At the Edge of Summer

“Luc René Rieulle Crépet!” She flipped the painting around, away from my view.

“You’ve remembered my full name.”

“And you’ve forgotten your manners.” She glared at me over the top of the frame. “It’s my mother you’re talking about.”

“Pardon, mademoiselle.” I went to close up the supply cabinet, trying very hard not to think of nibards.

When we left the studio, Clare kept her eyes fixed on the hallway rug.

“Papa has painted me before.” I tried to sound reassuring. “Many times.”

“And your mother. Many, many times. Once with a butter churn.”

I made another attempt. “They were good friends, our parents.”

She sped up, still refusing to look at me. “Better friends than I thought.”

I stopped walking. Thankfully, so did she. “I’m not very good at this.”

She turned.

“I’m not very good at knowing the right thing to say.”

“I’m not either.” She pressed her hands to the front of her skirt. I realized that she’d left her sketch pad back in the studio.

“I wouldn’t worry too much about it.” I took a step closer. “Papa, he paints all sorts of things. Not all of it means something.”

“Did you not listen to a word I said in there earlier? About art being honest, meaningful expression?”

“But you’re wrong. Not all of it means something,” I repeated. “You need to see Hat Rack, with Cat.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Follow me.”

Hat Rack, with Cat, was Papa’s very first painting, at least the very first that he allowed Maman to frame and hang on the wall. It was tucked away down at the end of the west hallway, next to the blue powder room that no one ever used. I took Clare there and waited with crossed arms while she puzzled over it.

It was, literally, what it claimed to be. A striped tabby draped on the top of a nearly empty hat rack. Only a singular top hat, shiny and bent, hung from a peg. The painting bore none of the angularity that marked Papa’s later illustrations, but it played with color, like a Matisse. The cat’s whiskers were lined in blue, the old top hat shadowed in green. Come to think of it, it might have been the same hat Clare had tried on in the studio.

“It’s about the weariness of familiarity,” Clare said finally. It sounded like the thing an art student would parrot.

“Isn’t it just a cat?”

“Is a cat ever just a cat?” She threaded her fingers behind her back and paced, the way Papa always did before a painting. “Is not a cat sometimes a…a…” She gave the cat an accusatory stare. “Goodness, what else could it be?”

“Friendship.” I straightened the frame. “At least that’s what Papa always said.”

“Friendship?” She took a step closer. “Well, the cat, he’s a Manx cat. See here?”

“So? Papa’s never been to the Isle of Man.”

“Beneath the cat’s paw is a herring.”

“Herring?” I bent. “There is?” I’d walked by the painting hundreds of times and never noticed the gray herring between the claws. “Papa’s never been to Man, but he had a friend from there. Used to visit in the summers nearby when they were boys. I don’t know his real name, because Papa always called him ‘Herring.’ ”

“Ah-ha!” She nodded, satisfied. “And the hat rack?”

“Herring wanted to be a milliner? I don’t know.”

“He wanted to be great.” She snapped her fingers. “He wanted to be on top.” I was skeptical, but she was delighted. “You’re wrong. It is more than a cat. It’s a story of boyhood dreams.” She waited a moment before adding, “Told you.”

Though I thought she was ridiculous, I brought her to Eleven Apples, a still life of eleven apples, carefully arranged in a pyramid atop a gleaming plate. “Surely this speaks to him balancing his career and his family,” she said. I showed her The Ribbon, a rosy ribbon curled on top of a scarred wooden table, with a tight knot right in the middle. “This must be when he met your mother. Lovely, yet strong right at her core.” With Cheese Pots, Unguarded, a painting with two open crocks of the soft cheese eaten in Picardy, she said, “He was feeling nostalgic, missing Picardy all the way from Glasgow. And he felt vulnerable because of it.”

Those paintings of Papa’s lining the walls of the château had always been just that to me. Still lifes, landscapes, illustrations, the occasional portrait. But Clare, she found a story in each.

She’d stand before one, hands locked behind her back or thoughtfully stroking her chin, and weave thoughts, emotions, adventures for poor Papa. “Really, they’re like the pages of a diary,” she said, “spread all over the house.”