Sophie gazed at the sculpture for perhaps the fourth or fifth minute in a row, quite obviously deep in thought. To any passerby, Sophie was contemplating the artist’s subtle message nestled among the clever curves and ribbons of shiny copper. Was there a social criticism? Or perhaps it was the bitter, metallic taste of revenge?
The truth was that Sophie knew very little about art, and considerably less about this abstract lump of copper that had found its way to waxed floors, velvet ropes and an overzealous curator. Sophie was, however, an enthusiastic collector of precious objects herself. In fact, at the very moment that she stood wordlessly boring into the metal sculpture, she was visiting a very peculiar little room filled with her most prized possessions.
Dark wood floors rose into shelves that lined the room from floor to ceiling. A warm yellow glow coming from nowhere in particular fell faintly upon what might have looked to anyone else like a mish-mash of trinkets. Despite the sense of antiquity emanating from the objects and the small amount of dust accumulating in the corners of the room, there was no doubt that each and every installment in the strange museum had been well-preserved. Nostalgia mingled with a hint of resigned sadness. It produced an air of quiet beauty suspended about the room. Sophie smiled ruefully, knowing that she would try today to do what she tried to do every day.
Sophie’s wide blue eyes fell upon the slender figure of a winged, porcelain fairy. The ceramic gleamed even in the dull light, showing no indication of the long sixteen years it had rested untouched on the same shelf. It was a day from her childhood, Sophie remembered, spent in the woods in search of the magical creatures that flitted through her mother’s bedtime stories. Sophie could see it clearly now, the sun streaming through mile-high deciduous tree-tops, tickling the lichen and bracken fern. She watched as that little girl with the same curly chestnut hair and wide blue eyes ran into the forest. The six-year-old threw her head back, spread out her arms, and spun wildly in circles. Her voice chimed in a call for Queen Mab to come out, even if only for a second. As little Sophie’s dizzying circles slowed, she fell to the ground, giggling the whole time. The scene became fuzzy around the edges, and the smell of rosewood shelving drifted in and out. Sophie smiled, and whispered to herself, “Should have offered her fairy cake—that’s what they love best”. By then the room was back, and Sophie’s eyes were already straying towards the opposite wall.
The only object not on a shelf, and simply because it wouldn’t fit, was a coloured atlas resting against the wall. The pages had been turned many times over, but the binding and covers were still in remarkable condition. Sophie’s eyes stung with tears—she knew what was coming and couldn’t help but stand and wait to be sucked into the memories again.
This time the girl was a little older and perhaps a bit lankier. The glossy brown ringlets fell halfway down her back now and she had freckles to show for a summer on the beach. She carried in her hands the atlas, almost as tall and wide as she. A man with wisps of gray hair and laugh lines that evidenced a mischievous youth sat in a lawn chair on soft green grass. He opened his arms for the atlas, and next for the little girl that jumped into them happily. As she sat, leaning back against his chest and holding open the enormous map, the man pointed out the kite-shaped country of India.
“Did I ever tell you about the time I was there? I saw a tiger. It was a real one, lying right on the road. This was when your grandpa was in the war. I was driving the truck full of all my pals, and I stopped right in front of this massive, wild female Bengal tiger. It looked right at me!” The man bared his teeth and Sophie giggled furiously at the face. She never would find out how much truth there was to this story, nor did she care. The atlas and the wild tale of the tiger would always have a spot in her precious room of things that had been.
Sophie blinked back the moisture in her eyes and let them rove in search of something specific. Unlike the other two recollections, this one hid inside an empty brown paper cup, tipped over with the tab flipped back on its lid, which lay to the side. Sophie smiled at the bite marks on the rim—it had been a bad habit of hers for as long as she could remember to bite the rims of paper cups, or the straws on juice boxes. As she laughed at herself, a few snowflakes began to fall lightly, but continued increasing in number until Sophie found herself in the middle of a very heavy snowfall. She was on a downtown street that had been lit up with giant snowflake shapes on every lamp post. A big park to her right boasted plenty of thick evergreens all decked out in Christmas lights. To the left, a shop window threw an orange light onto the icy sidewalk. Inside, two young people tried on pairs of glasses, laughing at ridiculous frames called “Working Women” or “World Traveler.” After a while, the curly-haired brunette and boy who was at least another half of her height, walked to the edge of the glowing park. They bought hot chocolate and sipped it as they walked around the skating rink to the adjacent street corner. Sophie followed her teenage self into a pew in a beautiful building with high arched ceilings and stained glass windows. She sat, listening, watching the violins and cellos, observing certain members of the audience perk up in the middle of the Surprise Symphony, watching the conductor walk back on to the stage for one too many deep bows. All the while, the two young people in the pew who couldn’t see her whispered back and forth about the show and the people around them. Sophie saw a kind of carefree look in her own eyes, and, for the first time in a long time, contentment.
As this last memory faded, tossing her back into the room, Sophie’s eyes fought back tears one more time. She reached out as she often did, hoping for a new result today. Her slender fingers reached for the paper cup, only to slip through the tooth-marked rim, through the rosewood shelf. She lunged at the enormous atlas to find that she could not touch it.
The porcelain fairy was equally as immune to her greedy hands as all of the other objects in the room had been. Sophie wanted more than anything at that moment to touch them, pick them up and hold them. Somehow she thought that holding them would transform her from passive observer to participant. Sophie wanted to experience all of those things again. She wanted to sit on her grandfather’s knee and gaze at maps of far-off places. She wanted to twirl in endless circles in the woods, still believing in fairies. She wanted to hold that boy’s hand, sit in the park with hot chocolate, gossip about the cocky conductor. But she had only ever be able to watch—as a ghost. It was as if Sophie herself were a distant memory. Sophie gazed at the sculpture for perhaps the fourth or fifth minute in a row. She didn’t realize that she had been grasping at the copper sculpture until the fanatical curator shooed her hand away and scolded “excuse me Miss! Didn’t you read the sign?”
Those wide blue eyes blinked apologetically and drifted toward a sign that sat below the sculpture. In large block letters it read:
PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH THE ARTWORK. COPPER DISEASE IS A REAL PROBLEM FOR SCULPTURES SUCH AS THIS: OILS FROM HUMAN HANDS CAN TARNISH THE METAL CAUSING IRREVERSIBLE ALTERATIONS TO ITS APPEARANCE. THE ARTIST THANKS YOU FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING.
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