Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 135, No. 1. Whole No. 821, January 2010

Ravensara by Melanie Lawrence

A longtime resident of Berkeley, California, Melanie Lawrence reads manuscripts for a living by day and works on suspense fiction at night. A former magazine editor, she is also a book reviewer whose pieces have run in the San Francisco Chronicle and the East Bay Express. Her stories for EQMM, like this one set in the world of art, always seem to have a haunting quality. It’s unusual for a short story to have a dedication, but she asked that this one carry the following: To Frank and Donna.

Bulgarians.

She hated the days immediately following a good review. No sooner had some newspaper published the words “brilliant new retrospective” than the museum was full of gawkers, barging in front of serious viewers, mouthing foolish phrases about the paintings — superb paintings, some of them, worthy of stillness and respectful silence. If Ursula had her way, there’d be a regulation against talking in art museums.

And this time it was worse. Oskar Elif had been showing his work to mounting acclaim since he was twenty-four, but had seldom exhibited outside Europe, and certainly not to this extent. Already, on a chilly Monday morning, the fifth-floor galleries swarmed and buzzed. This was the noisiest bunch since the big Rothko show. Ursula cursed, a hushed malediction in her mother tongue — Elif’s as well — as a young person bumped into her without so much as an apology. The inevitable black leather jacket, of course, and a tousled helmet of hair, tinted plum. Not that she herself had been any more courteous in her student days, cutting into lines, shouldering her way through knots of people to capture the best view of a painting. Lithe and light-footed she’d been back then, in her tight white T-shirts and platform boots. Now she was just another woman of a certain age and no longer lithe, a drab old bird in the navy blazer and beige polyester trousers that all the museum’s guards had to wear.

Break time. Ursula nodded to her colleague in the next room and headed upstairs to the catwalk. The great transparent dome had trapped so much winter sunlight that the entire top floor was warm as summer, especially along the narrow catwalk that ran directly beneath the dome and spanned the museum’s core, the imposing, icy-white circular stairwell. An installation was still in progress here; no mouthy art lovers breached the quiet.

From habit, she kept her head bent, imagining herself on a bridge across a mountain pass, shivering with a touch of vertigo, but exhilarated, too. She could see straight through the silvery steel mesh to the spiraling lower stories of the museum, one after another, as if discerning them through fog, while all around her floated sunny air and curving walls of white plaster and glass. A parachutist must feel like this, she thought, or a plant in a greenhouse. Sometimes a painting could deliver her into this state. Weightless. Endless.

That evening, when all these people were gone, she would have another good long look at Tidal Marsh. Estuary as well. And North Sea. Just for a treat.

Ursula had trained herself over the years to approach an exhibit slowly, patiently. Not for her now the aesthetic greed of her youth, which she had mistaken for talent. As a senior guard, she could choose her work assignments, and she did so with care, one room per week, the better to edge her body and mind closer and closer to a selected canvas, the better to know it, let it under her skin. A kind of calculated spontaneity, that was the way to learn a painting. Thus, on the staff’s preview day, she’d skimmed through “Oskar Elif: 30 Years of Painting,” silent and excited, eyes sliding from one masterpiece to another, automatically memorizing media and styles, but not really seeing anything.

No longer passionate about the genre, she chose the early gestural abstracts for week one. They were technically admirable but dismal, gray. Week two’s pick, the still lifes, were a different matter. Painted from photographs — “photography is the path to reality,” said Elif’s first published treatise on painting — they haunted the memory like images from a dream: a window ledge, whitened by frost; wooden candlesticks and a dish of oranges; a ring of silver keys. Almost, she wished she had saved that room for last.

Until she contemplated the waterscapes. She remembered the North Sea of her youth; she had never thought anyone could really paint it. And the pond series, each slightly more abstract than the last, gradually pared down to luminous shapes and chill layers of color. The man could paint water. He could probably paint air. Well, in a few days she would find out. Landscapes were next week.

Ursula awoke in a good humor that Monday, relishing her morning eggs and dark pumpernickel toast, slathered today with an extra spoon of raspberry preserves. An extra cup of espresso, too, dripping golden foam. She even French-braided her hair, stroked mascara through her lashes. Silly, perhaps, to dress up for a roomful of paint and canvas and blithering idiots, but why not? There was little enough respect shown great art in her adopted country, except for the money it would fetch.

