the watercolor book

The garden shimmered like a forgotten dream, the water lilies beckoning to the bronze girl poised to step from her tiny pedestal into the rippling waters. The light cascaded about me like an absolution from heaven, the hope that led me here balanced precariously atop the fear that the woman with the white carnation would not arrive in time.

A week and a half before, I was ignorant of her existence, drinking two fingers of Johnnie Walker Red Label from a greasy tumbler at my desk. A paying client had not darkened my door in over two months, and I had slept on a cot in the office for three.

A knock at my door changed everything, the future client a tragic figure whose son had committed suicide a decade earlier. The unhappy man believed that he himself was to blame. When he left, I held a check for five thousand dollars with the promise of fifteen thousand more if I could find the beautiful woman haunting a small watercolor book.

Unfortunately, the St Paul, Minnesota postmark on the package that held the book was almost twenty years old. Even as he stroked the check I had not the least hope that I would find her using only a single, tiny painting.

He didn’t even know her name. For me she would became the penultimate mystery: the woman with the white carnation.

But as I reclined in the quiet garden that day, the glow of the afternoon sun warming my face, something more than the money was at stake. Something I could not form into words. It toyed with my emotions like the statue whose toes never touch the surrounding waters no matter how playful its posture and expression.

Looking down at the book as it rested on the bench, I opened it to the painting of the statue facing me a scant ten feet away. But the portrait on the facing page was what brought me here. Beneath her painting a caption read - Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream, the words that brought the old man to my door.

There were forty-three paintings in the book, but when I first examined them, I did not realize that any of them were statues. Each image seemed to capture a tiny moment in time, like the bronze girl who reached for her hair with one hand while stretching out for balance with the other. But once I accidentally located an actual photo of the sculpture, I quickly learned that most of the paintings were of statues as well. It made me wonder if the woman with the white carnation was real at all.

I found the break I needed on the website of a St Paul artist, when several of his paintings matched the minatures in the little book. The client agreed to cover the expense to fly to Minnesota to follow up on the lead, and so I booked a flight for the next day.

When I met Alex at his studio in St Paul, he asked me – What exactly are you after, Adam?

The author of the paintings. They’re yours, right?

Opening the book, he looked at the first drawing and then stared at me strangely before answering, They’re not. Where did you say you got this?

Wait a minute … several of these are near matches for paintings in your catalogue.

Turning back to the book, he shrugged. I didn’t paint them.

It was fortunate I was sitting. As the unhappy thought occurred to me that I was no closer to finding the woman with the white carnation than I was when I first fell under her spell, I dropped my head in frustration.

You okay?

I really hoped you were the artist.

But when I looked up again, he was gazing in horror at her painting, tears helplessly streaming down his cheeks. Turning his gaze to mine, he smiled wistfully and passed the book back to me. You better take this before I damage the art.

You know her? I was so excited that my hand trembled as I grasped the book.

Knew her, he murmured. A long time ago. Wiping his face with his sleeve, he sighed. We went to school together at the University of Minnesota. I met her and another good friend in a photography class. My best friend. Then he whispered the name of the client’s son.

I froze. He closed his eyes in effort to suppress his emotions, but the tears came again anyway.

I’m sorry, he finally murmured.

That’s alright, I answered gently, take as much time as you need.

Exhaling strongly, he wiped his face again before continuing. I haven’t spoken with her since Michael’s death. Even now, ten years later, I still can’t accept that he is gone.

Looking at me sadly, he asked, Is she the reason you are really here?

Michael’s father hired me to find her. I really need to talk to her. Do you know how to reach her?

Standing up, his body language abruptly signaled that the meeting was over, and I stood up in a fog of panic.

Maybe, he finally muttered. Give me your card. If I can get in touch with her, I’ll ask if she’s willing to meet. IF. No promises.

But if you could just give me her name …

He turned away and said – I’m sorry, but I gotta get back to work.

The next two days were the longest of my life. Four hours before my scheduled flight was due to leave the Minneapolis Airport, he called me and told me she would try to meet me in an hour at the Como Park conservatory. She’ll wear a white carnation in her hair. Still no name.

I arrived at the conservatory twenty minutes early and sat across from the bronze statute memorialized in the little watercolor book. But the appointment time came and passed, and the woman with the white carnation never showed. I waited as long as I could and barely made my flight back to New York.

The next day I googled the phrase below her drawing and found a sonnet by Shakespeare. I had not understood the copied line till I read it in context:

A bliss in proof and proved, a very woe;

Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.

All this the world well knows; yet none knows well

To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

Sentiment had not written this. This was despair.

