The Empty Frame

Ruben had helped Aunt Inez carry three paintings into the small gallery. He had carried the lightest one, although she had called it the most important. Now it hung beside the door, showing a pair of muddy gardening boots. Across the room was a beautiful wooden frame with nothing inside it. Ruben pointed. “That one’s much easier to carry.”

“It’s waiting for a painting,” said Mr Chen, the attendant. “The artist’s car broke down.” He went to answer the telephone, leaving Ruben beside the frame. There was no canvas tucked at the back, no secret flap and no picture drawn on the wall. Just a rectangle of cream paint. Ruben wondered whether visitors would think someone had forgotten to finish the exhibition.

Aunt Inez was straightening the label beneath her painting of the boots. Ruben took out his sketchbook and began drawing the empty frame. Then a grey shape slid into the space inside it. He stopped. Another shape followed, thin at one end and wide at the other. From the courtyard outside, a branch scraped softly against a window. Ruben looked from the wall to the window and back again.

Leaves from the courtyard tree were casting shadows through the high window. A breeze made them shift across the empty frame. For a moment, one shape looked like a running horse. Then it became an untidy umbrella. “Aunt Inez,” Ruben called. “This painting won’t stay still.” She stood beside him and watched. “Difficult to draw,” she said. He showed her his page. “Very.”

They tried drawing the shapes together. Every time Ruben finished a line, the shadow had moved away from it. Aunt Inez’s horse acquired three noses. Ruben’s umbrella seemed to have a tail. Mr Chen came back and studied the wall. “The artist’s on her way,” he told them. “That’s good,” Ruben said, although he was no longer certain he wanted the empty space filled.

When the artist arrived, she carried a painting of a quiet winter garden. Mr Chen fetched another frame so they could check the size. Ruben stepped aside, holding his sketchbook close. Aunt Inez explained the shadows. The artist watched the leaves tremble on the cream wall. “I’ve spent a month trying to make a garden look alive,” she said. “Yours has managed it this morning.”

The winter garden fitted the second frame. Mr Chen hung it beside the moving shadows, leaving the first frame where it was. The artist asked to see Ruben’s drawing. “Is that a horse?” “It was,” he said. “Then the wind changed.” She laughed and gave him a spare postcard to draw on. He turned it over before the next shape slipped away.

At the opening, a visitor stood in front of the empty frame and tilted her head. “Is something meant to be here?” she asked. Ruben glanced at Aunt Inez. A leaf shadow flickered across the wall. “Sometimes,” he said. On the way home, he asked what would happen on a cloudy day. “We’d have to wait,” said his aunt. Ruben put his sketchbook under his arm. “Next time, we should bring biscuits.”