I rolled up the door of unit 22, my whole body braced for heartbreak, and the cool air rolled out, and the light fell on paintings. Dozens of them, on easels and against every wall, and every single one was of me, at every age, painted with a tenderness that stopped my heart.
I put my hand over my mouth and sank against the door.
Couldnt take the heat or the cold, the woman had said, and now I understood, oil paintings crack and canvas warps in heat and damp, fine art must be kept climate-steady, and my Gerald had been protecting something he made with his own hands, in secret, for years.
The man who told me when he changed a light bulb, the least artistic soul I thought I ever knew, had been secretly painting for thirteen years. And his only subject, canvas after canvas, was his wife.
There I was at twenty-five, painted from our wedding photos. There I was at forty, at sixty. There I was at the kitchen sink, asleep in my chair, laughing at something, moments he had memorized and carried out here to turn into paintings, so he would never lose a single version of me.
His letter, propped on an easel, read: Old girl, I was never any good with words for the big things, so I stopped trying to say them and started trying to paint them. This is how I have seen you every day of our life. Beautiful. Every age. I was too shy to show you, an old man playing at painting. I keep them cool here so they will last, because I painted them to outlive us both, so our grandchildren will always see you the way I saw you. Love, Gerald.
I wept in that cool room, surrounded by thirty-seven years of myself, seen through the eyes of the man who loved me.
Couldnt take the heat or the cold, because he painted me to last forever, and paint is fragile.
I did not sell one painting. I brought them home. They hang all through my house now, me at every age, so that everywhere I turn, I see myself the way my husband saw me. To be seventy and see yourself, at every age, through the eyes of a man who found you beautiful for thirty-seven years, there is no gift like it on this earth.
My son did not know why I drove out toward the airport. Now he knows his daddy was an artist, and that his only muse was his wife. Couldnt take the heat or the cold, because Gerald painted our love to outlast us. It will. I see it on every wall. My shy, adoring, secret Gerald.