This is my movie. I direct it and form it. I am the cast and the writer and the producer. It is all mine.
My life, how should I say? Leaves a lot to be desired. In fact, it could be called dull, boring and not fulfilled. Usually I paint but this time I am painting a movie in my mind.
This is what I need.
Frame 1: See the unicorn, his head hanging low and his body close to the ground. Tiredness numbs every cell of his body. Instead of doing the many useful, constructive things needing to be done by busy unicorns, he sits heavily, rests his head in the smooth warm hollow of his favourite rock and basks in a circle of sun. Light dapples the dense black of his coat. A blue jay beside him screeches, raucous and wide-awake. His is the Canadian forest. He is king and I am about to be queen.
Frame 2: He rubs his horn against the bark of an elm and scratches at the earth, digging with his hoof, until, as if bored, he looks up at the sky and yawns.
The best part of spring is the pink trillium. He loves to put his nose right into the trumpet and breathe in the Ontarioness of the flower.
He has walked through a carpet of camomile and the air is full of the bitter-sweet smell of the herb.
He curses the world, and spring, and pink miliums and this strange sweet and bitter smell. He ambles to the stream, kneels into the soft sand and laps the clear, babbling water. Grazes for a while then eats a few miliums, though generally he never eats them.
All round him a bad aura touches everything. It is in my purples, mustards and navys; it is in the way my shapes are square and sharp and hard. People ask me what the shapes and the lines and the colours mean. Why should a painting have a meaning? It means whatever they want it to mean. It is a feeling. This one is the feeling of a unicorn and the ravine and the miliums and the shapes and colours in my paintings are the life of the unicorn and my own breath in him. My paintings are the flowers my grandmother scattered here and the herbs she grew and the spring of camomile under my feet.
The ravine is mine. It had been my mother’s and her mother’s. All mine and I love it. It’s as if I have to hold it and take it into me, just as woman has to take the body of a man she loves into her.
Frame 3. Alan and I amble down the gentle path leading to the bottom of the ravine. It’s easier to walk here than to walk down the path of this marriage. Three children make it important to keep on the path. I rub the rough, hard barks of the walnuts; finger the tips of the yellow-green sprouting plants and soak in the thin spring sunshine which shines through the bare branches.
This is also a picture painted by me: Alan is forty, tall and thin as one of the bare poplars, stooped, with a halo of fair blonde hair. He always gives the impression of being deep in thought. That kind of glazed expression most men have as they are about to come. I’m younger than Alan but not much. And so short I barely reach his shoulders. One of the things he liked about me was my size. His “little dwarf he used to call me affectionately and I called him my “gentle giant”. We used to be quite the cliched couple.
My bad habit of putting every situation and every experience into a picture.
“What do you think?” I say.
“About what?”
“You know . . . about widening the path so we can take a garden tractor down and bring up fire-wood. If we could bring up the dead and useless wood it would improve the health of the remaining trees.”
“Come on, you’ve been reading too many leaflets put out by the Department of Agri. You sound like one of them. You know as well as I do the work of making a proper path wouldn’t be justified. Not worth the cost of any wood we may, or may not, use.”
“Not just for the wood – for fun too. It would be nice to come down and smell the herbs and . . .”
“Your kind of fun, I don’t need,” he says, his face still blank. “And as for your herbs! Look where all that rubbish got your mother. Ended up in the nut-house.”
“What about me? I’m not my mother. Come on . . .” Smile. Paint a picture of a smiling woman. He walks ahead. Keep smiling.
“We shouldn’t be too long,” he says over his shoulder.
“Why hurry?”
“Have to be in the city by four.”
“Forgot.”
“Oh, you had a lot to think about.” He laughs, an insincere, dry laugh. “What do you, of all people, have to think about? Oh, yes, you have to make sure you have some paint, the odd canvas and as long as you have a couple of hours a day dabbling you’re happy. The artist, the great artist, is then satisfied.”
“I am an artist. I do sell my paintings and I almost keep myself by my work. I make a contribution.”
“You whine too much.” My immediate subjects are gallows, firing squads and electric chairs. What is wrong with him? We box in shadows. For some months I have suspected the colours of another woman round him and then brushed them off as a reflection of my own overabundant shade of green. Yet . . . we hardly make love now and when we do it’s a mechanical run to the end, not a process in itself. Images of men with soft hands and tender lips and armpits smelling of sweat.
