Take care,
Jack
I look up at my father. I don’t know what to say. It’s like the world has flipped upside down.
“I had no idea,” I say quietly.
All these years, I have blamed myself for ruining Jack’s life. I never knew that his father was so awful to his mother and him.
Now I envision Jack as a husband and a father. I imagine his mother in her new gallery, happily remarried. My chest fills with light—it is a weightless, peaceful feeling that I haven’t felt in far, far too long.
“Thank you, Dad,” I say, hugging him. It seems that all this time that I have been trying to help my father, my father has been trying to help me. “Thank you for finding Jack.”
“There’s something else you need to know,” he says. “Come with me.”
My mother’s studio is just how we both have left it—messy and dusty, full of color and light.
“Your mother was so happy here,” my father says, looking around.
I nod. “It was her favorite place.”
“No.” My father’s voice is suddenly firm. “That’s what I want you to understand. Thiswasn’ther favorite place. She loved it, and she was very happy here, but this was not her favorite place. Your mother loved painting, but it wasn’t her great passion.”
“Of course it was,” I say, baffled. “She was an artist.”
“She was ateacher,” my father says. He doesn’t raise his voice, but it seems to echo in the studio. “Teaching was what your mother truly loved to do. She was an exceptionally talented artist. We all know that. She poured her emotions into her work, and somehow, we felt those emotions deeply when we viewed her paintings. Thatwas one of her gifts. But, Lucy, it wasn’t her only gift—and it certainly wasn’t the one that truly mattered to her.”
He looks down at the paint-splattered floor. “When I met your mother,” he continues slowly, “I thought she was the most remarkable woman I’d ever known. She was so interesting and creative and beautiful… and complicated. So very complicated. She’d made something of a name for herself in the art world, but her success didn’t seem to bring her much joy. She spent her days alone in her studio. Not this studio, of course. She had a little studio in the city when we met. She was unique. But also… solitary.”
He gives a funny little chuckle of the sort that I haven’t heard from him in ages. “And me? I was as ordinary as they come. I think she found my ordinariness charming, somehow, if you can believe it.”
“I can believe it,” I say, because I can. My entire childhood, I witnessed how charmed my mother was by my father, by his devotion and his affection and his care. She loved him with every part of herself. What I have more trouble believing is that my mother had ever been solitary. I can only picture her surrounded by friends, the people of Bantom Bay whom she loved and who loved her. I think of her calendar, so full with her teaching schedule and lunches and walks and lectures and clubs.
“It was after we were married and moved here,” my father tells me, “that your mother began teaching. Andthat’swhen she truly seemed to blossom. She loved sharing her love of art with others… being a part of a community… feeling as though she gave back to the universe as much as she had received. I don’t have that sort of goodness, not even a fraction of it, but I admired it so much.
“So her favorite place really wasn’tthisstudio. It was the studio in the Bantom Bay Community Center. What she did there—the connections she made with people, the way she brought them joy—meant far more to her than any painting she made with her own hands. It was only when she started working there that she felt like her gift really mattered, likeshereally mattered. What she did for the people who took her classes, the way she listened to them and guided them and used her gift to give them a sense of beauty and purpose in their lives—thatwas magical. Your mother knew that it was never her gift for painting that was important. Thepeoplewere important. The connections.”
It is the most my dad has said since I’ve been home. It might, in fact, be the most I have ever heard him say.
I think about how satisfied I have been over the years, creating gardens for my many clients, and how that satisfaction feels quiet and small compared to the happiness that I have felt since I started working at the Oceanview Home. The people. The connections. I feel as though a piece of me has been missing all along, and now I have found it—or, perhaps, returned to it. My life in the past three weeks has been fuller than the previous ten years combined. Everything is messier, perhaps. Scarier. But so much more fulfilling and joyful, too.
“The work that you’ve done at the Oceanview Home,” my father goes on. “The way you care about those residents and the way they obviously care for you… your mother would besovery proud of you. As I am.”
“Well,” I say a few minutes later, once we’ve cleared our throats and dried our eyes and stepped away from our embrace. “If this studio really wasn’t Mom’s favorite place, maybe it’s time to clear it out.”
I see the fear that passes over my father’s face, and I press on anyway.
“She’s not here, Dad,” I say gently. “She’s not in these things. And the community center needs art supplies. Badly. I was there last week.”
I can see my father considering my words. He looks around, taking in the sight of all of my mother’s tools and paints with a new thoughtfulness.
“I really think Mom would want us to give everything to the center,” I tell him. “And then, when this space is cleared out, I think you should use it as your workshop. Get your tools out of the pantry. I think Mom would have wanted that, too.”
My father looks at me, surprised. After a beat, he turns slowly and walks toward the door.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“To find boxes for all of this stuff,” he says over his shoulder. “No time like the present.”