Surprisingly, it was impetus I needed. An hour later as I reexamined a drawing of a nude male with renewed eyes and finally recognized his face. There’re only two portraits in a book filled with paintings of statues. Alex and the woman with the white carnation. But when Alex wept, he had not shed tears for her. He wept for Michael.

Was Michael the artist? The portrait of the lover was separated from the one of the friend by a single page. But if he was the artist, why was the watercolor book mailed to him? Was it a gift returned by an angry lover?

I called the client and gently suggested that he was looking for the wrong person. He struggled with the news at first. I had correctly assumed that his son had never come out to his family for a reason. But he already knew the truth even if he had never admitted it aloud. I called Alex to let him know that the client wanted to meet him, and he agreed.

A week later I had an additional fifteen thousand in my bank account. It should’ve made me happy. But I still could not stop thinking about her.

She was the one I was supposed to find and I had failed.

Happily, the case was a turning point after years of bad breaks. A few weeks after the client met with Alex, he referred me to the law firm that handled his legal affairs. I worked as a consultant for them on various cases for six months or so before they offered me fulltime employment.

I had lived hand to mouth as a private investigator for ten years and suddenly I had healthcare and dental coverage and a 401(k) retirement plan. I rented a decent flat in Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn – no roommates, started working out again and ate three squares daily.

The woman with the white carnation continued to haunt my imagination for a long time afterward. But with time and absence of the little watercolor book, I gradually moved on with my life. Five years have passed since I originally gazed at her painting. I could not call her face to mind now even if I wanted.

So, when my former client called me yesterday and told me that he and Alex were hosting a retrospective of Michael’s art in a Manhattan gallery, it brought all the negative emotion back.

But I attended anyway because it seemed the right thing to do, arriving early to meet Alex and Michael’s father as they greeted guests in the gallery’s main hall. For someone who had died young, Michael had produced a lot of quality work. I had not made the connection when I had originally worked the case, but most of his artwork captured movement. A woman pulling a bow with an arrow nocked, another running with a wolf, a third with arms dramatically lifted heavenwards. Each one radiating timeless, ethereal beauty.

The exhibit included four paintings of the bronze statue from the conservatory garden. In each one the figure seemed a heartbeat away from coming to life and stepping out of the canvas, as if Michael had somehow seen in the burnished metal the model who posed for the artist in the first place.

But as I moved from room to room and admired his art, the woman with the white carnation was conspicuously absent. I did not see the expected paintings of her even as I encountered several of Alex.

Unfortunately, they saved her for last. After entering the final room, I gazed slack-jawed at a life size bronze of the woman with the white carnation as she gazed dreamily over her right shoulder. I wished then that I had not come.

Unlike the other work in the show, it was on loan from a private collector. The plaque next to the statue read Forbidden Fruit, 1998. Still no name. Not for sale, I guess, I muttered out loud.

Oh … I could never part with her, said a woman who stood unnoticed behind me.

When I started in surprise, she apologized, and I mumbled something about being lost in my thoughts. Your standing to close to fully appreciate her, she replied. And following her example I backed away another few feet. She was right.

At that distance the statue had the same power to make the observer believe that she was a living, breathing woman as the rest of his work. It’s her, I whispered as a tear slipped down my cheek.

It's her? You knew the model?

No. But I saw a painting of her once, in a little watercolor book.

I noticed a coffee place around the corner from the gallery, she said with a shy smile, join me for a cup?

In the coffee shop we sat at a little table near the storefront window, each of us absently looking at menu's. But when the waiter approached and introduced himself I realized I had not actually read any items on the menu. The owner of the bronze that had discomfited me seemed flustered as well.

After the waiter left, she looked me in the eye. I'm going to tell you something I have never spoken about to anyone. But you look safe, somehow, maybe only because your a friendly stranger.

Michael and I were lovers. In fact, I believed he was the one. So when he started seeing Alex behind my back, I was devastated. He had told me he loved me and wanted to marry me. But the truth was, he wanted to bring someone home that his dad would approve.

She was older, but the outline of her face, the slightly parted lips and almond shaped eyes gave her away. She was the woman with the white carnation, and I fell in love with her all over again.

The waiter chose that moment to deliver our coffees and after he left again, she pulled a silver flask from her purse, and she poured a little in her coffee before taking her first sip.

Would you like some? she asked with a shy smile. Johnnie Walker Red Label.

Then she reached her hand across the table and said, I'm Eve, the woman with the white carnation.

Taking her hand I grinned like a perfect idiot. Adam, I replied, thinking this day might have potential after all.