13 Little Blue Envelopes (11 page)

But everywhere—everywhere—there were paintings. Massive paintings of women, mostly. Women with sprawling masses of hair with all kinds of things coming out of it, women juggling stars. Floating women, women sneaking through black forests, women surrounded by bright shimmering gold. Paintings so large that the walls could each only accommodate one or two.

The girl continued to lead them back, then up three flights along a rickety wooden staircase that was lined with even more paintings. At the top, they reached a doorway that had been painted a bright metallic gold.

“Here,” the girl said, turning and heading back downstairs.

Ginny and Keith stared at the big gold door.

108

“Who are we visiting again?” he asked. “God?”

In answer, the door swung open.

Ginny wouldn’t have guessed that the girl at the door could have lost the “Unusual and Imposing Appearance Award” so quickly, but Mari beat her by a mile. She had to be sixty, at least.

Ginny could see it in her face. She had a massive crown of long, teased-out jet black hair cut through with orange highlights. She was wearing clothes that were just a bit too small and tight for her plump frame—a vertical-striped boatneck shirt and jeans with a black belt covered in heavy studs. It gripped her belly unflatteringly, yet somehow she carried it off. Her eyes were completely surrounded by heavy circles of black eyeliner. There were what looked like three identical freckles along each of her cheekbones, right under her eyes. As Ginny stepped into the room, she could see that they were small blue tattoos of stars.

She wore flat gold sandals, and Ginny could see that there were also tattoos on her feet, words printed in tiny purple scrawl.

When she reached out to clasp Ginny by the face and give her a kiss on each cheek, Ginny saw similar messages on her hands.

“You’re Peg’s niece?” Mari asked, breaking the embrace.

Ginny nodded.

“And you are?” This was to Keith.

“Her hairdresser,” he said. “She won’t go anywhere without me.”

Mari patted his cheek and smiled.

“I like you,” she said. “Would you like a chocolate?”

She padded over to her sunny worktable and produced a large bucket of miniature candy bars. Ginny shook her head, but Keith took a small handful.

“I’ll get Chloe to bring us some tea,” she said.

109

A few minutes later, Chloe (maybe the last name in the world Ginny would have attached to the red overalls girl—she was more of a “Hank”) came up with a ceramic tray with a brown teapot, a dish of sugar, and a small jug of cream. The tray was also littered with even more miniature chocolate bars. As Mari reached for these, she noticed that Keith’s gaze was lingering on the words imprinted on her hands.

“These are the names of my dogs, the ones that have died,”

Mari said. “I’ve dedicated my hands to them. My foxes’ names are on my feet.”

Instead of the logical, “You had foxes? And you put their names on your FEET?” Ginny managed to say, “I think I saw a fox. Last night. In London.”

“You probably did,” Mari said. “London is full of foxes. It’s a magical city. I had three pet foxes. When I lived in France, I had a cage built in the garden. I locked myself in there with them during the days and painted. Foxes are wonderful companions.”

Keith looked like he was about to say something, but Ginny planted her foot firmly on the toe of his Chucks and pressed down.

“It’s good to be in a cage,” Mari went on. “It keeps you focused. I recommend it.”

Ginny ground her foot down hard. Keith pressed his lips together tightly and turned to look at the paintings on the wall just next to him. Mari poured out the tea and loaded her cup with sugar, stirring it loudly.

“I’m so sorry about your aunt,” she finally said. “It was such terrible news to hear that she died. But she was so ill . . .”

110

Keith turned from a painting of a woman morphing into a can of beans and raised an eyebrow in Ginny’s direction.

“She mentioned you might be coming. I’m glad you did. She was a very good painter, you know. Very good.”

“She left me some letters,” Ginny said, avoiding Keith’s gaze.

“She asked me to come here, to see you.”

“She mentioned that she had a niece.” Mari nodded knowingly. “She felt so bad for leaving you behind.”

Keith’s eyebrow went up higher.

“I lived without a home for a long time,” she went on. “I lived on the streets in Paris. No money. Just my paints in a bag, one spare dress, and a big furry coat I wore all year long. I used to run past outdoor cafés and steal food off people’s plates. I’d sit under the bridges in the summertime and paint for a whole day straight. I was crazy then, but it was just something I had to do.”