As always, she arrived early, intent today on one work, Meadow, which she had viewed years ago at a group show in Paris. In her memory it rippled, softly emerald under an overcast sky, and she took the final stairs two at a time. She glanced up at the catwalk — no time for a quick trip across the bridge this morning. How did Elif manage to get his greens so fresh, while avoiding that calendar-art—

Ursula halted mid thought and stared at the child.

A very young infant, surely no more than one month old. Tightly swaddled, nestling in a wicker basket. The small fists were held at chest level, clenched, and the steel-blue gaze didn’t quite meet the viewer’s eyes, studied instead a point just above one’s head. Ursula turned around. There was no one else in the room. Just her and the child, like before.

God knows why she had gone through with it. She didn’t like children. They were loud, demanding creatures, sticky and frequently damp. So simple it would have been to get rid of this particular creature, simple and safe and legal. But she hadn’t. She’d kept putting it off, finding excuses: money, usually. “What a shame,” joked Ralf at what had proved to be their last meeting. “It’d be a good-looking kid.” He left her with a fistful of cash; she used it to buy oversized sweaters and new trainers for her aching feet, as well as a bottle of cognac and a posh leather portfolio. With a portfolio like that, she’d have to sketch more. And if she sketched more, undoubtedly she’d—

Ursula shut her eyes. The retinal image of the painting glowed, a fierce orange. She hadn’t thought about her daughter in years. Literally years. At first, yes, quite a lot: simple curiosity, nothing more. Where was she? A house? A flat? Napping in a garden? Was she crawling, walking, talking yet? A good sleeper, like her mother used to be? Did she love music? Primary colors, like her father?

Lucky little girl — she had been adopted, Ursula was assured, by an educated couple, rather young. “Don’t worry,” said the social worker, scanning Ursula’s paperwork, then her long hair, the hammered-silver earrings and black jeans, the portfolio propped against her chair. “They are people of culture. She’ll have a fine life.”

Good, she remembered thinking. So the child would be pretty and cultivated, probably go to university. She’d get by.

Ursula swayed and opened her eyes. She must sit down, quickly, and started to do so, right on the floor. My God, one would think her quite mad, sprawling on the floor of a public building like an adolescent. She opted instead for the wooden bench in the middle of the room. She looked some more at the child. A background of umber and fawn, slatey shadows in the white blanket. A cap of feathery brown hair. She could suddenly feel it again, under her fingertips. The gently swollen eyelids. The upward glance that took in everything and revealed nothing.

Standing up, she still felt a little dizzy, but shuffled toward the painting anyway. “Child, 1977. Acrylic after a photograph. Private collection.” Well, that was certainly helpful.

High heels sounded in the corridor behind her and she jumped. Young Whitney, probably. Her watch said 11:05. She’d daydreamed in front of the painting forever, and now she was late for her assignment.

As she hurried toward the east portal, Ursula almost ran into the high heels’ occupant. Not Whitney. A well-preserved woman about her own age, a frequent patron whose French accent she found unaccountably annoying. That lanky husband or lover in tow, as usual. Ursula murmured, “Pardon me,” but she needn’t have bothered.

“Oh, chéri, look! Is she not lovely?” The voice was deep and purring. “That tiny baby? She is precious.”

“Uh, yes,” said her companion. “Yes, Marie.”

The woman paid him no mind. “The brushwork. Those shadows. So precious.”

Ursula gasped, driving one fist into her palm with an audible smack. Some things are too precious to say aloud, she wanted to snarl. What a pleasure it would be to pick up the nearest guard’s stool and break it over the woman’s sleek, tawny head, silence the feline voice. She must get to her post, right away. This was a dangerous place.

Pulling rank, she was reassigned the next day to the child’s room.

Guards were supposed to stand or sit by the doorway. Each morning that week, Ursula inched herself along the wall, nearer and nearer the child, until she had an excellent prospect. Sometimes, casually patrolling the room, she would walk right up to her. Patrons who blocked her sight line were an infuriating nuisance, but by degrees she learned to ignore them and their ridiculous cooing. Eventually they would move on, and the child would be hers again, and time would dissolve.

