Louise Penny: A Fatal Grace

He wasn’t foolish or blind enough not to also see the homeless men and women, or the bruised and battered faces that spoke of a long and empty night and a longer day ahead.

But at his core he believed the world a lovely place. And his photographs reflected that, catching the light, the brilliance, the hope. And the shadows that naturally challenged the light.

Ironically it was this very quality that had caught CC’s eye and led her to offer him the contract. An article in a Montreal style magazine had described him as a ‘hot’ photographer, and CC always went for the best. Which was why they always took a room at the Ritz. A cramped, dreary room on a low floor without view or charm, but the Ritz. CC would collect the shampoos and stationery to prove her worth, just as she’d collected him. And she’d use them to make some obscure point to people who didn’t care, just as she’d use him. And then, eventually, everything would be discarded. As her husband had been tossed aside, as her daughter was ignored and ridiculed.

The world was a cruel and insensitive place.

And he now believed it.

He hated CC de Poitiers.

He got out of bed, leaving CC to stare at her book, her real lover. He looked at her and she seemed to go in and out of focus. He cocked his head to one side and wondered whether he’d had too much to drink again. But still she seemed to grow fuzzy, then sharp, as though he was looking through a prism at two different women, one beautiful, glamorous, vivacious, and the other a pathetic, dyed-blonde rope, all corded and wound and knotted and rough. And dangerous.

‘What’s this?’ He reached into the garbage and withdrew a portfolio. He recognized it immediately as an artist’s dossier of work. It was beautifully and painstakingly bound and printed on archival Arche paper. He flipped it open and caught his breath.

A series of works, luminous and light, seemed to glow off the fine paper. He felt a stirring in his chest. They showed a world both lovely and hurt. But mostly, it was a world where hope and comfort still existed. It was clearly the world the artist saw each day, the world the artist lived in. As he himself once lived in a world of light and hope.

The works appeared simple but were in reality very complex. Images and colors were layered one on top of the other. Hours and hours, days and days must have been spent on each one to get the desired effect.

He stared down at the one before him now. A majestic tree soared into the sky, as though keening for the sun. The artist had photographed it and had somehow captured a sense of movement without making it disorienting. Instead it was graceful and calming and, above all, powerful. The tips of the branches seemed to melt or become fuzzy as though even in its confidence and yearning there was a tiny doubt. It was brilliant.

All thoughts of CC were forgotten. He’d climbed into the tree, almost feeling tickled by its rough bark, as if he had been sitting on his grandfather’s lap and snuggling into his unshaven face. How had the artist managed that?

He couldn’t make out the signature. He flipped through the other pages and slowly felt a smile come to his frozen face and move to his hardened heart.

Maybe, one day, if he ever got clear of CC he could go back to his work and do pieces like this.

He exhaled all the darkness he’d stored up.

‘So, do you like it?’ CC held her book up and waved it at him.

TWO

Crie carefully got into her costume, trying not to rip the white chiffon. The Christmas pageant had already started. She could hear the lower forms singing ‘Away in a manger,’ though it sounded suspiciously like ‘A whale in a manger’. She wondered, briefly, whether that was a comment on her. Were they all laughing at her? She swallowed that thought and continued dressing, humming a bit as she went.

‘Who’s doing that?’ The voice of Madame Latour, the music teacher, could be heard in the crowded, excited room. ‘Who’s humming?’

Madame’s face, birdlike and bright, peeked round the corner where Crie had crept to change alone. Instinctively Crie grabbed her costume and tried to cover her near-naked fourteen-year-old body. It was impossible, of course. Too much body and too little chiffon.

‘Was it you?’

Crie stared, too frightened to speak. Her mother had warned her about this. Had warned her never to sing in public.

But now, betrayed by a buoyant heart, she’d actually let some humming escape.

Madame Latour stared at the huge girl and felt a bit of her lunch in her throat. Those rolls of fat, those dreadful dimples, the underwear disappearing into the flesh. The face so frozen and staring. The science teacher, Monsieur Drapeau, had commented that Crie was top in his class, though another teacher had pointed out that one topic that semester had been vitamins and minerals and Crie had probably eaten the textbook.

Still, here she was at the pageant so maybe she was coming out of herself, though that would take a lot of doing.

‘Better hurry. You’re on soon.’ She left without waiting for a reply.

This was the first Christmas pageant Crie had been in in the five years she’d been at Miss Edward’s School for Girls. Every other year while the students made their costumes she’d made mumbled excuses. No one had ever tried to dissuade her. Instead she’d been given the job of running the lights for the show, having a head, as Madame Latour put it, for technical things. Things not alive, she’d meant. So each year Crie would watch the Christmas pageant alone in the dark at the back, as the beautiful, glowing, gifted girls had danced and sung the story of the Christmas miracle, basking in the light Crie provided.

But not this year.

She got into her costume and looked at herself in the mirror. A huge chiffon snowflake looked back. Really, she had to admit, more of a snowdrift than a single flake, but still, it was a costume and it was quite splendid. The other girls’ mothers had helped them, but Crie had done her own. To surprise Mommy, she’d told herself, trying to drown out the other voice.

If she looked closely she could see the tiny droplets of blood where her pudgy, indelicate fingers had fumbled the needle and speared herself. But she’d persevered until she finally had this costume. And then she’d had her brainwave. Really, the most brilliant thought in her entire fourteen years.

Her mother, she knew, revered light. It was, she’d been told all her life, what we all strive for. That’s why it’s called enlightenment. Why smart people are described as bright. Why thin people succeed. Because they’re lighter than others.

It was all so obvious.

And now Crie would actually be playing a snowflake. The whitest, lightest of elements. And her own bit of brilliance? She’d gone to the dollar store and with her allowance bought a bottle of glitter. She’d even managed to walk straight past the chocolate bars, stale and staring. Crie had been on a diet for a month now and soon she was sure her mother would notice.

She’d applied glue and glitter and now she looked at the results.

For the first time in her life Crie knew she was beautiful. And she knew, in just a few short minutes, her mother would think so too.

Clara Morrow stared through the frosted mullions of her living-room window at the tiny village of Three Pines. She leaned forward and shaved some frost from the window. Now that we have some money, she thought, we should replace the old windows. But while Clara knew that was the sensible thing to do, most of her decisions weren’t really sensible. But they suited her life. And now, watching the snow globe that was Three Pines, she knew she liked looking at it through the beautiful designs the frost made on the old glass.