Page 45 of The Art of Vanishing

Jean

I could have followed Claire through the museum, trailing along behind her as she made her way to the exit.

Instead, I stayed where I was. I thought I needed time to lick my wounds.

I expected my heart to crack open wider than it had before.

But I felt numb. The door had closed. There was no longer a question of whether I would ever see Claire again. I wouldn’t.

I felt a part of me get locked up, the key taken out of the lock and slipped down into an unknown cavity. I would no longer need to edit those memories, that chapter of my life. It was written. I could look at it whenever I wanted, but there were no more changes to be made.

I stood up and my legs did not collapse under me.

I chose to wander, heading in the opposite direction of where I thought my cohort would have gathered.

I meandered through landscapes until I found the shore, walking down the boardwalk.

I sat in the sand, facing the water, my back to the drama of the months past. I looked out at the ocean, the pier to my left jutting out into the water, its colorful flags flapping in the breeze.

The wind was so strong, it might have been too cold to be out here were it not for the brilliant sun beating down.

I folded my jacket and my vest and laid them gently next to me, cuffing my sleeves so I could lean back against my forearms and feel the sand dig into my skin.

Life out there was ever-changing. Dangers lurked every day, in emerging diseases, in being in the wrong place at the wrong time, in what could not be controlled. There were so many unknowns.

In here, life was permanent. We knew what to expect. Outside the varieties of our own character, everything stayed the same. And while there were thousands of paintings to explore and people to see, it was finite. At some point, we may have done it all, have tapped out.

I stood up and walked back to the boardwalk, looping around to stroll down the pier.

I had never actually been here before and was impressed by how much there was to explore.

Peering in through the windows of a bright blue building, I could see arcade games, prizes, cotton candy machines, the trappings of a summer on the New Jersey shore in the 1940s.

I wondered at myself that I even knew what those trappings ought to be, having never visited such a place in my former lifetime.

I knew so much about such an arbitrary assortment of things, the places and circumstances I had access to within this museum alone.

I made my way to the end of the pier and stepped up onto the bottom rung of the wrought iron railing.

I leaned my stomach against the top of the barrier and stared out into the rolling ocean in front of me.

The Atlantic, I was pretty sure. I thought of my home, more than three thousand miles across this expanse. My former home.

I turned away from the water, looking back into the museum from quite a distance. It all seemed so small. This, the waves crashing against the shore, seemingly stretching on forever in either direction, this felt like what was real.

I could see the sun beginning its arc across the gallery floor and knew my time to return to my post was approaching.

A seagull landed on the railing just a few meters down from me—I had impressed him with my stoicism well enough for him to sit and trust me, reassuming his assigned seat for the day ahead.

I tipped an invisible hat to him, and he gave me an ever so gentle wink.