Free Sunflowers by Sheramy Bundrick Page A

the stars.
    Vincent pulled a palette from the box he’d brought, then rummaged among his tubes of paint. “I’m sorry you got in trouble with your patronne because of me.”
    “It’s not your fault,” I sighed. “I’m the one who stayed out without permission.”
    “I wish”—he paused with a paint tube in each hand and a frown on his face—“I wish I could help you in some way.”
    “Don’t you worry about me, I’ll be fine.” I tipped back my head and tried to count the stars in their silvery-gold brilliance. I didn’t want to think about Madame Virginie or the maison de tolérance , I wanted to think of nothing but being right there, right then. The wind off the water made me shiver; in my haste to leave I’d forgotten my shawl. Vincent saw me tremble and came to drape his jacket over my shoulders. A gentle scent of paint and pipe smoke drifted around me. His scent.
    After squeezing blues, greens, and yellows onto his palette and using a small knife to blend the colors, Vincent picked up his brushes and started to paint. It was dim, but the moon cast enough light so he could work. I sat on the wall and dangled my feet, peering again down to the riverbank. I could make out a coal barge, anchored and waiting to be unloaded the next morning, somebody probably sleeping on deck to keep away thieves. The river paid no attention as it made its dogged and determined way south.
    “Have you ever seen the sea?” I asked Vincent.
    He had a paintbrush in his mouth and spoke around the handle. “Many times in Holland. There’s a fishing village called Scheveningen near where I lived in The Hague. I did some seascape studies there a few times, and we used to take the children to the beach.”
    We. He and Sien. Had he carried Sien’s little girl on his shoulders across the sand, kissed Sien as they walked barefoot through the waves? I kicked my heel against the stone wall. “Have you been to the sea here?”
    “Once, for several days at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. Back in the spring.”
    “What’s it like?”
    “Beautiful. The Mediterranean changes color every second, from green to violet to blue, then the next moment it’s taken on a tinge of pink or gray. Very fine effects. I’ve wanted to go back but”—he cleared his throat—“that takes money.”
    We fell silent then, Vincent busy with his painting, me chasing images of the little family at Scheveningen from my mind. I turned from the river to watch him as he worked. Sometimes he stopped to look up and around, tilting his head and muttering under his breath. Once or twice he laid down his things altogether and held up his hands in a kind of frame, screening off what he wanted to see before smiling and taking up his brush again. His hand was graceful as it swept from palette to canvas, here with small dashes of paint, there with long swooping strokes. Once he took a tube of yellow color and squirted little blobs right on the picture.
    “There, you see, Rachel,” he said, “it’s not enough to put white dots on the canvas. Some stars are citron-yellow, others pink, while others have a blue forget-me-not glow. They aren’t all the same.” He sighed and gazed at the sky. “The stars make me dream, like when I look at a map and dream about the places I’ve never been to. Just as we take the train to Tarascon or Paris, we take death to reach the stars, and there we’ll live forever. Ah, to feel the infinite high and clear above you, then life is almost enchanted after all.”
    It was easy to believe in dreams, there by the Rhône on such a night. The stars seemed to hold ancient secrets as they hovered and winked above our heads, secrets only they knew and that we could but guess. Was someone up there watching, looking after us, as I’d always been taught and almost always believed? Had that someone brought Vincent to me? My eyes returned to him—brush held aloft, contemplating the picture with furrowed brow—and I thanked the stars that exactly