AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Sorry, dear,” she consoles, fingering a tendril of my light-brown hair. “I actually won’t be home until late. There’s a dinner with the Thompsons, and Sandra is heading a Christmas fundraiser. I have to be there.”
“I understand.”
“Besides, Marisa and you have plenty to go over. I don’t want you to get behind.”
“Okay,” I say reluctantly.
She kisses the top of my head. “Don’t forget to go over your French. Gerard is really nice.”
Her body, a product of a strict low-calorie organic diet and exercise with a side of liposuction, retreats out of the room.
My mother is a stranger to me in so many ways. The only interactions we have are in regard to what I should be doing, according to her wishes.
Her wishes.
Does she even know my wishes?
Does she even care?
Does she even know me at all?
Who am I?
For the first time ever in my existence, I realize that my life isn’t really mine. It’s the one my mother has been planning and molding since the day I was born. I’m being groomed for Gerard or whatever man who comes from a good family with money and fine breeding.
I’m the human equivalent of a Fifth Avenue mare seeking a European stud.
I dreamily stare at the landscape print of blue-and-orange swirls over a dark village. What I wouldn’t give to live in that starry night in the painting.
~~~~~~
“Excuse me.”
My eyes flutter, shades of gray vinyl flashing through my vision, and the stale air hits my nose as I awaken.
“Excuse me, miss,” a voice calls to my left. “The captain has announced our descent,” a flight attendant in her sixties, wearing a terrible shade of red lipstick, continues. “Please return your seat to the upright position. We’ll be on the ground shortly.”
Still returning from my dream state, I nod while straightening my seat. The flight attendant lingers down the aisle, uttering similar instructions to other passengers.
As the aircraft descends closer to the ground, I retrieve a small notebook, a memento of my childhood, from the seat pocket in front of me. Each trip home always brings about new revelations, and this was no different. I discovered that my bedroom had been downsized to make room for my mother’s expanding closet.
Because two weren’t enough. Apparently, she needed another one for her handbags.
Much of my room had been packed into boxes in preparation for a remodel.
At first, I was livid when the house attendant explained the upcoming construction since this was the first I knew of it, but then I quickly accepted the change because, in all honesty, most of the memories I had were not fond ones. I took the opportunity to reminisce about my youth, as I made sure nothing of importance was being thrown out or stored away, and I found my first art journal.
The bound pages were a secret between Marisa, my last au pair, and me. She’d introduced me to so many new ideas about life, the world, and people in general. Before taking me under her wing, she had been a struggling musician in Europe, and she’d come to the States to fulfill her grand and lofty hopes and dreams of having a professional career in the music industry. However, when Marisa had found herself unable to pay the rent, she had taken on me—my mother’s burden—as her own. While we had only been together for a short number of years, I’d learned more in her presence than with any other au pair my parents had afforded me.
Within the first few pages is a postcard print of Van Gogh’sThe Starry Night. Marisa had taken me to the Museum of Modern Art on one of our required cultural excursions, and I had fallen in love with the colors and lines of the masterpiece. I recall gazing at the canvas for what had felt like an eternity, as if it had sucked me into a dimension where only I existed within the eloquent echoes of Van Gogh’s mind.
Over lunch in the museum’s cafe, my au pair and I had talked about a variety of art, what it meant to us as individuals and what each artist was trying to convey when they’d crafted their masterpiece. Before we’d left the museum, she’d bought me the postcard and the journal in my hands with her own money. Although Marisa had said it was because she wanted to give me a gift from herself, in retrospect, there’s no doubt in my mind that it was because she had known my mother would have disapproved.
Why else would she have asked me to keep it a secret?
When we’d returned to the immaculate penthouse, smelling of bleach from a recent cleaning by the maid, Marisa had asked me to summarize my feelings and observations about Van Gogh’sThe Starry Night.
Studying the painting had become my obsession for years as I tried to properly describe the way this art piece in particular made me feel. My words had started off simple, but as I had grown, so had my thoughts.
