A Visit

The heavy door opens with a slow, groaning noise.  The gloomy light of the rainy day follows after a tall and willowy young woman. The click of her heavy heels on the marble floor is droned out by the din of a full building on this rainy day. Holding a sketch pad in her hands, she passes through security and into the Atrium itself. She glides effortlessly through the space, catching more than her fair share of eyes.

Even in the dim light her pale skin glows. The wide set eyes are large, but a sharp and penetrating blue. The delicate nose is slightly upturned. The full lips lack the color of lipstick. Her raven black hair hang in long tresses frame her narrow face well. A slightly large raincoat turns the lingering eye to the knee, where a long pair of striped socks takes over.

She stops for a moment by the fountain at the center of the Atrium. The dim light from the rotunda skylights gleams dully on the bronze of Hermes, who cannot move as fast as the water that bubbles and sprays below him. The steps leading up to the basin are lined with blossoms; a crazed blast of ill clashing colors that makes her heady and dizzy all at once. Most of the buzzing tourists ignore the fountain, except to take an occasional picture.

She paces once around the fountain, her eyes turned down and counting the steps. If anyone stares and wonders, she couldn't explain why; she always paces the fountain before visiting her friends. Once she reaches 27, she stops and looks to the bronze once more. Her cool eyes rest upon the figure; but her mind is elsewhere. She smiles and then turns to walk into the east wing, just between two pillars of dark granite.

The long corridor is lined with statues, with the occasional archway into a gallery. Just to her left is the Fisher Boy she has found so amusing since she was a child. The sound of the sea, she thinks to herself, must be something mystical to him. She strides past a minor Venus to a gallery, which she steps into. The heel clicks more loudly upon the wooden floor as she wonders why the hell they even have wood here anyways.

The room quivers with the faint murmurs of the few who admire some of the French work, but the couch is empty. She undoes the buttons of her jacket and walks around to sit down. She pulls back the neck of the crimson turtleneck to adjust the tag, and then she settles down. She has glanced at it, but she closes her eyes now and settles herself before looking at it fully. When she finally opens her eyes, she smiles, even though this must have been the fortieth time she has seen The Forest of Fountain Bleu. The shaded areas force the eye to the girl, as it always does. The eyes betray the Frenchman who painted this long ago. The loose shirt barely restrains the figure as she reads at her leisure. How I wish to have that much free time, she muses.

She sighs and stands up, drawing the coat closer to her against the warm room. Pulling herself away, she leaves the young lady to her reading and moves on to an adjoining gallery. The feminine is stronger here, though it is mostly unnoticed or ignored. She does smile as an older woman stops to admire a girl arranging her hair. By far the post popular (though she disagrees heartily) are the four dancers with flaming red hair as they prepare to take to the stage of life.

She moves past the frozen dancers forever trapped on canvas. Another gallery opens up that she barely pauses to take in, though she knows from times past that it is filled with impressionist pieces that hurt her eyes. She turns around a corner and enters a new gallery, the click of her heels preceding her. It is far busier in here, and she is forced to wait. Through the bustle she can see the gilded frame and the blue sky. Moments later the germen couple move and she can finally let the color wash over her. The parasol is still green and fresh as the grass. A perfect Monet; and the breeze that moves through the painting passes through her heart with happy memories of times past.

The smell of the sea, the heavy tang of salt and brine. The air is heavy with it. She breathes in deeply and feels a hand clasp her own. And in this moment, she is happy. The sun is bright and the air is warm, yet fresh. It beckons her to the warm sand of the early morning and the cool waters, slate grey, of the Atlantic. She smiles and squeezes his hand and steps out into the new day.

Her eyes open and she can almost smell the sweet smell of the air. She tilts her head and allows the swirls of cool colors to wash over her senses.  . It is so superior to her copy, a framed print at home. She finds her hand clasped tightly on a couch just behind her, already white. She releases it and the color floods back. She turns again and stares calmly at the fluffy white clouds and the breeze caught dress of the woman. She smiles one last time, and then turns and walks off.

The click is more pronounced as she makes her way out of the section. Sharp and precise and capable of being heard by deaf men, they herald her return to the corridor. With hardly a look, she walks straight across to a new gallery beside the zephyr watering dew upon the earth.