Ginny felt her throat go dry and had the uneasy feeling that both Keith and Mari were watching her closely. It didn’t help that she was sitting in a spot of sunlight coming in through the ancient multi-paneled window above Mari’s worktable. Mari thoughtfully pushed one of her little chocolate wrappers around the table with her finger.

“Come,” she said. “I’ll show you something. Both of you.”

At the back of the room, in what looked like a closet, was the narrowest set of stairs Ginny had ever encountered. They were made of stone and spiraled tightly. Mari’s body could just about squeeze through. They emerged in an attic, which had a low, curved ceiling painted a bright, cotton candy pink. The room smelled like burned toast and several centuries of dust, and it was filled with shelves loaded down with massive art books, with 111

spines featuring titles in every language Ginny could recognize and lots more that she couldn’t.

Mari pulled down a particularly large book that had a thick crust of dust along the top and banged it open on one of the tables. She flipped through the pages for a moment until she came to the print she wanted. It was a very old, intensely colored image of a man and woman holding hands. It was an incredibly precise picture, almost as clear as a photograph.

“This is by Jan van Eyck,” she said, poking at the picture. “It’s a painting of an engagement. It’s an ordinary scene—there are shoes on the floor, a dog. He’s recording the event. Just two ordinary people getting engaged. No one had ever gone to so much effort to record ordinary people before.”

Ginny realized that Keith hadn’t tried to make a comment for a while. He was looking at the picture intently.

“Here,” Mari said, pointing a long emerald green fingernail at the center of the picture. “Right here in the middle. The focal point. You see what’s there? It’s a mirror. And in the reflection, that’s the artist. He painted himself into the picture. And right above it is an inscription. It says, ‘Jan van Eyck was here.’”

She closed the book shut as punctuation, and a dust bunny puffed into the air.

“Sometimes artists like to catch themselves looking out, let the world see them for once. It’s a signature. This one is a very bold one. But this is also a witnessing. We want to remember, and we want to be remembered. That’s why we paint.”

Mari was just getting to something that seemed like a clear message—something Ginny could wrap her head around.
We want
to remember, and we want to be remembered. That’s why we paint.

112

But then Mari went on.

“I marked my hands and feet to remember my companions, the ones I loved,” she said, looking at her tattoos.

Keith’s eyes lit up and he got as far as opening his mouth and making an “eeee” sound before Ginny got to his foot again.

“What’s your birthday?” Mari asked.

“August eighteenth,” Ginny replied, confused.

“Leo. Ah. Back downstairs, love.”

They oozed back down the stone steps. There was no rail, so Ginny gripped the wall for support. Mari shuffled back to her worktable and patted a stool next to it, indicating that Ginny should sit. Ginny crossed over uncertainly.

“Right. Let’s see.” She eyed Ginny up and down. “Why don’t you just take off your shirt, then?”

Keith folded his arms and sat on the floor in the corner, deliberately not averting his eyes. Ginny turned her back to him and self-consciously pulled off her shirt, wishing she’d put on a nicer bra. She had packed a good one, but of course she’d put on the stretchy, sporty gray one.

“Yes,” Mari said, examining Ginny’s skin. “I think the shoulder. Your aunt was an Aquarius. It makes so much sense, when you think about it. Stay still now.”

Mari picked up her pens and began to draw.

Ginny could feel the pen strokes on the back of her shoulder.

They didn’t hurt, but there was a sharpness to the pen. It didn’t seem right to complain; after all, there was a famous artist drawing on her. Not that she knew why.

Mari was a slow worker, drawing dot by dot, poke by poke, working against the pull of the skin. She got up frequently for 113

chocolate, or to look at a bird that had come to the feeder in the window, or to stare at Ginny from the front. It took so long that Keith fell asleep in the corner and began to snore.

“There,” Mari said, sitting back and looking over her work.

“It won’t last forever. It will fade. But that’s how it should be this time, don’t you think, love? Unless you’d like it tattooed in. I know a very good place.”

