Gail Bowen - The Nesting Dolls

Taylor’s eyes searched my face. “Well?”

“It’s the best work you’ve done.”

“Why didn’t you say something?” Her voice was unsure. The painting on the canvas was bold and assured, the creation of a mature artist, but Taylor was still fourteen years old, and she needed my approval.

I put my arm around her shoulder. “I was just overwhelmed – with how far you’ve come in your work. And everything about the painting reminds me of your mother – the hair is different, of course, but the expression on your face, even the way you hold your body, is the same. She had a certain stance when she was assessing her work. There’s no way you could know that.” I pointed towards the canvas. “But there it is.”

Taylor’s body tensed and when she spoke her voice was small and furious. “Jo, I am not my mother.”

“You’ve always liked talking about her. You told me once it was a way of not losing her.”

Taylor turned and went back to her canvas. The silence in the studio hung between us, heavy as the odour of paint in the air. When, finally, she spoke, Taylor didn’t face me. “You don’t know what it’s like. When I Google my mother, every article and blog talks about how dazzling and brave she was as a painter, and how she wasn’t afraid to live her life fully. No matter how good I am, people are going to measure me against her, and I’m just this boring kid. Declan says maybe I should change my last name to Shreve, then everyone will just say that for a lawyer’s daughter, I’m a pretty good visual artist.”

“Declan’s a good friend.”

Taylor dabbed her brush in a pot of paint and stared at her canvas. “He’s more than that,” she said.

“In what way?” I tried to sound cool and objective. I didn’t make it.

Taylor turned away from her canvas with such fury that the paint on her brush flew off and spattered on my hand. “I was going to say that he’s the only person who understands what I’m going through. It isn’t always about sex, Jo. I’m not a skank like my mother.”

“Taylor, your mother wasn’t a skank. She was a complex human being who was just beginning to discover her own worth when she died.”

I had delivered the eulogy at Sally’s funeral. The chapel was full, but I was the only one present whose relationship with Sally went beyond the romantic or the professional. The eulogy I wrote had been carefully crafted to say all the right things without acknowledging the terrible truths at the heart of Sally’s life. Ten years later as I stood watching her daughter’s body trembling, I knew that I had finally found the words I should have used on that grey February day. Sally’s life wasn’t complete. That was the tragedy. She had just begun to discover her worth when her life ended.

I walked over to Taylor’s painting and looked at it carefully. “You’ve only just begun. You don’t have to measure yourself against anyone. You’re that good.” When I put my arm around my daughter, the paint that had spattered from her brush onto my hand dripped onto her shirt. “Sorry,” I said. “I wrecked your shirt.”

The shirt was already covered in paint. “It’s okay,” she said. “I have ten other shirts just like this one.”

We both laughed, and then we moved so we could look more closely at the self-portrait. There was violence in the lines and the colours suggested turbulence in the relationship between artist and medium. “You’re not where you want to be yet, are you?” I said.

She sighed heavily. “No. Not even close.”

“But closer,” I said. “Taylor, this really is the strongest work you’ve ever done. And you have something your mother never had. Time. You have time to get where you need to go. Find out who you are, and I have a feeling the rest will come.”

It was close to eleven when I parked in the space reserved for tenants and guests of the condo on Scarth Street. Louise Hunter’s Mercedes was already there, and when I got off the elevator, I could hear her practising. I revelled in the moment, letting the Bach wash over me and watching the mirrored reflection of the twinkling white lights wound around a ficus by a window in the corridor. The morning had been a trying one. Despite what I’d told Zack about my bold plan of attack, I knew I was more roar than tiger. As I approached the door that held the wreath that was the twin of mine, I remembered Zack’s observation that the French word for grenade was pomegranate. I pressed the bell, wondering how the grenade I was about to throw would change the lives of the people waiting for me inside.

Myra was dressed handsomely in a grey sweater and skirt, grey tights, and Capezio flats that matched the fuchsia in her patterned silk scarf. She tilted her head at the sound of the music.

“That must be lovely to listen to,” I said.

“It is when the pianist is sober,” Myra said. “Sadly, that has become increasingly rare of late.”

I listened for a moment. “She sounds in fine form now.”

Myra raised an eyebrow. “Have you heard Angela Hewitt play the Bach?”

The penny dropped. “We’re listening to a recording,” I said.

“Yes. Sad, isn’t it? Louise Hunter and I haven’t spoken much, but when we moved in, she told me she used the Hewitt recording to inspire her; now it seems she uses it to punish herself.”

“Louise told you that?”

“She didn’t have to. The sequence speaks for itself. At the beginning, when Louise was working towards what seemed like a realizable goal, she would listen to Hewitt, and then play the Bach. Every day her performance got stronger; suddenly, she just seemed to lose her way. Her playing became sloppy and inaccurate. She would pound the piano. Finally, she’d stop and put on the recording.”

“And you think she’s punishing herself by listening to how the Bach should be played?”

“I do. That’s why I never complain when she’s making a hash of it,” Myra said. “Who knows what burdens another person is carrying?”

To quote Zack, Myra’s words “unmanned” me, but I followed her into the apartment. There was no turning back. The tough questions had to be asked, and I was positioned to ask them.

I steeled myself but was immediately granted a reprieve. After Myra had taken my things, she touched my arm. “Could I ask a favour? I have a gift I absolutely must get in the mail. Normally, Theo comes with me, but he’s having a bad day. I don’t like to leave him alone. He becomes confused and angry, and I’m afraid he might hurt himself or do something foolish. If I get you two settled, would you be all right alone with him for twenty minutes?”

“Take your time,” I said. “We’ll be fine.”

As she had before, Myra set the tea tray on the table. She filled our cups, excused herself, and slipped away. As soon as the door closed behind her, Theo smiled, removed the nesting doll from his pocket, and began the game he’d played the day he found them in my purse. He balanced the mother doll on his palm, said “I have a secret” in a light feminine voice, then opened the doll and produced the identical but smaller doll inside her. He repeated the sequence, pronouncing the words “I have a secret” in an increasingly high-pitched voice until he came to the last doll, the baby doll that could not be opened. “I am the secret,” he said in a tiny, squeaky, child’s voice.

With great care, Theo placed the nesting dolls on the table in front of him, arranging them according to size; then he extended a slender forefinger and, smiling, stroked the shiny painted head of each doll in turn. He picked up the smallest doll, cradled it in his palm, and then raised his eyes to look at me. “This is the baby,” he said. His brow furrowed and he regarded me with suspicion. “You have a baby,” he said.