All Things Consoled by Elizabeth Hay

Author:Elizabeth Hay
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 2018-09-17T16:00:00+00:00

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One afternoon in May, I arrived at their rooms to see an Arctic painting of my mother’s taken down off the wall and placed on her worktable. My father was trying to get her to paint it over. He had the original photo of Young Al Fishing in his hands, the three-by-three-inch black-and-white snapshot. “I think she should take this photo and paint it on this canvas. I’ve drawn in where I think Al should be and she can do the rest. She needs something to do! I want her to work on something—tinker and fiddle with it.”

Mom smiled and laughed and said it was a good idea. She was humouring the testy, driven teacher.

Later, by ourselves in the courtyard garden, I asked her if she was all right with what he was doing to her painting.

“No! But he needs something to do. It doesn’t matter. Really, it doesn’t matter. The painting can be painted over. It doesn’t matter a hoot.”

Then, a bit later, “I want it to be over.”

“Your life?”

“Yes.”

Yet we were very content to be sitting side by side on the bench beside the pool of water with the little waterfall. A warm day and she looked surpassingly beautiful. She had on lipstick and was wearing blue.

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