The Long Way Home(36)

Clara was quiet, thinking. She finally nodded.

“For me too. The first go-round is all emotion just shot onto the canvas. Like a cannon.”

“Peter’s paintings look perfect right from the start,” said Olivier. “They never have to be rescued.”

“Rescued?” Gamache asked. “What do you mean by that?”

“It’s something Peter told me,” said Olivier. “He was proud that he never had to rescue a canvas because he’d screwed it up.”

“And ‘rescuing’ a painting means fixing it?” Gamache asked.

“It’s an artist’s expression,” said Clara. “Kinda technical. If you put too many layers of paint on a canvas, the pores get all clogged and the paint doesn’t hold. It gets all gloppy, the paint starts to slip off. The painting’s ruined. Mostly happens when you overwork it. Like cooking something too long. You can’t then uncook it.”

“So it’s not the subject of the painting that’s wrong,” said Myrna. “It’s just a physical thing. The canvas gets saturated.”

“Right, though the two mostly go together. You almost never overwork a canvas you’re happy with. It happens when you’re in trouble. Trying to save it. Going over and over it, trying to capture something that’s really difficult. Turning a dog’s breakfast into something meaningful. That’s when the canvas can get clogged.”

“But it’s sometimes possible to rescue it?” asked Reine-Marie.

“Sometimes. I’ve had to do it. Most of the time they’re too far gone. It’s really awful, because the canvas gives up just as I’m really close. Almost got it. Sometimes when I’ve just gotten it, put the last dab on. Then suddenly the paint shifts, starts to slip. Won’t hold and everything’s lost. Heartbreaking. It’s like you’re writing a book and you edit and edit, and you finally get it, and just as you write ‘The End’ all the words disappear.”

“Oh shit,” said Myrna and Ruth together, while on Jean-Guy’s lap Rosa muttered, “Fuck, f*ck, f*ck.”

“But sometimes you can pull the painting back?” asked Reine-Marie. “You can save it?”

Clara looked over at Ruth, who was picking a piece of asparagus out of her teeth.

“I had to save her,” she said.

“You’re kidding,” said Gabri. “You had a choice, and you saved her?”

“I mean the painting,” said Clara. “The one I did of Ruth.”

“The little one?” asked Reine-Marie. “The one that got all that attention?”

Clara nodded. If the huge painting The Three Graces was a shout, then the tiny one of Ruth was a quiet beckon. Easily missed and easily dismissed.

Most people walked right past the small canvas. Many who paused were repulsed by the expression on the old woman’s face. Rage radiated from the frame where the old woman glared, bitter, seething at a world that was ignoring her. All the gabbing, chatting, laughing people in the gallery walked right past, leaving her alone on the wall.

Her thin, veined hand clutched at the ragged blue shawl at her neck.

She despised them.

But for the very few who did linger, they saw more than rage. They saw an ache. A plea. For someone to stop. To keep her company, if only for a few moments.

And those who heeded that plea were rewarded. They saw this wasn’t just some embittered old woman.

Clara had painted the poet as Mary. The mother of God. Elderly. Alone. All miracles faded and forgotten.

And those who stood before her a very long time, who kept her company, were rewarded further. The final offering. The last miracle.

Only they saw what Clara had really painted.

Only they saw the rescue.

There, in her eyes, was a dot. A gleam. The elderly woman was just beginning to see something. There, in the distance. Beyond the giddy cocktail crowd.

Hope.

Clara had captured, with a single dot, the moment despair turned to hope.

It was luminous.

“You saved it?” asked Reine-Marie.

“I think it was mutual,” said Clara, and looked at Ruth, who was now taking a bit of bread from Jean-Guy’s plate and feeding it to Rosa. “That painting made my career.”

No one said it, but all were thinking that had Clara painted Peter in that instant she might have captured the moment hope turned to despair.

Clara told them about their visits just that morning to the prominent art galleries in Toronto. No one had remembered seeing Peter.

Armand Gamache watched her closely as she spoke. Taking everything in. Her words, her tone, her subtle movements.

Just as Clara put together the elements of a painting, as Ruth the elements of a poem, Gamache pieced together the elements of a case.

And like a painting or a poem, at the heart of his cases there was a strong emotion.

“So no luck?” asked Olivier. “No trace of Peter?”

“Actually, we did finally manage to find someone who not only saw him, but spent time with him,” said Clara. And she told them about their visit to the art college.

“Why would he go back to your old college?” asked Gabri. “Has he done it before?”

“No, neither Peter nor I ever went back,” said Clara.

“Then why do you think he went back this past winter?” asked Gamache, ignoring his grilled shrimp with mango salsa. “What did he want?”