Chapter 36
Claire
Art has disappeared from my life, but I cannot say I miss it.
All those years working with Jo to gain attention for Vincent, to raise the prices of his paintings, to get him the recognition she believed he deserved, were more exhausting than I realized until I was no longer possessed by Jo’s obsession.
Being in service of another person’s dream will almost always crush your own, but it is impossible to know that while you are in it.
Somehow I managed to hold on to my own dream.
And now I am living and working in America with my daughter by my side.
I wish I could show this life to the young woman perched on Theo van Gogh’s deathbed, holding his hand, promising to protect his beloved wife.
Jo and I saved one another in too many ways to count.
Though I doubt we will ever speak again.
Marie-Celeste has been trained and hired to work in a Dutch school.
Scores of wealthy Dutch families have settled in the borough of Brooklyn, and they want their children taught Dutch and French and my daughter can do both.
She is capable, brave, and incredible in every way.
Meanwhile, working with the van den Bergs’ flower business is very comfortable for me.
I help them keep their American tulip accounts, acting as the right-hand woman to their widowed son, Bartel, who is raising his two teenage daughters in Brooklyn.
The girls go to school with Marie-Celeste and we have created a lovely little community.
New York City is overwhelming, more so even than Paris.
The people move quickly, but are also more unaware of anyone around them.
No one is watching me here. Everyone is too busy thinking about themselves.
I remain in shock that I made it out of Holland.
Every night until we got onto the boat to cross the Atlantic I believed the police would knock on my door and arrest me for theft.
Meeting with Henrik Swanson one last time to sell the final painting in my possession was incredibly stupid, but I needed the funds.
He welcomed me as he usually did, paid me a fair price for the painting and the sketches I handed over to him, and told me he would happily do business with me again in the future.
Then I was summarily dismissed. I didn’t have the courage to mention how he’d betrayed me to Isaac, and besides, who was I to judge loose lips and moral failings?
I told him I had nothing else to share with him.
In America I have created my own routines.
I visit the same bakery each morning for a cornetto pastry.
It is run by loud Italians, and I find their desire to hug me and feed me wildly entertaining.
From there I meet up with some of the local florists and see what is selling well, what they will want more of in the next season, and how I can best support them.
We have the most work in the spring, though the big business is now in bulbs and there is demand from all the municipal parks in the city.
It is a glorious thing to see them sprout from the ground each April.
I feel like I am back in Keukenhof Gardens, riding bikes with Jo.
I wish I didn’t think of her so often, but how could I not?
Our lives were so entwined for such a long time.
Sometimes I find myself speaking to her in my head.
Just the other day I was reading a story about Carrie Chapman Catt, a prominent suffragist leader, declaring that “New York is the battleground of the whole nation,” in terms of women’s rights.
I wonder how much Jo knows about Catt, if they have even worked together at any point.
I still follow the news, but I have lost my passion for the movement without Jo.
One day, when I am visiting a client near Park Avenue in Manhattan, I pass a poster on the outside of the armory on Lexington Avenue. I haven’t seen his face in so long that I have to do a double take at the piercing green eyes staring back at me.
Vincent.
That same tortured, penetrating stare that once followed me through countless rooms in Amsterdam and Bussum.
I reach out, my fingers hovering just above the surface of the poster. The paper feels smooth beneath my fingertips when I finally make contact, nothing like the thick impasto of the original. It is an advertisement for a showing of Impressionist work inside the building.
I try to put it out of my mind as I make my way to my appointment, but Vincent’s eyes follow me, his gaze boring into my back with each step I take. By the time I am finished with my work for the day, I find myself walking through the armory’s massive doors and paying fifty cents for a ticket.
Time folds in on itself. Perhaps I should have waited and brought Marie-Celeste along, but she is so busy with work and a new relationship that she probably would not be able to get away. And this was an impulsive decision. Once I saw his face, there was no way I could not go.
It is a show similar to the ones I helped to curate with Jo in Holland.
There are many works from Vincent’s contemporaries in here—Pissarro, Seurat, his erstwhile friend Paul Gauguin.
But I am immediately drawn to the pieces by Vincent, the ones I know so intimately.
Some of them hung in our home once. Others I remember ducking behind in the attic, playing hide-and-seek with young Vincent.
I am losing myself in a field of haystacks when I realize I am not alone.
“They are superb, are they not?” the man next to me says, unsolicited. “I have never seen anything like it.”
“They are indeed,” I reply.
“Are you a collector?”
“Oh no. I simply walked in from the street. I was curious.”
We both stand there in admiration, and I don’t plan to speak, but then the words come out of my mouth. “What brings you here?” After all these years I feel like I am still Jo’s ears when she is not present.
“I teach painting at the Art Students League. I have been in every day since this exhibition opened. I truly have never seen anything like this. I keep hoping to run into one of the Van Goghs, but I have not had the opportunity.”
This startles me. “Run into who?”
“The family of the artist,” he says apologetically. “I believe his sister, or maybe his sister-in-law, and her son are living in America and they have been visiting the show to meet with collectors. I would like our school to acquire something, but I do not know if we can match the prices.”
His words blur together. Jo is here, in New York City?
“I hope that you cross paths with them one day,” I manage.
I’m drawn to a small collection of framed letters on the wall beside Vincent’s painting of a café terrace at night.
It’s one of many that’s not signed, but is so clearly his.
He explained his inspiration for it in a letter to his sister once.
I don’t need to read the framed missive. I have it memorized.
A painting of night without black. With nothing but beautiful blue, violet and green, and in these surroundings the lighted square is colored pale sulfur, lemon green.
I enormously enjoy painting on the spot at night.
In the past they used to draw, and paint the picture from the drawing in the daytime.
But I find that it suits me to paint the thing straightaway.
Jo always loved that line, “night without black.” Next to the framed letters there is a small plaque, the writing so tiny it is impossible to read without squinting.
“Curated by Jo van Gogh–Bonger.” And under it one more name. I gasp. “With the help of Claire Donadieu.”
My heart swells with pride at seeing my name in an exhibit such as this, one an entire world away from the filthy street where I was born.
I never asked for this kind of credit. It wasn’t something I thought I wanted, but now that I see it, having my work acknowledged feels important.
She must have done this quite recently, maybe even while living here in New York.
It could mean nothing, but it could mean everything.