Why?” asked Grandma Bertha.
“Craig doesn’t want her to have a boyfriend until she’s old enough to run the business on her own.”
“Overprotective, is he?” said Grandma Bertha, thinking of bad things that had happened not so long ago with a young woman named Joyce Chapman
“Not at all,” explained Manfred. “Craig is very liberal in that department. She goes around, but a romantic relationship isn’t what she’s looking for.”
“What about that scar on her shoulder?”
“Oh, that,” said Manfred. “That’s a whole other story. Oh, that’s from the fire...”
“Go on,” said Grandma Bertha, noticing he had made a pause.
“The fire that killed his wife. Daisy was twelve.”
Grandma Bertha nodded. “Oh, dear, that’s so sad,” she said. “This can leave all sorts of scars. I thought that was her stepmother over there. She’s far too young to be the girl’s real mother.”
She pointed to a buxom brunette with big blue eyes and unnaturally full lips.
“That’s Scarlett, Craig’s wife. She’s at least ten years younger than him.”
“I prefer not to judge,” said Grandma Bertha. “But they don’t look like a happy family.”
“What makes you
say that?”
“It’s a logical conclusion when a pretty girl is forbidden to have romances and doesn’t fight back about it.” Grandma Bertha pointed to a young man sitting on a sofa, with a bowl of peanuts on his lap. “What about him?”
“That’s Nathan Arkin,” he said. “He’s just left college. His father, Jim, is over there with Nathan’s mother. They’re okay, I guess, except Nathan wants to be a sculptor, and his father still made him go though business school.”
“Do you think he has any talent?”
“He’s not awful,” said Manfred. “With some years of practice, he might be able to make a living out of it. But his family doesn’t like that.”
“Being here today must be very frustrating for him,” said Grandma Bertha. “Having to sit through an unveiling of someone who can afford to pay for her own career.”
“I guess so. That one over there—”
Manfred was interrupted by Marina, who was calling for everyone’s attention by ringing a small bell. All eyes in the room turned to her.
“My dearest ones,” said Marina. “Now that you are all here, I cannot hold this in any longer. You all know how important art is to me, and I never thought that one day I would be standing in front of you, showing a work of my own. So, without further ado, I’d like to show you my painting.”
As the sheet fell, Manfred realized that Grandma Bertha wasn’t completely wrong. Marina’s painting might not be a masterpiece, but it was far from the worst he had ever seen. The picture was of a woman sitting by a dining table, slicing a piece of bread. There was something odd about her face, however.
But he didn’t have much time to look at the picture. There was a scream, followed by the sound of breaking glass. Everyone turned around to see what was happening. Daisy Erickson had fainted. People gathered around her, but there were two doctors attending the party, and they asked everyone to give her some air.
“What happened?” someone asked in the crowd.
“It was the picture,” someone else answered. “She fainted at the sight of it!”
2
Later that evening, after most people had forgotten all about the painting and were either chatting in groups or preparing to go home, Nathan Arkin was still standing in front of the portrait. He had a glass of champagne in his hand, but he wasn’t drinking it. The portrait had his full attention.
There was something strange about the painting, but what could it be? The woman sitting at the table was plain. She wore a white dress with long sleeves, her hair in a bun. In her left hand she held a thick piece of bread, and in her right, she had a kitchen knife. There was nothing on the table or on the brown wall behind her.
The woman’s face wasn’t very well done. Her cheekbones were asymmetrical. Her lips were thin, as well as her nose. Her eyes seemed to have been painted differently to the rest of the painting. They were amazingly well done, down to the smallest detail. Maybe that’s what made them creepy. It was like the two halves of her face belonged to different people.
Something touched Nathan’s foot, so lightly he didn’t notice it at first. But then the old lady’s voice brought him back to the real world. “Dear lad, could you please pick that up for me?”
He looked back at her and then down at his shoes. A ball of pink wool lay next to his right foot.
Nathan Arkin picked up the ball and took it to Grandma Bertha. “You should be more careful with this. Someone could have tripped.”
“Oh, that would never happen,” said Grandma Bertha, taking the ball of wool. “You’re Nate, right? The sculptor.”
He smiled. “People talk, don’t they? So, what do you think of the painting?”
“I just hope Daisy feels better,” she said. “It was strange, wasn’t it?”
Nathan nodded. “It was strange indeed. But I was talking about the painting. What did you think of it?”
Grandma Bertha continued knitting. “Apart from Marina herself, I think I’m the only one here who has seen her mother in real life. There’s something about the painting that fascinates me. It’s not the likeness, though.”
Nathan took a seat next to Grandma Bertha. “She doesn’t look like Marina’s mother?”
“I don’t remember her having such pale blue eyes.”
“Oh, but they’re not all blue,” he said. “If you look really closely, you’ll see the left one is a dark shade of green. The woman in the portrait has heterochromia.”
