Starry Nights

by Daisy Whitney

  Soon enough, I’m greeted by a darkening sky that sends a thrill through me. My cells have become anticipation as I return to her gallery, where I hear the rustle of a dress. There she is, stepping out of her frame; so natural, so effortless, as if she does this every single night. Her long cream dress skims the floor, and she shakes out her blond curls, a Botticelli beauty emerging from a half shell. Her hair is long and luxurious, and it begs to be touched, and held, and kissed. She doesn’t realize I’m here watching her, as her paint becomes body. Now she is flesh, and shape, and skin, and breath, and life.

  She turns around, and her eyes are on me for the first time. They are the fierce blue of revolution, the color of a rallying cry.

  Then she speaks. “I’m awfully hungry.”

  I slide into a conversation as if it were the next bend on a well-marked path in the woods. “It’s probably been awhile since you had a bite to eat.”

  “More than a hundred and thirty years,” she says, with a wry nod.

  “I know where there’s a great île flottante, but it’s closed,” I say, thinking of the nearby café that serves the floating meringue in caramel.

  “Maybe you can bring one tomorrow?”

  “Sure. It’s the best in the city.”

  “I do love sweets.”

  “Fortunately, we have plenty of those here in Paris,” I say, then I remember the sandwich from earlier. “I have half a sandwich in my bag.” I pat my backpack.

  “Would you mind terribly? I mean, may I have it?”

  “Of course. Absolutely.” I sit down on the wooden bench, and she sits next to me. I never take my eyes off her, not as I unzip the backpack, not as I unwrap the bread and cheese, not as I offer it to her. When the food reaches her lips, she rolls her eyes in pleasure.

  “This hits the spot,” she says.

  “I can bring a sandwich tomorrow too if you like. Do you have a favorite?”

  “Anything. Anything is good.” Then she stops, holds up her index finger. “Actually, everything is good,” she adds, and there’s a ravenousness to her words, a hunger in her voice, and I don’t think it’s just for food.

  “By the way, I’m Julien.” I offer my hand to shake. Her touch is a confirmation of so many things, most of all that I’m not mad, because she is as real as I’d imagined. She’s not a trick of the mind. She’s atoms and elements, she is absolute, from the hair that falls past her shoulders to the folds of her dress to the slim silver bracelets she wears, each one the width of a few links of thread.

  “You can call me Clio.”

  “Clio,” I say. Then again, because her name is like a bell, clear and pure. “Clio.”

  “It’s better like this, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, I would have to say it’s better like this.”

  She sighs deeply. “I’m free. I’m finally free.” Her voice breaks for a moment as if she might cry. But tears don’t fall. “And it feels spectacular.” She leans her head back, like she’s on a beach letting the sun warm her face. “Ah, you have no idea what all those years inside a painting will do to a girl.”

  She stretches her arms up high, shifts her neck from side to side, then turns to me. Her gaze is a spark, a ride on a motorcycle after midnight, as her wild blue eyes light up as if she’s about to suggest something naughty. “Would you like to show me this museum, Julien?”

  Okay, maybe not that naughty. But it’s the way she says it. Like nothing could be better than the two of us, nearly alone, in the Musée d’Orsay.

  “I would love to show you this museum.”

  We wander through the galleries, and I show her the art. She trails her hand along the canvases, brushing her fingertips across pasteled bathers on beaches, bowls of peaches, and moonlit stars, then tracing them over petals of flowers, Tahitian women on islands, and cabarets in Montmartre. I don’t tell her to stop, I don’t say “keep your hands off” as I would to anyone else who tried to touch the paintings. There is a reverence to her touch, as if she’d never even dare think of hurting a painting, as if she could only think of loving them. When she reaches one of Monet’s Rouen cathedrals she stops to consider it.

  “I want to go there. I want to see the real cathedral. Have you been?”

  “Yes. My father teaches art history. He took me to a lot of the places the artists here painted. Rouen, Arles, even Monet’s garden.”

