In the Shadows of Freedom

by C

  “Oh. Okay. That’s impressive.” She scratched her head, trying to remember his name. Chris? Alex? “I’m not too good at names. Sorry.”

  “It’s alright. We haven’t spoken in quite a while. I’m Morgan.”

  “Oh yeah! Morgan. How did I forget that? Your name fits you.”

  “Thank you! I like to think so as well. So what brings you to the city, Amanda?”

  “I’m attending the Graduate Academy of Fine Art. It was always a dream of mine.” Her response came readily: talking to him felt as comfortable as pulling on an old pair of sweats.

  “Art is your gift. I always enjoyed seeing your work at Valor. How are your classes?”

  “They’re mostly good. My painting class has been challenging. That’s why I’m here. I was assigned a work of art in the Met that I’m supposed to replicate. I would have preferred any other painting besides this one.”

  “I know the Met well. What painting are you assigned?”

  “Portrait of a Mother.”

  “That’s my favorite painting!”

  “Really? Why?”

  “If I tell you what the painting means to me, it will prevent you from seeing it with fresh eyes. You have to discover its beauty for yourself. Actually, we’re right beside it now. What do you think?”

  They had indeed wandered to Portrait of a Mother. Amanda turned to gaze at it. The Florentine, naturalistic portrait of a mother and her child was much larger than she had anticipated. It was a landscape: above, the sky in gradient shades of blue—glowing colors made possible with oil painting; below, a flowering meadow; and encompassing the whole image, an early-dawn illumination. The mother was in the foreground, seated on the grass and facing the viewer. Her bright eyes stared forward, and her long forehead gave her a look of intelligence. Her golden hair was swept up and covered with a sheer veil, accentuated with tiny pearls along the edge. Pink hues softened her cheeks of fair skin. She wore a delicate blue brocade gown, embroidered with tiny gold filigree, which draped voluminously to her feet. The sleeves of the dress were slashed, revealing scarlet silk material underneath. On her lap sat her baby—a naked, plump boy. He had light curls on his round head, which he rested against his mother’s chest. He stared upward at her, wide eyes and thick eyelashes. A tiny hand extended toward his mother’s face, as though playfully trying to grasp her. His whole face seemed to smile with joy.

  Amanda sunk down onto a nearby bench, facing the painting. That relationship between mother and child—it didn’t matter that this painting was done hundreds of years ago … the bond that existed between the two remained something timeless and unchanging. But it was a bond that had been broken for Amanda.

  “You seem sad. Is everything alright?” Morgan sat beside her.

  “I just … This is just a subject I don’t like to think about.”

  “A mother and her child?”

  “A mother.”

  He was silent for a moment. “It evokes some strong feelings for you?”

  “Yeah. Time doesn’t heal all wounds.”

  “It is hardest when the hurt is very deep.” He was quiet for a moment. “Did something happen to your mother?”

  “She died.”

  “I’m sorry.” His simple words rang with sincerity. “Did she pass away recently?”

  “No. When I was twelve.”

  “That’s young to have lost a parent. How did she die?”

  She glanced sideways at him. She could share this with him, couldn’t she? There was a wonderful anonymity here, like a therapist perched behind a desk whose sole job was to listen. Morgan was safely distant. Nothing of great consequence hung in the space between him and her. Yet at the same time, it felt like they had somehow known each other for years.

  She stared at the floor, and her words tumbled out. “It was my twelfth birthday, the day she died. I remember being so excited. I was going to have a huge party. I went down to the kitchen that morning to help my dad blow up the balloons, and my mom was there with my five-year-old sister, baking my birthday cake. Every year on my birthday, she made my favorite chocolate fudge cake.”

  “Your mother sounds like a very caring person.”

  “Yeah, she was. She was my best friend.”

  “And then what happened?”

