Page 20 of The Art of Vanishing

Jean

I typically languished in the time between when the museum closed its doors to visitors and when Claire arrived, but tonight I sprang to action. Marguerite noticed.

“Where are you off to?” she called as I strode out into the yard. “And alone, at that?”

“Got some research to do!” I yelled over my shoulder.

I didn’t have to turn to look at her to know that her hand was reaching up to run her fingers along the black ribbon tied around her neck, as she always did when she was trying to figure something out.

It covered a scar left on her throat by a childhood surgery.

I couldn’t remember ever having seen her without it tied into place.

I pushed my way through the lush trees that formed the jungle at the edge of our backyard and raced off through the other paintings.

Before last night’s jaunt to the racetrack, it had been quite some time since I’d explored the first floor of the gallery.

Acquaintances I’d not seen for decades tipped their hats as they rose from their assigned seats.

I waved in return as I bustled through, stopping only for a moment to take in Seurat’s Models, hanging high on the wall across from me.

This was one of my favorite pieces in the museum, amateur appreciator of art that I was.

I’d have to take Claire to see this one another night.

But first, we were following Susie’s guidance.

I capered my way through the rest of the works before landing in Susie’s recommended gallery. There, I found who I was looking for.

“Hello, Antoinette.” I’d gone not to Odette but to a work of my father’s, The Green Dress, which hung directly opposite Modigliani’s Portrait of the Red-Headed Woman . After all, you couldn’t see a painting the way it was meant to be seen if you were standing inside it.

“Jean! My long-lost friend. It’s been a while,” she said, rising from her chair and placing a kiss on each of my cheeks. Her green dress draped perfectly along the length of her body, the billowing sleeves just gracing the edges of her wrists.

“Far too long,” I agreed. “If you don’t mind, I have a favor to ask of you.”

She cleared her black stockings off the chaise lounge and gestured for me to sit. Her home was delightfully messy; despite her best attempts at order, her effects covered every available surface. “Please.” I sat down across from her and explained what I had in mind.

“I’ll help,” she said. “Of course I will; it would be my pleasure. But before I do, you owe me an explanation.”

“If I understood how the magic worked, I would explain it in a heartbeat.” I exhaled. “But I can’t describe it. Claire just tried to climb in one night and she could do it. I don’t know any more than that.”

“That’s all very well and good,” she retorted, “but that’s not to what I was referring. I’ve been believing in magical things for longer than you’ve been around, out there or in here. I meant that it’s time we talk about where you’ve been.”

I picked at the skin around my left thumb, a splinter of paint falling to the floor. “I’ve been around,” I said. “You know.”

“I don’t know,” Antoinette said. “You used to come visit, maybe not often, but somewhat regularly. And that petered out into nothing. It’s been decades since you’ve left your own home on a regular basis.”

“It’s just…” I’d never spoken about this before. “It’s easier this way. What was ever the point? Drifting through the same world day after day with no purpose? When I stay put, I know what to expect.”

“A whole lot of nothing, that’s what you should expect with that attitude.” Antoinette scoffed. “Jean, that’s no way to live.”

“Is that what we’re doing in here? Living?”

“We’re doing as much living as we’re going to get to do, if you think about it that way.

Or, if you think about it my way, we are going to get to live forever.

We are immortal, which some people would kill to be.

We have forever to figure out what we’re doing here.

” I took a breath, preparing for a rebuttal, but she cut me off before I could even start.

“You’ve been choosing the easy option, keeping yourself safe, but you’re doing it in the name of protecting others.

Thinking you’re patient, when it’s really just fear.

I’m glad she’s forced you to consider another way of living.

I’ll prepare myself for what you’ve requested of me. ”

Antoinette was quiet then, having said all she needed to say. I raced back the way I’d come to my living room. I could see by looking through the museum and out the windows that the sky outside had darkened. I wondered if Claire had beatenme.

As I jogged back through our garden and up the steps into the house, I saw that she had.

She was cleaning, albeit half-heartedly, and I leapt up and down to catch her attention.

