At its best, art is a mirror. It has the ability to reflect people’s emotions, even challenge what they think they see in themselves. Art should hold more than colours on a wall. It should inspire people to become something bigger than they already are.
Noelle skimmed the pictures for a third time. She’d taken photos of Jill and the baby a couple of weeks ago at Jill’s house and today wanted to fine-tune them and print them off on photo paper, then frame them as a gift for Jill. Close-up shots of perfectly formed hands and toes, black-and-whites of baby with mother.
Noelle did her best to ignore the constant scratching of Mr. Darcy at her bedroom door. “In a minute,” she responded, but the mere sound of her voice would only make him scratch more frantically. A gray paw flashed from underneath the door in his desperate attempt to be included. Noelle had learned the hard way that Mr. Darcy’s pouncing and jumping skills extended to nearly all surfaces in the house, especially dangerous when she attempted something important or delicate. Once, thinking her printed-off research of a new Bath artist remained safe high atop her bedroom dresser, she returned to find the documents scattered all over the floor and Mr. Darcy playing innocent, licking his paw in the corner. She’d learned to place a closed door between the surface and the cat—the only way to prevent a mishap or disaster. If she could only ignore the scratching…
“This one,” she whispered. Eveline looked directly at the camera with wide, inquisitive eyes. Noelle needed a special photo to place inside an expensive frame she’d bought in Bath. Jill would love it. As she inserted the print and secured the mounting board on the back of the frame, her cell rang.
“Hey.” That had been Adam’s typical greeting every time he’d called to update her on his father. The stent surgery a week ago had been successful, and Adam’s father was released from the hospital three days later. But a follow-up appointment yesterday revealed there might be long-term damage to his heart. How much damage, they weren’t yet sure. With each day that passed, Adam’s tone grew hollow. The weight of the week had taken its toll.
“Where are you?” Noelle clicked on the speaker to free up both hands and wrap Jill’s present. “I hear birds.”
“I’m at the river. You know that place behind your Gram’s estate? At that bend we used to go to?”
“Yeah. I remember.”
“Can you meet me?”
“Now? It’s kinda late. To be at the river, I mean. It’ll be dark soon.”
“So what? Come sit with me. Hang out. I can use the company. We won’t stay long.”
She would’ve asked where Laurel was, but she already knew the answer. Working. Or out of town on a business trip. Always one or the other. In fact, Laurel had chosen some meeting over sitting with Adam during his father’s surgery last week. And since then, Adam had only mentioned her visiting once.
“Please,” he said with that irresistibly pathetic tone.
Noelle sighed. “Okay. I’ll come.”
“Brilliant.”
Noelle approached the area where she thought Adam might be and spotted him sitting under a tree, facing the river. She had walked at least half a mile but hadn’t minded. The sun beamed down on her arms while the breeze carried its fresh summer sweetness to her. She held a basket of scones she’d baked earlier, along with some fresh fruit and bottled water. Adam probably hadn’t remembered to eat today.
“What’d you bring me?” he shouted from a distance, standing up and dusting off his jeans.
“A picnic.” She handed him the basket. He hadn’t shaved in a few days. She’d never seen him with heavy stubble before, and he looked devastatingly handsome. The shadow of a beard made his eyes darker, more intense. The stubble, a by-product of not caring about his appearance during a stressful time, had Noelle selfishly wishing he would wear it that way more often, on purpose.
He set down the basket and helped her spread out the white blanket she’d also brought. “So, how’s your father today?” Noelle asked as she sat to his right, facing the river. She folded a scone and a couple of strawberries into a napkin and passed it over.
“Tired. But coherent. Actually made a joke this morning.” He bit into the juicy strawberry.
“And how are you?”
He swallowed and looked straight ahead. “Fine. That’s the standard response, right? The one everybody wants to hear.”
“I’m not ‘everybody.’ I’ll take the real answer, please.”
“Numb. Terrified, exhausted. Guilty.”
“Guilty?”
“I never saw enough of my father. Before his… attack. We only live two hours apart, but I was always ‘too busy.’ Even when we were together, we sat mostly in silence, maybe talked about cricket scores. Nothing substantive. Watching him lie there now, weak and out of energy, I wonder if we’ve run out of time. I don’t know how to talk to him.” As he spoke, his gaze had remained on the river, but now he glanced over at her as though hoping for some sort of reassurance.
“You’re being too hard on yourself. Adult children lead busy lives. You’ve been there when you could be. And most importantly, you’ve been there when he needed you this past week. That’s everything.”
Adam pinched off part of a scone, his focus returning to the drifting water. “I love this place. I used to come here all during my twenties, right to this very spot. To decompress after a hard exam or shitty job interview.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah. It’s a place that makes you think. Take a long look at yourself.”
She leaned back on her hands and crossed her ankles, glad to know this place had been there for Adam, too, all those years ago.
“You know, it’s weird…”
“What?” She waited patiently, reminded of the long pauses he used to take during their talks under oak trees as teenagers.
“I should actually be happy. I mean, my dad didn’t die, right? He’s alive.”
“Very good point.”
“So why do I feel empty?” He found a small rock in the dirt beside him and pitched it toward the river.
