Sunnyside

Sunnyside. Fall of 1976. Afternoon.

Mabel, a pleasant, earnest woman, 60s, stands on a roadside opposite an old ramshackle cabin, its mossy roof starting to cave in. She wears an old, quilted coat and nylon pants, a yellow kerchief holding down her hair. In the grip of one hand, a large, flat, wooden case. In the other, a collapsed tripod.

Light comes off the lake downhill to her right. Sunnyside. Children, her grandchildren, 6 and 4, scream in the orchard over her shoulder. She turns and smiles at the two girls running around the trees.

“Be nice to your sister, Cheryl, or Papa won't want to take us out to dinner like he said he would.”

The screaming subsides for a second, before the older one lunges at the younger, and the screaming, and giggling, picks up again.

But Mabel proceeds like no one else is there. She opens the tripod and attaches an adjustable clamp to it, producing a homemade, portable easel. She picks up a canvas and props it on the easel, tightening the clamp on either side of the canvas, then holds up her large, flat case. Folding legs are attached to one side. She opens them up and the case becomes a table. With one click, she opens the case to reveal tubes of paints and all manner of brushes and tools. She takes a whittled pencil from the case and begins to sketch.

She looks up, sees the progress of a new neighborhood around the cabin, the footings and frames of new houses, the work trucks. Then the sloping hillside, a shimmering lake, and the rolling hills on the other side.

An approaching car is heard kicking up rocks from the gravel road to Mabel's left. It whips down the road, past her, kicking up a swirl of dust and drowning out the children's laughing for a singular moment. It leaves a dust trail as it fades away behind her, over the ridge in the distance, and the children's voices come back.

Mabel notices none of it. She is intent on her cabin as the sketch starts to take shape. The cabin, lake and hillside, with fruit trees. Absent are all of the new houses, as it would have been.

She looks intently at the door on the cabin under its sagging gable, angled between her and the lake, perfectly lit, and begins to sketch it in place.

She is taken out of her trance by a granddaughter on her periphery.

“Nana, what are you doing?”

“I'm painting the old Allison house before they tear it down.”

“They're tearing down someone's house? Does a lady live there?”

“No one's lived there for a long, long time I don't think.”

“When is Papa coming to take us to dinner?”

Mabel is taken by the door. Her pencil repeats the shape on her canvas as her eye holds to the real thing. The breeze blows through the strands of her hair sticking out of her yellow kerchief.

“Nana?”

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Sunnyside. Fall of 1876. Afternoon.

A pile of children and their frenetic noise, spills out the cabin door with Susan Alison, in her 40s, dressed for work, pushing and swatting them out playfully. They run in all directions. She watches them run out into the orchard as she stands at the door and looks at the landscape.

The same one Mabel sees.

She calls to her son Robert, not using his name because he knows she is speaking to him.

“Your father is coming home in three days, and he expects your chores to all be done!”

Robert is already gone, deep in the orchard. But he respects his mother enough not to ignore her.

“I fed the cows this morning! It's Beatrice's turn to milk!”

Beatrice responds, unsure if she is talking to Robert or mother.

“Is not! It's Edgar's turn!”

Susan wipes her hands on her front apron and sighs. Looks around at all the work to be done.

A little one comes out of the cabin. George, maybe five, taking longer to tie up his shoes.

“How did I miss you? Have you done your chores?”

George does not answer, just grabs mother's skirt and hugs the whole thing.

“We can hug for a bit but we all have a busy day to prepare. Your father comes back from the ranch in three days.”

“Do you miss Papa, Mama?”

“I do.”

“We get along without him.”

“We do.”

Susan looks out longingly at the lake, further down to the bend where it disappears, the ridge in the distance. She rubs his back but she is somewhere else.

A windchime tinkles and clinks in the breeze.

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Sunnyside. Fall of 1976. Late afternoon.

Mabel is using her palette knife to fill in her sketch, roughly. Looking at the front door where Susan was standing.

“That's a pretty picture Nana.”

Mabel looks at the canvas quizzically. She is not trying to capture beauty, which makes her think she is not sure what exactly she is trying to capture.

“Do you think?”

She looks to the younger one, keeping her thumb in her mouth to keep it warm as the child’s blond curls blow in an increasingly cold breeze.

“You think?”

