Tea Talk

lady's rose

#awcoctober2015 contest entry 

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I HAVE ALWAYS ADORED ART. When I was younger and had no sense of anything in the world, I thought that art was limited to my mother's smile even when she was tired, my father's humor after his boss had gotten upset with his antics, things that weren't materialistic.

And then one day when things were particularly dull and the mood was somber and I no longer had a father that took me to school every day because things just don't work out sometimes, kid. my mother took me to the Louvre, a place I was always fascinated with but never went into because I found it intimidating. It was massive and beautiful and extraordinary and everything I never was.

We went inside tepidly. Mostly, I think my mother was just trying to keep her mind somewhere instead of distracting mine. I still cried at nights when she kissed me goodnight and left the room. They were quiet, defeated sobs that sounded like a widow's tears for her drowned husband. They didn't sound like a daughter's who would still see her father every other weekend.

It just wasn't the same to me. He no longer lived in the house but his voice would echo in my head and in the room and it would echo so loud I wondered if my mother heard it, too. His voice was like ice cream on a sunny day, let me tell you. When the cold slipped through you all at once and woke you up, that was him, but in the sweetest, best way possible. Sometimes it seemed as if she did, when she suddenly cocked her head to the side or turned abruptly.

I saw him every other weekend like it was decided, but he always looked at me as a person would look at a ghost. Like he couldn't talk to them but he could see them. Except for he talked to me but it seemed forced, as if he did it to follow the orders of the court instead of his own heart.

I began to love and enjoy art, and that was because of that one day my mother took me to the Louvre. She looked at it like a person would look at their enemy they no longer felt hatred for. She looked at it with indifference, and that made my insides burn and boil because it was supposed to be for me, why wasn't I a part of the equation?

She remained apathetic as I decided to wander around the museum, walking up and down the halls until I reached the end. Then, I'd look at her once and she'd meet my eyes but wouldn't say a word, so I took that as my invitation to keep on wandering aimlessly. She followed, sparing a glance or two at the really popular paintings.

My favorite painting was the Mona Lisa even though it was cliche and everything they always said it would be. Her eyes were even more sly up close, her lips upturned into a smile that looked like it held everything.

I always hated the Mona Lisa a little bit for that.

I liked knowing things, and the Mona Lisa never whispered her secrets to me. I liked knowing what my parents talked about when I randomly awoke at night to hear their hushed words, laced with a secrecy they neverspoke about in front of me.

The Mona Lisa did just that, what my parents had done for months until one day it wasn't hushed words but raucous shouting.

The Mona Lisa was beautiful but mysterious. I never liked leaving mysteries unsolved, but Leonardo was, unfortunately, a dead man.

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When I was eighteen, I applied for the Louvre in France. They didn't specifically say they needed employees, but I applied in that hopeless tone that previous lovers say we can still be friends in. The Louvre fascinated me and I went back, when the pain of my parents' divorce didn't linger in the museum walls anymore.