  A lump rose in her throat. “My mom was mixing the icing, but she ran out of powdered sugar. She gave me a kiss on the top of my head and said, ‘Don’t worry, birthday girl. I’ll run to the store and be back in just a few minutes.’ I … I’ll never forget those words. It was the last thing she ever said to me.” She took a deep breath. “She got in a car accident. Some waste of life ran the red light and smashed into my mom’s sedan. She died right there, at the intersection.”

  “You never got to say goodbye.”

  Amanda shook her head. The words came more easily now; the hardest part was over. “After that morning, my life changed. I put away everything that reminded me of my mom—the perfume, dresses, pocketbooks. The memories were the hardest. I shoved them away, pretended they didn’t exist, repressed them. They just hurt too much. I never laughed or joked like I used to, so I didn’t really have close friends anymore. I hated special occasions. I still do. If it hadn’t been my birthday, my mom would still be alive, right? I brought everyone else down. Anger, loneliness, grief, pain—they became my new companions.”

  “So studying this particular painting is painful for you?”

  “How can I paint something … the one thing … I did everything possible to forget?” She turned away from the painting and faced Morgan. “I don’t expect you to tell me the answer. I didn’t mean to dump all of this on you.”

  “It’s alright. Thank you for sharing it with me. I’m sorry you have walked through life with so much hurt in your heart. Maybe doing this sketch will be therapeutic for you.”

  “If therapy means digging deeper into the wound, then, yeah, I guess.”

  “Remembering doesn’t have to be a kind of curse.”

  “My memories are all that I have left of my mom. Death is final. She’s gone. No happily ever after. These broken fragments of times past—they’re beggar’s scraps. Death has stolen her from me. Permanently.”

  “Your mom would want you to be happy, Amanda.”

  “And I would want her to be alive.”

  “Consider this, though: perspective in art changes an image in its entirety, giving depth and space. The same is true in life. Maybe your perspective is too shortsighted.”

  She folded her arms. “Perspective is an illusion, Morgan. It’s an art technique that fools the eye into believing that a three-dimensional world is present on a two-dimensional surface. Any perspective that tells me that my mom is somehow still alive, floating on a fluffy cloud surrounded by a choir of angels, is just a delusion.”

  “All I mean is that remembering your mother shouldn’t bring pain and suffering exclusively. There is still sweetness in the bitter.”

  “I guess that’s true.” She studied him—his placid face, the neatly pressed khakis, the calm and unhurried gestures of his hands. “It’s strange. I don’t know … there’s some uncanny feeling between us … I’m not certain how to explain it.”

  “I understand what you mean. We could call it a connection of sorts.”

  “Right. We have a connection.” She smiled at him through her sadness. “You know, I’m really not crazy. I don’t go around sharing these personal things with anyone who is willing to listen.”

  “I never thought you were crazy. I find that it’s very easy to talk with you too.”

  “Don’t tell me that you’re going to start telling me your deepest secrets now.”

  “Well, everyone has secrets.”

  “Why don’t you keep them to yourself, at least for now. I think I have all I can handle for today.” She opened her book bag and pulled out her sketchbook and a charcoal pencil. “I better get to work on my assignment.”

  “Yes, I agree. Now you must come to know this mother—the
one in the painting.”

  She squinted, focusing on the shapes and movement. “That’s always the first step. Study your subject: shape, color, design, value.”

  “It’s more than that, though. The greatest works of art all start with an emotional response, not an analytical one. If you’re going to paint someone, you have to go beyond his or her exterior: you have to find a way to illuminate the person within. If you are going to paint this mother, you have to try to understand her.”

  “What, are you an artist yourself?” She drew a sweeping, curved line, approximating the length of the mother’s arm that cradled the baby. “You sure have enough recommendations to make it seem like you are.”

  “No, not exactly.”

  “What do you do?”

  “Right now, I have some temporary work in the city. I don’t imagine I will be here too long, but things are always apt to change.”

  They sat there together, and the hours passed. She blocked in all of the abstract shapes of the painting, carefully proportioning them in relation to each other. It was a simple start, but it was nevertheless an inchoate image of the painting before her. Over and over, through drawing lines, erasing them, and adjusting, she refined the block-in to make it ever more accurate. Renaissance artists often sought the secret geometric design in the natural world; now she was similarly seeking the geometric patterns in this work of art. She was dealing with simple shapes, but she would still have to make it more complex and realistic.

