Starry Nights

by Daisy Whitney

  “I surprised Bonheur by showing up,” Sophie says, placing a hand on her hip.

  “I surprised Sophie by pretending I’d let her stay for the whole party,” Bonheur counters.

  “Nice to meet you, Sophie,” I say.

  “Happy birthday,” Lucy says to Bonheur and then compliments his looks, which include not just the pinup hair, but also a red dress with white polka dots.

  “What’s the story with the goat and sheep?” Simon asks as Bonheur guides us through the courtyard.

  “They ward away bad spirits.”

  “What sort of spirits?” Lucy asks.

  “The kind that thwart the artistic spirit,” says the now-eighteen-year-old, who opens the door from the courtyard to the house.

  Sophie darts in first and waves good-bye. “I’m going to tend to the flock,” she says, then heads off for the balcony.

  “She’s just a farm girl at heart. I’m going to have to buy her overalls and a straw hat someday soon,” Bonheur says.

  Once we’re inside, my eyes are drawn to the end of the hallway, but I force myself to return my focus to the living room. Bonheur’s friends have all gotten the memo to wear bright colors too. They’re decked out in swirling pinks and deep scarlets and swaths of blues and greens that mirror the sea. A sound system plays upbeat songs from pop superstars in America and England. No carnival music from a phonograph when the parents are out of town.

  Lucy pulls me aside as Simon grabs drinks. “Do you not like Emilie?”

  Talk about straightforward. “She was cool,” I say, leaving out any comments on her fantastic body.

  “Simon had told me all about you, and I thought you guys would be perfect for each other. You know—Ballet. Art.”

  “Right.”

  “So maybe we can all go out again?”

  “Yeah. But you know, Emilie’s pretty focused on that whole ballet thing, in case you hadn’t noticed,” I tease.

  “I know.” Lucy gives me a playful shove on my shoulder. “That’s where you come in. I want her to do more fun stuff. Hang out! Go out!”

  “Sure. But I think she’d rather be dancing.” I want to addend that statement with something like “art is sacrifice” but that sounds cheesy, even though it’s true. Besides, most of the thoughts I have about art I should keep to myself.

  Simon rejoins us as a girl with dark eyeliner and slinky jeans emerges from the kitchen carrying a tray. “Time for candy!” she announces, and offers us soft candy cubes in pastel shades that are stacked on skewers, like pillow-candy shish kebabs. I take a raspberry-colored one, and as it melts I can feel each individual sugar crystal on my tongue.

  Bonheur gives the eyeliner girl a kiss on the cheek, then a guy with broody eyes who’s dressed all in black kisses Bonheur’s other cheek. Maybe they’re a threesome of sorts, or all just good friends. Bonheur’s world is a little topsy-turvy, but then so is mine. I turn to say something to Simon and Lucy about trios and third wheels, but Lucy is riding the zebra on the carousel. She and Simon are laughing, and I have a feeling I’ve earned my keep as his social coordinator.

  Bonheur circles by again offering drinks. Soda, a pale bubbly offering, and something green in a thimble-size cup. “It’s absinthe.”

  “Just a soda,” I say and take a can. Sophie pops up by my side. “One for the road,” she says as she grabs a thimble, swallows the liquid, then dashes for the staircase and back to her room, I presume.

  “Enjoy your absinthe, Sophie,” Bonheur says, then turns to me. “She’s such a good girl. Doing her homework on a Friday night.”

  My jaw drops, and I’m not faking any surprise right now because I can’t believe Bonheur just let his little sister drink a hallucinogen. “How old is she?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “And she just had absinthe?”

  Bonheur smiles a wicked smile. “It’s actually apple juice with green food coloring. See, did I get you there? With the surprise?”

  “Maybe just a little. Do I get the five-legged calf?”

  “I don’t know. I kind of feel like I tricked you into surprise. Could you act totally surprised? Because everyone wants the prize pink polka-dotted calf, Julien. And it’s worth it.”

  “Then everyone should compete for it.”

  “But can you look truly surprised?”

