Page 19 of The Art of Vanishing

Jean

I returned to the garden under my mother’s expectant gaze. “You’re happy,” she said to me in French.

“I’m happy, definitely happy.” A grin spread across my face.

“I’m glad. You’ve waited a long time to feel this way.” There it was again, this refrain of my patience. While I’d always prided myself on it, believed it to be a virtue, I now wondered if others ever passed judgment on me. Did they think I had been standing in my own way for all this time?

The sun crashed through the gallery windows and I slipped my cigarette back in between my lips just in time for Susie and a new tour group to take over the room.

I thought she was headed straight for us, but she took a sharp right and parked her group in front of a painting directly opposite us.

She had a predictably eccentric outfit on today, a plethora of colors and textures, topped off with a remarkably silly hat.

Shockingly, it remained in place for her entire monologue.

“Now that you’re a bit warmed up, let’s play a game! Any guesses who this is a painting of?”

From the thoughtful silence that followed, a tentative voice emerged. “Um, Beatrice?”

Someone in the back of the group stage-whispered to their closest companion, “Who on earth is Beatrice?”

The woman who had answered the question turned around, pink in the cheeks. “I don’t even know. I just guessed it because it says ‘Beatrice’ in the top right-hand corner of the painting.”

“Well, I could have read that,” the loud whisperer said back with a bite.

Susie was there to get them back on track.

“Yes, you are right! This painting is named for its subject, Beatrice Hastings. Modigliani, or Modi as I like to call him,” she said with a wink, “met Beatrice when she moved to Paris in the twentieth century, and they began a tortured affair that would last years. It was quite the tumultuous relationship.” The group giggled.

“Here, she’s pictured in a box seat at the theater in a particularly plume-y hat, not dissimilar to my own.

You can tell from the sharp angles of her visage that Modi was in his experimenting-with-Cubism phase.

She’s not my favorite, but that’s a personal preference thing.

What I do think is cool about her—gather up, everyone, I think you’ll like this too.

She was a journalist—a writer and a poet, and at one point, there was a piece of newspaper attached by Modi to this painting itself.

Lean in close and you can just make out its text, right there, under her name. ”

The group followed her instructions, ooh -ing and ahh -ing. I wondered when Susie had decided she and Modigliani were on a nickname basis.

“Now!” she said as she pulled their attention in our direction. “To a painting I cannot leave this room without visiting: The Music Lesson .” The group huddled up around our frame.

“Today,” Susie continued, “I want to talk about contradictions. This painting is full of them. See how that fountain beneath the sculpture bubbles blue? Why on earth does that clear water run down into a muddy brown pond? Or this garden—lush, forestlike, the stuff of fairy tales. Who on earth has a jungle in their backyard in an apartment in Paris? Or even something so simple as the light. When we look at this painting, we can see it is daytime. So why is this shadow here, behind this young man?” She waved her hand along my body, hovering just in front of me.

She was so close; it was a wonder the motion sensor had not been triggered.

I wasn’t used to having anyone but Claire close enough to feel the warmth radiating off them.

“There must be light coming in through this window, so why would a shadow be pushing back toward it? Something to consider. Obviously, art does not have to all make perfect sense. There’s a tension in this painting, between the order and the chaos of the world Matisse has built.

With so many little puzzle pieces such as these, I can’t ignore this question of what does the artist want us to notice or to know about this space that exists ever so slightly outside the bounds of reality?

There’s something inherently magical in it; Matisse created this painting in an act of fear of the war, out of a desire to see his family reunited once again.

He is hunting for a way to keep his family safe and for a moment, frozen in time here, they all are. ”

The group’s attention on us was rapt, as if Susie’s words on our being had lulled them into some kind of a trance. A clap of her palms snapped them out of it.

“Okay! That’s the end of our conversation for today. I’ve loved spending the morning with you—you’ve been an absolute delight and I hope you’ll come back and visit me again soon.”

“Susie, you are the delight,” a woman cooed. They gathered around her to sing her praises, and little glimpses of their conversation snuck out our way. I latched on to one exchange in particular.

“Is there anything we didn’t have time for that we absolutely must see?”

“I’m afraid we had to rush by Modigliani’s Portrait of the Red-Headed Woman downstairs; that room was just too crowded. She’s one of my absolute favorites; I’d pay her a visit if you have a few more minutes. Go downstairs and head toward the right, you won’t be able to miss her.”

A chorus of “thank you” and “we will” followed, as the women swept their way out of the room. I heard one of them say to another, “Well, she was just the greatest. Couldn’t do it with anyone but her.”

“Absolutely not. She’s the only option.”

I’d seen this so many times before: visitors invested in making sure their experience was the best one—the winner. I’ve never understood what it was about visiting a museum that inspired a need for competition, but there must be something in the air.

“How do you say it again?”

“Modigliani—it’s like the G is silent.”

“Ooh, got it, like Mo-Dig-Liani.”

“No, no, no…” her friend corrected as they followed the group out of the gallery. Two women remained in front of us, looking at the painting directly to our left.

“I wonder if they’re dead,” one woman said.

“I’m pretty sure everyone in here is dead,” her friend replied. The first woman nodded in agreement.

When they walked away, Jamie Leigh, the new museum president, was revealed behind them.

Gone were the casual sweater and jeans of her first visit to us.

Today she was dressed in a well-fitted suit, a crisp white blouse underneath.

She was looking at us so closely, I felt compelled to slow my breathing and minimize any possible movements, trying to keep the illusion of stillness alive for her. It felt like she was challenging us.

Her red hair reminded me that I needed to make plans for what to do with Claire that evening.

I would show her all the best the museum had to offer, a bit at a time, of course.

I hadn’t seen Odette in a very, very long time, but if Susie said she was not to be missed, that’s where we would have to start.

I knew Claire spent little to no time downstairs, and I didn’t want her to miss out. We had a lot to catch up on.