As Aisha descended the stairs that led into the art gallery, Katelyn pounced on her like she was twenty minutes late instead of twenty minutes early. “Change of plans. Friends of Caren’s are fundraising for a youth travel club and volunteered last minute to do the bar and all the serving for a very nominal fee, so unless you have your heart set on working, you’re free to enjoy yourself.”
“No chores? What will I do with myself?”
Katelyn laughed. “It’ll be a shock to your system, I know—and no such luck for me. I’ll catch you later?”
Aisha nodded and Katelyn bounced away.
Caren’s friend Audrey, the gallery co-ordinator, took a mic, welcomed everyone and thanked them for coming, then said Caren wanted to say a few words. Aisha, like everyone else, paused to listen to Caren, but was distracted by lights strobing from the lower gallery. She wanted to get to the art.
While other people wandered and chatted in small groups, Aisha walked alone—and within minutes decided providence had given her the night off, not the fundraisers. She wouldn’t have been able to concentrate on serving anyone. She would’ve poured wine into people’s laps as she gawked over their shoulders. It was like Caren’s incredibly personal show was somehow created just for her—and it was intense. By the time she’d taken in the last piece, it was like she’d been on a vigorous, almost spiritual, hike.
She would never say anything so trite or cliché to anyone else, but Caren’s paintings had changed her. Or, at least, made her understand the world differently, more clearly or something. She always wanted things to be straight forward, black and white. Life and people . . . were not. They were layered and complex, and often, no matter how carefully you thought you looked, you only saw part of all that was there.
Of the many, many paintings that impacted her, two works were especially hard hitting.
The first: a massive landscape—similar at first glance to Caren’s original style of painting, which had brought her some acclaim and sold well. As the light bar above the landscape cycled through red, yellow, green and blue, however, the terrain completely changed, to the point that if you weren’t seeing the changes as they happened, you’d swear you’d viewed four entirely different pictures. The work was untitled, but a small white card said, “We see what we can see.”
It was what was not said, but that Caren so cleverly revealed, that yelled at Aisha: all we see is never all there is to be seen.
The second: a trio of small, exquisitely detailed pencil sketches, hanging on a triangle-shaped pillar. Lit, yes, but only with a soft incandescent light—no layers or secrets to be revealed. One drawing showed a woman dressed to the nines, incongruously sitting on a log. She was smiling and staring soft-eyed at something just beyond the edge of the canvas. Her face bore such naked, huge and vulnerable love and yearning that you almost had to look away. The woman was Sam.
As Aisha stood staring at it, transfixed, she felt a gentle hand on her shoulder. She turned to see Caren.
“No light show,” she said, “but check this out.” She pulled Aisha around the corner of the pillar.
And Aisha inhaled with surprise to see two-year-old Mo, all chubby cheeked and baby-plump. She wore a strawberry print romper and was asleep amidst a pile of toys and books on a white blanket, spread out in the shade under a large tree. She had that crumpled, slightly sweaty look toddlers get when they drop to sleep mid-play out of complete exhaustion. Aisha longed to trace her daughter’s sweet little face with a gentle finger. She’d been so small! She was still small, of course, but looking back always shocked Aisha with how much she’d grown.
Aisha moved to take in the third side of the pillar, certain of what she’d find. She was right. She stared at another meticulously rendered image—of herself, smiling down with an expression of love and affection that rivalled Sam’s. As in the other drawings, the recipient of her beaming love was not in the frame—but it was obviously Mo. Aisha even remembered the afternoon now, though how Caren had managed to sketch her, Sam and Mo unaware for so long was beyond Aisha. She was touched by how Sam looked at Mo with the same love—wait. Something occurred to Aisha. She walked back to Sam’s portrait. Then studied Mo’s again. The angle of Sam’s head was wrong. She went back to the picture of herself—and felt herself gape in surprise as it became clear what she was looking at. She had been smiling down at her daughter—and Sam had been looking, not at Mo, but at Aisha watching Mo.
A lump formed in Aisha’s throat and she looked down at the small white card posted below the picture of her. A small line of text read, “Generations – NFS.”
“Not the most original name for the series,” Caren said from behind her, and Aisha jumped. She’d forgotten Caren was there.
“Jo snapped the photo and when I saw it on her iPad recently, I couldn’t help drawing from it. I hope you don’t mind.”
Aisha could only shake her head.
“They’re not for sale, of course. I made them for you—” Caren suddenly looked shy. “If you want them, that is.”
“I—I would love them. Thank you.”
