The Memory Painter: A Novel (10 page)

“
Danke
. How’s the painting going?”

Bryan thought of Diana’s portrait drying in his studio and wondered what his father would think if he could see it. “It’s going,” he said cryptically.

Doc held up an enormous string of sprouts. “Oh, these are beauties.” He placed them in his basket. “Did you sell all your paintings?”

Bryan shook his head. “No clue.” Derek and Penelope communicated with him by e-mail, and he hadn’t checked his in ages.

“Well, I know you sold at least one.”

Bryan stopped digging. “Dad, I told you guys not to buy anything. You’re welcome to it for free.”

“Your mother wanted to. She fell in love with that Versailles painting.”

Now that was interesting. But of course she would. The Versailles painting had been done after he remembered Louis Le Vau’s life, the first architect to Louis XIV, King of France. A brilliant innovator, Le Vau’s expertise in visual grandeur had left an everlasting mark on the country. During Louis XIV’s long and prosperous reign, Le Vau envisioned the Vaux-le-Vicomte château and La Salpêtrière hospital, rebuilt the Louvre, designed the Collège des Quatre Nations, and transformed Versailles into the magnificent palace it is today.

Bryan had dreamed Le Vau’s life when he was seventeen—the year before he had left home. The next morning he had come downstairs for breakfast and hadn’t said a word, trying to assimilate the memories. His mother had taken offense at his silence, which had resulted in their worst fight ever. In his anger, Bryan had struggled to speak in English. He could still remember the moment when he glared at her and recognized the spirit of Françoise d’Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon, Louis XIV’s second wife. The most educated woman in court and the widow of a renowned poet, she had caught King Louis’s eye and replaced his then-mistress. When the queen died, Louis married her in secret and she wielded great influence over her husband. Although she was never officially titled, she liked to have a hand in all things pertaining to the crown, and Le Vau resented her involvement in his work. Bryan had thought then how fitting that his mother had once been a virtual queen, and he was not surprised to hear that she had a connection to the Versailles painting now.

Doc gave a rueful smile. “She said she wants to redecorate the living room so she can hang it there. Thanks a lot.”

“Anytime.” Bryan dug up more potatoes. The bucket was almost full. He decided to take the plunge. “I just got asked to be best man in a friend’s wedding.”

Doc looked up. “Really? Best man?”

Bryan kept his face averted, afraid that his father would see the lie. “Another painter from my days in Europe…” he explained. “Anyway, I was wondering what does a best man do? Have you ever been one?” Bryan stole a glance at his father and immediately felt guilty when he saw the sadness in his face.

“Yeah, once. An old buddy of mine who’s no longer around.”

Bryan kept digging, trying to sound casual. He had to maneuver this just right to get what he wanted. “What do you mean not around?”

A long moment passed. Bryan wasn’t sure if his dad would answer. “He and his wife passed away before you were born.”

“That’s horrible. How did they die? Car accident?” Bryan cringed inside but he knew he couldn’t stop now.

“No, no. Terrible accident at work, some kind of gas explosion. I don’t know the details. It’s still hard to believe they’re gone.”

“How come you’ve never talked about them before?”

“It’s complicated. Your mother knew them too.”

Damn right it’s complicated
, he thought. But Bryan held back.

“I still have their things in storage at the restaurant. Guess it’s about time to get rid of it all.”

Bryan dropped his shovel in astonishment and blurted out. “You have their things?” He quickly picked the shovel back up again, praying his father wouldn’t notice his odd reaction.

But Doc seemed distracted. He looked around as if worried Barbara might hear. “Mike and I were roommates before he and Diana got engaged. I had a key to their apartment. After they died, the landlord was going to throw everything away—Mike didn’t have any family, and Diana’s parents were getting on and couldn’t fly out to handle it all. They didn’t want anything and I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away, so I stored it.”

He’d kept their things. Bryan’s heart leapt, and he fought back the urge to embrace his father. Without a doubt he knew he had chosen to be his son. Michael’s best friend and protector—Doc had subconsciously known what to do.

“I don’t know why I kept it all as long as I did. I was about to clear it out last year, just get rid of it. Lou Lou’s been all over my case to turn the storage room into her office. Promised I’d start working on it soon, but my back still isn’t a hundred percent.”

