In Sight of Stars(60)

“What?”

“They took the bandage off.”

My hand goes to my ear. “Oh, yeah.” She tsks. “What?”

“To tell you the truth, I’m disappointed.” She smiles. “It’s not so bad, you know. All that fuss, and there’s nothing but a glorified nick. Nothing you’ll even get stared at for. No one will even notice that. Grow your hair out a bit. No one will even care.”

*

I make my way to the deep end and dive.

The smell of chlorine is a salve.

I swim five laps without stopping, then stroke back to the shallow end without coming up for a breath. Sister Agnes Teresa sits on the edge, dangling her short, heavy legs.

“You coming in?”

“I might,” she says. “You swim for a bit. I don’t want to show you up here, too.”

I laugh a little. “Suit yourself.” I push off again and swim several more laps until I’m winded and tired, then float on my back, staring at the ceiling above me. With the water in my ears, everything grows quiet and calm.

Eventually, I hear Sister Agnes Teresa wade in. She makes her way toward me in an awkward half walk, half dog paddle, her short limbs moving faster than they should to keep her head above water. Watching her, it’s hard to believe that she’s a certified lifeguard.

“How do you do it?” I ask, when she finally reaches me.

“Do what?” she asks, short limbs treading in place.

“Everything. All of it. Go about life like it’s normal and fine. I mean, you always seem happy and content. But it must be hard, right? I mean, with all the…” I search for an acceptable word and settle on “challenges.”

With a flail of her arms, she positions herself upright to standing, her chin barely bobbing above the waterline.

“Whatever do you mean, Mr. Alden?” she asks, then she takes off, easily swimming the length of the pool.

Day 12—Morning

So, I’m doing it, then.

Walking down to Dr. Alvarez’s office where, in a few short minutes, my mother will be joining us, and I will confront her. Tell her what I know, and how I feel.

“Ask questions without fearing the answers,” Dr. Alvarez told me. Tell her I found the letters and ask whether my father knew, too. Whether that had something to do with what happened to him.

“Knowing is better than imagining most of the time,” Dr. Alvarez had said yesterday, “and, besides, I hate to break it to you, Klee, but married people cheat all the time. Get cheated on. It doesn’t make it right, and for sure it is awful and upsetting, but it is rarely a basis for suicide. So, maybe it contributed to your father’s deep unhappiness, but there were more likely other compounding issues, and an underlying diagnosis of depression. So, you can be angry at your mother all you want, that is fair. But I don’t know that you can blame her for his actions.”

I take a deep breath and plow forward past the god-awful fish mural. Either way, I will confront her. Get this off my chest before I get out of here.

So that I can get out of here.

Even if it means letting my anger free fall, letting my mother see how very much I hate her.

Even if she ends up hating me.

“I doubt that will happen, and you can’t keep walking around with it, Klee. You see that now. You need to get your anger out in the open. I can tell you from experience: It’s never as bad as you think it will be.”

But what if she’s wrong? What if it’s way, way worse?

*

I hover in the doorway and breathe a little easier. No sign, yet, of my mother.

Dr. Alvarez has the Van Gogh book on her lap. When I walk in, she turns back a few pages and taps at it with her finger. On the glossy page, a swirling lavender sky meets a sturdy green tree in a stretch of golden grasses.

“Wheat Field with Cypresses,” I say, sitting. “One of my favorites of his.”

“It’s a very hopeful one, don’t you think? You can almost smell the trees and feel the sun on your face, hear the wheat rustling in the wind. I’d like to find a print and add it to my wall.” I nod. “And this one?” She points to one with a chartreuse sky and bold yellow sun, a man in blue gathering something in his arms beside a knotty tree limb. “I flagged a few of the ones I liked best, but what interests me, too, is how very different they all are, some so free and almost whimsical, and others so much heavier and dark.

“The Sower,” I say. “And that one,” I add, pointing to the opposite page, “is The Potato Eaters.” I shudder for effect. “I never liked that one. At all.”

“The Potato Eaters,” she repeats, running her finger along the center of a dark, bleak painting of a peasants sitting at a wooden kitchen table.

“Les Mangeurs de Pommes de Terre is the actual title, which translates to ‘Potato Eaters.’ It’s one of the few I actually hate. My dad had a print of it hanging in his studio. I used to pretend it wasn’t a Van Gogh.”

Dr. Alvarez chuckles. “Well, I can certainly see why you weren’t a fan. It isn’t an easy painting to take in.”

“My dad loved it, though. He was taken by its skill. He would try to explain to me—to show me how Van Gogh could make the viewer feel the peasants’ dirt and grime and unhappiness. ‘To feel austerity through paint, to smell the loam of the earth,’ he would say. ‘It’s as if the peasants are painted not from oils but from the very dirt they sowed.’”