Chapter 5
Rathmore seemed to fall like a boulder from the sky, harsh in its Gothic aloofness against a serene sea of farmland. The pet
thought. Its remote and bucolic location was chosen, like any ancient temple of learning, to underline the necessary excision
of erudition from common rabble. The campus also boasted an uncanny number of drug dealers, all attuned to the seething opportunity
within a commonwealth of bored, existentially challenged young people.
Calla pointed out the passenger’s side window. “There’s where I made out with that TA with the mustache and the suspenders.
He thought he was the reincarnation of Jay Gatsby, remember?”
“In the field? Gross.” Vivi focused on driving at exactly the speed limit. A ragtag line of cows ambled beside the rental
car. There was a billboard with an enormous cross. He died for your sins. Sinners and cows, Rathmore’s claims to fame.
“We were staging some performance art,” Calla said. She flipped down the mirror and rubbed lipstick off her teeth.
“Of course you were.”
“It involved fence posts, from what I remember. Turn there, Bee.”
“I know. Stop back seat driving.”
“Okay, okay. Do you think anything’s changed in this old place?”
“Nope.”
Vivi had arrived on campus at the age of eighteen, lugging a gigantic, beaten suitcase behind her. Having lived in the Midwest
all her life, sequestered in a largely rural corner of Wisconsin, the Rathmore campus was familiar to her. The faithful marigold
of September limning the treetops. A perfume of manure and hay drifting through dawn-wet fields.
But the college had exuded a sense of stability and well-being foreign to her. Wool sweaters on athletic bodies; libraries
brimming with books; sunset-colored gourds huddled by doorways. Even her dorm, small and shabby as it was, overlooked a tidy
green where students gathered to study and flirt, sunlight banding their foreheads like diadems. If everything in her life
had felt vast and dangerous before, Rathmore opened its pocket and slid her in, as if she were nothing more than a trembling
animal.
What she really loved, like so many collegiate initiates, was the freedom of reinvention. At Rathmore, no longer seen as a
skewed reflection of her chirping sister or her tortured father, Vivi became a lighter version of herself. Many of her peers
had grown up in the large cities of the coasts and relished her overblown descriptions of small-town life. By casting sepia-toned
derision on the place where she grew up, Vivi was able to finally separate herself from it. If, at times, she felt a sense
of shame in misrepresenting Deer Creek and her family as objects of novelty, she quickly swallowed that shame. Distance had
not so much hardened her heart as built a protective coating around it.
But then, two years later, Calla arrived on a prestigious art scholarship in a storm of thrift-store clothing and wingtip
liner. She breathlessly elbowed her way into Vivi’s circle of friends, reminding Vivi of her place in the world. Second-best.
It took no time for Rathmore to belong to them both and for their roles to firm. The Nguy?n sisters: one reclusive, the other a flitting butterfly. The art historian and the artist, foils that could not exist without
the other.
As they drove under the archway in front of the campus, Vivi’s phone dinged. Before she could check it, Calla swiped it from
the cupholder and flipped open the notifications.
“Samuel Noi,” Calla read out. “That’s his third message this morning. Not counting the calls. Want me to tell him to cool it? No one likes a desperato.”
“Don’t.”
“What’s going on there anyway?”
“He asked me to move in with him. On my birthday.” There was no point in keeping it a secret now. Not when it was no longer
a viable option.
“Oh.” There was a pause. “What did you say?”
“I didn’t say anything. But I don’t think the offer’s on the table anymore.”
“Because of Blue Mirror? You just made his exhibition more interesting.”
“He’s not going to see it that way. He’ll think I’ve betrayed his trust. He’s not wrong to think so either. Why would he want
to be with someone who could throw everything away on a whim?”
“It wasn’t a whim.”
“It’ll seem like one to him.” But that wasn’t quite fair either. Samuel was balancing many things at once: his professional
obligations, his relationship with Vivi, and his own internal compass, which never steered him awry. He might not have believed
there was anything to find under the pentimento, but he hadn’t completely dismissed her. He would never. “Anyway, moving in
together is the least of his concerns now—or mine.”
“Well, you know what I say about all that. Cohabitating, marriage. It’s for the birds.” Calla’s tone was blithe, bordering
on offensively casual.
“You didn’t say that at your own wedding.”
