Thirteen crucifixions,51

She had talent.  He couldn’t argue with that.  But the symbolist aspect of the painting Glen found particularly disturbing.  Especially the way the serpent in the apple tree appeared to be intentionally averting his gaze from the dead white dove in the foreground.  The priest was looking towards the serpent, the priestess not really towards the dove, but at the pool of blood he was lying in.  A most disturbing aspect.  He was in the kitchen with Sheila.  They were seated at the arborite table, having just finished dinner together. 

            “How long have you been painting?” he asked.

            “About twenty years.”

            “Can you tell me how you got started?”

            “I suppose that I was needing the creative outlet.  It was a fairly frustrating period in my life.  The children were growing up.  Frank—my first husband—was usually absent. Madge and I were under all kinds of pressures with the drop-in centre that we were operating.”

            “What were you painting?”

            “Oh, details from the garden, mostly, still-lifes, a few abstracts.”

            “I like your style of work.  It’s like a live impressionism.”

            “Thank you.”

            Glen wasn’t merely trying to flatter.  He found her style of work very impressive, almost frighteningly present.

            “Tell me about the symbolism.”

            "Well, that’s the apple tree in the back yard.  I’ve painted it many times, actually.  Over the last eleven years or so I’ve been painting it three times annually—once in the spring when it’s really pretty and all covered in blossoms, then again in the late summer when the fruit is at its peak, and then again, just before Christmas when the branches are all bare.”

            “Always just before Christmas?”

            “That’s correct, three usually, four days before.”

            “Are you usually aware that you’re painting it on the winter solstice?”

            “Oh, I guess I am.  I never realized that.”

            Glen cleared his throat.  “Now what about the other aspects?  Have you painted these before?”

            “No, this is quite sudden.  I was just overtaken this afternoon by a sense of painterly mischief.  And I couldn’t stop painting till it was finished.  I felt in a way possessed while I was doing it.”

            “Yes, I see.  What about the priest and priestess?  They look very much alike, almost like the male and female aspects of the same person.”

            “I never thought of that.”

            “Their eyes are strikingly similar.”

            “Yes.  They are, aren’t they?”

            “Do you know anyone who looks like that?”

            “I do, as a matter of fact.  From a dream.  Or a long series of dreams.”

            “How so?”

            “I lay down for a nap this morning, about ten or ten-thirty.  I’d been working at the painting since quite early and was feeling quite fatigued.  I fell into a deep sleep, but not for very long.  That’s when I had the dream.  A youth, a boy actually—he couldn’t be more than fifteen or sixteen.  A very beautiful youth.  He’s always wearing the same clothing—white shirt and blue jeans.  But so beautiful—his hair is a light golden auburn, with vivid green eyes.  There is often a light surrounding him.”

            “You’ve been having this dream often.”

            “Many times, many times.  He sat at the foot of my bed and looked directly at me.  And he spoke.  He told me to leave this house soon, to get out while I can.”

            “When did you start dreaming about him?”

            “I was fourteen the first time I saw him.  But I was fully awake.  He was at this house, on the verandah visiting with the Portuguese widow who once lived here.  I was across the street, watching.  They didn’t appear to be really talking to each other.  She was sitting in a chair, he was standing near the door, looking out.  I thought he was quite strange because that was not the way youths dressed in those days.  But there he was .  The following day, my father was killed in action—this was during the Korean War.  And the lady disappeared.  All that remained of her was her clothes in a pile under the apple tree.  It was as if she’d been taken out of her clothes.”

            “Her body was never found?”

            “Never.”

            “And your father?”

            “His body was never sent home.  I think he was blown to bits with other members of his battalion.”

            “But were they sure?”

            “I don’t know.”

            “Did you tell anyone about this boy?”

            “I only remembered him this morning.  After the dream.”

            “But you’d been dreaming about him ever since.”

            “Off and on.  Every couple of years or so.  I dreamed about him the night before Frank proposed to me.  Then the day before this house came up for sale.  I have dreamt about him within a day or two of each of my children’s conceptions.  Also just before I had a miscarriage.  Then I dreamed about him again the night before my son told me that he is gay, then again just before Frank informed us that he had AIDS.  But now I’m getting a bit nervous, I have never dreamed about him three times in the same month.  And these last couple of times he actually spoke to me.  Before this, he’s always been silent.”

            “Yes.  I see.  Who do you think he is?”

            “I really wish I knew.  Do you have any ideas?”

            “No.  I don’t.  What do you know about the apple tree?”

            “Just that it’s the last surviving tree of an orchard that was planted here in the 1880’s, just when his area was being settled.”

