Your twin sister,
Rebecca Rose Underhill
Exhaling, the woman folds the letter neatly into thirds and slips it into a blank stationary envelope, her initials RRU embossed on the label. Running the bitter, sticky glue interior over her tongue, she seals the envelope and sets it back down onto the writing table. Once more she picks up the pencil, bringing the now dulled tip to the envelope’s face. Addressing it she writes only a name:
Molly Rose Underhill
The job done, the woman smiles sadly. Opening the table drawer, she sets the letter inside, on top of a stack of nine identical letters-never-sent. One for every year her sister has been gone.
Closing the drawer, she hears her cell phone begin to vibrate, then softly chime. Picking it up off the desktop, she opens the phone and sees that a new text has been forwarded to her electronic mailbox. Fingering the inbox, she retrieves the message.
Rebecca. Nothing more.
Punching the command that reveals the name and number of the sender she finds ‘Caller Unknown’. The sender’s number has been blocked. Closing the phone back up, she sets it down on the desk. That’s when the wind picks up, blows and whistles through the open window.
“Mol,” she says, staring out into the darkness. “Mol, is that you?”
The City
Chapter 1
I was in no mood to argue. Even with the one person on earth I argued with the most: Robyn, my partner at the Albany Art Center or, what we lovingly referred to as, The School of Art.
“What do you mean you can’t see the word, Rob? It’s right there spelled out in plain English.”
Here’s the deal: the center’s most accomplished artist-in-residence, Francis-autistic by clinical definition but a genius savant by our definition-had completed a brand new canvas. A colorful, richly textured, post-modern abstract on-get this-traditional landscape that to me anyway, contained the word ‘Listen’ painted in faint, flesh- colored letters deep inside its center. Or in the vernacular of the job, core.
Maybe the faint word wasn’t entirely obvious to the naked eye. Maybe it was difficult to see. But in my mind it was centered and focused enough that the abstract collage of lines and swipes laid out against green-brown grasses and distant forest trees seemed to be painted not over the word, but around it.
L-i-s-t-e-n
“My eyesight is just as sharp as yours, Bec,” Robyn barked. “We graduated the same day, same lousy school, same useless MFA in Painting and I just don’t see the word.” She abruptly held up her paint-stained hands like a politician about to retract a statement. “Allow me to correct myself. I see the word all right. That is, I force myself to see it. But it’s primarily an abstract rendering for God’s sakes.” She tossed Franny a smile. “And a darned good one too.”
“God’s sakes,” Franny mumbled, dark eyes rolling around in their sockets like a blind man.
“Thanks for the back-up, Fran,” Robyn exclaimed, holding up her hand for the artist to slap her five, which he cautiously did. By that I mean, without making eye contact with her. Brushing back long brunette hair, Robyn planted a satisfied smile on her narrow face. “Seems to me, Ms. Underhill needs a refresher course in Painting 101.”
“Refresher,” Franny repeated solemnly, as though speaking for no one’s ears other than his own. He was seated on a paint-spattered wood stool. The stool was set before an equally paint-stained easel and situated in the far corner of the classroom-far enough away from the other half-dozen private art students who occupied the downtown former Catholic grammar school now turned art center.
The fact that the emotionally distanced man-boy sat for an extended length of time at all was a testament to how absorbed he was in his work. From what his aging mother once told me, getting him to sit still for even thirty seconds at a time at home was a near miracle. Only when Franny finally collapsed into a deep sleep did he become the perfect still-life.
“Earth to Rebecca,” Rob spoke up, crossing her arms over her T-shirted chest. “Are we finished with the ‘Listen’ business, partner? Because I’d like to go home and shower before my date arrives.”
Robyn was currently ‘on the market’ as they say in the dating world. Since it isn’t all that easy meeting men in bars and virtually impossible to meet one while working at the School of Art, she’d become a devoted disciple of online dating’s Match. com. That is, a patron of the Match. com dating philosophy of ‘Find, Mind, Bind’ which in my loveless world tended to read more like ‘Find, Mind, Bind, Bail
…’
“Who’s the lucky victim tonight?” I posed, sensing an organ slide of jealously in my guts.
Robyn grinned.
“Allen. Stockbroker. That’s all I know. But very cute judging by the head-shot he posted on the website.” Her smile turned foxy sly.
Pulling my eyes away from Franny’s painting, I took a glance through the glass doors onto a busy downtown State Street, the sidewalk filled with commuters making their lonely exodus from the city to their suburban McMansions. Now that October had arrived, it was getting dark out earlier. Cooler too.
“I’ll take care of the lock up,” I offered.
By then the only artist left in the center was Franny, the others having begun to quietly make their exit while we’d argued over identifying a secret word not exactly hidden inside Franny’s painting.
My partner leaned herself into Franny, planted a peck on his smooth cheek. She then glided across the room, grabbed her black North-Face vest from out of her personal cubby and headed for the door.
“I’ll let you know how it goes tonight,” she barked. “Keep your cell phone by your side.”
“Don’t call me after eleven,” I ordered.
“Get thee a life,” she added before springing the door open, nearly pushing it off its hinges.
Just then I caught the image of my face reflected in the wall-mounted mirror above my work table. I looked into my own eyes-the same blue eyes I shared with Molly. The same blonde hair, same face. Only difference now was that Molly would forever remain thirty-two-and-under in my eyes, while as for myself, I was looking decidedly paler, thinner and more tired than a person should be for forty-two.
For a fleeting second I wanted to tell Robyn, ‘Take a good look around you. I’ve got a life.’ But she was gone and I’m not sure I believed it myself. Neither did Franny it turns out.
“Get a life,” he softly spoke to himself. Strangely, he smiled when he said it. A rare event to be sure. He also came close to making eye contact. Something he almost never did. Maybe it was just me, my intuition knocking on the gray walls of my brain. But I sensed he was doing more than just mimicking Robyn’s words. I sensed he was trying to tell me something. Something more than just the catch phrase ‘Get a life.’ It felt more like he was trying to tell me to Wake up! There’s something you need to know! Or, on another hand altogether, maybe I was looking too far into a deep dark nothing. Maybe I was just feeling old, passed over, worn out.
I worked up a smile anyway, scratched my forehead with nail-chewed digits.
“Yeah, sure, rub it in Fran,” I jibed. “Isn’t it enough that you can paint circles around everyone else in this studio? Including Robyn and me?”
I stood in the middle of the old grade school classroom floor, waiting for a response. But waiting for a response from Franny was as stupid as it was unrealistic. Because I’m not sure he understood a single word I’d just said. Rather, he understood my words. But from what little I knew about his condition, his autism acted like a barrier that could selectively block out almost anything I said.
I made my way back over to him, stood by his side and took another look at the new canvas. One last look at the crazy red and green Pollack-like squiggles and spatters that surrounded a large field of tall grass and beyond it, a dark wood. To combine the abstract with traditional landscape made for a daring composition, even for the most gifted of painters. But Franny was able to pull it off and then some. My eyes peeled to the painting, I knew that if I were made to interpret the piece for the studio arts course I taught every spring, I would have called
