Chapter 10.7 - The Soul’s Battle

Throughout her entire life light and shadow had been facing each other on Claire’s inner battlefield, her soul, equally favored and equally strong. Since the outcome of this constant battle showed up in her day to day life in the form of indecisiveness, she had moved the struggle to the canvas, where all of its epic details were brought to the foreground.

Grandmother was staring at this epic battle through the lens of Claire’s latest painting frowning and unsure.

“I don’t know, child, some times I wonder where all of this stuff is coming from,” she drew closer to look at the center of the painting where a clash of something she could not define seemed to be taking place. “What does this mean to you?”

Claire wished she could explain it, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t even describe it to herself, it had just come out, raw and crude, from that dark pool where her real feelings liked to go hide to protect themselves from the scrutiny of the world.

“I’m not sure,” she mumbled.

“Is that what you’re going to name this painting when you send it to the gallery? I’m not sure?” 

“How about Uncertainty?” Claire replied. “It sounds more sophisticated.” 

“It’s terrifying,” Grandmother rendered her verdict.

“You should try feeling it, it’s even more fun that way,” Claire thought but didn’t respond.

“You are way too conflicted, bebelle. You should make up your mind one way or the other what you are about and stick to it, nobody can spend their entire life between worlds.”

“What if this is what my life is really about? What if this is who I truly am, she who lives between worlds?” Claire had been born between worlds and had spent so much time in that spiritual neutral zone she didn’t know how to be any other way. She had never fit in the real one, where her yearnings and experiences were deemed strange and uncomfortable, and she didn’t fit in the land of eternal summer either, where she was too far removed from the levers of creation. The only place where she really felt she belonged was between the mirrors. There she could keep a foothold in both realities while watching the many stations of her nomadic soul.

“You should find a home, Claire. You look like you’re living your whole life out of a suitcase.”

“But I have a home, maman. This is home,” she pointed to the house and the garden with a broad gesture of her arms which looked like she had just let go of a warm embrace. The gesture stretched out farther into the horizon, to distant cities, to the edges of the sea and to the clouds, as if the universe itself was home.

Grandmother shook her head in disapproval and abandoned the subject.

“So, when is I’m clueless and it terrifies my grandmother going to the gallery?” she asked.

“Well, I have to finish it first,” Claire pointed out.

“You are telling me that this isn’t finished yet?” Grandmother shuddered. “I don’t think you can fit anything else in there, not without having all of those whatever they are burst out and scatter all over the place!”

“You mean my feelings,” Claire defended herself. “All of the me’s.”

The Claire collective stopped in its tracks in a moment of rare solidarity to assert its components’ rights to exist, independently and together, at least in a painted world if not elsewhere.

“Quick, grab a broom and a dustpan and gather Claire’s brains,” Grandfather joked from the doorway. “It looks like they spilled all over the floor.”

A cloud passed over the sun and the room turned dark all of the sudden, and then bright again, like some being in the sky was playing with the light switch. Claire squinted instinctively and when she opened her eyes she was outside, basking in the sunshine; the light was too strong for her to see anything, but she could hear giggles and bird song and the wind rustling leaves. A gentle touch brushed a strand of hair off her face and then she was back.

“We ran out of toothpaste and paper towels, care to join me for a quick run into town?” Grandfather asked, bringing her down into reality in the process. 

Claire nodded; she put down the palette and the brushes, took off her apron and followed him to the door. Grandmother watched them from the porch until they reached the end of the alley and disappeared from sight.