A short time later I sit in the corner of my studio, on my stool. There’s as much distance between me and the painting as the space affords. I keep forgetting to breathe. Then I gasp deeply to compensate for the lack of oxygen, and the act of it is violent enough that pain blooms inmy chest. I’m reluctant to blink, afraid if I take my eyes off the painting and its subject she’ll disappear again.
Mostly, I don’t move because my legs are still numb. I have no clue what’s happening, within my body or within the art. I can’t make sense of any of it.
Paintings, the objects and people captured in them, are static. Theydo not move. Except in the interactive GIA exhibits, when we animate art for entertainment.
Moreover, the subject didn’t exactly move—she disappeared.
There is something wrong with me. Maybe some sort of mental break, caused by my raging pregnancy hormones? I wish I could ask someone without drawing attention to the why. Maybe Maeve knows about this, if it’s a thing that can happen. I consider how to pose the question. “Hypothetically speaking, Maeve—related to the conservation I’m doing, and its artist—is there such a thing as pregnancy-induced psychosis?” However, I know I can’t ask Maeve—she’ll see right through the “hypothetically speaking” bit.
A brain tumor? Scary to imagine, but it could explain these hallucinations, and at least there are excellent treatments—cancer is rarely fatal nowadays. This offers a moment of relief, because while a tumor diagnosis would be daunting, losing one’s mind is more terrifying for me to consider.
But then, another thought…What if it’s not me?
What if something’s wrong with the painting?
My MotherHelper meeting starts in ten minutes and I haven’t left the house yet, which means I’m going to be late. It’s an add-on meeting to accommodate a guest speaker, a holistic dietician who Kat told me is “amazing…her milk-making muffin recipe is a staple.” I told Kat I’d attend, and it’s too late now to back out.
There’s no time to change, so work outfit it is, minus my apron—a short-sleeved cotton dress faded from years of wear, my hair in a finger-swept ponytail, makeup-free. I look disheveled and I don’t care. I’m too distracted to worry about my fashion sense.
For the last hour I sat on the stool in my studio, taking shallow breaths, watching the painting with such focus that my eyes ached. Pinging between loosely plausible explanations for what happened, none of which held.
Is it me? Is it the painting?I couldn’t make sense of any of it.
I should tell someone what’s going on. Wyatt, at least.
I will, I decide—but later.
Now, as I reach for my bag at the front door I see my tattoo—thethree dots glossy and skin-colored. No sign of anything amiss; no discernible pain. I’m suddenly glad for the biometric tracker, because it tells me that at least the baby is okay, which instantly brings down my heart rate.
Cutting through Colonial Park Cemetery will be fastest. It’s a gloomy day, the air muggy, the sky overcast and threatening a thunderstorm. The type of weather where you can sense the electricity in the air, your fingertips tingling with energy. I love a good thunderstorm in the South. They can get wild, like nothing I experienced back home. But too much rain leads to a host of problems, including dreaded flooding. At least today’s storm isn’t supposed to be this type of drencher. I don’t even bother with an umbrella.
The cemetery saw its first dead buried in the early 1700s but has been a city park since 1896, about forty years after burials ceased. There’s a meandering path through its middle, and benches for rest and reflection under moss-draped oak branches. The graves are old, many of the stones crumbling and illegible now. A large number of those buried in Colonial Park Cemetery died from the yellow fever epidemic, which gripped Savannah in 1820.
Clementine and I often walk through Colonial Park, a new grave marker catching her eye each time. “How did this person die, Momma? He was even younger than me!” She finds the idea of being buried—whole-bodied, in a coffin—curious, because that is not how it’s done anymore.
Neighborhood memorial centers, designed like beautiful museums, have replaced cemeteries. Here cremated remains (the process evolved to be environmentally friendly) are interred in the wall behind name plaques. Fountains babble and soothing nature sounds stream through speakers, creating a serene place to visit the dearly departed. Poppy has such a plaque—her box of ashes so small it barely took up half the space—beside her grandfather’s, but that’s not where I go to visit her. I can’t feel her there.
There’s a sudden loosening of my left shoe and I see the lace hascome untied. With a grumble, the community center still a five-minute walk, I sit on the nearest bench and bend to retie the shoelace.
The next thing I know, it’s teeming rain and I’m soaked to the bone. I’m seated on the bench. My shoelace remains untied. My wrist—specifically the area where the tattoo is—hurts again, like something is burrowing into my bone. The pain is searing, hard to breathe through. I massage my forearm, which seems to help a bit. My ponytail hangs in a dripping rope.
How long has it been raining like this?
Confused, I glance at my watch. See three calls from Kat and one from Margie. Then I notice the time.
I’ve been sitting on this bench for more than thirty minutes, but I have no recollection of those minutes passing. My dress clings to me, soaking wet, like a second skin. I’m chilled and shivering, my mind jumbled. Then something rises to the surface of my consciousness. Or rather,someone…
I wasn’t alone on the bench during the rainstorm.
I’m in trouble.
Not simply because I’ve been hallucinating, about cockroaches and disappearing subjects in paintings. Nor because I sat on a cemetery bench in the pouring rain for half an hour, without any recollection of time passing. Certainly not only because of the unexpected and unexplainable visit from my long-dead mother, who sat beside me on that bench.
No, the most pressing issue at the moment is that I missed the MotherHelper meeting.
Once I’m home and out of my wet things I call Kat to tell her I’m fine.
“An accidental nap,” I explain. She promises to send me the muffin recipe, and we make plans for our next breath work class. After I get off the phone with her I call Margie.