  Her eyes widen. “You’ve been to Monet’s garden? The real one?”

  I laugh once. “Yes, the real one. What other one would I go to?”

  “What is it like now? Tell me.”

  “It’s like this sensory paradise of colors and scents and sounds. It’s like art made real. It’s like walking through a field of inspiration,” I say, then stop myself when I hear the words coming out of my mouth. “God, that sounds unbelievably pretentious, doesn’t it?”

  “No. It doesn’t. It sounds …” Her voice trails off and she looks again at the Monet. She lays her hand along the doorway of the church. “It sounds like something I’d want.”

  The way she says “want” tugs on my heart. It’s both wistful and painful, a wish from a girl who’s been trapped for too long. Are the other people in the paintings trapped too? Something is different about Clio though. I’ve never talked to any of the other painted people this long. They’ve never said more than a few words, and none of them have ever seemed sad. She’s not like them. I want to ask who she is, where she’s from, but the moment is delicate and I don’t want to break it.

  “Do you want to see my favorite Van Gogh?”

  “Yes,” she says, and she’s smiling again, sparkling again. “I definitely want to see your favorite Van Gogh, Julien.”

  The sound of my name on her lips makes me wants to touch her arm, to reach for her hand. I keep my hands to myself though—she wanted to come out of her frame, but I don’t know if she wanted to come out for me or to be free of her painted chains.

  I take her to the wing on the second floor that houses the Van Goghs and bring her to Starry Night. A couple walks along the River Rhône as starlight fills the night and sailboats bob in the water. Clio places a hand on her heart and closes her eyes briefly. When she opens her eyes, she reaches for the painting, her touch like a murmur on the waves.

  “Have you been here?”

  “Yes, Van Gogh painted this by the Rhône in Arles. But I don’t remember going. I was too young when my dad took me there.”

  Neither one of us says anything as we admire the painting. Then her body shifts. She moves closer to me. We’re not touching, but being so near to her is intoxicating. “We’ll go together someday then,” she says, and now she’s looking at me.

  A heady, swooping feeling races through me at the admission that maybe she likes me too. “Anytime, any day,” I say, though I know it would be impossible. She may be real, but she’s still painted.

  “Show me more.”

  I do, and an hour or so later, she has seen haystacks and operas, mirrors and pheasants, doctors and patients. “You love them all,” she says to me when we stop near her gallery. It’s almost midnight, and I hate that I have to go home.

  I nod. “Yes. I do.”

  She asks me another question. “You’ve been coming to see me, haven’t you?”

  “Did you see me? Could you see me?”

  “You’re the first thing I’ve been able to see or hear on the other side of the frame,” she says with both frustration and relief in her voice. “I saw you in that room. You heard me, right?”

  “Yes,” I say, flashing back to Bonheur’s house.

  “I wanted to come out sooner.” There is so much longing in her voice. Longing for what could have been? For the years she missed? She moves closer to me, so we’re both leaning against the wall, inches apart. “As soon as I saw you, I tried to get out. It was the closest I’ve ever come to getting out until now.”

  “I’m glad you’re able to come out now.”

  “Me too. You’re so different from anyone I’ve ever
met. You asked questions about me. You talked to me.”

  She is so straightforward, and it is an immense turn-on. Who was that Jenny from Pittsburgh? I don’t remember. I don’t care. There’s never been another girl I’ve wanted as far as I can tell in this second.

  “‘What are you like, girl behind the paint?’ That’s what you asked me.”

  “You remember,” I say. I’m sure she’s some sort of enchantress, and she has put me completely under her spell. “Who are you?”

  “I told you my name. I’m just a sixteen-year-old girl.”

  “No. Who are you?”

  Her gaze dances away and then back at me as she grins. “Julien, do you want me to tell you everything about me on our first …” Her voice trails off, as if she doesn’t know the word. “What do you call it these days?”

  “Um, date? First date?” I offer, hoping that maybe she sees it the same way.

