The Stolen Canvas (2 page)

Kate crossed her arms over her green jacket and regarded Vanessa with a mix of concern and pride. Notoriously allergic to cats, she had obviously chosen to view the whole maternal scene from a safe distance. Ironically, and luckily for the kittens, her daughter, Vanessa, had recently started volunteering at the animal shelter.

“We had to give them Pedialyte just like they were human babies,” Vanessa said importantly. She leaned over the basket protectively, her long dark hair draping her oval face. “They were so cold; the vet said they could easily dehydrate. We had to warm them up first before we could try to feed them. Feeding a chilled kitten can be fatal, you know.”

Peggy drew a fluffy golden kitten from the basket and rubbed the small body against her face. “But where is the mother?”

Stella Brickson did not rise but craned her long neck to see the squirming feline mass. “There must be four of them. No. Five!”

“The mother’s feral. She abandoned them,” Mary Beth said matter-of-factly. “We’re not sure how long they were left on their own, but they were pretty weak when we hauled them out. Poor little things. But so far so good. We only lost one. Just yesterday.” At this last bit of information, her brown eyes grew soft.

The largest kitten had tufts of ginger and black fur in a ragged pattern. Its tiny face was gold but for a black patch over its left eye like a budding pirate. Two of the kittens were gray, and one had inherited color genes of every description. The fattest was gold with oddly crooked stripes on its tail and ears.

Alice stroked the fur of the little pirate. “Oh, Annie, aren’t they the cutest things you ever saw? I’d love to have this one when it’s big enough. Is it a boy or a girl?”

Mary Beth turned to Vanessa who blushed slightly and responded, “That one’s a boy. See, you can tell by the …”

“Never mind,” said Kate. “We’ll take your word for it.”

You’re not going to keep them all, are you, Mary Beth?” Alice asked, exploring the small tummy with a perplexed grin.

“No, that I can promise you. Another week or so, and I’ll be looking for good homes for every one of them. But they’ll still need a lot of care.” Mary Beth tucked the blue blanket around the kittens, which had been carefully returned to the basket. Her fingers moved gently near a listless black kitten smaller than all the others. “Not sure Blackie here is going to make it. It’s hard to get enough formula into her. Lord knows she needs it more than all of them, but she’s too weak to fight for her supper.”

“We should get them back by the stove,” Vanessa said, taking hold of one end of the basket. “Miss Calloway showed me what to do.”

Carla Calloway, a single woman in her fifties, had recently purchased the property known as South Shore and transformed it into a shelter. Stony Point gossip held that she had pretty much used up her considerable fortune to rescue abandoned animals of the region.

“In between shouting orders, no doubt,” Kate said with a sardonic expression. “Carla Callous is lucky you haven’t quit like the others. Nobody can take her critical tongue for long.”

“Yeah,” Vanessa said with a shrug. “But the animals are so cool—and she’s good with them. You guys are still going to have the benefit show for the shelter, aren’t you?” The teenager cast hopeful glances around the room of needlecrafters.

“We said we would,” Mary Beth said staunchly.

“You’ll get no thanks for it, mind you,” Stella Brickson intoned with an unrestrained
hmph!
“She’s as prickly as a riled porcupine.”

Annie pondered Stella’s remark and wondered what made Carla Calloway prefer the company of animals—if indeed that was true of the woman she had yet to meet. Personality aside, her care of Stony Point’s abandoned animals had made a significant contribution to the community’s well being. “She’s providing a wonderful service. We have to applaud that,” Annie offered diffidently.

Nods and sighs ensued, indicating willingness—however reluctant—to raise funds to augment the dwindling resources of the shelter’s founder.

Annie looked down at the tiny black kitten, its head weakly snuggled in the soft blanket. The filmy eyes seemed to meet hers briefly, and then slowly close. “Poor little thing,” she whispered. She felt a strange urge to pray for the tiny black runt with no mother.

At length, Mary Beth cleared her throat. “Well, then, we’ve had enough
Animal Planet
for today. Now, since we’ve committed ourselves to the benefit auction, we’d better not waste any more time.”