  She glanced at her watch. Nearly five o’clock. Only fifteen minutes left until the Met closed. “I’m going to have to be done for today.” She frowned. Her sketch was far from being complete. “I can’t show up with this tomorrow. Maybe I could stop back at the Met again in the morning, before class, just to make a few more adjustments.”

  “I come here often. Perhaps we’ll run into each other again.”

  “Yeah, that would be nice. Bye, Morgan. Thank you for everything.”

  “See you soon, Amanda!”

  At the doorway, she glanced once more over her shoulder. He still sat on the bench, staring at Portrait of a Mother, a smile on his serene face.

  Chapter Ten

  Favorite Places

  Amanda hurried onto the subway, oblivious of the people jammed in around her. There was no chance of getting a seat, so she clung to the pole in the middle of the car. She wasn’t sure if her death-like grip was more for balance or an effort to hold on to her emotional sanity. Talking to Morgan and telling him about her mom had opened a vault in her mind. Memories and feelings poured out now, a tidal wave she couldn’t hold back. She paid no attention to the conversations surrounding her or to the announcements for upcoming stops along the line; she could only ponder the long-repressed memories of her mom. It had been so long since she’d allowed herself to remember.

  Arriving home, Amanda was in no mood to confront Nikki’s passive-aggressive attitude, not to mention she probably couldn’t hide her emotional turmoil. Avoidance was in order.

  “Look who’s back.” Nikki glanced up from her computer and scrutinized Amanda. “What have you been doing all day? Painting the town red?”

  Amanda scurried past, mumbling, “I don’t feel so great. I’m going to bed.”

  She entered the bedroom, closing the door behind her, and crawled under the covers. She lay there, staring at the bedroom ceiling, remembering … missing. The microwave beeped and dishes clattered. Nikki was apparently making dinner. The door opened and other voices filled the apartment, most likely Nikki’s friends. Amanda watched the digital numbers change on the clock nearby. Late that night, the apartment door closed one final time, all the friends gone. The apartment was almost silent, save Nikki’s footsteps and the screaming of the neighbors next door. Then Nikki came into the room they shared and went to bed. Nikki would be the only one who slept.

  In her mind, Amanda saw her mother: picking strawberries one June afternoon, her forehead damp with sweat … visiting Amanda’s kindergarten classroom when they made green eggs and ham … handing her a swaddled, wrinkly faced Chiara and sharing together the marvel of this tiny new person. Amanda could almost see her mother’s thick black hair, the mint-colored purse with the gold chain that she brought out on special occasions, her dresser laden with perfume, saint cards, and jewelry.

  The room slowly lightened as morning approached. She was still awake, waiting for the night to be over. Her alarm wasn’t scheduled to start beeping for another fifteen minutes, but she preemptively turned it off. She tiptoed out of the bedroom, and ten minutes later, she left the apartment. Nikki, thankfully, was still sound asleep.

  Amanda got on the subway, her sketchbook tucked in her bag. She yearned for rest, but her mind knew no tranquility. Up the steps of the Met, through the door, throwing in her donation—a repeat of yesterday. The museum had just opened and was almost vacant at this early hour on a weekday.

  She had only half an hour to add volume and value to her sketch. She stared at Portrait of a Mother, zeroing in on the baby’s cherubic face. His eyes were wide, animated with admiration and devotion, as he gazed upward at his mother. She would give anything if she could just see her mother’s face one more time. It was the first face she ever saw, the one she had known the best. Now it felt so long since she had seen her mother’s wide smile, her eyes that seemed to laugh with some hidden joke, her nostrils that flared when she tasted something she didn’t like. She spent awhile trying to get the baby’s eyes just right.

