All That's Missing (36 page)

There was a long pause.

“The other thing is, I've been talking to that lady Miss Hasslebarger. You remember her?”

“Sure,” Arlo said. “The social worker from the hospital.”

“That's the one. She's worried about you. She says she thinks you're doing well there in Edgewater. In fact, she told me she thinks it might be a good idea for you to stay there for a while. 'Course, I told her that was out of the question unless you were happy with the idea. It would only be for a trial period, you understand. You wouldn't have to stay if you didn't want to.”

Arlo imagined more days of sitting around the table in Ida's kitchen and listening to her stories. He imagined Sunday drives in the country and doing homework in the tree house with Maywood. He went through the items on his list of reasons to stay in Edgewater versus reasons to stay in Marshboro. He thought about Sam and his other friends at school. And he thought about Poppo. What would happen if he said he didn't want to stay with Ida? He thought about Poppo giving up the opportunity to live near Eldon. That would be a mistake. Poppo needed to take that apartment. And Arlo needed to stay where he was. In Edgewater. With Ida. It felt like the right choice. It felt like what he was supposed to do.

“I think that sounds OK,” Arlo said. “I think we should try it. You know. For a while, at least.”

Arlo could hear the relief in Poppo's voice. “You don't mind if I tell Miss Hasslebarger, do you?”

“No,” Arlo said. “I don't mind.”

Ida came out of the kitchen with a fresh cup of tea. She was nodding her head up and down, so Arlo understood she had been listening on the other line.

“Ida says we'll come visit real soon,” Arlo said.

When he looked to Ida for approval, she gave him another nod.

“Good.” Poppo sounded like someone had lifted about a thousand pounds off his shoulders. “That reminds me,” he said. “Eldon told me there's a fishing pond near these apartments. We'll need to check that out when you're here.”

“I'd like that,” Arlo said.

“Me, too,” Poppo said.

They talked on for another ten minutes, until finally, Poppo said the nurse had to give him some medicine.

“I'm glad we got this worked out,” Poppo said.

“Me, too,” Arlo said.

“I'll see you soon, right?”

“You bet,” Arlo said. “Maybe next weekend.”

“Well, all right, then,” Poppo said.

“Love you,” Arlo said.

“I love you, too,” Poppo said.

The wood carving thrummed in Arlo's pocket. He tapped it three times for luck. He looked at the staircase and the living room and the door that led to the path to the river. He thought about Poppo and Eldon and about the future here with Ida and Steamboat and Maywood. He thought about being at home in a new place that was really an old place. A place where he was probably meant to be all along. He drew in a long, slow breath and let it out again. Then he stood and headed for the stairs.

The references in this book to the artist who painted the “famous lost painting” were inspired in part by the life of Henry Ossawa Tanner, who was born in Pittsburgh in 1859 and grew up to become the first African-American painter to be celebrated in both America and Europe.

Tanner's middle name, Ossawa, was a tribute to abolitionist John Brown and the town of Osawatomie, Kansas, where Brown led a raid against pro-slavery forces in 1856. Tanner's mother was born a slave in Virginia and escaped on the Underground Railroad. His father was born a free man in Pittsburgh and became a minister and later, a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Tanner decided he wanted to become an artist at the age of thirteen, when he went on a walk with his father in Fairmount Park in Philadelphia and observed a painter at work. He enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts when he was twenty-one and fell under the tutelage of renowned American artist Thomas Eakins.

After two years, Tanner left the Academy and struggled to achieve success as an artist. In 1888, he moved to Atlanta, where he hoped to establish a livelihood by running a photography studio and teaching at Clark College. He was unsuccessful, but he did manage to capture the attention of a prominent Methodist Episcopal bishop named Joseph Crane Hartzell who, along with his wife, arranged an exhibit of Tanner's work in Cincinnati. When none of the work sold, the Hartzells purchased all of Tanner's paintings themselves. Tanner used the money to fund a trip to Europe.

It was when Tanner arrived in Paris in 1891 that he found a home among fellow expatriates. He thrived in the absence of the racism he had experienced in America. He joined the American Art Students' Club of Paris and took classes at the Académie Julian. During the summers of 1892 and 1893, Tanner fell ill and was forced to return to America. It was during this time that he painted what was to become one of his most famous works,
The Banjo Lesson.
That canvas was accepted into the Paris Salon of 1894. Another painting,
Daniel in the Lions' Den,
won an honorable mention in the Paris Salon of 1896 and a silver medal at the Universal Exposition in Paris in 1900.

