Now I’m the one who has forgotten. Enamored with this new pregnancy, and baby. Having my ego stroked by my coworkers. Gossiping over lunch with Dale. All the while…forgetting. I want to cry. Why couldn’t Nick have waited one more day? They are typically delivered between weeks thirty-one and thirty-three of a pregnancy. Why did the ring have to arrivetoday?
The baby shifts, an elbow nudging me from the inside, reminding me to breathe even before my watch can. I take one ragged breath, then another. She’s running out of space now, and her movements are less acrobatic these days. But I’m grateful for even the slightest nudge, because it means she’s still alive.Close the door. Lock it. Walk away, Tilly.
“See you soon,” I whisper, pressing the gold ring against my belly. “Je t’aime, ma belle fille.”
I’ve treated halfway up the bridge of her nose. The face is distorted, one side of the chin longer than the other.
Her lips are full, her mouth closed and at rest. There is a slight pulling down at the corners, suggesting emotion hiding behind the serene expression. Charlotte Leclerc took great care with the neck and lower face, and I can’t wait to uncover the eyes.
The woman appears more skin and bones now, as though she thins out the higher we go. A lithe frame covered in skin, shadowed and highlighted to reveal the sinew and bony protuberance of her clavicles, the sharpness of her jaw, the tight cords of tendons in her neck. My impression is that she’s unwell—though the black hourglass at her center makes me think grief, rather than illness, made her this way. Not for the first time I wonder if this isn’t a self-portrait.
“Slow down, there,”my mother says.“You don’t want to miss anything.”
She’s with me in the studio—has been every day this week.
I’ve stopped searching for a logical explanation, am waiting her—it—out. Clearly this has nothing to do with a zinc overdose, or sherryin bisque, or even extreme exhaustion. I’ve come to believe it’s not actually my mother, nor a manifestation of her—ghostly or otherwise. I don’t know whatitis, or what it wants from me, and so decide to accept the most straightforward explanation: my brain has concocted the vision due to the emotional stress of both the pregnancy and the conservation.
This figment—both exactly like the mother I remember and also nothing like her—is meant to help me with my repressed grief, my mind attempting to heal itself before I become a mother again. I’ve longed many times to discuss my career with my mother. To share the challenges and satisfactions of the work.Enjoy it, I think now, for once the conservation is finished and the baby is here, I suspect the apparition—my mother—will disappear.
Somehow, I suppress the most terrifying moments—the moths on Christmas Eve; her insistence that I cut out my tattoo; her head falling off at Maeve’s birthday dinner—and focus on the more serene ones. Like when she sat beside me a couple of days ago, guiding me as I cleaned the sweep of the neck.“A second pair of eyes,”she said, her voice whisper-quiet.“Think of me as a second pair of eyes, my darling.”Inexplicably, her presence soothed me that day, calming my nerves and steadying my hand.
I’ve taken to tracking these visits in a paper notebook, so as to avoid notice. An uppercaseMscrawled into the date box on the days she shows up. I’m also counting down the pregnancy in the same notebook, grateful for each day added to the baby’s gestation. With everything that’s happened recently, I’m haunted by the thought that this baby may be safer outside my body than in it.
“I know what I’m doing,” I reply now to my mother’s“slow down”comment. My tone is sharp, for today she’s less helpful. More incessant with her interruptions, and I’m struggling to concentrate. “Please be quiet.”
She ignores the request.“Check the bow of the lip, Mathilde.”
I long to shut her out, but she’s piqued my curiosity now. I zone inon the cupid’s bow of the subject’s mouth. There’s an odd texture to the upper lip, overtop the paint.A finely patterned mesh?I put my glasses on, clicking the magnifier button on the arm.
“What is that?” I murmur. Under magnification I see a touch of sediment within the textured area, preventing me from getting a clear visual. I take a soft-bristled brush from my apron’s pocket. With a steady hand I apply the bristles delicately, gently removing the silt. I’m cautious not to change the integrity of Leclerc’s original vision but also want to remove anything that isn’t original. Like a fire-blistered section of paint, or dust and grime from its years in storage.
Despite my caution, there’s a slight crack when the whisper-soft bristles meet the lip. The sound of a small twig breaking in two. My heart flutters, and I let out a small “Oh!” Something has come free, and it’s caught in the bristles.Shit.
“Oops. You should have been more careful, Mathilde,”my mother says in a hollowed-out voice. I ignore her, upset I didn’t take more time to observe the area before reaching for the brush. Far too anxious about the painting’s integrity to pay attention to my dead mother’s criticism.
I remove the quarter-inch piece of debris from the brush with my tweezers, holding it carefully in the pinpoint ends. There’s a thin layer of paint on the backside of the section, and on the front, a series of connected thin lines, creating vesicles.
“Is this…an insect wing?” I murmur. It’s impossible to tell what type of insect, though. Looking at the subject’s lip and the area the wing piece came from, I see the mirror image left behind in the paint. Leclerc seemingly used the wing to create structure and add form to the lip. “Strange, but clever.”
“Not strange at all. Charlotte’s mother was a medical entomologist, studying the role insects have in human diseases,”my mother says.“She joined her on many field expeditions. It’s where Charlotte developed her love of medicine, along with a working knowledge of insects.”
“I didn’t know that,” I reply. I’m focused on the piece of wing, placing it under the AI-connected microscope for analysis. The result isreturned seconds later. It’s from aRhyothemis semihyalinadragonfly, from Madagascar.
“I told you all of this years ago, Mathilde.”
I turn off the glasses, lost in thought. “I’ve found blood. Fingernails, hair, sand, and flower petals.” I enumerate the items I’ve uncovered inThe Motheron my fingers, saying them out loud as I do. “Plus, that nerve bundle. And now an insect wing…all natural, biological elements…”
I’m trying to put it all together, muttering softly. “But for what purpose? Is this more than symbolism?”
“You know,Mathilde.”
“No, I don’t.” I look to my mother then, and wish I hadn’t.
Her head is reattached, after the pecan pie incident, but it’s facing the wrong way. I see the back of her hair, even as the front of her body faces me. She’s like a decapitated doll put together in the dark by a child’s hands.
Again:“You know, Mathilde.”
I’m queasy and need to stop looking at her. Sourness gathers in the back of my throat, along with rage. “Why won’t you just tell me?!”
