The Long Way Home (11 page)

She looked around at the bedroom walls again, this time with an open mind. Determined to find something good in what Bean had done.

She moved from painting to painting. To painting. To painting.

She stood back. She stood close. She tipped her head from side to side.

No matter how she looked at them, they were awful.

“That’s okay, you don’t have to like them,” said Bean. “I don’t care.”

It was also what the young Clara had said, when watching the all-too-familiar sight of people struggling to say something nice about her early works. People whose opinions she valued. Whose approval she longed for. I don’t care, she’d said.

But she did. And she suspected Bean did too.

“Do you have a favorite?” Aunt Clara asked, side-stepping her own feelings.

“That one.”

Bean pointed to the open door. Aunt Clara closed the door to reveal a painting there. It was, if such a thing was possible, more horrible than the rest. If the others were neolithic, this one was a large evolutionary step backward. Whoever painted this almost certainly had a tail, and knuckles that dragged on the ground. And through the paint.

If Peter had taught Bean the color wheel, he was a very, very bad teacher. This painting flaunted all the rules of art and most of the rules of common courtesy. It was a bad smell tacked to the wall.

“What do you like about it?” Myrna asked, her voice strained from keeping some strong emotion, or her dinner, inside.

“Those.”

From the bed, Bean waved a finger toward the painting. Clara realized that with the door closed Bean would see this painting last thing at night and first thing in the morning.

What was so special about it?

She looked over at Myrna and saw her friend examining it. And smiling. Just a grin at first, that grew.

“Do you see it?” Myrna asked.

Clara looked more closely. And then something clicked. Those funny red squiggles were smiles. The painting was filled with them. Lips.

It didn’t make the painting good. But it made it fun.

Clara looked back at Bean and saw a large smile on the earnest face.

“Clearly the artistic gene hasn’t been passed to Bean,” said Myrna as they sat in the cab back to the hotel.

“I’d give a lot of money for Peter to see what his lesson has produced,” Clara said, and heard Myrna grunt with laughter beside her.

*   *   *

“What did you two get up to today?” Reine-Marie asked Annie and Jean-Guy as they ate dinner on the terrace in their back garden.

“Dominique and I took the horses through the woods,” said Annie, helping herself to watermelon, mint, and feta salad.

“And you?” Armand asked Jean-Guy. “I know for sure you didn’t go horseback riding.”

“Horse?” said Beauvoir. “Horse? Dominique says they’re horses but we all know there’s at least one moose in there.”

Reine-Marie laughed. None of Dominique’s horses could be considered show-worthy. Abused and neglected and finally sent to the slaughterhouse, Dominique had saved them.

They had that look in their eyes, as though they knew. How close they’d come.

As Henri sometimes looked, in his quiet moments. As Rosa looked. The same expression she sometimes caught in Jean-Guy’s eyes.

And Armand’s.

They knew. That they’d almost died. But they also knew that they’d been saved.

“Marc and I did some yard work,” said Jean-Guy. “What did you get up to?”

Gamache and Reine-Marie described their afternoon, trying to figure out why Peter went to Dumfries.

“And why the 15th arrondissement in Paris,” said Reine-Marie.

“Dad, what is it?” Annie asked.

Armand had gotten up and, excusing himself, he went into the house, returning a minute later with the map of Paris.

“Sorry,” he said. “I just need to check something.”

He spread the map out on the table.

“What’re you looking for?” Jean-Guy joined him.

Gamache put on his reading glasses and hunched over the map before finally straightening up.

“When you went riding, did you stop in to see Marc’s father?” Armand asked his daughter.

“Briefly, yes,” said Annie. “We took him some groceries. Why?”

“He still doesn’t have a phone, does he?”

“No, why?”

“Just wondering. He lived in Paris for a while,” said Gamache.

“He spent quite a bit of time there, after Marc’s mother kicked him out,” said Annie.

“I need to speak to him.” Armand turned to Jean-Guy. “Ready to saddle up?”

Beauvoir looked horrified. “Now? Tonight? On horses or whatever those are?”

“It’s too dark now,” Gamache said. “But first thing in the morning.”

“Why?” asked Annie. “What can Vincent Gilbert possibly know about Peter’s disappearance?”