Bryan had forgotten that his father had injured his back on a hiking trip. Doc had been a serious hiker all his life, tackled just about every ambitious trail in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico and never had hurt himself. Ever. What were the odds?

Bryan hurried to offer up his help. “I can clean out the storage room for you.” Doc’s eyes grew so round that Bryan couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m serious. You shouldn’t be lifting anything yet and I have the time.” Even as he said it, Bryan felt a little ashamed at his selfish motives—he could tell that his father was touched by the offer.

“You sure? It’s over two dozen boxes covered in dust and Lord knows what else.”

Bryan held back his excitement. “It’ll give me a little break from the studio. I need it.”

Doc reached into his pocket. “Here’s my keys. I’ve got another set.” He hesitated. “Just don’t tell your mother about it.”

As if on cue, they heard her car pull into the drive. Bryan pocketed the keys and handed over the potato bucket. “I’ll go say hi.” He couldn’t avoid her forever.

*   *   *

Barbara came in the back door carrying several bags. “Bryan? You here?” She turned the corner and saw him at the kitchen sink washing his hands. “This is a surprise. I thought you were avoiding us.”

Bryan grimaced to himself. “Sorry, I’ve been meaning to call you back.” He wiped his hands on the nearest towel and turned around. “It’s been a crazy week.”

Barbara busied herself putting groceries away. “Well, we came to your art opening. You weren’t there.”

Bryan watched his mother whiz around the kitchen like a dynamo.
She looked … good.
He cringed at the thought but could see why Michael had attempted to date her. Barbara was an attractive woman. Now approaching sixty, she took excellent care of herself and looked at least ten years younger.

But she was also a difficult person—too caught up in her own head, cross-examining everything all the time. It was wearying. Throughout his childhood she had been obsessed with curing him and had shipped him off to institution after institution, allowing psychiatrists, neuroscientists, and sleep therapists to become his surrogate parents. The one person he had yearned for had rarely been there, and when she was, she was always in doctor mode, studying him and quizzing him. Over time, his longing had turned to anger and then the anger had faded to distance, until they didn’t even know how to have a conversation anymore. A mother was supposed to know her child better than anyone and she didn’t know him at all.

Now that he was older, he could look back on her actions with a glimmer of understanding, though the child in him still hadn’t forgiven her. When he had returned to Boston he had thought they could try again, maybe even start over. But now he had Michael’s memories to contend with. And they definitely didn’t help.

Barbara busied herself by chopping salad ingredients. “I found the most amazing antique the other day,” she said, motioning to the bag by the door. On weekends she rummaged around flea markets with her girlfriends, looking for antiques. It was a longtime hobby.

Bryan was not surprised that she didn’t comment on his paintings. She hated to compliment or give praise; the tendency was not in her nature. Still, it stung a little. If Doc hadn’t mentioned that she had fallen in love with the Versailles, Bryan wouldn’t have known she’d bought it. She was such a different person with his father. Bryan had always felt like the odd one out, despite the dreams, and now it made sense.

“Something funny?”

Bryan snapped back to the present. “Sorry, what?”

“You had this little smile.”

“That not allowed?”

Barbara ignored his remark and went to work peeling a carrot. “Are you all settled in? I’d love to see the new place.”

“It’s just a loft where I work. There’s nothing to see.”

“You could at least have us over for dinner. You live like a hermit.”

Bryan crossed his arms. “Because I paint.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to keep yourself isolated. It’s not healthy.”

“Ah Jesus, here we go.”

She turned around and put her hands on her hips. “Don’t get defensive. I just worry about you. You look like hell. I’ve seen street bums who dress better. Are you even eating?”

Bryan stole the carrot from her cutting board and took a big bite to make a point. Barbara kept talking. He tuned her out and wandered over to the counter by the back door and peeked inside the bag from the flea market. What he saw inside flabbergasted him. He carefully lifted the object out and set it on the counter. “You bought a clock?”

“Yes. Don’t change the subject. Do you see what I’m trying to say?”

