“Excuse me, Profesora Cameron?”
Professors weren’t supposed to pick favorites, and she never would have admitted it, but Marco was quickly becoming Grace’s favorite student. He wasn’t afraid to ask questions and speak up in class, and he always seemed entirely comfortable with himself. His roots were showing in his bleach blonde faux-hawk, but it looked better that way somehow, like he styled it like that on purpose, and maybe he did.
“Like I said, you can all call me Grace.”
“Yes, pardon. Grace.” His voice echoed through the auditorium as the other students shuffled out of the room. “I brought the picture of my mother’s painting. I asked her about her influences, and she stared at me like I had three heads, but I thought you might like to see it?”
Grace smiled and leaned toward his phone. “Of course.” The photo was bright on the screen, and just as Marco had described, it showed a vase of colorful flowers done in oil, reminiscent of any number of flower vase still lifes and well done too. It was clear that the artist had experience and had perfected her craft. “It’s beautiful,” Grace said. “Your mother is quite talented.”
“You think so? She saw me taking the picture and couldn’t imagine what I was doing with it. I think she was embarrassed when I told her I wanted to show it to you, but I insisted you wouldn’t judge.”
Grace couldn’t seem to stop staring at the phone. A vase of flowers. It wasn’t exactly an unexpected subject, but there was something about this painting, the way it played with light and had a real background full of other significant objects. There were little details there Grace hadn’t noticed at first—a dirty dish, a baby bottle, a wet sponge. The flowers were beautiful; they were the focal point, but there was something more there. There was life. This was Marco’s mother’s vase of flowers from her garden in her very real and slightly messy kitchen. Grace loved it instantly.
“Profesora Cameron?” Marco must have been talking, but Grace could tune out anything when she was staring at a work like this, even if she didn’t mean to.
“Yes, sorry. I—”Words, words.“I really like this, Marco.”
“See, this is what I keep tellingmimamá.This is something, correct? But she doesn’t want to hear it.” He eagerly searched Grace’s face, so thrilled to have a second opinion. Maybe her view didn’t mean very much, but it meant something to him, her young, optimistic student who adored his mamá.
“Yes,” Grace breathed, still strangely dazed. “This is something.”
She walked home with a head full of flowers. She appreciated a good distraction these days. Even Rafael’s little pitch for her to curate the art exhibit offered an escape from her usual loop of thoughts—the conversations she played in her head again and again. The day her grandmother had finally confessed that she was dying was like a broken record in Grace’s brain. She’d played the memory so many times that it was almost distorted, and she couldn’t quite make sense of it all—why Gram hadn’t told her from the day she was diagnosed, why she would keep something like that a secret. The guilt of not knowing, of not being there from the start, had weighed on her, and she didn’t know how to get out from under it.
For that reason, Grace rather liked being able to focus on Rafael’s persuasion tactics—his bright grin and his passionate appeal to her love of twentieth century art, even though he clearly couldn’t remember everything Christian had in the collection. She’d almost laughed at how much Raf tried to sell it to her, and she had to admit, if anyone could sell something with charm and good looks alone, it was him. He’d even smiled at her and told jokes. Kind of.
Obviously, the idea of hundreds of paintings in an actual historic cave was enticing, but she wasn’t kidding about the visa problem and her concerns about the exclusivity. Shouldn’t the people of Granada get to see their own museum? And Picasso, ugh. Some of the biggest museums in the world weren’t quite sure how to present him, to reconcile the genius of his art and the reality of who he was. Grace certainly didn’t have any clue how she would handle him. In class, she just did her best to tell the truth, to present all the information and let her students decide for themselves what to make of it. They looked at one of his paintings of Françoise Gilot, and they talked about an excerpt from her memoir, about Picasso holding a cigarette to her cheek, watching it burn her. He was It wasn’t like there was a dearth of artists who were terrible people; it was something they came up against quite regularly, and Grace included it in the discussion of their work.
She also had to admit, even if she refused to ever say it aloud, there was also an inkling of fear about working that closely to Rafael, though she couldn’t pinpoint its source. Was she afraid he would be too bossy or get angry with her about the placement of some painting, that he would be utterly disappointed by her efforts, or was she afraid of something else? No reason to examine that too closely or tease it out.
