Rogue Wave (5 page)

“May I?” Kiernan asked, before turning to face the work in progress.

Garrett nodded, running his fingers across her hand before he released it.

A preliminary sketch had been lightly indicated on the canvas. Kiernan smothered a gasp. The picture was of the mud flats. The same subject she’d seen inside. Three years had passed, and this was the same picture. The familiar photo was pinned on the wall next to the canvas.

“Tell Kiernan about the painting, Gar.” Maureen’s voice held a tautness that didn’t match her words. Kiernan felt a stab, of guilt; in the few moments she’d been in the studio she’d forgotten Maureen, so engulfing was Garrett’s attention. Was this his ability to mesh with anyone that Maureen had talked about? And was Maureen reacting too, because it was being directed at another woman? Glancing at her, Kiernan noticed the rigidity of her shoulders, saw that her thumb was working away at the raw spot.

“I took that photo in Alaska before I left last month.”

“You left there last month?” Kiernan asked.

“Uh-huh. It’s a shame to leave Alaska in May. That’s when you first start to see the grass. There’s that odd scrunchy feeling when the frozen earth softens to mud. It’s like walking on Styrofoam.”

Kiernan laughed. Garrett looked at her, vaguely surprised, then smiled too, as if he were humoring a child.

“The painting, Garrett,” Maureen insisted. “What are you aiming for in it?”

“What makes my work so individual, Kiernan,” he said, still smiling at her, “is its sense of place. I present the people through their environment.” His words, Kiernan recollected, were taken directly from the gallery brochure. But he had the air of an excited small boy telling a secret to a special friend. It was a very effective—and very flattering—presentation, especially since he must have given it many times. And yet there was something not quite right about it.

Kiernan held her breath for a moment. Although the studio windows were open, the air felt used and stale. She’d expected the place would smell of paint or turpentine, but all she could detect was a vague aroma of coffee. She made a decision. “What about the three paintings in the house?” she asked.

“Three?” Garrett shook his head. “You should have your eyes checked. You’re seeing triple.” He grinned at her, but the grin had a watery quality about it. “I did one, but it’s not quite right.”

Kiernan hesitated. Behind her, she could hear Maureen give a little gasp. “No, honey, there are three in there.”

“Maureen,” he said, shaking his head, “are you ladies playing some kind of joke on me?”

“Come back to the house and see, Garrett.”

“There’s only one painting, Maureen. You know that.” His grin was firmly locked in place, but his jaw was tense.

“Humor me.” Maureen led the way across the dry October grass. The tightness had spread from her shoulders to her back; she walked stiffly, as if the discs in her spine had turned to stone.

When Kiernan stepped inside, the chill and darkness startled her. It was one of those houses that would never be warm no matter how big a fire they built in the baronial fireplace. Maureen and Garrett were standing behind the sofa, leaning against the back. Neither was looking at the paintings, but Maureen’s face seemed wary and hopeless. Garrett glanced around the room with the calm, indifferent expression of someone who has been away for months and is reacquainting himself with his surroundings.

The earliest of the paintings was propped up by a table, the other two against a wall. “There, Garrett,” Maureen said. “There are your paintings.”

“Paintings?” he asked, as if this were the first time he’d heard of them.

Maureen’s lips quivered: She pointed to the canvases.

Garrett glanced at the wall, then focused on the picture by the table. “This isn’t quite right,” he said. “I’ll do it over.”

Maureen stepped closer. Her eyes, which had seemed so angry earlier, were tear-filled. “You’ve already done two more, Garrett. They’re right here.”

“No, no.” He reached for her arm as if to comfort her in her delusion, but she moved away quickly, the veins in her neck rigid. “Look at them, Garrett!” Her voice was louder, shriller. “They
are
yours, aren’t they?”

“Well, they look like mine.” His face twisted in bewilderment. He moved closer to the canvases, squatted down in front of first one, then the other, peering at the brushstrokes.

“You did paint these, didn’t you?” Maureen insisted.

“It’s my style, certainly.” He stood up. His expression changed from confusion to fear. “Someone sure copied the way I paint, or at least tried to. But these are flat, lifeless. The guy who did them must’ve been an accountant or something.” It took Kiernan a moment to realize that the hollow, nervous sound he made was meant to be a laugh.

“No one copied you, Garrett. No one’s been here but us, right?”

