Chapter Eight #3
He’s right. I felt so old when I was eighteen, but I know now that it’s all relative. Maybe we always feel old because in that moment, we’re always the oldest we’ve ever been. But time marches on, regardless. And what was once the frontier of our experience melts into the past.
So, I thought I was old at eighteen. I thought I was worldly-wise and in love. But now I know that this, now, this is what feeling old is like. Ground down and exhausted. At least I’m not naive anymore. I’m not sure there’s anything worse than ignorant naivety. At least for me.
‘How long are you in Paris for?’ he asks, and I’m jolted out of my trance.
‘Only another day. I’m going back to MAM tomorrow to try and speak to the curator, see if she can tell me anything more about the painting. Then it’s home on Wednesday morning. I run an art therapy session at the hospice on Thursdays.’
I mean, in reality, no one is going to die if I don’t run the class. Well, they might die, but not because of that.
‘So you didn’t give up art entirely.’
‘It’s not quite the same thing. And I haven’t given it up – I’m just on a hiatus.’ A hiatus spanning several years.
‘And why was that?’
‘No real reason. How long are you here for?’ I ask, changing the subject.
‘Until Friday,’ he answers after a drink. Emmett looks like he’s going to say something, but stops himself.
‘That’s a good thing that you do, at the hospice.’
‘I enjoy it,’ I answer honestly.
He goes to talk again, but has a drink instead.
‘What?’ I ask him.
He has another drink.
‘It’s just… Well, I wondered what you made of the message in the corner of the painting?’
‘The answer is always in the art?’ I ask, remembering the sentence in the corner above Earl’s signature. I push my plate away.
‘That’s the one.’
I shrug. ‘You know Earl believed that everyone should be creative somehow. I guess he’s telling people that you should look to art to answer… I don’t know, life’s big questions.’
‘So you don’t think it was a message for you?’
‘For me? Why would it be for me?’
Emmett neatly puts his knife and fork across his plate.
‘Because you’re in the painting. What if it’s a message for both of us?’
I laugh, too loudly in this fancy restaurant.
‘Why on earth would Earl send us a message from beyond the grave?’ For a smart person, Emmett has always had the capacity to be really fucking stupid.
‘Not from beyond the grave. He painted it that last summer, and we had more going on than what happened. I think he knew that we’d find it hard to stay together. Neither of us knew what love was meant to look like.’
His words sting. ‘I wouldn’t have found it hard, Emmett. That was all you.’ My voice is sharp. But even as I say it, I know it’s not exactly true. He’s right: we had other obstacles, so many obstacles.
‘You knew Earl – he saw things.’
Some of the fire goes out of me as Emmett reaches into his pocket and unfolds a neat piece of paper. It has a list on it.
‘What’s that?’ I ask.
Emmett slides it across the table to me.
The Weight of Light
Longing for Human Connection
Montmartre in Motion
The Juxtaposition of Life and Death
The Rubicon
The Edge of Always
‘Why do you have a list of Earl’s final paintings?’
‘These are the ones that are included in the exhibit.’
‘I know that, but why are you showing it to me?’
‘What if Earl wanted us to go to them, the places he painted? What if he saw it as a way to bring us back together?’
‘In Paris? Why would Earl want us to come to Paris? It makes zero sense, Emmett.’
‘Luna, he had a great love story in Paris. You know he did. I don’t know, it’s just an Earl thing to do. He loved helping people.’
I think of all the painstaking hours that Earl spent with me as I learned to draw, of all the support he gave Tanya and Emmett. Emmett’s right: it would be just like Earl to try and help us from beyond the grave.
‘What are you suggesting here, Emmett?’
‘Come with me. Let’s go and see the places he painted. It could be like, in his honour. We never did say goodbye to him properly.’
I mean, I did. I did say goodbye to Earl. But thinking about his funeral makes it very hard to remain neutral about almost anything at all.
‘I don’t know about you,’ he says with an air of finality, ‘but I could do with some answers right now.’
I mean, fuck yes. I would love answers. And if life were a question that could be solved, I’d be all over it.
‘So we what? Spend tomorrow traipsing around all the places that Earl painted hoping that some magical answer to a question we don’t even know appears before us. That’s insane behaviour.’ I try to ignore the fact that I’d had that exact thought, the moment I’d walked into the exhibit.
Emmett shakes his head. ‘I’m not saying we do it in a day. It’ll take the rest of the week. Luna, say you’ll do it. Spend the week in Paris with me?’
There was a time when I’d have done anything that Emmett asked of me. I’ve come to see it as a weakness, the way I was back then, giving him the power to make me miserable, just handing my happiness over on a plate. I don’t do that anymore. No one gets that power.
I’m no longer the person that I was in The Time Before.