Chapter 66
I haven’t been truthful about everything.
For one thing, I remember what happened in the studio that day, during the storm. Before the painting took me and everything went dark. Though I can’t explain how I was found outside the locked studio door, so I leave that one be.
However, I tell Ana, Wyatt, and Dr. Rice at the hospital, after I regain consciousness from surgery, that I have no recollection of what happened. “The last thing I remember is going upstairs, wanting to double-check the storm windows on the third floor,” I say.
Like Yasmeen, they are grateful the memory of my water breaking, of the collapse, is lost to the trauma.
“All that matters is that you’re still here. That you’re both safe,” Wyatt replies, through unrelenting tears, holding our brand-new swaddled baby in his arms.
I also can’t explain the shape the painting is in, when I finally get home and unlock my studio door.
Not only is it undamaged; it’s completely conserved.
Flat on my workbench, the inflated cover tightly wrapped against the corners.
When I uncover it, holding my breath, I see the subject’s eyes are closed.
The heart in her hand still, no evidence it ever beat wildly in three dimensions.
Insect wings and antennae intact, mouth closed in its original semi-frown.
I arrange for immediate, same-day shipping.
Raoul arrives to pack the piece for me, bringing blueberry and lemon muffins, a baby rattle ideal for teething, and an art kit for Clementine.
Two hours later a drone carries the crated painting out of my house and off to the collector many states away.
While my ordeal left me with no physical reminders—minus the broken wrist—there have been mental fractures.
Moments when I find myself drifting, not quite tethered to the present.
Strange bits of knowledge I can’t remember learning land in my mind, like with the cicadas.
Or like the delivery of the dragonfly wings.
Sometimes, odd sounds and smells reach me, like the flutter of insect wings, but without the insects.
Or the sickly-sweet tang of old-fashioned pink bubblegum, which you haven’t been able to buy for years because of governmental food additive restrictions.
Sometimes I wonder if it truly all happened the way I remember.
It would be easy to doubt my experiences.
To believe the stress of the pregnancy caused a mental breakdown, this bizarre separation with reality.
I do try that on, to see how it feels. But I’m left with too many hanging threads.
Far too many moments that don’t fit neatly into that box.
These days, I think often about what my mother wrote in her presentation. The one she never delivered, because she fell down the stairs at our home and broke her neck before she could.
When we restore art—breathing new life into the brushstrokes, colors, shapes, and textures—a conservator must ask: have we also brought the artist herself back from the dead?
It’s a good, relevant question that I don’t know the answer to.
Or maybe I don’t want to know the answer.