“Really?” Grandma Bertha almost yelled. “That’s fascinating! I can’t see that well, you know. I’ve been through a lot of Aprils. Not in a million years would I have been able to see that.”
“Did Marina’s mother have different-coloured eyes?”
“No, not at all,” said Grandma Bertha. “She had bright blue eyes. I remember that very well.”
Nathan took a sip of his champagne then looked at the picture. “This portrait has a strange feeling to it,” he said. “It feels like…”
He didn’t finish the sentence.
“Like what, my dear boy?” she said.
“It’s silly.”
She tapped his knee. “I don’t mind hearing silly things as long as they’re interesting,” she said. “Anyway, now you’ve made me curious, and I won’t let you go without telling me what’s on your mind.”
He smiled at her. “All right, then. I have a theory about art. I’ve done some art pieces myself—”
“I heard you’re a talented sculptor!” said Grandma Bertha. “And I’d love to see some of your work.”
His smile grew broader. “I wouldn’t use the word ‘talented’. Or, at least, my parents wouldn’t. They think it’s a waste of time.”
“You’re going to prove them wrong, I’m sure. But you were talking about a theory…”
He finished his champagne and put the glass on the coffee table. “Answer me this: have you ever read a book or seen a painting and felt like the artist who did that must know something deep about you? Something you yourself never realized?”
“That’s how I feel about Edgar Allan Poe,” she said, knitting.
Nathan paused. “Sometimes I think that works of art can tell us things that not even the artist knew. For example, imagine you’re painting a portrait of someone you haven’t seen in decades. Imagine everything that has happened to you in the meantime. These things can get in the way between you and your memory.”
“So, you mean that Marina added the eye thing because she met someone who had heterochromia?” asked Grandma Bertha, fascinated.
“Maybe… but it goes beyond that. She might have done it by accident. It might have been because of someone she knew, some story she heard. Maybe she’s just not that talented a painter, and mixed the watercolours in the wrong way, resulting in the eyes being a different colour.” Nathan looked around to make sure no one else was listening. “Whatever it is, those eyes reminded Daisy of something. Her reaction reminded me of when I was a kid and we had a school trip to the museum and we saw a painting of a boy playing with his dog. I started crying so much they had to call my parents. My own dog had just died. That painting spoke to me in a way I don’t think the painter had imagined.”
“And do you think that’s what happened tonight with Daisy?” Grandma Bertha asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m just guessing. It’s a subject that fascinates me, you know? I’d like to do a deeper study on it.”
Grandma Bertha returned to her knitting. “It is very interesting,” she said. “Do you know Daisy personally?”
“Not at all,” said Nathan. “She lives in a completely different world. Her father made a fortune out of junk food. She’s a fine-looking girl, but her social skills are not great.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve seen her with guys,” explained Nathan. “And I’ve seen guys talking about her. She’s emotionally detached. She’s never felt anything for anyone, not even her parents.”
“I’m sure that isn’t true,” said Grandma Bertha.
“A person can’t go through their teenage years without falling in love a couple of times.”
“She’s strange,” said Nathan again. “There’s talk that something must have happened to her to make her this way.”
“What kind of thing?” asked Grandma Bertha.
Nathan’s eyes met hers. “I have to tell you, this is the most I have talked to anyone in months. What’s your name again?”
“I’m Grandma Bertha.”
“Is Grandma your name?” he asked, intrigued.
“No, no!” said Grandma Bertha, reaching for her bag. She pulled some pictures out of it. “This is my grandson, Stu,” she said, showing him a picture. “He’s my sweetheart. And this is my son, Todd. He’s all right too. A bit of a wimp sometimes, but nobody’s perfect. This is my daughter-in-law, Lydia. And these are my doggies.”
“Where are they now?” asked Nathan.
“The doggies are in the guest room upstairs, where I’m staying. My family is back home, living their lives. I’m taking a long holiday – seeing the world, you know. And solving a few mysteries here and there.”
“And are you going to solve this mystery as well?” he asked.
“I’ve already started,” she said. “Why do you think I threw that ball of wool at you?”
“I thought you had,” he said. “What are you going to do next?”
“I’m finishing this sweater,” she said. “And then, after everyone has left, I’m going to bed. Tomorrow I’ll talk to Marina at breakfast and see what she thinks about inviting the Ericksons for tea. You know, to see if Daisy is feeling better.”
“What are you going to talk about?”
“A lot of things,” said Grandma Bertha. “She might be tough, but she’ll talk to me. People always do. It’s my special talent. And after we’ve chatted for a bit, I’ll see if I can get her to take another look at the portrait of Marina’s mother.”
3
“Albertha, darling!” said Marina the following morning when Grandma Bertha came down for breakfast. “I was just on the phone to Daisy’s stepmother. We were talking about what happened last night.”