Next day, before the sun climbed too high above the jagged barrier of the Coast Mountains, Harry slipped his great-aunt’s photo into his jacket pocket, jammed his hat onto his grizzled head, then rattled out the front door and up Maple Street. He didn’t continue on through Maple Lane as usual, though. Instead, he pointed ‘the contraption’ west onto Oak, chugged up to Willow Street, then plodded on toward the seniors’ centre and the continuation of Mural #41 on its back wall.
The first thing in the mural that caught his attention was a mismatched threesome, who had obviously just arrived at the outdoor gathering: a lank, stern-looking gentleman, wearing a top hat, buttoned up shirt and formal black jacket, who—Harry guessed by the fellow’s weathered features and white beard—was in his late 60s; beside him, a portly woman in a purple dress watched the goings on in the field self-consciously, perhaps even dismissively; and beside her, a tawny, smiling white-haired woman, wearing a straw hat and what might have been a field-hand’s dress.
Nobody there I recognize, Harry thought, moving on. He’d only taken a few faltering steps when he stopped again, this time to stare at a brown-haired woman in a blue dress who held a pink umbrella in front of her. She looked intense, stern, and certainly not happy. Auntie Phipps? he wondered.
He fumbled the photo of his great-aunt Harriet out of his jacket pocket. Studied it. Held it up to the portrait in the mural. “Could be?” he thought. But the likeness wasn’t perfect by any means. What startled him most about the woman in the mural was her imperious, blue eyes. His Auntie Harriet had died long before the invention of Kodachrome, but he remembered her piercing gaze—even as an old woman whose eyes had faded to pale grey. She held you fast when she stared, which she didn’t often do, Harry remembered, as if she’d been taught not to, the same way you learned never to point a gun.
She was old when he knew her, even in the faded photos he’d seen. The woman on the wall was young and arrestingly beautiful, Harry thought. “Not pretty. Beautiful.” She seemed a woman who knew things about herself and her world that others could not possibly understand. A woman who made her mind up and said exactly what she thought at precisely the right moment.
He looked back from her to the threesome he’d studied just before. “You’re Auntie Harriet’s mother?” he asked the elderly woman in the straw hat.
Your grandfather Franklin’s mother too? she confided. I’m your great-grandmother, Lenora Phipps.
She smiled fondly.
And Franklin’s on his way, she added, laughing at Harry’s inquiring look. You saw him and your grandmother, Eleanor, yesterday. They’re on the trail, heading toward the gathering with their passel of young’uns.
You mean the people in the mural out front?
The old woman nodded. And who do you think the child between them is?
Astonished, Harry froze. “Mother?” he gasped.
Bravo! She cheered. Welcome into your story.
Harry turned his walker around so he could sit facing the mural, settled in as if he were getting ready to watch a television show, then stared into the scene wide-eyed, waiting. A practiced mural gazer, it wasn’t long before the picture came to life, swirling at first, as if the paint were a liquid dissolving into a whirlpool. It sucked him in, and Harry found himself entering the enlivened setting.
The first thing he heard, gravitating into the mural, was the lively scrape and squeal of a fiddle. Follow! it beckoned, and he didn’t hold back. Harry stepped-lively into the brilliant sunshine of another era, its shouts and laughter quickening in his imagination.
~~~
Franklin laughed. He knew the children could have been better behaved, but preferred to let them romp and play rather than insist on an unreasonable decorum, imposing strictures even a sensible adult should chafe at. He and Eleanor were agreed on that. They exchanged a glance and smile, drawn closer to each other by the sudden tug of their daughter Catherine, who had decided to swing between them, holding hands.
“Whose monkey are you?” Eleanor laughed.
“You and Papa’s!”
“Yours and Papa’s, my sweet.”
“You and Papa’s,” Catherine insisted.
They smiled in grudging adoration.
Catherine didn’t learn easily, but she learned well. Neither Eleanor nor Franklin scolded often, but didn’t hesitate when needs-be, and of all their children, Cath forced them to scold the most. A stubborn child, she insisted on doing things her own way, unless you could give good reasons why she shouldn’t. They were often frustrated, having to come up with sensible arguments, and found themselves feeling ashamed of their own nonsensical reproaches.
“She’s destined to be a lawyer, I swear,” Franklin predicted.
He appreciated their daughter’s ‘independent frame of mind’, and Eleanor was grateful for the way he loved her—so completely, so devotedly.
But still? She gave him a doubtful look.
“If any woman can, it’s Cath,” he insisted.
“She’s so like your sister,” Eleanor observed, a comment often made.
The others ran on ahead, shouting and shrieking as if the whole world needed a wake-up call, as if they were being tickled by the gods.
“We’re very lucky, you and I,” Eleanor said suddenly.
“That we are, my love,” he agreed.
Aware of the absurdity of their bliss, they leaned over Catherine and kissed.
They couldn’t yet see the clearing through the trees, but the strains of a fiddle reached them, wailing like a desperate animal of undetermined species, a ‘delightful keening’ to Eleanor’s way of thinking. She skipped, forcing Franklin and Catherine to stumble along after her, laughing.
“Auntie Harriet!” Catherine shouted suddenly, breaking free of their grasp and running up the path toward her favourite aunt, arms outstretched. The other children passed Harriet by with distracted waves and hellos, but Cath insisted Harriet stoop and give her a stiff, almost reluctant hug.
“Run along, dear,” Harriet said. “I must talk to your parents.”
“Oh-oh,” Franklin sighed. “What now!” Eleanor agreed.
Next: The Picnic – Part 3