Page 37 of The Art of Vanishing

Jean

I’d wandered back to the journal, wanting to make sure we’d gleaned all we could from today’s page, when Odette reentered. I didn’t turn to look, but from the absence of her skirt swishing, I could tell she hadn’t left immediately upon seeing me there.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi,” she responded, slowly inching farther into the room. I turned back to look at her, rising up from where I was seated on the floor to find a chair. “Sorry about earlier. I didn’t mean to make things awkward.”

“You didn’t,” I said. “So, um, you’re here for the journal?”

“Just wanted to see what all the fuss was about.”

“Well, you should check it out. It’s all yours. I’d best be getting home now, unless you need any help interpreting it?”

“I think I’ve got it from here.”

“Right, right, well.” I stood and backed out of the room, leaving Odette a clear shot to the book.

“Enjoy.” The last thing I saw as I exited, turning back to check over my shoulder, was Odette pressing her way up against the edge of the frame, her signature graceful neck twisting so she could get a better look.

She really was desperate for new reading material.

As the museum’s powers that be had hoped, the presence of the journal ensured the constant attendance of visitors the next day.

I even recognized some people who I had seen the day before, back to read what came next.

Some came in small groups, tittering nervously among themselves as they waited their turn to approach the day’s page.

Others came alone, lingering silently until the small crowd had cleared away.

They brought notebooks, scribbling down notes in their few moments of glory with the text, or snapping a photo on their cellphones.

Susie came again, no tour group in tow this time.

I could tell from the second she walked in that night that Claire was frazzled. She was rushing and accidentally steered the mop into the doorframe, spilling her bucket of soapy water across the floor.

“Shit,” she cursed as she threw a handful of rags on the puddle in a futile attempt to mop up the liquid. “Ugh, whatever, I’ll deal with you later,” she told the mop as she hurried over to me. I helped her in.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she lied. “Just a little in my own head today is all.”

“Do you want to talk first or go see the journal first?” I was eager to put her at ease and couldn’t tell which she needed right now.

“I think—I guess talk?” she said. “I’m worried we’re going to run out of time.”

“It’s okay,” I reassured her as I took her hand in mine.

“We don’t have to get it all done tonight.

The close call with Linda last night startled me as well.

” She chewed on the skin around her thumb.

I could tell it was already raw from a day of worry.

“What about a compromise—why don’t we talk on the way to the journal?

And wherever we get to, we’ll pause and pick it up again tomorrow? ”

“Okay,” Claire exhaled. “Okay.”

And as we walked through fields, taverns, living rooms, and studios, she began to let me in.

“I’m not sure where to start. I don’t know where this story even begins.

I was so young when we met, only sixteen.

And he was older, much older, in a different part of life, but I couldn’t see that at the time.

At first, it was just about him. I didn’t realize I was falling for him until he made a move and it was clear the feelings were mutual.

Well, maybe ‘mutual’ is the wrong word, because of the age difference.

I’m doing a terrible job of explaining this… ” she trailed off.

“It’s okay,” I assured her. “I’m understanding, so far.”

“Things moved slowly and then all at once. For a year, we hovered around each other, but his presence kept anyone else from standing a chance at getting my attention. And then all of a sudden, we were together and…Well, there was no turning back. At first, he was so excited. He convinced me to come here, to the city, with him. He promised me that life I’d always dreamed of, a life of excitement and glamour, and I thought this is it, this is growing up.

I was so young, I was seventeen, I asked my mom what to do.

I’d been hiding him from her and she freaked out.

She threw me out. Said I was going against everything she expected of me. ”

“She did what?” I interrupted. “She threw you out? For dating someone she didn’t approve of?”

“It’s more complicated than that,” she said. “There’s more to the story. My mom holds very tightly to her convictions. If you’re wrong, in her mind, you are always going to be wrong.”

“That’s not fair,” I said, mad on her behalf, but I could tell she didn’t want to linger on that part of the story. “But we’ll come back to that. What happened next?”

“I moved to the city with Jeremy. He promised me it would be beyond my wildest dreams. But it was never going to be like that. He knew that, but I didn’t realize he was lying until we started to live it.

I didn’t know anyone here, so I just went to work and back to the apartment every day.

He’d take the day shift at home and then as soon as I got back in the afternoon, he was off to ‘work.’ I never really understood what he did.

And that’s how he liked it. He wouldn’t come back until the last possible moment.

He stayed out until all hours of the night, never answering my calls, even during the day.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what was going on, that he’d gotten bored of me and of the life I could offer him.

I called him out on it—the next week, he proposed.

I’m pretty sure he did it just to shut me up for a while.

He never actually planned to marry me. It had the intended effect; I kept trying to make our life together work.

Until one morning, he just didn’t come back. ”

“At all?” I asked. I found it impossible to believe someone would choose to leave Claire.

“At first I thought he’d show up again after a few days, but weeks passed, and then months…And that was the end. Of the Jeremy chapter,” she said. “I can see that now, but it took me years to wrap my mind around the fact that he was just gone. I kept wearing the ring until…well, until I met you.”

We’d arrived at the painting above the journal. Claire seemed sad, these memories having stirred up terrible feelings within her.