“Maybe nothing, but I remember talking to him about his time in Paris. He showed me where he stayed.”

Gamache placed his finger on the map.

The 15th arrondissement.

ELEVEN

The Toronto galleries were a bust. None remembered seeing Peter Morrow and all tried to convince Clara she should show at their space. The very same galleries that had rejected and mocked her work just a few years earlier were now trying to seduce her.

Clara didn’t carry a grudge. They were far too heavy and she had too far to go. But she did notice, and she noticed something else. Her own ego, showing some ankle. Eating up the fawning words, the come-hither smiles of these late-to-the-party suitors.

“Has he been here?” Clara asked the owner at the last gallery on their list.

“Not that I remember,” she said, and the receptionist confirmed there’d been no appointment with a Peter Morrow in the past twelve months.

“But he might’ve just dropped in,” Clara persisted, and showed the owner an image of Peter’s striking work.

“Oh, I know him,” she said.

“He was here?” Clara asked.

“No, I mean I know his work. Now, let’s talk about your paintings…”

And that was that. Clara was polite, but fled as quickly as she could, before she was seduced. But she took the owner’s card. You never knew.

Their last stop before getting on the afternoon train was the art college, where Peter and Clara had met almost thirty years ago.

“The OCCA—” the secretary said.

“Obsessive-compulsive…” said Myrna.

“Ontario College of Canadian Arts,” said the secretary.

He gave them a pamphlet and signed Clara Morrow up to the alumni list. He did not recognize her name, which Clara found both a relief and annoying.

“Peter Morrow?” That name he recognized. “He was here a few months back.”

“So he spoke to you?” said Clara. “What did he want?”

She’d actually wanted to ask, “How did he look?” but stopped herself.

“Oh, just to get caught up. He wanted to know if any of the staff was still around from when he was here.”

“Are they?”

“Well, one. Paul Massey.”

“Professor Massey? You’re kidding. He must be—”

“Eighty-three. Still teaching, still painting. Mr. Morrow was eager to see him.”

“Professor Massey taught conceptual drawing,” Clara explained to Myrna.

“Still does,” said the secretary. “‘Translating the visual world onto canvas,’” he quoted by heart from the brochure.

“He was one of our favorite professors,” said Clara. “Is he in now?”

“Might be. It’s summer break, but the professor often comes in to his studio when it’s quiet.”

“Professor Massey was wonderful,” Clara said as she hurried along the corridor. “A mentor for lots of the younger artists, including Peter.”

“And you?”

“Oh, no. I was a lost cause,” said Clara, laughing. “They didn’t really know what to do with me.”

They arrived at the studio and Myrna opened the door. The familiar scent of linseed, oil paints, and turpentine met them. As did the sight of an elderly man on a stool. His white hair was thinning and his face was pink. Despite his age he looked robust. A grain-fed, free-range artist. Not yet put out to pasture.

“Yes?” he said, getting off his chair.

“Professor Massey?”

His expression was quizzical but not alarmed or annoyed. He looked, Myrna thought, the sort of teacher who actually liked students.

“Yes?”

“I’m Clara Morrow. I understand my husband came by to see you—”

“Peter,” said the professor, smiling and coming toward her, his hand extended. “Yes. How are you? I’ve been following your success. Very exciting.”

He seemed to mean it, thought Myrna. He looked genuinely happy for Clara, and happy to see her.

“Did Peter tell you about it?” Clara asked.

“I read about it in the papers. You’re our greatest success. The student has outstripped the master.” Professor Massey studied the woman in front of him. “Probably because we were never really your masters, were we, Clara? Perhaps that was the key. You didn’t follow us. You didn’t follow anyone.” He turned to Myrna and confided, “Not easy to have a pupil who was genuinely creative. Hard to grade, harder still to corral. To our shame, we tried.”

He spoke with such humility, such awareness of his own limitations, that Myrna found herself drawn to him.

“I’m afraid I can’t remember any of your works,” he said.

“I’m not surprised,” said Clara with a smile. “Though they were heavily featured in the college’s Salon des Refusés.”

