Chapter 14
Vivi was pacing near the entrance of the estate. She’d kicked up the gravel and now pieces of it rattled inside her shoes,
jamming into her heel. It was evening and the bats were clicking in the trees, the sharp points of their wings slashing against
moonlight. In the distance, cathedral bells rang. Nine, ten, eleven. She peered past the edge of the gates to the empty road
beyond. The trees were a scribbled mass.
Late that afternoon, the sightseeing bus had returned with its stock of tourists dragging souvenir sacks behind them. Glossy
fridge magnets of La Moisson, casters of salt from the Rh?ne, scarves printed with the flowers of Provence. The sight of the tourists, so self-satisfied,
so careless, made her tut in judgment. When had art become so consumable? The ineffable, made common. And where the hell was
Calla?
The day had begun with revelation. Its tail was riddled with unreasonable irritation and a deeper, lacerating wretchedness.
An email had come through from Abel. He told her that the board had decided to terminate her employment at the Forster. He
was curt and professional, citing misconduct and truancy, firm in his declaration that there would be no severance offered.
He didn’t state any legal repercussions, though his language betrayed the stiffness of oversight from the museum’s lawyers.
There was an underlying threat of what the institution could have done, if they chose. Vivi assumed Samuel was responsible for this leniency.
But it was Abel’s tone that struck her. He’d always served as a bit of a paternal crutch for Vivi. Good-natured, mild, gently
encouraging. His oblivious placidity, a panacea amid her confusions. But she sensed none of his usual affection in the email,
only a cold finality that cut her in unexpected places.
At the close of her Forster interview all those years ago, Abel had asked, simply, “Why art?”
She could have responded with a thousand pat answers. Within a lifetime of pretzeling herself into different roles—steady
sister, dependable daughter, supportive best friend—she understood how to give people what they wanted. But Abel’s frankness
made her want to root for the truth.
“Art is the only home I’ve ever known.” She hesitated, but he nodded reassuringly, and she found herself spilling the rest
in a rush. “I grew up in a fractured house. The adults in my life couldn’t save me. But art could. Every time my heart broke,
art filled in the rifts, like kintsugi. Making the cracks meaningful and mine, something I created, rather than a thing that another person did to me.”
Once she began, she couldn’t stop talking. She described the sisters’ stick drawings in the dirt. The way she would carve
scenes into fallen logs with her father’s pocketknife. Calla crumbling dead leaves, then arranging the fragments into new
images, an autumnal mosaic that blew away with the first stray gust. The woods had become the sisters’ canvas, their color.
It was—
Vivi paused abruptly, struggling to catch her breath, but she never had to finish, because Abel filled in the gap by telling
her that she was hired. He’d known that it would take a lifetime of words to answer such a question.
Nearly a decade and it was done. One mistake that cost her career. The Chicago art community was small. Word would get around.
Within days, other museums would learn what she’d done, if they didn’t know already, and she’d be dubbed a persona non grata.
The worst part was that Abel’s dismissal was warranted; she’d made it impossible for him to land on another outcome.
Knowing this, Vivi grieved so many things. The raised woodgrain of a stretcher beneath her fingertips, the back-aching, myopia-inducing, satisfying labor of inpainting a canvas with her favorite hairline brush. The hush of the galleries after all the patrons had left,
a quiet that sank into her bones and massaged her worn muscles like ointment.
She saw Samuel pacing her lab as she worked, tripping over his words as he explained a new idea for an exhibition. The two
of them, leaving together after everyone else had clocked out, speaking a language of beauty, of love, as they dawdled on
the tree-lined streets outside the museum.
Losing her job at the Forster was like losing a place in the world. It was losing Samuel. She’d known, abstractly, what her
decision to strip the painting would cost her. Then she read Sam’s email, the one that felt like a goodbye, and felt the cost
rising. But even after that, there’d been a part of her that thought she could reverse it all and reenter her life as if nothing
had changed. Now, without any foothold at the museum, she saw that she couldn’t reclaim anything. What was done was done.
Art would exist without the Forster. She understood that. But she’d been banished to its outer folds, a spectator rather than
a participant. That banishment resurfaced all the old fears of being left behind and rendered her small and perplexed again.
Online, she searched for news on Sea to Earth. The exhibition opening was just about a fortnight away. She wondered how Samuel would explain the stripped painting, if
he’d mention her name or erase her role altogether.
