“Do you know what happened to Ossirian before the Clearbornes took him in?”
She shook her head. “I never asked. He told me once that he used his name because it reminded him. I took that for what I thought he meant,” Carolyn said.
Brent nodded. “I would, too. So, the beach. The big question.”
Carolyn nodded. “Ossirian was struck by it, as though by lightning. It reordered his mind, realigned his perception.”
“One question.”
“Given Ossirian’s other peculiarities, does this surprise you so much?”
Brent considered this. “Okay,” he admitted. “Maybe not much. So what happened then?”
Carolyn gave him a strange look. “You’ve seen what happened.”
Brent’s skin prickled. “The… the rooms?”
“Yes,” she said. “He decided to understand them. So he became them. Each room represents the personalities of the artists. Ossirian became them and painted like them. To learn their languages. To ‘understand’, he said.”
“Uh… that’s a little…” Brent struggled for a moment. Then he shrugged. “Psychopathic.”
“Extreme. Intense doesn’t begin to describe it,” Carolyn said.
“Well… as far as homework goes, it sort of makes a twisted kind of sense. How long did it take him?” Brent asked.
Carolyn gave him a flat look. She turned her face up to the sun and closed her eyes. “Five years.”
The silence that fell between them was a physical thing. Brent’s eyes widened. He stared at the trees, mind racing. Then: “My god.”
“Yes.”
“That was when he-”
“Shortly after,” she said.
Brent’s skin prickled. “He painted House after five years’ study. No wonder-”
She snickered. He frowned at her.
“What is so funny?” he demanded.
“You still don’t understand. You don’t understand why he painted it. Or why he gave it away.”
“Well? Are you going to tell me?”
Carolyn nodded. “But of course. But you need to understand first. He painted for five years. Intricate, involved work. He read constantly, painted constantly. It was during that time that Miciela took ill. As she worsened, Diego sold me the house. Ossirian didn’t notice. He paid little attention to anyone during those years. He painted, he ate, he slept. We made love at night, and he would sleep dreamlessly. He took on the personalities of the artists, and it was unbearable for the longest time. Michelangelo was an arrogant, antisocial bastard. Caravaggio was prone to terrifying violence. Goya… Ossirian struggled with Goya. He came to believe Goya was a fraud, a figurehead. That his paintings were forged. Picasso is a misogynist. Bacon was an emotional terrorist. Gauguin was a child molester. Degas was an anti-Semite. Lipi wanted a harem. Raphael probably made love until he died.” Her lips quirked. “When he was Raphael it was… exhausting.”
Brent smiled. “I’m sure.”
She blushed at his knowing look. He found it charming. “But… you said he didn’t realize Miciela was ill.”
Carolyn’s face changed. It closed to him as she recalled. “She had been dead three weeks before he asked after her. He didn’t understand where she had gone. He refused to accept it. He never spoke of it again.”
“Never?” Brent mused.
“Ossirian couldn’t cope with loss. With death. I expect it’s because of the reason for his orphaning. You understand.”
Brent’s teeth ground. “There were never any charges brought for his parents’ deaths,” Brent said. “Too little evidence. ‘Death by misadventure’ is what’s on the certificate, but I’ve seen autopsy reports that suggest otherwise. Ossirian was shipped off to the Clearbornes. He survived. He seemed to thrive in school. And then one day, Ossirian vanished.”
“His way of dealing with loss was to shut down. He buried himself in the work.”
“How did Diego deal with it? Losing his wife?”
Carolyn stared out over the trees. “He stopped eating. He stopped dressing. And a month later, he died in his sleep.”
“Jesus.”
“They were together forty years. He didn’t wish to go on without her,” Carolyn said. She didn’t look at Brent. “It is that way, you know, when you spend a lifetime loving someone.”
Brent stared at his hands.
She cleared her throat. “So. Two more years of solitude. Painting. Being. Searching. My parents died. My father at the beginning of the year, my mother at the end. They had a decent life. It was hard; the hardest thing I had to face. Ossirian, of course, was little comfort. He was wrapped up in himself. He and his search.”
If she felt bitter about it, he couldn’t tell. Her voice remained even, steady. He considered her again, in something approaching awe. She had weathered unfathomable loss on her own. She was strong enough for the both of them. Of course she was, he thought. She had to be. He certainly wasn’t. Coward.
“And he finished. And the evening that he did, he started painting his own work. He began with a series of sketches.”
“Sketches of what?”
“You’ve seen those as well, dear boy. He wanted to paint the house.”
“The-”
“Yes. He painted the house,” she said. “Over and over.”
Brent glanced back at the house. “Oh. The… the paintings in the halls.”
“He wanted to express something new. He painted the rooms in all the different styles of the great artists. And then he painted one subject in each style.”
“The house?”
“Something he knew intimately. This house.” Carolyn glanced back at the house. “He was born to live here. He knew it the moment he saw it. That day on the lawn, he never went anywhere else in his heart but here.”
Brent watched her reliving it, saw the history playing in her eyes. He saw the smile before it curved her lips.
“What?”
“I was thinking… Toefler. He saved Ossirian. Not once but more than once. And…” she gave Brent a mischievous smile. “…and I’m going to tell you something you don’t want to know. Or perhaps you do. It depends on how much of a sense of humor you have.”
“I don’t understand.”
“What did you think of the paintings?” she asked.
“Which?”
“The studies of the houses in the hall.”
“They were technically brilliant, but they were just… reproductions.”
She gave him a brilliant smile. “Very good! Ossirian thought the same. And when he finished them, he was distraught. They were as lifeless as his other work. He was confused, restless, and frantic. A relapse. I sent a letter to the one person I could think of that might hold influence. And then came Toefler knocking.”