The Mystery of Hollow Places(31)
Even in winter and in the dark, their grass seems painfully green.
ELEVEN
At eleven a.m. on the fifth day after my dad goes missing, I sit down on a bench at the Boston MFA, trying not to throw up on my sneakers.
The squeak of winter boots on white tile floors, the echo of a man lecturing his wife on postmodern art, the bleats and barks of kids who’ve had culture forced upon them on their school vacation—all of it boils over in my brain. My stupid brain, which feels like a cracked egg. I drop my face into my hands and try to ignore the nausea I’ve been swimming in since I woke up this morning to the chiming of Jessa’s relentless texts, all of which I ignored, switching my phone to merciful silence. I was still in Jessa’s dress. My carefully braided hair was a ruinous heap, now scraped snarls-and-all into a bundle at the back of my throbbing head.
I’ve seen Dad hungover. I know some of the tricks. Like, there’s a sleeve of low-fat saltless Ritz in my bag, smuggled out of Lindy’s diet cabinet in the pantry. And I’ve been guzzling water since I woke up; I stuck my face in the fountain by the museum bathroom until a mom behind me tapped her foot on the floor and muttered, “Leave some for the fishes.”
Dad’s hangover ritual, other than flavorless carbs and sleeping till two under an Everest of blankets, is a single drink first thing in the morning. Once, he had this book party in Boston that he was contractually obligated to go to. This was just pre-Lindy, at the start of the last real bad time, and his agent had to put him in a two-hundred-and-something-dollars late-night cab ride home. Dad called me from the front steps so he could use me as a crutch to the sofa. The next morning, I watched him make a tall Bloody Mary, sweating and gray-faced. “Don’t breathe so loud, Immy,” he begged me. “I’m recovering.”
“From being drunk?” I stage-whispered.
“From waking up.”
Unfortunately, Lindy was still around when I dragged myself out of bed this morning, and it was all I could do to keep my game face on when we passed each other in the hallway. “It’s a beautiful morning,” she chirped, though it was a hollow, preoccupied kind of joy, like an underpaid Starbucks barista might offer. Still, she probably would’ve noticed me mainlining vodka and Tabasco.
I prop my chin up on my fist and stare at the painting across from me. A porcelain-pale woman hefts a baby boy. She’s supposed to be the Virgin—I’ve never been to church or anything, but the cloak and tiny Bible give that much away—so I guess that makes her kid Jesus. Except since this is the Renaissance Art of Northern Europe and Italy wing, he’s painted in that Renaissance style where it’s obvious none of the artists took a child-development class. None of them understood the head-to-body proportions of a baby. Take Jesus, who looks like a grim-faced elf, with a long body and dangling sausage limbs and a head the size of a tennis ball. In all these paintings, it’s as if the kids were never young; they were born miniature adults. Like instead of growing older, they just increased in length and height and weight. Which I bet would be a lot easier if it were true.
When the wave of nausea peaks and passes, I push myself to my feet and keep moving through the interconnected rooms. The museum map shows me where I want to be, and after a few wrong turns I find the long room labeled Drawings and see it: just a little thing compared to the big art around it. Though my head is bobbing with the tiny boat in its inky water, I plant my feet and stare.
Beside the drawing, the plaque reads:
The Miraculous Draught of Fishes
Gift of the estate of Mrs. Sarah Wyman Whitman through Mrs. Henry Parkman; acquired June 1909
Artist: Eugène Delacroix, French, 1798–1863
Medium: Pen, brown ink, and washes on paper
According to the Gospel of St. Luke, Christ chooses the poor fishermen Simon, Peter, and Andrew as his first Apostles. They have been fishing unsuccessfully in the Sea of Galilee when Christ appears and tells Peter to let down his nets into deep water. They make a miraculous catch, so their boats overflow with fish. The tale of the fishermen has long been a popular subject among artists, many religious, but some with humbler motives. The Miraculous Draught of Fishes has been re-created by more than one painter living in poverty, poignantly expressing a starving man’s wistful dream of plentiful food.
The fishermen’s shadowed faces don’t have much in the way of features, but they don’t look awestruck or burning with god fever. The slashes of their lips are straight, their squiggly muscles straining to haul in the catch while dark clouds billow in from the left. They seem nervous, in a hurry to gather the fish before the storm hits and everything they have is washed away forever.
I’m leaning in as close as I can get to the canvas without bells or alarms or just a strained museum guide sounding off, when fingertips brush my arm from behind.
“I wasn’t touching it!” I jump back, turning so fast it takes the room a second to catch up with me. But it isn’t a museum guide.
It’s Jessa.
“What the hell?” I press my hand against my thumping heart. “What are you even doing here?”
“Ugh, don’t shout,” she groans through dry lips. Now that my vision has refocused, she does look rough, a whole rainbow of unhealthy colors. Her skin is practically green, and there are purple smudges under her eyes, red-rimmed and bleary. She pulls at the strings on her oversize sweatshirt, drawing the hood in like a noose. “Morning-me is really not feeling night-me. I thought I was gonna upchuck the whole train ride.”