Alive in Shape and Color

by Lawrence Block

  The woman laughed, then clapped her hand over her mouth. “Yes, I suppose.” She paused. “But it gets drafty here. Very cold. That might make you uncomfortable.”

  Clothilde was already uncomfortable. She had been the whole time. But she’d taken the job on a bold whim and now this was the next one, wherever it led.

  “I understand,” she said to the woman.

  “No, I don’t believe you do.”

  “I do.” Now it was Clothilde’s turn to stare openly at the woman. Taking the painter in from head to toe. Clothilde had never before regarded a woman so frankly. She feared the feeling but thrilled at it.

  And the woman—Clothilde knew her name, would speak it in her mind, but never out loud, not even later, when it counted most—gave the only necessary answer:

  “All right then. We’ll begin tomorrow morning.”

  “You’re the boy,” I broke in. The car had pulled up to a fancy house. The kind you would see in Westmount, a neighborhood I did not frequent.

  He had the grace not to be annoyed. “I am,” he said.

  “You’re younger than I thought, then. I thought you’d be as old as—”

  “Let’s not speak of him right now.” The door on his side opened. “Come with me.”

  “Where else would I go?”

  “Back to his place.” He stood on the sidewalk. I got out after him.

  “I don’t think so.”

  I followed him inside the house. Just as fancy as on the outside. Before I could stop myself I said, “Your father supported you then?”

  “He raised me.” The tone did not allow for argument. I was too cowed by the opulence, the kind that did not announce itself but simply existed, daring to be contradicted.

  “And you inherited it all.”

  “Almost all. Not the painting.” He directed me to sit in a plush chair across from him. I sat. He remained standing. “He didn’t know it existed. Neither did I, till I met your boyfriend.”

  “You were going to tell me why he wanted the artist.”

  I could see he did not want to answer. He turned his head away from me at an angle, finding a spot on the floor more to his liking. Enough time passed that I thought he might not answer.

  But it came, in a near whisper. “Because she said no. Men like him always hear yes, even when those saying it don’t mean it.” His head whipped up. Fury flickered into his green eyes.

  “Don’t judge me,” I said.

  “I’m not. The world works this way. I’m well aware. Morality is a costume to wear at convenient times. And when it’s inconvenient, it’s shed like a snakeskin.”

  The bitterness undid me. “Is that what your house is?” I waved around for maximum effect. “Another mask? I’m here and I don’t even know your name.”

  “And I don’t know yours. Unless it really is Cléa.”

  An impasse, then. The next generation on different sides of a painting, an unfinished story. One which I wanted an ending to, so very badly.

  “How do you even know what your mother said to mine?”

  He sat in the nearest chair, bowing his head again. “She told me, even when she knew it would hurt me.”

  When he picked up the thread again I understood the hurt.

  The first morning Clothilde was indeed as cold as the artist warned. Goose bumps dotted her body as she posed with her arms up above her head, exposing her armpits. The hair on them, more than anything else, bothered her most. Not that the artist could see her entirety. She could put that away in a small, faraway corner of her mind, concentrating on banal thoughts like how much dust remained in the parlor to clean when this was done.

  “Move your left arm a fraction to the right,” the artist called out.

  Clothilde did so almost automatically, but the act of doing so snapped her out of her domestic rumination. For the rest of the session she felt an overwhelming need to fidget. Itches begging to be scratched in places out of reach. Thoughts racing quickly.

  And then, after interminable time passed, the artist clapped once. “Voilà,” she cried, talking to the canvas. Then she moved her head so Clothilde could see her. A half smile played on the artist’s lips.

  Clothilde, insolent, spoke first. “We are done?”

  But the artist, if she heard it, ignored it. The smile became a proper one. “Yes, Clothilde. See you tomorrow morning.”

  Clothilde escaped from the studio for her bedroom. When the door shut behind her she felt, as she always did, the lack of space, barely enough to fit herself, the twin bed, a closet, and a nightstand. But something else intruded further. She spent the night wondering exactly what it was, tossing and turning as an answer eluded her.

  The answer remained out of reach with each successive painting session. The artist barely spoke except to give directions from her easel. Chin up. Eyes wider, no squinting. A shoulder up, then a shoulder down. Right leg turned out just so. Clothilde was so pliant she did not take in each command, she became them. By the end of each session, punctuated with another Voilà! from the artist, Clothilde hardly felt human—until, as she did every time, she kicked off the green shoes while fleeing the studio.

  A week passed this way, then another. Outside of the studio Clothilde and the artist remained cordial, as much as giving and taking orders for domestic duties counted as such. But inside the studio was another matter. How could two women be cordial when hardly any speech passed between them? When for hours on end, one painted and the other remained as still as she could, and then when she could no longer, carried on nonetheless?

  Three and a half weeks into the session, a shift.

  They began in April, and now it was nearer to May. That month was Clothilde’s favorite. The biting winter cold was no more and the scorching summer was weeks away. In between, the air smelled of promise and honeysuckle. Optimism pervaded the crowd thronging in Phillips Square or around the Main. It was a time when, perish the thought, the idea of reaching the top of Mount Royal seemed an enjoyable, not an unbearable, prospect.