Would there be a grand reveal? Once Blue Mirror was unveiled, the rapacious art scholars would revive their interest in Ly, scrounging through the archives for any hint of who the blue lovers could be.
Maybe Quan would make Ly’s letter public; then everyone would know about the offering.
Another scholar was bound to put the clues together more efficiently
than Vivi had. They’d inch in on her territory and she’d be powerless to stop them. She’d begun this quest because of Calla,
for Calla, but along the way, she imagined she might have gotten something for herself out of it. What she managed to forget was
that the world didn’t hand out favors, not to people like her.
What if, after all that, there was no offering? Was the journal a worthy enough exchange for her entire career? The sinking in her gut told her that it wasn’t.
She was still flailing in the dark.
After she read Abel’s email of dismissal, Vivi stormed into Calla’s room in their suite and opened her sister’s suitcase.
She flung around bits of silk and lace, a romance novel with a bright cartoon cover, a package of Gauloises, a tin of Altoids.
Without articulating it, Vivi knew exactly what she was searching for: a reason to release her anger, which was, at its heart,
only a profound helplessness.
Finally, in an inner compartment of Calla’s suitcase, she found a plastic pill bottle with a scratched-off label. Inside,
shell-pink ovals clattered. They were no larger than Tic Tacs, harmless-looking. Momentary exultation soared through her,
but it was replaced with a greater sense of self-loathing. Why was she like this?
Vivi admitted that she’d been looking for evidence of regression since the night Calla appeared on the museum steps. Every
erratic breath, every strange twitch, every unreadable look became confirmation of what Vivi had always known about her sister.
Calla was an addict. She would always be an addict. Vivi would never be free of any of it. The manic bursts of activity, the
cavernous depressions, that worry that stalked Vivi, like Grendel’s mother in her gnashing anguish. History repeating itself,
in a nightmare merry-go-round.
It wasn’t Vivi’s fault that she found what she was looking for. She pocketed the pills. There was nothing left but the confrontation
that had been building for weeks—years. She went outside to wait for Calla.
Finally, at half past eleven, there was the sound of a motor in the distance.
An electric Voxan tore down the road, screeching to a stop in front of the gates.
Its driver twisted the throttle so the snarls of the motorcycle cut into the peace of the estate.
Laughing, Calla jumped from the back of the bike, shaking her hair behind her.
There was a flush in her cheeks, a frenzied light to her eyes.
“Mon dieu, you’ll wake the dead,” she said. She leaned over to flick the driver’s collar. He pulled her to him, kissed her
hard on the lips. His face was in shadow, so Vivi couldn’t tell who it was, but it didn’t matter. Calla drew away, staggering
a bit as she waved him off. “Thanks for the ride, handsome.”
The Voxan revved away. As Calla passed Vivi, she said, “Don’t. I don’t want to hear it.”
Vivi followed. “Who is he?”
“Alain? He’s a doll. I was having a drink in town, and he said he wanted to show me around. And he did, if you know what I mean.”
“You can’t just go running off with a stranger.”
“You know what they say about strangers. Actually, I have no idea! Too many spritzes. Do you have any aspirin? My head is
killing me.”
“You couldn’t leave a note? Or wait for me?”
Calla snorted. “The way you waited for me, before reading the rest of the journal?”
“You snooped in my laptop.”
“It was laying open. Your password’s been the same since you were thirteen. I only skimmed.” Calla struggled out of her jacket.
She was noisily tromping up the stairs to the rosebud suite, unmindful of the sleeping guests. Once they got inside the rooms,
she began to root in Vivi’s suitcase, looking for her toiletries bag. “Don’t deflect. You promised you would wait to read
the rest of the entries with me. It was our discovery.”
“You didn’t wait before going to the cottage.”
“Tit for tat, huh? Same as ever?”
There was a snag under Calla’s careless words, one Vivi didn’t want to examine just then. She was turned around. She’d expected
to be the one lobbying accusations; she didn’t know she’d be playing defense in this conversation.
“So this was punishment,” she shot back, trying to recover the edge she’d given up. “You disappearing all day, in a foreign country with no way for me to find you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“It’s not ridiculous. It’s a pattern. I do something that makes you mad. You make me chase after you until I’m worried sick. And I can’t even apologize because