Every year they were together, my father had a portrait painted of my mother. Each of these portraits was done in a different style, using different artists. Some of the artists had her wear costumes, some had her close her eyes or turn her head away. She agreed to this each year because my father had told her when they were both young enough to believe in such proclamations, that he would let her burn them all when he died, promising that she did not have to keep them if she wound up a widow.
After thirty or so of these portraits had been painted, my mother ran away with an artist, a woman who had painted her in various hues of blue.
The two of them live together in Miami, thriving in a life of late nights and beautiful views and Cuban maids whose children come to visit on Halloween in bright costumes with their shy little friends.
My father, retired, lives alone now in Iowa, in a barn he converted to a two-story gallery to house each of my mother’s portraits. We don’t see him often, not as much as we visit Miami, and he does not seem to mind. He calls every month or so to talk about the birds he watches from his bedroom window.
He says nothing about the paintings, except that one of them fell and had to have its frame repaired.
I do not know what he does in that barn all day, and I’ve thought from time to time that he must walk around to each picture, seeking answers for why his wife left him for another woman. But this is giving my father too much credit. He did not spend much time on the paintings when they were together. I can remember catching him studying them only twice, and in one of those times he was focussed on a style of brushwork he had not seen before.
Most likely he does not give them much thought at all, except when he has guests and must explain why a man would hold on to his past in such a display of decadence. Perhaps then he says, as he would never say to his children, I should have had them paint something else.
