The Drawing

Crime Fiction by E.P. Lande

Jack stood in the rain, wondering what he should do. He had borrowed from everyone he knew, and now no one returned his phone calls. He had been fired from his job for being drunk — again — and, at his age, he didn’t believe his prospects for finding another position with the same salary and benefits were very good. Even for the most menial of service jobs — like slinging hamburgers in a McDonald’s — he wouldn’t be hired. Everything he had in the world he had on his back. He had been thrown out of the apartment he’d been living in for the past year, as he owed the landlord six-month’s rent. He’d max’d out his credit card, and his girlfriend had told him to get lost. His only hope was his Aunt Mary who lived in Philadelphia.

Jack hadn’t spoken to his mother’s sister in years. Jack knew that the sisters had never had a good relationship. But now Jack had no alternative. Reluctantly, he called his aunt.

“Jack, it has been some time,” she said — and then there was silence.

“Well, Aunt Mary, I knew that relations between my mother and yourself were ….”

“Nonexistent? You needn’t beat around the bush with me, Jack. Your mother and I had our differences, but that was a long time ago.”

Jack wasn’t sure how to tell his aunt.

“You’re broke, is that it?” she asked. Shit, that bitch can read my mind, Jack thought.

“And, you’re thinking of asking me to help you out.”

“Well ….”

“You’re my sister’s son, my own flesh and blood. As I don’t have children of my own, I would consider doing something for you. Wherever you are, take a bus here so we can meet. Then I’ll decide.”

Jack walked to the bus station and bought a ticket for Philadelphia with the last $20 bill he had, leaving him with $8 and change. That should be enough for a taxi to his aunt’s, he figured. If she didn’t agree to help him, he didn’t know what he’d do; he hadn’t thought of that possibility.

“Jack, you’re the image of your father,” his aunt told him when they were seated in her living room.

He wasn’t sure if he should take his aunt’s comment as a compliment or a rebuke.  “Your father was a drunk and a womanizer, never held a steady job, and left town

with his boss’s secretary, without even saying goodbye to my sister. I suppose you never heard from the bastard after what he did?” she said. “Anyway, he’s gone and good guidance.” She looked at her nephew. “I won’t offer you a drink, because I don’t touch the stuff myself.”

Jack looked around. His aunt had a nice house — small and decidedly bourgeois, but comfortable. He could see himself staying.

“So, tell me, what do you have in mind?”

When Jack didn’t answer her question immediately, his aunt said, “You need to work,” which Jack wasn’t entirely against, it’s just that he actually wasn’t suitable for anything much as he’d left college to chase after his then girlfriend who’d gone to Mexico, and when he returned to the States, he had become a heavy drinker, taking after his father. He’d drifted from one job to another, always either forgetting to come to work or leaving before he got fired.

“Perhaps you could help me find one,” he told his aunt.

She did, working in the local Amazon distribution center loading customer orders onto passing vehicles. The work was drudgery, but the pay would allow Jack to feel somewhat independent.

Aunt Mary told Jack he could stay in her house, and gave him the room in her attic. She told him to furnish it with a bed and dresser she had stored in her cellar. The room was bare but adequate, and to Jack, better than sleeping on a bench in the park or on the subway platform.

“I eat my dinners at 6:30,” she told him. “You’re welcome to join me. Unless you know how to cook, you’ll have to put up with mine. Your uncle did, for twenty-eight years. I imagine you can as well. As you’ll be going to work early — you told me you’re on the 5:00 shift — you can fix your own breakfast.”

The arrangement suited Jack, he decided — at least until he found something better. He didn’t have to see — or speak — to his aunt until he returned home in the evening and they had dinner together.

At work, Jack formed a bond with some of the guys. In time, they invited him to join them for drinks at a local bar. As it would be after he’d had his dinner with his aunt, Jack thought he might.

“Do you think it wise?” his aunt asked when he told her.

“It’s only with the guys at work. I don’t see any harm in it,” but given the habit he’d inherited from his father, his aunt had a point.

“That’s how it started with your father,” his aunt reminded him. “The bum would tell your mother that he was only going out for a beer with his co-workers, and wouldn’t return home until 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning — if he returned home at all.”