She spotted me and rushed over. After she pushed the top half of her body through the frame, her words spilled out in a rush: “I was so worried you’d left, I mean after last night, that you didn’t want to see me and wouldn’t tell me and instead were just ghosting me by being freaking gone and that would just be the end of it—”

“Claire!” I tried to interrupt her dark spiral of thoughts.

“Claire. CLAIRE!” Finally, she paused and made eye contact with me, though it was less to do with my calling her name and more because she was forced to catch her breath.

“I didn’t leave, I will never leave, and certainly never because of last night.

” I felt my blood surge with heat as that memory danced in my head.

“I was planning what you and I are going to do tonight.”

“Oh.” Her demeanor was still shaken, but her eyes betrayed excitement.

“What was that word you used? You thought I might be ‘ghosting’ you?”

“Yeah, it’s a thing out there. I’ll explain it to you sometime.”

“I’m looking forward to it. Now, are you ready to go for the evening?”

“I have a bit more cleaning to do.”

“Not a problem, you get done what you need. I’ll”—I took a seat in my usual chair and picked up my usual book—“be right here.” She hopped back into her world and hustled her way around the gallery. I obviously read not a single page.

Suddenly, she was back in front of me.

“Well, that was fast,” I complimented her.

“I’m not sure it would hold up to Linda’s standards, but it’ll do for now. I wasted time, worrying that this was all gone.”

“Well, begone those ghosts from your mind. Did I use it properly?”

“Not quite,” she mocked. “So, what’s this grand surprise that you’re planning?”

“Of course,” I said. “Away we go!”

We wandered our way through a maze of paintings, me in the lead. We were slower together than I had been alone. Claire stopped in nearly every frame to take it all in, and I was happy to wait until she was ready to proceed.

Finally, we returned to Antoinette’s chambers. I could tell she’d done her best to tidy up the place since I’d been here earlier. I was touched by the effort, even as I caught a glimpse of her stockings peeking out from beneath a pillow.

“Antoinette, you didn’t need to clean on our behalf.”

“Nonsense.” She waved me off. “It’s been decades since I had someone to spruce up for.” Her gaze landed on Claire, and she said, “And you must be our guest of honor.”

“Hi,” Claire said, a hint of shyness in her voice. “I’m Claire.”

“It’s very nice to meet you, Claire; I’m Antoinette.”

“Antoinette was one of my father’s models in Nice,” I explained. I had known her both inside and outside this world.

“Ancient history, that is. Now come along, have a seat.” She seated both of us on the chaise lounge, which she had rotated to have a better view out into the gallery.

“Welcome to my tour of, well, the works we can see here.” She gestured to the wall across from her.

Claire let out a little gasp as she turned to me.

“You got me an art history class?” she asked, her eyes sparkling with emotion.

I chuckled. “Professor Antoinette takes the floor. I wanted you to be able to see all that we have to offer. I know how much the pieces mean to you.” We beamed at each other for a moment too long and Antoinette cleared her throat.

Claire slid her hand into mine as we turned back to face our makeshift instructor.

“Now, as I was saying, let’s turn our attention to this wall.

” She gestured across the room. Our eyes were drawn to the wall directly opposite, a plethora of artwork greeting us.

Frames of all shapes and sizes hung in seven columns, showing faces, bodies, still lifes, landscapes, and more.

Some were empty of their typical inhabitants, just a chair left behind.

I had forgotten how charmed I was by the abundance of the collection.

Just because this room was smaller than ours did not mean it housed any less work; it probably held even more pieces than ours did. I made a note to count the next day.

Antoinette spun tales of what we saw before us.

Like the guides who passed through the galleries each day, her descriptions and anecdotes were undoubtedly embellished, but her rhetorical improvements shone with the light of actually knowing something of the artists and their subjects.

She had just finished a rather riotous tale about one of the women we could see in a Picasso painting, which she followed up with a quick, “Also, this was a study for a work of his that some say was the true start of Cubism. Now, on to this fabulously blue boy…” Claire was eating up each word of Antoinette’s discourse, which was more gossip-centric than education-focused.

