Starry Nights Read online

  She shakes her head and tsk-tsks me. “You know the rules.”

  I sigh. I do know the rules. I hate the rules. “I left my paper at school.”

  “Well, what kind of grade did you get on it?”

  “An average one. Like usual. What’s this thing you have for me?”

  “Don’t you worry, young man. It’s something you’ll want. Are you going to pass your literature class this year?”

  “I’m doing my best.”

  She scoffs. “Your best? That is rarely enough when it comes to academic endeavors, Julien.”

  I’m never good enough—I wasn’t good enough for Jenny, I’m not a good enough artist, and as for school, I’m barely good enough to pass. It tires me, sometimes, my own mere adequacy. “And on that note, I think I’ll just head to my room and spend some time with my friends from Brooklyn.”

  This rankles my mother, as she hates my music with such passion I swear she wishes the Internet were never invented. Bands like Dirty Cat and Protracted Envy are screechy and scratchy, she likes to say. I tell her Mozart is too, even though I don’t believe that.

  I walk off, but she calls me back. “It’s the Renoir.”

  I stop in my tracks, and my heart dares to beat faster, betraying me. The prospect of the Renoir is more powerful than ticking off my mother. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, if you actually get your homework done, Julien, then you can see the The Girl in the Garden before anyone else does.”

  I turn around. “But it’s not coming to the museum for a few weeks, I thought.” I’ve been eagerly tracking the painting’s journey since it resurfaced last month, just a few days after I cut the padlock. The collectors are a couple in Montmartre who run a high-fashion line, and their family had sheltered the painting for more than a century. They reached out to my mother and told her that the Musée d’Orsay was the only place they wanted it hung. It’s a gift to the museum. Quite the present, indeed.

  “It’s not. But you can see it tomorrow if …”

  “If what?” I ask, though I know what’s coming. Because the rule is this—if I pass all my classes, then I’m allowed to spend my evenings at the museum. Most parents would be thrilled if their kid wanted to hang out at a museum. But I’m the freak, the boy who actually craves the company of paintings, so my insidious genius of a mother uses all-hours access as a carrot for better grades.

  “If you’re doing well enough in literature. Then you can see it.”

  “I’ll bring home the Molière paper tomorrow.”

  “Good. I have some final documents to review with them anyway. But just wait till you see the painting, Julien.” She places her palm against her chest, as if the memory of the painting is too much. “It’s the most beautiful Renoir I’ve ever seen. You will be in love. I know you. You’re just like me. You fall hard.”

  I am like her in that way, but I don’t have the other pieces she has. I’m not book smart, and I don’t have the ability to apply theory or rigor to that love. Some days I think I’d be better off just hanging with the street artists who ply their trade by the river. Some of their work isn’t half bad. Like this young guy Max who sketches hilarious drawings of tourists on the steps outside the museum most afternoons.

  My mother reaches inside her purse on the counter and roots around until she finds what she’s looking for. “I almost forgot.” She hands me a small white ceramic creature with brown spots. It’s a calf, but a five-legged one. Renoir once said the idea of women painters was as ridiculous as five-legged calves. It’s a shame that he was such an amazing artist but not exactly what you’d call an equal opportunist. “From the collectors. A gift for you.”

  I narrow my eyes at the calf. “That’s weird. Why are they giving this to me?”

  My mother shrugs. “I don’t know, but I need to get to bed. I have an early meeting with the restorers. They’re coming to look at that portrait, the one that had that little bit of sun damage. I need to get it fixed before it goes to the joint exhibit at the Louvre,” she says, referring to a different Renoir, a picture of two young girls playing a piano that started to fade several weeks ago. I noticed the damage first and alerted my mother. The restorers are the best, though. I’m sure they’ll fix it in time for the exhibit at our sister museum.

  She returns to her room. I inspect the calf out of curiosity. The fifth leg—a shrunken baby leg hanging from its back—has a small cap for a hoof. I take the cap off and a bit of silvery powder with the consistency of confectionary sugar tumbles free.

  I shake the calf more, but it’s empty now.

