Constance stepped through the door and smelled the now familiar scent of the bistro. The dark wood beams and wide-plank pine floors were permeated with more than a century of maple-wood fires and strong coffee.
“Over here.”
Constance followed the voice. The mullioned windows were letting in whatever daylight was available, but it was still dim. Her eyes went to the large stone hearths at either end of the bistro, lit with cheery fires and surrounded by comfortable sofas and armchairs. In the center of the room, between the fires and sitting areas, antique pine tables were set with silverware and mismatched bone china. A large, bushy Christmas tree stood in a corner, its red, blue, and green lights on, a haphazard array of baubles and beads and icicles hung from the branches.
A few patrons sat in armchairs nursing cafés au lait or hot chocolates, and read day-old newspapers in French and English.
The shout had come from the far end of the room, and while Constance couldn’t yet clearly see the woman, she knew perfectly well who had spoken.
“I got you a tea.” Myrna was standing, waiting for them by one of the fireplaces.
“You’d better be talking to her,” said Ruth, taking the best seat by the fire and putting her feet on the hassock.
Constance hugged Myrna and felt the soft flesh under the thick sweater. Though Myrna was a large black woman at least twenty years her junior, she felt, and smelt, like Constance’s mother. It had given Constance a turn at first, as though someone had shoved her slightly off balance. But then she’d come to look forward to these embraces.
Constance sipped her tea, watched the flames flicker, and half listened as Myrna and Ruth talked about the latest shipment of books, delayed by the snow.
She felt herself nodding off in the warmth.
Four days. And she had two gay sons, a large black mother, a demented poet for a friend and was considering getting a duck.
It was not what she’d expected from this visit.
She became pensive, mesmerized by the fire. She wasn’t at all sure Myrna understood why she’d come. Why she’d contacted her after so many years. It was vital that Myrna understand, but now time was running out.
“Snow’s letting up,” said Clara Morrow. She ran her hands through her hair, trying to tame her hat head, but she only made it worse.
Constance roused and realized she’d missed Clara’s arrival.
She’d met Clara her very first night in Three Pines. She and Myrna had been invited over for dinner, and while Constance yearned for a quiet dinner alone with Myrna, she didn’t know how to politely decline. So they’d put on their coats and boots and trudged over.
It was supposed to be just the three of them, which was bad enough, but then Ruth Zardo and her duck had arrived and the evening went from bad to a fiasco. Rosa, the duck, had muttered what sounded like “Fuck, fuck, fuck” the whole night, while Ruth had spent the evening drinking, swearing, insulting and interrupting.
Constance had heard of her, of course. The Governor General’s Award–winning poet was as close as Canada came to having a demented, embittered poet laureate.
Who hurt you once so far beyond repair that you would greet each overture / with curling lip?
It was, Constance realized as the evening ground on, a good question. One she was tempted to ask the crazy poet, but didn’t for fear she’d be asked it in return.
Clara had made omelettes with melted goat cheese. A tossed salad and warm, fresh baguettes completed the meal. They’d eaten in the large kitchen, and when the meal was over and Myrna made coffee, and Ruth and Rosa retired to the living room, Clara had taken her into the studio. It was cramped, filled with brushes and palettes and canvasses. It smelled of oil and turpentine and ripe banana.
“Peter would’ve pestered me to clean this up,” said Clara, looking at the mess.
Clara had talked about her separation from her husband over dinner. Constance had plastered a sympathetic look on her face and wondered if she could possibly crawl out the bathroom window. Surely dying in a snow bank couldn’t be all that bad, could it?
And now here Clara was again talking about her husband. Her estranged husband. It was like parading around in her underwear. Revealing her intimates. It was unsightly and unseemly and unnecessary. And Constance just wanted to go home.
From the living room she heard, “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” She didn’t know, and no longer cared, whether it was the duck or the poet who was saying it.
Clara walked past an easel. The ghostly outline of what might become a man was just visible on the canvas. Without much enthusiasm, Constance followed Clara to the far end of her studio. Clara turned on a lamp and a small painting was illuminated.
At first it seemed uninteresting, certainly unremarkable.
“I’d like to paint you, if you don’t mind,” Clara had said, not looking at her guest.
Constance bristled. Had Clara recognized her? Did she know who Constance was?
“I don’t think so,” she’d replied, her voice firm.
“I understand,” Clara had said. “Not sure I’d want to be painted either.”
“Why not?”
“Too afraid of what someone might see.”
Clara had smiled, then walked back to the door. Constance followed, after taking one last look at the tiny painting. It was of Ruth Zardo, who was now passed out and snoring on Clara’s sofa. In this painting the old poet was clutching a blue shawl at her neck, her hands thin and claw-like. The veins and sinews of her neck showed through the skin, translucent, like onion paper.
Clara had captured Ruth’s bitterness, her loneliness, her rage. Constance now found it almost impossible to look away from the portrait.
At the door to the studio she looked back. Her eyes weren’t that sharp anymore, but they didn’t have to be, to see what Clara had really captured. It was Ruth. But it was someone else too. An image Constance remembered from a childhood on her knees.
It was the mad old poet, but it was also the Virgin Mary. The mother of God. Forgotten, resentful. Left behind. Glaring at a world that no longer remembered what she’d given it.
Constance was relieved she’d refused Clara’s request to paint her. If this was how she saw the mother of God, what would Clara see in her?
Later in the evening, Constance had drifted, apparently aimlessly, back to the studio door.