The “Leclerc” room is described as “large, windowless, and nearly empty.” I take in the white walls, high ceilings with elaborate crown moldings, and gallery-style lighting. There is one round burgundy-velvet bench in the room’s center, its pedestal feet resting on a herringbone parquet floor. Three of the four walls hold Leclerc paintings.
The Healer. The Dreamer.Then the third piece, believed to be the artist’s last,The Child—the painting my mother conserved, which is the one most familiar to me. Seeing the artworks together again allows me to appreciate the similarities. Each piece showcases her preference for memento mori, which translated from Latin means, “remember that you must die.”
“Edvard Munch, Vincent van Gogh, and Rembrandt, to name a few, have applied this style to their work,” Mom explained when I asked her what “memento mori” meant. We were at the dinner table, and it was early in her conservation ofThe Child. Mom typed something into the search bar, then turned her laptop around and pointed to the images on the screen. “See here, and here? Artists use elements like skulls, decaying flowers, hourglasses, clocks, and even bubbles, integrating them into the tableaux. Memento mori is meant to represent the fleeting nature of life, Mathilde. It’s very powerful.”
The Healerfeatures a sole female subject on a black background,one half of her dressed in a doctor’s lab coat, the other half a bare skeleton. A tiny clock rests where the doctor’s right eye should be, the hands set to midnight. The woman inThe Dreameris in repose, nude and flat on her back, surrounded by dark vertical slashes purported to be trees in a night forest. Her one visible eye is rolled to the back of her head, her hands in prayer position on her chest, clutching a bouquet of wilting sunset-orange blooms. Marigold flowers, something I learned when researching Leclerc during graduate school; it was a pet project, not part of my official studies, and it was slim pickings. Charlotte Leclerc the artist was like a ghost; hardly anything had been written about her with much authority. But it made me feel closer to my mother, even though my research never revealed the answers I sought after her death.
When I shift my gaze toThe Child, my throat tightens. I think of Clementine, only a couple of years older than Charlotte Leclerc’s daughter was when she died. The grief in the piece is palpable, discomfortingly familiar, even though the art is more jovial and vibrant than her others. But there is something deeply tragic about it; something difficult to put words to.
The young girl inThe Child—her cheeks rose colored, a yellow polka-dotted dress tied with a bow at the waist, red patent leather Mary Janes—is skipping rope. The rope’s handles, upon close examination, have skulls sculpted into them. In the top right corner of the piece a subtle, ghostly image is visible within the clouds. It appears to be an exact replication of the skipping child.Though one could argue the brain is mirroring the shape into the cloud’s formation, Mom told me, showing me a photo of the finished conservation. Both then and now I believe Leclerc meant it to be an echo, the image purposeful.
The skipping child blows a gum bubble, which is glossy and pink. The ground under her is pitch black, though there is visible texture this journalist describes as “impressions of flower petals.” I close the file.
The next photo is of a typewritten card, declared by police to be asuicide note despite being unverified as written by Leclerc. It was found in the room where she died. I study the photo, reading the four sentences out loud.
“If you’re reading this, it means I am dead. I promise that I tried. I hope it was enough. I’m sorry, my darling, if not.”
A hard shiver moves through me. I’ve not seen the specifics of the note before, never released to the public, from my recollection, and it unsettles me more than the paintings themselves. I click over to the next series of photos that Cecil included. One of Charlotte Leclerc’s medical school graduation, another from the archived website for the hospital where she worked as a surgeon, both of which I have seen. The photos are grainy and small, showing Leclerc as an attractive woman with shoulder-length blond hair, blue eyes, and thinnish lips.
I have a desperate longing to call my mother. I’m ever surprised by how close to the surface her loss remains; one small scratch, and the wound weeps.
I click into my personal folder, turning up the volume. “Mathilde, it’s your mother,” she says. I smile, remembering how she always started her messages like this, as though her voice wasn’t as familiar as my own.
“Please send me your Christmas list pronto, or you’ll get toothpaste and laundry soap in your stocking. See you soon, ma belle fille. Je t’aime.”
“Je t’aime aussi, Maman,” I whisper. I never did send my list, and four weeks later she was dead. I click play again, and again. And again.
