Aftershocks (eBook)

Kathleen Jonke (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
236 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-8161-2 (ISBN)

Infos

Aftershocks tells the story of Sarah O'Neil, the thirty-year-old daughter of an artist named Anna. Soon after her mother's death, Sarah discovers a hidden portfolio of her artwork in the studio of their Minneapolis home. It contains work that Anna completed during the year she spent in Portugal before Sarah's birth. The contents of the portfolio lead to a revelation that propels Sarah across the ocean to the vibrant coastal city of Lisbon. Her journey turns into an extended stay that includes falling in love, and discovering herself and her life's purpose along the way. Then a catastrophic event transforms the lives of the people she has come to know and love, and the story spirals out to capture the risks and rewards all of us face in our filial, familial and intimate relationships, and the need we all have at times for a little shake up to achieve our destiny.

Kathleen Jonke was born in 1959 and grew up in Wheatridge, Colorado. She earned degrees from the University of Colorado and worked as a geophysicist and geologist until 2014. She has lived in several midwestern and western states and spent some time in Portugal. She retired to Golden, Colorado where she enjoys writing, hiking, gardening and traveling. She lives with her life partner, J.J. Fraser, and their two Gordon setters. Aftershocks is her first published novel.

Textauszug

Chapter 1

The low whistle of the tea kettle amplified, forcing Sarah to release her grip on the drive wheel of the etching press and walk the few steps to the north end of the studio. Two cups sat side by side, next to the portable burner, on a paint-splattered table. She filled one, lifted it to her chin, and felt the steam rise across her face. The scent of lemon mingled with the room’s perpetual smell of turpentine and linseed oil.

While sipping her tea, she glanced around the studio. Along the length of one wall, her mother’s framed oil paintings were stacked in rows and encroached on the etching press in the center of the room. During her lifetime, her mother, Anna, had completed more than five hundred paintings, numbering each one on the back for her records. Most of her work had been sold, first to city residents at small art shows and later in galleries to people from around the world. All that remained were the paintings Anna had yet to show or had rejected for one reason or another. The work needed to be organized, but Sarah didn’t know where to begin.

Three black, metal flat-file cabinets stood against the wall opposite the paintings. They contained fifty years of her mother’s artwork on paper and canvas, with a few drawers reserved for Sarah’s own work. On top of the cabinets were wood boxes and ceramic canisters of art supplies, a three-foot wide roll of brown craft paper in a dispenser, and a haphazard stack of loose etchings.

“Ah, a place to begin,” Sarah said.

She spread out the first three etchings on top of the end cabinet. They were from Anna’s Blue Period, a title Sarah had given her mother’s last body of work. Anna had been blue. She was dying. And in her last year, she had taken a fancy to every shade of blue.

Paging down through the stack, Sarah recognized one of her favorites, a peacock etching. The feathers of the iridescent bird were a mixture of greens—sea, emerald, aquamarine—and of blues—cobalt, cerulean, ultramarine. Deep indigo trees filled the background. A pond lay in the foreground. The peacock passed near its edge, unaware of its beauty reflected softly in the still water.

Sarah decided to frame the etching and pulled it from the midst of the pile, but in so doing, the etching on the top of the pile began to slide down between the cabinet and wall. But something prevented it from falling to the floor. She recovered the etching and then tried to look behind the cabinet, but the space was too narrow to see the object.

Sitting on the floor, she braced one foot on the wall and pulled at the corner of the cabinet with all her strength. The cabinet was heavy and moved only an inch, but it was enough to fit her hand and wrist behind it. She reached in. About six inches back, she ran her fingers along a tall, thin object and felt the metal ridges of a zipper.

Squatting with her right hip against the wall, she grasped the end of the object and pulled out a large, black leather portfolio. She placed it on the floor, unzipped the three sides, and opened the cover.

Inside was a collection of her mother’s artwork on paper. She moved aside one sheet of tissue paper after another, as she paged through sketches of landscape scenes. There were also portraits of people she didn’t know. Although she had never seen these sketches before, she recognized the body of work. It was a collection from the year her mother had traveled and painted in Europe, the year before Sarah was born.

Oil paintings of the time Anna had spent in Portugal and Spain, along with some of her American landscapes, covered the walls of their three-story, Minneapolis home. Two of the paintings were Sarah’s favorites—a painting of Portuguese fishermen sitting on a beach tending their nets beside blue, yellow, and white striped fishing boats, and a painting of an outdoor market with Portuguese women dressed in black, selling vegetables and colorful bouquets of flowers. These paintings were created from photographs after Anna had returned home. But the sketches in the portfolio appeared to have been created while Anna was still in Europe. The worn portfolio must have been the one she had carried with her.

