Chapter II #3
Again it struck me how unobservant I’d been over the past year, to not realize my sister was in love.
She said it’s so beautiful like her heart was about eight sizes too big for her chest, and when I looked over at her, I saw her eyes were filling up with tears, her bottom lip gently quivering.
I took her into my arms, ignoring the sudden itch on the insides of my wrists, and we crossed the street holding on to each other.
“Get it together,” I whispered into her hair.
“But it is so beautiful,” she protested, her voice shaking.
“I know. But try to remember that you don’t actually like it here that much.”
“That’s not true,” she said, but out of the corner of my eye I saw her smile.
She’d never been a fan of medieval art. It ended up being a lot of religious pieces, and none of us were religious.
I wasn’t particularly drawn to it, either, it was more the Cloisters itself, how old it felt, how dark and quiet the rooms were, how the stone walls and floors and courtyards felt like you’d stepped out of New York and into some nameless, ancient European city.
If you squinted and held your breath and tilted your head and suspended disbelief for just a few moments, it felt like you were somewhere else entirely.
A fantasy novel. Cair Paravel. The room far, far underground where Alice landed after plummeting down the rabbit hole.
“What’s wrong with you?” Bernadette said, appearing suddenly on Evie’s other side, ruining the mood. Her voice was flat and lacked any real concern. Evelyn looked at me quickly, raising her eyebrows before replying.
“Oh, just thinking about how there’s nothing like the Cloisters in the fall.
” She mimicked Dad’s eager-beaver voice perfectly, but Bernadette didn’t so much as crack a smile.
I didn’t even think she’d heard her, forgetting that she’d asked her a question as soon as the words had left her lips.
She broke apart from us and walked on her own, just behind Mom and Dad.
Clara was bringing up the rear, her eyes wide and happy as she soaked everything in, recharging her artist’s brain with miles of green leaves.
“What’s her problem?” Evelyn asked, pointing her jaw at Bernadette.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You must know,” Evie countered. “You always know.”
Inside the lobby, we waited as Dad showed our membership card.
Clara was in a playful, kiddish mood, and she kept twirling, her knee-length dress spinning out in a very satisfying way.
She wore gray tights and Mary Janes that had once belonged to Evelyn.
And she wore our grandmother’s watch, which was weird. Evelyn usually never took it off.
“She gave it to me,” Clara said when I asked about it. We were standing in front of an enormous wooden triptych.
“She did not give it to you,” I said.
“She did,” Clara said, and pouted a little. “She said I could have it.”
“But she loves this watch.”
“Geez, chill, it’s not like she pawned it,” she said, and stuck her tongue out at me before loping away.
I turned to watch her go and saw our father wander in from an adjacent doorway.
He spotted me and bounded over, tugging my arm excitedly.
“I’m going to the Treasury. Did you know they have the only complete set of illuminated playing cards from the fifteenth century?
The fifteenth century, are you freaking kidding me! ”
“Cool, Dad,” I said, but he had already skipped away, shaking with anticipation to see these cards I was sure he’d already seen a dozen times.
“Did you give your watch to Clara?” I asked Evelyn when I found her a few minutes later, in the Bonnefont Cloister.
“Hmm?” She didn’t turn to look at me. She was staring at a plant with two signs next to it.
The first said:
DEADLY NIGHTSHADE
ATROPA BELLADONNA
(SOLANACEAE)
The second said:
POISON PLANT
“Grandma’s watch. Did you say Clara could have it?”
“Isn’t it odd that they have that sign,” she said, pointing to the one that labeled the plant as poison. “I mean, it’s in the name, you know? Deadly Nightshade? You would think that would be enough of a warning for people.”
“Evelyn. Clara. The watch.”
“Yes,” Evelyn said, still not looking at me. “I gave it to her. She’s always wanted it.”
“But you love that watch.”
“And I also love Clara,” she said, and that was such a compelling argument that I didn’t know what else to say.
She went inside. I stood in the cloister, surrounded on all sides by impressive stone archways. Above me, the sky was a pale gray-blue. The air was crisp and smelled very clean. It smelled like my mother’s perfume. I lowered my gaze and there she was, in front of me.
“Status report, please?” she said, touching a hand to the braided tie of my hooded sweatshirt.
