Restoration: A Novel (Contemporary / Women's Fiction) (26 page)

Dear Tess,

It appears Dahnya Alicandri is now Dahnya Alicandri
Benato.  Enclosed, you’ll find her address in Sulmona, Italy.  Her married name
made it a little more challenging to find her.  Since that detail changed, I
hope you don’t mind if I request a change in our agreement and ask that in
exchange for her address you allow me to interview you.  Before you instantly
respond “no,” please indulge me by reading these words while I lobby you.

After our visit with Randall Wright, I planned to send
a completed article based upon my observations, just as we agreed.  But I must
admit I’m struggling with it.  The story I feel compelled to write can’t be told
from that one visit.  Just drawing from that perspective, there’s far too much
of Wright’s story being told. 

I thought I knew who Tess Olsen was when I wrote that
series years ago.  We could argue how right or wrong I was.  I’m sure given our
track record, we would.  I don’t know much about who Tess Olsen is today, but
I’m curious as hell to find out.

 So far, I’ve written the ending.  When you’re ready to
be interviewed so that the rest can be written, please call me.  I’m patient;
I’ll wait.

Neil Palmer

Tess slid the letter aside, then flipped past the page
with Dahnya’s address.  On the third sheet of paper, at the top of the page and
typed in crisp, bold print, was the title:
A Survivor’s Tale: The Triumph of
Good Over Evil
.  The rest of the page was blank.  It reminded her of the
empty canvas that had stared back at her for years. 

She smiled.  Without even knowing it, Neil had sent her
the perfect metaphor: her creativity no longer held hostage.  Her eyes traveled
down the blank page to the very bottom where a single line was typed.  So this
was the ending he referred to in his letter.  He’d borrowed her words and
must’ve  known when he typed them that she’d struggle with this one line.  For
now, she could only hope it was as prophetic as the blank page had been
fitting.   

And she lived happily ever after.

On the day the state of Florida was to execute Randall
Wright, a terminal illness plagued the clock, resisting the hours and dragging
out time.  From her work space, Tess’s eyes jumped between the work on her
table to her wristwatch.  Neither made any progress.

By noon, she felt like her anxiety would levitate her from
her chair.  At twenty minutes after, she cleared her work space and snatched
her purse from her drawer. 

Before she left, Francesca hugged her and offered to spend
the afternoon with her, but Tess didn’t know what to expect of herself and
asked to be alone.  After an aimless walk through Chelsea, she ended up here,
in the borrowed studio where she’d painted her first work in years, and sat in
front of it on a wooden chair she dragged from the kitchen.

“I hope you like Florence,” she said to her artwork and
glanced at her watch. 

3:45 p.m.

He didn’t have much longer.  State executions were
precisely on schedule.  She’d educated herself on this much.  The formalities
surrounding them were always the same.  By now, he was lying relatively
comfortably on a gurney in a sanitized room where he’d say his last farewells. 
How different his final moments were for him than they were for his victims. 

Protocol demanded that the curtain concealing Wright from
those in the observation room remain closed until minutes before the poison
entered his veins.  At that time, the curtain would open and the gurney he was
strapped to would be tilted upright to face the glass window behind which his
victims’ families sat.  He would be allowed to say his final words to them, but
they wouldn’t be granted the same privilege.

She’d always imagined herself sitting among them on this
day, but Wright had failed to deliver the only thing she’d ever asked of him. 

3:50 p.m.

She hoped fear had replaced his arrogance.  At some point
in their captivity, his victims must’ve realized they were going to die.  Their
fear had to have been incredible.  Unfortunately, his heart wouldn’t be beating
too rapidly in his chest and sending adrenaline through his body in nature’s
fight or flight response to danger.  The state would ensure that Wright’s
nerves were soothed.  He would’ve been given a sedative that probably already
was dripping into the needle, one that was carefully, and as painlessly as
possible, inserted under his skin.

3:55 p.m.