The necks grow longer and the eyes become narrow. With hardly a glance at the collection of dashing manhood, she walks up to a single large portrait of a mother and children. With a stony face, she keeps her side to it, then turns on her heel and faces the piece head on. With an equally stony face does Lady Elizabeth look back at her, the blue grey eyes as dead as the owner. Beside her stands her son, standing straight. His small eyes are alive where his mothers' are dead. His face glows and unlike his mother, he looks off into the distance, sensing his future greatness. Clinging onto her brother, a small girl with blonde ringlets cringes and hides her face.

As if standing on the axis of a set of scales, the dark haired beauty sways. Pity gives way to Rage. Her heart sways again to Remorse. She tastes Outrage on her tongue and she glares at the young lord. At least, she says to herself as she turns away from the desecration, society has grown out of that. She turns and sees, a few galleries ahead, the white lady beckoning her.

Abruptly, the small phone in her pocket vibrates. She pauses and reaches for the wildly vibrating cell. She examines the scream and thumbs through the screens before finding the text message awaiting her:
'First Level, Gallery 26. Look for Coal'.
She replaces the phone in her pocket while she turned and retraced her footsteps. Moments later the smart click of her heels echoed in the corridor. Her face was set with a quizzical look that stopped short of her eyes. The cold eyes glowed like glowing blue flames, hottest of all.

She swept from the east wing and through the rotunda again. She ignored the crowd taking their pictures and crosses to the stairwell to the north. Her hair flies behind her in her measured haste. In moments she is down on the first level. She glides down the corridors lined with sculpture, before finding herself at an archway. The plate on the inner edge of the archway proclaims 'Gallery 26 – 19th Century American'

The gallery is a long, rectangular room with two rows of three columns centered in the room. The center of the room is bathed in harsh light, while the pictures are more softly lit. The stuffy warmth closes in. Instinctively, she unties the belt around her waist and opens the rain coat to reveal a dark colored, loose fitting plaid that hangs on her form conservatively. The dark color contrasts sharply with her pale skin. Her eyes adjust to the dim light of the perimeter before she strides willfully into the room.

A few oils hang on the walls, evenly spaced and accompanied by a small information tag. The first three are paintings of schooners braving the Atlantic. Greens, blues, and grays mixed roughly, frothing with white to depict the surface action of the waves. . She turns away and sees what looks to be a fantastic landscape. She finds herself pulled toward it. The detail is rich and the colors soft and relaxing. She tilts her head as she examines the small boat bearing a child. The angel at the helm is radiant and reassuring. Even before her eyes find the small plate, she knows this is where she was meant to be.

"Thomas Cole. The Voyage of Life: Childhood, 1842"



Her lips move slowly, forming the word "Coal". She giggles quietly while her eyes glitter with mirth. She turns slightly to walk to the next painting in the Voyage series, aptly labeled Youth. Her heels clicked as she glided to examine the next portrait and the hopes of the subject it contained. Her eyes touched briefly on the luminous yet solitary figure on the shoreline.

"Yes," a deep voice spoke behind her. "Our angels do seem to abandon us when we decide we know better".

"How do you know that he thinks he knows better," she asks. She stares at the departing angel.

"Your people portray hesitation and indecision with an arm outstretched to the object that signifies their hesitation," the voice replies. "He couldn't care less about his protector."

"My people," she asks quizzically. A delicate eyebrow arches.

"And the first shot hath been fired," the voice chuckles.

"We are not having this discussion again, are we," she asks. The corners of her mouth turn up into the ghost of a smirk.

"Such a whippy retort," the voice says. "I hope it will not leave a mark."

"You're impossible," she says.

"A point to me, I think," the voice replies.

She turns slowly to face her companion. Sitting back against one of the pillars is a young man with curly, dirty blonde hair. His brown eyes stare evenly up into her face. She avoids staring directly into them; they are abyssal in character and even she could wallow in their limitless depths. His keen face is kind, yet bears the lines of wisdom painfully earned. He wears a shirt-sleeved flannel over patched jeans and scuffed sneakers. In his hands are a pen and a pad of writing paper covered with his untidy scrawl. His face stretches into a warm smile.

"Hello Georgia," he says.

"Hiya Ernest," Georgia replies.


"You were saying," Ernest asks. His eyes widen and stare. Georgia sinks into the depths of his eyes then jerks herself back with a shudder.

"That's not fair, you know," she says scornfully. Ernest chuckles softly while he stares unblinkingly.

