This is where the journey begins — and where it was always going to end up. Before the hunt for pictures, before the ferry rides and road trips and strangers’ living rooms, there was a son who had never properly grieved his mother. This chapter is his introduction.
My name is Luke Edward Ollett. I was born to Dick Ollett and Zoë Alexandra Payne.
I was only 18 when Zoë passed away. I was in the middle of defining my own identity, my own self exploration as a man and as a human. I chose to react to her death with stoicism and decided to deal with my own burgeoning life, over remembering hers.
Decades later, I realized that there is so much I wanted to tell her. So much I wish I could share with her. I felt the absoluteness of death was unfair and got in the way of our relationship. I needed to tell her I had lived in multiple countries. I needed a way to share with her that I liked animals, that I learned another language, that I suck at drawing but call myself an artist. I needed to show my love and appreciation for her, something I had never done.
And to make it worse, I often forgot the sound of her voice, the curl of her smile. I struggled to remember when we last touched each other. And I felt like a horrible person for that.
Our relationship felt incomplete and I didn’t know what to do about it.
I wish I hadn’t been a naive teenager who chose not to care more during those last few difficult years of her life. I don’t know what I would have done, or could have done, but when she decided that life wasn’t just hard, but impossible, I wish I would’ve been there for her… with her.
This book is my journey to find my dead mother’s art through the names in this book, the people that knew her more than I ever did. To understand who she was, not only as my mother but as a friend, a lover, a partier, a person.
You cannot find someone you know nothing about. Before the journey, this chapter draws a portrait of Zoë Payne — her childhood in England, her art colleges, her animals, her Lupus, her darkness, and her extraordinary gift.
Zoë was born and raised on the outskirts of London where green rolling fields extend beyond the horizon. She was born to Jimmy Payne and Lucy Stevens on May 11th, 1956 in Amersham, England. She was the youngest of three siblings, the eldest of whom passed away during labor.
Jimmy was a pilot for British Airways and with that came a lifetime of travel. The Paynes left behind thousands of picture slides depicting them in all manners of exploration, from a posh Safari in Tanzania to a casual saunter in front of the Taj Mahal.
Zoë’s impressive talent for drawing is unmistakable. She attended multiple art colleges, not to learn, but to use their facilities and get discounts on pencils and supplies. The teachers would ask her to explain her unique style to the class. Despite her universally accepted talent, Zoë rarely sold any of her work. On occasion she was paid for a commission, but she absolutely despised the act of drawing for money.
Early on, she was diagnosed with Lupus, an autoimmune disease that can be excruciatingly painful and potentially deadly. It would force her to take a lot of bed rest and frequent doctor’s offices.
Her love and connection to animals was almost spooky. She could hold her finger out and hummingbirds would land on her. At garage sales, she got our three-legged cat “Toughy the Tripod,” a cage full of ring-neck doves, and a parrot, among other things. I’ve heard stories of her knack for taming wild horses. So it’s no surprise why animals are a central theme in her art.
Zoë was intensely spiritual and believed in a higher power. She also believed in the very dark sides of life, and depression would plague her until her death. Her art rarely shows a distinct sense of elation, but instead leaves you with a thought that there might be something else, something hidden, that is a little more sinister.
The first stop. Cindy had two of Zoë’s pictures hanging on her bedroom wall — and a name that would lead to the next chapter. This is how these things begin: at a funeral, with a borrowed frame.
I saw Cindy at a funeral for a mutual friend. She knew my parents when they first immigrated to California from England and had worked with my dad for decades. After telling her about my journey to find Zoë’s pictures, I learned she had a couple in her possession. Cindy was nice enough to let me borrow them for a few weeks and get them scanned.
I always liked Cindy. She was a tall confident woman who got to her station in life by being direct and assertive. In the early ’80s, Cindy commissioned my mom to draw a picture of birds with the specific request that it include grasshoppers and spiders. She paid $500 for the Three Parakeets. Cindy would describe how pained Zoë was to take any money from her.
A few months after the Three Parakeets was finished, Cindy received a gift from Zoë in the mail. It was a drawing of a bobcat with a note that said:
For Cindy a kindred spirit With lots of love from Zoë x….