Tanner spent the remainder of his life in France, dividing his time between Paris and a farm near Étaples, in Normandy. In 1899, he married Jessie McCauley Olssen, a Swedish opera student. They had one son, named Jesse. Though Tanner said he maintained great respect for America, he did not feel he could be a successful artist if he had to spend a lot of time fighting racism.

In 1923, Tanner received France's highest honor when he was made an honorary Chevalier of the Order of the Legion of Honor. In 1927, he became the first African American to be named a full academician of the National Academy of Design.

Tanner's painting
Sand Dunes at Sunset, Atlantic City
was acquired during the Clinton Administration by the White House Foundation and is the first painting by an African-American artist to enter the White House's permanent collection. It hangs in the Green Room.

Tanner's work was the subject of an exhibition
Henry Ossawa Tanner: Modern Spirit,
which was organized by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and presented in 2012. The exhibit also appeared at the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.

While Solomon Brokenberry in
All That's Missing
is a figure of my imagination, I relied upon many of the facts of Tanner's life in order to construct a plausible story.

SOURCES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

Hartigan, Lynda Roscoe.
Sharing Traditions: Five Black Artists in Nineteenth-Century America.
Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985.

Marley, Anna O., ed.
Henry Ossawa Tanner: Modern Spirit.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.

Mathews, Marcia M.
Henry Ossawa Tanner, American Artist.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969.

Ringgold, Faith.
Henry Ossawa Tanner: His Boyhood Dream Comes True.
Pierpont, NH: Bunker Hill, 2011.

Writing a novel is a daunting proposition, but no less daunting is the thought of thanking all those people who helped along the way. Unfortunately, there is not space to name them all.

Offering moral support were the good people at the Kanawha County Public Library, the West Virginia Library Commission, Read Aloud West Virginia, the West Virginia Commission on the Arts, and the
Sunday Gazette-Mail.
Thanks also to Colleen Anderson, Ancilla Bickley, Denise Giardina, Kate Long, Ann Pancake, Arla Ralston, Mary Kay Bond, Susan Turnbull, Carol Campbell, Jeri Matheney, and Cindy Miller.

Thanks to all my Vermont College mentors and friends — especially Jane Resh Thomas, Liza Ketchum, Kathi Appelt, Leda Schubert and Bethany Hegedus, all of whom read early drafts of this novel. Thanks also to Ellen Levine (now sadly missed) and Carolyn Coman, workshop leaders who asked just the right questions, and to advisors Phyllis Root and Louise Hawes. Thanks to my writing group — Jane Buchanan, Debby Edwardson, Nancy Thalia Reynolds, and Maura Stokes for sage advice. Thanks to fellow Wild Things (Vermont College Class of Winter 2005) for team spirit. And, special shout-outs go to Tami Lewis Brown, Nicole Griffin, Helen Hemphill, and Deborah Wiles for positive energy and encouragement.

Thanks to Straton Beamer — local natural-history expert and gardener extraordinaire — and to the knowledgeable staff at the Rappahannock River Valley National Wildlife Refuge for answering questions about ospreys and eagles. Also thanks to the people at Charleston Area Medical Center for answering questions about social workers.

This novel would never have been completed without the quiet space generously offered by Bailey & Glasser, LLP.

I owe a
huge
debt of gratitude to patient and long-suffering editor Hilary Breed Van Dusen, who saw possibilities in the manuscript I first submitted in the spring of 2011, who urged me on with insightful editorial letters, and who never complained about my obsessive revising (though she did once threaten to come to my house and grab the manuscript out of my hands if I failed to hit the
SEND
button by Thursday). Thank you, Hilary! Thanks also to Miriam Newman for valuable editorial insight and comments.

Thanks to everyone at Candlewick for making the world of children's books the most glorious space on earth and, unbelievably, for allowing me to be a part of it.

Finally, thanks to Marshall, Jenn, Jennifer, Mike, and Chana for understanding all those times when I was revising and unwilling to carry my laptop across the river in a canoe. And to my husband, Rick, there are not words to express my gratitude. Twenty years ago, I told you I wanted to write a novel and you never stopped believing I would.