“Theo thought it was so.” Her words burn with a new intensity. “I have been reading his letters trying to figure out how to be in the world without him and they have pushed me to this decision.”
“What letters?” I ask.
“Theo and Vincent wrote one another hundreds of letters over the past twenty years and both brothers saved their copies. I have been reading through some of them. When I do, it feels as though he is here with me. They remind me of what a good man Theo was and how much these paintings meant to him. They remind me that I cannot abandon them, not yet. Not yet.”
A knot twists in my stomach, heavy and unyielding. What else does Theo reveal in those letters to his brother? Letters he never thought his wife would read.
“Please do this with me, Claire,” she pleads. “If I succeed in this, we can both have a better life. I truly believe that bringing you along with me is what Theo would have desired. I know that my dear husband would want the two of us to help one another. It has to be you.” Do I imagine her gaze hardening?
Does she know more about my past with her husband than I assumed? Oh, Theo, what did you write in your letters about me?
7
Emma
There is agrand legend attached to most paintings by Vincent van Gogh. Many of them come from the hundreds of letters that Vincent wrote to his brother, Theo, that were slowly released to art critics and to the public after his death. There have been dozens of compilations of those letters published over the years, entire textbooks dedicated to them.
Van Gogh is one of those artists whose life seems to exist in the zeitgeist of every generation. I laugh at Stella for addressing him by his first name, but he is one of the few painters whose first name I think the majority of people could recall. Most people have no idea that Picasso is Pablo or Matisse, Henri.
We know more about Van Gogh’s inspirations, his setbacks, his madness, and his brilliance than we do about practically any other artist. He’s a celebrity, a rock star, the John Lennon of artists. And it is because someone thought to preserve and publish all those letters.
So even if you’re not an art person, you have a vague idea about the Sunflowers series. I have more than a vague idea. The Sunflowers have been lodged in my brain since the first time I visited the Philadelphia Museum of Art with my mom. I was only three. I tried to grab at the painting because the petals on the twelve stems seemed real enough to touch. Each flower had its own personality. I still remember the sharp rebuke from the museum guard.
Back then I assumed there was one painting of the flowers. I only learned how many Van Gogh painted years later in school. He did three of them while he was in Paris, maybe more. When he moved to the countryside in Arles he had plans to paint a group of models one day out in the fields, but they never showed up. It was unbearably hot, and not wanting to waste a burst of inspiration, he gathered a bunch of newly grown Provençal sunflowers and brought them inside, where he placed them in a locally made ceramic pot and started painting as many as he could to welcome his friend Paul Gauguin to paint with him in the South of France. The exact number he made has never really been known.
Many Van Gogh paintings have been lost. There were some that perished in house fires, some in bombings during the wars, and others that simply languished in attics or basements, forgotten until they naturally deteriorated. Two of the remaining sunflower paintings are among the most valuable pieces of art in the entire world.
And now I’m breathing the same air as one in a glorified closet in a penthouse in Paris.
“There are five flowers,” I whisper in amazement, because I know that none of the paintings that still exist have this many blooms.
“Yes,” Stella says quietly. “I thought you might notice that.”
“Is it…”
“Real?” Stella finishes my sentence.
“Yes. Is it?”
“What do you think?”
“It feels real.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” I say honestly, tracing my fingers through the air, inches from the canvas.
Stella’s eyes narrow, her gaze flickering between me and the painting with the careful calculation of someone who’s spent decades appraising value in art, in people, in opportunities.
“How long have you had this?” I ask. Though, if anyone would have a lost masterpiece casually hanging in their walk-in closet, it would be the widow of the richest art collector in the world. And yet something whispers to me that this painting didn’t come from Maxwell’s collection.
“It’s been in my family a long time,” she says, her voice softening in a way I didn’t think possible. “I used to joke with Maxwell that this painting is the reason he fell in love with me.” She laughs a genuine laugh, not a practiced social tinkle. “It’s why we met in the first place.”
I sink down onto the plush carpet and gaze up at the painting again. The vibrant yellows and golds pulse with an almost supernatural energy. I swear I can feel them warming my face, like sitting in a patch of late-afternoon sun after a too-long winter.
“What happened to that drink you were fixing me?” Stella asks.
“It’s still in the kitchen,” I reply, reluctantly breaking my gaze from the painting.
