Photo Credit: National Galleries of Scotland
“You will live forever,” he said. “People from far and wide will know your name, Bluette.” What do I care if strangers know my name? Mama and Papa wanted him to paint Rosette, but for some reason he chose me. I don’t know why. I’m so plain. That’s what Mama tells me all the time. Rosette is the beautiful, older one. She should be painted. But now it will be my portrait that hangs above the mantle and that everyone will see when they walk into the dining room and sit down to eat.
Mr. Walton, or Eddie, that’s what he told me to call him, is nice. I don’t mind that he’s staying with us. Everyone in our little Cockburnspath seems to be hosting an artist lodger this summer. I think they’re silly leaving their easels everywhere and watching people do the most boring things and making them seem important. What’s so important about picking cabbage or herding sheep or walking to school? Eddie’s friend, Mr. Guthrie, painted my friends, Lucy and Bobby, picking apples in their orchard. They look so serious in the painting. Those two are the goofiest. I don’t know how they didn’t go into fits of laughter. Eddie made me wear mama’s straw hat and had me walk down the road from our house until he found the “perfect” spot for me to stand. That’s our house behind me. Oh, and he picked blue cornflowers that I’m named after for me to hold. He probably thinks he is so clever, Eddie.
Today is my third day standing here like this. Eddie says it may take another week. It’s uncomfortable. I don’t like it. No one has ever spent so much time looking at me. I don’t like it one bit. The first day I was so embarrassed I just wanted to laugh. I don’t feel like laughing anymore. Now I just want to run away. I’m still standing here only because I want Mama to like my painting. Maybe Eddie can make me less plain so she thinks I’m beautiful, too, like Rosette.
It’s hard to just stand still with nothing to do. Your mind goes crazy. Eddie said that I will live forever. Am I already living forever? What if Eddie makes me too pretty and Mama likes the portrait more than me? Mama and Papa say Eddie is going to be really famous one day, that people will pay a lot of money for his paintings. What if one day someone wants to buy this painting of me and moves me from my parents’ house to some faraway place for strangers to look at? Is that what it feels like to live forever?
Eulogy
Maybe i just didn’t understand what they meant when they said to submit an ekphrastic work. I still don’t. Does anyone?
