Chapter 10
Mist draped onto the Citroen as they drove up to the entrance of Maison de Notre Rêve. The estate emerged through a haze,
little resembling the vibrancy Vivi had memorized in Van Gogh’s sun-drenched paintings. Aside from Moonbathers, Ly had never painted Arles. Or Europe, for that matter. Yet it was easy to imagine what he saw when he walked from the train
station, past the cobblestone streets and out onto the dusty paths that traced the Rh?ne.
Vivi didn’t glimpse the lauded Provencal light that day, but she could imagine it. Van Gogh had a vision for a utopian Arles
that would welcome the most innovative artists. He’d seen flourishing salons, painters dangling cigarettes as they loped along
the streets, uninhibited color and romance, a display of unleashed, instinctive force. Perhaps Ly might have found himself reflected in the other artist’s vision.
After the last letter from Justine in 1936, there was no other mention of Ly—L—in Blanc’s correspondence.
To the siblings, it was as if he’d never existed beyond that summer.
Even Ly’s disappearance, seven years later, didn’t elicit any missives to or from Justine.
The silence around L didn’t feel incidental
to Vivi.
Maison de Notre Rêve lay at the center of the property past a fence with blocky posts.
A drive curved around a stone fountain from which a statue of Diana of the Hunt emerged, her palm bent toward the sky in offering.
A bird sat on her sculpted fingertips, tail erect as the vertical bar of an exclamation mark.
They’d left Rathmore three days ago, but already, the time on campus felt like a moment from another life.
Beyond the gardens, along the farthest boundary, Vivi made out a small building thumbed from a clearing. It was camouflaged
and inconsequential, a rattling coin inside an oversized purse.
“Do you think the cottage is open to the public?” Calla asked, pointing.
“That’s it?” Vivi was distracted, unaccustomed to driving, much less driving in the rain in another country. But she’d be
damned if she let Calla, with her lead foot, get behind the wheel. “Doesn’t look like much.”
“I’d build it in painted straw,” Calla said dreamily. “With dried clovers for grass. And then I’d drape everything in organza.”
“You could. Paint it, I mean. Or collage it, whatever. Did you bring your sketchbooks?”
“I haven’t worked since—” Calla picked a piece of lint off her knee, flicked it out the window where it looped into the wind.
“Since Enmeshment?”
Calla pressed her lips together, refusing to be caught by her sister’s conversational hook. It was as if there was a hole
where the memory should have been. But wasn’t Vivi masking herself in amnesia too? If she could have, Vivi would have chosen
to erase two moments from her life: the night her mother disappeared and that wretched night of Calla’s opening. Both cleaved
the sisters in opposite and irreversible ways.
Calla cut her eyes away from Vivi. “There’s the lot. Park as close as you can, will you? I don’t want my hair getting wet.”
Inside the Maison de Notre Rêve, a tinkling melody came from the lobby speakers.
Near the baseboards, a cleaning person stooped with a rag, working at the scuffs with weary patience.
All the obvious signs of a hotel were there—signage in teal and cream, a scalloped logo embossed on linen stationery, chairs arranged in tête-à-tête formations—and their sedate order irritated Vivi.
She wanted to feel like she was in Ly’s home, but any connection had been neatly severed by the deliberate ahistoricity of the inn.
Behind the desk sat a large-framed woman with short reddish waves. Jean, according to her name tag. She made no effort to
disguise the fact that the novel she was reading was far more interesting than any disheveled tourists arriving on this drizzling
day. Vivi gave their names and asked for two room keys.
“You are in room five on the second floor,” Jean said. “We call it the Rosebud Suite. It is the most magnificent in the inn.”
In response to Vivi’s raised brows, Calla whispered, “I splurged. We deserve it.”
Where, Vivi wondered, was all this largesse coming from? Maybe the divorce settlement was more generous than predicted. Or
maybe Calla was flying by on credit, eschewing the practical for immediate pleasures. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Vivi’s own savings account, formerly so flush, continued to dwindle with each new charge she wracked. She was on unpaid administrative
leave, still paying rent on the apartment in Lakeview. There would be a time in the near future when she’d have to return
to reality. If she couldn’t talk her way back into a job at the Forster, she’d have to find a new one. But the thought was
too sad to contemplate just then. She was in France. She was with her sister. For once, worry could wait.
Jean continued. “Breakfast is from eight in the morning until ten. There is a pamphlet on Arles in your room.”
“Are we free to walk the grounds?” Calla asked.
“Of course. The gardens are at your disposal. I wouldn’t now, though. There is a cocktail hour on the terrace at sundown.
