Page 31 of The Art of Vanishing

Jean

There we were, all four of us, together again.

We had not all been in the same room since we had descended into this lawless life.

How natural and unusual it felt at the same time: our untraditional family, without the man who related us all, scattered across one room.

I didn’t know what to do with my hands or my eyes. Where did I normally look?

Pierre and Marguerite were whispering at the piano bench, giggling and shushing each other as if nothing had changed. My mother reclined in her rocking chair, not yet stitching her embroidery, though she held it in her hands. Her gaze was upward, toward the sky.

Across the gallery, I could see others in their frames resuming their positions as well.

Some rested near where they were meant to be, leaning against a wall or a doorframe, waiting for a sign that this was, in fact, going to happen.

As the light rose in the gallery, I felt us all take a collective inhale of expectation.

Moments later, we heard the recognizable trundle of the wheels of a cleaning cart rolling into the main hall on the floor below us, the noise carrying through our open doorway.

Marguerite let out a soft “mon dieu.” Pierre’s head snapped up from where he had been resting it on the piano in front of him.

I leaned forward, pressing my ear to the divide, and could hear her dunking the mop in the bucket and slapping it down against the floor one story below.

Could it be Claire? It must be Linda, I reminded myself, based on her location in the museum.

If it was Claire, she’d come right up here, I was sure.

Or maybe she wouldn’t because it was still daytime outside.

Did that have any effect on her magic? It didn’t matter, it was probably Linda anyway, like Marguerite had said.

The act of listening to someone clean a room we were not in lost its fascination as time went on.

We heard whoever it was slowly progress into one of the first-floor wings.

Marguerite and Pierre had begun a game that involved spinning the ring she wore on her thumb against the lid of the piano and guessing in which direction it would fall. I lit a cigarette.

The gossip network of first-floor paintings confirmed that night what I had suspected—it was, in fact, Linda. Claire was nowhere to be seen.

The next day passed the same; we heard Linda roll into the gallery beneath us.

This time, she turned in to the other wing of the first floor.

Once again, we stayed in place, but relaxed a bit more than we would on a typical daytime shift.

As the light faded at the end of the day, we could hear her roll out.

“She must be cleaning these rooms within an inch of their lives,” Marguerite remarked as she stood up to stretch. “They’re not very big. How could it be taking her so long? And if it’s such a large project, why did they bring her in alone?”

“I’ve been thinking,” I replied. “They can’t be very dirty either. No one has been in here. What’s there to clean besides dust?”

“I hope this isn’t some sign of the end,” Pierre piped up.

“What if they’re making it all spotless because they’re bringing in a potential buyer or something?

What if life outside the museum has gone on as normal, it’s just that we’re in trouble, legally or financially or something of the like, and that’s why we’ve been shut down this whole time? ”

I panicked. If that was the case, I would never see Claire again. They’d chosen Linda for this final cleaning. What if this was the end?

“Maybe,” I mused to make myself feel better, “the building is condemned and it’s a hazard for them to let anyone inside anymore and we’re all getting moved.”

“Then why would they send Linda in to clean,” Marguerite asked, “and why wouldn’t they take us out immediately? We know the value of some of the pieces in here is astronomical. They wouldn’t just leave us here in a room that might collapse at any moment.”

She had a point there, as did Pierre. But what if they did take us out? Would they tell Claire? What if one day Claire returned and we were gone? Would she try to follow us?

Finally, it was our turn. Linda appeared the following day, stomping into our gallery and beginning her work.

As Marguerite had supposed, Linda took her time, really cleaning each and every nook and cranny.

The gallery glittered with the residue from her cleaning solution and the sunlight dancing through the windows and across the surfaces.

I felt impressed by how we looked; we were ready to be seen.

Linda’s presence brought life back to the gallery with a jump.

She danced and hopped her way across the room as she brought it up to her standards of cleanliness.

Just like Andromeda had described, she wore a mask that covered the lower half of her face, though it frequently slipped below her nose and she left it dangling there, only partially obscuring her mouth.

I got the sense that Linda had missed us too; she spent some of her time just taking in the room, her eyes sweeping across the walls, the doorways, the windows, the ceilings.

