Still Life Read online

  The last door in the hallway was closed.

  Olive crept nearer. This time, there was no sound from within. She waited for several seconds, listening for the thump of Morton’s feet or the slam of closing drawers and hearing only the muted drumming of her own heart. Slowly, she reached up and touched the brass doorknob.

  It turned in her hand.

  The room inside was dim. “Morton?” Olive whispered. She already knew that he wouldn’t answer, but pretending that she was still looking for him made her feel a bit less guilty. Olive pulled the door shut behind her and hurried to the nearest window, tugging the dusty curtains apart. Blue-white daylight rushed in. Olive spun around, scanning the room.

  A high bed stood against one wall, piled with pillows and worn patchwork quilts. A layer of dust had spread across the covers, like one more delicate blanket. The rest of the room was soft and cozy and faded, with patterned wallpaper, and a round, hand-braided rug, and wooden furniture draped with fine white strands of spiderweb.

  Except for the cobwebs and the dust, this seemed like the perfect room for crinkly-eyed Harold and softly smiling Mary.

  The only thing that didn’t seem quite right was that the walls were bare. There were no wreaths, no photographs, no decorations at all—except for one large, framed portrait above the dresser.

  Olive squinted up at it. It wasn’t one of Aldous’s paintings, she was certain. The brushstrokes were bumpy and inelegant, and there was no spark of life inside of it, even when Olive put on the spectacles.

  It was a portrait of a girl a little bit older than Olive—a girl with a narrow face and sharp, sallow features that made her look like she’d been carved from a stick of butter. The girl was gazing into the distance, and her mouth wore an awkward little smile, as though she hadn’t practiced it enough. Olive recognized her immediately: She was Morton’s older sister, Lucinda. Olive sprawled across the dresser top for a better look. In the bottom corner of the canvas, in the shade of gold used for Lucinda’s hair, were two little initials: MN.

  Mary Nivens?

  The back of Olive’s neck began to tingle.

  Without her brain telling them to, Olive’s hands yanked open the top dresser drawer. Instead of being filled with clothes or accessories or anything else a person might actually get dressed in, the drawer was stuffed with stacks of papers.

  Olive pulled out a handful.

  The yellowing pages were covered with sketches. There were drawings of a girl with perfect hair bows and a stiff little smile, and of a man with big hands and a thick mustache, and of a boy with a round face and soft, pale hair. In the bottom corner of each sketch, there were the same initials: MN. And, at the top of some of them, there was another, changing note. Lesson with AM, March 13. Lesson with AM, February 28. Lesson with AM, April 9.

  Olive groped through the drawer, pulling out another sheaf of papers. Here was a sketch of Morton on a swing. Morton with a striped ball. Morton running down a hillside. A sketch of Harold leaning against a tree. A drawing of a slender, long-haired woman staring sadly up at the sky.

  She was so absorbed in the papers that she didn’t hear the door creak open.

  “Olive!”

  Olive jumped.

  A flapping white figure shot across the room, wrenching the curtains closed. The papers flew out of Olive’s grasp. The dresser drawer banged shut.

  “I was just looking,” said Olive lamely.

  “You’re not supposed to be in here!” shouted Morton, shoving Olive toward the door. “You’re not supposed to snoop in Mama’s things!”

  “Your mother was an artist?” Olive asked as Morton hustled her into the hall.

  “No!” Morton exploded. He slammed the door behind them. “She was my mother! She—she just liked to draw!”

  “That’s all I meant,” said Olive. “She liked to draw.”

  Morton folded his arms. He glared across the hall, not meeting Olive’s eyes.

  Olive studied his face. He must have seen the same things: Lesson with AM. He must have known exactly what this meant. Olive had a guess of her own, but Morton’s scowl told her that now was not the time to ask.

  “I’m sorry,” she said at last. “I just want to know the truth.”

  “Hmph,” said Morton.

  “I’m probably a little too curious.”

  “Not probably,” said Morton.

