As a child, I was terrified of the portraits we had in our dining room. Their eyes followed us around the room. One was my great-great-great-great-great-grandmother (I think that’s the right number of greats) on my mother’s side of the family, Sarah Visscher Schuyler Hoyle (she was married to a cousin of the Schuylers in Hamilton). The other was my great-grandfather on my father’s side of the family, Mark Antony DeWolf Howe, the Episcopal bishop. I wrote about this story on my blog in 2005.
When I became a storyteller, one of the first stories I wrote for telling to grownups was about these two portraits. Here’s a version of that story:
(Transcript below the Subscribe button below, if you’d prefer to read it.)
Yes, we had the portraits in the house. Yes, I was scared of them and I suspected Sarah of having a gun hidden under her cloak (I don’t tell this story as often as I used to, in part because of the rise in gun violence in our world). Yes, I was always hungry after school, and sometimes I would go through the dining room to get to the kitchen, sometimes through the telephone room. No, I couldn’t climb the tree in front of the house until I was about ten. But this story takes a sharp departure from the facts.
Before I start, I explain to the audience that all my stories start with a seed of truth. I’ve learned that I need to say that this is what I call “personal fiction.” If I don’t, people feel somehow cheated, and that I’ve told them a pernicious lie. Unlike some stories, where the truth gets shifted gradually with memory, I intentionally stretch it in this story.
What do you think? Do you feel cheated?
Transcript of “The Portraits”
They say that the mark of a fine portrait is that the eyes follow you around the room. We had two portraits in the house I grew up in, in the dining room. On one wall was the portrait of my great- great- great- great- great-grandmother, Sarah Visscher Schuyler Hoyle. She was a beady-eyed old lady, with a long nose and thin lips. She wore a little lace cap and a dark cloak under which I knew anything could be hidden. She carried a little box—it looked sort of like a yo-yo, but it was probably a box for snuff, the kind you put in your nose to make yourself sneeze.
She was famous in our family. She had taken her second husband to court when he tried to cheat her out of money she had inherited from her first husband. She lost that case, but in our family it was always referred to as “a landmark case”.
On the other wall was the portrait of the bishop, the Episcopal bishop, Mark Antony Dewolf Howe, my great-grandfather on my father's side of the family. He was a dark-haired, dark-eyed young man with a black jacket, black tie, a little gold cross on his white shirt. He looked like a man who would do well in life, and he did.
The dining room was a warm and comfortable place at night. We would all sit around the table. My mother would sit under the portrait of the beady-eyed old lady. My father would sit under the portrait of the bishop. There would be four, five, six, even all seven kids around the table and we would laugh and talk and tell stories and tell jokes. The candles were always lit on the table. We would clear the plates after we ate and then come back with dessert, usually ice cream. I might kick my brother under the table. He'd kick me back. He had longer legs. We would sometimes race our napkin rings across the table. We always had cloth napkins so we had napkin rings. My napkin ring was thin silver and fast. My brother Mark’s was wooden and it had a mouse carved on it. He never won those races. After the meal, my dad would take his butter knife and carve up the wax that had dripped down onto that table, the table that had come down through the generations.
So the dining room was a warm and comfortable place at night, but in the daytime, it was cold, dark, and scary.
Every day, I ran home from school. Every day I was hungry. I came home from school a little earlier than my brothers and sisters. I'm a little bit younger. Every day I would run past the big old tree out in front of the house, the big old elm, and I'd look up and think, oh, maybe today I can get up in the branches of that tree, maybe today I'm tall enough. Maybe today Mark and Deb won't sit in the branches and laugh at me.
I'd run up the three steps, then up the pebbled path and up the next three steps, bang in through the big black front door, run through the vestibule, toss my books on the bench. Every day, I had a choice. I could get to the kitchen by taking the safe route, through the telephone room, which was really just a hallway, or I could take the dangerous route through the dining room. I would get one, two, three steps into the dining room. The beady eyed old lady would watch me. The bishop would watch me. Their eyes would follow me across the room. I would only get about three steps in before I ran as fast as I could to the butler's pantry, to the kitchen, to safety, to toast.
I never knew why it was so dangerous until one day. As usual, I ran home from school. I was hungry. I ran past that big old tree and thought, oh, maybe today I can get up in the tree. I ran up the three steps, up the pebbled path, up the next three steps. I slammed in through the big black front door, ran through the vestibule, tossed my books on the bench. I got to the door of the dining room and I stopped.
There, in full human form, outside of her picture frame, was the beady-eyed old lady. And in her hands was an old and dangerous-looking gun.
I couldn't move, I was so scared. She looked at me. She said, ”You, you always run through here so quickly, you never see what really happens.”
She looked across the room at the bishop and said, “The sly remarks he makes, the constant looks. It's more than a lady can stand.”
She raised the gun and BANG! She shot, and I ran, out of the house, straight up into the branches of that tree—the tree I had never been able to climb before in my life.
I sat in that tree. shaking. I waited a long time. I waited until my sister Deb and my brother Mark came home from school, and even then I waited for my brother Tom and my sister Faith to come home, and even then I waited for my brother Dave and my sister Mary to come home, and even then I waited for my mother and father to come home.
Then I climbed down from that tree and went in the house. Nobody’d missed me. Nobody knew I'd been anywhere. But I refused to eat in the dining room that night or for many nights after.
A few months later we moved to a different house, a more modern house, in another town, in another state. The portraits were hung in the dining room again, but they were not exactly facing each other.
A few days after we moved, I was looking at the portrait of the bishop. My mother came up next to me. She said, “Oh, look at that—there’s a little hole. Huh. The movers must have pierced it when we moved. If we can ever afford to get it cleaned, we’ll get it fixed.”
She went on to do something else. I decided to go to the kitchen, get a piece of toast. I crossed the dining room. The beady eyed old lady watched me. Her eyes followed me across the room. When I got to the door of the dining room and the kitchen, I looked straight up at the beady eyed old lady and she looked straight down at me.
And then…she winked.