Charles De Lint - Memory and Dream

“It devastated her,” Alan said, “though she tried not to show it.” He shook his head. “All that astonishing work ... gone, just like that.”

He pictured the one painting by Isabelle that he owned—a ten-by-sixteen oil pastel of a small angular, red-haired gamine that she’d called Annie Nin—and a thought came to him then. If Cosette really had been brought over through Isabelle’s painting The Wild Girl, then the subject of the painting he owned would be alive, too. Out there in the world somewhere. But the others, the others were all dead.

Destroyed in the fire.

“It must have killed her,” he said softly.

“Killed who?” Marisa asked.

But Rolanda was with him. “Isabelle,” she said. “The way she must have felt when the people who were born from her paintings all died in that fire.”

“No wonder the direction of her art changed so drastically,” Alan said. He stared down at the painting he held. “Except ... what if they weren’t destroyed?”

“You just said that the fire took almost everything she’d ever done up to that point in her career,”

Marisa said.

Alan nodded. “Including this painting. But it’s here, isn’t it?”

“Do you think she only pretended that they were destroyed in the fire?” Rolanda asked. “That she hid them so that she could keep them safe from harm?”

“I don’t know,” Alan replied.

But he remembered again how Isabelle had insisted on the condition that the originals of the art she did for Kathy’s book remained in her possession at all times.

“She’d be in a lot of trouble with her insurance company, if that’s true,” Marisa said.

Alan nodded absently. He placed the painting back down in the window seat, setting it on top of the brown wrapping paper that it had been lying upon before Marisa picked it up. He noticed the envelope as he was straightening up. Before he knew what he was doing, he had the envelope in his hand and was studying the handwriting.

“What’s that?” Marisa asked.

“A letter from Kathy. I recognize the handwriting.”

“Wait a sec,” Marisa said as he started to open it. “I know I walked us in here, but that’s because I didn’t think she’d mind us waiting in her studio, you being old friends and all. But we should definitely draw the line at reading her mail.”

Alan agreed with her. Normally he would never have considered prying the way he was about to.

But the need to know what Kathy had written overtook him, shadowing common courtesy. The compulsion had him going ahead and opening the envelope at the same time as he nodded in agreement to Marisa.

“It’s dated from just before she died,” he said. “It ...” He continued to scan down the page, turned to the next one. “It’s her suicide note,” he said when he got to the end. “She mailed it to Isabelle instead of leaving it in her apartment.”

His chest was tight with the old pain of Kathy’s loss. The unfamiliar room suddenly seemed to be choked with ghosts. He gave Marisa an anguished look.

“Isabelle really knew all along that Kathy ... that she killed herself. So why did she pretend otherwise?”

“I don’t understand,” Marisa said.

“The big fight we had at Kathy’s funeral. It was about how Kathy died. Isabelle was mad at me for not going to the hospital to see her ... but Kathy was never in a hospital. She died of an overdose ofsleeping pills in her own apartment and Isabelle was the one who found her on one of her visits to town. When she kept claiming that Kathy hadn’t killed herself, I thought it was because there was no note—you know how people want to deny that someone they cared about could have killed herself? But then it got crazy with all this talk about cancer and hospitalization and the radiation treatments not working ....”

“I still don’t get it,” Marisa said. “Her suicide was reported in all the newspapers. And even the other night on the TV, they mentioned it when they ran the piece on how the injunction had been lifted.”

Alan nodded.

“So why would Isabelle try to convince you different?”

“That’s something I would love to know,” Alan said. “It’s gotten to the point now where I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

Rolanda cleared her throat. “Maybe I should leave you two to hash this out with Isabelle.”

Jesus, Alan thought. What must she think of us? Barging into Isabelle’s studio and going through all of her stuff.

“I can come back some other time to talk to her,” Rolanda added.

Alan shook his head. “No. There’s something very strange going on here and what you told us about this Cosette girl is a part of it.” He paused to study her for a moment. “Don’t you want to know what it’s all about anymore?”

“Yes, of course. But this all seems so ... personal. I can’t help but feel as though I’m intruding.”

Marisa nodded. “I know exactly what you mean. We should go, Alan.”

Alan knew they were both right, but he also knew he had to deal with the tangle of memories that rose up from the past every time he thought of Isabelle and Kathy. The past lay so thick upon him at the moment he could hardly breathe. He looked down at the letter once more, wishing it actually explained things, rather than calling up new questions.

This is what I’m leaving you. For you and Alan, if you want to share it with him.

What had Kathy left in that locker at the bus terminal all those years ago? And why had Isabelle never told him about it—about the letter or the contents of the locker? Was whatever it had been the real reason that Isabelle had gone all strange at the funeral? They had all been so close, almost inseparable for so many years. He had never been able to understand how it fell apart. And surely Isabelle knew how much he’d cared for Kathy, how much her death had devastated him. What had she found in that locker that she couldn’t share with him?

“Alan?” Marisa said.

Alan nodded. He returned the letter to its envelope. He looked at it for a long moment, then tossed it onto the window seat beside the painting.

“Nora Dennis has a studio here, doesn’t she?” Marisa asked as they made their way down the hall to the stairwell.

Alan nodded. “Why?”

“Maybe she’s seen Isabelle.”

“Doesn’t seem likely. Isabelle only just got back to town.”

“It wouldn’t hurt to ask,” Marisa said.

So they left the stairwell at the second floor and went looking for Nora’s studio. It wasn’t hard to find. Halfway down the hall they came upon a door that was standing open. Loud music spilled out of it, a song sung in an Irish dancetune signature but with drums and electric guitars augmenting the acoustic instruments. The Waterboys, Alan thought, recognizing the song. Looking through the doorway, they found Nora sitting on the floor with watercolor paintings scattered all around her. She glanced up and grinned when she noticed them standing in the doorway.

“Sorry about the mess,” she said, standing up to turn down the volume of the music, “but I’m just getting organized for a show.” She looked around herself, her smile widening. “What am I saying?

Organized? I wish.”

Unlike Isabelle’s studio, where everything was still unpacked, Nora’s studio looked as though a tornado had just touched down in the middle of it. Alan felt like a relief worker, showing up at the scene of a major disaster with the best of intentions to help out, but being overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of what had to be done.

“I haven’t had a chance to talk to her yet,” Nora said when they asked her about Isabelle. She ran a hand through her short brown hair, making it stand up at attention. “But I saw her down in the courtyard about an hour ago with Johnny Sweetgrass.”