Page 16 of The Art of Vanishing

Jean

After that kiss, I couldn’t bring myself to get back in my usual chair; it looked the same and I felt so different.

But my legs felt weak all of a sudden and I plopped down onto the piano bench.

My spine felt like it might dissolve into gelatin, so I lay down, allowing the bench to support me as my legs draped off the other end.

I felt like adrenaline was dripping off my fingertips.

I wasn’t alone for long. “I heard you caused quite the stir today. Should I be upset Andromeda got to meet her before I did?”

I lifted my head to see Marguerite standing inches in front of my bent knees. “How do you possibly already know about that? Where were you tonight?”

Ignoring my second question, she said, “News travels fast around here. So, did she enjoy Le Bonheur ?”

“Yes, she very much did.” I couldn’t stop my ridiculous face from grinning at the memory.

“Do you ever doubt your trust in her, as you keep showing her all our secrets?”

I shook my head. “We don’t have any secrets, Marguerite. We are publicly on display, all day, every single day.”

An utterly French-sounding pfffft escaped Marguerite’s lips. “That’s an incredibly small-minded way of looking at our world. Don’t undervalue your thoughts, Jean. Each time you share them, you’re sharing a little part of yourself.”

I was enjoying sharing myself with Claire.

I thought back to before Claire knew I could hear her, how she told me that Linda trusted her and that was surprising because she’d never felt that kind of faith in her before, not from someone who had recently been a stranger.

Nor had she ever placed her trust in anyone else.

I wondered if she trusted me now. I wondered if I trusted her.

I wondered how Linda was. It felt like a lifetime since she’d last been in our gallery.

“I like sharing myself with her,” I assured my self-righteous sister. “I want her to know all the parts of me.”

“It sounds like you know what you’re doing,” she said. It could not have sounded less like she had any confidence in what I was doing.

And I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, but I could not and would not confess that to Marguerite.

I wasn’t used to having the chance to drastically affect someone else and their livelihood.

We had little room for choice in this world and when we did, those choices had little consequence.

Suddenly, that was not the case. My actions no longer existed in a vacuum; I affected Claire and she had the same power over me.

We had come quite far from the days when this was a low-stakes, unrequited infatuation.

Despite the heft of my thoughts, my body was full of bubbles from this evening. If I inhaled deeply enough, I would float up, my head grazing the ceiling, gravity losing all power over my physical state. I had absolutely no idea how I would make it through the next day with the museum closed.

But muscle through it I did. Come Friday morning, the museum reopened its doors and a steady stream of visitors flowed through the gallery.

Cellphones were lifted up to us, their users capturing our existence on their glass screens, making us into a portable memory.

A group of preteen girls even stopped right in front of us and executed a handful of coordinated steps and arm movements that looked like a choreographed dance.

An older woman, presumably one of their mothers, recorded them, the smirk on her lips belying that she was holding in a chuckle.

After finishing, they rushed over to watch the footage over her shoulder.

Pleased, they moved on to the next gallery, carrying their winter jackets stuffed under their arms. The weather today looked cold and gray through the windows, but it was cozy and safe in our never-changing space.

That afternoon, a tour group swept through. We didn’t usually have tours on holiday weekends, given how crowded the galleries were, so these must have been important guests, to someone at least.

This guide jumped right into the thick of it.

“So, I know we’ve talked a lot throughout our tour today about the emotion behind each of these paintings. They’re not just illustrations of something, they’re illustrations about something. This one is all about fear .” Her group looked confused.

“Between the war, the typhoid, the draft, all the dangers of the time, the artist was afraid his family wouldn’t survive.

” She pointed to my mother in the garden.

“See the artist’s wife here, pictured in a wheelchair?

” She was not, it was a rocking chair. The guide described how my mother’s position apart from the family signaled that her relationship with my father was in its decline.

I let out a breath so strained it sounded like a growl.

Her tone was brash; her wiseacre attitude stung.

She acted as if we could not even hear her.

“I will admit”—her voice changed to a more playful tone— “Ihave taken a liking to this little guy.” She came right up to my line of sight, a few steps back from where Claire came to stand each night.

“I love how I can come right up to him, stand at his eye level, see what he’s thinking.

” I wondered if she was close enough to sense the frustration radiating off me.

Finally, she gathered her troops and moved them along to another room.

While the guide’s assumptions that she understood us had irked me, she had forced me to think of my own fears.

I still knew so little about Claire. I wanted her to open up to me, for her to feel like she could tell me things.

There was so much of her life out there I couldn’t picture.

I didn’t even know if I would be able to comprehend it if she described it, but I would try.

We never discussed the ring, but I wondered about it daily.

When I let the worries fill my brain, they took full advantage.

There was, of course, a chance this could all be over in an instant.

Claire could be let go or move elsewhere.

The museum could close. Linda could redo the room assignments.

Our situation was so fragile and if it ended tomorrow, I’d never fully know her.

We eventually made it to evening and the gallery was once again empty.

At closing, Marguerite and Pierre wasted no time rushing off to their nightly haunts.

I stayed seated, waiting, as I was used to doing.

Claire swept into the gallery, bucket clanging alongside her.

From across the room, she lifted her left hand in a wave, right hand already clutching the mop handle.

I waved back. Something seemed different.

Claire sprang into action, wiping away the day’s grime. I wished, not for the first time, that I could climb out into her world and pick up a mop of my own, to keep her company while she went about her responsibilities. But I was not the special one. I was just the patient one. I waited.

After finishing her tasks to a level that would pass muster with most, though maybe not Linda, she rushed toward me and flung herself up over the frame before I could even offer her my hand.

I reached out and caught her by the elbow, aiding her the rest of the way up into my world.

As we both drew up to our full heights, I felt an unfamiliar warmth spreading across my cheeks.

It wasn’t painful, but it was certainly unusual, and I reached my hand up to feel my skin.

I realized what was happening as Claire spoke it into existence simultaneously.

“You’re blushing.” She grinned as she said it.

“I don’t think I’ve blushed in the last century,” I confessed.

“What a guy thing to say,” she mocked me, but reached her hand up to touch my cheek. I captured it with my own, holding it there.

“Hi,” I said.

“Bonsoir,” she replied, pronouncing every letter, including the silent R. I slid my hand along hers, entwining our fingers, and brought it down in between us. That’s when my mind wrapped itself around what had changed.

All five fingers on her left hand were empty, no longer bearing any kind of rings or adornment. Her eyes followed mine, watching me come to this conclusion. I was unsure where the line was, of what I should say, or could say.

“I’ll tell you about it later,” she said, and I believed that she would.

“You don’t have to,” I assured her.

“I want to. I think. But not now. I’ve been thinking about what we talked about last night, about how it feels like there are two versions of me, the one out there and the one in here.

And I decided that I don’t want to let the girl I am out there hamstring the person I can be in here.

While I’m here, I might as well be here.

So, now, I want to—” She interrupted herself by leaning in to kiss me, and I was happy to do whatever it was the version of Claire in here wanted to do.

I was really good at waiting. “Come on,” she said, pulling me along by our still-connected hands. “Let’s get moving.”