  “I’m sorry,” said Olive again. “Really. I shouldn’t have looked, when you told me not to. I was just trying to help.”

  Morton didn’t answer.

  For a few seconds, they both kept quiet. Olive gazed through a gap in the hallway curtains, at the softly snowy world beyond.

  “Hey, Morton,” she began. “Do you want to have a snowball fight?”

  Morton’s eyes met hers. “. . . What about the Old Man?”

  “It’s still daylight,” said Olive, trying to sound confident. “Besides, Walter and Mrs. Dewey and Rutherford are right next door. They would know if anything happened.”

  “Don’t you think the snow might”—Morton wiggled his painted hands—“wipe me?”

  “We’ll bundle you up. We’ll find boots and a coat and scarves and mittens and a hat, and you’ll be completely covered. What do you think?”

  Five minutes later, Olive and something that looked like a woolly fire hydrant burst through the front door of the tall gray house.

  Olive bent down to gather a handful of snow. Before she could even close her mitten around it, a ball of cold, wet ice smashed against the side of her neck.

  “Ow, Morton!” she shouted. “That hurt!”

  There was a self-satisfied snicker from the woolly fire hydrant.

  Olive straightened up, packing the snow between her mittens. Another clump of slush struck her on the back of the head.

  “Morton! You throw too hard!”

  “You throw too slow,” Morton countered.

  Olive hurled her snowball. It landed with a harmless piff at Morton’s feet.

  Morton’s snicker turned into a giggle.

  Olive dodged his next snowball and even managed to hit Morton’s shin with her own. Morton let out a happy shriek before whipping a missile that smacked Olive directly in the chest. She giggled too, feeling the startling explosion of snow on her cheeks and chin.

  She ducked to pack another snowball, and Morton dove behind a tree.

  “Wait!” he called from the other side. “Don’t throw any more.”

  “Don’t try to trick me.” Olive inched closer, patting her snowball into shape. “Is this an ambush?”

  “No,” said Morton. His scarf-wrapped face peered around the trunk. Even from a distance, Olive could see that his eyes were worried. “There’s something wrong.”

  “What happened?” Olive dropped the snowball and ran nearer. “Did you get wet?”

  “No. I just . . .” Morton flexed his hands inside their fuzzy mittens. “It feels—like—thickening.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Slowly, Morton wriggled his shoulders. “It doesn’t bend right. It’s like . . . like taffy. When it cools.”

  There was a honk from the street. Olive glanced out from behind the tree trunk to see her parents coasting past in the station wagon, Mrs. Dunwoody at the wheel, Mr. Dunwoody smiling from the passenger seat. They gave Olive and Morton cheery waves.

  “You should go inside,” said Olive, brushing the clumps of snow from her jeans. “Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.”

  Morton stared after the station wagon. He nodded absently, still flexing his fingers inside of his mittens.

  “I should go too,” said Olive. “It’s getting dark.”

  Morton nodded again.

  “Tell Walter how you’re feeling,” Olive commanded.

  With one last little nod, Morton stumbled toward his house.

>   “Good night, Morton,” Olive called after him.

  Morton didn’t reply, but as Olive ran toward the lilac hedge, she felt the thud of a snowball between her shoulder blades. She turned around. The front door of the tall gray house slammed, shutting Morton safely inside.

  By the time Olive reached her own front yard, her parents had gone indoors. She knew they would be switching on lights, opening cabinets, starting dinner. And Morton would be trudging through the quiet, dim house where no parents were waiting for him.

  Most of Olive felt sorry for Morton. But there was a small, frustrated part of her that wanted to grab him with both hands and squeeze the answers out of him like the last squiggle of toothpaste from a stubborn little tube.

  Had Mary Nivens studied with Aldous McMartin? What had she wanted to learn from him—the skills of a painter . . . or something more?

  Who had Mary Nivens been?

  Olive stepped through the front door of the old stone house.

  “It’s the snow maiden!” shouted Mr. Dunwoody from the kitchen. “Come and tell us about your day!”