If the rain clears.”
“And the cottage?” Jean gave them a puzzled look. Vivi showed her the picture from the Wandering Wilsons’ blog. “The servants’
cottage on the property. Could we see it?”
Jean wrinkled her nose. “That is not for guests. Technically, it’s not on our property any longer. The land was parceled out in recent years. That cottage now belongs to a man next door.”
Calla asked, “Do you think we could talk to him?”
“Ah, impossible. He will not welcome it.” She did not elaborate.
“I’m hoping to see the cottage, because . . .” Vivi’s arm stilled her. Patience, she counseled.
“Would you like a towel?”
“No, we’ll go up now,” Calla said.
Vivi, unaccustomed to luxury, averse to it in many ways, had never seen anything as fine as the suite that Calla had booked.
Two smaller rooms converged into a spacious sitting area that overlooked a long and narrow pool at the back of the hotel.
Thick barnwood beams angled over sloped ceilings. Rows of candles sat on the brass-edged sidebar.
True to its name, the suite boasted a wall-length mural of a rose garden with red and pink blooms spilling from spiky-leafed
bushes. In the bathroom, there were bars of soap shaped like roses. Even the robes held the faint scent of tuberose, as if
they’d been hung on a flowering trellis to dry. Calla popped the cork on a chilled bottle of champagne sitting in a carafe
on the sidebar.
Vivi sank into one of the chairs, not caring that the wet from her clothes was seeping into the upholstery. “I feel like I’ve
been traveling for years.”
Calla poured two glasses. Raised hers up for a toast. “To ancestors and offerings! To new starts!”
“And old ghosts.”
Vivi sipped her champagne, but Calla downed hers in a quick gasp, sighing in pleasure as the bubbles broke down her throat.
She grabbed for the bottle again.
“Are you sure you should?” Vivi asked, reaching for Calla’s flute.
Calla held it away from her. “Lighten up, Bee, we’re in paradise!”
“Just one, okay?”
“I’m not a child.”
But you are an addict, Vivi thought to herself.
As if hearing her thoughts, Calla scowled, setting down the flute so forcibly that Vivi was surprised it didn’t break.
She flounced to the bathroom, muttering about overbearing sisters all the way.
But Vivi caught the flash of hurt on her sister’s face, a broken sort of vulnerability that never failed to make Vivi feel guilty.
While they traveled, Vivi had watched her sister for signs of distress. She didn’t know what she was looking for, exactly,
only some deviance from the norm. But Calla seemed like her usual self. She flirted with the airline attendants. She bought
piles of fashion magazines that she didn’t even look at. As the plane took off, she bounced in her seat, excited as a kitten
with the zoomies, while Vivi gripped her seat handles, murmuring plane crash statistics to herself. Counting the rows to find
the nearest emergency exit.
What would they do if there was a water landing? Calla couldn’t swim. But there would be floating devices, Vivi could carry
them both for a time.
She’d forgotten how it felt to be on constant alert like this, forced to anticipate all the ways a person could fall from
grace. It was like living two lives: one for yourself, the other as a helpless witness, heart in your throat. Even with Phoebe,
Vivi had never felt such responsibility. She didn’t need to; Samuel had always stood at the parenting helm.
For a time, during Calla’s marriage, Vivi had breathed more easily, knowing that Wayland was at her sister’s side. Yet even
then, there’d been signs of dissipation. Calla and Wayland’s passion was a fragile sort, easily stoked but combustible. Transitory.
The parties in the Pilsen loft: thick clouds of smoke ringing beautiful people, music that jumped like a racing heartbeat.
Lines of coke on coffee tables, tabs slipped under waiting tongues. The inexorable clinking of glass, a sound that reminded
her of Tu?n tossing a bottle into the overfull recycling bin each morning before his shift. Calla, shouting at Wayland. Wayland, storming
out into the snow, slamming the door behind him. But they always came back together, again and again, until the one day they
didn’t.
Maybe, in her relief and her oversized loyalty to Wayland, Vivi had let herself ignore the signs of rupture in their marriage. She wished she could talk to Way about it, but it was impossible now.
Calla emerged from the bathroom, hair brushed, a shiny coat of crimson on her lips. She looked refreshed, energized from the
hundreds of miles crossed. “Come on, let’s go exploring.”
“I’m going to need a moment.”
“Well, I’m going to see what I can find.”
“Not the cottage. Please? Wait for me to go to the cottage.”
“Fine. But don’t snooze the day away, lazy.”
After Calla left, Vivi threw herself onto one of the beds. Without bothering to pull the blankets off or draw the curtains,