  Strange. Why would they want me to have a ceramic five-legged calf? Simply as an inside joke?

  I place the cap back on and drop the calf into my backpack, then take out my notebook. I grab half a chicken sandwich from the refrigerator and eat as I flick through my drawings. I stop at the one I drew the night before, Olympia’s cat. My sketch is technical and precise, worthy of nothing more than an entry in a cat guidebook someday. Veterinarians might even coo over its lifelike contours and shapes. I study it to see if I could maybe have drawn it a different way, a subtler way, to make the cat seem more … I don’t know … enchanting. I run my index finger across the cat’s head, but no ideas come to me. I close the notebook, tuck it into my backpack, and head to my room.

  As I turn the doorknob I see strands of black hair on my hand. Sleek hair from a sleek cat.

  Chapter 3

  Chocolate-Plum Iris

  I smell sheep at the top of the stairs. “It’s like a petting zoo on that balcony.”

  My mother shushes me, then whispers, “That’s their balcony.”

  “Well, I would think they’d want to know it stinks like sheep.”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s not our place to point that out,” my mother says as we arrive at the door to the collectors’ home. The couple lives on the curving corner of a hilly street in Montmartre, a few bends and twists in the road above a onetime artists’ residence made famous when Picasso joined the roster of live-ins. Notre Dame might be Point Zero in Paris, but Montmartre is the epicenter of painting. The cobbles are mortared with the colors of a palette, the streets have been touched by the soles of the greatest of great artists.

  “Besides, how do you know what a sheep smells like?”

  “Like wool. I’m betting a sheep smells like wool.”

  “Touché.”

  She smoothes her hands over her suit. “You should write a paper on this painting for your history class,” my mother says before pressing the buzzer. “Since it has such a story behind it.”

  The Girl in the Garden was exhibited only once, at a gallery show in 1885, then it went missing. The story is that both Monet and Renoir were in love with the girl. Renoir painted her one day during a visit he made to Monet’s garden, but then the girl’s family hid the painting away to protect her reputation, so she wouldn’t be known as that girl two married men were in love with.

  “Are the collectors her family? The girl’s family?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Do you think both artists were in love with her?”

  “It’s a story. A legend.”

  But legends can have a life all their own, and I can’t help but wonder who she might have been, this girl whose likeness pulled off a disappearing act for more than a century, a feat to rival any magician’s stage trick. Maybe she was a girl who lived in Montmartre, someone who went to school here, or waited tables, or did whatever girls my age did many years ago in Paris.

  “Hello!” The voice comes through the buzzer. “Come in, come in.”

  I push open the heavy green door etched with curling ironwork panels and hold it for my mother. I let the door fall behind us as we walk down a stone path that funnels into a courtyard flanked by yellow tulips. I expect to see the couple. Instead we’re greeted by a guy about my age. His head is shaved, but the odd thing is he’s dressed like a woman, in tight jeans, purple flats, and some sort of sleeveless top that he migh
t have raided from his mother’s fall line. I’m caught off guard by the twist, but I know better than to let on.

  “Bonheur,” he says and holds out his hand to shake. For a moment, I think I’ve heard him wrong, that he’s said bonheur instead of bonjour. Then I realize, Bonheur is his name. Or, more likely, it’s the name he has given himself. The word means happiness, but considering how he’s dressed, I suspect the name is an homage to Rosa Bonheur, the nineteenth-century painter who had to dress as a man to work on many of her pieces in public. Perhaps that’s the twist.

  “Such a pleasure to see you again,” my mother says. “This is my son, Julien.”

  I shake his hand. “Good to meet you. Fan of Rosa, I take it?”

  He beams. “But of course! And it’s great to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you.” He has a firm grip, and he doesn’t let go of my hand right away. He beams at me and seems to study me like I’m an oddity.

  “Thanks for the calf,” I add, even though I’m not quite sure why he wanted me to have it. But I don’t want to let on that I’m in the dark on that count.

