Cruelest Month

‘Ready?’ Clara asked, her voice almost squeaky with excitement. She’d worked non-stop, racing the arrival of Fortin. But then it had become something else. A race to get what she saw, what she felt, onto the canvas.

And finally she had it.

‘Okay, you can look.’

Peter’s eyes flew open. It took him a moment to absorb what he saw. It was a huge portrait, of Ruth. But a Ruth he’d never seen. Not really. But now, as he looked, he realized he had seen her, but only in passing, at odd angles, in unsuspecting moments.

She was swathed in luminous blue, a hint of a red tunic underneath. Her skin, wrinkled and veined, was exposed down her old neck and to her protruding collar bones. She was old and tired and ugly. A weak hand clasped the blue shawl closed, as though afraid of exposing herself. And on her face was a look of such bitterness and anguish. Loneliness and loss. But there was something else. In her eyes, something about the eyes.

Peter wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to breathe again, or need to. The portrait seemed to do it for him. It had crawled inside his body and become him. The fear, the emptiness, the shame.

But in those eyes, there was something else.

This was Ruth as Mary, the mother of God. Mary as an old and forgotten woman. But there was something those old eyes were just beginning to see. Peter stood still and did as Clara had always advised and he’d always dismissed. He let the painting come to him.

And then he saw it.

Clara had captured the moment when despair turned to hope. That instant, when the world changed forever. That’s what Ruth was seeing. Hope. The first, new-born, intimation of hope. This was a masterpiece, Peter knew. Like Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. But while Michelangelo had painted the instant before God brought Man to life, Clara had painted the moment the fingers touched.

‘It’s brilliant,’ he whispered. ‘It’s the most wonderful painting I’ve ever seen.’

All the artsy descriptive words fled before the portrait. All his fears and insecurities vanished. And the love he felt for Clara was restored.

He took her in his arms and together they laughed and wept for joy.

‘The idea came to me that night at dinner, when I watched Ruth talk about Lilium. If you hadn’t suggested the dinner, this never would’ve happened. Thank you, Peter.’ And she gave him a huge hug and kiss.

For the next hour he listened as she talked a mile a minute about the work, her excitement infecting him until they were exhausted and exhilarated.

‘Come on.’ She poked him. ‘Up to the old Hadley house. Grab a six-pack from the cold room; they’ll probably need it.’

As he left he peeked into Clara’s studio once more and was relieved to feel just a hint, just an echo of the crippling jealousy he’d felt. It was going, he knew. Soon it would disappear completely and for the first time in his life he’d be able to be genuinely happy for someone else.

And so Peter and Clara made their way to the old Hadley house, Peter carrying a case of beer and a tiny shard of jealousy, which started festering.

* * *

‘Happy?’ Reine-Marie slipped her hand into Gamache’s. He kissed her and nodded, pointing his beer down the lawn. Henri was playing fetch with an exasperated Myrna, who was trying to get someone else to throw the ball to the tireless dog. She’d made the mistake of giving him a soiled hot dog and now she was his new best friend.

‘Mesdames et messieurs.’ Monsieur Beliveau’s voice bellowed over the gathering. The eating stopped and everyone gathered at the porch of the old Hadley house. Beside Monsieur Beliveau stood Odile Montmagny, looking very nervous, but sober.

‘I read Sarah Binks,’ Gamache whispered to Myrna, who joined them just as Ruth sidled up. ‘It’s delightful.’ He withdrew it from his jacket pocket. ‘It’s a supposed tribute to this Prairie woman’s poetry, except the poetry’s awful.’

‘Our own Odile Montmagny has written an ode to the day and to this house,’ Monsieur Beliveau was saying as Odile shifted from foot to foot, as though she suddenly needed to relieve herself.

‘But Sarah Binks was my book. I was going to give it to her.’ Ruth grabbed it from his hand and used it to gesture toward Odile. ‘Where’d you get it?’

‘It was hidden in Madeleine’s bedside table,’ said Gamache.

‘Madeleine? She stole it from me? I thought I’d just lost it.’

‘She took it from you when she realized what you were going to do with it,’ hissed Myrna. ‘When you told Odile she reminded you of Sarah Binks she thought it was a compliment. She worships you. Madeleine didn’t want you to hurt her, so she hid it.’

‘This is a little something I wrote last night while watching the hockey game,’ said Odile. Nods greeted this insight into the creative process, this natural affinity between poetry and the playoffs.

She cleared her throat.

‘A cursed duck pecked off his ear,

And his face grew peaked and pale;

“Oh, how can a woman love me now?”

Was his constant and lonely wail;

But a woman came and she loved the man,