But Annie smiled to see that Mary Beth could not resist one final fond look at the basket as Vanessa carried it through the door.

2

“Just get rid of all this junk now before the lease runs out—unless you want to pay another month’s rent on your mom’s place!” Jem Carson glowered as he spoke, his swarthy face close to hers in the weak lamplight. His dark eyes roamed the tiny apartment with quick, dismissive glances.

Tara wanted to tell him to go, but it was never smart to get Jem riled up. Besides, she was just so tired. “I will. I will. Just give me a minute. She was my mother, you know.” She hadn’t expected to feel any great sorrow upon learning of her mother’s death. Now, tears gathered at the corners of her eyes and threatened to spill over.

Her mother had raised her in a series of tawdry apartments on Boston’s lower east side. Tara remembered the day-care centers and later the public schools. She remembered her mother lying in the twin bed with the torn pink dust ruffle, too tired or sick or sad to fix breakfast. Later she would go to work and return with hamburgers or Chinese takeout, which they would eat in front of the ancient television set. By the time she was in high school, Tara knew her mother no longer worked. Each month she would open a long white envelope, and there would be money for groceries.

The turbulent teen years brought more misery, more mistakes. She’d left home at 16, deciding she wouldn’t look back. There must be something better in life, and she would find it.

Tara pulled clothing from drawers, stuffing them in a box. She tried to pack things up without looking at them, to pretend none of it mattered. She didn’t want to recall the sad lullabies, the fits of depression, the angry words, the tears, the longing.
Why is Mother so sad? Why doesn’t she love me?

Where had the years gone? She was nearing 30 years of age and had nothing to show for her life. No husband, no children, and since November, no job. She’d moved around New England in search of better-paying work, but with only a GED in place of a high school diploma, she was left with few options. And lately she’d found being on her feet for hours at a time exhausting.

Would she end up like her mother—dead at fifty of heart complications or too many pills? She shuddered and dumped a variety of bottles and magazines into a plastic tub.

She watched Jem plunk himself down in a faded armchair and switch on a football game on television. They’d met in Portland along the wharf where he’d been fishing. She liked to walk along the waterfront, to watch the boats bobbing in the water like brave little sailors ready to launch their next great adventure.

“I grew up in a place like this,” he’d said, peering over her shoulder. And that afternoon he began to describe a little place farther north along the Maine coast where there were lighthouses and lobster boats, town socials, and picnics on green lawns. Buried inside that burly, wild exterior was someone sweet, almost tender.

Did he still love her? What lay between them now seemed little more than habit or convenience. Mostly, he just took off for weeks at a time on some new venture that he was sure would make him rich and never did.

Tara opened the drawer of her mother’s scarred desk. The thin cushion covering the chair slipped as she scooted closer. Her mother had been raised in Boston by parents who boarded their only daughter at expensive schools in winter and shipped her off to relatives in summer. When her father died suddenly, leaving nothing but an astounding trail of debt, Tara’s mother had lived a year with a widowed aunt before running away with an Australian sailor.

Tara couldn’t remember the man who later became her father. He died three weeks before she was born—or so she was told. Her mother refused to talk about him and became eerily silent on the subject of her grandparents. Whoever these people in her mother’s past were, they’d taken her mother with them—along with any hope for happiness or love in her short, sad life.

Tara swallowed hard. She felt bitterness well up like bile inside her. Life was a cruel joke played on the unsuspecting.

Tara’s fingers traced broodingly over the little knobs on the desk drawer. She had been angry when she left home, determined to get something better out of life. But as time passed, her thoughts returned to those sketchy, difficult years, and the mother she had needed so much. If she had been a better child, would her mother have been happier? Would she have loved her?

She paused, arrested by the realization that during the last few years her mother had seemed more peaceful. Maybe she’d finally found relief in one of the many prescriptions that were supposed to relieve her depression.

“Get a move on!” Jem exclaimed. “I’m not hanging around here much longer.” He got up and walked a few angry paces toward her. Then, hearing the roar of some exciting play, he went back to the chair and the football game.