She pulled a tiny mirror out from a drawer of supplies and tried to hold it at an angle that Ginny could see. She had to crane her neck around painfully, but she caught a glimpse of it.

It was a lion, colored in bright gold. His mane shot out wildly in all directions (big hair seemed to be a theme with Mari), eventually turning into shooting blue rivulets.

“You’re both welcome to stay,” Mari said. “I’ll have Chloe—”

“The train,” Keith said quickly. “We have to catch the train.”

“We have to catch the train,” Ginny repeated. “But thanks.

For everything.”

Mari walked them to the door, and on the top step she stepped forward and wrapped her fleshy arms around Ginny.

Her crazy hair filled Ginny’s field of vision, and the world was black with streaks of orange.

“Keep this one,” she whispered into Ginny’s ear. “I like him.”

She stepped back, winked at Keith, and then closed the door.

They both blinked at the patterns of salamanders for a moment.

“So,” Keith said, taking Ginny by the arm and leading her back in the direction of the bus, “now that we’ve met with Lady MacStrange, why don’t you explain to me what’s been going on?”

114

The Monsters Attack

Outside the train on the ride home, the scenery was changing rapidly. First city, then green hills and pastures with hundreds of sheep nibbling at endless patches of green grass. Then they were riding along the sea, and then through towns with tiny brick houses and looming, unbelievable churches. There was strong sun, sudden fog, then a final bright burst of purple as it slowly got dark. The passing English towns were just streaks of orange streetlights.

It had taken almost the entire ride to explain the basics. She’d had to go back to the very beginning of everything . . . back to New York, back to Aunt Peg’s “today I live in” games.

She brushed quickly over the events of the last few months—the phone call from Richard, the horrible sinking feeling, the drive up to the airport to claim the body—and got to the interesting part, the arrival of the package with the envelopes. She waited for Keith’s big reaction, but all she got was: 115

“That’s a bit crap, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“The artist excuse. If you can call that an excuse.”

“You really had to know her,” she said, trying hard to make it sound light.

“No, I don’t. That is crap. I know crap. I have seen crap before.

The more you tell me about your aunt, the less I like her.”

Ginny felt her eyes narrowing a little.

“You didn’t know her,” she said.

“You’ve told me enough. I don’t like what she did to you.

She seems to have meant the world to you when you were a kid, and she just left one day without a word. And her entire explanation to you comes in the form of a few very odd little envelopes.”

“No,” she said, feeling an anger rising suddenly. “Everything interesting that ever happened to me happened because of her.

Without her, I’m boring. You don’t get it because
you
have stories.”

“Everyone has stories,” he said dismissively.

“Not good ones, like yours. They aren’t as interesting. You got
arrested
. I couldn’t have gotten arrested if I tried.”

“It doesn’t take a lot of effort,” he said. “Besides, it wasn’t getting arrested that was the problem.”

“Problem?”

He drummed his fingers on the table, then turned and looked at her for a moment.

“Okay,” he said. “You told your story, might as well tell you mine while we’re here. When I was sixteen, I had a girlfriend.

Her name was Claire. I was worse than David. She was all I thought about. Didn’t care about school, didn’t care about 116

anything. I stopped mucking about because I was spending all my time with her.”

“Why is that a problem?”

“Well, she got pregnant,” he said, flicking the edge of the table with his finger. “And that was a bit of a mess.”

It was one thing to know Keith had had sex. That should have been obvious since he was Keith, and not her, not so painfully virginal. But
pregnancy
was a step beyond anything she could really process. That implied a lot of sex. So much sex. So much that he could say it all casually.

Ginny looked down at the table. Obviously, she knew these things happened, but they never happened to her or to her friends. They happened on TV or to people in school who she didn’t know. Somehow, those kinds of stories always trickled down to the general populace months after they happened, giving the people involved a permanent, shiny veneer of maturity that she would never, ever have. She couldn’t even drive after ten o’clock at night.

“Are you horrified?” he asked, glancing over. “It does happen, you know.”

“I know,” she said quickly. “What happened? I mean, did she—?”

She caught herself short. What was she saying?