  “First date. Why, yes. I like the sound of that. And are visits to the museum good first dates?”

  “I would have to say this particular visit to the museum has been my favorite date.”

  “And for me as well.”

  I feel wobbly, but I manage to hang on to ask another question. “Where have you been for the last century?”

  She points to the gallery where her gilded frame rests. “On the other side of that painting.”

  We walk back. “What’s on the other side?”

  “Tulips and hollyhocks, pansies and irises.” Her voice is pure, her French is impeccable, but she doesn’t have the accent of a native.

  “You don’t sound like you’re from here.”

  “You doubt my French?” She places a palm against her chest, as if I’ve offended her.

  “Maybe a little.”

  “Do you think I’m French?”

  “I don’t know what you are. Or who you are. Tell me where you’re from,” I ask, seized by curiosity, by the thirst to know her more.

  She shakes her head. “Come back tomorrow, please. Promise me?”

  “I promise.”

  She walks back to her painting and steps into the frame, pulling up the gauzy hem of her skirts last, the lace edges brushing against the painted irises until she is immobile once more.

  Then I do something I have never done before. I touch the art. Not with my hands, like Clio did. If the forensic experts dusted this painting for fingerprints they wouldn’t find mine; they’d find the barest outline of my lips.

  I walk home in a hazy dream state, still feeling the faint traces of her so dangerously close to me, as if she’s imprinted on my skin. And so I hardly notice, and I barely care, that there’s a guy my age in jeans and a tattered sweatshirt sprawled out on the museum steps, watching me walk away.

  Chapter 10

  One of These Things Is Not Like the Others

  “Look! The sheet is messy on Olympia’s bed.” Clio points to the edge of the white satin sheet in Manet’s Olympia. A small bit of white fabric is poking out of the canvas, hanging over the gilded frame.

  I pretend to chide the painting. “I tell them to clean their rooms and put their toys away, but they don’t listen to me. Ever.”

  “May I do it?” Clio asks.

  “Be my guest.”

  She hands me the plastic takeout container with half of the île flottante still in it. The caramel had turned drizzly, and the meringue had sunk by the time Clio emerged. But still, she is digging the dessert. She gathers up the white folds of the sheet, and I tense for a second, hoping it doesn’t remain stuck outside the canvas, like Bathsheba’s belly. But the sheets take and Clio tucks them neatly back in. The art here behaves differently from the paintings at the Louvre. The art here seems healthy. The art there didn’t respond to my touch.

  “There.” Clio brushes one palm against the other.

  “Now I finally have someone to help me get all the paintings back in order.”

  “Does this happen a lot?”

  “The paintings are terribly lazy. They expect me to straighten up after them all the time.”

  “It’s more like they’re playing, though?”

  I nod. That’s exactly how the paintings here act at night. “Yes. They seem to be having fun.”

  “But you still pick up after them?”

  “Of course. I always take care of the art.”

  “You are a caretaker,” she says and takes another bite of the meringue, then offers some to me. I take the spoon from her and eat a piece. I don’t like to be fed.

  I hand the île flottante back to her, then look at my watch. I’ve got to be home by midnight. Darn curfew. “It’s almost eleven. Do you want to go to the ballet?”

  Clio raises her eyebrows. “The ballet? But I can’t leave.”

  “I think I might be able to arrange for a special performance here.”

  “That sounds like a perfect, as you call it, second date.”

  Clio puts the empty takeout container on a wooden bench. We walk across the cavernous thoroughfare to visit my dancer friends. I tap twice near the frame. The girl in white squeezes her way out of the paint.

  “I’m all better now,” she announces. She points to her foot. “Thank you.”

  “Anytime. By the way, I’m Julien. And this is Clio.”

  “Oh. Hi, Julien and Clio,” she says, giggling. “I’m Emmanuelle.”

  “Nice to meet you, Emmanuelle,” I say, and it’s the first time I’ve learned the name of one of Degas’s dancers.