Marco’s mother’s painting, though, that gave Gracefeelings.Her grandmother would have loved it, how it was so beautiful and honest at the same time, a kitchen she would have recognized. Grace perceived the comfort of it as well, and she wished she could live in that painting like it was her home…a home that no longer existed for her.
Sometimes when Grace thought of her grandmother, she thought of Mary Cassatt’sIn the Loge,not only because Gram loved that piece, but also because there was a quiet power in the woman in the painting. She was bold and present and active, but still, she had her limitations. Grace thought her grandmother had felt a twinge of familiarity when she saw the woman. It was the kind of thing that spoke to you, even when you weren’t sure why. The coffee table book where they’d look at Cassatt’s work was in storage with most of her grandmother’s things, but Grace took out her phone and pulled up an image.
Memories stirred to the surface. “Looking at the Cassatt again, Gram? I’m going to get you a poster print of it for the ceiling over your bed.”
Grace wished she could call Gram and tell her about the flower vase. She wished she could call Gram and tell her anything.
She was so lost in the thought of it, she didn’t notice the people rushing through her apartment building or the frantic conversations of neighbors in the hallway. She marched up the stairs in a daze, ready to lie down in her bed for the only good sleep she ever got. Night was for insomnia and sorrow, but there was something about the light through her window in the late afternoon, something that allowed her to nap and feel safe.
It was on the second floor of the building that she realized the floor was wet, but it didn’t fully register in her brain. Grace kept walking through the water as if it was just a figment of her imagination, as if the mess would simply disappear at any moment.
It didn’t disappear, though. In fact, it seemed to get worse, and Grace found herself swiveling back and forth, staring at the slick floor in silence, trying to understand. After a moment, she held her breath and opened the apartment door, only to discover that the flood was in the apartment as well. She scanned the ground, frantically trying to locate the source, to make sense of the damp living room, but the pieces weren’t arranging themselves into an understandable pattern in her mind. “Shit,” she whispered, still baffled about what was happening but sure it was awful as she pulled out her phone and started to call Alma.
Apparently, water heaters burst. Like, literally, they could explode and flood an entire nearby apartment, soaking the floors and carpet and furniture. Wet rugs did not smell great. Shop vacs and open windows to let things air out only did so much. Oh, and according to the landlord, parts of the floor really needed to be pulled up and replaced in such a situation.
Grace paced back and forth on a limited path next to the dining table in Obinna’s studio apartment, trying to figure out a plan. She’d only been in Spain for a month, and here was yet another disaster to contend with. Somehow, it barely registered anymore, even though she didn’t have a place to live. Disasters were a dime a dozen these days. Alma stared up at her from the couch, tossing out ideas for a temporary place to stay.
“You can’t be that far away, Grace,” she said. “It’s madness.”
Alma’s landlord had been kind enough to offer one of his empty apartments for their use while the contractors were working on the place, and it was only a fifty-minute bus ride away even if it was in a sketchy rundown building. Alma had immediately declined the offer, but Grace supposed she would at least have to take a look, because what other options did she have? Sure, Obinna had already proposed that Alma and Grace could stay with him. In his studio apartment. Alma could share his bed, and Grace could…sleep on an air mattress in the middle of the room indefinitely? One night had been enough.
She would pass on that offer, which meant she was off to check out the rundown place in the middle of nowhere. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, and plenty of people commuted fifty minutes. Most importantly, it was temporary.
Alma volunteered her brother as the perfect helper to escort Grace to view the apartment. “He can drive you!” she’d announced, as if Raf didn’t have a job to worry about, and the matter was already settled. Alma needed to be in the lab, but Rafael was flexible. He could make himself available in a crisis, especially since he didn’t have client meetings or vendor research on the calendar. Alma had strong-armed him into being Grace’s chauffeur for the day before Grace could offer a single protest.
“I know it might be awkward, but I really wish you’d just stay with Obinna and me. It will be cramped, but we could manage. It will be like a—um—what do you call it?”
“An orgy?”
