The art of vanishing, p.13
The Art of Vanishing, page 13
“I am as well. I will, of course, ask her and report back.”
She pulled out a cigarette. We were all a bit unsure if we were free to go about our evenings. It seemed there was a collective decision to hold tight for a moment to see if anything changed. “Have you met Jean’s special friend?” Marguerite asked Pierre.
“Marguerite,” I warned.
“What?” she asked, exhaling a plume of smoke. “It was just a question.”
Pierre shook his head. “No,” he said. “But Maman has. I saw them with her one night, in the garden.” He looked at me and shrugged. I didn’t fault him. It wasn’t a secret. But I hated being reminded that everyone’s eyes were on me—ironic, I know, given my day job.
After enough time passed to assure everyone that the coast was clear, Marguerite and Pierre stood up from their bench. “Well, have a lovely evening,” Marguerite called out as she glided away, her words lasting longer in the room than she did. Pierre also pulled on a cap and ran along after her. My mother rose from her rocker, and once again, I was alone. Waiting.
I wondered what Claire would have to say about the weird behavior of the museum director today. I wondered if there wasn’t something grimmer going on outside these walls; it could even be something as serious as a war. I worried for Claire’s safety. I tried to ground myself. I was taking this too far. Claire would, of course, be fine. She would have mentioned if a war was imminent, wouldn’t she? The issue must have been something more benign; maybe they were worried about a possible theft. Now that would make things interesting.
Each year they upgraded the security in our museum, the anti-theft technology getting more and more sophisticated. It wasn’t as easy to steal things as it had been before. But if they kept upgrading the systems, theft must still be possible. I myself had never witnessed it, but that didn’t mean the threat wasn’t real.
I spent a bit of time lost in my fantasy about being a bystander to an extremely elaborate museum heist. In my mind, the thieves wore three-piece suits and smoked cigars as they carried the artwork out to where an old-fashioned getaway car—a horse, maybe—was waiting. There was even a musical score, something jaunty and suspenseful. Maybe something string-heavy.
I woke myself from my daydream. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but I knew it had been quite a while. Claire still wasn’t there. On the other hand, we’d closed early, so it would make sense that I had lost perspective on how long it had been. Maybe it was still early. I had no way to mark time except for the sky through the windows, which had been dark for at least some time now. My shoulders were hunched together with stress. I unclenched them and massaged my jaw. I wasn’t tired, I didn’t get tired, but I was feeling quite stiff. I switched my position and took a seat on the floor. I lay on my side, propping myself up on my elbow.
What if she never came back? What if the bad taste in my mouth from last night was how things ended between us? What if this was all over?
I rolled to my back. It must have been many hours by now. I was the patient one. I could handle this. Maybe Claire had a larger assignment now, maybe she needed to clean additional rooms along with ours. Maybe Linda had caught her up in conversation in the break room. Maybe they were receiving new instructions tonight and would be up later.
Later came and went. There was still no sign of her. There was no sign of anyone. Maybe there had been an emergency at home, something with her family, and she couldn’t make it to work today. Remembering how distressed she had been the night I was meeting with Antoinette and she came in to find our frame empty, I resolved to maintain my post all night in case she showed up. It’s not like I had anywhere else to be. It was funny how quickly my brain and body forgot that I used to spend every night like this. I had become so accustomed to Claire’s presence, I didn’t know how to be alone anymore.
The sun rose, flooding the gallery with cool morning light, illuminating tiny dust particles floating in the air. Marguerite and Pierre returned; they could see it written on my face.
“She never showed?” Marguerite asked. I shook my head. “Neither did Linda.” My composure collapsed with relief. It wasn’t just us; Claire had not left me. It was everyone who had not come. But relief was quickly replaced again with concern. What if something larger was afoot? What if there was a war out there?
“Wow,” Pierre said quietly. “I guess last night we were really and truly alone.”
“I guess so,” Marguerite said. “How strange.” Her fingers traced her black ribbon. “Well, it’s nearly time.” Out of habit, we all took up our usual positions, waiting to hear the reception hall come to life.
It never did. After a few hours, I noticed figures in paintings around us begin to drop their poses.
“What the devil is going on out there?” Marguerite asked.
“Maybe it’s a massive snowstorm?” I posited. We looked through the windows to the sunny day outside. It was doubtful, even to the most naïve of forecasters.
“Well, I’m sure they’ll be back in a few days,” Marguerite said through her third cigarette of the morning. Sensing my heightened anxiety, she added, “I’m sure everyone will be back.”
“What if…” I could hardly get the sentence out. “What if something’s really wrong out there?”
Marguerite thought about my question before responding. “Jean, if something really is wrong out there, what are you going to do about it?” With that, she walked away.
She was right. There was absolutely nothing I could do.
Pierre put a small hand on my shoulder. “I’m sure everything is okay, Jean. I bet she’ll be back tonight!” I patted his hand with my own. I couldn’t summon the same optimism, so I said nothing.
Claire
“Hello?” I answered my phone, the dread audible in my voice. It was Monday. The phone number on the incoming call was still unsaved in my contacts, but this time, I knew who was calling.
