I’d been twenty-two then, but because of my small stature people have always mistaken me for much younger than I actually am.
I just smile politely and move into the kitchen, where I can quickly wipe down the countertops, scrub the dishes, and leave the rest of the cleaning for tomorrow. The two of them speak in hushed voices in the other room. They talk in French, which I’mproficient in, but they probably wouldn’t believe that. It’s money they’re going on about. Matthew is pushing some on his grandmother; she’s refusing it.
“I don’t want it from you,” she says sharply. “I want what I deserve.”
“I’m working on it. Caroline and Father are being difficult. As usual.”
“I would call it something other than difficult.” Stella sounds angry, an emotion I’ve never heard from her. I know from the obituary I read that Caroline Swanson is Matthew’s older sister. The two of them both work for the family business. They were mentioned as vice presidents in the piece. For the first time I realize there are no family photos in the apartment, odd for a doting grandmother.
The water echoes loudly in the steel sink as it warms to the right temperature to get this morning’s fried egg off the pan, and I concentrate on that. Because of the sound, I don’t hear anyone sneak up behind me.
“If you’re ever looking for someone to show you a different sort of Paris, the real Paris, I’m more than happy to be your guide,” Matthew whispers in my ear, not touching me at all, but making his towering presence over me very well-known. The air around him crackles with an intensity that I’ve never experienced before, not even with Pascal, who could command an auditorium of his students with a single word. What is the real Paris to a man like this?
“It was so lovely to meet you, Monsieur Swanson. But I’m afraid I’ll be going home to the States soon.” I don’t want this to be true, but it will be if I can’t make enough money to enroll back in school before my student visa runs out in a couple of months.
“What a shame. We could have had some fun,” he purrs as he walks away.
Once he’s out the door, his grandmother is distracted, as if she wishes she had followed him instead of being stuck insidewith me. I wonder how often she leaves this dark room. Every time I visit, she’s in the exact same spot, smoking her cigarettes and sipping her tea. I’ve never even seen her rise to go to the bathroom.
“I’ll be back tomorrow morning, Madame Swanson,” I call out, pulling my hair into an unruly high bun and sweeping my freshly cut bangs out of my eyes. The bangs were a mistake, they almost always are, but I’d watched a documentary about Jane Birkin that convinced me I would look quintessentially French with some fringe. I do not.
“Oh, please. I need you to stop with that. Call me Stella. ‘Madame Swanson’ makes me feel ancient, which I am, but I don’t need to be reminded of it. Though Paris is a nice place to be an old broad. They love older women here. Respect us. No one sees through us the way everyone does in America. I suppose that’s what I wanted for the end of my life. To be seen.”
I stare once again at the peach blossom, focusing intently on a single petal until the rest of the painting blurs away.
“I miss my art,” she says suddenly, her voice slurry. It hadn’t been tea in those teacups. “They’ve taken it all.”
The faded squares on the wall make more sense now.
“I don’t subscribe to the idea that art should be protected like a newborn baby, kept in a box in some climate-controlled bunker. Art should live and breathe. That is what the artists have always intended,” Stella moans cryptically. What is she talking about? Bunkers? “The artists wanted their art to outlive them. It should change and sometimes even evolve alongside us ridiculous mortals. But that is not the way some members of my family see it. To my stepson, a painting is a mere commodity that you sell to the highest bidder or stash away in a bulletproof vault in a climate-controlled cave underground while it grows in value. In the end they want to lock it all away.” She stands and stumbles, crashing into an end table but ultimately steadying herself before I can rush to her side.
“I’ve got you. Let me help you into bed,” I say. This kind of care is a routine I know well from taking care of my own mother for so long. Together we stumble down the long hallway.
We finally make it into the apartment’s main bedroom. It’s entirely empty save for a mahogany four-poster bed that looks as though it was carved in the Middle Ages. It probably was. Above the headboard only one thing hangs on the wall: a massive silver sword mounted horizontally, its blade catching the moonlight wafting in from the balcony. I heave Stella up onto the mattress. Her eyelids are closed by the time I get her beneath the covers and pull them up to her chin.
“Emma?” She calls out just as I’m shutting her door.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Emma, please don’t let them lock me awaytoo.”
2
Claire
1891
I’ve been watchingher for months. I know her habits, her routines. I know she leaves in the morning to fetch milk for her son, takes him with her to meetings throughout the day. She returns home at night looking bone-tired and defeated.
Her husband, Theo, begged me to check in on her, to try to protect her.
But for months I only watched.
The night I properly meet Jo van Gogh is the night I save her life.
It’s late, but I have only just finished with work. When I walk past her apartment, I notice candles burning in the window. As I shift my gaze down from the attic flat, the door to the street opens and a hooded silhouette slips into the entryway. The apartment still burns bright, but it is Jo’s tiny figure slowly stumbling over the Pigalle’s cobblestones. I follow in silence. Why is she leaving so late?
Jo hesitates at the corner and continues uncertainly up the hill toward the unfinished dome of Sacré-Coeur on the Butte Montmartre. It is the time of night when even women like me are usually in bed, the hours when the streets are turned over to stray cats and men intent on bad deeds and harm. On this night in particular the city is filled with a certain bloodlust. The papers have dubbed it guillotine frenzy, as today was the public execution of a notorious murderer, one whose crimes have been well documented and much gossiped about throughout Paris. His beheading in the Place de la Roquette was attended by thousands, a jeering and enthusiastic mob of mostly men who then retired to the bars and brothels, bloated with savage hunger.