“Clara’s fine,” I said. “Evelyn’s fine. Bernadette is … mostly fine, I think.”
“And you?”
“Oh. I’m fine,” I said.
“Not a very thorough status report, I have to say.”
“Things are a little … weird.”
“I’ve picked up on that.”
“But I think it’s mostly okay.”
“Okay,” she repeated. “I trust you.” I had pulled my hood over my head; she gently pushed it down. “I wish you would stop wearing the same sweatshirt every day.”
“Well, I wash it,” I said.
“But still. You have so many beautiful clothes.”
And she wandered away without waiting for a response.
I found Evelyn an hour later, after spending some time with the Farthing ghost who always hung around the Merode Room, staring somewhat morosely at the Annunciation Triptych, nodding in my general direction as if to indicate she didn’t mind my company.
This was nice because sometimes they did mind my company, and they’d disappear or walk through a wall or sink dramatically into the floorboards to get away from me.
That always made me feel a little weird, like I’m the only person left alive who can see you and you still can’t tolerate me?
Evelyn’s hands, when I found her, were stuffed into the pockets of her ochre-colored corduroy skirt, her head slightly tilted to one side as she stared, unblinking, at what had always been our favorite piece of art in pretty much the entire world—The Unicorn in Captivity.
I didn’t have to look at my sister’s face to know that she was on the verge of tears again, in that in-between place where your nose is tingling and your eyes are burning but you could come back from it, if you wanted to.
“Evie?”
“He could get out,” she said, not taking her eyes off the tapestry.
It showed a snow-white unicorn, legs folded, reclined in the middle of a beautiful, overgrown garden.
The unicorn was chained to a pomegranate tree that was encircled by a wooden fence with no gate.
But the fence was low, to Evelyn’s point.
The tree was thin and weak. The unicorn could get out if she wanted to.
“I’ve always thought of it as a she,” I said.
“There’s blood on its coat,” Evie continued.
“Pomegranate juice,” I said, and Evie looked startled, like she was surprised to find me next to her. I said it again, and pointed to the ripe fruit hanging in the tree over the unicorn. “Pomegranate juice.”
“Do you really think so?” she asked.
“Look at her face. She’s not in pain. She’s serene, calm. Waiting. She’s not a captive. She’s in charge of her own fate.”
“But she’s chained.”
“But she’s not mad about it.”
“Who in the world is chained and not mad about it?”
“A dog, maybe?”
We’d never had a dog. Dad was allergic and Mom was pretty blanketly against pets. There had been talk of a guinea pig, once, but nobody wanted to be the one to clean its cage.
“Can you believe this was made over five hundred years ago?” Clara, suddenly, on Evie’s other side. “It could just hop right over that fence, too.”
“Break the tree in half with one good yank.” Bernadette, suddenly, on my other side.
“But it doesn’t want to get out,” I said. “Clearly.”
“It’s a metaphor,” Bernie announced.
“How do you figure?” I asked.
“The unicorn can’t see past its own situation. It’s like a person who thinks they’re drowning in water when really, it’s shallow enough for them to stand.”
“Deep,” Clara said. “No pun intended.”
“It’s about all of us being trapped in these situations, these societal constructs, holding ourselves to impossible standards, money is king, working yourself to death is admirable, your prison is your own mind.”
“It sounds like you’re writing a thesis statement for a freshman-level English class,” I said, and Bernadette punched me on the arm, a little harder than she meant to, I hoped.
“Have you seen the other tapestries?” Clara asked. “Your theory doesn’t really hold up when you walk over there and see the one where four men are surrounding it with spears.”
“There’s always another side to the story,” Evelyn said quietly.
“There are always men with spears,” Bernadette retorted.
“Poor guy,” Clara said sadly. “Are you all ready to go? I’m very hungry.”
“Are you crying, Evie?” Bernadette asked.
“I’m moved by the art,” Evie said, a little dramatically.
“We’ve seen it a thousand times.”
“I’ve also seen you a thousand times and I still like looking at your face.”
“Fair. Meet you back at the car.”
And it was just the two of us again, Evelyn and me, and I saw her suck in an enormous amount of air and hold it for so long my own lungs ached. When she let it out again, all trace of sadness was gone from her face. She turned to me and smiled.
“Ready to go?”
“Ready,” I said.
She turned and walked away, not waiting for me.