Page 28 of The Art of Vanishing

Jean

I was seated in that same chair when, weeks later, Odette came for me once more.

It had been hours, days maybe, since I had seen my family, or anyone else, for that matter.

I heard the rustle of her voluminous black skirts before I saw her, turning to watch her enter through the door to the kitchen.

She paused, just within the room, standing behind the piano.

“Hello again,” she said.

“Hi,” I replied.

“I thought it was time I take you up on your offer to share your book.” She peered around me, looking for it.

I reached beneath my seat and pulled its soft, worn cover from underneath the cushion.

She hesitated, not coming forward to get it.

“How have you been?” she asked as if she already knew the answer and it was terrible.

“Oh, you know” was all I could think of to say. She sat down on the bench of the pink piano, purportedly my father’s favorite color. She ran her hands over the keys but didn’t press down with enough weight to make a sound.

“I think I do know,” she said. “I’ve never felt so lonely in my life, and I’m alone most hours anyway.

I hadn’t realized until now the stock I’ve been placing in what it is to be the object of attention of a hundred strangers every day.

I love it. It fuels me.” She laughed gently at herself.

“Though I’ve never really considered them strangers,” she continued. “Do you?”

“I do.” I nodded. They’ve always felt strange to me, too strange to connect with in their ephemerality, there for too-brief a time to feel a change.

“I don’t,” she said. “Even before I was here”—she gestured to our painted surroundings—“I would go to museums all the time, almost every day. The other girls I worked with slept all day long, burning off the hangovers of the night before, resting their feet in time to slip them into their heels once again. But I could never sleep past midmorning. I would walk, bleary-eyed, through the streets of Paris until my brain caught up to my body, which was already wide-awake. I’d stop for a coffee.

And then I’d discover that my feet had taken me to the Louvre or one of the galleries, and I’d spend the day inside, surrounded by people I’d never met.

But I always felt like we shared something.

It was in the air; I could feel it on my skin.

And when I sit, day after day, in my frame, I feel it in the crowds here as well. A sense of communion.”

I was jealous of the sensation Odette had described. Maybe the next time we had people in the galleries again, I’d feel it too. If that time ever came.

“Without the people,” she sighed, “it certainly isn’t the same.”

“At least you’re keeping yourself busy,” I said. She looked at me, confused. “With your books?”

“Ah.” She waved her hand dismissively. “It’s just a ruse, something to trick my brain into thinking I still have a purpose.”

“Oh,” I said. We lapsed into silence, and I was hopeful we could stay that way.

The sudden social interaction had left me exhausted despite its brevity.

After a few moments, Odette placed her hands on the piano keys once again.

This time, she began to play. It was simple, and she was stiff at first. It had probably been years, maybe decades since she had played.

But as she soldiered on through the piece, she picked up confidence and comfort.

Her hands weren’t those of a novice; rather, they were those of someone who was once extremely familiar with this instrument.

Her tune lifted through the air, in a minor key but simultaneously a bit jaunty.

A waltz rhythm, its ? time making me want to bob my head along.

I let the impulse take me. When she finished, the end dangling on a hauntingly unresolved note, I gave her a quiet round of applause. She tipped her head to me.

“You are terrific,” I said simply.

“What do they say about you when they give tours?” she asked. “The museum guides?”

“That we are the artist’s family,” I responded.

“That our separation within our frame represents the divides growing within my family. That my father painted us out of fear or out of nostalgia. One of my favorite guides frequently tells guests he doesn’t love my father’s work.

He feels like it never looks finished.” I smiled at the memory.

He was on the newer side at the museum but had quickly made a name for himself in my opinion.

I felt a pang in my chest; I missed him too.

“How charming,” Odette said.

“As I’ve heard the kids say, he ‘tells it like it is.’ What do they say about you?”

“That I’m an unknown woman, probably someone the artist met when he was living in Paris.

Some take it further, offering up their own theories about who I might be, and why I might have been worthy of his painting.

Some get quite close to the truth, speculating that I was a dancer in the halls on Montmartre. ”

I laughed along with her. I was in on the joke, as I had once known Odette better than any of them.

Odette had been my first love or, at the very least, my first infatuation.

She was actually the only other person I’d ever given my heart to.

There was, of course, the former assistant curator but I’d be hard-pressed to call that anything more than a flirtation.

At most, it was almost a friendship. We’d never even exchanged words.

Before Claire, there was just Odette. As Antoinette had explained, Odette was an accompanist in the dance halls before her painted life, playing the piano along to whatever tempo was demanded of the band.