Move past him and stop to face him. “Odd, isn’t it, that after all this time, you still think my painting is some kind of game?”
“Don’t get on that high horse again. Making a point, that’s all. Some of us have to be in certain places at certain times; some of us have to do certain things, though we don’t want to do them. You don’t have to do anything.”
“I see. I have nothing to do, I have nothing to think about?”
Once upon a life this used to be my magic place; a place where nothing could hurt me.
We walk on in angry silence until we reach the stream. He stops, clasps his hands behind his back, stoops as he says, “The great artist. Ha!”
Will not react. Paint a picture of a unicorn hanging by its hooves, blood dripping from his mouth. In the cavity I will put Alan.
Cress grows lush and appetizing. It is the first of the plants I harvest in the ravine. Salad tonight. Perhaps a cold cress soup. Pick an armful. There should be some nasturtiums at the fence which separates this land from McLaren’s. A hoofprint.
“Look, there’s been a horse here. Imagine! A horse drinking at our stream.” Trace the mark with my finger just as if I was drawing it in the form classes in art school.
He doesn’t look at the print. “Probably one of McLaren’s horses broke through the fence.”
“Never! This couldn’t be one of those ugly, scraggly, great mulching-bags of riding-school horses; it has to be the print of a gentle stallion, full-maned, flowing tail, nostrils flared and breath billowing before it like a tunnel of steam. Yes, that’s how I see the horse which made this print.” Giggle in spite of my mood. Romantic idiot. He ignores this, or he didn’t hear. Just as well.
Bunch my cress with some dead grass. No, the nasturtiums are too small for picking. We walk back to the house in silence. The day is yellow and bitter. It has the taste of overcooked meat.
Frame 4. Another week on this damned unicorn. It’s solid. Dead. No magic, a mundane glibness.
So, take a walk, girl, go and find the magic in your special place. Look at the rocks, feel the humid damp, wallow in the rotting leaves and stick your nose into a damned trillium. Pink or white.
One colour, one movement, one shape, and it could make everything come alive. Sure it could.
Find the spot where the cress grows. Funny, the cress has all gone. See a unicorn eating my cress and he’s welcome to it. Set up my easel, spread my blanket and line up the paints. The ground is spotted with camomile flowers. I lean against an elm and meditate, clear my mind, become the forest. Float. Huron woman waits for her man to welcome him onto a bed of fine moss; early settler picks ripe tomatoes from her vine as the bread rises; farmer disappears into the heavy corn to see if it’s ready for picking.
Clear morning light changes to midday hazy softness as I paint. Colours swirl round me. Forms join and separate.
Need a rest. Bend down to the stream for a drink. More prints in the soft mud. Touch them. They are fresh. What horse this?
Frame 5: Deep inside the forest the unicorn blends into the dappled shadows and vibrating leaves and spotted rocks. He’s behind the elm where I work. His breath brushes my bare shoulders, no more than a breeze. He strokes me with his nose. Yes, this shining black horse with the fine turned horn which explodes out of the bone of his skull. Reach out and stroke the horn – dry, hard, rough. Fondle his hot, furry nose. Curl my fingers round the nostrils and with the other hand rub the tip of the horn.
“I can see you’re friendly.”
He nuzzles my cheek with his mouth.
“You are a silly old horse. I think that you could be almost human.” Keep my hand on his neck and the touch of him is as comfortable as the touch of a child. His breath on my face. Lean against the tree. He rubs my face with the side of his horn. Now his head is in the angle between my head and shoulder. I hold his head in my hands; his breath is fresh, like grass. This gentle, huge animal. This silky, warm animal. Nothing in this world but the heavenly darkness of this animal. Lovely darkness.
He licks me clean. Kisses me all over my face and brushes my lips with his horn. He tidies the rug and I sleep.
Later I notice he’s left the tip of his horn embedded in the bark of the tree.
Frame 6. Alan does not like the painting. Says it’s rubbish. Says I’m getting more and more off the wall. Who says artists had to be accessible – whatever that means?
Frame 7. July, and I float on the heat. Hate summer. Love fall and spring. At times hate my life. It is certain that the colours of another woman blot out his own colours. I don’t know the man I married. He is scarlet. All scarlet, an angry frantic scarlet. I pretend blindness, deafness and no sense of smell.