Jack didn’t listen to his aunt. He remembered his mother telling him, “Mary doesn’t know the meaning of having fun. She controls your uncle with the fist of a haloed tyrant, believing everything she says and does as though it had been written on the tablets Moses brought down from Mount Sinai and handed to the Israelites.”

As soon as he could, after finishing dinner, he took his aunt’s car — she had told him he could use it from time to time — and drove to the bar where he joined his pals from the warehouse.

“How’s your old lady doin’?” they would ask Jack, knowing from him that his aunt controlled every minute of his day when Jack wasn’t working. “Have another,” they would encourage him, and he did.

During the first weeks, Jack would leave the bar to get home before his aunt left her living room and the ubiquitous radio, climbing the stairs to her bedroom on the second floor — usually by 9:00. As long as he said goodnight to her, she didn’t appear to be

disturbed. Upsetting his aunt might lead to her telling him to leave, and this Jack wasn’t prepared to do. Life in his aunt’s home was comfortable. He had a roof to shelter him from the rain, a bed to sleep in, and food on the table — though for all this he had to spend some time with his aunt — albeit as little as possible.

He began returning to his aunt’s house later than he had at the beginning, staying at the bar with his buddies, drinking, sometimes leaving only when the bar closed at 3:00 in the morning. A few times he overslept, arriving at the warehouse well past the start of his 5:00 shift. He always had an excuse — he had to help his aunt who had fallen when getting out of her bed; his aunt had asked him to get a prescription for her at the pharmacy that only opened at 9:00 — and the warehouse foreman had accepted his excuses. But when Jack gave an excuse, forgetting he had already used it the week before, he was fired.

He didn’t tell his aunt. He suspected she would criticize him, telling him once again that he was just like his father — a drunken bum — and might turn him out of her house.     

“They put me on a later shift,” he lied to his aunt when he joined her for breakfast the morning after he was fired. He would leave the house at 9:30 — to be at work as his make-believe shift at the warehouse began at 10:00 — “10:00 to 5:00,” he told her. Instead of driving to the warehouse, Jack would return to the bar where he would stay drinking until he returned to his aunt’s home to eat dinner with her. After dinner, he would sit with his aunt, listening to her radio and talking with her, until she said goodnight when he would return to the bar to drink with his former buddies.

This routine continued for several weeks without arousing his aunt’s suspicion, until Jack ran out of money. His unpaid tab at the bar now approached $600. He borrowed from his buddies, who lent him money knowing Jack had been fired and the likelihood of his repaying them, mute. They enjoyed Jack’s company and, anyway, what was a few bucks between friends?

But Jack knew the bar owner and his buddies would eventually expect to be repaid, and unless he got another job, where would he get it?

Finding a job did not appeal to Jack who preferred sitting in a bar nursing a drink. When he asked his aunt for a twenty — just to tide him over between paychecks — she refused.

“You’ll have to learn to budget,” she told him. “When your uncle was alive, he taught me to live within our means, and you should do the same.”

He stopped going to his usual bar after his breakfast with his aunt, switching to another bar before the previous bar owner pressed to be repaid. He went to a different bar in the evening. Jack told his buddies that his aunt had made it a condition that he stay home nights, otherwise she’d send him packing. Whether or not his buddies believed him didn’t matter to Jack. It put off the day they would ask to be repaid the money he owed them.

One evening, when Jack and his aunt were sitting in her living room listening to her radio, she told him that she had told her lawyer to write a new will for her.

“As I don’t have children, and you’re the son of my only sister, it’s only natural for me to leave you whatever’s left,” she told him.

Jack believed his aunt to be well off. She lived comfortably, though not extravagantly, and she didn’t seem to lack financial resources. Her home was adequately furnished, just not luxuriously. The only adornment was a framed drawing that hung over the mantle. He couldn’t say he liked the picture — a girl carrying a loaf of bread — but it might be worth something, he thought.

“Your uncle was quite fond of the drawing,” his aunt said, noticing that Jack was looking at it. “He picked it up at a house auction, before we were married.”

“Who’s the artist?” Jack asked.

“Somebody I’d never heard of; van Gogh — a Dutchman, I believe.”

Jack had never heard of the fellow either, but if the drawing were worth something, he didn’t care.

“What d’you think it’s worth?”

“I never cared enough to ask … and I don’t think you should concern yourself either,” his aunt told him.