  “Coming!” Olive called back.

  She tossed her coat over the coat tree and hurried along the hall. Around her, old picture frames glimmered softly. Lights glowed in their antique sconces. The whole house felt so warm and bright, Olive didn’t notice that within each painting she passed—the Parisian street scene, the silvery lake above the stairs, the stonemasons and their dog in the kitchen corner—a thick, eclipsing darkness was just beginning to fade, as if something that cast a huge shadow was slowly backing away.

  THE ART MUSEUM had once been a small college. It still had a slightly college-y shape, with high brick walls and latticed windows, but inside, all the classrooms had been removed, and everything that was left had been painted white. Its ceilings were very high. Its parquet floors were dizzyingly shiny. Footsteps echoed through its rooms, as if other, invisible people followed its visitors everywhere they went.

  It was the kind of place that would compel anyone to whisper.

  Anyone, that is, except Ms. Teedlebaum.

  “It’s just like a garden, isn’t it?” the art teacher exclaimed. She paused in the center of the first gallery, swaying happily from side to side—possibly because she was wearing two different shoes. “Creativity is blossoming everywhere!”

  The collected sixth graders gazed around. Olive and Rutherford, who were standing to the teacher’s right, ducked just in time to avoid a swinging clump of keys.

  “This would be the rose garden,” Ms. Teedlebaum went on, gesturing to a row of bright paintings. She whirled to the left, and the keys around her neck swung again. “Those weavings would be the vegetable patch. Does anyone know what those clay pots would be?”

  The students blinked at her.

  “Pumpkins!” said Ms. Teedlebaum. “All right, everyone. Remember the things we’re looking for: examples of impasto, chiaroscuro, self-portraits, landscapes . . .”

  There was a soft giggle from the other side of the crowd. Olive glanced up to see the group of girls from her art class smirking at her. The one with black eyeliner went on staring until Olive looked away.

  “Most of all, drink it in!” Ms. Teedlebaum cried, swaying from her green pump to her black moon boot. “Be inspired! Enjoy!”

  The students scattered, winter coats and thumping boots charging off in every direction. In the jostle, Olive felt a hand touch her arm.

  “Tell us if you see any really scary landscapes, okay?” said the girl with the eyeliner. She gave Olive a smile that was too bright to be real before gliding away with her giggling friends.

  “Why are you thinking about spending the rest of this field trip hiding in the restroom?” asked Rutherford’s loud, nasal voice from over her shoulder.

  “I’m not,” said Olive. She pulled her collar up over her burning cheeks. “Come on. Let’s get started.”

  They headed quickly into the corridor, leaving most of the other sixth graders behind.

  The hallway was long and quiet. Chambers branched off from it in surprising places, one room leading into another like gigantic cars on an empty, motionless train.

  “I know it’s rather unlikely in a local museum, but I hope the collection includes at least a few pieces dating from the Renaissance, if not the Middle Ages,” said Rutherford as they swerved around a corner into one of the unoccupied rooms.

  The gallery was lined with paintings of all shapes and sizes. There were tiny pictures of flowers in little round frames, and huge pictures of people in velvet coats with too many buttons. Rutherford headed straight toward a canvas depicting a castle. Olive trailed toward a portrait of a woman in a filmy white gown. The woman’s face was rosy and cheerful and nothing at all like Annabelle McMartin’s, but something about her old-fashioned dress and paint-flecked brown eyes made Olive’s stomach twist. She backed quickly away again.

  “Shall we move on?” Rutherford asked.

  They wound past a dark-suited security guard and turned into a chamber that looked exactly like the one they had just left, except for the changing paintings. Olive stopped beside a picture of a clothesline dangling with strange objects. A bullhorn, a tutu, a striped ball, a top hat, and a baby elephant were all pinned to the clothesline, floating on an imaginary breeze. Olive glanced at the tag beside the picture.

  “Rutherford!” she shouted. “Look! It says this one is by Florence Teedlebaum!”