“No one we
invited,
hon.” He glanced fearfully from his wife to Kiernan. “Forgers don’t knock at the front door. Anyone could creep round to my studio during the night.” His hands were shaking.

Maureen’s face was bloodless.
“Crept
in? Painted those canvases and left them in the house?”

“They’re not worth taking away,” Garrett said, almost inaudibly.

“Garrett, you know you painted all of these …”

“No!” he cried. “Only one. I’ve only painted one. You know that.” He cringed away from Maureen. Horrified, Kiernan found herself taking a step backward.

“Those things don’t belong there!” he shouted. ‘Those walls must be bare. Nothing can be on them.” He grabbed one of the canvases and flung it to the floor. The frame cracked. He tore and ripped at the canvas itself, and when it didn’t give, flung the whole thing into the empty fireplace.

Maureen swallowed hard. For several moments she stood unmoving, then walked stiffly over to Garrett, who was staring out of the window, his body at attention. She put a hand on his shoulder. “Aren’t the redwoods magnificent?”

Kiernan moved beside the couple in time to see the fear wash out of his face, leaving it momentarily blank. There was no trace of his earlier anxiety, she noted. He turned abruptly away from the window, looked at Kiernan and grinned. “Hello. I’m Garrett Brant. How nice of you to come all the way out here to see us.”

Kiernan gasped. Mechanically, she extended a hand.

Garrett glanced quickly, questioningly, at Maureen and when she said nothing turned back to Kiernan, still smiling. “Now where is it I know you from?”

Kiernan swallowed hard. “Do you remember my name?”

His smile quivered but held. He took her hand in both of his. “Why don’t you tell me again. You know how painters are, all picture, no memory space for words. You’re … ?”

“Kiernan O’Shaughnessy.”

“Kiernan! What a wonderful name, all green glades and fast-moving water. Kiernan, it was good of you to come. Maureen’s not as fond of seclusion as I am. She’s a city girl. She wouldn’t have chosen the woods for a vacation.” He smiled. “But we’re only here for two weeks, right, Maureen?”

Maureen gritted her teeth, then nodded. In the moment before she spoke, Kiernan watched her remold her face, squeezing out the emotion, glazing it with pleasantness. “You’ve got work to do, Gar. Don’t let us keep you.”

“Okay. You ladies have fun, now.” He caught Kiernan’s eye and smiled. “See you later, uh—. Don’t you dare leave without saying good-bye.”

Maureen walked him into the yard. Looking at them, Kiernan found it hard to imagine they could ever have been lovers, ever have been anything but mother and son.

G
ARRETT
B
RANT LOOKED AT
the redwoods beyond his studio window. He smiled happily.
The trees … just like they were when I was a boy here. Almost as if time had stopped. He moved closer to the window. There’s the scar in the bark, where my swing hit it—

He heard the door creak behind him and whipped around. The wall of photographs caught his attention.
Odd that the edges should curl so soon. I just put them up when Maureen and I got here.
His gaze shifted to the snapshots of the mud flats of Cook Inlet. He shivered despite the heat, remembering the stories of those deceptively solid stretches of land which, when the tide was out, were covered with algae—green, chartreuse, golden-brown. Thanksgiving colors. He shivered again. He no longer
thought
of the woman the mud had sucked down, he
felt
her terror, recognized the moment when she knew she would die,
knew
the moment when the salt water covered her face and drowned her. He turned to the canvas on the easel.
Had he captured all those nuances? There must be three levels in the painting: safety, danger, death.
He let his eyes half close; saw Sally, his neighbor in Anchorage. Sally looking at the first sketch he’d done of the flats, swearing she’d never walk there again. He felt again the warm flush of helping, maybe saving. When the canvas was done,
if
he caught the peril, maybe it would warn people. “Alaskan Mud Flats” would get lots of attention if he won the Arts Foundation grant.

The studio door creaked again. He turned toward it and waited an instant before taking a blue and green jacket off the hook and placing a hand on the knob.
Why am I leaving? I must have decided to take a break. If I can’t remember even that, then I really
must
need a rest.
He smiled, recalling himself standing in the studio, hearing the buzz of the intercom and Maureen telling him to come into the main house; there was a telegram for him. He could
see
her pale face, flushed now with excitement, could see her waving the envelope at him. “The committee, Garrett …” she’d said, but he couldn’t hear anything else, just knew that her voice seemed different somehow.
Odd to lose that memory so soon. Must be the pressure. This San Francisco business to take care of. Waiting to hear about the grant.