They continued as they had since Jack lost his job. When he asked his aunt once more for a loan — just to tide him over, he told her — she again refused, telling him that he had to learn to get by on what they paid him at work. She still believed he had a job.

His aunt’s refusal and attitude grated on Jack; he started to resent her, not remembering that if it hadn’t been for her generosity in allowing him to stay with her when he was down-and-out and broke, he might be lying in a gutter some place and no one would care.

But, the more he thought of how she lived, the more he resented her for not doing more to help him out now. Her telling him that he was her sole heir, dwelled in his thoughts. He could think of nothing else. What if she were no longer around, he thought? Everything would be his. And the more he thought, the more he resented his having to be with her, 24/7. Why can’t she just die, he began saying to himself as they sat in her living room every evening. When he was out drinking in bars during the day, these same thoughts stayed with him. The thought of his aunt dying and him inheriting her money, her house and everything in it, wouldn’t leave him. He even had the same thoughts when he was sleeping, to the point that he began having sleepless nights. Some mornings he was too tired to get up. His aunt would knock on his door in her attic, as she didn’t want him to be late for work. Jack resented her even more these mornings. Why couldn’t she leave me alone, he thought?

One evening, after his aunt had gone to bed, Jack slipped out of the house and drove her car to the bar where he knew his former buddies would still be drinking. He needed company.

They greeted Jack as though he had never left their group, slapping him on the back and offering him a beer. Jack didn’t want them to know how depressed he had become, spending every evening with his aunt and not having the money to drink with his buddies. But he did tell them that she had written a will in which she had made him her sole heir. Hearing this, his buddies toasted his good fortune. Get rid of the old bitch, they all told him.

During the following weeks, Jack couldn’t stop thinking about the advice his buddies had given him. His aunt was a useless and stingy old hag, he told himself. She wasn’t a human being, sitting on a pile of assets in a warm house with a full ‘fridge. The more he thought about how his aunt mistreated him, disrespected him, comparing him to his father, the angrier Jack became.

One night, after leaving his buddies at the bar, Jack decided. He waited a half-hour after his aunt had climbed the stairs to her bedroom before he quietly followed her. He listened outside her door. When he believed she was in her bed and asleep, he slipped into her bedroom. Her breathing was regular. He walked over to her bed and looked down at his aunt who was lying on her back, her mouth slightly open. In a low voice, he called out,

“Aunt Mary?”

When she didn’t answer or even move, he bent over until his face was barely inches from hers. He straightened himself and reached over his aunt’s sleeping body for the pillow on the other side of her bed.

With the pillow held firmly in his hands, he looked down at his aunt. After a moment’s hesitation, he leaned over her and, with all his force, pressed the pillow onto his aunt’s face, covering both her mouth and her eyes. Her body twitched, and she let out a few muffled sounds. He pressed harder. It took what seemed like a long time until her twitching body stopped and only the silence of the night surrounded him.

He remained bent over his aunt’s stilled body. Slowly, he lifted himself and looked down at his aunt. Her eyes were open wide. Her mouth was twisted, but otherwise her appearance gave the impression that she was resting. He struck a match and passed the

flame in front of her eyes; they didn’t move or blink. He then placed the flame over her mouth; it didn’t flicker. He sat on her bed and looked at his aunt who seemed to be staring at the ceiling. He closed her eyelids; he didn’t want her to “see” him.

Raising himself, he uncovered his aunt’s body and rolled it over, to check if she had urinated or perhaps perspired. Satisfied that she hadn’t, he went over to her dresser and took out a fresh nightgown. Returning to his aunt’s bed, he slipped off the nightgown she had been wearing and redressed her with the fresh one. He then replaced the covers over her and walked out of the room and back down the stairs to the living room.

When Dr. Adams examined his aunt the following morning — Jack called her doctor as soon as the housekeeper informed him that she had found his aunt still in bed, that his aunt hadn’t moved when she opened the blinds to let the sun in — the doctor gave him the news that she had died in her sleep, most likely of a heart attack.

“You were aware, Jack,” the doctor looked at his patient’s nephew, “that your aunt had a heart condition that I was monitoring very carefully, as I thought she might have such an attack as the one she suffered last night.” The doctor looked at his former patient. “While it’s sad, it was inevitable. I told her this would happen, and that she should be prepared.”