While Cindy told me this story, she got close to the Three Parakeets hanging on her bedroom wall and touched one side of the frame. I sensed that Cindy had a lot to say about that time of her life – a lot to say about a version of Zoë that she hadn’t thought about for a long time. I wanted to know, I wanted to be there. In this place that she was remembering about herself, about Zoë. But I felt out of place, and I didn’t want to pry. I thought I was just there to pick up a picture.
Still looking at the hanging spiders in the picture, she told me about her ex-husband Jack who she knew to have four of Zoë’s pictures. I could tell Cindy had, and would always love Jack. Even as she described him as an anti-social and incredibly difficult person, I got the sense that Cindy loved that part about him, and that she cared for him. She softly went on to highlight just what a strong relationship Zoë and Jack shared around their mutual love for birds.
Cindy’s ex-husband. A self-described recluse. A man who handed over four of Zoë’s pictures and told Luke he was the only person on Earth who should have them — forty-five seconds into their first conversation.
Cindy had warned me that Jack was a little eccentric and a bit of a recluse. And I got that sense during our phone conversation. Before the introductions were done he interrupted me to explain that he would not be able to see me in person but he’d arrange for me to pick up his four pictures from Cindy. He told me that I was the only person on this planet who should have them and it was non-negotiable.
This was forty-five seconds into my relationship with Jack and I again wondered if I was intruding. But he calmed my concerns when I asked him about birds. He excitedly told me how he and Zoë had hiked for days to help a condor’s nest from falling off a tree. He even more emphatically recounted their numerous bird watching adventures in far away places. It’s easy to see these themes in the pictures he gave me. I felt honored that he and Zoë shared their memories with me.
I thought of Cindy outlining the Three Parakeets with her finger, and I wondered if there was more to the connection Zoë and Jack shared — more than just birds.
An ornithologist with the right home for a woodpecker. But the story of this particular picture turned out to belong not to Pat — it belonged to Luke’s parents, hidden in plain sight for decades inside a Tom Robbins novel.
An unexpected result of collecting these pictures is figuring out what to do with them. Where they could go to continue their story? It seemed unfair to me that I would be the only one to have them, so I decided that each piece of art would have a guardian. A guardian that would understand the true significance of the picture.
I discovered that my good friend Pat is an ornithologist and can pick out a bird call from 300 paces, as well as determine the bird’s sex. I’d known him for 15 years, yet I never knew of his fascinating connection with feathered animals.
One of Zoë’s pictures Jack had given me was a woodpecker, so it only seemed right it should reside with another birder. I drove to Pat’s house in Redding and delivered the Woodpecker.
On the way home, I stopped at my dad’s house. He knew I was going up there, and he knew I was working hard to frame the Woodpecker and deliver it to Pat. While I told him about my trip, he interrupted and asked me if I knew where the Woodpecker came from. I had no idea. He revealed that it comes from the cover of the book Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins. He told me that he and Zoë would pass this book back and forth with suggestions to open it to chapter five where the other would find a joint and a particularly raunchy sex scene, or handwritten notes next to a lengthy discussion about birth control from an anarchist male’s perspective.
The Woodpecker picture is an everlasting memento of the courtship between my dad and Zoë. As my dad told me the story of this picture, again I found myself awkwardly between two people and a memory that only they would ever share. His story faded into an audible smile, and for a moment it seemed he was back in that room with Zoë, bantering with his future mate about the idiosyncrasies of the female anatomy, hoping to impress her with his wit.
Not all chapters are long ones. This one is quiet — a few sentences about a picture made in limited copies, each signed personally with a different message. Sometimes that is enough.
Two chapters, one folder. Crystal opened a print of a butterfly and began to cry. Then she took Luke upstairs to show him why. Vanessa is the reason Luke chose that particular picture to give away in the first place.
Crystal
On my way to Pat’s house to deliver the Woodpecker, I stopped for a night at the Harris household in Folsom, California. I got to know the Harris family when I crashed the memorial of their recently deceased grandmother and shared a number of teary-eyed drinks with their family.
