My mother was on the floor at the bottom of the staircase. Flat on her back, her head tilted to the right at an unnatural angle. She was motionless. No rising chest, no twitch of a finger, no signs of life whatsoever. But her eyes were open, staring unseeing toward the ceiling. Her expression was not one of surprise or terror. Her face appeared…strangely relaxed. Resolute.
I was afraid to touch her and so hovered my hands over her body,as though that might somehow patch her back together. My tears dripped onto my mom’s blouse, my panic rising. I shouted her name, again and again, sobbing over her lifeless body. Finally, I called for help.
The police and ambulance arrived quickly. I sat on the bottom stair, my knees pulled up to my chest as I shook uncontrollably. My house was considered a crime scene until proven otherwise, so I stayed with a friend for a couple of nights. I have very little memory of the weeks after my mom died. My brain went offline, likely to protect itself.
Officially, her death was the result of a broken neck. An accident, the police investigation soon concluded. She died instantly, the coroner’s report stated. It was speculated her foot got caught in the fabric of her long skirt, causing her to lose her balance at the top of the staircase.
I hadn’t noticed the skirt when I found her, but later, when I read the report, I couldn’t move past that detail. See, my mother never wore skirts. Didn’t even own one, as far as I knew, her closet filled with fitted trousers, leggings, one pair of skinny jeans she wore on Sundays. Mom found dresses and skirts impractical for her type of work. All that extra, unnecessary material piled around her legs while she sat on her work stool. “So fussy,” she’d say when I asked why she never dressed up. “Who needs it?”
I had no idea why she was wearing a skirt that day—white, billowing fabric, paint-spattered, returned to me with her other belongings from the hospital—and would never be able to ask. But it was odd, out of character. It unsettles me to this day.
“A tragic, horrible accident,” her colleagues and friends, as well as my friends, kept repeating at the funeral. They clutched my arms in sympathy, offered tight hugs that stole my breath. I longed to run away, but to where? Even then I understood grief follows you everywhere.
A couple of weeks after the funeral I returned to university, thenthe house was sold, and I went backpacking in Europe with two school friends for the summer. My grief came with me, my constant companion, but somehow I kept my head above the surface. Until we arrived in Italy, where I saw a familiar saying on an apron, of all things. Hanging innocently in a tourist shop near the Stazione di Venezia Santa Lucia—Venice’s central train station.
Non tutti le ciambelle riescono col buco.
(Not all doughnuts come out with a hole.)
My mom was trying to tell me she was with me, would always be with me.
I bawled like a baby while I clutched the apron, scaring the hell out of my friends and the shop’s owner, who insisted on giving me a steep discount. I still have that apron—I wear it in my studio, and every time I tie the strings around my waist I think of my mother.
But I never thought I wouldseeher again. Not in this lifetime, anyway.
It’s three a.m. and I can’t sleep. Every time I close my eyes my dead mother is there. Standing beside Dr. Rice, head tilted hard to the right as she watches me. This leads me to the horrible memory of finding her at the bottom of our staircase, in that skirt I had never seen before. The subsequent cresting grief and panic inside me won’t relent, and I try to visualize a breath ball. It’s useless. I can’t lie in bed a moment longer.
Wyatt sleeps soundly as I creep out of our bedroom. First, I go to the kitchen for a glass of water, adding one of my electrolyte packets. I stir the mixture with my finger and head back up the stairs, tiptoeing past my bedroom and Clementine’s. The moon is nearly full, and it glows through the window adjacent to my studio’s door, illuminating a rectangular patch of light on the landing. Typing in my code to unlock the door, I cringe as the alarm pad beeps loudly three times, granting me entry.
Slipping inside, I turn on the lights and then squint with the sudden brightness. My watch buzzes.Switch to red-light filter for optimal circadian rhythm management?I touch the ignore button, the bright lights remaining as they are. I won’t be going back to sleep tonight.
Blinking to help my eyes adjust, I look at the painting, which remains covered on my workbench. A chill moves through me, goose bumps rising across my arms. There’s a cardigan hanging on the back of the door, and I slide it on before sitting down at my desk.
I sip my electrolyte water as my personal tablet comes to life, and then take a notebook and pen from inside the desk’s drawer. Normally I’d use my GIA-issued tablet, but I don’t want a digital trail for this search. I’m not sure exactly what I’m looking for, or what I’ll find, but I have the sense I’ll want to keep it to myself.
Welcome back, Tilly!A search bar appears below the greeting message, and a virtual keyboard lights up under the tablet. Setting my hands on the lit-up keys on my desk’s top, I start typing. “Margot Milton, Painting Conservator, Toronto, Canada.”
A list of hits runs along the side of the screen, with another search box popping up in the center to help narrow the findings. For a moment my fingers pause on the keys, my chest tight. Then I type, “The Child + Charlotte Leclerc.” Six references are highlighted along the side, and I touch the first one.
It’s an announcement ofThe Child’s procurement, which I’ve seen before. The details are limited, and the collector is mentioned as “an anonymous admirer of Leclerc’s art.” I close it, then scan the next few references. A website link for the Art Gallery of Ontario. A HoloLex—the modern version of Wikipedia—page on Charlotte Leclerc, with optional hologram features if you have the technology at home (we don’t). That article by the journalist from a few years back, with the teaser headline…A Terrible Fate Was Coming My Way. The fifth reference is blocked, a red-bordered box popping up when I click it, asking for an Advanced EduNet passcode. This article is behind a security wall, meaning it can’t be viewed by the general public. The screen is fuzzed out for privacy, so I can’t even read the synopsis.
I hesitate, as entering my GIA code will automatically flag a connection to Charlotte Leclerc. I was given strict instructions to keep the nature of this conservation private, the signed NDA top of mind.
I decide it’s worth the risk. After all, who’s going to go looking through my search history? Raoul knows what I’m working on, and I can’t imagine anyone else bothering to check. I enter my password, and the screen comes into focus.
Charlotte Leclerc:Tragic Character or Avant-Garde Artist?The Child, a Conservation.By Margot Milton, Principal Conservator—Paintings, Art Gallery of Ontario
It’s my mother’s presentation. The one she was working on the day she died and never had the chance to deliver in person. I can’t believe this is the first time I’m seeing it. Then I check the upload date—only a month ago, for a CAC conference session about some of the museum’s most enigmatic artists and projects. That explains why it wasn’t in the package I received from Cecil when I started my conservation.
I race through the presentation, which is verbatim and many pages long. I’m breathless by the time I reach the end. Then I reread her closing paragraph, and a shiver moves through me.
I’ve learned three things.
One,The Childwas as disturbing and curious a piece of art as the one currently in my studio. Two, my mother was deeply affected by this particular conservation, noting how Charlotte Leclerc “wormed into my subconsciousness, whether or not I was actively working on the piece, and at times made me question where her brush ended and mine began.”
Three, while it was her self-professed “project of dreams,” my mother posed a final question in her presentation, and reading it now makes my blood run cold.
“When we restore art—breathing new life into the brushstrokes, colors, shapes, and textures—a conservator must ask: have we also brought the artist herself back from the dead?”