  And here Clothilde was, stuck inside this studio cage as her favorite month began. When the artist commanded, Clothilde did not yield. The “keep your shoulders level” prompted Clothilde to stick one out at a greater angle than normal.

  The artist finally stood up, paintbrush thudding as it hit the floor.

  “What is wrong with you? We’re so close and now is the time you decide not to listen to me?”

  Clothilde, as the artist raised her voice in frustrated anguish, closed her eyes, knowing it could not block out the sound but wanting to believe it could. After a beat, she opened them again. The artist faced her. Only inches separated their faces.

  “I’m sorry,” said the artist. Her voice caught as she recovered her normally medium-modulated tone. “You’ve been so good and have never complained once. I suppose I was shocked you finally did.” A rueful chuckle followed a half gasp. And then, the artist’s hand on her shoulder.

  “Will you forgive me?”

  Time seemed to slow down. Clothilde looked back at the artist and then, before she could let the impulse go, she reached for the artist’s other hand, then placed it on her breast.

  “I think so,” said Clothilde. Then she leaned in and kissed the artist’s mouth. Time stopped for a while. Clothilde felt warmth spread inside her and reveled in the taste of the artist’s lips, like a mix of cherries and apples, and the feel of her hands moving about her body. As one hand crept lower and lower, pushing against Clothilde’s mound, time started up again.

  “I can’t,” the artist whispered, snatching her hand back.

  This time it was she who fled the studio in a hurry. The paintbrush lay on the floor. Clothilde, still unclothed but now alone, ventured over to the easel to see what the artist left behind.

  The painting was ready, at least to Clothilde’s mind. And it felt as if she was seeing her inside self revealed to the outside. Or perhaps it was the artist’s inner self.

  Clothilde felt before she heard
the intake of breath behind her. When she turned her head a fraction, she found two eyes staring up before a pair of feet scampered away from the door.

  “You saw what happened,” I said.

  The man did not answer. He did not have to. His face had turned stark white during the telling.

  “How old were you? Four?”

  “Nearly six, and I stopped being a child then.”

  “Did you know what you were seeing?”

  He gave me a look of utter pity. My question was so foolish. But he answered, and it was the answer of a man who had not released his own anguish.

  “I loved my maman, but my father happened to show up the following day. A whim, I suppose, since he had barely kept track of me for the previous year. He asked why I looked so sad and I told him. Before I could understand I was living with him and the roles reversed: I barely saw her for the next ten years. And never for very long. Not until after my father died.”

  I understood everything in that moment. Why he’d been at the bowling alley. Why he stayed in the gangster’s orbit. Why he wanted that painting.

  “It isn’t for you; it’s for her. She’s still alive, isn’t she?”

  Again, he did not answer me directly. He rose from his chair and turned toward me. I realized, all of a sudden, we were very nearly the same height. In heels I would be taller. But it meant, when he took my hand with an intensity that betrayed him, I could close the gap between us and kiss him lightly with the barest of effort.

  His hand in mine, he said, “We will go tonight for the painting.”

  And he told me his name: François.

  I had wanted the painting all to myself because it hurt so much to see my mother there when I knew precious little about her. And now, thanks to François, I knew more, so much more—knowledge I wasn’t asking for, but needed. And with that knowledge came the realization the painting wasn’t mine and could never be.

  But I could restore it to the person who needed it most.

  For the next few hours François and I busied ourselves with other things. And, also, each other. I won’t say it was transcendent, because that’s a lie. But for the first time, I didn’t hate myself after fucking. The lifelong grief I spent my whole life pushing away remained, but now I could accept it for what it was and not let it rule me.

  We watched the sun set outside the kitchen window as we feasted on croque madame (courtesy of his chef, of course) and cheddar cheese and figs and fruit and then, when the light faded into night, we changed into all-black shirts and pants, donned black masks, and instructed his driver to stay home for the night.

  “You’ve done this before?” I wondered.

  He shook his head. “I’ve thought about it a lot. Came close once or twice. But it’s a two-person job.”

  François drove smoothly out of the neighborhood, down Côtes-des-Neiges and away from the Main. Less than ten minutes later he pulled the car up a block away from the gangster’s opulent manse. Close enough for a getaway, but not too close.

  We stepped out of the car and I hesitated. “What’s wrong?” he whispered.

  “I don’t know.” I waited. Then I heard a wail in the distance.

  “We should go,” he said.

  “Slowly.”

  We did. Creeping up along fences, averting our masked faces, but we needn’t have worried. No one was out tonight. I stayed alert for anyone who might appear, but this was as clear a coast as one could have.

  I stifled a laugh. So much had happened in such a short time. I felt drunk on information, on learning so much about my mother. Clothilde. She was younger than I when she encountered the artist. And there was so much still to know.

  But not yet. We were upon the gangster’s house. The front door would not do. François and I scurried toward the back, where both of us knew of another way in. Me, as the mistress. He, as the revenge-seeker.