            “I would be interested in tracing its lineage.”

            One horticulturist has theorized that its parent stock is from the Azores.  The last of the trees might have been wiped out during a volcanic eruption.”

            “And you have other paintings of this tree.   Are they in the house here?”

            “They’re all over the house actually.  You’ve not noticed the one hanging in your bedroom?”

            Glen could feel his face redden a little over this omission.  Then he recalled a rather stark looking small painting hanging by the closet, of a naked, defoliated tree in midwinter.  “I may have not recognized it right away because it was one of your winter trees.  It would look quite different from the others.”

            “Yes, of course.  Shall I make coffee?”

            “Only if it’s decaf’.  Time’s moving on tonight.”

            “Yes, I do have decaf’—it’s in the margarine container in the freezer.  Would you like to make it?”

            In the living room they sat drinking decaf’ and eating ginger snaps that Sheila had just finished baking.  A large painting of the apple tree in spring bloom adorned the wall over the fireplace.  “One of my earlier paintings”, Sheila said.  Glen had to admit that it was beautiful, and quite different from the one that she’d just finished today.  There were, perhaps, a half dozen of these paintings hanging in the house—“I used to think they were the best of the lot.  Now I’m not  so sure.”

            “Where are the others?”

            “I’ve stored them in the old master bedroom on the second floor.”

            “We should have a look at them.”

            “In a minute.  We could tour the house to look at the others as well.”

            Outside the light was fading.  Sheila had turned on a couple of lamps, though they made the room a bit garish.  When she had suggested pulling the curtains Glen politely asked to leave them open.  “I enjoy watching the light fade outside”, he said.

            “You’ve lived here quite a while now”, he said.

            “One way or the other this house has occupied me all of my life.”

            “This house has occupied you.  Interesting play on words.”

            “Yes.  It is, isn’t it?” She sipped some coffee, ate a mouthful of ginger snaps, holding the half-eaten cookie up, as though appraising it for flaws.  “I was brought up in this neighbourhood, but I think I told you this already, years ago, when you were in the house down the street.  The house I grew up in was on Parker and Lakewood.  It was demolished before you first lived in the area.  This is the only neighbourhood I’ve ever lived in.”

            “Very unusual nowadays.”

            “I suppose it is.  For some reason I never saw any cause for wanting to move on.  Almost everyone I grew up with here has left the area, mostly to better, more affluent neighbourhoods.  Most of us who grew up here grew up with a sense of stigma and shame about the eastside.  We have always been, and still are, Vancouver’s designated have-nots, no matter how well we’re doing for ourselves.  Look at this house—it would be the envy of any of the tony neighbourhoods on the west side.  And Commercial Drive has become fashionable, though in a way that makes me alternately want to laugh or gag.”

            “I can see what you mean.  So, you never felt any need to move away from here.”

            “I felt a certain amount of pressure, especially when Frank and I began to get serious.  We wanted to raise a family in a good neighbourhood and he was already earning a good salary.”

            “What did he do?”

            “He was an international sales representative for a major chemical company that got rather controversial when they became implicated in a variety of environmental degradation and human rights scandals in Africa and South-East Asia.  For me, quite embarrassing, actually, but he was usually out of the country and I was here raising the children, as I’m sure you recall from when you were living in the area.  It wasn’t much of a marriage.  But Frank thought that we should live in West Point Grey or in Kerrisdale, but here this house was being offered by City Hall, dirt-cheap.  I wanted to live here, I had to live here.  I dreamed about the youth and I knew this house was calling me.”

            “Tell me a bit about Frank.”

            “There isn’t that much to tell, really.  He was handsome, very charming and athletic.  Extremely popular.  He seemed particularly interested in me, though to this day I still don’t understand why.  I found him extremely shallow actually.  And in the long-run morally challenged. We hadn’t been married long when I began to figure out that he was having affairs. I assumed they were with women.  But I wasn’t shocked in the least to learn he was gay.  Relieved actually.  Once I got over the anger of not being desired by him.”

             “Why relieved?”

             “I didn’t feel that I was competing with other women.  I became used to his dishonesty.  I grew to expect it.  He would tell me he would be off in Sydney or Kuala Lumpur or some such place for six months on business and I would try to give him the lie even though it was pretty damn clear to both of us that he was gone mostly on the business of pleasure.  Thank God we stopped sleeping together years before he caught that horrible illness.”

            Glen noticed her grimace in such a way as to suggest that she’d like to change the subject.  It was dark outside, but for a faint turquoise wash at the hem of an indigo sky.  The last robins had stopped singing. Sheila got up and pulled the curtains shut.  “Would you like to see those paintings now?” she said.