It was ten days after the funeral. I was boxing his items: dusty brass paperweights, the scruffed and grimey golfball that won him that tournament three years in a row, his pewter mug. These had been placed upon his bureau years ago where he could admire them. They left spotless shadows beneath them, their visible permanence.
Mother sat in a wooden chair, watching me from a corner. She had never sat in his leather armchair, before. I asked her why she wouldn't. "You'd be a lot more comfortable."
I pulled open a drawer and removed his fountain pen collection; each barrel was heavy with the weight of unwritten thought.
"I can't," she said, smiling warily. "I can still feel him sitting there, writing up some letter. Can't see him, but he's there."
"Does he mind that we're donating his stuff?"
Mother stiffened. "Doesn't matter what he minds. Just mind that he is there."
***
Between the oak bookcase and the plaster wall was a sizeable gap not visible from the front. I discovered it there when I tried to unplug the desk lamp - the kind with the glass green shade and brass neck, chain dangling - and traced the wire under the carpet and behind the bookcase. The plug slithered into shadow and hid there like a timid snake. Summoning my courage - who knew what dusty spiderwebs were hidden in the dark? - I stuck my hand into the crack, groping for the outlet. I felt something of an ornate bevel, something I thought to be a vintage switchplate but discovered was the carved edge of a picture frame. Grasping it by the wire, I pulled out a painting from behind the bookshelf.
Dust had accumulated in the crevices of the gilt frame, except those paths I had traced with my greyed fingertips. There was no glass to protect the oil painting within. In it were hundreds of trees, dappled red, yellow and orange, overlapping each other, forming hillsides. I could see the raised peaks of paint that cupped the dust like an unmelting snow, and a stray bristle or two. It was as if the leaves were being blown out of the frame to lick my face, earthy and moist, the bristle like a loose branch. A ghostly white chapel haunted the hillside, half-obscured.
The chapel was unfinished.
All around, the landscape was thick with colour, fleshy with broad, messy strokes, oppressed by a deep, ponderous sky. But the chapel itself was bare; only the light grey trace of a pencil outlined its tower and its slatted windows. I could see the weave of the canvas in the chapel-shaped absence, and the edges of the church flamed with a feathery whiteness where the paint was delicately flicked outwards and away, preserving this holy space.
"Your father never finished that one," said my mother from her seat, startling me. I had forgotten she was there.
"He painted this?" I asked incredulously. Then I noticed, hidden between the shadowy branches, his thin, black scrawl. "I didn't realize he was a painter."
"He never was. Not officially, anyway. Liked to keep it a secret."
"Well, he did a good job. I never saw any brushes, even! How'd he paint this without me noticing?"
My mother stared thoughtfully into the landscape.
"That one was painted just after you were born. It was the last painting he ever did."
I looked into the painting.
"How come he never finished? Is this where you were married?"
"Such a curious child you are," she teased, but the lines around her lips were grim. "That isn't where we married."
"Where is it then? This from a calendar or something?"
My mother stood up from her chair and stared down her nose at me as I sat on the floor, painting in my lap.
"Yes, a calendar," she said. She turned round - "You can donate it" - and walked away.
"Alright," I mumbled to myself, and traced each brushstroke with my eyes. There was something about the chapel that held my attention. It haunted my consciousness as I pulled the donation box over; I couldn't give this away. Where is this chapel, I wondered, and what is hidden there?
To Be Continued
2 comments:
What happens next! i really like this and it left me wanting more, is it a sci-fi or horror??? The beginning has this sad atmosphere but its building up to something!
Me too! I want to know what happens next! So much tension and anticipation!
I really liked this, it was very well written, you clearly reveled in the language and found ways to express things differently: "each barrel was heavy with the weight of unwritten thought", "peaks of paint that cupped the dust like unmelting snow" and so on. It was very beautiful.
The only thing I would question is the switch in the level of diction between the narration, which is intricate and well-expressed, and the dialogue, which is common and ungrammatical. There's nothing wrong with these dialogues in and of themselves, it's just when you put them beside such uplifting metaphors, they sort of wilt. I did like when the narrator asks her mom if the picture comes from a calendar, I thought that was funny.
Can't wait to read the next part!
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