Sarah moved aside the last sketch in the pile and discovered a painting on canvas board. She held it away from the glare of sunlight that was streaming in the south windows of the studio. It was a painting of the front courtyard of a home. Terra cotta pots overflowing with flowers filled the back corners of the courtyard. A large crack ran at an angle along the front of the home’s white stucco exterior. The bright blue front door appeared freshly painted and was framed by three rows of blue and white tiles above the door and along each side. A flower box of red geraniums hung on the tiled wall to the right of the door. To the left of the door stood a wrought iron bench. A man sat on the bench holding a guitar on his lap. His dark head was bent forward, and his eyes were cast down, while he played a silent melody.

Sarah looked back through the stack of sketches. Then she returned to the painting of the man playing his guitar. None of the artwork was as intimate as this painting. She frowned. This man was not a stranger to her mother. She studied every detail of the painting again, disappointed that her mother wasn’t alive to tell the story behind the work. Then she reluctantly set it aside.

Beneath the pile of artwork, in the bottom corner of the portfolio, she discovered a blue, denim-covered, photograph album. Sarah carried it to the overstuffed chair near the window, sat down, and skimmed the first few pages. The album contained photographs from her mother’s trip to Europe. Her mother had shown her an album from that time, but that one was kept in the dining room sideboard. This wasn’t the same album.

She turned back to the first page and studied a photo of a woman with vibrant red hair and the rumpled look of a traveler, sitting at a table in front of a European café. It was her mother’s sister, Irene. Sarah was puzzled. Aunt Irene didn’t go to Europe with her mother. Sarah was quite certain of this, even though she wasn’t around at the time.

Years later, when Sarah was a little girl, Irene and her mother told her the story. She remembered sitting cross-legged on the floor and listening intently.

“I tried to talk your father into taking a year’s sabbatical to go with me,” Anna said to Sarah. “But he refused. He doesn’t like to travel.”

“Rather baffling, don’t you think, considering that he’s a history professor?” Irene said and winked at Sarah.

“At least he encouraged me to go on my own—”

“Ha!” Irene laughed. “Joe never thought for a moment that you would go without him.” She turned toward Sarah and said, “As soon as your mother made the arrangements to travel, your father sulked, hoping she would change her mind and stay home. He was subtle, but his intention was obvious. He played on her sympathy, telling her that he wouldn’t be able to get along without her. She started to feel guilty, said she had a change of heart, and couldn’t leave him alone. When she picked up the phone to cancel her reservations, I grabbed the phone, pulled her out the door, and escorted her onto the plane with a promise from the pilot that he would lock the door behind her.”

“I have Irene to thank for the trip of my lifetime,” Anna said with tenderness in her voice.

“Yes, you do,” Irene said. “But now Joe hates me.”

“He doesn’t hate you,” Anna said. “You exaggerate, as usual.”

“Well, he certainly doesn’t approve of my lifestyle,” Irene said. “He thinks it’s contagious.”

To Sarah’s surprise, Irene exchanged a smile with her mother.

Maybe it was contagious to some degree, Sarah thought. Her mother had found the courage to leave her husband at home while she pursued her dream to paint abroad. Her father, born in 1949 and holding fast to the commonly held belief of the male dominant role of his time, believed a wife belonged at her husband’s side, taking care of him and their home. He even told Sarah on a few occasions that he had been miserable when her mother was away. But Sarah didn’t feel sorry for him. After all, Anna was only away from home for one year of their long life together. Besides, her mother had said that she had the time of her life during that year. After two months in Spain, Anna had spent the remainder of the year in Portugal. She rented an apartment in Lisbon and spent her days painting or traveling the country with the friends she had made along the way.

“There’s a special place in my heart for Portugal,” Anna said with a distant look in her eyes brimming with tears. “It was a time I will never forget. Not one moment of it.” She took hold of Sarah’s chin, cupped it in her hands and said, “I have no regrets.” Then she brushed Sarah’s cheeks with both her thumbs, looked into her eyes with love, and kissed her forehead.

Sarah sighed at the tender memory, then she looked back down at the photographs and turned the first page. The following few pages displayed snapshots of Irene or Anna in various locations, posed in front of a landmark—-an enormous castle door, a statue, an ornate church. In the photographs, they...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 12.12.2024
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• ISBN-13: 979-8-3509-8161-2 / 9798350981612