Chapter 7
7
I hit the nearest Metro station and take the next train to Montmartre. It’s only fifteen minutes, but it’s the longest fifteen minutes in my memory, and when I reach my stop, I climb a hundred looping spiral steps to the exit. I start out at a quick walk, but near the house, I break into a sprint up the hilly street.
Remy opens the door before I can text that I’m here. He’s dressed casually today in skinny purple pants and a white T-shirt that I’m sure were never peddled in a department store.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, as serious as I’ve ever seen him.
I’m about to do something drastic. I haven’t told a soul that I’ve been living in a mirage since that night the ballerina danced out of the Degas. But Remy said the Muses live below his home. Now I know something is really happening—to me, to the art—and he’s the only one I can think of who might believe me.
“This is going to sound completely mental,” I blurt out in a rush.
His knitted brows climb into a more Remy-like arch. “ Mon ami , what besides the sheep on my balcony and a carousel in my living room makes you think I am not accepting of all kinds of madness?”
That excellent point derails my runaway thoughts, which had been centered on convincing him to even listen to me. He closes the gate and says, “Let me guess. The Degas ballerinas are dancing for you at night?”
My jaw hits the paving stones.
I stare at him, dumbfounded. It’s as if I’ve been putting on an elaborate play for the public, and he’s pulled back the curtain, revealing the stagehands and sets and all the illusions. I don’t have to perform anymore, and it takes a second to figure out what to do instead.
“They danced Swan Lake the other night,” I confess, pacing the courtyard, and when he doesn’t laugh, I tell him everything about the living art. “All of them, or any of them. The Cézannes, the Manets, the Matisses . . . The picnickers in a Monet brought their lunch out of the painting last week. Olympia ’s cat prowls the galleries. I think she’s looking for mice.”
Remy does laugh then, not mocking but delighted. “How astounding. The green-eyed monster is eating me alive right now.”
“Yeah,” I admit. “It’s pretty cool, when I’m not worried I’m going completely round the twist.” I look at him directly. “It’s weird though, right? Does this happen to other people? Does your Monet come alive in the hall?”
Does Woman Wandering in the Irises break free at night?
That’s what I really want to ask, but I’m afraid of how badly I need the answer.
“Of course it doesn’t,” Remy says. “Who ever heard of art coming to life in someone’s house?”
“Exactly!” I gesture with open hands to the point he makes in my own argument.
Rather than respond, Remy thoughtfully taps his smooth chin. “I think maybe it is something about a museum. Think of how much planning goes into how and where to display a piece—the frame and the lighting, the backdrop, what’s nearby, even the flow of the room. You know this. Art is art anywhere, but the setting affects how it affects us, how we interact with it.”
I stare at him, his matter-of-fact explanation as jarring as my first glimpse of the ballerinas. “So you think art can only come to life in a museum? Not in a home or a private gallery?”
He raises his hands in a shrug. “Who can say? Perhaps there are people who enjoy performances of Swan Lake in their homes nightly.” With a wave, he dismisses that idea as ridiculous. “But no. I do believe it is the museum. This is what I’ve always believed, and so it must be true. In a museum, you sense the faces looking out of the paintings are just waiting to come alive as soon as the doors are locked.”
I’d felt exactly that many times, even before the edges between life and art had blurred. But Remy is right. Only in a museum is there the sense the art has another life when no one is watching.
“I suppose there is a kind of logic to it,” I say. “Museums are like churches for art. Sacred spaces, or holy ground or something.”
Remy nods excitedly. “Yes, that’s it. We come like pilgrims to an abbey to see them.”
I feel like I might have a faint glimmer of understanding about what’s going on, and that worries me. Am I grasping at straws? “You seem very certain of this when you’ve never seen it for yourself.”
Another dismissive wave. “Do you have to see the sun to believe in it? My family believes it. Sophie believes it. Rafe . . .” He makes a so-so wag of his hand. “The power of art is real, and anyone can feel it, even if not everyone can see paintings come to life. But some people can. The Muses say there are, and have always been, those who can see art live and breathe.”
And just as I feared, the explanation is getting away from me again. “Hold up, Remy. The Muses told you this? In the basement?”
He shrugs. “It isn’t an ordinary cellar.”
“Yes. I gathered that. I hadn’t realized how extraordinary though.”
“They live and work far beneath Montmartre. I’m a sort of emissary for them.”
He might have said “I’m a bike messenger” just as matter-of-factly. I look around the courtyard for a bench because my head is spinning from how quickly my world is changing.
No bench. I have to man up and deal with this on my feet.
“What about that silver dust I saw in the cellar? There was some inside the five-legged calf you gave me too.”
“And in the one you won at the party.” Remy nods, pleased I am following him, which proves I’m a better actor than I thought. “They give it to me from time to time to pass along.”
This is too much. I pinch the bridge of my nose and wonder which of us is the delusional one—him or me. Though I suppose we might both be. Or maybe Remy’s delusion is part of mine.
Perhaps he can sense I’ve reached the end of my tether, or maybe his feet are getting tired, because he puts a hand on my shoulder so that we’re both angled toward the house.
“ Mon ami , we can stand here longer and debate the Muses and madness and the magic of museums, but I think you might rather come inside and see what—who—it is you came to see.” The roguish teasing in his voice as he gives my shoulder a shake is more the Remy I’m used to. “A certain beautiful woman in a garden, maybe?”
I run a hand over my chin. “Is it that obvious?”
He nudges me toward the house. “You wear your feelings on your sleeve, as they say.”
We go in by the orange door, and he leads me down the hallway, even though I know my way by now. Heat rises in me. The whole house quivers, hazy and warped. There’s a strumming in my body, and a whispering in the air that urges me on. Remy unlocks the door to the room where she’s kept, and it’s torturous to stand still that long.
Then . . .
Then, it doesn’t matter—because nothing exists anymore but me and this room and this insanely gorgeous painting that I want to hold and touch. This painting that is perfect—no sun damage, no fading colors, no flowers wilting from the seams.
Remy leaves me alone with the painting, and when I am mere inches away from it, I lift my hand, but I am careful not to touch the frame, or even the canvas. The painting is still a painting.
Until it’s not. There’s a stretching I feel in my own muscles and tendons, like coming awake at dawn when the first rays of a coral sunrise flare through the windowpanes. A sound goes with it—a sweet morning yawn, delicate arms unfolding from the night, and eyelids fluttering open.
Inside her garden, the woman presses her fingertips against the wall of reality between us, imploring the canvas to yield for her. Slowly at first, then more quickly, she reaches her hand through the paint, spreading her fingers.
I don’t hesitate. I reach for her, my fingers touching hers and then sliding around them. Her skin is warm and soft and radiant.
And confident.
There is a boldness in her touch that makes me feel like I can do anything, and the things I’ve done, I can do better.
I press her soft hand to my cheek; her palm is so warm, so tender on my face. I want her to come all the way out, to talk to me, to tell me who she is.
Holding her hand, holding her painted gaze, I speak the first and only thought I have. “I want more than anything for you to be at the museum. I can’t wait to meet you.”
“It is the same for me with you,” she whispers from beyond the canvas.