“Hi, Claire, it’s Jamie again,” the woman on the line said, confirming my suspicions.
“Hi, Jamie, how are you?” I said, feeling a compulsion to be polite even though I knew the odds were slim that this call would go the way I wanted it to. I was no idiot; the news had been inescapable these past few days.
“Oh, you know, it’s been a weird one. Not issues I’d ever thought I’d have to tackle in the first few months of this job or maybe ever but…” she trailed off.
“Yeah, I hear that. I don’t think any of us saw this one coming.”
“I’m sure someone did. Alas, I am guessing you’ve anticipated I’m not calling with good news.”
“I figured as much.”
“Now, we don’t really have any sense of how long this will last or where we’ll be when it’s all over. We are temporarily closing the museum but it is just that, temporary. We are complying with the government mandates to keep all nonessential employees at home, so we’re stripping back everything except security and anyone necessary to current conservation projects. Basically, we have to keep the art safe until we can all get back to normal.”
I doubted we would ever return to what we’d thought of as normal before, but this didn’t seem like the proper time for a debate.
“Okay,” I said.
“So, now for the details part. We are going to lay you all off. I recognize that phrase sounds terrifying, but when we do, you’ll be eligible to apply for unemployment, which I’d recommend you do as soon as possible. And I want to say as clearly as I can that we fully intend to hire you all back when we are able. We just don’t know when that will be. I’m hoping this lasts for no more than a few weeks but…we just don’t know.” Her naturally authoritative tone was slipping with each bit of doubt she showed. I knew somewhere in the back of my brain that this situation must be a horror to manage, but I could only think about myself in the moment.
I couldn’t believe this was how Jean and I had left things, me tight-lipped and refusing him the one thing he asked. Telling him the truth seemed so easy with so many days and one global catastrophe between us now. He didn’t even know I loved him.
“I hope that’s true,” I said, not really hearing the words as they came out of my mouth. “I really hope I’ll get to come back.” It was an understatement.
“Me too,” Jamie promised. “I will do everything in my power to make it so.”
I had, of course, heard promises and been burned before, so I took this with a grain of salt. I said my goodbyes and hung up the phone; I was sure she had many other calls to make. With a click, she was gone. Tears were already rolling down my cheeks. I’d known the whole time this was too good to be true and just like that, it was gone. I was mad at myself; this was not about me. People were getting really sick, lives were at stake. But how would I support my family?
I couldn’t stop the stupid tears from coming. I let myself lean up against the counter of our tiny kitchen and I cried my heart out. Would Jean have any idea what had happened, or would he think we were all gone for good? Did he have a frame of reference for what this was? I’d heard them compare it on the news to the Spanish flu, but that had been 1918. If Jean had been painted in 1917, he would never have lived through it himself.
After my tear ducts had run themselves dry, I ran the tips of my sleeves under my eyes, wiping away any mascara that might have smudged and silently sniffling. I needed to pull myself together; I didn’t want to scare anyone. I needed to make a plan.
I opened our cabinet and stared into it in horror. There was barely anything in there that could be pulled together to make dinner, even though it had only been three days since I’d last braved the hellscape that our grocery store had become. What on earth had I been doing when I was in there on Friday?
Well, Friday had been one heck of an afternoon, but I’d managed to get out of the house with a few minutes to spare. I shoved the apple in my hand in between my teeth, holding it there as I leaned down to put my car key into the lock. Oh, how I envied the women in the grocery store parking lot whose fancy cars unlocked at the mere signal of their approach. They didn’t even have to open their purses.
Because Gracie had jumped in for me, I would have just enough time to do a grocery store run before work. I wouldn’t be able to grab anything perishable but maybe I could scoop up a few more bottles of water and dry-food things. That’s what they kept saying to do on the news, at least.
The car blared to life, the radio screaming with the voices of our local news anchors. I forgot Gracie had borrowed my car earlier. I turned the volume dial all the way down and switched over to the soft rock station; I needed a break from the doomsaying. The news was all panic these days.
I pulled out from the tiny spot Gracie had squeezed the car into and zipped on over to the highway, pulling up to the store a few minutes later. Twenty minutes left before I had to be on the way to the museum—this would be my own version of that show Gracie loved, Supermarket Sprint or something like that.
The grocery store experience was far more harrowing than I had anticipated. My basket holding the few nonperishable items I’d found left on the shelves looked silly compared to the other shoppers’ carts stacked high with valuable items like Clorox wipes and six-packs of paper towels. Even the store-brand goods that I favored—because I couldn’t afford anything else—were nearly all picked over. I grabbed some extra vitamin C and a few boxes of Easy Mac, a favorite in our household, and spent way too long evaluating which soup flavors I’d never heard of before would taste best. I went with split pea and ham. The chicken noodles were long gone. I was sure this wasn’t enough, but I couldn’t think of anything else to grab. What were the odds they’d shut the stores down? No matter what was happening or how bad things got, people needed food. Right?