If Claire had a pen and paper, she’d be furiously scribbling notes, I was sure.

As if she could sense the spotlight our attention placed on her usual seat, Odette swanned back into her frame in the center of the wall. She reclined in her typical pose and gave us a little trill of her fingers. Antoinette returned her wave with a brief nod.

“She’s beautiful,” Claire whispered to me.

Claire was right; Odette was transfixing.

A collarbone as sharp as a razor blade set above a corseted black dress with voluminous skirts.

Most unique was her vibrant red hair, which she kept in a curly bob, a few strands of bangs hanging across her forehead.

Thin eyebrows arched above knowing eyes.

“Ah, parfait, Odette has returned.” Antoinette clapped her hands together.

“As you may or may not be aware, she is one of the most famous paintings in this gallery. Each tour group flounces through this room and claims she is an unknown woman whom the Italian artist met when he was trying out the ‘bohemian’ lifestyle in Paris— pfft —she is far from unknown, if they would just bother to ask us. Her name is Odette, and she was a musician in Paris. The artist met her while she was tending bar. With her flaming red hair and a look on her face that says, ‘I see right through you,’ of course she was destined to be a star, on the canvas and off. If you meet her, you must ask her to play the piano for you. Maybe her voice is nothing to write home about nowadays, but the way her stories come alive…There is no one like her.”

Unbeknownst to Antoinette, I had chosen this spot precisely because we would be able to see Odette but get no closer than that.

If I had it my way, Claire and Odette would never meet and we three would be all the better for it.

When Odette could tell our attention had turned to another painting on the wall, she lifted her hand from the ripples of her skirt and pulled out a paperback book.

After Antoinette had wrapped up her lecture, Claire and I bid her adieu and wandered our way back up to our hall. Claire gushed over her newfound insider knowledge.

“How on earth did she ever come to know so much?”

“Well, we spend every day listening to tour guide after tour guide tell their version of what’s happening in our gallery, so I am certain she’s picked some things up there. But Antoinette was also an artist herself.”

“There aren’t a lot of women artists in here, not compared to the numbers of men.”

“No, there are not. There are a lot of men represented on these walls.”

“A lot of white men,” Claire said pointedly.

We were just about to take the turn that would bring us upstairs when we saw Linda. Her galleries were, unsurprisingly, already sparkling from her night’s effort. Claire grabbed my hand and leapt behind a nearby bush.

Claire whispered once we were both safely concealed, “You don’t think she saw us, do you?”

I peered my head around the corner because it made more sense for Linda to see me in my own world than to know that Claire was there. “No,” I reassured her, “I don’t think so.”

Claire laughed nervously while exhaling her anxiety. “Oof, that gave me a scare. I’ve thought about it before and don’t know how I would’ve explained all of this.” She gesticulated wildly at herself.

“What do you think would happen?” I asked. “If she saw you?”

“I don’t know.” Claire scratched that place behind her ear, the one she always favored when she was on edge.

“I don’t think she’d believe her own eyes.

But I can’t imagine it would be good if the museum found out; I don’t think they’d like it if their staff was crawling around in their paintings.

That’s gotta be some type of security risk.

” She laughed lightly at her own joke before growing serious.

“I think it would be bad. I don’t think I’d be allowed to come back anymore. ”

I wouldn’t stand for that, but I was also powerless to stop it.

“We have to be more careful, Jean,” she warned me. I could tell that she was shaken by this encounter. We would be. I wasn’t going to lose her.

“Come on, I know another way back.” I pulled her in the direction we had come and took her along an alternate route. We ended up where we always did, strolling beside the murky brown pond in my backyard before being forced to say good night.

“Thank you again, for tonight’s class. No one has ever arranged something like that for me.”

“I’d get you a private boat along the Seine if I could, but I’m a little bit limited here,” I joked, though another idea had already popped into my head.

“You’re like a fairy godmother and a Prince Charming rolled into one unbelievable guy.”

Now I was blushing again. She put me out of my misery, placing a kiss on my lips and sliding away.