THE SHAPE-SHIFTER

I forget the date of first contact. It happened online. Evan saw my message on a memorial page set up for Rory in 2008. My first boyfriend was a man who left an indelable impression on me. We were painter and model for four years after leaving high school. We each came into a greater sense of who we were by manipulating images in words and paint. Young lovers, we were brash in displaying what we understood to be right or wrong.

Rory was wrong to leave me as he did, falling into bed with a friend’s girlfriend, ghosting me for weeks, never writing a note to explain. I was pregnant for the third time, having surrendered the first child for adoption, loosing the second to placenta abrupta. He married the girl and moved to Wales as a visual artist. Once there, his concern that his paintings do right for others in the world vanished. He focused on interpretions of local legends. I packed stark observations into poetry and stories.

The internet page where I posted my reminiscence on Rory belonged to his friend in France. It collected comments from people all around the world. Evon found me there. At age 54, Rory’s passing felt too soon for many of us, including our daughter. He’d written to her but refused to meet. She was 32.

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I was still pregnant when he went overseas in 1976. His efforts to make contact on a return visit seven years later—after divorcing the woman he left me for—were blocked by a mutual friend. When I learned what Noel had done, I bawled him out, reminding him every father has a right to meet their child. Noel thought he needed to protect us. Much had changed in all of our lives. Truth be told, Noel understood our dynamic better than Rory or I. He told me of their quarrel, ending in fisti-cuffs. Rory accused Noel of selling out as art director in a corporate company. Noel told Rory he was worse, a fake painting the arora borealis as a rainbow.

In any case, Evan emailed me questions for a memorial piece he was writing. Admitting he hadn’t heard about me, he was more surprised to learn Rory had a child. I shared our early experiences, our connection beginning years before we dropped out of high school at 17. I attended Thomas Laird Kennedy, a secondary school with a special program in Commercial Art. From Grade nine onwards my drawing classes had professional models who took their clothes off, introducing us to the human form. I knew what my art owed those models. You can’t get it right drawing the human form if the body is always dressed.

Rory and I developed an undeniable link through drawing and painting. I modeled, knowing it would improve his line, having no idea of the can of worms I opened. I started with poses similar to those I drew in school. Rory recognized the development in his craft quickly, wanting more. In the second month, he developed a goal: one hundred drawings a day. Sometimes I modelled for hours on end. He filled-in details with paint after transferring the sketch to canvas.

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Rory was father for all three of my first pregnancies. We were young and stupid about birth control. The first child’s adoption was the best thing for the child in that era. Rory refused to be a father and I wanted my baby to have two parents. The middle child was a placenta privea pregnancy that developed into placenta abrupta and an emergency therapeutic abortion. It was both physically taxing and true heartache. My oldest daughter—along with her sister by a different father, seven years later—was raised owning part of my soul. Evan wanted to know the way Rory and I influenced each other before Rory left Canada for Wales. He might have believed the story was simple, but the story of Rory and Elke is anything but simple. Rory sent letters to Nia a few times during her late teens, but he was ill by then, refusing vistors.

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I’m calling him Rory, meaning Red King. That name usually refers to the 12th century Gaelic king, Rory O’Connor. Rory wasn’t his given name. He was William, which didn’t suit at all. William means valiant protector, though the Czechoslovakian version, Vilhiam, means clever, resolute and mischievous. That version suits him better. I tried it out, calling him Vilhiam in fun while we still lived together. He didn’t like it. Of course, Rory is the perfect name for someone with red hair. Some people say the name means tall, which also suits him. As it happens, the Latin version of Rory means dew. I say naaa, but love the variations of meaning the name offers. Especially given the way our lives played out.

According to his widow, the newspapers got his cause of death wrong. Rory passed because a parasite picked up on a painting trip to Morocco ate holes in his liver. Of course, Doctors told him he couldn’t drink, but he always enjoyed a pint. He’s buried in the Welsh countryside now with a decorative tombstone. Canada didn’t own him, though his parents and his sister remain here. The truth is, he’d long abandoned what we planned as artist and model. We believed our joint project would impact the global art scene. What he produced after leaving me never will. What rankles is the way his creativity became a dance with local legends, his focus falling to shape-shifters. I can only call his later work cartoons.

People in the art world will understand me to mean quick images when I say cartoons, but I’m not so lenient. Consider the subject matter and his treatment. It’s derivative. A friend saw the paintings Nia received after his death and said they looked like the art of someone with a lobotomy. His later works are that simple.

I admit to my bias. We were a team, inspiring each other. Why else sit for hours on end while he painted? When he left, I think he was looking for outright support. He found her, a few years after his return search for me in Canada. He hadn’t imagined I’d move on without him.

They say an artist has to struggle to develop. In 1988, he married a woman who didn’t argue and assumed the role of his Agent. She bought him an abandoned chapel, a building he turned into his studio gallery. His paintings began to sell. He said during an interview that he strove for innocence like Picasso. Reading that made me laugh. Not just the irony of anything Picasso created being deemed innocent. In fact, Rory got himself so cushy that... Well, I won’t go there.