Her mother was no doubt sitting in the observation room
weeping, holding out hope until the end that the governor would swoop in and
save the day and grant a reprieve.  There was a phone in the death chamber
ready to take such a call.  She wondered if her mother ever once considered the
indignity Wright’s victims had suffered while begging for their lives without a
chance for mercy.

But Tess knew her mother’s position; fate cruelly had
entwined her husband’s destiny with strangers whose deaths, although
regrettable, had nothing to do with him.  Alish was convinced she was
witnessing the state’s murder of an innocent man.      

4:00 p.m.

Were his final words replete with contrition and full of
remorse?  Or did he commit one final obscene act and assume a Christ-like
countenance, extending forgiveness to his victims’ families for their misguided
insistence that he sacrifice his body in exchange for sins he’d insist another
committed against their families.  Were they crying along with her mother?

4:05 p.m.

Could he at least feel the poison pushing through the I.V.
as the executioner released it into his veins?  What was he thinking as his
heartbeat slowed?  Did he resist death, at least in his mind, or did he embrace
the freedom it offered that life in confinement could not?  She hoped he was
mocking God and His creation until the end.  She didn’t want to accept that the
God who she was raised to believe in but often doubted, a God who could love
all and forgive anything, also would forgive a repentant monster. 

4:10 p.m.

Tess slipped a pair of headphones over her ears and tuned
her radio to a news channel.  The news she’d waited so long to hear was
reported so matter-of-factly.  Randall Wright was dead.  Finally.

4:15 p.m.

He was still dead, no longer in the same plane of
existence as she was.

4:20 p.m.

No more lamenting that a killer lived while his victims’
bones rested in graves.  No more looking forward to his execution.  No more
imagining his final moments.  Like a vacuum, his final breath had sucked all of
that out of her life.  She was rid of him. 

Tess waited for her soul to embrace jubilation, relief or
a mixture of the two.  She hadn’t prepared for the emptiness she felt.  For the
first time since she was a teenager, she faced a life without Wright’s
overwhelming presence.  The state had kept its covenant and executed him. 

Now what?  His death was an event she hadn’t looked past. 

Tess strayed into the kitchen, fetched the bottle of
champagne she’d chilled as part of her post-execution celebration, borrowed a
wineglass from the cabinet and drifted back to her painting.  Tucking the
bottle under her arm while her hands choked its neck, she pressed her thumbs up
against the cork.  A loud pop ensued as the cork sprang from the bottle and
into her fingers.  She poured herself a glass and lifted it toward her
painting. 

There wasn’t a toast suitable for the occasion and
besides, she suddenly felt gruesome about what she was doing. 

She sipped the champagne.  It was sweet.  She tilted a
second sip past her lips and settled back into her chair, resting her glass on
one knee and the champagne bottle on the other.  She finished one glass and
poured another while her eyes absorbed her painting.  A few sips into her
second glass, she heard a quick knock and then the studio’s door open.

“Good, you’re still here.”  Kenyon’s urgent voice reached
her ears.  “I found the key and note you taped to the door.  What do you mean
you won’t be using this place any longer?  One painting and you’re through? 
This should be a beginning, not an end.”

She didn’t look behind her to where his voice came from,
but when he inserted himself into the space near her, she lifted her eyes and
acknowledged his presence. 

“I’m not through painting.  Just through painting here.”

Curiously, he gazed at the champagne bottle and then at
her painting.  “I suppose it is a cause for celebration.  Now that I know there
will be more like it, I can celebrate with you.”

As Kenyon walked to the kitchen, she closed her eyes and
wished him away.  There was nothing about this day she wanted to share with
him.  She flinched; her eyes flickered open.  He hovered over her, his
fingertips touching hers, loitering too long while coaxing the champagne bottle
from them.

“May I?”

She jerked her hand away.  “Sure, yes.  Here.”

He smiled at her while pouring a glass.  Without a
ponytail to capture his hair, it flowed down past his cheeks and rested on his
shoulders.

“I’m glad you’re here.  I was wondering when I’d see you
again.  You know, I don’t even have your number.”