  I have a hunch I’m being tested somehow for something, and I don’t know what. But Bonheur has the painting and I don’t, so I go along. I flash back to the night when the first Degas dancer in white burst through her frame, and call upon my best look of surprise.

  “That is brilliant!”

  I join in with the rest of his friends, and we all feign surprise and not surprise for several rounds until the pet sheep bleats from the balcony.

  Bonheur smacks his palm against his forehead. “Oh, my sister forgot to feed Berthe again. Don’t worry, Berthe. Carrots for you soon, love,” Bonheur calls out to his ovine friend. Then to us: “I can’t decide who to give the calf to. You’re all too good at these games. You know what will help me decide?”

  “Hot chocolate, obviously,” says the broody boy in black.

  “Clearly. Spiked and not spiked.”

  “Goes both ways,” the boy adds. Bonheur laughs and ushers the guests into the kitchen.

  I seize my chance and ask Lucy and Simon to cover for me. They station themselves outside the second door. I close the door quietly behind me. The room looks just the same as yesterday and the drawing, too, is unchanged. I pull the trapdoor and glance at the corkscrew stairs, long and dark. I take my phone from my pocket and press against the screen, so I have a faint glow as I descend the steps, one looping circle after another. I’ve made six or seven orbits down the staircase and the air is feeling mustier and heavier and the light from my phone only illuminates the steps right below my feet. Finally, after another dizzying round or two I arrive at the bottom. I point my phone downward to the stone basement cellar, then take several tentative steps in front of me. I reach a wall and sweep my phone up to light it. Empty. I do the same with the other walls; all are bare. There is nothing here in this cellar.

  But voices.

  The soft sound of voices.

  They are not coming from above. They are coming from below.

  From underground.

  I kneel down, press my ear to the floor. It’s women’s voices. But I can’t make out the words. I guess you could say they are talking, but it sounds more like poetry, like they are speaking in sonnets, or rather that their voices make you feel the way a sonnet does. I have half a mind to lie down on the floor, one ear pressed against the cold all night, and listen to their siren song, though the rational part of my brain tells me that it is physically impossible for there to be voices underneath this rock. This home is built on a hill, on dirt, on bedrock. There should be nothing under me but concrete.

  And yet I hear soft, gliding words, the sound of snowflakes floating down from a gaslit sky. Then laughter, like a bell, pure and bright. I press the heels of my hands against my eyes. This is how you lose your mind. This is the madwoman in the attic. The mad boy in the basement. Seeing art. Hearing voices. From the dancers in the Musée d’Orsay to Giselle in the square to these voices. Everything feels so unbearably real to me, even though I don’t really know how any of it can be. I don’t have a rational answer to how or why my world is tilting. But the voices aren’t going away, so I hunt for the source of the sound, maybe a crack in the cellar floor. It’s then that I see silver dust. Like the kind in the calf Bonheur gave me.

  It’s filled in a ridge in the floor in the shape of a rectangle, like desert sand outlining the edges of an archaeological dig. My phone gives off embers of light as I blow a stream of air into the dust so I can see what it’s outlining. There’s a small slot in the middle of one of the ridges. But the dust disintegrates with my breath, leaving only a shadow on the air—a reminder that it’s clearly time for me to conduct my exodus too, and to get a grip on reality.

  I take t
he steps two by two, spiraling higher, away from the voices. I near the top of this everlasting staircase. Light from the room floods the open trap door and I emerge, safe, into Bonheur’s TV room. The door to the room is still shut. I pull it open, and two bodies fall in, catching themselves before they topple. Simon and Lucy untangle their arms and lips from each other.

  “Just making sure no one came in,” Simon says, grabbing for Lucy’s waist to hold onto her.

  “Thanks.”

  “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  “I’m not sure,” I say as we step into the hall. Simon doesn’t ask what I was looking for. He gets that sometimes you just need to guard the door without knowing why.

  “Are you having the time of your life?” It’s Bonheur, and his red heels click loudly along the hardwood floors.

  “I’m having the worst time. The absolute worst, most awful time of my life,” Lucy says, pretending to cry.