Crystal was my good friend’s mom. Crystal and I connected at the memorial, at which she would half-joke that she was my mother in northern California. When I arrived, I immediately presented a print of the Butterfly to her as a thank you for the lodging. When she opened it up and looked at it, she began to cry and let the unfurled picture roll back up. Not sure how to react, I eventually put my arm around her. I thought that maybe butterflies had murdered their dog or represented some other horrible tragedy. But then she grabbed my hand, and with no words and only a few muted sobs, she led me upstairs. She only let my hand go to open a bedroom door. Inside was a bedroom full of butterflies and butterfly-related things. As I picked up small figurines and marveled at hanging strings of multi-colored butterflies, she explained to me how Grandma Dee always came to her in the form of a butterfly, even before she passed away. She told me that when she saw the picture of the Butterfly, she could instantly feel Grandma Dee. She opened up to me and shared why she needed that Butterfly, right then, at that point in her life. This art became the bridge that helped her cross an emotional river that she was unwilling to do on her own.
Vanessa
There are at least three original Butterflies, each very different. Each clearly showing Zoë’s practiced and improved art skills. In my opinion, the Butterfly was an homage to her disease, Lupus. A symptom of Lupus is getting red or dark cheeks that resemble the shape of a butterfly.
I broke up with Vanessa in Austria. She had just arrived from an 18-hour journey and had lost her luggage which would arrive in two days. I sat her down on the single bed that we were supposed to share for the rest of the week and said I could never have a life with her because she had Lupus.
Vanessa and I had a beautiful relationship that I never allowed myself to appreciate. To me, we were just a caterpillar, and I failed to see just how wonderful we could be.
I felt so guilty with my choice, I insisted that she take the original Butterfly. Vanessa absolutely loved butterflies and had them everywhere in her life.
A gift made for one person, repurposed for another, thirty-seven years later. Zoë’s obsession with Pointillism shows in every careful mark — a Mother’s Day card quietly transformed into a birthday gift with one letter changed.
My aunt explained to me that Zoë was obsessed with Pointillism and took a lot of inspiration from Seurat and Van Gogh. Zoë would employ this technique regularly in birthday cards and love notes as can be seen in this Mother’s Day gift Zoë gave to her mother.
Thirty-seven years later, in an effort to continue this picture’s legacy, I digitally replaced all the Y’s in the lyrics with I’s and gave it as a birthday gift for my friend Luci.
Before Dick, there was Jeff. A ferry to a remote island, large glasses of whiskey, and a plastic container full of handmade cards — each one a window into a version of Zoë that Luke had never known existed.
When my grandfather died and we were cleaning out his house, we found pictures of Jeff, Zoë’s ex-husband before my dad. Nobody had a lot to say about Jeff when I inquired, just that he was “a good guy,” and “definitely handsome,” and how he’d “got into some sort of accident,” and how “while he was in the hospital, he and Zoë divorced.”
I emailed Jeff requesting to stay with him for a few days, despite having not a clue where he lived. He agreed and directed me to San Juan Island in the Puget Sound just south of Vancouver — a place where orcas go to play, and where the principal mode of transportation is driving your car onto a big boat.
I arrived late and booked an Airbnb in a town an hour north of Seattle. My AirBnB was hosted by Lisa, and my room was a closet underneath her stairs which was advertised as “Harry Potter’s Closet.” During my conversation with Lisa, she explained to me how she had just returned from her own quest looking for her original parents before they adopted her, a fact she had only recently learned. I laid in bed that night thinking she didn’t seem happy with what she found on her journey, and I wondered if I could expect the same result.
The next morning after a two-hour drive and a 90-minute ferry, I arrived on San Juan Island. I drove off the dock to find Jeff standing by the side of the road. I had previously looked him up so I had an idea of what he looked like. He had been the owner of a popular vegan restaurant, which made him a town celebrity, and he clearly enjoyed being in the local news.
I picked him up and we headed to the new brewery restaurant in town. There was a sense of calm awkwardness in the air — an entirely unpredictable life situation for which neither of us could prepare for but understood we had to share it for the next few days.
It took us 30 minutes to sit down at the restaurant as Jeff stopped at every table to say hello, or ask about the house, or listen to a prediction of the weather. Jeff had lived in the area for three decades, and his celebrity status was evident. At each table we stopped, he introduced me as his “friend.” Clearly, an easier introduction than “And this is Luke, my deceased ex-wife’s son from the guy she met while I was in the hospital.”
After dinner, we left for Jeff’s house, which was another 30 minutes from the harbor in a remote part of the island. His house was nestled into a hillside with lots of tree cover and not much traffic. A five-minute walk and you were on a cliff overlooking the water towards the Canadian coast.
