Just wanted to say that all the lovely reviews I have received rock! You readers really put a smile on my face and motivate me to write more. I appreciate you all so much. So thanks for reading and enjoy this next installment
~Noeme
New York City-1925
Carla was sitting in her quaint little studio in the borough of Bronx County. She was smoking at cigarette and had her hair wrapped in a head tie and her old clothing smeared with paint. She had not cared to tidy herself up before the reporter from The Times came to interview her, but now that he had arrived she felt a little guilty. She had not been raised to receive customers in such a state and although she was so removed from her past life, she could not help but feel some of the old values still dictating the way she thought.
The reporter is a young man, in his early twenties. Carla notices he has quite the small frame and is in exceptionally eager to interview her for what Carla can only assume is his first serious assignment.
"Talk to me like you would to your mother," Carla says trying to be encouraging. She takes a long suck out of her cigarette. Her hands moving about in a delicate fashion, she can see the young man is admiring her; men always admired her. "Go on, I promise I don't bite."
"Yes sorry Miss, there is just so much to go through," says the reporter flipping through his notes anxiously before composing a serious reporter face.
Carla wanted to laugh. She tapped her cigarette out on the side of an ashtray placed on the table between them before taking another drag.
"What do you suppose is the inspiration behind this current collection of yours? I mean it is only just recently that you have shot to recognition, can you explain where you draw your inspiration from?"
"Inspiration," says Carla, "I don't understand what you mean by inspiration really. I just paint as I see fit."
"Surely you must draw your talents from something,"
"Must I?" Carla raises an eyebrow. The young reporter blushes under her gaze but seems to muster up the courage to challenge her.
"Yes Miss, is it D. Matheson Barlow? That's what everyone has been calling you, can I call you that or shall I call you something else?"
"You may call me whatever you like, but the name I prefer is Dacia. My name is Dacia," Carla says.
"What I lovely name, my grandmothers name was Dacia," says the reporter.
Carla raises an eyebrow, how often men used that line, "Small world."
She remembers how Liam said his grandmother's name was Caroline the first time they met as well.
"Yes," says the reporter clearly transfixed by her elegant hands. He had not taken his eyes off of her, watching as her delicate fingers moved back and forth between her mouth and the ashtray. Quickly recovering himself he says, "Forgive me, I believe I was asking about where you drew your talents from. What has been your life experience? I am told you grew up in England."
"Surely my accent gave that away sir. Yes I did grow up in England."
"And what was that like? I see in some of your earlier works from a few years back that you seem to be painting the same house over and over again. It looks like it's a Palace. I was wondering is that a place from your childhood."
Carla lights up another cigarette allowing the smoke to engulf the reporter's view of her. She knew that all these pretentious art people always had to know about the meaning behind everything. "It's Paradise," she says.
The reporter scribbles furiously like she has just revealed the end all, be all.
"The painting is a paradise, or your childhood was?"
"Both," Carla whispers now beginning to regret this interview. But the gallery hosting her exhibition had insisted upon it.
"I'm sorry Miss, I don't quite understand. Could you elaborate? Do you mean as in your own interpretation of paradise?"
"You want to know why I paint right?" Carla says pointedly.
"Yes," says the reporter.
"I paint because it is paradise for me. A release, an expression if you will of all that has been lost."
The reporter scribbles that down, "By lost you mean your childhood?"
"By loss, I mean loss. That's all."
Carla can see that the reporter seems more confused than ever. And she wasn't exactly making it easy for him. She would feel bad if he returned to the office with such little material to write an article with. She takes a great big sigh looking off into the distance thinking of all that is lost to her. The truth is she has no other word for it, no tangible way in which to elaborate the suffering of her soul.
Painting was a temporary release, and a way in which she could provide for her two children. If she had to dig deep inside the crevices of her own soul, to give her son and daughter the life they deserved then she would do it. She would, because loving her children was all she could afford to do right now.
"Do you ever stumble upon a scene so beautiful you wished you could capture it forever in your head?" Carla asks the young reporter.