  Bonheur looks genuinely surprised.

  “Gotcha!”

  Bonheur wags a finger at Simon’s new girl. “You did get me. Well done, well done. Now, why don’t you two lovebirds head to the kitchen? You haven’t had my hot chocolate yet. It’s spiked with cayenne pepper. For l’amour!” He winks at Simon and Lucy, tipping his head to the festivities in the other room. Simon asks me with his eyes if it’s okay to go, and I nod.

  Bonheur cocks his head to the side and smiles. “The voices are lovely.”

  I do my best to act unsurprised. Does he hear them too? Is he crazy as well?

  “Like a poem,” he adds.

  I have to know. I have to confirm I’m not the only one hearing things. “What are those voices?”

  He beams, as if I have asked the one perfect question. “Muses.”

  I scoff. “Muses in your cellar?”

  “Don’t you believe in Muses?” he asks, as if Muses are the equivalent of the law of gravity. His certainty catches me off guard.

  “I don’t know,” I say, stumbling through the words.

  “Well, I do.”

  I’m not sure where to go next. I glance at the floor of his house, trying to gather my thoughts. His house. That’s right. “Did this used to be Suzanne Valadon’s house?”

  “It did. She was my great-great-great-something. I lost track. But yes, she lived here.” He assumes a dramatic pose, gesturing grandly as he continues, “Way back when she painted and partied and tempted the other artists in the heyday of Montmartre and the Moulin Rouge.”

  “Why would my mother not mention that you guys were related?”

  He resumes his normal voice. “I have no idea. But Suzanne had her own artistic politics and not everyone agreed with them. Not Renoir for sure. They didn’t see eye to eye, but she loved that painting. The Girl in the Garden. She’s the reason my family has it. She kept it safe. We have kept it safe for all these years.” He grips my shoulder and turns me toward the white door at the end of the hall. “The painting is off limits to everyone.” He lowers his voice to the barest whisper. “But would you like to see her again?”

  I should say no. I should run far away from all these strange things—Muses, Valadon, his family guarding a prized painting.

  But this is the real reason I’m not bothered that Emilie is off dancing. Because I’m off chasing a dream as well, and the hope that my reality isn’t merely my illusion. “Why would you need to keep it safe?”

  “It’s not like other paintings, Julien. It needed more protection.”

  “Why? Who would want to hurt that painting?”

  “It wouldn’t have been hidden for so many years if there weren’t people who wanted to hurt it.”

  Two artists in love with the same girl. Maybe the girl’s family had been after it. Maybe they wanted to protect her reputation, as my mother said. My head spins with shadowy secrets of a girl who inspired love, aroused jealousy, needed protection.

  Who is she?

  “But you’ll keep it safe at the museum, won’t you?” Bonheur asks.

  “Of course.” I have so many more questions, but the closer I get to the door, the harder it is to put words into anything resembling a logical order. My own beating heart is leading me to that room.

  Bonheur removes a key from a pocket in his dress and opens the door. He guides me inside. “Sit, stay. I’ll leave you two alone.”

  The door clicks behind him, and I walk, like a patient hypnotized, to The Girl in the Garden.

  Even with the space between us, I can feel a warmth coming from the canvas, a body heat radiating out. I study the girl, the way she looks back, the way her lips are parted ever so slightly. I want to trace a finger across those red lips. I want to know what she was saying when she posed for this painting. What would she say now if she could talk?

  I stand close and watch her. She stays still and silent, but the room feels expectant, as if anticipation itself is wrapping around me like a long line of smoke drifting across an Arabian night. I stare so hard at the painting that I squint, and when I do, I see the faintest of lines surrounding her.

  A shimmer of silver.

  The canvas buckles near her hand. Then it’s quiet again. I hold my breath, pleading for more. This is real, this has to be real, please let this be more than an illusion. There’s a rustling then, and one slender, feminine finger pokes out. I feel a rush of blood to the head. I lick my lips briefly, hold my hands together, and I wait.

  “Come out,” I whisper. “Come out.”

