The Black Painting

by Neil Olson

  “But he’s dead,” Teresa said.

  “Death does not remove my obligation. You may dismiss it, but throughout this difficult time I have tried to remain the custodian of your grandfather’s wishes.”

  “More the letter than the spirit,” Dave said, through a mouth full of donut. “Jenny’s not family. That’s why you used her. Makes sense now. And if Phil or Fred killed Pete to shut him up, that was just bonus points.”

  Ilsa looked at Dave as she might a goat that had bleated a credible counterfeit of speech. Teresa took a deep breath, thinking: now or never.

  “Why did you ask Pete about stealing the painting?”

  Ilsa took a tissue from her purse and blew her nose before speaking.

  “I suspected that was your question. Are you prepared for the answer?”

  I think I just got it, Teresa judged, her spirit sinking.

  “As prepared as I’ll ever be.”

  Ilsa swept the table again with her shaking hand, and Teresa realized it was a nervous gesture. That the older woman was as disturbed by this conversation as she was.

  “I am not a religious person. Religious, spiritual, choose your own word. I have always been suspicious of those types. Your father was different. He was a true seeker. By which I mean he was certain that he did not know the answers, but was open to what answers might come. He believed in good and evil, devils, angels. I think he understood them metaphorically, the soul at war with itself. But I am not certain.”

  “You talked about this stuff with him?” Teresa could not disguise her amazement.

  “Later. At first I only overheard him with Alfred. They were both brought up to ignore servants. Especially women. I might have been offended, but I thought it a privilege to listen to them talk. Long and heated debates, Alfred on the side of the rational, your father the mystical. Alfred usually got the better of it. Yet I sensed that he wanted your father to win, ultimately. That he wanted to be convinced.”

  “Convinced of what?”

  “The influence of the supernatural. The reality of the invisible world.”

  “So Grandpa didn’t believe in the painting’s power?”

  Ilsa’s gaze became sharp and anxious.

  “It was layers beneath layers with your grandfather. His business dealings, his entire life was such a maze of deceit that he himself was lost in it. He certainly wanted others to believe. To fear the portrait, and him by extension. Also to desire it. In private, he would laugh at them, and declare the whole thing nonsense.”

  “But you didn’t buy that,” Teresa said.

  “I asked him once,” Ilsa replied, her mouth twisted oddly. Smiling at a memory, yet pained by it at the same time. “If you worship this verdammte painting so much, why is it on the wall behind you.”

  “He couldn’t look at something like that all the time.”

  “Your father could.”

  “So he had...what? A higher tolerance for the work’s influence? Higher than Grandpa, I mean?”

  “Truthfully?” Ilsa eyed Dave with distrust. For a moment Teresa thought she would have to ask him to take a little walk, but the older woman overcame her hesitation. “I am not sure that comparison was ever tested.”

  “Holy shit,” Dave whispered after a moment.

  “Wait, what does that mean?”

  “She means,” said Dave, his voice hushed with wonder, “that Alfred Arthur Morse never looked at the portrait. My God, you have got to be kidding.”

  “No, that’s, that can’t...” Teresa felt stricken, and could discern a matching misery on Ilsa’s face. Why? It was shocking, certainly, but why this pain? She sat with it for half a minute and then she knew. “He brought that thing into the house. Into all our lives. His own son never recovered from what he saw. That historian died. And he never even looked at it?”

  “I do not know for certain. We didn’t discuss it.”

  “You do. You know, or you never would have said such a thing.”

  “Perhaps now you understand your father’s mind a little better, ja?” Ilsa pushed on. Reaching a hand across the table, but stopping short of Teresa’s. “Why he might have found his own claim to the work superior to Alfred’s.”

  “Did he know Grandpa never saw it?”

  “If I am not sure, he could not have been. Yet he must have sensed the truth.”

  “And he asked you to arrange its theft?”

  “His interest was not like other men’s,” Ilsa insisted. “He did not want to sell it, or to inflate his stature. He did not care about ownership. As long as Alfred allowed him access, he was content. But Philip and the lawyers pushed Alfred to sell. Dorothy hated it and wanted it gone, and then she died so needlessly. Alfred felt terrible grief and guilt, and made up his mind to be rid of it. Ramón realized he would lose the work forever.”

  “But what did he want from it?” Teresa demanded.

  “That he could not have said himself, I think. Except. He believed there was a demon in his blood. I use his own words. The thing that gave him strength and clarity also gave him those terrible depressions. And the mania, which was worse. He was institutionalized as a teenager.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Teresa said numbly. Bludgeoned by the knowledge.

  “He saw in Goya a kindred spirit. Someone who had been through the fire, and found a way to defeat his demon. He thought that by looking closely enough, by meditating on the work, he might know the artist’s mind. He might find his own way out. For himself, for your mother. For you. It was not greed or possessiveness, Teresa. It was love.”

  A green tractor rumbled by, towing a hay wagon full of squealing children. They made their slow way along the rutted lane, into the heart of the orchard. Teresa looked for the hidden lie, but could not discover it. She had always felt that her father loved her, however distantly. Love. How much harm had been perpetrated in its name? How much more was to come before they found the bottom of this?

