I SAT DOWN ON one of the benches in front of van Gogh with a flask of wine and three of my best friends, and we all passed it around, sharing sips, as they sang happy birthday to me, and gave me presents. A romance book from Juliette—“It’s the latest Ann Nichols! I got it early, don’t tell anyone.”
And Drew and Fiona, they gave me an elegant and beautiful passport holder.
“Because you should use it,” Fiona said with a smile.
I hugged them all, thankful to have friends like these, who were there for me when I didn’t need them, and running toward me when I did. Usually, we’d all just celebrate birthdays at our local Wine and Whine haunt whichever Wednesday was closest—that’s how we celebrated everyone’s birthday—but they knew I’d come to the Met on Wednesday instead, since it was my birthday and I was nothing if not my parent’s child of routine, and they’d accosted me on the steps, completely unexpected. I thought I wouldn’t see Drew and Fiona for another week at least, but they decided to bring Penelope along, and she was napping surprisingly blissfully in a wrap across Drew’s front. My aunt and I used to visit van Gogh before we set off on our trips, but there was no trip this year, though it was still nice to go and sit, like I used to in college, and drink a little wine, and listen to my friends comment on the pieces of art as if any of us knew what we were talking about.
“I like that frame,” Juliette said. “It’s very . . . stark.”
“I think it’s mahogany,” Fiona pointed out, before Penelope Grayson Torres made a noise that probably signaled to Fiona that something was amiss, because she took the baby from Drew and said, “I need to go find a bathroom. Drew?”
“I think there’s one this way. We’ll be right back,” Drew added, getting up with her wife.
“Take your time,” I replied, and they left down the hallway. Juliette grabbed a map that had been abandoned on one of the benches, and she mentioned that she hadn’t been to this museum in a while.
“You should go explore. I’ve been here so many times, I think I have all the plaques memorized,” I replied matter-of-factly, and that seemed like a great idea to her, because she set off for the Sackler Wing, leaving me to my own devices.
Finally alone, in the quiet surrounded by tourists, I settled down on my bench, and looked up at the van Goghs, sandwiched beside other Postimpressionist painters of that era, Gauguin and Seurat. Even though people tried to be quiet as they moved around Gallery 825, their footsteps were loud and shuffling, echoing across the wooden herringbone floor.
I closed my eyes, and breathed out a breath, and I missed my aunt.
She always said she loved van Gogh’s work, and maybe that was why I loved it as well. And knowing what I knew now, maybe she liked van Gogh’s work for other reasons, too. Maybe she liked how he created things while never knowing his own value. Maybe she liked the thought of being imperfect, but being loved anyway. Maybe she felt some sort of kinship with a man who, for his entire adult life, warred with his own monsters in his head. Vincent van Gogh’s last words were, after his brother comforted him by telling him he would get better from the self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest, “La tristesse durera toujours.”
The sadness will last forever.
It wasn’t a lie. There was sadness, and there was despair, and there was pain—but there was also laughter, and joy, and relief. There was never grief without love or love without grief, and I chose to think that my aunt lived because of them. Because of all the light and love and joy that she found in the shadows of everything that plagued her. She lived because she loved, and she lived because she was loved, and what a lovely lifetime she gave us.
I didn’t realize Drew had returned until she cleared her throat, her hands behind her back suspiciously—as if she was hiding something. Fiona wasn’t with her. “Hi, sorry. I didn’t want to give this to you with everyone else around . . .”
“What is it?” I asked.
“I really hope you won’t be mad at me, but . . .” She revealed a package, and handed it to me. “When you threw it away, I . . . fished it out of the garbage. I was trying to figure out the right time to give it to you and, well . . . there’s never a right time, I guess.”
It was the same package that I’d thrown away—the one from my aunt that had gotten lost in the mail.
I took it, running my hands over my aunt’s crisp handwriting.
“I’m sorry if you’re mad but—”
“No.” I blinked back tears in my eyes. “Thank you. I regretted throwing it away.”
She smiled. “Good.” Then she stooped down and hugged me. “We love you, Clementine.”
I hugged her back. “I love you all, too.”
She kissed my cheek, and began to leave again, but I stopped her for a moment. “Did you ever hear back? About James Ashton?”
Did I mess it all up? But I was afraid to ask that part, because I hadn’t heard one way or the other what ended up happening to that auction. I think it wrapped up today. He probably went with Faux, or Harper, or—
A sparkle lit Drew’s eyes and she nodded with a smile. She sat down on the edge of the bench and took my hands tightly, and said, “We got it! I heard just before we came here to surprise you.”
My shoulders relaxed with relief. “You got it.”
“We have some things to work out in the contract, but he’s ours.”
“He’s yours,” I corrected.
Her smile faltered a little. “Strauss and Adder won’t be the same without you.”
“It’ll be just as good, and he will shine with you, I just know it.”
She perked at that. “You’re right, and you should say it louder.”
So I did. I stood and pointed to Drew and shouted, “Attention everyone!”
Drew paled. “No, wait, stop—”
“Please give a round of applause for Drew, the most thoughtful, lovely book editor you’ll ever find!” I shouted, while Drew tried to shush me, and clawed at me to sit down again. The attendant in the room gave me a tired look. “And she just won her dream book at auction!”