  I move closer to the painting, inches away now. “Who are you?”

  There’s the gentlest swishing sound of a skirt from behind the frame.

  “What is your name?”

  Then a distant sound, like a far-off bell.

  “What are your favorite things?”

  Something like laughter, but it’s not from the party. It’s as if the canvas is echoing a sweet, inviting laugh.

  I put my hands on the frame. This is as close as I have come to touching her. “What are you like, girl behind the paint?” I ask, and for a moment I can hear soft breath and the beating of a heart, and I’m sure neither one is coming from me.

  The canvas is quiet the rest of the night, and when the sounds of the party die down, I’m one of the last to leave. Bonheur presses the pink polka-dotted calf into my hands and tells me I earned it.

  “I want to see her again. Before she comes to the museum.”

  He smiles and programs his number into my cell. “Just think of me as your middleman. For her.”

  We’re no longer calling her The Girl in the Garden. She’s a she. She’s a girl, and I want her to come out at night even if she is all in my mind.

  Chapter 7

  A Vision in Flames, Then Sizzles

  I hand my mother my latest history assignment with a gleam of triumph. I have obtained a slightly above-average grade on it, and I want to gloat because it is my after-hours access.

  “Ha. You didn’t think I could do it.”

  She gives me a sharp look as she puts her glasses on. She won’t believe I’ve accomplished anything academically until she verifies it with 20/20 vision. But it’s amazing how an imaginary girl can motivate me. My mother peruses the pages, then gives an approving nod. She hands the paper back to me. “Well done. Now, do you think you could do me a favor and pay a visit to Claire at the Louvre to check out the Interiors exhibit? The Renoir with the sun damage has been repaired and is hung there, but I need your sharp eyes for a second look.”

  I sigh. “Seriously? Can I just have an afternoon off?” I need to check on a different Renoir.

  “This is important. I need you. You were the first one to notice the fading, so I would just feel better if you could give it one final look. I don’t want to have any problems.”

  “Okay,” I say, giving in.

  “And Julien?”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t let on that the piano girls had any sun damage at all. It’s all better now, so the Louvre doesn’t need to know.”

 
“Of course,” I say, tucking this latest secret safely away. Besides, sun damage happens. It’s a standard part of the aging process, and it can also be reversed by a good restorer. No harm, no foul.

  On my way out, I see the usual assortment of street artists who’ve set up shop along the river to draw tourists with pointy chins and oversize heads. Max is there, the guy who’s the best of them all. He’s sketching a gangly English boy who is fidgety and antsy, but the parents seem determined to capture their son as caricature. The too-long limbs remind me of a baby horse, and I say this to Max.

  “You better hope they don’t know ‘poulain’ or I’ve lost ten euros,” he says, but he’s laughing.

  “I’ll cover you if they turn out to be bilingual equestrians.”

  I’m not a religious person, and so I have to say I’m relieved that we have very few scenes of saints and martyrs, or crucifixions, for that matter, at the Musée d’Orsay. I’m not keen on interacting with anyone from the Old or New Testament when art comes alive after hours. Thankfully, we only have art painted after 1848, and most modern painters moved far away from the religious and historical scenes of the past.

  But the Louvre is our sister museum, and it claims earlier works, including a seventeenth-century Georges de La Tour depicting Joseph in his workshop with a young Jesus. I’m glad it’s daytime, so the father and son are staying put in their frames.

  “It’s ironic as an interior scene, don’t you think? It was my idea too, because I do have years of practical work in the field.”

  The question, and the veiled insult about my age, comes from Claire. She’s an assistant curator here at the Louvre and has been showing me how they’re mingling the paintings for the joint exhibit opening soon on Interiors through the Ages. It’s not the first question she asked me. The first was Where is Marie-Amelie Garnier? My response was simple: She sent me instead, and I’d be honored if you’d show me the exhibit before it opens. Then she huffed out an annoyed Very well.

  Claire is one of those perfectly put-together people—sharp skirt, heels, proper blouse, and the kind of straight brown hair you see on TV hosts and anchors. Like many of them, she’s also humorless.