Verna lays her favourite sable brushes on the table beside two large jars of fresh water; one for washing, the other for rinsing. Immediately to hand is her palette, loaded with black, grey, teal, pink, white. She selects a sheet of cartridge paper, A4 size. Her heart flutters. Butterflies, at her age! Hardly surprising, though. Resisting the urge to give up before she has even tried, Verna clips the paper to the easel, pulls up her chair, closes her eyes, steadies her breathing and waits for her heart to settle.
Outside, the groan of Jim’s ageing Briggs & Stratton lawnmower approaches. As he pushes it past the open window, she hears him singing. Actually, it’s more like screeching.
‘He’s a keeper, that one,’ her father had said, all those decades ago. And he is. Although there was a time, after the children left, when she wished he would sing to himself a little less in public. Or perhaps only in the shower. Or not at all. She’s used to it now. It’s part of him. If he goes first, she expects this is what she will miss the most. Along with the warmth of his body beside hers in their bed.
Verna turns her attention back to her easel. Does her best to focus her mind. Watercolours require planning, each step building on the one that’s gone before. There’s no going back to fix mistakes. Not like with oils. Or even acrylics.
Eyes closed, she explores her face with the tips of her fingers. Her high cheekbones, the hollows of her cheeks deeper than they used to be, the skin dry despite the moisturiser she applies twice a day. Her lips are thin, have been for years. When age first made an appearance, she’d thought they might be the one thing she’d get help with; a collagen implant, to give them a little boost. The internet cured her of that; fish lips are not appealing. Her jowls – trim people like her get them too, they’re just sharper, more stringy. The rough skin of her nose, thanks to all her Aotearoa summers. She can’t feel them but does remember the tiny red blotches, the broken veins in the creases between nose and cheek. Her eyebrows, untamed these days. Once that would have mattered a lot.
All this detail. It’s not achievable. Not any more. Not for her. Her eyes are the problem. They’re not as good as they once were. Objects seem to jump about at will. Sometimes it’s as if she can see the light waves scientists talk about. Mostly though, it’s her peripheral vision that’s no good. If she’s going to do this, she has to work with what’s left, somewhere between her imagination and her limitations.
Jim completes two more strips of the lawn, his voice and the lawnmower fading in and out as he goes back and forth. He’s in his own world, stuck on that old song about mothers and their lovely daughters. She humphs. What did Herman’s Hermits ever know? What does Jim know?
She breathes and she plans. Dark first. A few strokes; an indication is all she wants. Then the lighter colours for movement.
Rowena had sparked off this return. Verna warmed to her from the beginning. Her voice was comforting like the sun in autumn. Not a hint, ever, of being weighed down by her job. It must get to her, Verna supposes. Delivering bad news more often than not. Some people turn brutal with the strain of it. Rowena, though, held Verna’s cold hand between hers and looked directly into her eyes as she delivered the news. ‘We can slow the progression, but we can’t stop it.’ Which wasn’t a surprise. Jim had done a Google search.
He’s finished the lawn, thankfully. The quiet is a relief. She loads a brush with water. Dabs into the paint well. Lifts the brush. Pauses. And then in a few quick strokes she has the shape of her face, round yet peaky.
Her.
She draws in a long, satisfied breath and her work disappears in waves of light and shadow. She squints, puts her face close to the paper. There she is. Sort of. She rinses her brush in the first jar of water, presses the bristles against the edge, repeats the process in the second jar. The water in both has turned a murky grey-brown. Is it clean enough? She can’t be sure. At a guess – probably. But probably isn’t certainty. And for these last strokes she wants control. She laughs at herself. In watercolour? Who has that? O’Keeffe and Klee for sure. Never her. Not even in her heyday. She’ll try though. Just like she used to.
In the laundry, Verna tips the water away and rinses each jar two, three times before refilling. Satisfied she’s done her best to ensure her work won’t be contaminated, she returns to her easel. She takes a fresh brush from the table, one with a finer head, dips it into the clean water and then loads it with white mixed with a hint of grey.
A familiar urge rises within her, taking her by surprise. She’d thought it was gone for good – this feeling of something greater than her bursting through her, to the brush, the paint, the paper. Throughout her painting life, it was this that drove her to show what she sees.
Until it didn’t.
She savours the sensation. It is like touching eternity. This is not the time to hesitate. This is the time to do. Before it disappears again. She leans forward, sweeps the brush across the paper in one quick movement, follows it with another. She washes out the brush, mixes the white with the pink. The last quick strokes indicate her nose and a cheekbone.
Verna sits back. So, she thinks, this is how it is. Oh, how she has missed it. The thinking, the musing, the doing of it. Ideas rush through her head. A series perhaps. Tracking the changes. It might be interesting. Even thrilling. Sad too.
‘Vern, you’re painting.’ Jim’s surprise startles her back into her body. ‘I thought that Rowena lady was chasing after pipe dreams.’
‘Hmm.’ She catches the familiar whiff of sweat mixed with green grass. Hears an unfamiliar quiver in his voice. Dismisses it. It’ll be her ears playing tricks.
‘You gonna show her?’
Trust Jim to push her on to the next step. ‘Dunno … maybe.’