The Lost Wife Read Online Free Page B

placed down her teacup and took the magazine from me. She smiled. “Keep your braids a little longer, Lenka,” she said, her voice tinged with wistfulness. “It’s taken you years to get your hair this long.”
    And so my braids stayed. My mother, however, came to welcome some of the modern trends coming into Prague. She loved the new style of wide-legged trousers, a full blouse peeking out from a high, nipped waist. She bought these fashions for both herself and me, and even had Gizela, her seamstress, make several pairs of pants for us from a pattern book she ordered from Paris.
    Unfortunately, my closetful of new, modern clothes failed to alter my perception of myself. I still felt as though I was trapped in a state of awkwardness. I wanted to be more confident and more feminine, but instead I only felt unattractive and insecure. My body seemed completely foreign to me now. For years, I had stared at a girl with braids and a body that seemed like it was cut from a paperdoll book. Now, with the changes of adolescence, I was more self-conscious about how I moved—even how I used my hands to express myself. An arm might now graze my breast when it earlier could move freely in front of me. Even my hips seemed to get in the way when I thought I could squeeze between two chairs.
    I tried to focus my attention on my portfolio for art school. This was something that was tangible and something in which I had confidence. In my last year at high school, I had progressed from simple watercolors and pastels to a love of oil paint. When I was not doing homework, I spent my time painting or drawing. Our living room was full of the framed portraits I had done over the years. The small sketches I had done of an infant Marta were now replaced with a large portrait I painted of her in the white dress and pale blue sash she had worn to Lucie’s wedding.
    I hoped my portraits could express more than just the appearance of my subject, but their thoughts as well. The hands, the eyes, and the position of the body were like the instruments of a clock, and I only needed to orchestrate them in such a way so as to portray my subject’s inner life. I imagined myself as El Greco, arranging my father in the large recess of his intricately carved chair, the red velvet seat a striking contrast to his black suit. I painted his hands, with the blue ribbons of his veins, the carefully manicured nails, and his laced fingers gently resting on his lap. I painted the blue green of his eyes, reflecting the light. The blackness of his mustache, resting above two closed, pensive lips. My mother, too, offered to sit for me.
    Mother’s name, Eliška, when abbreviated to Liska, meant “fox,” and was a nickname my father called her lovingly. I thought of that as I painted her. I asked her to pose in a simple housedress, made of white starched cotton with an eyelet neck and trim on the sleeves. It was the way I loved her most, without her typically powdered face or her elegant wardrobe. My mother, simple and natural. Her pale skin, once revealed, was slightly freckled, like speckles of oatmeal floating in a bowl of milk.
    She was always quiet after she studied one of my completed paintings. As if she wanted to say something, but instead held back.
    She never spoke of her own time in art school, and certainly there was an air of mystery surrounding her former life as a student. She never displayed the paintings she had done before her marriage. I knew where they were because I had stumbled upon them around the time that Mother first announced she was pregnant with Marta. Lucie and I had gone to the storage cage in the bottom of our apartment building to look for a pump for my bicycle. Each apartment had a small locker, and Mother had given us the key for ours. I had never been down to the basement, and it was like a dark cave filled with everyone’s misbegotten things. We passed old furniture draped in heavy white cloth, leather trunks, and boxes stacked to