Her pregnancy had been easy, the birth hard, given her youth and vigorous health. Twenty-four hours of labor and three hours of pushing, watched over by a morose midwife and visited, once, by her mother.

“What will you call her?”

“Why? What’s the use? I’m not keeping her.”

A snort of disgust. Ursula grinned and held the little bundle out, for courtesy’s sake, but the older woman shook her head. “She’s got to have a name.”

“Mary Magdalene?”

“That’s not funny.”

“Well — Rosa. For Rosa Luxemburg. Oh, all right. Ghislaine, that’s pretty. Gisela. Sara.”

Sara.

So what had those cultured folk actually named her? Ursula hadn’t loved the child, had been most relieved to see the back of her, in fact. Now, though, the question presented itself, over and over, while she was walking to work or chopping vegetables for her supper or lying awake at dawn. Alexandra? Hadn’t Alexandra been a fashionable name back then? Isolde? Very classy. But Sara was a nice name, really. According to the night nurse at the birthing home, it meant “princess” in some language or other. On the rare occasions Ursula had thought of her at all during the last twenty-odd years, she said to herself “the child,” but sometimes “Sara” had come to mind as well.

The dream surfaced Tuesday night and again on Thursday and Friday. While pregnant, Ursula suddenly remembered, she had dreamed of babies all the time. Now she saw a small child — whether boy or girl, impossible to say — skipping along one rail of the catwalk like a tightrope dancer. Once the child was chatting with Marie, the annoying Frenchwoman, and Ursula grew angry with them both. Another time, Ursula whispered, “Careful! You’ll fall!” but the child merely smiled to itself and glided through another bar of light.

It was no use; her supervisor wouldn’t give her a second week in the child’s room. “Ursula,” he said, “this is a very popular show. I know you love the Elifs, and I truly admire your dedication, but I’ve got to be equitable here. Whitney’s doing her master’s thesis on his photo-based work.”

Screw Whitney, she almost snapped. Then she took a swift breath. What if he assigned her to another exhibit altogether? What would she do then? Come in at lunch and breaks and on her free days? Well, if need be, she—

“Don’t look so worried, Ursula. I’ll just send you on to the North Gallery.”

The North Gallery. That wasn’t so bad; she could still easily get to the child during her breaks. And tomorrow was Sunday, her day off — she would visit the child’s room again tomorrow. Perhaps in a head scarf and dark glasses? The other guards already thought her a touch — eccentric. Ursula the loner, the art nut, polite and aloof, who never talked about family or friends or weekend plans or what she had watched on cable the night before. She didn’t want to give them any more to natter about.

The North Gallery was devoted to adult portraits. Ursula regarded them dubiously. People were seldom her subject of choice. But having already spent half an hour with the child that morning, she was ready to take on a new room of Elifs. And there, in the center of the west wall, was the signature painting of the exhibit, the one on all the posters plastered all over the city, the Sleeper.

Ursula understood why the young, fair-haired woman in gray, dozing in a wing chair, would captivate the crowd. Like the best of Elif’s portraits, she was so very still, suspended within her own world and her own light. One noted Hopper’s influence, and yet the girl’s affect was completely different. “Serene,” said the docents. No, thought Ursula. No one knew what she was, not even the painter. Only the sleeper knew. For such a popular work, it was truly good.

She felt almost content, almost herself again, here in the largest and loftiest of the galleries, lit by high clerestory windows. A week of the child had drained her. She needed a rest.

Ursula began a leisurely tour of the room. What was this, a landscape in the midst of the portraits? She moved nearer, drawn to the misshapen fir tree, to a green at once deep, dark, and cool.

At the top of the tree sat two inky birds. Her eyes traveled downward until she realized the painting wasn’t a true landscape. Reclining against the tree trunk was another young woman. Not the Sleeper, not nearly so blond. Ursula felt the blood beating inside her skull, almost heard its thrum. She made herself walk closer. The model appeared to be sitting in a garden; a high stone wall suggested itself in the background, and massive plants of various sorts, sprigged with small flowers — herbs perhaps. Ursula was about two meters from the painting now. One of the model’s hands rested in her lap, and the other wrapped a root of the tree. Feathery brown hair escaping from its knot, steel-blue eyes gazing upward, just above the viewer’s head. Ursula stooped to read the plaque next to the painting.

