In Sight of Stars(67)

The girl shrugs. “It can’t all be good, right?” she says.

“No,” I say. “I guess it can’t. But I wish it could.”

I move closer to the lake, and she says, “You can touch it if you want. You can go in: make it better. I don’t get why the whole world thinks you shouldn’t touch art.”

I do as she says, reaching out to touch the people in the lake, one after another. Some of them are familiar: Sarah, and Abbott and Scott Dunn.

Sarah reels when I touch her, then dives, disappearing like a mermaid, under the surface. Sister Agnes Teresa and Martin are there. Sabrina, too. I scan the water for Dr. Alvarez, but the girl says, “Don’t look for everyone. Not everyone can be where you want them. So, are you going to buy it?” she asks.

“Me? No. I don’t like it.”

“You don’t have the money,” she says.

I feel nauseous and panicky, and turn to leave.

“It’s okay, son, stay.” A man, lanky, with white-blond hair and eyebrows, has appeared and holds tightly to my arm. “I think you’re looking for me,” he says.

“I am. I was. I need to talk to you,” I say.

“Of course you do. Follow me.”

I follow him down a long, dark hall to a narrow tunnel that slopes downward, leading us underground. Water drips from the ceiling, and our footsteps echo, wet and hollow, as we proceed. When we reach an open space, he puts a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t feel sorry for yourself,” he says. “Take this reed.” He moves away, revealing the entrance to a cave. Sitting before it is Sister Agnes Teresa.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” she says.

I follow her into the cave, strewn with paintings, framed and unframed, small ones and huge canvases that take up the length of a bedroom wall. “Hold on,” she says. “I’ll find the one that is yours.”

“I didn’t paint one,” I say, but she disappears through a door, and returns, dragging a large canvas.

“I know,” she says. “You didn’t. He did. He asked me to give it to you.” She switches on an overhead light to illuminate it, revealing Van Gogh’s potato eaters, Les Mangeurs de Pommes de Terre.

Five gaunt, ugly peasants sit at a wooden table, their faces bleak and tired. Grotesque. A lack of hope permeates the painting. One peasant is unseen, her back to the viewer. But from under her cap, I see her long black hair.

“I don’t want it,” I say. “He knows it’s the one painting of his I never liked.”

“That’s because you’re looking at it wrong,” Sister Agnes Teresa says. “You’re looking at it upside down.” She waddles around the front, turning each corner with effort until she makes a full rotation with the painting, then steps away again. “There. Try now.”

This time I see it. The painting is so much different than I thought. The same bleak peasants sit at the table, their gnarled fingers thick with dirt. But their faces are no longer grotesque, they’re familiar and happy and warm. Dad’s face, Mom’s, and mine. And, next to my father, sits Armond.

“And, look here,” Sister Agnes Teresa says, pointing. “Look how many sunflowers! And none of them simply plain yellow. But you have to look carefully to see all the colors.”

Beneath the table, I see them. Sunflowers. Van Gogh’s sunflowers. The floor is covered in them. And as she turns the painting again, the sunflowers multiply and come to life, spilling out of the painting and into the room.

“You see, Klee,” Dad says, turning from the table where he sits between Mom and Armond. “I wanted to accomplish what Millet said I could. To paint people so they’d appear to arise from the very same soil they’ve sowed.”

“And?”

“Don’t you understand? I wanted you to understand.”

I nod, but I don’t understand at all.

“We’re sown from dirt, and sorrow, and flower petals. You and me. Your mother, Sarah, Armond. Do you understand, Klee? I need you to. It’s important that you understand.”

I nod again, reaching out to touch the smear of dirt on his nose. But, I can’t find him through the blur of my tears.

“Please, understand, Klee,” he says.

I keep nodding until he disappears.

*

I awaken, drenched in sweat. It’s still dark out, but that weird slate gray before the sun rises.

Quiet.

Still.

The clock reads 4:42 A.M.

I’m still here, in the Ape Can. But in a few short hours, my mother will pick me up and bring me home.

I throw on sweats and a T-shirt, and walk to the closet, sliding out the duffel she dropped off over a week ago. I pull out the large sets of acrylics and the biggest brushes, add those to the small set of brushes and second acrylic set still in my backpack, and head out into the hall.

The hallways are desolate, the lights still dimmed for sleep hours. A male orderly sits dozing at a desk on the far end of the hall. I hear a nurse talking in someone’s room. Maybe Sabrina woke up. Maybe Martin had a nightmare.

I slip past, go quietly into the stairwell, and walk the long corridor that leads to the hall I take to Dr. Alvarez’s office. Halfway down, another lone nurse sits at a desk. She’s got her head down, a blue light bouncing off her face. Probably playing Candy Crush on her iPad.