Page 1 (1/2)

ONE

Oh, no, no, no, thought Clara Morrow as she walked toward the closed doors

She could see shadows, shapes, like wraiths lass Appearing and disappearing Distorted, but still huoing through her head all day, appearing and disappearing A poe under The body of the poerasp

What was the rest of it?

It seeures at the far end of the long corridor seemed al Fleeing

As she wished she could

This was it The end of the journey Not just that day’s journey as she and her husband, Peter, had driven froe into the Musée d’Art Contemporain in Montréal, a place they kneell Intimately How often had they come to the MAC to marvel at some new exhibition? To support a friend, a fellow artist? Or to just sit quietly in the allery, in the middle of a weekday, when the rest of the city was at work?

Art was their work But it was more than that It had to be Otherwise, why put up with all those years of solitude? Of failure? Of silence from a baffled and even bemused art world?

She and Peter had worked away, every day, in their s their tiny lives Happy But still yearning for , white h those doors Finally The end point of everything she’d worked toward, walked toward, all her life

Her first drea, almost fifty years later, was at the far end of the hard white hallway

They’d both expected Peter would be the first through those doors He was by far the more successful artist, with his exquisite studies of life in close-up So detailed, and so close that a piece of the natural world appeared distorted and abstract Unrecognizable Peter took as natural and made it appear unnatural

People ate it up Thank God It kept food on the table and the wolves, while constantly circling their little home in Three Pines, were kept frolanced at hihtly ahead of her, a smile on his handso them, never took her for his wife Instead they assuant hand was histo like

The distinguished artist with the head of graying hair and noble features could not possibly have chosen the wolove hands And the pâté in her frizzy hair And the studio full of sculptures es ings

No Peter Morrow could not have chosen her That would have been unnatural