  “I make them myself. Come on in. My mom’s inside.” Bonheur leads us to an orange door at the end of the courtyard. We enter their home, a massive one for Montmartre standards. An elaborate security system is installed on the wall of the foyer, but beyond that the house is like a trip back in time, with old-fashioned carnival music playing on a phonograph in the living room and a small vintage carousel with a tiger and a zebra for riding that makes its home in a corner. Framed posters from the Moulin Rouge and a kaleidoscope of once-popular stage shows fill the walls.

  Bonheur’s mother calls out from the kitchen, “Ms. Garnier, I’ve just finished up the most divine clafoutis to share with you.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Clemenceau. And I’ve told you, please call me Marie-Amelie.”

  “Then, Marie-Amelie, you can’t call me Ms. Clemenceau,” the voice from the kitchen says in a playful manner. “Won’t you join me in the kitchen?”

  As my mother walks away I notice the large oak table that’s home to dozens of miniature ceramic calves. Like the one he gave me, each of these calves has a fifth leg. On a brown calf, a meaty extra back leg juts out of the cow’s shoulder. On a black-and-white calf, a skinny front leg hangs from the rear haunches. A trio of black calves have fifth legs that descend from their bellies. “You work in ceramics?”

  Bonheur gives a sheepish sort of shrug. “My little art form. What can I say? I’ve never been terribly good with a paintbrush, but I do what I can.”

  “Hey, don’t knock it. I think these calves are cool. Kind of ironic.”

  “That’s exactly what I was going for,” Bonheur says with a bright smile. He reaches across the table for a black calf with pink polka dots, and a fifth leg where its tail should be. “This is my prize calf. In fact,” he begins, then lowers his voice as he glances to the kitchen, “I’m giving it away at my surprise birthday party tomorrow night. My parents are going to Provence for the weekend.”

  I laugh quietly. “How is it a surprise if you know about it?”

  “I hate surprises,” he says, now intensely serious. “I abhor them within an inch of my soul. I read endings of books first, I look up spoilers of films in advance, and I always open my Christmas presents the second they arrive. Especially the ones I order for myself! So my friends and I are throwing an un-surprise party for my eighteenth birthday. We’re going to act surprised about everything everyone says, and whoever pulls off the most authentic look of true surprise wins the prize calf.”

  “That does kind of sound like fun,” I concede.

  “You should come. Bring friends if you want. Just don’t tell your mom, obviously, since I don’t want her telling mine.”

  Before I can commit, our mothers emerge from the kitchen. Introductions are made, and we all sit down at the table with the calves to eat the baked dessert.

  “I have the final paperwork,” Bonheur’s mother says, and they review his family’s ownership of the Renoir through the years, the forensic and fingerprint reports my mother commissioned to verify the authenticity of the painting, and even a pigment analysis because Renoir used a particular mix of chromium salts and boric acid to sign all his works. He’s said to have done this to ensure that fakes could never be made. As they continue on through the archival and forensic details that remind me far too much of school, I ask where the restroom is and Bonheur tells me it is down the hallway, the second door on the left.

  “Be sure to check out the art on the walls. We have a Jasper Johns, a Monet, and a Valadon.”

  “Will do,” I say and leave them behind.

  In the hallway, I linger on the paintings and the way Monet has captured the cobalt-blue morning light on the pond near his home, his Japanese bridge arcing over the dreamscape of water beneath it. What must it be like to craft such beauty with your own hands? I only wish I could make something worth looking at.

  I scan the rest of the walls for a Valadon, but I don’t see one, so I open the second door.

  It’s not the bathroom. It’s a modern room with bright-white walls, a long black leather couch, and a plasma screen hanging on the opposite wall. I look down to find a door in the middle of the floor. Perhaps a trapdoor to a basement? But how can there be a basement when they live on a steep hill? The door has a chain on it that is looped into an eyehook on the other side. A chalk drawing covers half the door. I step around to check it out right side up.

