Pentimento

The house was dark. The afternoon had been gray and what was left of the sunlight was disappearing in to the winter solstice. The young man sat in a chair watching the flames in one of those electric fireplaces designed to simulate the real thing. The flames repeated their pattern while the fake logs dotted with bright red specks resembled the ghosts of dying pieces of real firewood.

It had been a long a day in a series of recent long days of back and forth between his parents’ home, the hospital and finally this afternoon the funeral home. At least it was over. The hard part of watching day after day as his father slipped from being his father, a man, a human being in to skin over bones was through. In the end his father’s skin was fragile like parchment paper.

Now he was alone. There was no one left, his mother having died several years ago and then his aunt around the same time. They use to say how the two of them, his mother and aunt were inseparable and did everything together. The two of them use to laugh, wink and drag out the word everything as if it implied something wicked. They died within weeks of one another.

He missed them all. Especially their stories of their lifestyles before he was born and the tales of the artists, the musicians, and the wild parties. “Decadence in a brownstone.” his aunt use to say. They seemed to know everybody and the two of them often posed nude for painters. His father would wink, “I have the best ones upstairs in my closet, kind of fine art porn,” he would joke. This place, this house had seen and heard it all.

His father was an artist and his mother was a poet. The two of them with his aunt raised him. While his parents would go off to teach, his aunt would stay home take care of him and the house. The place still smelled of paint and solvent. His father had painted up to the end. Always the artist, he painted constantly looking for that light, that magic light that would give him that masterpiece, that museum piece. His one wish all his life was to paint something so beautiful that it would hang in a museum. His chance to live forever. His father who had searched all his life for the best light to paint, died on the day with the least light.

The clanging of the steam in the radiators brought him back to the room the cold room. No Christmas tree this year. No decorations. There were less and less as the years rolled by after his mom's death. In the front room he rummaged through his mother’s desk. An old roll top antique piece stained with life. His father kept the way it was the day she died. He was superstitious that way. Her notebooks, her poetry, long pieces of verse about love, beauty, rain, snow, and sunlight dancing in the corners of an abandoned room.

She had been published and like his father both taught at the local college. All of them real bohemians. No one ever spoke of any other family. The artists, writers and musicians always around the house became their extended family. Now the house was just a lonely brick shell.

He looked through the desk. His father had been adamant that he would find everything he needed in his mother's desk. Among the piles of papers, notes, and sketches was a packet of letters tied with red ribbon. A silver heart charm dangled from the ribbon. He remembered that heart, the silver filigree as it hung around his mother’s neck. His aunt had one as well, on a bracelet she never took off. He had always thought the charms were gifts from long lost grandparents.

Taking a deep breath he unwrapped the bundle and feeling a bit of the voyeur began to read the letters in his mother’s recognizable handwriting. They were love letters, passionate, descriptive, filled with longing and hope. He read through them and learned so much of his mother’s passion, her life, anecdotes about him as a child.

He set the letters down and realized that in his haste to read he never looked to see who they were addressed to. He read the envelopes again and again. These letters, these beautiful letters were from his mother to the woman he knew as his aunt. His mother's lover.

All those trips his father would take in quest of best light to paint. Sometimes his father would be gone for weeks, for months. His father would leave and his aunt would move in to his mother’s bedroom. For company they would tell him. Now it all made sense, somehow now it all made sense. They were so connected, so much more than he ever knew, ever realized. All those magnificent love poems were to her. The charms were simple tokens of love one to the other.

He was the product of the three of them, always having been proud of his parents and their works. Her poems, his paintings. His aunt busy keeping up the house, while the two of them worked and taught. The three of them raising him, teaching him to draw, to cook, and to write verse.

Sitting back in the well-worn chair that had been his mother's sanctuary, he wept. Here she would sit, away from the real world while she crafted her verse and wrote such beautiful letters to his aunt. Only in the house late at night or when his father went away could they be who they really were. It seemed so lonely to him, so distant to be near the love of one's life and be separated by the rules of the game.