"I suppose," he says looking more confused than ever, "Like something you can capture with a Kodak…a photograph."
"Yes," says Carla, "Except it's better than a photograph could ever be. It's like a memory, a moment you wish you could relive over and over. A moment you wished could be captured."
"Oh yes of course. I have many memories from my childhood with my mother and father. The times we went to the water hole, or the county fair."
Carla smiles briefly, "Do you ever just close your eyes at night and just remember the smell of the water hole, or the laughter parents voice at the fair? Like the all that encompassed the whole environment."
"Yes," says the young man getting excited with the camaraderie they were sharing at the moment, "All the time."
"Do you ever wish that you could stay there, always? Do you ever wish you could just live that moment and take it all in? Try and remember everything before it's too late and you can't remember anymore?"
"Is that what your doing with your paintings?"
"I suppose. Do you think it's futile?"
"Not at all, I actually understand it quite well actually. Life can feel so unfulfilling just going through the motions. What moment are you trying relive?"
"Plenty of moments."
"Moments at the beautiful house in your paintings?"
"Not the house so much," Carla responds, "But the people passing through it…"
"…On there way out to live the rest of their lives. You wondered where they all ended up?"
"Exactly. If kind of bothers me, that I can't know exactly how everyone went in life," says Carla before adding, " You like to read books don't you? You must, you're a reporter."
"Yes I read good fiction novel here and there, but mostly I read and write news stories."
"Don't you ever so frustrated when you read the paper and all these events are just unfolding around you, and you feel helpless to stop it? I felt like that during the War in 1914. All those men we knew some of them wouldn't make it back…but the papers, who were they fooling when they tried to make everything look like a victory."
"I was young then," says the reporter. But Carla ignores him continuing on,
Even when I reading a novel, sometimes I just get so frustrated with the characters actions, I wish I could re-write the novel myself. "
"Rewrite history to, then? You wish you could bring all the young back from war to, is what your saying."
"Well in a way. I guess I just had the power that a writer has to make events whatever they want to be. The author who has the license to do with their character as they please, or the journalist who gets to re-write history if they wish.
I'd like think that is what I am doing with my paintings. Capturing moments and making them not how were, but how I wanted them to be."
"With all do respect Miss, I don't see how your current collections of flowers really relates to any of this? What exactly are bunch of flowers capturing besides the beauty of nature? What else is it doing besides making everyone from the Vanderbilt's in New York to the Taft's in Ohio wanting to get their hands on one of your coveted paintings?"
"You haven't been listening well. The flowers are capturing a lot more then just a few gratuitous nature shots. You were interested in my childhood, were you not?"
"Yes."
"Well in regards to my childhood, the flowers and the beauty are what I wish it had been. That's all and that's why I paint them. Because in all my pain, in all those moments you wish you could capture, we forget-"
"Forget what?" says the reporter surprised at his own eagerness. He is hanging onto her every word.
"That everything is beautiful. You can't question how it could have been any other way, any different, all those moments…what makes them so powerful, both the good and the bad, is that they never last."
"Everything is beautiful, I like that. Very insightful Miss," whispers the reporter.
"Yes, everything is beautiful. Moments go, but the purpose of life is trying to find a way to make the beauty last."
Carla got up abruptly signaling the end of the interview. Poor chap, she had barely given him that much information, but at the same time she sort of had. She was sure he'd find a way to make the article work, but Carla couldn't be bothered with that at the moment. She wanted to go home, Giulia and Cillian would be waiting for her. And most importantly Peter would there to; he was the strength holding her and her children together. Most of what she had said today came from with him and his own life experience.
In her five years of being in New York City, Carla was truly finding a way to reconcile herself to old pains and embrace new possibilities. Peter was the constant in her life, a symbol of her own resilience and inner strength. He was the one who had first showed her how to take her failures and lowest moments for what they were, say fuck it and then carry on. And he was also the one who was showing her not to bury herself in experience and history, but to dig out the things that defined her and learn to set them free. He was constantly showing her ways to make the beauty last.