Chapter Three #3
Gone are the bright, vivid colours that he favoured.
Instead, this piece is almost pastel. There are greens and blues, thick brush strokes that sweep across the bottom of the canvas, blurring the distinction between land and water.
I’m certain that it’s Northumberland, the way the coast juts over the sea, all broken lines, like a jigsaw; the sea and land coming together as one.
The greens and blues give way to lighter colours, pastel pinks and pale yellows, white clouds that draw the eye up.
And there I am, right in the centre, my hair blown out in all directions by some invisible wind, red and vivid against the background.
My eyes are sad. I thought they were neutral, but here up close, I think I’m sad.
It’s clear that it’s me. My eyes, my hair, the shape of my face.
But it’s also the fact that I’m in Northumberland, and that’s the place that I’m meant to be.
I’ve often felt that I couldn’t exist in any other place.
There’s some symmetry between the land and me.
There’s a shadow too, a patch of green only just darker than the rest. You have to look closely to see it.
Great art isn’t what you see; it’s how much you feel when you look at it. And I feel so many things when I look at this painting that it’s impossible to untangle all of the threads.
I’m immortal in this painting, and I can’t look away. I stumble backwards and sit on a concrete bench. People don’t block my view, so I sit some more, trying to commit every stroke to memory. It’s almost whimsical and so beautiful.
There’s a line of writing in the bottom corner under Earl’s signature. I squint at it.
The answer is always in the art.
I tilt my head to the side, wondering what Earl meant, and catch a couple of people looking at me and then the painting. I ignore them, consider putting my sunglasses on. I’d do it except for the fact that they’d dull my view.
It wasn’t exactly true, what I said to the Deathers about Earl’s art not incorporating death.
Earl might not have painted death overtly, but his work was often inspired by it.
He’d said this once when the local newspaper had run an article on him, and they’d asked him what his favourite thing to paint was.
‘The moment before death,’ he answered simply.
‘I imagine that there’s an explosion of colour, in the seconds before we die.
A last hurrah, if you will, before eternal darkness.
’ The reporter from the Bamburgh Echo hadn’t really known what to make of him after that.
But Earl had just chuckled at his startled expression and carried on.
‘Whatever question you ask, my friend, death is always the answer.’
After that, the other kids on the caravan park had avoided him for a few months. They’d dared each other to knock on his door, until Mae had punched one of them on the nose.
But this isn’t a painting of death.
The answer is always in the art.
What answer? I wonder. What question?
I’m absorbed in it. I’m trying to imagine where and when Earl painted the piece, wondering how he could have kept this work secret.
No one had any secrets on the caravan park; everyone lived too close together for that.
Gregor had managed to sell some of his work during Earl’s lifetime, but once he’d been ‘discovered’ in the years after his death, they’d all reappeared, owned mostly by the same collector in London.
How can it be that there was a whole painting just out there somewhere?
I’m so completely lost to my thoughts that I don’t notice a person sitting down next to me on the concrete bench.
I try to focus on the painting as the man beside me shifts a little.
I feel light-headed all of a sudden.
I can’t look, but I have to. Earl, the painting, me, Emmett, it’s all too much.
It can’t be. Surely not. Not when I’ve imagined him next to me so many times over the years. Yet, in all my imaginings, it’s never, ever been real.
‘Luna,’ he says. And when did my face become so wet?
I turn to him – how can I not? His face is the same, just a little more worn. There was a time when I knew his face better than my own.
‘Luna,’ he says, and it is him, not some figment of my imagination, but the real thing. How can he be here now, not all the times I needed him, but now, when I want time with Earl and this painting?
Emmett is here, though, and I am crying.
I thought I’d feel sad. Or happy, even. I thought I’d be overcome with guilt.
After all, it’s the guilt that has plagued me for all these years.
Weighed me down and broke me before I understood how broken I really was.
It’s none of those things that I feel. I’m angry.
I’m so angry that it lights me up from the inside out, all this anger.
I’m surprised at the depth of my own feeling.
I didn’t think I was capable of that anymore.
‘Emmett,’ I answer, trying to inject some coldness into my voice. He leans back, just a touch. Good. He should feel bad.
I recall all the other instances when I first saw him. How long I waited for him. How I was always, always happy to see him at the start of each summer. I try to push the memories away, but they assail me, they rain down on me. And no matter how hard I try to fight them, they won’t let me go.