There was a round of sparse applause as Drew pulled me back down onto the bench, her face red in a blush. “Shush! Stop it! What’s come over you, do you want to get kicked out?”
I laughed and promised, “I’m going to celebrate every good thing that comes your way.”
The room attendant, who had begun to walk over to us, decided that we weren’t worth it, turned, and left for her perch by the doorway again.
Drew said, “You’re a menace.”
“You love me.”
“We do,” she agreed, and her eyes flicked down to the package again. “Come find us when you’re done?”
“I promise.”
“Okay, good.” And she left again to go after Fiona.
When she was gone, and the quiet crept into the gallery again, I stared down at the package on the bench beside me. It was small, about the size of a postcard, so I could see how it could’ve easily gotten lost. There were half a dozen different customs stamps on it, detailing its long and harrowing journey. It felt almost impossible that it’d come back to me, but it had.
My fingers slipped under the brown packaging paper, and I finally tore it open. It was a travel guide—to Iceland. Ævintýri Bíður by Ingólfur Sigurðsson. When I put it into Google, it translated to Adventure Awaits.
And she had tucked a letter into it:
To detail our trip next year! I found it in a darling little used bookstore in Canterbury, England.
Love, AA
My mouth twisted as tears came to my eyes. She had been planning it even though, in the end, she wasn’t quite sure she wanted to go.
I closed the letter and tucked it back into the book for the trip I would never go on, and turned my eyes back up to van Gogh.
I would never know if she meant to leave or not, whether it was accidental or intentional, but I chose to believe that in another universe, we were boarding a plane to Iceland, she in her powder- blue traveling coat, her hair pulled up into a scarf, ready to tear through all the romance novels she’d loaded onto her kindle, and I’d be painting scenes in Ævintýri Bíður.
I liked that story. It was a good one.
But . . . so was this one. A little sadder, but it was mine, and while Iceland was no longer on the agenda, adventure still awaited, so I opened to the first page, and took out my pencil, and began to sketch the family with the young child across the room. Her parents held her hand as she pulled them from one painting to the next, counting the birds in each of them. If they didn’t have a bird, she’d say, “None!” and move on, so naturally I sketched a flock of pigeons behind her.
I’m sure my friends were all dragging each other through the Met, looking at the suits of armor and the sphinxes and the Rembrandts, while I sat happily and let my heart pour out into the pages.
I didn’t notice the man who sat down beside me until the little girl came up to him and asked, “Do you like birds?”
“Most of them,” he replied warmly, “though I’m still unsure about pigeons.”
“I love pigeons!” she gasped, and turned to her parents. “Momma, Daddy, let’s count the pigeons in the pictures next!” Before she dragged them off to the next room, which—I knew from experience—held quite a lot of paintings with birds in them.
The man beside me leaned forward, his hands on his knees, as he looked up at the paintings. He wore a soft lavender button-down, sleeves rolled up to expose the tattoos across his arms, placed like afterthoughts. I glanced over at him—
“Iwan?” His name was a whisper, afraid I was mistaken. Though, he didn’t look as put together as before. His auburn curls were wild, his shirt crumpled. But then he looked over at me, those pale eyes so lovely a gray, I knew how to paint them now—in shades of black and white and creams and golds and blues, pearlescent and soft. And then he smiled at me, that same crooked smile of the man I’d met in that small apartment on the Upper East Side, where time crashed together like opposing waves.
I had just opened my mouth to congratulate him on choosing Drew, the only right choice, trying to make it sound as sarcastic and playful as I could, while trying to disguise my regret, the cracks in an impending heartbreak, when he said, “Happy Birthday, Lemon.”
“What?” I gave a start.
He pulled up a small bouquet of sunflowers. “Happy birthday.”
I took them hesitantly. He’d remembered my favorite color. Of course he had, because he was still the same person—thoughtful and kind. Like he’d always been. For everything that changed, something stayed the same. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have said anything the other week—especially not at your opening.”
“Perhaps,” he replied, folding his hands together. We sat there quietly for a moment, looking at the paintings. Tourists migrated around us, the gallery a soft rush of murmurs.
“How did you know I’d be here?” I asked after a moment.
He gave me a sidelong look. “You said you would be. Every birthday.” He gave a small laugh. “You have no idea how many times I debated coming here any other year. Just sitting down beside you, wondering if—maybe—you’d recognize me.”
“From the cab?” I asked.
He nodded. “But I was always a little too afraid. And then when you walked into that book meeting . . .” He clicked his tongue to the roof of his mouth and shook his head. “I tried to look so cool for you.”
“You accomplished that. Maybe a little too well,” I added.
He chuckled, and turned to me. “Would you . . . like to go to dinner with me? I know this restaurant down in NoHo. It’s changed a little recently.”
“I don’t know . . . Is it good?”
“It’s decent,” he replied, and then after a thought, he added, “I hope.”
A grin broke out across my face. I couldn’t help it. “Well, then, I guess we need to go see for ourselves,” I said, and he stood and outstretched his hand to me, and I felt a familiar kind of thrill curl through my body as I accepted his hand—the kind of feeling I got when I rushed after my aunt through airport terminals, fast and breathless, the world spinning.
It was the feeling of something new.