“Thank you, Claire,” I said, “for telling me all of that. It means so much to me that you would trust me.”

“It’s not all,” she said. “There’s so much more.”

“It’s okay,” I said. I didn’t want her to be sad for a moment longer tonight. “There’s tomorrow and the next day and the next day. A page of the journal, a little more story.”

“Okay.” Claire gave in. “We can do it that way.” I couldn’t tell if she was relieved or if she was anxious to keep dragging it out.

She still wouldn’t let me in all the way, wouldn’t tell me what she really needed right now.

But I had let her off the hook for the night, and she was taking me up on the opportunity.

Claire crouched down to get a better look at the journal and read aloud.

“Today, I found myself in his studio unattended. He’d again invited me over to model but must have forgotten that he’d done so, because he was nowhere to be found at the agreed upon time.

But the door was unlocked and I figured he’d left it so for me, so I let myself in.

I waited for a bit, but the sun was setting and his arrival was clearly far from imminent.

I stood up to explore. Sure, I was a bit nosy, but it was he who had broken our… ”

“?‘Appointment,’?” I translated.

“ I found myself drifting towards a canvas that was covered with a large cloth. I can’t say what drew me to this one, but it was like something was silently calling me.

I pulled back the sheet to reveal a finished salon scene, with a chatty group seated on the various pieces of furniture across the room.

They felt so alive, I could almost hear what they were saying, if I just leaned in a little closer…

Oh my god, I can’t believe that’s how it ends. ”

“I wonder if I know that painting,” I said, trying to picture such an arrangement of subjects. “It feels familiar, but no image actually comes to mind.”

“Jean,” Claire said, her tone serious.

“What is it?” I asked, concerned about her sudden shift in mood.

“What do you think happens next?”

“What do you mean? We’ll read the page tomorrow.”

She cleared her throat. “Do you think she goes in? To the painting, I mean? That’s how I’d always felt, before I figured out that I could—” She mimed climbing into my frame. “I wonder what will happen, if she follows that instinct. I have to read more. I have to know.”

The impact of her words hit me. “You think maybe…no, that’s impossible. You think she’s like you?”

“I mean…” Claire fidgeted with a handful of her hair, twining it between her fingers.

“There can’t be many of us, if you or anyone else in here have never heard of it happening before.

Y’all certainly have institutional knowledge.

But maybe there are just a handful of us who have gone so far as to learn that it’s even possible.

It wouldn’t make sense for me to be the only one… ever.”

I thought about what she’d said, and realized I wasn’t certain that there was no one in here who might know about something like this.

It was possible some stones had been left unturned.

I had been so wrapped up in our romance, I’d long ago left behind any investigation of the magic that allowed us to be together.

“That’s a good point,” I said.

“I guess we’ll find out tomorrow,” Claire mused. “I wish I could just slip down there and turn the page.”

“If only you wouldn’t send the museum into lockdown,” I warned. “That couldn’t possibly be worth finding out what happens next.”

“We’ll wait, then.” Claire looped her hand through mine. Then she described to me an invisible network of communication that she called “social media,” where people could spread photos and gossip from the phones they all carried in their pockets.

“Is it like how you said you could look the old version of me up?” I asked, unable to remember the word she’d used for the process.

“Yes, it all usually starts at Google, totally. But there are these different sites that Google links to, where these conversations can, well, spiral.”

I struggled to picture the reality of this seemingly cosmic-level web of information, but Claire said it wasn’t necessary to visualize it; even she found it unfathomable.

She was using it to do some research on the journal, and I was shocked to discover it was taking the internet, a term I’d learned from her, by storm.

Yesterday’s visitors had uploaded photos and abbreviated testimonials of the contents of that day’s page, and curiosity about the identity of the writer grew exponentially.

Claire said there were people thousands of miles away who had joined in on the conversation.

“It’s absolutely wild. Maybe people still have more time on their hands than before, or everyone’s obsessed with true crime and thinks they can solve the mystery themselves, but I’ve seen full social media accounts, TikTok videos, blogs even, spring up overnight dedicated to dissecting each painting in the museum, cataloging every woman featured, ruling out anyone who we know enough about to know that it’s not her. ”

“Why does everyone care so much about it? And what’s a blog?”

“Oh, a blog is like a personal website—I mean, a page online that any one person can make that everyone else can access on their technology if they want”—I didn’t interrupt, but I was so lost—“but also probably no one else is reading it.”

“Why not?”

“Because there is so much space and noise online, not everyone can have someone who cares about their work. It’s hard to explain.

Some people write, or post, just for the sake of doing it.

It doesn’t matter whether anyone else is looking.

It’s like their way of saying something out loud, even if they’re in the room alone. It’s beside the point.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“As to why everyone cares so much? I don’t know.” Claire paused, contemplating the question I’d raised. “I think maybe there’s been so much darkness in the world this year and this, like, tingles with magic.” I threaded my fingers through hers.

“If only they could see you.”

“They’d lose their freaking minds.”

“Have you ever told anyone about this?”

“Kind of. I tell it like it’s a bedtime story at home.”

“To your grandmother?”

“Yes.” Claire dug two of her teeth into her bottom lip. “Her and my—”

The alarm blared.