Chapter 38 #2
“It was my fault.” Her face contorts, though she sheds no tears. “My fault that Vincent’s delicate mind shattered. He was doing better, healing, until I came along. I stole the years Theo believed would have helped his brother achieve greatness.”
“You did nothing of the sort.”
“But I did!” she exclaims almost manically.
“When Vincent learned of our engagement while he was living in Arles, he had one of his worst episodes yet. He mutilated himself, sliced his ear off because he was so upset. He had hoped he would bleed to death that night he did it, and it was because of me.”
I knew vaguely that Vincent had hurt his ear.
He had painted portraits of himself with the ear bandaged.
I also knew from Jo that he had harmed himself one night in Arles while staying there with Paul Gauguin.
But I never found out how all of this connected to her, as Agostina had hinted all those years ago.
“Vincent’s nerves and illness were to blame. How can you think it was because of you?”
“It was my fault. Gauguin told me only after Theo died. I kept it from you. I kept it from everyone but Anna. But Paul has recently written a terribly self-serving book in which he describes the event. So many people in our world now know his version of the story of that terrible night. It is no surprise that he somehow managed to write himself as both the victim and as a hero.”
She is so agitated that she is going off on tangents. I try to slow her down.
“What actually happened that night when Vincent hurt himself?”
“Both of them had probably been drinking. Vincent first threatened Paul, and then he took a razor and sliced off part of his ear. He wrapped the ear in paper and delivered it to a young woman in the brothel, which is the detail people keep gossiping about. Paul wrote about all this. And makes it seem as though he was an innocent survivor when we know they had a difficult relationship. But what most people do not know is that Vincent did this on the day he received the letter from Theo telling him the two of us were engaged. Vincent couldn’t bear the thought that Theo would abandon him for me, and he was intent on taking his own life that night.
He had hoped he would bleed to death when he maimed himself. ”
This is it, the terrible secret Jo has carried that Agostina mentioned to me so many years ago, the thing that Anna also hinted at that has led to Jo’s obsession for all these years.
How I wish she had told me, how I could have tried to make her see she was not thinking rationally.
As women we always blame ourselves. But then again, so does the rest of the world.
Her tears finally fall as the sea breeze blows her hair out of its tidy bun.
I push the locks behind her ears and wipe away the wetness on her cheeks.
“When we got engaged, Vincent told Theo he didn’t think there would be enough space in our home for all his paintings if I was living in there as well.
As if the two of us couldn’t coexist. I have never forgotten that.
How sometimes he saw me as a rival and a nuisance, and how because of it I tried to make myself as small as I could when I arrived in my marriage, how I tried to take up no space at all in my own home so that Vincent’s paintings could thrive in there.
I resented it, oh how I resented it, but I kept trying to appeal to him and failing.
I was terribly impatient with Vincent the last time I saw him in Paris.
It was hard not to be. He talked all the time, day and night.
He would follow Theo and me to our bedroom and keep talking as we undressed, then pull a chair over to the bed and continue talking while we feigned sleep.
Other nights I awoke before dawn and saw him merely staring at me in my sleep.
I begged Theo to send him off again. And then when Vincent did shoot himself less than two years later, I felt all the guilt crash down on me like a wave.
When he died, he said he had done it, had shot himself in the chest, for the good of all of us. ”
She never should have carried this burden on her own. And she’s wrong. I know she is. “Vincent was unwell before that. We both know it. We read all his letters, all of Theo’s begging Vincent to get more help.”
“Vincent’s health spiraled from the moment we were engaged,” Jo says. “And when he died, so did Theo’s. I have blamed myself and that is why I could not rest until I fulfilled both of their dreams. I had to give them both more time.”
And in giving them time, she took it away from herself.
“Vincent van Gogh has his art hanging in New York City, among the most talked-about artists of the day,” I remind her.
“His work is on the walls of museums around the world, his name mentioned in textbooks. That is all because of you. You did more than Theo ever could have.”
“Do you believe that?” she asks with naked vulnerability.
I do with every ounce of my soul. Her husband was a good man. Jo is a great woman. “Absolutely.”
“I believe you are the one person I needed to hear that from.”
“You achieved so much that is great and noble and unexpected. You have lived for something.”
“I have.” She smiles. “And there are more days now that I believe I can finally rest, though the guilt will always live inside me. Theo used to say ‘someone who is satisfied in the storm can still appreciate tranquility when it comes.’ I am trying so desperately to appreciate the tranquility.” She unrolls the canvas on her lap and I gasp at what she has brought for me.
Her fingers trace the buttery petals of the sunflowers.
“I used to think these were terribly ugly, but I have come to love them. They are awkward and unfinished. Just as we are in real life. Before Vincent, too much art portrayed a perfection that didn’t exist in reality.
Vincent was never afraid of showing the messiness. ”
I hadn’t thought about it like that, but as she says it out loud, I realize it’s one of the reasons I often felt attracted to his paintings. I lean down to inspect it even closer. Jo carries on.
“Vincent painted almost all of his Sunflowers for Paul Gauguin. He was obsessed with him and he hung them all over the walls of Paul’s room to welcome him when he arrived in Arles to paint with him.
Vincent called it a bouquet of paintings.
Quaint, yes? It was his way of showing gratitude when he couldn’t show it in other ways.
This is the only one I still have. Theo would have wanted you to have this one. ”
“I love it.”
“They remind me of you,” Jo says. “Sunflowers are some of the hardiest flowers. They can grow in almost any type of soil where other flowers would struggle. They can withstand terrible droughts, even fires. They adapt remarkably well, much as you have.”
I don’t know how to respond, so I merely grasp her hand in mine.
“Gauguin wrote that he was terrified of Vincent after what happened with the ear. He fled town right after. But even though he knew I was seething about his book, he also wrote to me from one of those islands he lives on and asked me if I could mail him some sunflower seeds in memory of his old friend. All things can be forgiven with time.”
“Even things we don’t deserve to be forgiven for.”
“Especially those. I hope you won’t sell it for some time. Keep it in case you or Marie-Celeste or one of her children ever truly needs the money. I have a feeling it will be worth much more one day.”
“About Marie-Celeste,” I begin. “About her father. I don’t…” I have no idea how to say this out loud, how to admit to Jo that as much as I have always hoped that Theo was not the father of my child, I could never know for certain. She stops me though.
“I know what you are trying to tell me. And it does not matter. Your daughter is a wise and wonderful girl, and you are giving her the life she deserves. You have been her mother and her father.”
We both choose not to pursue the topic any further, but there is one small thing that I do want to tell Jo about Theo.
“Theo once told me something too that I have kept with me. Would you like to hear it?”
“Absolutely.”
“He said being happy together is not just a matter of being kind to each other, it is each spinning its own thread, knowing that if there’s ever a difficult knot, one won’t have to unravel it alone.
He was speaking of marriage, of his union with you, but I think about it often.
It could also refer to a long friendship.
In fact, I think it perfectly describes our friendship. ”
Jo nods slowly. “What we had, our friendship, it meant at least as much, no…it meant more than both of my marriages.”
Together we gaze on the canvas in my lap, at the sunflowers shining with their own light in the bright afternoon sun. I trace my fingers along the petals, wanting to see everything Jo sees in me.
She isn’t just gifting me a painting; she’s giving me a reminder of our survival, a reminder that together we have managed both to reach for the sun and to thrive.