During my short walk from the train station home, I mentally compartmentalize my day to create space for my family once I walk through the door. I wonder how Clementine fared at school with her history presentation, if Wyatt was able to secure permits for his latest project, how Shelby’s maintenance neurotherapy session went today. Turning onto Oglethorpe Avenue I see the iron gates of the Colonial Park Cemetery up ahead. I’m almost home.
Our town house is half of what used to be one of Savannah’s grand estate homes. Most homes have been refurbished to manage the climate migration pressures, which have forced us closer together. While the interiors are extensively renovated to suit families’ needs, the homes’ exteriors remain traditional. The wrought iron railings frame staircases and second-floor Juliet balconies; wooden shutters and vine-covered bricks provide ambience; ivy climbs on gates and lampposts; and most every front door is painted red, a nod to the Civil War days when red-door homes signified a safe haven.
I’m ducking under the draping Spanish moss of our oak, startingup our front steps, when I see it. Innocently sitting outside my red front door.
The air leaves my lungs in one great whoosh right as our neighbor’s door opens. She pops her head out, noticing me. “Oh, hi, Tilly! I had a delivery notification and…Oh, there it is.”
Becca Woodward steps toward me. She’s wearing a beige linen jumpsuit, which looks chic on her. Her long dark hair is swept into a smooth ponytail, seemingly untouched by Savannah’s near-constant humidity. I think of my unruly curls, gathered in a messy bun.
“They must have confused our doors.” Becca smiles, having no idea what’s happening inside my body. No clue about the searing pain in my gut brought on by seeing that box outside my door.
“Congratulations, Becca.” I plaster a smile on my face even though I want to cry. “Are the boys excited?”
“They sure are! But we all hope it’s a girl this time. Lucky number five, maybe?” She crosses her fingers, then picks up the box from outside my door. My uterus contracts with a cramp.
The box now in Becca’s hands is the size of three shoeboxes, the cheery yellow logo bright against the white background.Nourishbox, the logo reads, with the slogan “Nurtured by Nature.” I know one of these boxes will show up weekly until Becca is six months postpartum. I’ll have to find a way not to feel like I’ve been stabbed in my stomach each time it does. The program’s name is written on the tape sealing the seams in a continuous loop, taunting me.MotherWiseMotherWiseMotherWiseMotherWiseMotherWiseMotherWise…
Becca shifts the box to get a better grip, and something shiny slips out from her T-shirt’s neckline. I glance at it, and she notices.
“Almost time for another ring,” she says, her tone bright. Another sharp cramp in my abdomen. I can only wave in response to her “see you later, Tilly” as she takes her NourishBox inside, leaving me alone on our shared front stoop.
Of courseBecca is cheerful. She’s doing what every woman issupposed to do—boost the population, one baby at a time—while being nicely compensated for her efforts.
I know her fifth necklace ring, each representing a living child, won’t arrive for a few months yet—midway through her third trimester. The gold rings are worn by mothers, silver “legacy” rings by grandmothers. It’s a foundational element of the MotherWise program, the rings both practical and symbolic: the jewelry is tied to program incentives but is also a societal signal of success.
Each gold ring comes with a minuscule tracking device, scanned when you walk into a store, and provides family discounts on everything from groceries to baby clothes. The more rings, the higher the savings. Though the pilot program was still months away when I became pregnant with Clementine, MotherWise allowed new mothers who were a year or less postpartum to sign up retroactively. Which I did, eager for the savings and the quite pretty jewelry that was becoming commonplace on new mothers.
Poppy’s ring was delivered two weeks after she died. I never corrected the painful error, never told Wyatt—or anyone else—about it. I waited with bated breath for someone to show up at our door, owning the mistake.I’m very sorry, Mrs. Crewson, but MotherWise needs to reclaim the ring, as there is no longer a pregnancy.But no one arrived, and the ring became proof Poppy had been real—MotherWise would never have sent it otherwise!I was desperate in those earliest stages of grief for something to acknowledge her.
At first I only wore it around the house, when I was alone. The two rings dainty, pretty, and golden against my neck. As the months, then years, passed, I wore it more often. Though rarely in public. No one ever came back for that ring, and it seemed an administrative error that got lost in the shuffle of the program’s multiphase rollout. Now I have a fierce, familiar urge to race to my bedroom, to the dresser drawer where I’ve hidden the second gold ring in a jewelry box tucked inside a pair of balled-up wool socks I’ll never need in Savannah.