It was a contrast to the alacrity with which she normally did her cleaning, moving as quickly as possible so she could get back to the break room.

She even took her cellphone from her pocket, the one that I’d seen her use exclusively for gameplay, and snapped a few photos.

I wished I could ask her if she’d heard from Claire, if she was doing okay, why it was just Linda who had returned to us, if we would get to see Claire again.

Instead, we just watched Linda work. As evening crept in, she surveyed her progress on our wing.

Pleased with the state of things, she pushed her cart back out toward the elevator.

“What do you think happens next?” I asked.

“It seems like she’s nearing the end, so I think we’ll soon find out,” Pierre supposed. “There aren’t many rooms left to clean. Either the galleries are about to reopen, or we’re headed toward whatever is out there, waiting for us.”

“At least we’re pretty and clean in the meantime,” said Marguerite.

“I didn’t realize how much the dust was dulling our shine.

” They both rose, heading off to their nightly activities.

On their way out, Marguerite stopped to say, “Have a nice night, Jean. We’ll see you in the morning.

” It was touching, and out of the ordinary compared to the way we normally interacted.

I could see it was bringing all of us comfort to be together regularly again.

We had just reassembled into our assigned positions, morning having newly begun, as the gallery below filled with voices.

I could hear the stiffening of fabric around me as we all straightened up into our assigned positions.

Moments later, a group of museum employees walked into our room.

Jamie was there, as expected, accompanied by Lisa, Henry, and Christie, the board members.

Our painting, the largest in the room, was centered along the longest wall.

We faced directly across from an open doorway, looking toward the windows.

The four of them assembled in a clump between the windows, opposite the four of us.

“I think this spot will be perfect,” said Lisa, her dark hair streaked with gray. Her face was covered by a mask with bright splotches of color across its white surface. I wondered if she’d made the pattern herself at home.

“Can we have this dresser removed?” Henry said as he rapped his palm against it. The sound of his ring hitting the lacquered wood was grating and made everyone jump. “Sorry,” he apologized, wringing his hands before he tucked them away into his pockets. “I’m not quite myself yet in public.”

Christie reached out to him, her touch falling a few inches short of his shoulder. “None of us are right now.”

“Is there enough of a flow, in case we start to get crowds up here?” Henry asked.

Jamie nodded. “These are two of our most visited galleries; we’re used to heavy foot traffic up here.

We can always put stanchions and a guide right through that doorway, if we need to create a queue.

I’ll also say that we have no idea what kind of patronage we’ll be seeing in the next few months.

We’ll cut the total capacity down, of course, to allow for social distancing in the galleries.

But we don’t even know how many visitors, if any, will want to come back, at least right away. ”

A worried silence fell upon the group as the words set in. “Well,” Lisa finally said, “we’ll just have to see.”

“I would want to come back,” Christie said. “Even today, being back in these halls, I have chills. I forgot just how full to the brim it is with art. How much I’ve been missing it.”

“Let’s hope the rest of the city feels that way,” Jamie cautioned as she led the group out of the gallery. “I’ll see what can be done about moving that dresser into the restoration facilities before tomorrow…” Her voice became too faint to hear as they descended the stairs.

“What do you think they’re putting in there?” Pierre asked.

“I have no idea,” Marguerite and I said in near unison. “They never move things in this room. Or in this museum,” she added.

“Do you think this has to do with why it’s been empty for months?” Pierre said.

“It’s hard to say—maybe that, or maybe they’re using this time as an excuse to make a change,” I thought aloud.

“It can’t be a painting,” Marguerite said with her typical certainty, “or they wouldn’t be looking at that space. I can’t imagine they’d ever hang another painting in here. It must be like…a thing.”

“A thing,” I joked back at her. “Of course, how astute of you.”

“Oh, pffffft, ” she said. “You know what I mean. It’s an object, maybe of some historical importance to the collector. Or to the art in here in some way. I doubt it’s art itself.”

“I guess we’ll all see, seemingly soon.”

“Lucky us,” Marguerite said. “It’s all going to unfold right before our eyes.” She had the glint of gossip that was hers to trade in as she sashayed out of the room with a wave of her hand.