The younger one nods a big yes and it’s unclear if the nod is being lead by the head or the hand attached to the thumb.

The realization that beauty was never a thought pulls her back into the canvas. Mabel retreats back into herself. What is in this canvas waiting to be realized. Can't put her finger on it.

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Sunnyside. Fall of 1876. Dusk.

Susan exits the house into colder air, the noise of all the children fades as she pushes the door half closed and speaks through the crack.

“Prepare George for bed please. I'll come in soon. Robert, don't walk away from those dishes.” She doesn’t have to use his name, but it just comes out on occasion.

Susan shuts the door gently and looks out where Mabel stands one hundred years later. The bend in the lake. The ridge on the hillside. Waiting. She turns to go back inside, and sees the wind chime on the branch beside her door above her is tangled. Patiently, meditatively, she untangles it, hair getting in her face from the chilling wind. Opens the door, raising the volume of the children, then shuts the door behind her.

The only sound that remains is the clinking of the chimes.

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Sunnyside. Fall of 1976. Dusk.

Mabel has filled out the rough work and looks to be finishing up when Wilbur, two years Mabel’s senior, pulls onto the gravel in his 1966 Dodge Coronet between Mabel and the cabin. He rolls the passenger window down to shout.

“Hop in groovy group! Let's get this show on the road!”

The grandkids come out of the orchard and pile onto the large bench seat beside their Papa. But Wilbur sees Mabel is anxious. Distracted. He leans down over the laps of the kids.

“Whatcha painting?”

Mabel points with her brush over the top of the car.

“The old Allison house.”

He looks through the driver side window.

“Hope you're sprucing it up a little. Bit of an eyesore, don't you think?”

Mabel does not respond. Wilbur relents, gets out of the car. High waisted pants and Cowichan sweater. Dashing. A 25 year old deep inside this 60 something year old. He wraps his arm around his girl. Looks at the painting, looks at her. Playfully.

“It's beautiful. Where is Mrs. Allison?”

“I don't know.” Mabel isn’t sure if she has answered the first or the second part of her husband’s sentence.

“These kids haven't eaten, have they?

He wants to reach her, tell her she needs to do her job, look after these kids. But he sees her eyes and knows she is lost in there for the time being. And a direct conversation might leave her in there forever. So he jokes with her instead.

“If we don't feed them, they'll die and Wayne and Delcie will never let us have their kids again. I'll take them down to the house and get them dressed up. Fancy. We'll take them out to dinner. I'll take you out to dinner. Once you've finished your painting. But I don't know how long I can fend off these savages.”

“I just need to finish this. I'm almost finished.”

She needs time. He sees that.

“Get over here Coli, we’ll see who gets to sit in the middle. If you’re good, maybe both of you can have the middle.”

The Coronet, with Wilbur and kids bouncing on the seat, drives down the hill to the lake and new houses.

Mabel stares at the painting. Longer at the cabin. What is missing?

A moment. Not a process, not a revelation whispered in her ear, not a reason to be calculated. One moment it isn’t there, the next it is. There is nothing in between. The idea that what is missing in her canvas is missing in the cabin. That all this time she has been painting the shell, not the soul.

She picks up a couple colors with the edge of her palette knife, quickly mixing them, and scratches a line under a branch reaching toward the door. A few dashes below that branch around the singular line. A little white to highlight it all. The wind chime appears. Where is should be. Where it was.

Mabel stares at her canvas. Is it beautiful? Beauty seems to her a ridiculous word. Complete. Then, she looks to the cabin. The wind whips at her yellow kerchief again. It breathes life into the soul of the cabin, the soul of her canvas. She sees it. It isn't there. But she sees it. Hears it. She is alive. And the Allison house and all of Sunnyside is alive with her.

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Sunnyside. Fall of 1976. Evening.

The Coronet, paint set, easel and painting in the back seat, Wilbur, Mabel, and kids in the front, pulls past the cabin, onto the main road, kicks up dust as it goes.

Over the ridge.

Inexplicably, the chimes that are not there, continue to play.

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Sunnyside. Fall of 1876. Evening.

That same dust. Those same chimes. That same ridge. A team of horses and wagon, John Allison, dashing, reins in hand, comes up the road. Complete.

photo and painting credit: Mabel Hill, 1976.