I rolled up the door of unit 31, my whole body braced for heartbreak, 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.
Real particular that no one be added but him, the man had said, and now I understood, my Walter had a secret he was ashamed and shy about, and a man who could not keep a Christmas gift quiet had to lock this away where no one, not even his own big mouth, could give it away.
The man who would tell you your gift by Thanksgiving, the least artistic soul I thought I ever knew, had been secretly painting for seventeen 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. At the kitchen sink, asleep in my chair, laughing at something, moments he had memorized and carried out here to paint, 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 late in life I started trying to paint them instead. 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, and you know I would have blurted it all out by Thanksgiving, so I hid them here and told the folks to let nobody in but me. I painted you so our grandchildren would always see you the way I do. Love, Walter.
I wept in that unit, surrounded by forty-four years of myself, seen through the eyes of the man who loved me.
Particular that no one be added, because he was shy of his gift, and could not keep the surprise otherwise.
I did not sell one painting. I brought them home. They hang all through my house now, me at every age, so everywhere I turn, I see myself the way my husband saw me. To be old and see yourself, at every age, through the eyes of a man who found you beautiful for forty-four years, there is no gift like it on this earth.
My daughter did not know why I drove out to Route 11. Now she knows her daddy was an artist, and that his only muse was his wife. Particular that no one be added, because Walter painted our love in secret, and meant it to outlast us both. It will. I see it on every wall. My shy, adoring Walter.