Hidden Pictures(49)
We move into the gazebo and Adrian uses an app on his phone to brighten the party lights strung across the ceiling. Then we all take seats and Sofia gets down to business.
“This is a difficult project to research. The first challenge is that the story’s very old, so nothing’s on the internet. The second challenge is that Annie Barrett died right after World War II, so all the newspapers were still obsessed with Europe.”
“How about local news?” I ask. “Did Spring Brook have some kind of daily paper?”
“The Herald,” she says, nodding. “They published from 1910 to 1991 but we lost their microfilm in a warehouse fire. Everything went up in smoke.” She gestures poof! and I glimpse a tiny tattoo on her left forearm: a slender long-stemmed rose, tasteful and elegant, but I’m still surprised. “I checked the library for physical copies but no luck. Nothing before 1963. So I figured I’d reached a dead end, but one of my coworkers pointed me to the local authors shelf. Anytime someone in town publishes a book, we usually order a copy. Just to be nice. Mostly it’s mysteries and memoirs, but sometimes it’s local history. And that’s where I found this.”
She reaches inside the folder for a very slender volume—it’s more of a pamphlet, really, thirty-some pages with a cardstock cover and bound with thick, rusted industrial staples. The title page looks like it was produced on an old-fashioned manual typewriter:
THE COLLECTED WORKS OF
ANNE C. BARRETT
(1927–1948)
“It wasn’t in our computer system,” Sofia continues. “I don’t think this book has circulated in fifty years.”
I hold the book close to my face. It has a musty, pungent odor—like its pages are rotting. “Why is it so small?”
“Her cousin self-published it. Just a small run for friends and family, and I guess someone donated a copy to the library. There’s a note from George Barrett on the first page.”
The cover feels old and brittle, like a dried husk, ready to crack between my fingers. I open it carefully and begin to read:
In March of 1946, my cousin Anne Catherine Barrett left Europe to begin a new life here in the United States. As a gesture of Christian kindness, my wife Jean and I invited “Annie” to live with our family. Jean and I do not have any siblings, and we looked forward to having another adult relative in our household—someone to help raise our three young daughters.
Annie was just nineteen years old when she arrived in the United States. She was very beautiful but like many young women also very foolish. Jean and I made countless efforts to introduce Annie into Spring Brook society. I’m an alderman for the town council and I also serve on the vestry of St. Mark’s Church. My wife Jean is very active in the local Woman’s Club. Our closest friends welcomed my cousin into the community with many kind and thoughtful invitations, but Annie turned them all down.
She was silly and solitary and described herself as an artist. She spent her free time painting in her cottage, or walking barefoot in the forest behind our house. Sometimes I would spot her down on her hands and knees, like an animal, studying caterpillars or sniffing at flowers.
Jean compiled a short list of daily chores for Annie to complete, in return for her room and board. Most days, these chores went unfinished. Annie showed no interest in being part of our family, part of our community, or even part of the great American experiment.
I had many disagreements with Annie about her choices. Many times, I warned Annie that she was behaving irresponsibly or even immorally, that all of her bad decisions would catch up with her. I take no satisfaction in knowing that circumstances have proven me correct.
On December 9, 1948, my cousin was attacked and abducted from the small guest cottage at the back of our property. As I write these words nearly a full year later, Annie is presumed dead by the local police, and I fear her body is buried somewhere in the three hundred acres behind my home.
In the aftermath of this tragedy, many of my Spring Brook neighbors have reached out to offer their prayers and fellowship. I have compiled this book as a token of appreciation for their support. Despite my differences with my cousin, I always believed she had a creative spark, and this volume is a memorial to her slight achievements. Collected here are all the finished paintings left by Anne Catherine Barrett at the time of her demise. When possible, I have included titles and dates of composition. May these paintings stand as a tribute to a sad and tragic life cut short.
George Barrett
November 1949
Spring Brook, New Jersey
I start turning the pages. The book is filled with blurry black-and-white photographs of Annie’s canvases. Paintings called Daffodils and Tulips have wiggly rectangles that don’t look anything like flowers. And a painting called Fox features diagonal lines slashed across the canvas. There’s nothing remotely realistic in the book—just abstract shapes and splatters and blobs of paint, like something off the spin-art machines at a church carnival.
It’s a massive disappointment. “These look nothing like the drawings in my cottage.”
“But painting is one thing and drawing is another,” Sofia says. “Some artists use different styles for different mediums. Or they just like to mix it up. One of my favorites, Gerhard Richter, he spent his whole career moving between very abstract and very realistic paintings. Maybe Annie liked both.”