“This was on the floor of your dressing room. You chose me, didn’t you? Two whole years ago you chose me to come here and study.”
“I chose all of you,” she says. “Colette and Lucie too.”
“You’re the silent benefactor who created the scholarship.” It’s not a question anymore.
“Yes,” she says simply, shoulders relaxing as if relieved to finally shed this secret. “It was me.”
“But you ended it,” I counter with a slight edge to my voice. I know I should be grateful for all we were given, but we’ve also struggled so much. “You stopped financing it.”
Now she shakes her head vigorously. “I would never. That wasn’t me.” Her manicured fingers close into fists. “My stepson cut off all my discretionary funds. I had no control over that, and it was one of my greatest heartbreaks.”
She moves to the window, her silhouette framed against the city. “When Maxwell got very sick about five years ago, I knew things could get bad. He assured me repeatedly that the majority of the company would fall to me, that I could finally run it for real, out in the open, instead of being the woman helping him behind the scenes. But his mind failed him more and more each day and his son of a bitch of a son made sure that didn’t happen. I knew I would need a plan B. I figured I would need allies to help me. And I created the scholarship to bring them to me. I didn’t think my stepson could cut me off so quickly. I thought my lawyers had a chance against him.” She turns, and I’m startled to see tears welling in her eyes. “I never thought you wouldn’t be able to finish school.”
She looks truly crushed. “But I promise it won’t matter. You’ll finish. I am going to make sure of that.”
I’m still trying to catch up. “You did know who I was when you hired me to work here cleaning for you. You suggested the job to the receptionist at school, you told her to tell me about it?”
“I did. I had always planned to reveal myself to you, but I wanted to give you time to settle, to get to know one another and this city, to immerse yourselves in school the way you deserved. But when the money ran out, I had to find a way to bring you tome. I was the one who suggested Monique tell you I needed help here in my apartment. I wanted to meet you in person, to spend time with you before telling you who I was.”
“It wasn’t fair to keep me in the dark for so long.” I don’t know what else to say.
“Life’s not fair, Emma; you know that better than anyone. It’s one of the reasons I chose you to come to Paris in the first place. Life has been very unfair to you for too long, and you deserve so much better.”
When I’d written the essay to apply for the scholarship, I’d laid all my misfortunes out on the table. What did I have to lose? I began with my mother, the brilliant young mathematician and engineer who got a full ride to UPenn for undergrad and was then accepted into a coveted PhD program. She’d moved to the East Coast from a small town in Illinois and she loved being in a city, adored immersing herself in the world of algorithms and equations. She eventually fell hard for her married thesis advisor, my father. You would think my parents would have been a cautionary tale to me, would have kept me from falling for Pascal, my own advisor, but alas, we never fully learn lessons from our parents’ lives.
My father told my mother there was no way the baby could possibly be his and then failed to inform her he had accepted a big fancy job at Stanford and moved when she was eight months pregnant with me. He never responded to any of her pleas for help. My mother’s brilliant brain broke over and over again after that. The first time they took me away from her I was five months old. A neighbor had called the police because my mother had taken so many pills she didn’t wake up for an entire day and I was screaming and starving.
That’s where my ten-page diatribe to convince the École des Beaux-Arts to accept me heated up, partially fueled by a bottle of excellent whiskey I’d swiped from the bar I was working at. When my mom was institutionalized, I was put into emergencyfoster care. She did inpatient therapy, got out, they gave me back to her, and we cycled through the process for the next eighteen years. There were long stretches when she was medicated and stable and those were wonderful. But then it would all fall apart. I quickly learned how to take care of both of us. I got us into the bathtub at least twice a week. I washed and brushed her hair, and I made us meals of cereal starting at age four. I could always tell when she was starting to decline. She would fill the walls with equations, convinced she could solve the theorem my father had been diligently working on at Penn and then at Stanford. She wanted revenge and she wanted recognition, and she believed co-opting the solution was the only way she would ever get his attention. To this day I don’t know if any of it made sense because we were inevitably thrown out of those apartments and she had to start all over again. When she had these episodes, she gave me my own walls to work on. I was given pens and pencils, crayons and markers, and allowed to draw and sketch on a single wall. She encouraged me, told me I had my own kind of mathematical mind, that my proportions of human features and landscapes were the work of a genius. She smothered my body in kisses and held me tight to her and in those moments I loved our life together.
We moved around too much for me to go to high school, and I got work as soon as I could. I only made it through the eighth grade, but I got my GED and went to community college to be a teacher. The art program in Paris didn’t seem to care much about transcripts or fancy degrees. The application consisted of a portfolio of our work and the personal essay.
It was one of the curators I’d befriended at the Philly art museum who told me to apply. I’d just turned twenty-two, finished my teaching degree, and I’d managed to work enough overtime during the holidays for a deposit on a small but safe apartment in a quiet suburb where Mom could walk to an outpatient program that kept her for eight hours a day and was mostly paid forby Medicaid. When I left for Paris I hired a home aide to walk her back and forth and make sure she took her pills each morning and night. I didn’t think of all the ways it could have gone wrong, all the ways itwouldgo wrong.
Stella knows this story already because most of it was in the application.
Her gaze is softer now.
“That scholarship changed my life,” I whisper. “Did you get Colette the internship at Sotheby’s too?”
“I did. I hoped it would change all of your lives,” Stella says. “I had also hoped it could go on as long as you needed it. But maybe it still can, if you’re willing to help me.”
She pulls her own letter from the folds of her silk robe and hands it to me. The cursive is tight and tiny. “It’s from Jo to my grandmother. I only have a few of their letters here with me, but I read this one often. She’s asking her to leave Paris and go to Holland with her. She’s begging her to take a giant leap of faith in the hopes that they will both be able to secure a better future for themselves. Read it. At least the last line.”
I have to squint to make out the words.
Neither of us has much hope for a promising future right now. But together I think we can make something of this mess of a life.
8
Claire
Jo takes hertime in front of each painting, explaining each of them to me in great detail as we wind our way together through the small rooms of Wisselingh’s gallery in Amsterdam.
“I haven’t seen so many fine works together in ages,” she whispers. “Corot, Breitner, so many of Theo’s favorites. This place reminds me of his gallery in Montmartre. Everything is so carefully chosen. Look at this gorgeous Monticelli. His blossoms were always an inspiration to Vincent.”
The delicate blooms in front of us are similar to the ones in the small painting Jo carries in her bag, if only she could gather the courage to approach the gallery owner with it.
He’s sitting at his desk in the corner, slouch-shouldered and skinny, pretending not to watch us through his thick, round glasses. I nudge Jo toward him. This is the reason we came.
