13 Little Blue Envelopes(25)

Mari patted his cheek and smiled.

“I like you,” she said. “Would you like a chocolate?”

She padded over to her sunny worktable and produced a

large bucket of miniature candy bars. Ginny shook her head, but Keith took a small handful.

“I’ll get Chloe to bring us some tea,” she said.

109

A few minutes later, Chloe (maybe the last name in the world Ginny would have attached to the red overalls girl—she was more of a “Hank”) came up with a ceramic tray with a brown teapot, a dish of sugar, and a small jug of cream. The tray was also littered with even more miniature chocolate bars. As Mari reached for these, she noticed that Keith’s gaze was lingering on the words imprinted on her hands.

“These are the names of my dogs, the ones that have died,”

Mari said. “I’ve dedicated my hands to them. My foxes’ names are on my feet.”

Instead of the logical, “You had foxes? And you put their names on your FEET?” Ginny managed to say, “I think I saw a fox. Last night. In London.”

“You probably did,” Mari said. “London is full of foxes. It’s a magical city. I had three pet foxes. When I lived in France, I had a cage built in the garden. I locked myself in there with them during the days and painted. Foxes are wonderful companions.”

Keith looked like he was about to say something, but Ginny planted her foot firmly on the toe of his Chucks and pressed down.

“It’s good to be in a cage,” Mari went on. “It keeps you

focused. I recommend it.”

Ginny ground her foot down hard. Keith pressed his lips

together tightly and turned to look at the paintings on the wall just next to him. Mari poured out the tea and loaded her cup with sugar, stirring it loudly.

“I’m so sorry about your aunt,” she finally said. “It was such terrible news to hear that she died. But she was so ill . . .”

110

Keith turned from a painting of a woman morphing into a can of beans and raised an eyebrow in Ginny’s direction.

“She mentioned you might be coming. I’m glad you did. She was a very good painter, you know. Very good.”

“She left me some letters,” Ginny said, avoiding Keith’s gaze.

“She asked me to come here, to see you.”

“She mentioned that she had a niece.” Mari nodded

knowingly. “She felt so bad for leaving you behind.”

Keith’s eyebrow went up higher.

“I lived without a home for a long time,” she went on. “I lived on the streets in Paris. No money. Just my paints in a bag, one spare dress, and a big furry coat I wore all year long. I used to run past outdoor cafés and steal food off people’s plates. I’d sit under the bridges in the summertime and paint for a whole day straight. I was crazy then, but it was just something I had to do.”

Ginny felt her throat go dry and had the uneasy feeling that both Keith and Mari were watching her closely. It didn’t help that she was sitting in a spot of sunlight coming in through the ancient multi-paneled window above Mari’s worktable. Mari thoughtfully pushed one of her little chocolate wrappers around the table with her finger.

“Come,” she said. “I’ll show you something. Both of you.”

At the back of the room, in what looked like a closet, was the narrowest set of stairs Ginny had ever encountered. They were made of stone and spiraled tightly. Mari’s body could just about squeeze through. They emerged in an attic, which had a low, curved ceiling painted a bright, cotton candy pink. The room smelled like burned toast and several centuries of dust, and it was filled with shelves loaded down with massive art books, with 111

spines featuring titles in every language Ginny could recognize and lots more that she couldn’t.

Mari pulled down a particularly large book that had a thick crust of dust along the top and banged it open on one of the tables. She flipped through the pages for a moment until she came to the print she wanted. It was a very old, intensely colored image of a man and woman holding hands. It was an incredibly precise picture, almost as clear as a photograph.

“This is by Jan van Eyck,” she said, poking at the picture. “It’s a painting of an engagement. It’s an ordinary scene—there are shoes on the floor, a dog. He’s recording the event. Just two ordinary people getting engaged. No one had ever gone to so much effort to record ordinary people before.”

Ginny realized that Keith hadn’t tried to make a comment

for a while. He was looking at the picture intently.

“Here,” Mari said, pointing a long emerald green fingernail at the center of the picture. “Right here in the middle. The focal point. You see what’s there? It’s a mirror. And in the reflection, that’s the artist. He painted himself into the picture. And right above it is an inscription. It says, ‘Jan van Eyck was here.’”

She closed the book shut as punctuation, and a dust bunny puffed into the air.

“Sometimes artists like to catch themselves looking out, let the world see them for once. It’s a signature. This one is a very bold one. But this is also a witnessing. We want to remember, and we want to be remembered. That’s why we paint.”

Mari was just getting to something that seemed like a clear message—something Ginny could wrap her head around. We want to remember, and we want to be remembered. That’s why we paint.