The Art Box

All that remains at the bottom of the box is an envelope. She pulls it out and flips it over to see the seal unbroken. For a moment she pauses, it seems wrong to open something not meant for her. But then she sees the stains on the envelope, and the way the edges are crinkled and her fingers slide upon the top and it’s open.
She pulls out what seems like slips of paper and when she turns them over she’s surprised to see that its photographs. They seem old, with white rims around it and colour that has hints of brown.
The first one is of a woman, her face lit up in joy, and her hair swaying around her face as if she were dancing. It was a happiness that is rarely captured, and she wonders what in that moment made her smile so much.
She places the photo on the ground and looks at the next one. The same young woman, though it’s hard to tell, stands in a park with her arm around a young man. Perhaps these two were lovers, maybe her joy was because he was the one behind the camera.
As she flips through the photos she watches the woman change. Her face looks the same, but her smile seems to lessen, and the light in her eyes fade. Perhaps it’s just the photos, but the woman looks sadder, as if the happiness in her life had been stolen. Most of the photos were of her, and if there was someone else in it it was the same man that her arm had been around. Whenever he was there he was smiling at her, and his eyes held a love so great it didn’t seem like it could be moved.
She holds the final photo in her hands. It’s of the woman again, with a small suitcase in her hand and no smile on her face. Her eyes are blank and she looks like she doesn’t know a photo is being taken. She stands in front of a large gate and a small sign on the side shows where it is; Newbridge Mental Hospital’.
A wave of grief floods through the woman holding the photo. She had seen how the woman had smiled, and felt the laughter in her eyes, and how here she was, going into an asylum. She flips the photo over, somehow hoping to see something that said it was just for a laugh, or a joke, or something.
The last time I’ll see you without a smile.
The photo falls from her hand. It shocks her for some reason, that this woman that she did not know could be so happy, yet fall so far. There’s almost a pain in her for this woman, but a curiosity to know more.
She gathers up the photos and stuff them back into the envelope. Pressing the still beeping answering machine on her way, she quickly leaves the house.
It doesn’t take her long to return to the garage sale, and the man with the bum bag is just beginning to pack things away. The radio player is gone, but the shirt is still there.
He smiles when he sees her walking across the drive.
“Did you find anything nice in the box?”
“I found these.” She reaches him and hands him the envelope.
He doesn’t even look at it but seems to know what it is.
“I’ve always wondered where these went. Thank you for bringing them back.” He peeks in slightly, and smiles, pulling out a photo.
It’s the one where her smile is the biggest.
“Did you know her?” Julia asks.
He looks up, and there’s a pain in his eyes but also a glimmer of something else.
“Yes. She was my sister. Here,” he pulls out another photo, one that had the young man in it. “That’s me.”
They hadn’t been young lovers at all.
“Can I give you a hand packing up?”
He nods. “That would be a delight.” He puts the photos into his bum bag.
“I’m Julia.”
“Earl.” He walks back closer to the house and she follows.
“Everything needs to go in a box, it doesn’t matter how organised it is.”
“Are you moving?”
He chuckles. “I’m going to a home.”
She begins to place items in a box. She doesn’t pay attention to what’s going in, she doesn’t need to.
“Your sister was very beautiful,” she says hesitantly. Politeness is nagging at her, but she’ll regret it if she doesn’t test the strings.
“She was,” he sighs. “We were very close.”
“Why was she outside an asylum?” She knew she shouldn’t have asked it, but she had forgotten for a moment that she had to refrain.
He didn’t seem to mind, as he looks towards her he smiles.
“No one’s ever asked me that. People presume she was there because she was insane, and leave it at that.”
“I’m sorry if I shouldn’t of asked.” She returns to putting books in a box.
“I’m glad you did.”
He’s looking at her and when she looks up at him she seems something odd in his eyes. It’s not pain, and it’s not happiness, but almost contentment.
“My sister was having troubles. She always did but then they got worse and I watched as they got worse. I was worried for her. People said it would help her if she took a break for a couple of weeks and I let myself believe that. It was my decision for her to go there, she was always going to do what I said.”