Ravensara.

“Ma’am?”

Ursula slowly swiveled her head.

“Where’s the sleeping lady?”

“The sleeping lady?”

The little girl nodded confidently. She had brown eyes, tilted at the corners. Ursula looked at her for a long time before saying, “Sleeper, she’s called.”

“I saw her on the bus. A poster of her. She’s so pretty.”

“Yes. No. You’re the one who’s pretty. See the bench there, with all the people? She’s just in front of it.”

The girl nodded again, puzzled but pleased, and dashed off. Ursula forgot to follow and admonish her for running in the museum. She returned to Ravensara.

So this was her daughter. It had to be. Who else could it be? A human being’s eyes, her glance, didn’t change, not in three years nor in thirty. She recognized her, knew her, absolutely.

Her daughter. Heavens, she was beautiful. Beautiful — and peaceful, as Ursula herself had never been. She had her youth and health and a garden and art. Ursula blinked. She felt flooded with light, physically drenched with it, as if a window shade had suddenly flown open. So this was joy, the mere knowledge that someone else existed. Almost, she wanted to cry, but that would prevent her looking at Sara.

Inhale while counting to four; hold it on a count of four; exhale on a count of four; hold again for four — what her old yoga teacher called square breathing. Ursula square-breathed conscientiously, several times, before returning to the doorway. She would inch along the wall, like a turtle. In less than an hour, she would have a perfect view of her daughter.

Much later that night, Ursula poured the last of her Christmas cognac. Now she was full of self-loathing. Her daughter? That was a painting. She had no daughter. She wasn’t a mother, she was a fool. With a conscious effort, she grasped the edge of the kitchen table and pulled herself upright.

She hadn’t looked at the family albums since moving to this studio, and couldn’t quite remember where they had got to. Not the bookshelves, not under the bed. The hall closet. She almost fell off the stepstool and had to grab at the clothing rod to save her balance. Ah, there they were, shoved to the very back of the top shelf: two big, leathery volumes full of relatives, collected by her mother, who had hated every one of them.

This time Ursula didn’t scruple to sit on the floor. She leaned against the closet door and pawed through the first album until she succeeded in ripping right through Great-Uncle Karl’s grim face. After that she paged more cautiously past grandparents and great-grandparents, long-dead cousins many times removed, uncles, aunts, Pappa — and Mamma, the old bitch, as a squalling baby, a sullen, uniformed school girl. Ursula stopped turning. Here it was: the yellowing snapshot of her mother taken on holiday just before her marriage, sitting on a stool under a birch tree and gazing into space. The same pose, almost, and the same unfathomable expression, even the same floating hair. Ursula fell asleep then, curled up on the hall carpet, not minding the cold.

No more alcohol, she told herself sternly; there was work to be done. She attached a small lock to the liquor cabinet and tossed the key behind the refrigerator. A long shower and lots of aspirin and coffee and juice, and she was ready for work.

How would she feel on seeing Sara again? Ursula paused on a curb for the red light before darting across the street. For why shouldn’t it be Sara? Elif was only nine or ten years her senior, educated, and as cultured a person as one could wish. He was a countryman, for God’s sake, and it wasn’t that big a country. A nurse probably mentioned the name to the adoption workers. The canvas was dated 1996; the model looked to be the right age. Given those liberal abortion laws, there probably hadn’t been many babies available for adoption. She must look that up. She must look many things up.

Once at her post, she slipped an envelope from her blazer’s inside pocket and boldly stepped right up to the painting. The resemblance between Sara and her own mother was even stronger than she had imagined. Faded though the little snapshot was, the shape of the faces, the high foreheads — these were unmistakable. Fingers trembling, she pulled out and unfolded the one drawing Ralf had made of her, the day they met. Again the shape of the face, and the hands, too. Tall, long-legged women, all three of them, but their hands were small, and shapely as gulls.