We were both eager to get on with the matter at hand, so as soon as we settled into his rustic living room, Jeff asked me about my agenda. I told him I had none, nor anything planned, nor did I have any questions. I just wanted to come to meet him and understand a part of Zoë’s life that I knew nothing about. This seemed to calm him down. He took a sip from his large glass of whiskey and began his story.
He told me everything in reverse, starting with his split-up with Zoë and ending with fond memories of courtship and love.
The End as I Understand: One evening Jeff and Zoë, married at the time, were hosting a party at their house. My dad showed up selling cocaine to everyone. Jeff then saw Zoë kissing my dad from across the party. Jeff was enraged and was held back by friends and told to forget about it. Over the forthcoming weeks, Jeff would not let the incident go. Until, with emotions running high, he crashed his motorcycle into a truck while riding recklessly through a canyon. Jeff was hospitalized for six months and had burns covering the majority of his body. While in the hospital Jeff would not permit Zoë to see him. Zoë sent flowers and pictures, and pleaded, but Jeff refused to let her see him, resolving to use the hospital as a means to break away. Which is exactly what happened. Zoë moved on, eventually becoming closer with my dad, and she and Jeff split up.
I suddenly realized I had shown up probably looking an awful lot like my dad would’ve when Jeff saw him kissing Zoë. At one point, quite selfishly, I thanked him for breaking up with Zoë, as that decision had the direct result of me coming into existence.
Jeff indoctrinated me with two things he now lives by:
You don’t owe me anything. His hospitality, for example, did not need to be repaid.
Don’t feel bad. I told him I felt bad for drinking all his whiskey and brought him a new bottle. He said he wouldn’t take it because I felt bad. So I re-stated my offer such that it made me feel good to complete the circle of life by giving him that bottle. I found it very satisfying.
Jeff & Zoë’s Beginning: Over the course of a few days, Jeff would tell me the most beautiful stories of their relationship. How he first knew he was in love with her when they clasped hands while riding their horses mid-gallop. Or how you can still see their initials in the cement at the address on her Business Card picture. Or how she could call their crow and it would fly down and land on her shoulder. He would tell me these stories with a glimmer in his eye and a smile as those beautiful experiences were found in a distant corner of his mind.
Jeff’s stories put me in a state of wonder. To hear about Zoë as a young adult. Not my mother, but a bohemian artist who partied hard and did drugs and loved to throw punches… who lived many lives before the one I shared with her.
One evening, during a particularly emotional conversation, Jeff pulled out a giant plastic container that was filled with cards that Zoë had made while they were together. A postcard-size drawing of Jeff sitting outside at their house while Zoë gazed out the window. Another postcard with stars and incredibly detailed creatures surrounding immaculate calligraphy saying that she loved him and that was all. There must have been at least 200 cards in this container. After reviewing only a few, I could sense Jeff reliving each moment as he pulled out a card. A visual time capsule in a world drawn with colored pencils. I soon realized these cards were personal to him, and sensing his discomfort, I asked him to put them away.
There are some parts of Zoë that I should not expect someone to share with me.
There are some parts of Zoë that don’t belong to me.
The morning I left, Jeff was already out of the house. We had said half-drunken goodbyes the night before, which seemed appropriate.
I left Jeff a print of the Golden Eagle. Right next to the plastic container with the cards.
A frisbee golf course. A total solar eclipse. A mentor going through a divorce. And a drawing of a cactus and an owl that somehow said exactly what needed to be said, at precisely the right moment.
From Jeff’s house in Washington, I headed south via train to Portland to see my friend and mentor, Charlie. He guided me through my highschool years and was a heavy influence in the way I live my life today. He and I have lived parallel lives. I in Chile, he in Turkey. We both found life and love and attempted to bring it back to the United States.
He and I planned to play frisbee golf during a total eclipse, and I wanted to give him a print of the Cactus and Owl in the middle of it. While the sun faded, and the world embraced a weird temporary darkness, he revealed he had recently divorced.
I’d always seen this picture to represent a broken home. I don’t know why I had it in my hand that day, but it seemed fitting to give to Charlie right then.
I was lucky to catch Charlie during a time of his life where he was changing and evolving. During these times, we have the unique opportunity to look back and consider a version of ourselves that once was, and use that to build and look forward towards a version we want… a version we need.