“You were part of that?” Professor Massey shook his head sadly. “A terrible thing to do to vulnerable young people. Humiliating. I am sorry. We took care that that never happened again, you know. Peter and I talked about it too.”

“Well, I survived,” said Clara.

“And flourished. Come in, sit down.” He walked across the studio without waiting for their answer and pointed toward a group of shabby chairs and a sofa whose middle sagged to the concrete floor. “Can I get you a drink?” He stepped toward an old refrigerator.

“You used to stock it with beer,” said Clara, following him. “We’d have parties in your studio after class on Fridays.”

“Yes. Can’t do that anymore. New administration. New rules. Lemonade?”

He offered them a beer.

Clara laughed and accepted.

“Actually, I’d prefer a lemonade if you have one,” said Myrna, who was parched after a morning trudging from gallery to gallery in sizzling Toronto.

Professor Massey handed her one, then turned back to Clara.

“What can I do for you?”

“Oh, much the same as for Peter,” she said, sitting on the sofa. Her knees immediately sprang up to her shoulders and a whitecap of beer landed on her lap.

She should have been prepared for that, she realized. It was the same sofa they’d sat on as students, all those years ago.

Professor Massey offered Myrna a chair, but she preferred to wander the studio, looking at the works. She wondered if they were all painted by the professor. They seemed good, but then Myrna had bought one of Clara’s
Warrior Uteruses,
so she was hardly a judge of art.

“Well,” said the professor, taking a chair across from Clara, “Peter and I talked mostly about the other students and faculty. He asked about some of his favorite teachers. Many of them gone now. Dead. A few demented, like poor Professor Norman, though I can’t say he was anyone’s favorite teacher. I like to think it was the paint fumes, but I think we all know he came in demented, and working here might not have helped. I myself have escaped detection by having a mediocre career and always agreeing with the administration.”

He laughed, then fell silent. There was a quality about the silence that made Myrna turn from the blank canvas on the easel to look at them.

“Why are you really here?” Professor Massey finally asked.

It was said softly, gently.

His blue eyes watched Clara and seemed to place a bubble around her. A shield. Where no harm would come to her. And Myrna understood why Professor Massey was a favorite teacher. And why he would be remembered for things far more important than “translating the visual world onto canvas.”

“Peter’s missing,” said Clara.

*   *   *

Their progress through the woods reminded Jean-Guy of something. Some old image.

Gamache was ahead of him, on what they all suspected was not really a horse. For the past fifteen minutes, Beauvoir had ducked branches as they snapped back into his face, at about the same time Gamache called, “Watch out.”

And when he wasn’t being bitch-slapped by nature, all Beauvoir could see was Bullwinkle’s ass swaying in front of him.

He was not yet having fun. Fortunately for Beauvoir, he hadn’t expected to.

“Can you see it?” he called ahead for the tenth time in as many minutes.

“Just enjoy the scenery and relax,” came the patient response. “We’ll get there eventually.”

“All I see is your horse’s ass,” said Jean-Guy, and when Gamache turned around with mock censure, he added, “sir.”

Beauvoir rocked back and forth on his own horse and couldn’t quite bring himself to admit he was beginning to enjoy himself. Though “enjoy” might be overstating it. He was finding the soft, rhythmic steps of the careful animal reassuring, calming. It reminded him of the rocking of monks as they prayed. Or a mother soothing a distressed child.

The forest was quiet, save for the clopping of the hooves and the birds as they got out of the way. The deeper they went, the more peaceful it became, the greener it became.

The heart chakra. A villager who ran a nearby yoga center once told him that.

“Green’s the color of the heart chakra,” she’d said, as though it was a fact.

He’d dismissed it then. And, for the record, for public consumption, he’d dismiss it now. But privately, in the deep green peace, he began to wonder.

Ahead he could see Gamache, swaying on his creature. A map of Paris sticking out of the saddlebag.

“Are we at the Louvre yet?” Jean-Guy asked.

“Be quiet, you silly man,” said Gamache, no longer bothering to turn around. “You know damn well we passed it a while back. We’re looking for la Tour Eiffel and beyond that, the 15th arrondissement.”

“
Oui, oui, zut alors
,” said Beauvoir, giving an exaggerated French nasal laugh. Hor, hor.