Ursula carefully replaced the photograph and the drawing. She glanced around — no authorities in sight. In the small notebook in which she kept track of her work schedule, she began a list: Search the Web for biographical information about Elif and for intelligent criticism about the paintings. Was there an adoptees’ organization in their native country? Very likely. Search “Sara Elif.” Perhaps she, too, was an artist. Look at the university art department’s Web site and see what their library had to offer. They might even be open this evening.

And the paintings themselves; Elif’s self-portrait, a happy contrast to the sober face in the exhibit brochure, might hold a clue. Ursula stopped writing. Daft of her — he wasn’t the biological father. Ralf was. Had she destroyed all her sketches of Ralf?

She had become too engrossed in her task, and the patron had to raise his voice. Where had all these people come from so suddenly? Ursula directed him to the bathroom, barely able to conceal her impatience, for a terrible thought had just occurred to her: When I find her, when I find my daughter, what then?

Ursula had always loved slow mornings at the museum, time during which she could sink into a chosen canvas as she would into sleep. A good painting was good company, and now Ravensara had become her best friend.

“Good morning, my love. How are you today?” she would ask the young woman. It was hard not to whisper the words out loud, but she heard them in her mind, sweet and vibrant.

“Fine, Mamma. I got up early and sketched. I’ve decided to paint the meadow.”

“That’s ambitious! In morning light?”

Sara laughed. “Oh, Mamma, what a cliché! And anyway, Pappa’s already done that. No, I was thinking late afternoon and sunny, but not too sunny. Autumn, decay, a chill in the air. You know.”

She did. A discussion of shadow ensued, and the infinite difficulty of painting light.

Ursula related tales of her childhood; her daughter listened with real interest. They compared notes about books, films, and favorite meals. But painting was their main topic of conversation, naturally. They liked many of the same artists. Sara herself had shown promise even as a small child. She has far more talent than I ever did, Ursula thought, more discipline, and a better color sense, too.

One afternoon, right in the middle of a debate about Jackson Pollock, came the shock of a beefy hand on her shoulder.

“Ursula? Ursula! Listen to me!”

Focusing on her supervisor’s features was oddly difficult. He looked — dimmed, as though seen through thick glass. She shrugged his hand away and tried to smile. “Yes? What is it?”

The benign face was frowning under its beard in a perplexed way. She noticed Whitney then, slouched a few steps behind him, shifting uneasily from foot to foot and not meeting her eyes.

“Ursula. Let’s go to my office and have a cup of coffee. Whitney’ll spell you.”

“But—”

He took her arm. Ursula almost jerked away. She disliked being touched by strangers. “I’ll be right back, darling,” she murmured. “Wait here.”

The upshot was that her supervisor was worried — no, concerned — about her. Patrons had, well, not complained exactly, but had brought their comments to the front desk. Ursula was obviously tired, she looked as if she hadn’t been sleeping well. She needed a sabbatical, a little rest, with pay. “Just for a few weeks, of course,” he added, stirring his empty coffee cup. “We couldn’t manage long without our most dedicated team member.”

Ursula produced a real smile this time. She had recovered her poise, pushed her panic down with maternal resolve. She’d buy a wig if necessary, and higher-heeled shoes. They couldn’t keep her away from her daughter. No one could.

At least the “sabbatical” gave her more time for research, in between discreet visits to Sara. She found Elif maddeningly circumspect about his private life, with only a few Web sites offering any personal data. He had married young, to another artist, and was now divorced. He had two children. He lived in the country. That was all. His published essays about art history and technique were masterly, but unrevealing of Elif’s own history. The ex-wife’s information was similarly limited.

How discouraging! How could so great and well-known a painter manage to live in such secrecy? These were the moments when Ursula’s shoulders would droop with anxiety and sadness, and she would have to make herself more coffee before she could go on.

No “Sara Elif” to be found on the Web, no prominent Northern European painters named Sara at all, not in the right age range. One afternoon, Ursula’s favorite search engine suggested yet again that she might want to try a different spelling — and this time she discovered that there was a young painter named Sarah Linder (Linderstrom was the name of Elif’s hometown!), whose landscapes were thought very fine. She was only twenty-seven, but surely that was a typo or an error. No mention of her antecedents, which made Ursula nod approvingly. Her daughter, of course, would want to be judged on her own merits.