  Rutherford skidded across the floor to Olive’s side. He leaned close to the canvas, blinking at it through his smudgy glasses. “Interesting,” he said. “What do you think it means?”

  “I don’t know. The tag says it’s called The Inescapability of Laundry.”

  “That is completely unhelpful.”

  Olive giggled.

  “I think I see another Teedlebaum over here,” said Rutherford, darting to the right.

  Olive followed him, passing a still life with two dead birds, a misty purple landscape, and a portrait of a small boy in a straw hat. The boy was turning away from the frame, as though he was looking at something in the distance. But even at that angle, and even with his tufty white hair hidden under the hat, Olive knew who the boy was.

  She rushed toward the frame.

  The face was flatter and more lifeless than the ones in Aldous’s portraits, and there was something strange and sloppy within the brushstrokes, making them bend in thick, crooked swipes, but Olive would have known that pale, round face anywhere. In the canvas’s bottom corner were the two painted initials, just where Olive knew they would be. MN. And on the label that hung beside the painting were the words Portrait—Mary Nivens.

  “Rutherford . . . ?” she breathed.

  “This one is titled The Sweet Security of Breakfast,” said Rutherford, gazing up at a painting of a house made of pancakes. “I’m not sure I understand this concept, either.”

  “Rutherford!” said Olive again.

  This time Rutherford turned around. Seeing the look on Olive’s face—or the thoughts in her head—brought him hustling across the parquet.

  “Look,” Olive whispered. They were the only people in the gallery, but other students were thumping through the corridor outside. Someone could pop in and overhear them at any moment. “It’s Morton,” she went on, keeping her voice low. “And his mother painted it.”

  Rutherford squinted critically at the canvas. “I didn’t know she was a painter.”

  “I didn’t either,” said Olive. “I just found out.”

  Together, they gazed up at the picture. And, as they gazed, something inside of the painting—something so faint and small that Olive’s brain almost didn’t catch it—twitched.

  Olive grabbed Rutherford’s sleeve. “Did you see that?”

  “See what?”

  Olive leaned closer to the bumpy brushstrokes, her heart moving from a st
eady drumbeat to a roll. “It moved.”

  Rutherford frowned. “I didn’t see anything. And Morton appears to have remained in the very same position.”

  “It wasn’t Morton. I think . . . it was something behind him.” Her hand flew to her collar, tugging out the spectacles. “Is anyone watching?”

  “No,” said Rutherford. “We’re alone.”

  Olive set the spectacles on her nose.

  The painting kept still.

  There were no flickers in Morton’s eyes, no fluttering strands of hair, no shimmering light on suddenly three-dimensional surfaces. There was nothing at all.

  Rutherford watched her closely. “It’s not working, is it?”

  Olive shook her head.

  The longer she stared, and the longer the painting didn’t move, the more Olive began to wonder if she had imagined that tiny twitch. Maybe what she’d seen was just an accidental blot of color, or a glint on a thick smudge of paint. And the paint was awfully thick and smudgy. Some of the brushstrokes in it didn’t seem to be part of the portrait at all. They bumped up under Morton’s image like scars under a thin bandage.

  Olive glanced over her shoulder. A uniformed security guard stood in the doorway, too far off for Olive to see his face, or to know if his eyes were following her. A group of students tromped past the door. The security guard turned to watch them, and Olive whirled back toward the portrait.

  She raised one hand, fingers outstretched, and pressed them carefully against the painting.

  It didn’t feel like one of Aldous’s artworks—like a window with a sheet of warm, invisible Jell-O where the pane of glass should have been. It felt tighter, and thicker, more like a piece of well-chewed bubble gum. Morton’s image kept still as Olive pushed harder, making the canvas bend. She had just felt something begin to break, sending a gust of cool damp air over her fingertips, when a voice behind her said—

  “I saw that.”

  Both Olive and Rutherford spun around.

  The girl with the eyeliner stood in the doorway. Her hands were on her hips, and her dark eyes were fixed on Olive.