After thanking the doctor, Jack called the funeral home and arranged for her burial. As his aunt had lived a relatively reclusive existence since her husband died, and as Jack was her only living relative, he did not expect many people to show up for her service, — and few did. He greeted her lawyer, a Mr. Franks, the housekeeper, the librarian at the free library where his aunt had been a volunteer some years before, and a couple of ladies

who introduced themselves as friends of his aunt’s, though he didn’t recall her speaking of them.

A few days after his aunt’s funeral, he met with her lawyer at the lawyer’s office.

“Your aunt made up her will sometime after you came to live with her, leaving you as her sole heir,” the lawyer informed him, “and while I asked her from time to time if she had any changes, she left it unchanged.”

“What, exactly, does my aunt’s estate consist of?” Jack asked. “She never discussed it with me, and I didn’t feel comfortable asking her.”

“Her principal asset was an annuity her late husband set up for her.”

          “Is that what she lived off of?” Jack asked.

“Yes, that and her social security,” the lawyer told him.

“And … nothing else?” Jack was beginning to feel uneasy.

“Well, there’s her house ….”

          “And she left it to me?”

“Yes, the house and its contents form part of her estate, but I must advise you, that her house was heavily mortgaged.”

“In your estimation, Mr. Franks, do you believe there’s any equity in it?”

“The house would have to be evaluated for me to give you an answer, but I can tell you this, that your aunt’s late husband put a mortgage on it to the full extent possible.”

“Why would he have done that?” Jack asked, masking the concern that had creeped into his voice.

“In order to purchase the annuity that would pay for his wife’s — your aunt’s — living expenses for as long as she lived.”

“For as long as she lived? What about the residual value of this annuity?”

“There isn’t any,” the lawyer told him. “You see, your aunt’s late husband, wanting your aunt to live comfortably, bought the type of annuity that pays for the upkeep of its holder, but ends — meaning, with no residual value — when that holder dies.”

Jack left the lawyer’s office in a daze, numbed, and angry. Why hadn’t she told him, he asked himself? All these years his aunt had been living off of a mirage, something that would be buried with her. They had never discussed her financial situation. He had lived well since arriving at her doorstep three years before, and he’d assumed — no, counted on — living well now that she was dead. The witch; the evil witch, he muttered to himself as he walked along the street leading from the lawyer’s offices. She knew all along that I would be left nothing, and never said a word. The bitch!

Then he remembered. The drawing. Why had he forgotten about the drawing? In his office, Franks had told him that he was his aunt’s sole heir, that whatever was hers, was now his — and that included the drawing.

He hurried back to his aunt’s house. He needed to see the drawing, to make sure it was still there, hanging on the living room wall, that somehow it hadn’t disappeared, possibly lifted off the wall in his absence.

But there it was, exactly where it had been ever since he’d moved in with his aunt. Now it was his. In the past, he had suggested to his aunt that she sell the drawing so they

could live a little better, but she had always refused. He needn’t ask her permission any longer; according to his aunt’s will, it was his drawing … and he would sell it.

The following day, he contacted Christie’s auction house in New York and asked to speak to the person in charge of modern art.

“This is Hugh Carton,” a person said. “How may I help?”

“I inherited a drawing ….”

“Who was, or is, the artist?” Hugh Carton asked.

“I was told by my aunt, who left it to me in her will, that it was by a fellow by the name van Gogh,” Jack told Mr. Carton.

“Really, well, I congratulate you. Drawings by van Gogh are not only rare these days, but are quite valuable.” Jack was hoping that he would be told this and, inside, he was feeling giddy. “Would you be able to bring — or send — the drawing to my offices so that I might have a look and give my opinion?” Hugh Carton asked. “I’m assuming, of course, that by calling Christie’s you’re interested in selling the drawing?”

“Yes, that was my intention,” Jack told him.

They arranged for Jack to bring the drawing to New York the following week. Mr. Carton would assess the drawing’s worth and the prospects for its sale. At the end of the conversation, Jack put the receiver down and sat back in his chair, speculating on how much he would get for the drawing. Mr. Carton said that drawings by this guy van Gogh were rare; it’ll probably fetch a few thousand, he imagined, enough to keep in booze for a while, he said to himself.

The following week, when he entered the offices of Christie’s, the director in charge of modern master paintings and drawings, Mr. Hugh Carton, was expecting him.

