His second reaction was that outside the painting, where he was standing now, was the invisible figure of the painter. There was no hint, either in the facial expression and posture of the woman or in the way she had been painted, of any connection of tenderness, of intimacy, of passion, of love between painter and subject. Had he expected there would be? Had he feared there would not?
His third reaction—the one he had been holding back—was that this was his mother. She was blond, blue eyed, apparently small and dainty, pretty in a fresh, youthful way without any individuality to set her apart from hundreds of other young ladies her age. She was his mother. She had died giving birth to him. He wondered how old she had been. She looked no older than eighteen in the portrait, probably younger. And the hand that had painted her—the invisible hand though it had touched this canvas numerous times—was his father’s.
His fourth reaction was that the painting had not been signed. He had not even realized that he had been hoping for some clue, however small, to his father’s identity.
He became aware again of Camille standing beside him, looking at the painting with him, but not speaking, for which fact he was grateful.
“Cox-Phillips was right about one thing,” he said, surprised to hear his voice sounding quite normal. “The painter was not particularly talented.” Why had he chosen that of all things to say? The painter was his father—at least, in all probability he was. “He left the beholder with no clue as to who she was. I do not mean her identity. That must be undisputed. I mean her, her character and personality. I see a pretty girl. That is all. I do not feel—”
“The connection of son to mother?” she said softly after he had circled one hand ineffectually in the air without finding the words he needed.
“Did I expect to?” he said. “Did I expect to know her as soon as I saw her? To recognize her as part of myself? It is not the painter’s fault, is it, that she is just a pretty stranger, a decade younger than I. I wonder if the dog was hers or the painter’s. Or was it a figment of his imagination? But there is no other evidence that he had an imagination or could paint something that was not before his eyes. He painted her as she sat there before him. She had to sit still for a long time and probably over several sessions.”
His hand reached out to touch the paint, but he rested his fingertips on the top of the frame instead.
“There is no evidence,” he said, “that he loved her or felt anything for her. Did I expect that there would be? A grand passion transmitted onto the canvas by a painter deeply enamored of his subject, to be transmitted to the beholder more than a quarter of a century later?” He closed his eyes and lowered his head. “It is a pretty picture.”
All his life there had been an emptiness, a blank, where his parents ought to have been. He had never dwelled upon it. He had got on with his life, and he had little of which to complain. On the whole, life had been good to him. But the emptiness had always been there, a sort of hollow at the center of his being. Now there was something to fit into that hollow, and it brought pain with it. So close, he thought. Ah, so close. They were so close to him, those two, painter and painted, father and mother, yet so eternally unattainable.
“Joel.” Her voice was a whisper of sound from beside him.
Why the devil was he going all to pieces over a mere painting, and not a very skilled one at that? He could have lived the whole of the rest of his life knowing no more than he had ever known about himself without feeling any pain greater than that certain emptiness. Why should knowing a little feel worse than knowing nothing? Because knowing a little made him greedy for more when there was no more?
He would find a place to hang the painting, he decided, somewhere prominent, where he would see it every day, where it would no longer be something almost to fear but on the contrary, an everyday part of his surroundings. It must hang somewhere where other people would see it too, and he would point it out to any of his friends who came here—Ah yes, that is my mother when she was very young. Pretty, was she not? The painter was my father. He was Italian. He returned to Italy before he knew I was on the way and she never did let him know. A bit tragic, yes. I suppose there was a reason. A lovers’ quarrel, perhaps. She died giving birth to me, you know. Perhaps she intended to write to him afterward. Perhaps he waited to hear from her and assumed she had forgotten him and was too proud to come back. A comfortable myth would grow around the few facts he knew.
He turned to look at Camille. “I will not paint you with a contrived smile on your face,” he told her, “or with a fan in one hand that has no function but to be decorative. I will not set a little toy of a dog on your lap to arouse sentiment in the beholder. I will not paint you with flat eyes and an unnatural perfection of feature and coloring.”
“They would have to be very unnatural,” she said. “And I do not like little dogs. They yap.”
He smiled at her and then laughed—and then reached for her and drew her against him with such force that he felt the air whoosh out of her lungs. He did not loosen his hold but clasped her as though she were his only anchor in a turbulent sea. She let herself be held and set her arms about him. Her face was turned in against his neck. For long moments he buried his own face against her hair and breathed in the blessed safety of her.
“I am sorry,” he said then. “I am behaving as though I were the only person ever to suffer. And how can I call this suffering? I ought to be rejoicing.”