We again walk down to the ravine. We have company tonight and I need some cress. At least at midday the mosquitoes should be sleeping. I hope. The house is too hot to bear. We walk silently for a while; eventually, as if he’s been waiting for the right time, he says, “Been thinking: we may as well sell and move into the city.”
“What?”
“Saw Watkins yesterday. I’m going to be more and more in the city. Can’t get on with all this travelling, it isn’t good for me. We should get a good price for this place and pick up something convenient for the subway. The children would prefer the city too.”
“You think so? Have you asked them?”
“No point in asking – we’ve no choice.”
“There’s always choice.”
“Not for us.”
“Is that what you really think? You really think I have no choice and the children have no choices?”
“Have to be in the city; nothing more to say about it.”
“It’s you that has to be in the city, not me, and not the children.”
What is this man talking about? Do I know him? My painting is a grey canvas with huge blotches of red as if someone has been shot through it. We’re at the same spot where I had painted my unicorn. The grass is still flattened.
He says, shaking his head, “I don’t understand you at all.”
Anger bubbles. “I think you do. When it suits you – then you understand me very well. You can go to hell. You can go to your city and leave me and the children here.”
“Can’t be done.”
Something funny in his voice: there’s a dead certainty, a sureness, an authority even greater than is usual for him.
“And why can’t this be done?” Be patient. Give him time. Let him speak.
“I need the money from the house.”
“What?”
“Said I need the money from the house and we have to sell it. There’s no question or choice for any of us.”
“Go and find an apartment somewhere – like others do when they find family life too much.”
“I don’t understand any of this. I don’t know what’s wrong with you, it’s as if I’m the one who’s being illogical and stupid.” He stands right in front of me and looms above me. I’m a fly waiting for the swatter. “This is silly. Only yesterday you were normal. Today you’re acting like a goat.” He smiles and his eyes become blue and clear as the stream. “All this rubbish about you keeping the children and the house, and me finding an apartment. . . . I don’t know where it comes from.” He laughs in a friendly, normal manner. Strokes my face. He strokes the cat the same way. Harder and harder all the time until the cat jumps away.
I move his hand from my face. “It sounds a sensible thing for people to do when they’re splitting up.”
“Wake up, and stop this stupidity!” The bully in his voice. I do not like this painting. Will change it and start another.
“I think I have just woken up,” I say too loudly.
I’m a tiny speck compared to his elephantine size. That white, blank face . . . Have seen this look twice before and each time he struck me. I brace by pushing myself against the tree. I swore I would leave if it ever happened again. Silence!
“Bitch! Don’t know who or what you think you are. Think you’re something special. Think you can turn my life upside down, and I can’t do anything. You know what I think?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. “I think I’m not going to let you get away with it this time. Not this time.”
His leaden hands on my shoulders. Bark cutting into my back and his fingers move up to my throat and . . .
“You think that you can take everything I’ve worked for from me? Think this: I could squeeze the life from you right now and leave you here. I could do that. Say you went on a trip . . . you were having an affair . . . went away. I could say anything at all and no one would miss you. Bury you here and you would never be found. Never.”
I whisper, “Where would that get you?”
He laughs. “Where would it get me! I’ll tell you where it would get me. It’ll get me my children, and my home, and my house and everything I’ve worked for all these years.”
His fingers tighten the pressure. Discomfort changes to pain. Must not fight.
Frame 8: Branches gather, come together. It’s dark as black velvet. Through this night is one shaft of light. It shines on me; it’s my circle, my spotlight. My face is red hot in the light while the rest of my body freezes; it’s getting colder and colder as the hands on my throat turn into a tourniquet.
Now the circle of light on my face gets larger and larger. Reach up behind me and find the piece of horn and grip it. Power flows into me. Release the piece of horn and take his hands in mine and gently lift them off my throat.
Unicorn. Footman. 905 874 1414
Frame 9. “That was a silly thing to do, wasn’t it?” I’m speaking to a wicked child. His eyes bulge, pupils huge. He looks about and trembles.
“I don’t know what happened,” he stutters.
I start walking up the path and mumble, “We had best be getting back. It’s getting late.”
As I walk I pick foxgloves and white bryony and black nightshade and monkshood and aconite.
“What’s the flowers for?”
“For the dinner arrangement. We have company. Remember? They smell good. Granny scattered the seeds. Wanted them to be wild as they should.”
“Yes, yes, of course. Your grandmother and her flowers. Her herbs.”
Birds sing once more and sun floods into the darkness.
This is how things should be.