The grant.
He felt again the simultaneous tensing of his shoulders and the rush of relief.
Made the cut. They don’t telegraph losers. Five finalists. Only four days to go, to know for sure. No more carting slides to galleries, no more gallery owners closing shop before they get around to paying me my share of a sale. No more being too tired to paint because I’ve spent all night
—
night after night
—
vacuuming tasteless beige office after tasteless beige office.
But his face didn’t reflect that frustration, as if it had settled so deeply, so intimately in his body that it had no need of superficial exhibition. He could still sense those corporate types, feel them grumbling about wastebaskets, dirt on the carpet, as they strolled past him out to the California Tavern. He smiled suddenly. His hands tightened in anticipation.
Next week the grant. Then, there would be a future.

M
AUREEN WALKED SLOWLY BACK
into the dining room. She looked drained. “Kiernan, all those months in the hospital and the rehab center, I thought he’d get better. But he won’t, ever. For him, it’s all the way it was three years ago. It’s like life’s a movie and for Garrett it stopped in that one frame. He’ll be forever twenty-eight. In the middle of his Alaska paintings. He won the Arts of the Land Foundation Award for them. He would have been so pleased. He does know he was one of the finalists, but the notice of the actual award came too late. Sometimes I tell him about winning it.” She swallowed. “I show him the letter. He’s surprised, pleased.”

“That must be some small comfort for him. To be able to relive a wonderful moment afresh?” Kiernan said.

Maureen closed her eyes. “For Garrett, yes. But I see the difference. Before the accident he would have been excited. Now he’s pleased. That’s one of the side effects of his type of brain injury. Emotion fades. Maybe it’s the result of no longer having a future. Or maybe it’s the constant uncertainty. Garrett has no facts to hang onto, what happened five minutes ago is gone for him. He has no idea what season it is, you saw that. But he understands enough to know he
should
know, so he’s always searching around for clues, or for something that will allow him to rationalize what he’s only been guessing at.”

“Like living in a constant earthquake?”

“The only solid ground Garrett’s got is in his distant memory. His injury resulted in a very special kind of amnesia. Damage to the mediodorsal nucleus of the thalamus is linked with a frontal syndrome …”

Maureen was repeating herself, Kiernan thought as she interrupted. “… And the frontal lobes deal with the sense of purpose.” She could see why Garrett Brant’s paintings showed less life with each effort. With no commitment to hold him, he would become easily distracted; his conviction in the uniqueness of his vision would fade as the range between high and low disappeared.

“His hands start to shake by evening. Once in a while we shoot at tin cans. It’s something to do.” She shrugged apologetically. “He’s got an old Ruger revolver. But now he has to use both hands to hold it steady.”

“You said his capacity for emotion has faded. But he certainly reacted to these paintings, when he saw them in. here.”

Maureen’s eyes filled. “Oh God, that hurts. I know better than to try to reason him into the present. The neurologists tried a lot at first—we all did. I couldn’t believe he was gone. He’s not a person anymore, he’s a holograph. He has flashes—sometimes they’ll last as long as a minute or two—when he seems like the old Garrett. Sometimes in bed he looks at me the way he used to, as if we two are the only people in the world; I can hold his attention longer then. And there are some things you just don’t forget.” She swallowed hard. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. But it’s been so long since I’ve really talked to anyone. In bed—that’s where it’s worst. Mechanically Garrett’s great. Still knows all the right moves. But they don’t mean anything to him.”

“Take your time,” Kiernan said gently, watching Maureen awkwardly rubbing her wet cheeks. She hoped her voice did not betray her horror of misery such as Maureen’s: misery for which she knew no relief. She was clumsy with this kind of grief. For her, pain was something to be denied. She’d learned from her sister, Moira, how to run from pain so fast that it could never catch up with her—until Moira died. She’d let her guard down only once after that, with Marc Rosten—and afterward she’d never allowed herself to dwell on that mistake. At this moment she wanted more than anything to get away from Maureen Brant, run full out to the Jeep, and floor the gas pedal. Instead, she took a deep breath, put a hand on Maureen’s arm, and led her to the sofa. Her own fingers felt cold, but Maureen’s skin was icy. “Garrett didn’t sound unsure of himself when he met me, Maureen.”