The Long Way Home

“It came to me just now when I looked at his latest work,” said Clara.

They’d moved into Peter’s studio, drawn there by the canvas on the easel.

“How’d you figure it out?” she asked Myrna.

“The color wheel.” Myrna described her vivid English muffin. Gamache, who hadn’t yet had breakfast, thought the marmberry sounded genius.

“You?” Myrna asked him.

“I was thinking of the dog’s breakfast,” he said, and described his different route to the same conclusion. “And how very difficult it must be to paint a feeling. A real mess at first.”

In front of them was the painting Peter had left behind. It was all in shades of white. Beautifully nuanced. It was almost impossible to distinguish the canvas from the paint. The medium from the method.

Someone would probably pay a lot of money for that. And one day, Gamache thought, it might be worth a lot of money. Like finding an artifact from a lost civilization. Or, more accurately, a dinosaur bone. Bleached and fossilized. Valuable only because it was extinct. The last of its kind.

Such a contrast to Myrna’s and Clara’s descriptions of Bean’s exuberant paintings.

They were a mess. A riot of clashing colors. Without technique. Having heard the rules, Bean had understood them, then ignored them. Choosing instead to move away from the conventions.

“When you looked at the paintings on Bean’s wall,” he asked his companions, “what did you feel?”

Clara smiled broadly, remembering. “Honestly? I thought they were awful.”

“You thought that,” Gamache persisted, “but what did you feel?”

“Amusement,” said Myrna.

“Were you laughing at them?” he asked, and Myrna considered.

“No,” she said slowly. “I think they made me happy.”

“Me too,” said Clara. “They were weird and fun and unexpected. I felt sorta buoyed up, you know?”

Myrna nodded.

“And this?” Gamache gestured toward the easel.

All three looked again at the bleached, tasteful canvas. It would go perfectly in someone’s penthouse, in the dining room. No danger of ruining the appetite.

Both women shook their heads. Nothing. It was like looking into a void.

“So Bean is the better painter after all,” said Gamache. “If only Bean had painted them.”

And that was the giant piece of the puzzle they’d all found at the same time.

Bean hadn’t painted those silly pictures. Peter had.

They were a mess, because they were the beginning. Peter’s first chaotic steps toward brilliance.

*

“You need to describe the paintings for me, in more detail,” said Gamache.

They’d moved with their coffees into Clara’s garden, feeling the need for fresh air and color after the tasteful oppression of Peter’s studio.

Rain was still threatening but hadn’t yet arrived.

“What struck me first were the purples and pinks and oranges all squashed in together in that one over Bean’s desk,” said Myrna.

“And the one by the window?” asked Clara. “It was like someone had thrown buckets of paint at a wall, and the drips had somehow taken shape.”

“And those mountains in the one behind the door,” said Myrna. “The smiles.”

Clara smiled. “Amazing.”

Taking a pain au chocolat, she ripped a section off so that the gooey dark chocolate core was exposed and flakes of pastry fell to the table.

“I don’t want you to think they were great,” Clara said to Gamache, who’d put strawberry jam on a croissant and was reaching for the marmalade. “It’s not like we’re turning them into masterpieces in our minds now that we know a kid hadn’t painted them.”

“They’re still crap,” agreed Myrna. “But happy merde.”

“Peter did them.” Clara shook her head. It was unbelievable. But true.

She’d called Peter’s sister, Marianna, and caught Bean in. She asked Bean who’d painted the pictures and Bean’s answer came immediately, and with surprise. Surely Aunt Clara knew.

“Uncle Peter.”

“He gave them to you?”

“Yes. And some he mailed. We got a pipe thing with more a few months ago.”

It was at that point Clara spoke to Marianna again and arranged for all the paintings to be couriered to her in Three Pines.

“I’ll get them out this morning. I’m sorry, I thought you knew he’d painted them. Not very good, are they?” Marianna said with barely disguised pleasure. “He showed some to me when he came over. Seemed to want me to say something about them. I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.”

Poor Peter, Clara thought as she sat in the garden. So used to applause for everything he did. So used to getting it right the first time. How strange it must be to suddenly not be very good at something he was once celebrated for. Like a great golfer changing his swing, to become greater. But making it worse in the short term.

Sometimes the only way up is down. Sometimes the only way forward is to back up. It seemed that was what Peter had done. Thrown out all he knew and started again. In his mid-fifties.