Page 44 of The Art of Vanishing

Claire

As I ran, I realized Jamie must have let me go without sounding the alarm or reporting me for a reason.

I had two guesses as to what that reason might be.

The first was that she’d read the journal all the way through, as I had, and knew what its creator had been capable of.

The second was that she recognized what I could do, because she could do it too.

I scampered down the stairs, looking around corners before I took them. I had never made my way over here through the gallery hallways, I’d only moved from painting to painting, and it was with a few wrong turns that I made my way to the painting I was looking for. Finally, I found her.

Odette was seated as usual, draping her elbow over the back of the chair. She was reading from a small book in her lap, slowly turning the pages with a single hand. I cleared my throat and she looked up at me, cocking her head ever so slightly to the side.

“Would it be okay if I came in for a moment?” I asked. She nodded and extended her hand down to me, as Jean had done each night. I took it, her fingers so much thinner than his, but they were long and her grip was strong.

Moments later, I was on my feet next to her, looking around the blue-green studio she sat in each day. Odette waited as I took in my surroundings, a curious expression on her face.

“Hi,” I said. “How’s it going?”

“It’s certainly been eventful, these past twenty-four hours. How are you?” she asked.

“Oh, you know,” I answered with a nonanswer. “I’ve been better. I actually—” I didn’t know how to explain what had just happened. Had I been fired? It didn’t feel like it. “This is actually my last night here.”

The look she gave me conveyed sympathy and curiosity all rolled into one. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, but she didn’t ask about what happened. I appreciated that. I didn’t have the time to tell her. “What brings you here, Claire?”

“Have you known all along,” I asked, “that it was yours?”

“Not until I saw it,” she admitted, instantly knowing I was talking about the journal.

“From the way they described it, it could have been anyone. There were so many of us women at the turn of the century who had a passion or a talent for art but who faded into the recesses of history because we didn’t have a rich husband or a supportive father who would help us pave the way.

But as soon as they dropped it off, I recognized it.

It was the last diary I kept before I went from that world to this one.

I was in the middle of it when Modigliani painted my portrait here.

I honestly don’t know how it ends.” She chuckled with disbelief at the situation.

“I guess I, like everyone else, will never know.”

“But you can do what I can do,” I pressed. She looked at me curiously, trying to suss out how much I knew. Finally, she gave in.

“I can, yes. Or I could. It unfortunately didn’t translate over to this version of me. I can’t walk out of the paintings the way I could walk into them.”

“Are there others like us?”

“You’re the only other person I’ve seen do it.

At some point in the last century, I’d convinced myself it was all just a dream.

But when you showed up here, I realized it had been real.

I remembered what that first time felt like, how magical and scary it was.

There must be others, other people who are watching closely enough, others who dream big enough to have the guts to try. ”

“Sometimes,” I said, “I’ve wondered if maybe everyone can. They just haven’t thought of it.”

“It’s possible. Can you imagine the trouble that would cause for a museum? A mass movement of people leaping into the paintings?”

“It would be chaos! Surely not everyone would have good intentions. There would be no way to keep this world safe. I’m sure that’s what everyone else like us has realized too.”

“Right,” Odette agreed, “that to share the secret is not worth the risk.”

Speaking of risks, I turned my back to Odette and released a few buttons of my jumpsuit, wiggling the journal free from where it was tucked within my uniform. “I thought you should get to see how it ends,” I explained as I held it out to her.

She took it in complete silence, pulling it closer to her and running a hand over its leather exterior.

“How did you…” Her question drifted off into nothing. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that for the first time in more than a century, the journal and its author had been reunited. “Thank you, Claire. Jean was so lucky to know you. We all were.”

“I was jealous of you,” I admitted. “And intimidated. You and Jean were together once, right? You two have so much in common. You speak the same languages. You come from the same world.”

Odette waved my words away like she was clearing the air of smoke.

“That was another lifetime. Sure, we came from the same world, but that world doesn’t even exist anymore.

When we found each other here, it was different than it is for you two.

We were companions, kindred, lonely spirits looking for a connection before we drifted our separate ways.

It wasn’t like what you had, the fire that pulled you towards each other.

Jean loved me, but he was never in love with me in that madly, deeply all-consuming way he loves you. ”

I could feel that she was telling the truth. There were all kinds of love, the love I felt for Gracie, for Luna, for art and the way it invited me to dream. I’d never find a love like this one again, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be more love out there for me. I wished the same for Jean too.

“Take care of him for me, will you?” I said as I sat on the frame, swinging my legs to dangle over its edge.

“I will,” Odette promised as she clutched the journal to her. “Be well, Claire.”

I had just changed back into my street clothes as Jamie and Mark knocked on the door, checking to see if I was ready.

I folded my jumpsuit and handed it back to Jamie, knowing it was unlikely the museum would need that size again.

I considered asking if I could keep it, but worried she’d get suspicious about my intentions.

Soon enough, I was back through security and safely out in the parking lot. I turned to look up at the building one more time. It had once been so intimidating to me but had so quickly come to feel like it was mine. I wondered how long it would take to get over that love too.