A part that might have been able to fade into the background of such boisterous venues, but she never did.

With hair as red as hers, there was no disappearing.

She was the object of fancy of most everyone she met, including me at one time.

Early into our tenure at the museum, maybe a decade or so in, we found ourselves together, alone, in someone else’s living room.

I had met her no more than a handful of times; back then, she ran in an adjacent social circle to Marguerite’s, which I used to tag along with every few nights.

We’d only ever exchanged a few words with each other, always part of a larger group.

But here we were, just the two of us, and though we’d both been heading elsewhere, we decided to stay.

We sat down at the small table that held a deck of cards, abandoned in the midst of a game.

Odette picked up the hand closest to her and began to play as if it were her own. I followed suit.

“You’re in the painting with the piano, are you not?” she asked me. We spoke entirely in French then. Odette spoke English fluently and would have been happy to make me practice; her mother was French and her father was English. But using French felt like home to me, and she understood.

“I am,” I said as I laid a card down on the table. “Why? Do you play?”

“I used to,” she said as she picked up my discarded card and replaced it with one of her own.

“If you ever want to play again, you could come use it,” I offered enthusiastically. “Honestly, I mean it. Any time you wanted.”

“Thank you,” she said. “That’s very kind.

” I had few friends of my own in this world, apart from Marguerite and Pierre, and I was looking forward to having a reason to see her again after that night.

She was probably a bit older than I, just by a handful of years, but I could tell she had so much more knowledge of the world.

She placed her winning hand on the table. I held mine to my chest—I was nowhere near close to having completed the game.

“I’m glad I ran into you tonight,” she said as she stood to leave.

I could practically feel my eyes twinkle in response to the compliment.

“Perhaps I’ll come take you up on your offer in the near future.

” With that, she whisked herself out of the room, her skirts making their characteristic percussion as they brushed against one another.

She did come, the next night, to play. Before she began, she said, “You don’t have to stay. I promise, I won’t hurt it.”

“I want to stay,” I replied. “Really, if that’s all right with you.”

In response, she began a boisterous song, something I would learn was a frequent request from her days at the halls.

It was lively and chaotic, like how I felt when I was around her.

After she played for nearly an hour, she spun around on the piano bench to face me.

She asked me more questions about my life and offered up information about hers, as I couldn’t help but ask, “Where did you learn to do that?”

I delighted in our nights together, easing myself from instant infatuation to comfortable friendship.

I had had so few friends in my life, only my family and those I had met in my youth, friends who were long lost to a different world.

There was so much to know about Odette. I felt us growing closer with every story we swapped.

I knew I was attracted to her from the start but was surprised to find the ways my body could and would change without my permission when I was around her.

It was like she was a magnet, and I was physically incapable of leaning away.

Her hand might brush past my arm and I’d spend days chasing the high I got from the sparks caused by that moment of contact.

A thought interrupted my nostalgic reverie—I wondered about how time could dull certain sensations.

Gone were the days where mere proximity to Odette could set my skin ablaze.

What remained was a sense of familiarity, something an entirely different temperature from the heat we’d once known.

Cooler, more stable, like an object at rest.

“Odette,” I said in the present moment, when her second song had come to a close. “Why are you seeking me out now?”

A sly smile crept to her face. “Are you referring, Jean, to the fact that it’s been quite some time since we kept each other company?”

“That is precisely why I’m asking.”

“I’ve been feeling strange. This time feels aberrant. I craved something comfortable. You came to mind.” I was surprised to hear her words echoing my own feelings. “What did you expect me to say? I’m on a tour of my ex-boyfriends?” She laughed. “Would you be upset if you thought there were others?”

“If anything,” I retorted, “that would make it easier for me to understand ‘why me?’?”

“You think too much, Jean. You’ve always been overwhelmingly stuck in your own head. I don’t always have such clearly identified motives. I just do what I like, within reason of course. We have so little choice, those of us who live in this way. I like to take what power I have when I can.”

“I’ve always admired that about you.”

“I know.”

It was she, not me, who had moved our relationship into another phase back then.

I had felt locked in my brain, eager to push forward but unsure how to make the jump from friendship to something else.

Odette had simply said one night, “I’ve been thinking about what it would be like to kiss you,” and leaned in to answer her own question.

A siren went off in my brain, my blood burning hotter than it had before.

I’d been thinking about it too, to the point of absolute distraction, but had never thought to tell her so. How simple she made it seem.