“Well…” Noelle watched a squirrel bury a nut in the ground several feet away. “You’ve been through a lot in a few days—this shocking event you weren’t prepared for. You’re still processing everything.”
“I think I’m going through an early mid-life crisis. I mean, my dad having a heart attack—this sounds really selfish—it’s made me look at my own life. And to ask myself all the big questions. Where have I been? Where am I going? What the hell do I want to do with my life?”
“The big events can do that. One minute, you’re sailing along then wham. It happened to me when my parents divorced. Then, especially, when different people in my life died. Each time, it makes me stop and think harder, see things through different eyes, value life in a new way. It’s like I’m shocked out of my own life or something.”
“Yes.” He shifted to make stronger eye contact. “Yes, exactly. This unexpected thing happens, and it changes your perspective. You start to weigh things out—your past decisions, your current relationships, your future—and everything sort of… tilts.”
Flicking an ant off the corner of the blanket, Noelle considered what that meant. Some sort of opportunity or window that might have just cracked open. “Are you weighing anything specifically?”
“My future, I guess. What I want it to look like.”
The silence that followed told Noelle he wasn’t willing to explain. So she leaned forward and brought out another strawberry in a napkin. “Here,” she offered.
He wore a genuine, relaxed smile for the first time since she’d arrived. “I seek life’s answers, and you offer me comfort food?”
“Yep. I can’t guarantee it’ll solve the mysteries of life, but it’s all I’ve got at the moment.”
He took the napkin, his finger grazing her palm.
“It’s enough.”
She stared at the Polaroid. Reading the entries over the months, Noelle had created a sort of game: study the photos first and try to figure out the theme before peeking at the journal entry’s title. The first painting in this series displayed uncharacteristically modern, offbeat tones. Aunt Joy had scattered blurry words and phrases across the entire canvas, all different sizes, colors, and fonts, painted on a dark background. Most, impossible to interpret, but Noelle caught a few: “witch,” “freak,” “loner.”
The second painting contained shadowy-looking people, wispy ghosts, speaking into each other’s ears, their faces gaunt and vacant, soulless. The last painting showed a wooden door with vivid oranges and yellows running down it. She couldn’t figure out the symbolism or the paintings’ similarities, their connection to each other. Giving up, she turned to the entry to read the series title, “Whispers.”
People are cruel. They seem to thrive off half-truths and rumours, accepting them blindly as gospel. Makes them feel self-important, I suppose—spreading lies about people, their eyes darting to and fro, making sure they’re not caught. But they don’t realise that their gossip and lies hold great power. To destroy and unravel and cause pain. Lies upon lies lead to a warping, a distortion of anything good in a person. I should know.
I spent the better part of my morning helping Mac scrub egg off my front door. Year after year, Halloween after Halloween, the children and teenagers make their pilgrimage up the hill to my cottage, to put into action what their parents do with their tongues. Gossip, belittle. The children think I’m a witch, living secluded in this house, hardly ever going outside. They make up stories about me, each one a little more gruesome and more untrue. Instead of leaving me to my peace, they mock me. And I’m left to scrub away the remains of it.
Whispers seem so harmless on the surface. To the ear, whispers sound as soft as a gentle wind. But it’s the words inside the whispers that do irreparable damage. That leave the lasting impression. That don’t ever, ever go away. I hear them. They don’t think I do, but I hear them.
Certainly, not everyone is cruel. Some have reached out, tried to help, tried to know me. But I’m too far gone. I don’t want their help. I only want to be left alone. Above all, it’s none of their business who I am or who I’m not. And just as I do not go rummaging into their affairs, their business, their daily lives, I wish they would offer me the same courtesy. And leave me alone.
Noelle hated that Aunt Joy had faced cruelty, even from only a handful of villagers. She recalled Joe’s question, months ago, asking if anyone had egged her door last Halloween. She couldn’t imagine people in the village capable of it. Surely, Aunt Joy’s isolation created in her a sort of hypersensitivity to things. A person could become quite paranoid, never leaving the house, always speculating about what other people were thinking. And the eggings at Halloween didn’t help. But maybe they were only a coincidence, just an immature group of bored local boys killing time, not discriminating with their targets. Other houses might have been egged as well, but Aunt Joy would never have known.
Then again, the village wasn’t a perfect one. She’d witnessed Mrs. Pickering’s gossip firsthand. Isn’t it human nature to speculate, to gossip and wonder about other people? Especially someone reclusive and misunderstood, like Aunt Joy. The temptation for the villagers to gossip about her probably grew stronger with each reclusive year she spent in the cottage. Perhaps the truth lay somewhere in between Aunt Joy’s version and Noelle’s own experience of the townspeople. She only wished her aunt had seen more of the good in them—the fund-raiser the village had tried to put together to save the gallery, the way people still beamed with pride at the mention of Aunt Joy’s name, the excitement over the Sotheby’s auction.
If anything, the series of Polaroids solidified Noelle’s choice to keep the journal private. Though she understood the emotion behind them, the words might only serve to reinforce some people’s stereotypes and presumptions of her aunt—quirky, eccentric, out of touch with the world, even bitter and lonely. Paranoid and unstable. Even if that presumption might not have been fully true.
Better to let them study the “Whisperings” paintings and wonder. Wonder if they might even see little glimpses of themselves in those shadowy, gossipy figures.