Allyn Allyn - Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Vol. 135, No. 1. Whole No. 821, January 2010

As always, she arrived early, intent today on one work, Meadow, which she had viewed years ago at a group show in Paris. In her memory it rippled, softly emerald under an overcast sky, and she took the final stairs two at a time. She glanced up at the catwalk — no time for a quick trip across the bridge this morning. How did Elif manage to get his greens so fresh, while avoiding that calendar-art—

Ursula halted mid thought and stared at the child.

A very young infant, surely no more than one month old. Tightly swaddled, nestling in a wicker basket. The small fists were held at chest level, clenched, and the steel-blue gaze didn’t quite meet the viewer’s eyes, studied instead a point just above one’s head. Ursula turned around. There was no one else in the room. Just her and the child, like before.

God knows why she had gone through with it. She didn’t like children. They were loud, demanding creatures, sticky and frequently damp. So simple it would have been to get rid of this particular creature, simple and safe and legal. But she hadn’t. She’d kept putting it off, finding excuses: money, usually. “What a shame,” joked Ralf at what had proved to be their last meeting. “It’d be a good-looking kid.” He left her with a fistful of cash; she used it to buy oversized sweaters and new trainers for her aching feet, as well as a bottle of cognac and a posh leather portfolio. With a portfolio like that, she’d have to sketch more. And if she sketched more, undoubtedly she’d—

Ursula shut her eyes. The retinal image of the painting glowed, a fierce orange. She hadn’t thought about her daughter in years. Literally years. At first, yes, quite a lot: simple curiosity, nothing more. Where was she? A house? A flat? Napping in a garden? Was she crawling, walking, talking yet? A good sleeper, like her mother used to be? Did she love music? Primary colors, like her father?

Lucky little girl — she had been adopted, Ursula was assured, by an educated couple, rather young. “Don’t worry,” said the social worker, scanning Ursula’s paperwork, then her long hair, the hammered-silver earrings and black jeans, the portfolio propped against her chair. “They are people of culture. She’ll have a fine life.”

Good, she remembered thinking. So the child would be pretty and cultivated, probably go to university. She’d get by.

Ursula swayed and opened her eyes. She must sit down, quickly, and started to do so, right on the floor. My God, one would think her quite mad, sprawling on the floor of a public building like an adolescent. She opted instead for the wooden bench in the middle of the room. She looked some more at the child. A background of umber and fawn, slatey shadows in the white blanket. A cap of feathery brown hair. She could suddenly feel it again, under her fingertips. The gently swollen eyelids. The upward glance that took in everything and revealed nothing.

Standing up, she still felt a little dizzy, but shuffled toward the painting anyway. “ Child, 1977. Acrylic after a photograph. Private collection.” Well, that was certainly helpful.

High heels sounded in the corridor behind her and she jumped. Young Whitney, probably. Her watch said 11:05. She’d daydreamed in front of the painting forever, and now she was late for her assignment.

As she hurried toward the east portal, Ursula almost ran into the high heels’ occupant. Not Whitney. A well-preserved woman about her own age, a frequent patron whose French accent she found unaccountably annoying. That lanky husband or lover in tow, as usual. Ursula murmured, “Pardon me,” but she needn’t have bothered.

“Oh, chéri, look! Is she not lovely?” The voice was deep and purring. “That tiny baby? She is precious.”

“Uh, yes,” said her companion. “Yes, Marie.”

The woman paid him no mind. “The brushwork. Those shadows. So precious.”

Ursula gasped, driving one fist into her palm with an audible smack. Some things are too precious to say aloud, she wanted to snarl. What a pleasure it would be to pick up the nearest guard’s stool and break it over the woman’s sleek, tawny head, silence the feline voice. She must get to her post, right away. This was a dangerous place.

Pulling rank, she was reassigned the next day to the child’s room.

Guards were supposed to stand or sit by the doorway. Each morning that week, Ursula inched herself along the wall, nearer and nearer the child, until she had an excellent prospect. Sometimes, casually patrolling the room, she would walk right up to her. Patrons who blocked her sight line were an infuriating nuisance, but by degrees she learned to ignore them and their ridiculous cooing. Eventually they would move on, and the child would be hers again, and time would dissolve.

Her pregnancy had been easy, the birth hard, given her youth and vigorous health. Twenty-four hours of labor and three hours of pushing, watched over by a morose midwife and visited, once, by her mother.

“What will you call her?”

“Why? What’s the use? I’m not keeping her.”

A snort of disgust. Ursula grinned and held the little bundle out, for courtesy’s sake, but the older woman shook her head. “She’s got to have a name.”

“Mary Magdalene?”

“That’s not funny.”

“Well — Rosa. For Rosa Luxemburg. Oh, all right. Ghislaine, that’s pretty. Gisela. Sara.”

Sara.

So what had those cultured folk actually named her? Ursula hadn’t loved the child, had been most relieved to see the back of her, in fact. Now, though, the question presented itself, over and over, while she was walking to work or chopping vegetables for her supper or lying awake at dawn. Alexandra? Hadn’t Alexandra been a fashionable name back then? Isolde? Very classy. But Sara was a nice name, really. According to the night nurse at the birthing home, it meant “princess” in some language or other. On the rare occasions Ursula had thought of her at all during the last twenty-odd years, she said to herself “the child,” but sometimes “Sara” had come to mind as well.

The dream surfaced Tuesday night and again on Thursday and Friday. While pregnant, Ursula suddenly remembered, she had dreamed of babies all the time. Now she saw a small child — whether boy or girl, impossible to say — skipping along one rail of the catwalk like a tightrope dancer. Once the child was chatting with Marie, the annoying Frenchwoman, and Ursula grew angry with them both. Another time, Ursula whispered, “Careful! You’ll fall!” but the child merely smiled to itself and glided through another bar of light.

It was no use; her supervisor wouldn’t give her a second week in the child’s room. “Ursula,” he said, “this is a very popular show. I know you love the Elifs, and I truly admire your dedication, but I’ve got to be equitable here. Whitney’s doing her master’s thesis on his photo-based work.”

Screw Whitney, she almost snapped. Then she took a swift breath. What if he assigned her to another exhibit altogether? What would she do then? Come in at lunch and breaks and on her free days? Well, if need be, she—

“Don’t look so worried, Ursula. I’ll just send you on to the North Gallery.”

The North Gallery. That wasn’t so bad; she could still easily get to the child during her breaks. And tomorrow was Sunday, her day off — she would visit the child’s room again tomorrow. Perhaps in a head scarf and dark glasses? The other guards already thought her a touch — eccentric. Ursula the loner, the art nut, polite and aloof, who never talked about family or friends or weekend plans or what she had watched on cable the night before. She didn’t want to give them any more to natter about.

The North Gallery was devoted to adult portraits. Ursula regarded them dubiously. People were seldom her subject of choice. But having already spent half an hour with the child that morning, she was ready to take on a new room of Elifs. And there, in the center of the west wall, was the signature painting of the exhibit, the one on all the posters plastered all over the city, the Sleeper.