"We were discussing your people," Ernest says softly. Georgia turns back to the painting sharply. She closes her eyes for a moment while a steadying breath shakes her frame. She opens her eyes again and allows the color of the painting to wash over her. She smiles at the youth in the boat.

"I don't understand why we are having this age old discussion again," Georgia says coolly.

"Debate," Ernest corrects.

"What debate," Georgia says. "It seems like every time we hang out, we find ourselves discussing this. Don't you think that we've covered all the angles?"

"Yet you still act like I'm a servant to a second class citizen," Ernest says.

"Well, you are a writer," Georgia snorts while she struggles in vain to hide her smirk.

"The arrogance that any true artist shows of a writer," Ernest says. "I know the way you all look at us. You all look at us as the boring lot in the fields of creativity. If memory serves, the last time we discussed this, you called Literature 'Arts' plain sister that gets stuck in the closet when its time for the ball'".

"Your words, not mine," Georgia shrugs. "I'm really not interested in arguing the point".

"Why argue what is true?"

Georgia shrugs and continues to examine the painting.

"So what is so great about Art," Ernest asks.

Georgia studiously examines the minute details of the work while she ponders. Finally she turns on the spot to face down her tormentor.

"Art is the essence of life, frozen in a moment in time," she begins slowly.

"It captures the beauty that we perceive everyday, the very heartbeat of our living world. The wind, the sea, the light. It helps us see more clearly the world we live in. It helps us see through the eyes of someone else; see their love and their pain and their passion."

"That is a run on sentence," Ernest observes wryly while he plays with his notepad.

"Shut it, grammar Nazi!" Georgia snaps back. Ernest chuckles softly and shakes his head.

"You think it is so funny, don't you? That's your problem, life is abstracted into what words you can use to explain it," Georgia says. "Never mind that there are things that words cannot fathom, or sights with no name, or feelings that all the words in the dictionary cannot give the right weight." Georgia closes her eyes and shakes her head sharply.

"What you are trying to say is Art is the expression of life as is," Ernest says.

"Whatever, its not like you can slap a label on something and say that's all there is," Georgia replies.

"That is true," Ernest says. "But for all your colorful language, you still don't understand why Literature is as moving and deep as her flashy and colorful sister."

"And I suppose you're going to lecture me now," Georgia says.

"Oh I wouldn't dream of that," Ernest says.

"Then why did you ask me to come here," Georgia asks. She opens her eyes and looks into his face.

"Well....lets just say I found a way to show you the power of this plain sister you mock," Ernest says softly. He smiles and offers his notepad to her. Georgia reaches down and accepts it. Her eyebrow arches while she brings it up to read it.

"Start at the beginning," Ernest advises.

Georgia turns back the pages (seven in all) and her eyes dart up to the top of the page, which starts rather mysteriously "The heavy door opens with a slow, groaning noise....", then her eyes freeze momentarily on the next part of the paragraph "The gloomy light of the rainy day follows after a tall and willowy young woman. The click of her heavy heels on the marble floor is....". Her shocked eyes flick up to look at Ernest. He smiles and nods at the notepad, urging her on. Her hands shaking slightly, she continues reading on of the adventure of the eerily familiar figure traipsing through her most recent memories. Only when the loving man on the floor says softly 'Start at the beginning' does she pause to look down at Ernest again.

"Art captures life at the moment the artist conceives of it," Ernest explains quietly. "However, Literature does something else entirely....you see, I make life."

Georgia stares blankly for a moment, then her eyes see the last few sentences scrawled over the paper at the end. Her eyes focus and read slowly "....slowly Ernest rises from the floor. His long, strong figure towers over the dark haired beauty before him..." Consciously Georgia hears Ernest standing up while her eyes follow"...his hand, reaching out and taking her free hand. He draws it to his lips, donning a gentle smile before he gently kisses the palm first, then the back of her hand....". His breath stirs the fine hairs on her hand, sending a thrill through her body that wasn't emotion at the miraculous manuscript in her hand. Her breath quickened when "....he leaned in and whispered softly int her ear 'Let's go back to the seashore and let the new dawn set the sea ablaze with the light of a thousand possibilities for the new day'....

Then he pecks her cheek softly and squeezes her hand gently. Her pale cheeks, flushed with the promise and the moment, stretch into a warm smile. She squeezes his hand back and she looks up into his kind face.

"Ready?" Ernest asks.

"Yes," Georgia replies.

Together they close their eyes, and walk to the sea.