PEARL
I painted him. Over and over again I would set myself before canvas and easel, a solitary sailboat floating on the sparkling ocean off in the distance in my mind, or the two lines of women in protest, those of us for, those of them against. And yet when I did dip the brush in paint, when the brush found the canvas, it was always him that emerged. I painted Peter not as I had last seen him, in that wretched uniform, but in all the other and magical ways I had looked upon him, as a groom waiting for me at the end of the long aisle, as a lover hovering just above me, and as a joyful boy when he beheld our daughter for the first time.
Painting him became an obsession, one of sweet pain – and unprofitability, as I could not put a single one up for sale. I knew I had to do something else
