She was there. Not a ghost. A mannequin in her wedding dress, holding a palette knife instead of a bouquet. It turned its head. Cracks spread across its porcelain face like the cracks in our family’s narrative.
I returned for the portrait. Not the gaudy, half-finished one of Mother that the tabloids called “The Crying Canvas.” No. The small one. The one she painted of me at seven, before the madness took her palette.
I don’t remember her smiling.