  “What then?” she asked, wiping the dampness from her face. “You asked Pete to steal it and he refused.”

  “He refused to even answer. He pretended not to take me seriously. I put myself into his hands and achieved nothing. I told Ramón he must forget the whole matter.”

  “How did he take that?” Dave asked.

  “Not well. He didn’t argue, that was not his way.”

  “But he didn’t give up the idea?”

  “I believed that he had.”

  “Do you think he stole the painting?” Teresa asked. “Tell me honestly, Ilsa.”

  The woman bowed her head, and Teresa feared the worst. But a moment later Ilsa shook her gray crown vigorously.

  “It was a long time before I could remember that day. I confess that in weaker moments I wondered. When I finally brought myself to ask him, Ramón swore he had not done it. He was offended. Offended and hurt. It was the last time we spoke.” Teresa thought the woman would weep then, but her eyes remained dry. The tears were all in her voice. “He did not care for me as I did for him, but I do not believe he would have hurt me like that.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Dave eagerly, leaning forward. “You’re saying you do remember that day?”

  “Much of it has come back. It took months, Mr. Webster. Years even. Much too late for the police, or your investigation.”

  “And no memory of who hit you?”

  “It was from behind, I never saw. Just the boy there on the carpet.”

  “James,” Teresa breathed.

  “Yes,” said Ilsa, her voice gone strange. She stared at a grassy patch near the table, but her mind was back in the study at Owl’s Point. “Rolled into a ball. So still. As if there was no life in him. Then for just a moment before the room went dark, he looked up at me. And he smiled. An awful smile.”

  “What?” Teresa cried, standing and banging the table with her thigh.
A cup of cider went over, and Dave stood also. “What the hell are you talking about? He was catatonic when they found him.”

  “Yes,” Ilsa agreed. Her voice suddenly tired, as if the vision had emptied her. “It’s true, yet the picture is in my mind. So clear. Probably something my bruised brain invented.”

  “Sit down,” Dave said urgently. Why urgent? Because he sensed that her outburst had broken the mood. They might lose Ilsa any moment, and there was more he wanted to know. She didn’t care. Not about Ilsa’s secrets or Dave’s needs or anything. It was all too much. The edges of her vision shimmered, and a sick feeling welled up in her. She sat.

  “What else do you remember?” Dave asked.

  “Bits and pieces,” Ilsa mumbled. “Nothing useful. I went to Teresa’s room to check on her. Ramón was worried. He was normally inattentive to children’s illnesses, but he was very worried that day. I heard James scream, I ran down the back stairs to the study.”

  It started. A wash of bright light, and the world fractured. Don’t close your eyes, Teresa commanded herself. That only makes it worse. Yes, that’s my girl. See it. See.

  “What’s wrong?” Dave’s hand grasped her upper arm. “Teresa?”

  “She is having a seizure,” Ilsa answered calmly.

  “You were in the room,” Teresa said between clenched teeth. Fighting to remain present.

  “Yes,” Ilsa replied. “Your room.”

  Not heading to her room, which Teresa had always believed, but actually in the room. She could see her there. Concerned gray eyes looking down, moments before James tore their world open. Teresa pulled breath downward from the base of her lungs, releasing it slowly. She stared at a single branch of the apple tree, willing it to stay solid.

  “Where was Audrey?” she asked, her voice growing stronger.

  “Sleeping by the window.”

  “Did you see her there?”

  “No. You did.”

  “That’s right,” Teresa said. Herself again. The fractured world began to reassemble. Dave still held her arm, warm and close. Looking worried. Ilsa seemed shocked. She had not expected the young woman to shake off the fit. For the very good reason that Teresa had never done so before. “I saw her. No one else did. Dave, we have to go back. Now.”

  “Like, right now?”

  “Yes, we have to go back to the house. Please, get the car, and I’ll be right there.”

  “Right. All right.” He looked at her with concern and suspicion both, but rose from the table and set off toward the barn. Ilsa had begun to rise.

  “One more thing,” Teresa said. “What did you see that night? The night Grandpa died.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You saw someone in the house.”

  “No, that was only shadows.” Ilsa fell back onto the wooden bench and turned away. She looked as drained as Teresa felt. “I found him in that, that state. I was frightened.”

  “A figure with something over its head. Ilsa, please.”

  “It was nothing. Nothing but my fear. Fear does the most terrible things to us, my child. It is the cause of all of this unhappiness.”

  I can’t argue with that, Teresa thought. My child. Something her father said. Fred had been correct about the source of Ilsa’s residual affection.

  “You know,” the older woman continued. “Later I decided it wasn’t something covering its head. That it was hair. You see what I mean? Long thick hair to his shoulders.”

  “Like my dad’s.”

  “Yes,” Ilsa confirmed. With a smile so fragile that the faintest pressure would shatter it. “Like Ramón. But it was nothing, Teresa. There was no one there.”

  “Okay.”

  “Why did you ask me about it?”

  “No reason. No reason at all.”