“Oh, I see what you’re trying to say, Barbara. I just don’t have to agree with it.”

The color drained from Barbara’s face, and Bryan realized he had just spoken to her as Michael. It was something he had said to her verbatim during their last fight.

“The way you said my name just now…” she was clearly battling a ghost. “Since when am I Barbara? I thought my title was Mom.”

Bryan turned back to the clock and began to fiddle with it. Neither spoke for several minutes.

“It doesn’t work,” she announced unnecessarily. “But it was so beautiful I had to buy it. The man said it was French and very old.”

Bryan opened the back to look inside at the mechanism that made it tick. “It is old, but it’s not French. It’s Dutch.”

“How do you know that?”

Because I built it in the seventeenth century.
How the hell his mother found it at a flea market was beyond him. But she had done that all his life: found objects he could identify from his past. It was one of her talents.

In this particular lifetime, Bryan had been Christiaan Huygens. His father, Constantijn, was a poet and composer—friend to Descartes, Rembrandt, and many others. Christiaan’s mother had died when he was eleven after giving birth to his sister, and his father had never recovered from the loss. Constantijn hadn’t known how to relate to his children, and when Descartes recognized Christiaan’s budding genius, he suggested that Christiaan be sent to school in Leiden.

Christiaan excelled and he soon surpassed his teachers. He wrote the first book on probability theory and hypothesized a law of motion, which Isaac Newton would later reformulate. His quest to understand mechanics led him into every field … mathematics, physics, astronomy. He proposed that light was made of waves and discovered centrifugal force. A master in optics, he also created a refracting telescope, which he used to speculate that Saturn had rings and to detect its first moon, Titan.

But Christiaan’s greatest passion was time. And when he designed the pendulum clock, the most precise timekeeper of its day, he helped the world to capture it.

Christiaan had sent the clock that Bryan was holding to his father as a gift just before the old man died. Bryan still couldn’t believe that Barbara had found it. Had she been Constantijn?
No … she couldn’t be
. He forced himself to focus and he stared deep into her eyes, actively seeking the recognition.

Attempting to place a person in the past was something he generally tried to avoid, but in moments like these he couldn’t resist the impulse. He had learned how to recognize someone’s spirit by honing his thoughts in on them and connecting with them through their eyes. On a rare occasion a recognition would come without his trying, especially if he was angry or upset, but usually it took immense concentration. Barbara stared back at him with her eyebrows raised, clearly baffled by the silent exchange.

And then he saw it—Constantijn’s spirit shimmering in her eyes. Bryan turned away, disconcerted. Rarely did he recognize a soul that had crossed over to the opposite sex. This was also the first time he had envisioned his mother as a man and the idea felt alien to him. But still, to recognize Constantijn within her, and as he held Christiaan’s clock … His anger melted, and he swallowed the lump in his throat. “If you’d like, I can fix it for you.”

“That’s right, I forgot you went through a watchmaking phase.” She shook her head at the memory. “I’ll never forget when I came home and found you with all our clocks and wristwatches in pieces on the table.”

Bryan remembered it too. That had been right after he had recalled Christiaan’s life. He had rebuilt clocks every day for months, explaining it away as a new hobby. And he hid his new fluency in Dutch and French—although he did allow himself to get As in math from then on out.

He tried to make a joke of it. “Hey, I put them back together.”

“That’s true.”

They smiled at each other as Bryan placed the clock back in her flea market bag.

Barbara asked, “Are you going to stay for dinner?”

“Sorry. I’ve got plans.” He saw her disappointment and added, “We’ll do it soon, though. Promise.”

“At least have some of your birthday cake. Your father’s been eating it all.”

“That’s okay, thanks.” He picked up the bag and left before she could say anything else that might get him to stay.

*   *   *

Bryan drove down the street, parked his car, and pulled out the clock. He sat for a long time hugging it to him, filled with a yearning that always came when he handled something that had once been his. He closed his eyes and let the feeling wash over him. How he would love to go home and fix the clock, to lose himself in Christiian’s world, but that would be a distraction. Doc’s keys sat heavy in his pocket, and he knew answers lay locked away in Michael and Diana’s things. He only wished that Linz could help him go through them.