In their early twenties, Calla and Wayland married in a sparkling winter ceremony of oligarchic resplendence at the Cultural
Center, all bankrolled by Wayland’s parents. Vivi stood beside Calla as her maid of honor, wearing an icy blue gown draped
with a faux fur stole, smiling until her cheeks flamed with the effort. Calla had stared adoringly into Wayland’s eyes as
he recited his handwritten vows, promising to love her through the storms of life.
Calla covered her wounded expression with a grin. “Yeah, well, I’m older, wiser now. And what I know is that the world is lousy with men, Bee. No use going to pieces over one. Could you imagine yourself, anyway, as some soccer mom hauling around juice boxes for the next decade of your life?”
Vivi thought of Phoebe onstage at the recital in her tulle skirt, searching for Vivi in the crowd, face falling once she glimpsed
the empty chair. The way Samuel used to draw droopy hearts in the condensation of the shower. They’d taken turns writing messages
inside each, some dirty, others sweet, V+S 4Ev, like a pair of teenagers.
“I guess I won’t ever know,” Vivi said, staring hard at the road in front of her.
“Freedom tastes sweet, I’ll tell you that.”
Vivi was about to respond, perhaps with something snippy and regrettable, when she felt Calla’s hand slide over, squeeze her
knee. Once, twice. In that gesture, Vivi sensed the words her sister didn’t say. I see you. I hurt for you. Her anger deflated.
How much trouble would be saved, if they could all just say what they meant.
Dr. Quan’s lecture hall was already full. The air conditioner was turned to the highest setting, but it still wasn’t powerful
enough to ease the heat of packed bodies. Vivi and Calla found a seat in the back next to a woman in a milkmaid dress and
a thousand jangling bracelets. Calla was jiggling her foot, twisting her neck to look at the other attendees. Finally, just
as Quan was introduced, Calla shot to her feet.
“It’s too stuffy in here, Bee. I’ll find you afterward.”
“Seriously?”
“Gonna check out the old studio, see if the skeletons are still roaming the department.”
“Now? This was your idea, Button,” Vivi hissed. “Calla.”
“Give me the CliffsNotes after.”
Shaking off Vivi’s grasp, Calla rushed out, whispering apologies as she stepped over the disgruntled bodies.
They all craned past her for a glimpse of the elusive Dr. Quan.
The woman with the bracelets shot Vivi a sympathetic look.
Vivi turned away, resisting the urge to provide excuses for her sister’s rudeness.
Paul Quan walked across the stage with long strides, recalling the image of a circus performer on stilts. A small yet distinguished
man in his early fifties, he exuded a bullish authority that came not so much from his appearance, but from his carriage and
voice. When he spoke, his whole body quivered so that his black hair grazed his shoulders and shook.
While in her graduate program, Vivi had attended dozens of lectures. But she’d never witnessed any like Paul’s. He galloped
across the stage, gesticulating as he hammered each point into his listeners’ ears. With his wild hair and wilder manners,
he resembled a Marxian revolutionary more than a staid scholar.
For one exhilarating hour, he brought early-twentieth-century Paris to life. In rigorous detail, he outlined the petty dramas
of artists; the sums of money each significant painting commanded; the affairs that brought men to their knees. Those faded
old salons emerged in ravishing color, bristling with scandals and musings and the frenzy of youthful inspiration. She wished
Samuel was sitting next to her, with his incisive questioning, his deeply thoughtful listening.
His last text message had been brief. Don’t walk away from this, Vivi.
She’d drafted hundreds of replies in her head and sent none. It frightened her, how much pain she was capable of inflicting.
At the Q asked me too many questions.” His
frown eased a centimeter or two. “I didn’t know he’d died. Sorry for your loss.”
“It was very sudden. He wasn’t—we weren’t close. Please. I have questions too. If you have a moment.”
He looked as if he would refuse, but then he tilted his head and studied Vivi’s pleading expression. He sighed deeply. “Fine,
then. Come to my office.”
Vivi hesitated. It felt wrong to talk to Paul without Calla. But if she went looking for Calla, she might not get this opportunity
again.
“I won’t wait,” he called. He was nearly out the door now, his shoes clomping onto the steps leading to the quad.
With a curse under her breath, she ran to catch up with him.