The figures were lopsided and held at some unnatural angle
with invisible string. Their longing for each other was evident in their eyes,
their posture, and their open lips. The paint was deep and without err each
stroke made with purpose and understanding. It was titled The Garden at Noon and held no apologies for its anonymous author,
and missing era.
It was a gem found by a curator in the estate
of your normal, everyday middle management father of three. It was a heart
attack that got him. The children had found the painting in a large holder kept
in pristine condition, though they had never seen it. One child, now a young
man, voiced that it looked old and maybe valuable. With little in savings, a
poor 401k portfolio and laughable life insurance, selling off their fathers
possessions was as much necessity as pleasure.
The painting made waves in the art world;
there were grand arguments over who must have painted such a poignant piece,
such a valuable spectacle. The horror in that some average man would have such
a beautiful piece and not even have the wherewithal to bring it out of the
basement! Not one of the children, now
all adults, younger versions of their late father, could see what was so
impressive about the couple with their awkward poses and forbidden love. So
they continued their life. They went to work, home to their various families
and occasionally met on the weekends for a barbeque dinner. Life was simple, it
always had been.
It was on a dewy night, when the
oldest daughter couldn’t keep her hair lying flat, the humidity plating her
plain silk blouse to her damp skin, that she found herself thinking about Garden at Noon. This wasn’t the first
time she had contemplated the strange event, though she didn’t speak of it. In
a way, she felt her siblings were just as unease by the appearance of this
piece in their father’s belongings that they’d rather pretend it was never
there. It wasn’t that she could pretend to know that she understood art, only
that she felt something when she looked at it. A lost longing in place inside
her belly she didn’t previously realize existed. It was the way she imagined
love would feel, though in her short experience it never did. On nights she
contemplated the strange painting she couldn’t seem to control these memories
of her childhood, her father’s hands paint stained and stiff. She’d remember a
scene of him at the dinner table, eagerly running the thumb of his left hand
through the palm and fingers of the right, like he was massaging away a day’s
work. She was unsure if these memories were real or if her desire for a
connection to her father, as desire for him to be something more, created these
memories in her head. He had never
mentioned the arts of any sort. Her younger brother and sister were athletes,
she wasn’t much of anything. Their mother was dead or gone or preoccupied with
a life not burdened with three children and a husband with bowed knees and a
potbelly. As far as any of them know, creative were not in their family tree. Yet suddenly they had found themselves in
possession of what some herald a masterpiece and this oldest daughter couldn’t
let that pass quietly.
The more time that past, the more
summer nights she thought, the idea of the paintings originator were consuming.
She had begun having dreams of great visions and impossible feats, of colors in
shades she didn’t know existed. She was chased by paintbrushes into the large,
massaging hands of her father for safety. She found herself often at the museum
standing soley in front of Garden at Noon
not caring to look at any other piece on display. She would go back to the
house of her father, which the painting had afforded them to keep, and search
through basement and bedroom for any sign of an artist that had once lived
there. She always came up empty and without satisfaction. She had determined
there was something she had missed, meaning that there was something to find.
One day, fall was turning to a cold
and harsh winter, she stumbled upon a post card. It was old, and dated, of a
double decker bus in front of some European building she felt she ought to
know. It was addressed to Ralph, it took her a moment to remember that was the
name of her father, who had always been ‘pop’ to her. The back held writing looping and sensuous,
she could see her mother’s soft curves and skin in the way she wrote. The daughter was not sure how she had not seen
this postcard before as she read the goodbye in lofty handwriting. It was
simple and to the point, taking no care for feelings.
I
have given you three children, my youth, and my life. Yet, you still do not
find me muse enough to paint and I do not find you either artist or man enough
to love.
The letter struck the daughter as
harsh, but she did not feel pain for the mother she scarcely remembers, only
sadness for the father who forbids his art at the loss of a muse that did not
know it. She would get back Garden at
Noon and she would put it on the wall behind pop’s ashes. She decided she
would take an art class at the local college. She would quell that longing in
the new part of her belly. Years later, when she passes from cancer, her
children will find a basement full of paintings, no which were secret, and they
will cherish the pieces of their mother she left behind in water color and
canvas.