She stared quietly at her painting as if he wasn’t even
speaking to her.

He looked around the room.  She’d packed up and removed
all of her supplies.  The only reminder she’d ever been here was on the canvas
she stared at. 

“I’m glad this place served you well,” he said.

“Please thank your friend for me for allowing me to use
this place.”

“I have a lot to thank him for.”  When his words failed to
draw her eyes to him, Kenyon sat down on the floor near her feet and stared as
intently at her as she stared at her painting.

“What are you thinking?”

“Things.”

“Your thoughts and feelings are as captive as your art
once was.  Tell me, what should I do to coax you into sharing them?”  He waited
for her answer, sipped the champagne and tried again.  “Is this how you get men
to fall in love with you, being so elusive?”

“Men love me.  They don’t fall in love with me.”  Except
for one, she could’ve said, but kept this to herself.

“I loved everything about that night: watching you free
yourself, the intensity with which you worked, this painting, my painting,
you.  Your creativity was infectious.  I had to finish painting after you left,
before the universe absorbed the energy that filled this room.”

“Kenyon?”  Her eyes finally shifted to him.  “Would you
mind if I celebrated alone?”

“No, of course not.  I understand.  I share an intimacy
with my work as well.  I can only imagine the emotion going back and forth
between you and it after not having created anything for so long.”  He stood. 
“It’s like finding a long-lost lover you thought you’d never see again, isn’t
it?”

“I see so many things when I look at it,” Tess said,
attempting to sound as if she was affirming his metaphor without embracing it. 
She didn’t want to peak his curiosity when he was so close to leaving by telling
him she was too busy seeing life and death on the canvas to notice whether it
was an old lover.

“I see so much when I look at you.”  He leaned forward and
pressed his lips to her cheek.  The exhalation of his warm breath lingered
there as she breathed in the sweet smell of champagne accompanying it. 

Reluctantly, he pulled away from her.  “I hope you’re not
done being my muse.”

She let him go without informing him she was leaving the
country.  They’d go back to being strangers.  He’d find another muse, and she’d
find another lover, one who didn’t remind her of her failed fidelity to Ben.

***

Tess carried her painting into her apartment like a timid
teenager escorting a new boyfriend home for the first time.  She set it against
the wall where her other paintings hung and stepped back to compare it to the
others.  All were painted in a similar style.  It was obvious the same artist
had painted them all.  What amazed her about their differences was the artistic
maturity of her most recent work.  The talent trapped inside of her had
continued developing while she struggled to find it, and she marveled at how
she’d advanced her art so much without even picking up a brush.

She walked over to her answering machine and cringed as
she hit the replay button.  She expected to hear her mother’s grieving voice. 
The start of each message brought relief as she heard voices other than
Alish’s: Cassie calling to see how she’d fared today, Francesca doing the same
and then dead air followed by a click in which a caller was silent before
hanging up.  A series of silent gaps followed half a dozen clicks, indicating
someone had kept calling without leaving a message.  She wondered if this
phantom caller was her mother. 

She expected the last call to be a hang-up as well, but
the recorder’s digital voice announced that another message was left just
minutes before she’d walked through the door.

When Ben’s voice spoke to her, she sank down into the sofa
cushions.  Her hands gripped the armrest as she stared at the machine.

“Tess, this is Ben.  I was watching CNN and heard about
Randall Wright.  I just wanted to call and see how you’re doing.  I hope today
brought you the closure you needed.”  He sighed as he struggled to express his
solace for her into a machine.  “I hope you’re okay.”

Forgetting she was listening to his recorded voice instead
of screening his call, she reached for the phone but caught herself before
lifting it from the cradle.  

“Enjoy Florence, okay?  All right, bye.”

She grabbed the phone and punched in his number.  Closing
her eyes, she rocked her body and listened to the phone ring.  “Pick up,
please.”

“Hello.” 

She stopped rocking and opened her eyes.  “Ben, I just
missed your call.”