  A woman in a pale-pink dress, so light it’s the color of the inside of a seashell, dances with a man she looks away from. But the man’s not here; he’s not been rendered in chalk. It’s half a reproduction. It’s half of a Renoir, his Dance at Bougival. The dancing woman is Suzanne Valadon, who was an artist’s model and an artist herself, not to mention the first female painter admitted into art school in France.

  Is this chalk drawing what he meant by the Valadon he wanted me to see? Valadon and Renoir were contemporaries, both artists in Montmartre. But is there some greater connection Bonheur is trying to hint at?

  I hear the voices down the hall. Methodical, detailed. They’re still reviewing the documents.

  I kneel down and unhook the latch, expecting a creak or a moan of hinges. But the door opens without a sound. Beneath it I see a set of stairs that wind round and round, until they descend into total darkness. There must be a cellar far below. I bet that’s where Bonheur’s family hid their art during the Nazi occupation to keep paintings safe from plundering. I close the door and shut the latch.

  A chair’s legs scratch across the living room floor.

  Quickly, I leave this room and pop into the bathroom down the hall. I step in, turn on the water, turn it off, and head out as the cross-dressing teenage ceramist who uses a woman’s surname as his first name walks by.

  “Found it,” I announce stupidly. I want to kick myself. Of course, I found the bathroom. But saying “found it” implies I stumbled across something else. Bonheur tips his forehead ever so slightly to the second door as he says, “Good.”

  He wanted me to see the trapdoor. He sent me to that chalk drawing. What’s at the bottom of all those stairs?

  “They’re still talking about all that pigment, blah, blah, blah,” Bonheur says and rolls his eyes in some sort of parents-are-so-dull gesture. “So my mom said I should just show you the painting.”

  I follow him to the white door at the end of the hall. He takes a key from his pocket, unlocks the door, turns the brass handle, and gestures to the painting hanging behind an imposing oak desk.

  Forget trapdoors, forget five-legged calves and silvery dust. Photo reproductions don’t do this painting justice. Goose bumps rise on my arms, and my heart beats hard against my skin.

  Her back is mostly to the painter, but she’s twisting around, looking over her shoulder with a fierce stare, a sharp longing in her eyes, all the more unusual because Renoir never let his women look at the viewer. They always cast their eyes down or away. But this gi
rl, her gaze is defiant, and her eyes are etched in pools of radiant blue, the same color as Monet’s morning light. Long blond hair cascades down her back, and one hand is held up, as if she is trying to touch something or someone. She is surrounded on all sides by flowers, trapped almost by irises, in shades of violet, of royal purple, of a plum so dark it’s nearly the color of chocolate.

  A chocolate-plum iris.

  And the girl? She is the most beautiful I have ever seen.

  I turn to Bonheur. “About that invitation. I’ll definitely be at your party.”

  Chapter 4

  House History

  Simon is obsessed with the history of Paris. But not the stuff we learn in textbooks. He prefers the tidbits he uncovers in rare bookshops and old, dusty libraries. Like how some Parisians turned to their own cats for sustenance during the Franco-Prussian War and found them quite tasty when served with olives and pimentos, or how Napoleon III’s wife was rumored to sprinkle gold dust in her hair every morning.

  But they don’t teach us that sort of history here at Lycée d’Aile. They teach us boring history. And boring literature. And boring math. Because school is dull and dreadful, and truth be told, I can’t tell you much about the approved curriculum, or whether this school will give me wings as the name promises, or even what I need to be studying for our end-of-year exams in a few weeks. My mission when it comes to high school is simple—to get by and get out. I suppose my problem with school is not just that it’s boring. My brain doesn’t seem to want to make the right connections between sophisticated math problems and, say, the proper method of solving them.

  But there’s that little matter of my mother holding my grades over my head, so I do my best to pay attention in literature and history and even in math the next day. The task is complicated when the teacher, Monsieur Douyard, fails to vary the intonation in his voice even once during the lecture on something having to do with negative numbers or negative squares or square numbers. I take notes the entire time, but my numbers seem to resemble the letters SV—Suzanne Valadon is on my mind—in an elaborate doodle rather than numerals. Too bad Douyard is calling on me for an answer.