For the girl to be so callous to my grief! Utterly oblivious, the girl continued talking, until slowly I began to find some unexpected humor in it.
“It’s true,” Charlotte went on. “One time when my brothers got to fighting and the littlest was screaming like a banshee and I by accident burnt up my good shoes by the woodstove, Mam threw her apron down and walked right out of the house, left the door wide open, and she got nearly to town before Da picked her up in the wagon. He put her in a room at the hotel for the night, saying she could have it all to herself, with a hot bath and a new dress, if only she would come home the next day. She came back, and I’m glad she did, but I don’t think I would have, if I was her. I’m decided?—?I’m only having dogs and goats, but no babies.”
I started to laugh then, and she did, too.
May 12
Only one of Father’s sculptures did I not like to see. His Pietà . The word was mysterious to me as a child, and I did not recognize the weeping woman. If only Mother had ever walked down the path into the woods and seen it, I like to imagine that she would have admired it, even with its Catholic effect.
It frightened me, however, even more than his sculptures of pagan gods or the lion hunter that crouched in the densest part of the forest. It was the woman’s face, shaped into a melting and howling cry, that horrified me, but also something about the awful weight of the dead man laid out across her lap. He was too heavy for her, he nearly crushed her, and even though I could not understand it fully, it seemed to me an unnatural scene.
“It is her own son, her dead child,” Father said.
He would not look away. Everywhere, even in the blackest abyss, he believed one might witness the divine. The shadows and contrast?—?absence itself?—?as important as the light and marble, for one cannot exist without the other.
May 13
Mr MacGillivray found me in the yard today, and I am afraid this time it was I who wanted to turn away and pretend I did not seem him approaching, but then he called out his friendly greeting.
“How are you today, Mother?” And then, as he neared me, “But where is your chair, Mrs Forrester?”
“I am no longer in need of it, I am afraid.”
Such insufficient words. Yet he must have read in my expression the true meaning, for he did not ask anything more of me but only said, “I am sorry to hear that, my dear. Sorry indeed.”
He offered his arm to me then, and together we walked back toward the house, fallen plum blossoms at our feet and the evening sun in our eyes.
A miracle, it seems to me, that a man scarred by the cruelest of battlefields could harbor such compassion for my small loss.
May 14
I have been thinking of light, the way it collected in the rain drops that morning I was so full of joy, and the way it shifts and moves in unexpected ways, so that at times this cabin is dark and cool and the next filled with golden warmth.
Father spoke of a light that is older than the stars, a divine light that is fleeting yet always present if only one could recognize it. It pours in and out of the souls of the living and dead, gathers in the quiet places in the forest, and on occasion, might reveal itself in the rarest of true art.
The entirety of his life was devoted to the hope that someday he would create a sculpture so perfectly carved and balanced, set in just the right place among the trees, that it would be capable of reflecting this light. He had seen it in in the works of others, yet he believed he had failed in his own.
I wish he could have known the truth. Just weeks after he died, I went to see the bear. It was the end of an autumn day, and as I stepped into the meadow, the light of the setting sun was cooling from oranges and reds to the bluer shades.
He had never looked so alive; shadows dipped and curved along his outstretched claws, his fur and muscles seemed poised for life, and for a moment, the sun just touching the horizon, the marble seemed to be formed of translucent light itself.
I had no doubt of what I was witnessing?—?this was not simply a flattering cast of sunset; this was the light Father had sought his entire life. The nearest I can describe is when Father took the back off a piano and showed me how a strong, clear note could cause other strings to vibrate without ever setting finger to them. He said the strings were resonating in sympathy to that pure sound. So it was within me.
Shall I allow myself to believe in an immortal soul? If so, then I am certain it was Father’s spirit that gathered with the divine light of the world and radiated from that finely carved marble.
He always looked to his angels and gods and his Pietà . He never thought to look so near.
May 16
There is not much time. I could run in five different directions, but today Charlotte and I began by removing all the dried goods from the pantry and then stripping the shelves from one wall, because it was all that I could think to do for now.