Evan befriended Rory early in his thirty years of living in Wales. They were friends for more than half of Rory’s life, becoming so close they partnered on creating several books. Rory drew the covers and chapter illustrations for Evan’s novels and poetry. Soon they sat at tables in local fairs, offering their work for sale. Or visited exhibitions of other’s work and compared notes. Or talked about books they read for hours. Or engaged in games of chess at a pub, trying to drink each other under the table as much as wanting to best each other’s game.

I learned most of this in the first emails. From the moment of Evan’s first contact, I hoped I‘d found my way back to the impetus for making the art that Rory and I explored as teenagers. The questions Evan asked inspired me to consider our initial approach. The trouble was, Evon and I didn’t make a connection with any depth. He plumbed me for answers to questions with a limited focus. Then he excused himself, saying he was going on holiday, falling out of touch for months at a time. He sent short notes about his accomplishments, or invitations to public readings across the ocean with a two week lead time.

That’s precisely what Nia complained her Dad did when he wrote. He sent catalogues listing his paintings for sale at some gallery in London, England. I told Rory off for that, saying she didn’t want to know the artist. She wanted to know the man. He was surprised, telling me there wasn’t more to himself than the paintings and woodcuts. Maybe his wife bought that. I didn’t.

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When we were teenagers we had discussions about autocratic governments around the world that angered him. He couldn’t stand what oligarchs did to poor people, or those who protested their laws. He raged about transgressions against all claims for human rights. His early paintings, the ones done with me, were filled with allegories, references to ancient customs, and different cultures. He painted to address his grievances. His work dealt with the real world and the long history of abuse of power exerted over others. As a young man, he engaged fully as an emotional and intellectual being in his work.

Rory became a chameleon after moving to Wales; a shape shifter. At that distance, he wore someone else’s clothes. He stole the history of university study Noel had done. As Noel passed over, I became the last person on earth who knows Rory’s true identity, beyond his Canadian relatives. He’d always enjoyed learning about new cultures and languages. Now his work spoke only of Welsh legends and fairy tales.

I said something about this shift to Evan, Rory’s biographer friend. He couldn’t follow the shift in interests I referred to. Looking at gallery showings online after his passing, it was clear Rory painted the same characters, over and over again. Ceffyl Dŵr dominates. She’s a a mythic, winged, water horse sporting a fish’s tail. She dwells in ponds or behind waterfalls in the mountains of Wales. Ceffyl Dŵr shape-shifts, just as the Kelpie of Scottish mythology does. Rory painted polar bears, giving them the same heart-lines popularized by Norval Morrisseau, a First Nations Canadian artist. And that’s another shift, because heart-lines weren’t his idea. As Rory studied shape-shifters—bears represent shape-shifting in Native lore—he became a shape-shifter himself. Perhaps he was inspired by the polar bears that troubled villages on the Welsh seashore. In any culture, shape-shifters are ominous, malevolent spirits who often shift from human form.

What Rory created wasn’t ominous or threatening. Instead, he made brightly coloured cartoons. The creatures aren’t damaged by swords or captured by humans. They’re offered like fairytale illustrations meant to sooth the worries of those warned about their danger. It makes me wonder all the more about the man who painted them. I mean, he was a Grade eleven drop-out, like me. In Wales, he stole the resume of our mutual friend, Noel, saying he studied at university in the same years he lived with me in Brampton, Ontario, Canada. I read this lie in the biographical notes on his website. He used it to hide our time together. That’s how I understand his paintings of Ceffyl Dŵr, and the ruse that she’s docile, adding a bridle as if she could be tamed.

It’s dangerous to conect with a shape-shifter. They can wipe you out of existence. The truth is, Ceffyl Dŵr swallowed me, Rory’s three children, and Noel whole. Rory’s friend Evan didn’t use the origins of the artist he researched to write that memorial. What I told him revealed more than he wanted to know. They spent decades together as good friends but he knew little about his friend. Take my word for truth, a shape-shifter can lurk among us, tipping a beer to all of the good times we share, but remain completely unknown for who he truly is.

Sharon Berg’s work appears in Canada, USA, Mexico, England, Wales, Amsterdam, Germany, India, Singapore, and Australia. Her poetry includes To a Young Horse (Borealis 1979), The Body Labyrinth (Coach House 1984), three poetry chapbooks (2006, 2016, 2017), plus Stars in the Junkyard (Cyberwit 2020) was a 2022 International Book Award Finalist. Her short story collection is Naming the Shadows (Porcupine’s Quill 2019). The Name Unspoken: Wandering Spirit Survival School (BPR Press 2019) won a 2020 IPPY Award for Regional Nonfiction. She’s Resident Interviewer for The tEmz Review (London, ON, Canada) and operates Oceanview Writers Retreat out of Charlottetown, Newfoundland, Canada.