Chapter 11
It was early evening, the fading light filtering through the conservation room’s tall, arched windows. A half dozen canvases, each in various stages of treatment, were clasped on nearby workstations. The room smelled lightly of acetone and the navel orange I’d recently peeled.
We were alone, the last of her museum colleagues leaving as we arrived.
Mom had missed most of the afternoon because I had an unfortunate run-in with a field hockey stick during gym class.
I sat on her stool, spinning it slowly in circles, nibbling a sweet orange wedge as she gathered the files she needed for that evening’s work session.
I was impatient to leave, the way teenagers get with any plans other than their own, but kept busy sharing photos of my three stitches and black eye on Snapchat.
A moment later I realized how quiet the room had gone and glanced up from my phone. Mom stood at the end of her workstation, across from where I sat, staring over my shoulder.
“You good?” I asked, raising one brow, then wincing at the pain. I followed her gaze to the item behind me. Leclerc’s The Child, and Mom’s current project. I couldn’t see much of it, the painting draped in protective plastic. “Mom, is everything okay?”
“Did you know all art is made by the dead, Mathilde?”
“Huh?” I remember feeling confused at first, then concerned by her odd question and the flat tone of her voice. “You mean, all the art here?”
I glanced around the room then, at the various canvases, thinking about the long-dead artists who had painted them. I got a strange feeling in my stomach and put the rest of the orange down.
“Yes, all this art,” she said, a faint smile tugging one corner of her mouth. Her eyes seemed unfocused, and too much of their whites showed. Like they’d rolled back slightly.
Is she having a stroke? I tried to remember what we’d learned in health class about the signs of a stroke but could only bring to mind the acronym FAST, though not what it stood for.
“Every brushstroke, every line, all made by hands that no longer move,” Mom continued, one hand rising as though painting strokes into the air. “These artists—they’re gone now. But the art remains. Don’t you see? The dead speak through their paintings.”
Something went cold in my center then, and I shivered hard. I slid from the stool and tucked my phone into my sweats’ pocket. I was definitely ready to go home.
“Morbid much, Mom?” I heard the slight shake in my voice, tried to hide it with a chuckle. “And you give me a hard time about listening to those true crime podcasts.”
But Mom remained rooted in place, her eyes back on the Leclerc. “My job, Mathilde, is to bring these paintings to life. Removing imperfections left by time, the elements. Repairing accidents. Cleaning others’ mistakes. But this work, it can…” She shook her head, then sighed.
The chill left my center, crawled up my spine. My hands were in tight knots and a headache was forming behind my eyes. Mom lowered her voice to a near whisper, and I had the bizarre thought it was so the paintings wouldn’t hear her.
“These canvases hold more than just the artists’ skill and vision. Sometimes they carry fragments of the artists themselves. Their beliefs, their fears…even their obsessions. When we conserve them, we breathe life back into those fragments. And sometimes—” Mom hesitated. My heart fluttered.
“Sometimes what?” I croaked out.
There was a loud bang against the windowpane. Gasp-worthy loud. Left behind, a tiny circle of soft, downy white feathers on the glass. A bird hit the window, I thought. It’s only a bird. I wondered if it was still alive but didn’t want to look outside to find it lying dead on the ground.
The bird striking the window seemed to shake Mom out of her bizarre reverie, and she cocked her head at me. “What, honey?”
I muttered in annoyance, though it was really a cover for how rattled I felt. “Can we just go?”
“Yes, I think I have everything I need.” Mom thumbed through her file folders, nodded, smiled. “How’s the head?”
Touching the bandaged spot I said, “I have a headache.”
With a final glance around, Mom tucked her files under her arm. She turned out the lights and held the door, waiting for me to go first so she could engage the keypad’s lock.
But right before I stepped out I heard something—a dull swish, or sweep. It was rhythmic, every two seconds or so, and filled the room with an echo.
“Do you hear that?” I asked. I held my breath, listening. Swish…sweep…swish…
It sounded familiar, and yet at the same time eerily unnatural.
“I don’t hear anything,” Mom finally said. “Maybe it’s that headache?”
“Maybe,” I replied, without conviction.