  She then moved to the mother’s hand, which grasped the baby. She began shading in the fingers, whose touch was protective and comforting. Her own mother’s hand had been marked with prominent veins. Amanda had liked running her finger up and down the blue bumps, like she was tracing a roadmap over her mother’s skin.

  “You came back!”

  Amanda jumped, her heart pounding. She spun around. Morgan stood just a couple of feet away. She hadn’t even noticed him approaching. He appeared the same as yesterday—identical clothes and all, though they showed no wear or wrinkles.

  “Mind if I have a seat?”

  She smiled, sliding over on the bench and making room for him. “Apparently, you weren’t lying when you said that you come here often.”

  “I’ll always tell you the truth. How is your sketch coming along?”

  “I’m getting there, I guess. I’m trying to add some value and dimension right now.”

  “What about class this morning?”

  Amanda glanced at the clock on the wall. It was now fifteen minutes past the time she was supposed to leave. “I guess I’m skipping today. It’s alright—Michael allows one unexcused absence. I’ll just spend the rest of the afternoon here, and that way I’ll have the assignment done for next class.”

  Morgan nodded. “It is looking very good.”

  “Thanks. You know, I couldn’t stop thinking about my mom all last night. Working on the sketch, in some weird way, has been helping.”

  “It is a way of processing.”

  “Yeah, I guess it is.”

  They sat in a comfortable silence for some time. Morgan turned from Portrait of a Mother to look at her. “Tell me a little about painting. Why do you like it so much?”

  Her vault of memories now open, the recollection came easily. “It started the Christmas after my mom died. I dreaded the day. Everything reminded me of her, but the holidays especially so. I convinced my dad to make everything as low-key as possible: no lights, no big family dinner … you get the picture. I didn’t ask for any presents, but on Christmas morning, there was a package under the tree with my name on it. It was a paint set. I had never really painted before, and I’m still not sure what inspired my dad to give it to me. That afternoon, I painted for the first time. It’s been my window of escape ever since then.”

  “A window of escape?”

  “It’s hard to understand.” She leaned over her pad, now working on adding depth to the folds of the mother’s gown. “Painting puts me in touch with
this other reality. Sometimes, when I paint, I’m not even sure why I paint what I do. I begin painting one thing, but when I’m done, I’ve created something else. My paintings have a symbolism that even I don’t understand sometimes. It’s kind of magical.”

  He tilted his head contemplatively. “Another reality … something beyond this world? Something supernatural?”

  “It’s just something special, that’s all.”

  “It sounds like it. Do you have a favorite painting?”

  “Yeah, I do. It’s a painting that I did. I realize that probably sounds incredibly conceited of me. It’s not, though: I don’t like it so much because of the technique. It’s one of my earliest paintings, so overall it’s elementary in style.” She continued sketching, but her mind roved to the canvas hidden beneath her bed. “I painted it during that first year after my mom died. It’s bizarre: it’s the painting I cherish most of all, but I don’t know what it means.”

  “It seems to me that most things are much deeper than what appears on the surface. Life is so much more than what mere senses perceive.”

  Amanda didn’t comment. She was visualizing the small painting in her mind. … She had memorized every inch of it. “There are clouds on the top of the canvas: black and gray storm clouds, very ominous and foreboding. Raindrops fall from the clouds—but the raindrops are really tears. I’m in the foreground of the painting, my head down, and I’m holding something that seems to be an umbrella, but it’s formed by three interlocking hands, which protect me from the falling tears. Meanwhile, I’m looking at a puddle formed at my feet. Inside the puddle is a face. It’s not my reflection, but the face of a beautiful woman. That’s the amazing part of the painting: even though I was just a novice when I created it, the woman’s face is perfect in its portrayal. I’ve never been able to replicate it.”

  “What does she look like?”

  “It’s hard to describe her. When I say that she’s ‘beautiful,’ I don’t mean what most people consider beauty today. I’m not referring to the women on magazine covers or who win pageants. It doesn’t have to do with her eye color or hairstyle. This beauty is something much more genuine and real … powerful and breathtaking.”