Someone approached Caren and whisked her away into conversation. Aisha studied the pictures once more, a sorrow-tinged gratitude welling up within her. The gratitude part was easy: she knew how much she was loved, always had—and Caren had merely portrayed tangible proof of it. The sorrow was more complex. Sam’s words about Jase came back to her. From the little bits he’d told her here and there, he’d been shuffled about countless times, lived in a huge variety of houses, but none that were ever quite home. Had he ever had a parent look at him the way Sam looked at her, and she looked at Mo? Did he live with the idea that something he did or didn’t do, or something he was or wasn’t, made him unworthy of love, of happiness, because rejection was his most common experience?
She sighed heavily and considered the beautiful drawings again. In a few weeks, when Caren’s show ended, Aisha would ask her a favor, see if she’d do another drawing in the same style, one of her mother Maureen from a photo Aisha loved. Then the series would be complete.
Walking back to the landscape, Aisha stood watching it change under the lights for several minutes and caught herself wishing Jase had come tonight, despite her anger with him. She would’ve liked to hear his thoughts on the various paintings.
Needing to be alone—wishing, actually, that she could go hide in the kitchen with her thoughts and do the washing up—Aisha spotted Callum in the crowd and made her way toward him.
She planned to tell him she was heading to a coffee shop and not to worry about a ride for her because Sam had volunteered.
Before she could say any of that, however, a brunette in stilettos that could compete with any of Sam’s shoes, intercepted Callum. “Good grief,” she said in dramatic stage whisper. “What gives with your parents? Are they together or not?”
Aisha understood why the woman asked the question. The whole extended family, most of their collective friends and associates, and no doubt the majority of Greenridge, thanks to the small-town rumor mill, had heard that Caren had asked her prominent lawyer husband for a divorce in the middle of their 35th wedding anniversary celebration. Yet, even to Aisha’s mostly disinterested eyes, Caren and Duncan did seem closer than ever. He’d hung off every word of her mini speech, choked up when she thanked him for being a “rock of support,” and visibly beamed with pride for her as he studied her work, as enamored as any other attendee. Most notable of all, however, was the fact that although even Aisha knew how much the big man loved to be the big man and hog the spotlight, he milled about quietly, letting Caren’s show be her show.
“Nina,” Callum said in a tone very similar to the one he used to announce “scat” whenever he came upon a pile of evidence that bears had been visiting River’s Sigh. “I’ve given up trying to understand my parents, let alone explain them to other people.”
He moved away, but the woman followed. “Jo!” Aisha heard him exclaim. “There you are!”
She chuckled at his blatant relief just as a low voice rumbled behind her, sending her heart crashing into her ribs. “I don’t get the lady’s question. It’s all here.”
Aisha turned to see Jase looking down at her, a hesitant smile creasing his face.
“What do you mean?” she asked, ignoring for the moment her real questions: Why are you here? Why are you chatting so casually, like we’re still friends, with nothing wrong between us?
Jase shrugged. “To someone a few steps removed, this whole show is an explanation of who Caren is.”
“Totally,” Aisha agreed—then her mind flew to another changing-light painting that she’d admired, one of swirling, almost psychedelic shapes and images. “Wait . . . Union!”
Jase’s smile flashed again. “Exactly.”
The painting had been moving, literally and figuratively, and now that Aisha thought about it, it was also incredibly revealing. At first glance it appeared to be a kaleidoscope of interlocking shapes and spirals, but as you continued to look the silhouettes of a man and woman appeared. In one beam of colored light, they were completely entwined. Under another spectrum, they sat peacefully, close but not touching. Beneath the glare of two other colors, they were estranged: reaching out for each other, but not managing to connect, or standing as if alone, their backs turned. But the wildest part was that it was all one canvas. Each thing was true in a certain light—and one reality didn’t cease to be just because the light changed to reveal something else. If you started to think any one position was dominant, the lights changed and the couple grew closer or moved further apart again.
Aisha thought for a moment. “How did you get here?”
“I borrowed Jo’s truck—but don’t worry. She knows. Volunteered it, in fact.”
Aisha chuckled, then whipped out her phone and texted Sam: Have a different ride home. Thanks, though.
Her phone pinged back a thumbs up reply immediately. Aisha laced her fingers through Jase’s and tugged his hand. “Come on. We’ve got to talk.”
For an instant, his whole body was slack and unmovable with surprise, but then he looked into her face and nodded solemnly. He took charge, pulling her through the crowd to the exit, and she was the one who had to hurry to keep up. His speed made her wonder . . . Was he expecting bad news or good? Or maybe he was the one with news. Perhaps he’d shown up at the gallery to seek her out, and maybe his newfound ease was a form of resignation and meant he was about to tell her something she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear. Maybe because she hadn’t told him to stay, he was going to go. . . .