“Ever since our conversation, I have been anticipating with great pleasure our meeting, — and, of course, having a look at your van Gogh drawing,” Hugh Carton told Jack as he entered the director’s inner office. On its walls were framed reproductions of paintings and drawings, and one or two of sculptures, that Mr. Carton had represented for sellers at various auctions held by the auction house.

“Yes, we’ve sold quite a few modern paintings and drawings over the years I’ve been the director,” Hugh Carton told Jack, seeing that Jack was looking at the framed reproductions. “Now, let’s have a look, shall we?”

Jack lay the drawing on the director’s desk and unwrapped it. Hugh Carton picked up the framed drawing and brought it over to the light.

“Do you know where your aunt got this drawing?” Hugh Carton asked, his eyes examining the picture.

“I’m not entirely sure,” Jack told him. “You see, it was actually her husband who acquired the drawing some time before they married.”

“I see,” the director said. After a few more minutes, he asked, “Would you mind if I take the drawing out of its frame? I would like to look at it without the glass between my eyes and the work.”

With Jack’s permission, the director cut the paper backing and slowly, and with considerable care, lifted the drawing out of its frame and lay it on a table nearby that had been covered with a cloth. He then began examining the drawing, first with his naked

eye, then with a magnifying glass. After what to Jack seemed like a very long time, but was, in fact, not more than twenty minutes, Hugh Carton raised himself, put down the magnifying glass, and turned to face Jack.

“You don’t mind if I leave you for a few minutes? I need to make a phone call,” he said, and walked out of the room.

Left alone, Jack sat back and mused about what he would do, once the drawing was sold. Perhaps, with part of the proceeds, he would go to Europe. He had always fantasized about spending time in Paris, and possibly Rome. He understood there was an active nightlife in both those cities. He would go to London where he would have a few suits made-to-measure at the best bespoke tailor, and while he was there, a few pair of shoes as well. He always admired the shoes he’d seen in the magazines. In Paris he would visit the Folies, maybe hook up with one of the girls.

Then he thought of his aunt. The bitch, he muttered to himself. The selfish bitch. She could have shared what she had with me, and not make me beg for leftover crumbs. She deserved what I did.

He looked up when Mr. Carton reentered the office.

“I hesitate to tell you this, but in my opinion — and I preface what I tell you now as it’s only my opinion — your drawing is not by van Gogh,” the director told Jack.

When Hugh Carton said this, Jack jerked out of his laid-back position, looking as though someone had hit him.

“The purpose of my phone call was to check with the director of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. They keep accurate records of the whereabouts of all paintings and works on paper by the master ….”

Jack wasn’t sure he heard the manager correctly. “Are you saying … that my drawing isn’t a van Gogh?”

“It resembles a van Gogh, but I’m afraid that the drawing you brought me today isn’t a genuine drawing by the famed artist,” Mr. Carton told him. Jack seemed confused as the director continued to explain.

“All the van Goghs in existence are catalogued. Your drawing certainly resembles one of the drawings that presently is part of a private collection in Montreal, Canada. Yours was probably done by someone who copied van Gogh’s — possibly by the British artist, John Myatt — and your aunt’s husband must have found it and, believing it was by van Gogh himself, bought it. After my conversation with the director of the Van Gogh Museum, I am 100% certain that what you brought me today isn’t by Vincent van Gogh.”

Jack stumbled out of the director’s office. It had begun to rain. In a daze, he turned left and walked down the street, wondering where he would go. The mortgage company had sent him a letter by certified mail that they intended to take possession his aunt’s home the following week. When Jack went to his aunt’s bank, he was told that all she had in her checking account was $20 and that she had closed her savings account the previous year. He thought about asking his drinking buddies for a loan, but then remembered he owed them for his tabs they had picked up.

All he had in the world were the clothes he had on his back … and the $20 the bank teller had given him when he closed his aunt’s checking account. If he bought a return bus ticket to Philadelphia, he would be left with $8.

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Bio: E.P. Lande was born in Montreal, but has lived most of his life in the south of France and Vermont, where he now lives with his partner, writing and caring for more than 100 animals, many of which are rescues. Previously, he taught at l’Université d’Ottawa where he served as Vice-Dean of his faculty, and he has owned and managed country inns and free-standing restaurants. Since submitting less than two years ago, 45 of his stories have been accepted by publications in countries on five continents.

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