Two of Sarah Linder’s paintings were in a group show which had just opened a few days before in Brussels; Ursula, trembling with excitement and pleasure, thought this amazing piece of synchronicity a good omen. She printed out the review and Sarah Linder’s The Clearing, and taped them above her computer. The Clearing depicted a rook circling a tree; even reproduced in pixels, Sarah’s handling of the light on the blue-black wings was ravishing. Another dark bird: another nice bit of synchronicity.

Now if she would only hear back from the adoptees’ organization. Perhaps she should write them; e-mail could so easily go astray. Or maybe even telephone very early tomorrow morning? However it came, the news would be good, Ursula assured herself. Soon she’d have a legitimate excuse to start researching airline schedules, too!

All that sitting and clicking and concentrating and coffee had made Ursula restless. She decided to go back to the museum, just for a few minutes before it closed. She wouldn’t bother with the damned wig. No one would notice her; she was an employee, after all.

Half an hour later, she was sitting in front of Ravensara. Judging from that one online example, “Sarah Linder” had been scrupulous about finding her own style, her own palette, but there were certain similarities, too. Ursula walked as close as she dared to the painting to get a better look at the birds.

“Marvelous, is it not?”

She muttered an affirmative.

“She resembles you, a little.”

Lowering her head, Ursula saw that her companion was the art-loving Frenchwoman.

“You think so?”

“Oh yes.” The Frenchwoman was tall, her features large, well proportioned, and now creased in amusement. “Yes. You, but not you. It’s been a long time since I last saw her. She’s much older now.”

Ursula could not speak.

“Have you done your homework? Do you know what ravensara is?” pursued the Frenchwoman.

She shook her head.

“It’s an herb. See it there, the big bush to the left of the fir? Ravensara aromatica. Pretty name, eh, for a disinfectant? It comes from—”

“You know her?” Ursula cut in.

The woman stared back at her proudly, and when she spoke again her accent was stronger, the R’s more pronounced. “Oh, very well indeed! I gave Oskar that photograph when I was twenty, but it took him another twenty-something years to get around to painting me!” She shook her head, still smiling. “Artists! One moment they hate you, the next you’re the beloved and the muse! But how can you not forgive someone who makes you live forever?”

She lifted her strong hands, the thumbs out at right angles, and framed her own face.

“Someone who — What the hell are you doing?” The French accent had vanished.

Ursula didn’t hear the other woman. Her own hands were on the painting’s frame, lifting it from the wall. She was vaguely aware of a mechanized shriek somewhere in the room. How lucky that she had worn her old running shoes! They carried her past a wildly gesticulating guard and into the corridor. She would never have believed she could run so fast, and up stairs at that, and with such a burden. So swift was her flight that the curved walls blurred around her, a globe swimming in light, and only the soft metallic clang underfoot guided her to the middle of the catwalk. She flung her arms forward, opened her hands wide, and let Ravensara soar into space.

Her supervisor was being so kind. For once she didn’t mind his hand on her shoulder. He was talking softly, as a father might, while they walked the endless corridors to his office. Sometimes she caught a phrase or two: “A miracle no one was hurt, a real miracle.” “Destroyed. That lovely painting.” But one word especially. “Why?” he wanted to know. Why?

Why? Ursula tried her best to remember. “The Frenchwoman,” she said at last. “Because the Frenchwoman told me it was she. In the painting. Not Sara. Sara’s gone.”

A tall, lean man rounded the corner just then, about to hurry past them. He stopped abruptly. “A Frenchwoman? Good-looking, fiftyish? Five feet nine?”

She nodded.

“Where did you see her?”

“I don’t remember.”

The tall man looked into her face. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll find her. And by the way, she’s not French. And she’s not in any painting.”

“What do you mean?” she whispered.

He hesitated, then shrugged, seemingly resigned. “She has — it’s called HPD: histrionic personality disorder. Grandiose people. They crave attention. They lie.” He laughed, not unkindly. “Marie always wanted to be an artist. She found the next best thing.”

“So did I,” said Ursula slowly. She thought a moment. “So have I.” She smiled at him. “My daughter’s a painter. Sarah Linder. Watch for her name — she’s the real thing.”\

Copyright © 2010 Melanie Lawrence