  The window was partway open. François pried it further and let me go first. We landed in the laundry room, and as soon as both of us thudded to the floor that sense of wrongness grew stronger.

  “I hear something upstairs,” I said.

  François waved it away. “We’re here, let’s go. If we have to leave we’ll know when.”

  The staircase from the laundry room shuddered with each one of our steps. My heart beat triple time at the thought of being discovered. François betrayed no emotion. He focused on silence and I tried to follow suit. When we reached the top of the stairs, he before me, together we pushed on the door.

  It didn’t budge.

  “Is it locked?”

  “Je ne sais pas. Je pense que non.” He furrowed his forehead, thoughts obvious: to kick the door or not to?

  He tried pushing on it again. Still no good. There was nothing to do but kick it. No room for a running jump. Brute force or nothing at all.

  François and I both hurled ourselves at the door.

  It flew open.

  A man’s body lay on the floor at the end of the hallway.

  And a woman stood over the body. Even from such a distance we could see the fury in her eyes as she held the gun between herself and the man, but also the sense of defeat.

  François shut the door and scampered down the rickety stairs before I had a chance to take another breath.

  “Get down here!” he growled.

  I did.

  Before long we were outside again, catching our breaths.

  And as we made our way back to the car, taking a different and more complicated route four times as long, we heard the wail of police sirens, the screams of the gangster’s wife as she resisted arrest, and the sad intonations of the officers reciting the arrest.

  We were silent for the whole ten-minute drive. Then, as François parked the car in his driveway, he turned to me and removed his mask, resignation written all over his face.

  “We won’t get the painting tonight. But someday we will.”

  It took nearly nine months.

  By then the gangster’s wife, Rosalie in full and Risa to her intimates, was serving a five-to-fifteen-year prison term for manslaughter. Everyone wanted her to plead guilty because they feared what she would say in a trial, and what others would say about the gangster. Better to get her away from Montreal. Who knows why the gun went off and the gangster died?

  Only when the police turned up at François’s house three days later, looking for me, because Risa invoked my name in her statement in less than flattering terms, did it seem there might be a motive. I told the truth, leaving out the failed painting heist. They might check for signs of life in the laundry room, but having collared their woman, one with ugly secrets, I doubted they would follow up with us again.

  By then François’s house had become mine. I had as little to do as before but there was no longer a need to fill the aching void with bad sex and worse drugs. On the worst days, when I thought I might spirit myself away for good, François always caught me in time. There had not been any worst days in quite a while.

  When the painting of my mother finally arrived I wasn’t prepared. I kept myself ignorant of the negotiation process. Every time François returned from another meeting with Risa, he looked more ashen than before. I became so accustomed to this cycle that when the painting did return, covered in packing material, I did not recognize it for what it was.

  Then François said we had a visit scheduled for the following morning. To deliver the package.

  My eyes widened in alarm. “It’s done?”

  “It is.” He gripped my hand. “It’s time.”

  The driver took us and the painting there in just under an hour. A tiny village near Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts, populated by a few hundred. That was where the artist lived now. Where she’d lived for nearly my entire life.

  François told me more about her in the car. How after she lost custody of him, she lost the will to paint for some years. And for Montreal, now associated with so many unhappy memories. She found the village by placing her finger on a map and tracing a cir
cle exactly halfway. She gave herself a week, and if she abhorred it she could leave. She didn’t. And then she painted again and restored herself in part.

  The painting was exhibited only once, the year François turned eight. The gangster fell in love with it, or so he would boast to his drinking buddies, and doubled its asking price. It had indeed been a revenge of sorts. A pitying kind. For the artist had spurned the gangster’s violent advances one night, a year before François was born. He never forgot, for women generally did not say no to him. And he thought, in his furious mind, that if he could possess her most daring portrait and that she must live off his largesse, then he had won.

  The driver reached a dirt road. Turning left, we slowly approached a modest wood-paneled bungalow with a red-and-white roof. François took the painting out of the trunk and held it gingerly with both hands. I walked slightly behind him, holding nothing but my purse. There was no doorbell, so I rapped on the door for the both of us.

  My breath quickened when the artist answered the door. I could not say why I felt her to be so familiar. She didn’t resemble her son, not exactly, though her graying hair still curled around her face and she was nearly as tall as François. As she greeted us I sensed a keen intelligence that seemed kin to his. And when she smiled it matched her dancing eyes and dry wit.

  François tore off the packaging and placed the painting on the closest easel. The house was so small the entire main room functioned as the artist’s studio, with unfinished canvases loitering about in different parts of the room. She stared at her long-ago creation, the desire-filled nude clad in green heels. Then she looked up at me, astonished.

  “Cléa!” she cried. Then she caught herself. A blush bloomed in both cheeks. She held up a hand to cover her face, then thought better of it.

  “You look just like her.”

  I felt my entire self lighten. I felt my mother, the true Clothilde, of a secret name no longer secret, within me. And also within the artist, the woman she wasn’t allowed to love.

  There was nowhere else I wanted to be.

  “I’ve been told that,” I said in English. “My name is Aurelie.”