“All right! All right!” Tara frowned and let her eyes linger briefly on the man in the chair. He was still young, but his beautiful black hair was thinning. He hadn’t shaved and had the beginnings of a paunch. He had seemed so dashing, so confident—her knight in shining armor riding a great black horse. (A white one would have been too much to hope for.) Life would be different, and she had embraced the sensation of being loved.

What did Jem see when he looked at her now? She raised her eyes to the filmy mirror on an adjacent wall of her mother’s studio apartment. When had she grown so thin? The curly hair clouding her shoulders looked dull and lifeless, her eyes enormous. They were brown. She’d always wished they could be blue—blue as the ocean.

“I can see the world inside them.” Jem had said that when they met along the waterfront—could it have been a year ago? The image in the mirror frightened her suddenly. She felt ugly and alone! As alone as her dead mother had been. What if Jem left her too, this time for good?

She tore her eyes away and pulled open the desk drawer. Just a few more things to go through. Trembling, she lifted a small packet of letters tied with a pink ribbon. Her mother had loved all shades of pink from shell to raspberry. Was this little bundle a sentimental record of some lost lover? Or could these be letters from the man who’d died before his little girl was born? Her eyes darted left and right; she felt like an intruder.

Dear Claire,

I’m so glad to hear from you after so many years. I am old now, but one does not forget the important things, or the people who have shared her life in some way.

You would love to see how spring has come to the bleak landscape around Grey Gables. Where once snow lay thick on the lawn and brittle branches streaked a dull sky, all is green and growing. The ocean has come to life again. The ice has broken up and is rushing away, chased by warm, westerly winds. Little green shoots and tiny flowers jump up everywhere. One can see that God, who is even older than I am, has not forgotten the important things either. In spite of our winter souls, he has sent spring once more.

I’m sorry you have not been well. You must take care of your health, and above all, remember that you are not forgotten.

It was handwritten on pale blue paper and dated April 4, 2009. The lines were straight, but the letters slightly wavy as though formed by an unsteady hand. The words sounded like poetry. She read down to the final line; it was signed, “Elizabeth Holden.”

Who was Elizabeth Holden, and why had her mother written to her? Tara drew out another blue envelope, opened it and read a letter dated that same year but four months later:

Dear Claire,

I was sorry to read you have been ill and that things are not going well. You sounded very upset in your last letter. That grieves me very much. There are good facilities in Portland where you can get help, but I hope you know that you are welcome here at Grey Gables.

The rose bushes are glorious. New blooms appear every day, and I drink in their fragrance coming through the open windows. You would especially like the pink ones that grow along the path leading to the road. I gave my neighbor a great bouquet for a wedding party she was attending today.

I pray for you every day and for Tara. I’m sorry she cannot come more often to see you. Write to me soon and tell me all your news.

This one was signed, “Love, Elizabeth Holden.” Tara stared at her name on the page. Whoever Elizabeth Holden was, she not only knew her mother but her as well.
I pray for you every day and for Tara
. Was this some relative her mother never talked about, even as she never spoke of her father or the grandparents Tara had never known? Tara read and reread the letter, the commiseration over a neglectful daughter.
I’m sorry she cannot come more often to see you.

A wave of guilt swept over Tara. It had been wrong to stay away so long. She should have spent more than a few hours on Christmas day with the mother who, though she may not have loved her, had given her life. Claire Andrews had died alone, not having seen her daughter for months on end. No one had come to her aid, only a kindly woman who once knew her and hadn’t forgotten—a woman who wrote letters about roses and ocean breezes and had been gracious enough to invite her mother into her home—an idyllic sounding place … Grey Gables.

Tara rifled through more letters, each similar in tone, containing uplifting thoughts, expressing concern, giving assurances of prayer, along with little asides about the life of an elderly woman in a house where ocean breezes wafted through the windows … .
I can still see well enough to work my needle. I hope you like this cushion cover I made for you. I stitched one like this for my daughter many years ago; perhaps it will remind you of your own child.
And the signature …
Love
.