I could admit it: I was distracted. My brain was not functioning on its normal wavelength. Instead, it was occupied by thoughts of how Jean was doing, what he was feeling about us, about the way things had ended the night before. I was psyching myself up to go in there and tell him everything. At first, I thought I’d just start at the beginning, but overnight I’d realized it was time he knew all of it.
Everything in the store was taking longer than expected. The aisles were crowded with people like me, confused about what to buy to prep for something none of us understood. The line for checkout stretched down the cereal aisle and was moving slower than normal, as both the cashiers and the customers were taking pains to stand as far apart as possible. One lady was wiping every item down with disinfectant before she put it in a bag. My skin grew itchy in that way it did when I knew I’d miscalculated the amount of time something was going to take. I reached into my bag to distract myself with my phone and found nothing. I must have left it in the car in my distracted state. All I could do was wait. I picked at the skin around my nails, a habit I was humiliated by but couldn’t for the life of me break. Finally, it was my turn and I threw the proper change at the cashier.
“Sorry,” I shouted over my shoulder as I barreled my way back out to the parking lot. “I’m going to be late for work!” I couldn’t imagine I’d get in that much trouble for being a few minutes late, but I never had been before because I didn’t want to miss a single second of potential time with Jean. And that night, I was practically sprinting in his direction, desperate to make things right.
I tossed the groceries into the back seat and turned the car on, only stopping for a moment to glance at my phone before I put the car in reverse. I caught a glimpse of three missed calls from the same local number and paused, putting the car back in park while I evaluated the situation. I thought that number might be the museum, though I had never saved it into my contacts.
There was a voicemail, left after the third call. I opened it up and listened.
“Hi, Claire, it’s Jamie, from the museum. I hope I’ve caught you before you’ve left home, but it seems like you may already be on your way. If you get this in time, could you please give me a call? My number is…”
I swiped out of the message and hit the button to dial back. In less than half a ring, Jamie answered.
“Hello, Jamie Leigh here.”
“Hi, Jamie, it’s, um, Claire?” Did I need to describe who I was? I doubted the museum president, whom I had never met, and I were on a first name basis.
“Ah, Claire, yes, I’ve been hoping you’d call. Look, to cut to the chase, we are currently locking up the doors for the night. I’m sorry if you’re already on your way here; I was trying to catch you before you left—”
At the end of the call, she promised to call on Monday with more updates. And now here it was, said Monday. Now I was fully up to date, fully unemployed, fully unable to get back into that painting, back where I belonged. But, then again, this was where I belonged too.
There was Gracie, a towel in one hand, holding the wall as she walked down the hallway. She was surprised to see me in this state and stopped her pursuit.
“Honey, what happened? Are you feeling okay?” She made to put her hand on my forehead, studying my face as she got closer. “Have you been crying? Is everything okay?”
“The museum is closing,” I muttered. I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes again, threatening to erupt.
“Oh, honey,” she said as she wrapped me in her arms. “I was worried something like that might happen. Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out together. We always do.” I nodded against her shoulder. “Come on, put on some cozy clothes. You can get to sleep at a normal time every night this week. There, already a silver lining. Luna!” she called.
“Mommy!” a voice shrieked as Luna streaked out of the bathroom, a towel streaming behind her like a cape. She jumped into my arms and nuzzled against me, her wet hair wiping against my cheek. I breathed in her baby shampoo scent and felt instantly at home. “Do you want to pick out my pj’s, Mommy?” she asked. I really did not want to start crying again, so I buckled the tears in.
“Why don’t you let Gracie help you, nugget, while I figure out what the grown-ups are eating for dinner tonight? I’ll be there in four minutes to read you a story before you go to sleep.”
Luna looked disappointed, but Gracie swooped in as she always did. “I bet I can guess which ones you want to wear!” she said as she headed off to the bedroom we all shared.
“Cannot!” Luna called, running to beat Gracie to it.
I returned to the kitchen; Luna had already eaten and I washed her bowl out in the sink. I needed something to do to keep my hands from shaking. I needed a plan, a way to keep us all safe and fed. Gracie and Luna were my entire world. And I couldn’t bring myself to tell Jean about them until it was too late.
It wasn’t that I was worried he’d think differently of me. Jean was the opposite of judgmental. It was just that I spent my entire life, day in and day out, living for Luna. Of course I did, I loved her more than words could say. But my time with Jean, my time in the museum, those were the only moments of the past four years where I hadn’t been defined as being Luna’s mom. I could just be me.
At least there was a silver lining in all of this. And that silver lining was probably getting impatient for a bedtime story.
“Has it been four minutes?” I asked as I poked my head around the door of our room. Gracie had just tucked Luna under the covers of her twin bed, which we had nestled in one corner in between the closet and the wall. The double bed Gracie and I shared was on the opposite side of the room. It was different from Luna’s not just in its size but in the absence of the pink unicorn blanket and sheets Luna and I had picked out together when we upgraded her from the crib. I picked up the corner of that blanket now and wrapped it around myself as I snuggled into her bed alongside her.
I took a deep breath. These were the things I could never feel in Jean’s world. Under this warm blanket with my sweet, sometimes sticky baby girl, I was reminded of what my life really was. What it needed to be.
