A Trick of the Light

In fact, she didn’t believe it when he told her she snorted and hummed and made all manner of noises. Not loudly. But Peter was attuned to Clara. He heard her, even when she herself couldn’t.

But tonight she was silent.

“Clara?” he tried again. He knew she was there, and he knew she was awake. “We need to talk.”

Then he heard her. A long, long inhale. And then a sigh.

“What is it?”

He sat up in bed but didn’t turn the light on. He’d rather not see her face.

“I’m sorry.”

She didn’t move. He could see her, a dark ridge in the bed, shoved up at the very edge of the world. She couldn’t get further from him without falling out.

“You’re always sorry.” Her voice was muffled. She was speaking into the bedding, not even raising her head.

What could he say to that? She was right. As he looked back down their relationship it was a series of him doing and saying something stupid and her forgiving him. Until today.

Something had changed. He’d thought the biggest threat to their marriage would be Clara’s show. Her success. And his sudden failure. Made all the more spectacular by her triumph.

But he’d been wrong.

“We have to sort this out,” said Peter. “We have to talk.”

Clara sat up suddenly, fighting with the duvet, trying to get her arms clear. Finally she did, and turned to him.

“Why? So that I can just forgive you again? Is that it? You don’t think I know what you’ve been doing? Hoping my show would fail? Hoping the critics would decide my art sucks and you’re the real artist? I know you, Peter. I could see your mind working. You’ve never understood my art, you’ve never cared about it. You think it’s childish and simplistic. Portraits? How embarrassing,” she lowered her voice to mimic his.

“I never said that.”

“But you thought it.”

“I didn’t.”

“Don’t fucking lie to me, Peter. Not now.”

The warning in her voice was clear. And new. They’d had their fights before, but never like this.

Peter knew then their marriage was either over or soon would be. Unless he could find the right thing to say. To do.

If “I’m sorry” didn’t work, what would?

“You must’ve been thrilled when you saw the Ottawa Star review. When it called my art an old and tired parrot mimicking actual artists. Did that give you pleasure, Peter?”

“How can you think that?” Peter asked. But it had given him pleasure. And relief. It was the first really happy moment he’d had in a very long time. “It’s the New York Times review that matters, Clara. That’s the one I care about.”

She stared at him. And he felt cold creeping down his fingers and toes and up his legs. As though his heart had weakened and couldn’t get the blood that far anymore.

His heart was only now catching up with what the rest of him had known all his life. He was weak.

“Then quote me from the New York Times review.”

“Pardon?”

“Go on. If it made that big an impression, if it was that important to you, surely you can remember a single line.”

She waited.

“A word?” she asked, her voice glacial.

Peter scanned his memory, desperate for something, anything from the New York Times. Something to prove to himself, never mind Clara, that he’d cared in any way.

But all he remembered, all he saw, was the glorious review in the Ottawa paper.

Her art, while nice, was neither visionary nor bold.

He’d thought it was bad when her paintings were simply embarrassing. But it was worse when they were brilliant. Instead of reflected glory, it just highlighted what a failure he was. His creations dimmed as hers brightened. And so he’d read and re-read the parrot line, applying it to his ego as though it was an antiseptic. And Clara’s art was the septic.

But he knew now it wasn’t her art that had gone septic.

“I thought not,” snapped Clara. “Not even a word. Well let me remind you. Clara Morrow’s paintings are not just brilliant, they are luminous. She has, in an audacious and generous stroke, redefined portraiture. I went back and memorized it. Not because I believe it’s true, but so that I have a choice of what to believe, and it doesn’t always have to be the worst.”

Imagine, thought Peter, as the cold crept closer to his core, having a choice of things to believe.

“And then the messages,” said Clara.

Peter closed his eyes, slowly. A reptilian blink.

The messages. From all of Clara’s supporters. From gallery owners and dealers and curators around the world. From family and friends.

He’d spent most of the morning, after Gamache and Clara and the others had left, after Lillian’s body had left, answering the phone.

Ringing, ringing. Tolling. And each ring diminished him. Stripped him, it felt, of his manhood, his dignity, his self-worth. He’d written out the good wishes, and said nice things to people who ran the art world. The titans. Who knew him only as Clara’s husband.