  “Pleasure to meet you too,” Clio says with a quick curtsy that reminds me once again of the time she’s from.

  Emmanuelle looks back at her frame and motions for her friend to join her. In a flutter of white tulle her friend springs free. Moments later, all the Degas girls are wriggling out of frames, encouraging the other dancers to make their getaways too. They jeté their way into the finale of Swan Lake as the dancers in pinks and whites and blues become the swans, with Emmanuelle as Odette. Her young friend plays the prince, still another girl assumes the role of the evil sorcerer. We watch them perform. When they’re finished, Clio and I shout “brava” as the corps take their swanlike bows, then leap back into their frames.

  As Emmanuelle goes still, I wonder what happens to her when she’s inside the frame. If she pines for escape, trapped in some sort of bizarre eternity of paint, or if she is simply a shadow of the girl she once was.

  Clio and I resume our walk through the galleries. “Clio, are you the girl Renoir painted? Or are you just, I don’t know, a version of her now that lives on in the art?”

  “You mean, am I like the other paintings? Paint coming to life at night?”

  “Something like that. I don’t entirely understand if it’s really them who come out, or just some alternate version that exists solely in the art. But you seem different. Most of the paintings don’t say much. More than a few words, at least, like with Emmanuelle. Are they ghosts?” I ask with a forced laugh.

  She shakes her head. “But I’ve heard that the ghosts of great artists inhabit cafés.”

  “Really?” I can’t tell if she’s joking.

  “Since that’s where so many writers, artists, and poets hang out,” she says with a teasing grin. “Though you’d think they might visit museums too.”

  “Please don’t tell me we’re going to be visited by a ghost of an artist.”

  She stops walking and faces me, her expression serious now. “When the paintings come out for you, it’s what people have meant all along when they talk about artists being immortal. In a way, their work can live forever. When the art comes alive it’s like the immortal version of the painting, like a little bit of the person painted has gotten to live forever. But the people, they aren’t stuck inside the painting. They don’t spend their days wandering beyond the frame. They aren’t alive on the other side.”

  “You’re not just paint when you go inside the frame?” I knew she was different. I knew she was a girl, and not just a shadow of the painting’s subject. But I had no
idea how real she was.

  “That’s why I asked about the real Monet’s garden. Because I live in the painted one. All the time.”

  “You live in Monet’s garden?”

  “That’s where I was when Renoir painted me. So when I go back in the frame, that’s where I am, in a painted version. That’s where I sleep. That’s where I’ve been.”

  “That sounds beautiful and awful at the same time.”

  Her eyes are full of such sadness. “It is. It’s gorgeous there, but it’s lonely. I’ve been completely alone this whole time.”

  “Did he trap you? Renoir?”

  She sighs and shakes her head, her beautiful blond curls moving gently, like a breeze. I can’t even imagine what she’s feeling. “There were things we didn’t agree on. But, Julien,” she says and places her hand on mine, “I don’t actually want to talk about Renoir right now.”

  Maybe the story is true. Perhaps Renoir was in love with her, but she didn’t feel the same. So he locked her away in a painted cage.

  “Fair enough,” I say, and I’m not sure where to go next. I want to ask her about her life before, about who she was and if she wants to go back. But maybe there is no back. Maybe there’s just this, life inside and out of a painting.

  “But you know what I do want to talk about?” she asks.

  “What do you want to talk about?”

  “You. Tell me about you.” She reaches for my hand and slides her fingers into mine. “Tell me how you spend your days, Julien.”

  Right now, I spend them waiting for the night.

  Chapter 11

  The Gnarled Hands

  I pass an art gallery where a Jack Russell terrier has camped out in the window, slumbering at the claw feet of a chair from years ago. I stop to say hi to the dog through the window, then I wave to Zola, the owner’s daughter. Zola goes to school with me and helps out in her mother’s gallery. Zola smiles and waves back, then points to the low neckline of her red-and-black dress.