She stares down at the now-full box before her, wondering what it must be like to have a brother put you in an asylum. She would’ve hated him.
“She was there for two years, I only visited her once. That box you got, those were all hers from when she was there, I think painting was the only place she found peace.”
The wooden contraption, the metal sheet with the star, those were the things that this woman she did now know had used to help her. Yet she felt now like she did know her.
“After two years I went to visit her, and she was covered in bruises and scars. They told me she had done it. That day I took her home. I was worried with how she would be around my wife and children.” He laughs then and she looks up at him surprisingly. The matter did not seem like one where he should be laughing.
“Within a month she was all better, smiling, laughing. It was like all she needed was to experience something worse and then realise how good things actually could be.”
“So it was a happy ending?” She dares to hope that the pain in the pictures could have only been temporary.
“My wife died a year later and she acted as a mother to them. They called her Mother Kate sometimes. When I was around my children I saw the same joy I had seen before. It was a very happy ending.”
She smiles, the pain from the pictures had gone, and now they were just another part of the story.
“That’s lovely Earl.”
He smiles, with the same contentment as before.
“It is.”
She continues to put items in boxes. He didn’t have much and it doesn’t take long for them to pack everything away.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” He asks.
“Yes please.”
She follows him inside. As he boils the jug and gets the tea ready, she looks at the pictures hanging on the cabinet.
There’s young children, teenagers, a bright woman in a veil.
“Was your sister as your wedding?” She calls through the kitchen door.
He comes out with two cups of tea and she takes one gratefully.
“No, she always said she wished she could have been, you do only get one after all.”
She looks down at the hot tea in her hands.
“Would you like to see some of her paintings?”
She nods.
He leads her to a small room with a bed.
“They’re underneath, I’m sorry I can’t reach down like that.”
She places her tea on the bedside table and gets onto her knees, pulling out a pile of canvases.
As she looks at them, she sees the colours and the pictures; the water, the trees. But she also sees the things behind it. She sees the red blood dripping from an eye and the cracked paint caked on the brush. She sees the small star enveloped in a night sky, and the metal stencil that defined it. She sees all the paint, contraptions, supplies, that now rest in two piles on her floor.
The last canvas when she looks at it she can’t see any of the things she saw in the other paintings. It was of a man, standing with a camera in his hands and tears in his eyes. He was a man in pain, and man doing something he did not want to do.
“That’s you isn’t it, the day she went to the asylum.”
“Yes.”
“She forgave you.”
He nods. “She painted this one right after she went in. She never saw me as a monster.”
She holds the canvas in her hands, looking at the tears down his face. She wants to be able to forgive like the woman, and see the truth beyond her own anger.
“Thank you Earl, for the tea and all.”
“It’s my pleasure dear.”
She replaces the paintings under the bed and he shows her to the door.
“Good luck with the new home,” she says.
“If it’s no good I’ll just tell the children I’m moving in with them.” He chuckles and she laughs. She’s glad she came back to see the man.
As she returns to her car she waves once more and drives away. She had learnt more there than she had expected and now there’s a smile on her face and a hope in her eyes. Maybe it wasn’t too late for things to change.
When she reaches her house she enters quickly and walks straight to the phone, glancing at the art supplies on the floor.
She realises she knows the number by heart, even though she can’t remember the last time she called. A long breath comes from her and she dials.
“Julia?” The tone on the other side almost seems like one of wonder.
“Hi Jeremy. Is it too late to come to your wedding?”
There’s a pause and the sound of breathing on the other side. Then there’s a laugh and she can see can imagine his smiling face through the phone. Her voice cracks in laughter with him and if anyone had been there with a camera they would have captured the same free joy that the woman had had.
It was never too late for change. She looks at the art supplies on the floor, maybe she could even become good at painting one day.
“I was thinking about painting you a picture for a wedding present.”
His laughter stops.
“One step at a time Julia, one step at a time.”

And she laughs with him, knowing that maybe it might take a bit longer for that part to change, but it doesn’t matter because the important part already has.