  25

  They drove east, racing the waning light. Dave could not remember feeling so tired, which was saying something. Still, he guessed that he had slept more than Teresa. Her eyes were red and underlined in dark crescents, and her seizure had scared the wits out of him. She seemed on the verge of a severe physical or mental breakdown, for which he would feel responsible. Yet she was also locked in. Almost superhumanly focused on their mission of discovery. If she had been following his lead at first, they had switched roles. She was on a scent, and though he sat right beside her, Dave felt like he was running to keep up.

  “What are you thinking?” Teresa asked.

  “I thought you were asleep.” The only sleep she seemed to get was in the car, so he had been staying quiet. She sat up and brushed the hair from her face.

  “I was, but my dreams are freaky.”

  “Teresa, look. Is this safe?”

  “Is what safe?”

  “What we’re doing. Is it safe for you? I mean, that attack you had.”

  “I’m okay. I was able to control it.”

  “Should you be trying to control it? Don’t you have medication?”

  “Did my mother tell you that?” she asked suspiciously.

  “She says you don’t take it.”

  “I do. Just not right now, I can’t.”

  “What do you mean? Why can’t you?”

  “Dave, you have to trust me on this. Do you trust me?”

  “Sure.”

  “The, um, what you call attacks. The episodes. They’re messages.”

  “From who?”

  “From...from me, from myself,” she said, though Dave was sure she had been about to say something else.

  “And what are they telling you?”

  “You’re going to feel like I’m doing tit for tat on the stuff you held back from me.”

  “I might very well feel that way,” Dave acknowledged.

  “There are things I can’t say until I’m sure. Bad things that I won’t be able to take back.”

  “Must be pretty bad. Why are we rushing back to the Owl’s Point?”

  “Because Audrey doesn’t want us there. She wasn’t worried about me. She was trying to get everyone out of the house.”

  Well, well. And why not? Dave felt sure that Audrey’s concern had been real, but that did not mean it was the only thing on her mind.

  “Why does she want the place to herself?”

  “Yeah,” said Teresa, running her pale hand across the dashboard. Like an echo of the devious and heartbroken Ilsa stroking the picnic table. “Dave, what if there was no theft? What if the painting never left the house?”

  The car slowed until Dave realized his foot had gone slack. He picked up speed again, though it was all he could do not to pull onto the shoulder.

  “Like misplaced or something? Come on, Teresa.”

  “No, deliberately moved. But still there.”

  “The house was searched.”

  “How soon, and how thoroughly?”

  “I don’t know. I only had the police report and your grandfather’s word.”

  “They were looking to see what else was taken,” Teresa said. “Not searching every cranny for something hidden. Right?”

  “And after all this time nobody stumbled on it?”

  “There are parts of that house where no one goes,” Teresa replied. “Almost no one.”

  “So who hid it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You mean you won’t say.”

  They hurtled down the steep ravine of 287 and shaped the long curve onto the Tappan Zee Bridge. Traffic was miraculously thin today. To the south, the towers of Manhattan sparkled distantly.

  “Now you think Audrey is behind everything,” he complained, not liking his own tone. “This morning it was Ilsa. Who will you accuse next?”

  “Do you feel that protective of her?” Teresa asked, turning a sorrowful face on him.

  “No.” He fumbled with the E-ZPass scanner until T
eresa took it from him, sticking it smoothly into the Velcro base on the windshield. “Yes,” Dave admitted. “Obviously I do. She’s a rude, crude, self-serving manipulator. But I like her.”

  “I like her, too,” Teresa said sadly. “I suspect she likes us. But in a pinch she’ll always put herself first.”

  “You could say that of most people.”

  “If you heard she had harmed someone to get a thing she wanted. Killed someone even. You might be a little shocked, but would you find it hard to believe?”

  Dave did not answer right away. And kept not answering until it was apparent that he wasn’t going to. He waited for the mechanical arm to rise, then shot out of the tollbooth like a jockey on a steel horse, racing eastward as fast as he dared to go.

  * * *

  On the far side of the little bridge, but still out of sight of the house, they pulled over. The lane was narrow. Rhododendrons blocked the passenger door, and Teresa had to climb out the driver’s side. She took Dave’s hand and squeezed it as they walked. He was startled, but did not pull away. Needing the comfort as much as she did. They cleared the last bushes, and there was the great pile of brick, awaiting them silently. The circular drive was empty of vehicles. There was no real way to hide, and Dave would have felt silly trying. Nevertheless, they walked on the grass margin, avoiding the gravel, and did not speak until they reached the front door. Teresa dug for her keys, and Dave touched her hand.

  “Wait. I’m going to make a quick circuit of the house.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “No, faster if it’s just me. I’m used to doing this without being seen.”

  She did not like it, but said no more, and Dave set off. No one on the lawn or in the gazebo. No one visible in the woods. There was nothing of note until he reached the garage. Through the glass he could see that where the green Jaguar had been, Audrey’s red Lexus was now parked. Carefully out of sight. Teresa’s instincts were on target. Dave leaned his forehead on the little window and thought about Audrey as he had seen her last. Naked and grinning, panting obscenities. An ache passed through him that was equal parts desire and mourning. A dull thump seemed to happen inside his gut. Until it happened again.