Charles De Lint - Memory and Dream

Last night’s joy at the thought of bringing Kathy’s visions to life in a new set of paintings leaked away at the thought of moving back. But she had no choice now that she’d accepted Alan’s commission. She would have to spend time in Newford, sketching and photographing locations, dealing with models, seeing too many familiar streets, meeting people she no longer knew but who would think they knew her.

It would be stepping back into the past, with all that had been left undone and unsaid and unfinished still waiting there for her; stepping back into that whole untidy tangle of memories and dreams that she had simply set aside because she couldn’t seem to find the wherewithal to deal with them.

Unable to do so then, and with nothing changed inside her, what made her think she could deal with it now? She’d found no new reservoirs of courage. She’d acquired no new abilities during her self-imposed exile.

It wasn’t anger she felt at all, she realized, except perhaps that old anger at herself and the weaknesses that drove her. It was fear.

She rowed back to the island, putting far more force than was necessary into the task. Her back ached from the fierceness she put into the effort and she had the beginning of a headache by the time she reached her dock and had moored the rowboat.

Massaging her temples, she walked slowly across the wooden planking until she stood in the forest’s shadow. There she paused. She realized that the decision she’d made last night had brought her to a demarcation of all that had gone before. She had stood in one of those rare border crossings between the past and the future where one is aware—so aware—that the decision about to be made will change everything.

She looked back across the water to the mainland. The red of her Jeep leapt out from among the surrounding evergreens. The maples in the hills beyond carried variations on that red off into the horizon.

Alan was gone, back to Newford, but she could no longer pretend she was alone. She turned back to the forest, realizing that she had to acknowledge them now.

“Which of you spoke to him?” she asked the dark spaces between the trees. There was no reply.

But she hadn’t really been expecting one. Still she knew they were there, watching, listening.

Meddling.

As she followed the path back home, she couldn’t quite shake the feeling that this was all Rushkin’s doing. That Alan Grant hadn’t thought of her as the artist for Kathy’s book—not on his own; that she hadn’t made the decision to take on the project—not on her own.

There was no logical reason for her to see Rushkin’s hand in this, although, from the very first time she’d met him, he’d proved to be a master at manipulation. But then nothing about Rushkin had ever followed any sort of logic. Not his charismatic appeal. Not the impossible wonder he had taught her to wake from a canvas. Not the bewildering way he could shift from being arrogant to obsequious, compassionate to brutal, amiable to rude beyond compare.

And certainly there was no logic at all for why he did so many of the things he had done.

When she reached the barn, she went inside and shut the door firmly behind her. Her fingers hesitated on the interior bolt before she pulled them away. Stuffing her hands in her pockets, she slouched on a chair by the kitchen table and stared out the window. The familiar, happy view, brown and green fields dappled with sunshine, the bright blue beyond, had lost its ability to soothe her.

After a while she took out her letter from Kathy and reread it, turning the locker key slowly over and over in her hands as she did. Long after she’d set the letter aside, she still sat there, staring out the window again, still turning the key in her hands. Two things waited for her in Newford and she was frightened of them both. There was what was in the locker that this key would open. That was bad enough. But also waiting for her, she knew, was Rushkin.

She’d named her studio after him, but she’d never been sure if it was out of respect for what he’d taught her or relief for having been able to escape from him. A bit of both, she supposed. It had been over ten years since he’d vanished without a word. He was dead. Everyone said so and she wanted to believe it herself. But then how many people had thought he was dead when she’d been studying under him? No, implausible though it might appear, she knew that he was still out there, somewhere, waiting for her.

If he was still alive, if he did return when she began to paint once more, utilizing what he’d taught her

... what would happen to her, to her art? Would she be strong enough to resist him? She’d failed before.

What would make this time any different?

She realized that she just didn’t know and that was what scared her most of all.

I

Newford, December 1973

“And where do you think you’re going with that?” Rushkin demanded.

It was just after lunch, two weeks before Christmas, and Izzy was getting ready to leave the studio for a class she had that afternoon at the university. She looked up from where she’d been putting a small canvas into her knapsack to see Rushkin glaring at her. The subject of the painting in question was a still life of three old leather-bound books and a rose in a tall vase, surrounded by a scattering of pen holders and nibs. She’d finished the piece a few weeks earlier and had been waiting for it to be dry enough to take home.

“It’s a present for my roommate,” she said, not hearing the warning bells that rang faintly in the back of her mind. “For Christmas.”

“For Christmas. I see. I’d thought we had a certain set of rules concerning the work you do while you are in this studio, but I can see I was mistaken.”

A hollow feeling settled in Izzy’s stomach. She read the warning signs now, but knew she was seeing them too late.

“N-no,” she said nervously. “You’re not mistaken. I ... I just forgot.” Rushkin had been adamant from the first that everything she did in the studio remained in the studio until he said otherwise. He wouldn’t explain why, and he wouldn’t allow any exceptions. “I didn’t think you’d mind.”

“No, of course you wouldn’t.” She could see the rage building up in his eyes, hear the growing vehemence in every word. “I’m merely here to provide you with a workspace and supplies so that you can shower your friends with the pitiful fruits of your labor that exist only through my largesse.”

“It’s not like that ....”

“You certainly aren’t learning anything, are you?”

“But—”

He strode across the wooden floor and tugged the canvas from her hands. He held it gingerly, his severe look of distaste giving the impression that she’d rendered it in dog shit.

“My god,” he said. “Will you look at this? It gives a whole new meaning to the concept of naive art.”

Izzy had thought it the best piece she’d done yet. It had been the first time that she really felt as though she’d managed to capture light in one of her oils: the way it fell across the various textures of her subjects, the glowing sheen and pronounced shadow on the leather of the books, the delicacy of the rose’s petals, the sparks of highlight on the pen nibs. She’d titled it By Any Name, knowing that Kathy would appreciate the literary allusion of both the title and subject.

“What could you have been thinking of?” Rushkin wanted to know.

“I ... I just thought Kathy would ... would like it,” she said. “She’s a ... writer ....”