Tara looked down. The cushion had slipped off the chair and fallen to the threadbare carpet. She stared at the beautifully worked design that featured a cradle near an open window. No face could be seen, but inside it a baby must be asleep. On a table next to the cradle, pink roses flourished in a crystal vase. Filmy wind-swept curtains revealed a cobalt blue ocean on which a distant white sail glinted beneath a summer sky.

She imagined her mother holding that cushion and looking into the cradle. Did she see small curved lips and wide trusting eyes beneath a cap of curly hair? She swallowed. Did she think of her? What had she done to so disappoint her mother? What could she have done to make her mother love her? Well, it hardly mattered now.

Jem pulled himself out of the chair and strode over to her. “Pack it up, and let’s get out of here!” He released a long disgusted sigh. “What are you doing now?”

His words were slurred, and she realized that he was slightly drunk. He’d had a couple of beers in the car on the way and another while he watched the football game. “It’s these letters my mother saved,” Tara stammered, drawing her shoulders in. It was a reflex whenever Jem had been drinking. He was as likely to give her a shove as a kiss, especially when he got impatient. “And this pillow. It’s beautiful, and it’s got initials in the corner. See, E.H—Elizabeth Holden … like the signature on these letters.”

“Lot of sentimental claptrap.” He grabbed the pillow from her hand and seemed about to fling it across the room. Suddenly he stopped. “Hey! Wait a minute. I know that name.”

He snapped the letter from her hand. Knitting dark brows together, he studied it first, and then the handworked cushion. “Yeah. That’s the old lady from Stony Point! Well, can you beat that? Imagine your mother knowing Mrs. Holden, the grand lady of Grey Gables.”

He grabbed up the little stack of letters and the cushion, and strode back to the easy chair. He chewed the inside of his cheek as he poured over the letters with the cushion on his lap. He began stroking his left jaw, a gesture that meant he was planning something, and
that
meant trouble.

She got up, pushed a carton to the front door with the side of her foot, wishing she hadn’t come. And yet, she was glad she’d seen the letters—there was comfort in them. Her mother had died alone in a stuffy apartment, but she had known the hand of love in her final years … even if it was just an old woman, miles away. Elizabeth Holden had known her and had not forgotten.
I pray for you … and for Tara
.

“Yeah, it just might work,” Jem was mumbling, more to himself than to her. “This could be just the luck I need.” He continued to rub his long, stubbly jaw as he refolded the letters. “Here, tie these back up and find something to put this pillow in. And be careful with it.”

Tara felt a chill in spite of the airless heat in her mother’s apartment. She tucked her arms into her old blue sweater. “Jem, what are you talking about?”

“It’s J.C.! I’ve told you a million times. Not ‘Jem’ or that ridiculous ‘Jeremiah.’ Can’t you get it right?” He put his fist down on the arm of the chair, bobbing his head in frustration. A strand of black hair fell over his forehead. “Jeremiah Carson was a dumb kid cutting traps on the dock, falling over his big stupid feet while his puny brother followed him around like a lost puppy dog.”

“Whatever,” she said, letting go a long sigh. Pretentious initials aside, he was still the overgrown little boy with grand ideas that never came to anything. Ah, she knew how to pick them.

“Hold onto your hat, Tara my girl. We’re going back to Stony Point. When those snooty townsfolk ticked me off, I said I wouldn’t go back …” He gave her a rare kiss on her forehead and looked down at the handworked pillow. “Now there’s something in that old backwater town that just might be worth the trip.”

Perhaps the place held some good memories for him. A place where pink roses bloomed, and where one could look out on the ocean. Her mother had seen such a world.

“People in these parts are dying to buy up Mrs. Holden’s needlework. I saw one in the Brown Library the other day—and a big write-up about the artist. And to think I knew her as a kid. Me and Wally used to do stuff for her at that big house on Ocean Drive.”

Tara dropped down on the couch across from him. Jem was talking about picking up and leaving again. She was desperately tired. “Je …” She caught herself. “J.C., you know I haven’t been feeling well lately. I can’t …”