“Do you go into the city often?” I said as we paused near another piece of art, this one a painting of a statue beside an explosion of flowers.
“Not often, no. I shop there on occasion, but it is awfully busy.”
“Yes. Very congested. I used to live downtown, which was great, as I don’t have a car. I could walk everywhere I needed to go—everything was right there. I was used to all the people. But now I live out near the ocean, and while it’s still kind of busy, it’s way slower out there. Downtown seems much busier to me now.”
We climbed the stairs and turned left at the top. I had never been on a tour of anything with so few words. In all reality, I could’ve seen and learned a whole lot more if I’d just wandered around on my own. She wasn’t describing the pictures or telling me any family history. Heck, she wasn’t even grilling me about her son. Even though she seemed really laid-back and extremely genteel, I was starting to get more than a little uncomfortable.
“This is my favorite piece,” Trisha said quietly as she clicked on the hall light.
I dutifully looked at the mess of a painting on the wall. Then leaned a little closer, not believing this had actually been put on sale.
A creature of some sort sat on a blob of brown. A man on a log? He held a gray sluglike thing. In front of him was a large, round blue area. Within it were strange shapes of all colors, one looking close to a five-year-old’s attempt at a fish. At the top was a round sun with the customary lines for rays.
The thing looked like a child painted it, for cripes’ sakes. And it probably cost millions.
“Oh. Wow.” I nodded and smiled. “It’s really interesting.”
Trisha gave me that soft smile. “Yes. A lovely attempt by Hunter when he was six. He wanted to be a painter at the time.”
My mouth dropped. My smile turned into a wry grin. “Get out!” I stepped closer, seeing that the brown smudge was a dock, not a log, and he was, indeed, trying to draw fish. “Wow. I had no idea he had been a budding artist.”
“Oh no, he was never any good.” Trisha moved down the hallway to another mess of a painting, this one depicting a camping scene with a big brown blob in the far right. The dotted white of stars stretched across a streaked black sky. A burning flame, fairly well done, twisted up from strange greenish…sticks? Another creature, definitely supposed to be a human, sat with a tree trunk next to him. A squiggly gray line was on the other side.
“Fishing pole,” I said, pointing to the tree-trunk-looking thing. “Fish.” I pointed to the gray line. “Fire, stars—I have all that. What’s the brown blob?”
“A bear, I believe.”
“Oohhhh.” I nodded, chuckling. “A nature scene with an element of danger.”
I heard Trisha’s soft laugh as she led the way to the young Hunter’s next masterpiece. This one was a meadow under an orange sky streaked with pink. A half circle of yellow with hazy rays lay on the picture’s horizon. The green foreground had various colored dots, some representational of flowers, and some a lazy attempt to fill up the page.
“Looks like he got tired of making flowers…” I pointed out the examples.
“Yes. He didn’t have the constitution of a painter.”
My eyes slid over the painting. “This one is way better than the others. It actually portrays a feeling. There’s kind of a…sweetness to it.”
“He was a few years older when he did this one. It was his last. His dad pushed him toward money and business shortly after he finished this piece.”
“Well, I’m sure he’s way better at business than he was at painting, but…it’s kind of a shame he let go of the hobby. He doesn’t have any hobbies now. Or none that I know of. Even golf is for business.”
“Exactly. And if you’ll notice, all these are outdoor pictures. Wild, wilderness. He did so love to play in the dirt. He was always begging me to go camping. He has a fondness for the outdoors that, sadly, I never indulged. I regret that now.”
I glanced back at the other pictures before looking again at the meadow. It was true—fishing, sitting beside a roaring fire under the stars, and finally, when he was older, a beautiful meadow filled with wildflowers at sunset. He had none of that now. No nature. Hardly even a yard, actually.
Trisha continued down the hall. I followed, my mind whirling.
“I used to like camping,” I said, remembering my own childhood. “My dad took me a lot. I was really good at fishing—very patient. I didn’t touch the fish once I caught them, though. My dad dealt with the hook and cleaning it and all that. It was fun. Those were good times.”