Take Me Apart - Sara Sligar Page 0,134

agree with me that her artwork more than stands on its own. But over the past year, I’ve realized that the more I tried to hide the truth of what my mother experienced, both in Nangussett Psychiatric Hospital and in our home in Callinas, the more I was helping create a version of my mother that never really existed.

“So although I had originally expected to auction off a censored selection of her papers, I have decided to sell the entirety of what she produced. The only thing missing from the collection is the diary she kept from the time I was born until the day she died. And the only reason I’m excluding that is because next year, I will be releasing a transcript of the diary as a book, whose proceeds will go to charities for domestic violence and suicide prevention.”

Kate’s breath wheezed out like someone had punched her in the stomach.

“I don’t know if the new information will stoke the curiosity about my mother or eliminate it,” Theo continued. “Maybe reading it, you’ll decide I made the wrong choice, and I should have kept it all private. But so many people have written about my mother. So many people have formed hypotheses and made assumptions and interpreted her. It only seemed fair that she should get a chance to tell her side of things. In the spirit of letting her talk, I will not be giving any further interviews or comments on this subject. I would ask you all to respect my family’s privacy and the sensitivity of the issue at hand.” He exhaled and looked up from his paper, folding it up again. “Finally, I’d just like to thank the archivist who organized this collection, Kate Aitken. Without her, the collection would not have been nearly as complete.”

His eyes met hers across the rows. She realized with a jolt that he had known where she was the entire time.

Then he stepped down from the podium and sat down again. The auction began. Twenty minutes later, the collection had been sold to Columbia University for $3.8 million.

* * *

Afterward came the hors d’oeuvres. Tiny salmon blinis and overfried samosas. The bartender began to look less panicked. Kate positioned herself at the edge of the room, beside a tall and rickety table, and tried to look like her heels were not twisting her feet into cornucopias of pain. She didn’t know anyone except Hal and Theo, but she guessed she should be ready in case someone figured out who she was and asked her a question. What would an expert look like? she wondered, and she pasted a vaguely bored expression on her face.

“Champagne?”

It was Theo. She was so surprised, she almost elbowed him in the stomach.

“Hi,” she said. Her voice was garbled, like her tongue had swelled up from an allergic reaction.

“Hi,” he said.

He looked healthy. His hair was a little shorter. He had a messenger bag over one shoulder. He gestured again with the champagne, and she took it and drank it without tasting it.

“Congratulations,” she said.

“Thanks,” he said.

“And thanks for inviting me.”

“Thanks for coming.”

Kate adjusted her tiny plastic plate with its tiny uneaten blinis. “How are the kids?”

“Great. Really good.”

“Good.”

They stood there together, unhappily. Kate began to fret with the edge of the plastic plate between her fingers. It was too much. The past months without him collapsed freshly onto her shoulders. It was all with her now, condensed into his body, his dear body, the chest she had kissed and scratched and slept on, the long legs, the rise of his throat. The smoke of the fireworks. His voice low in the night. The waves pushing over her, her heart in her mouth, the salt of him and the salt of the sea. Now the awkwardness, the uncertainty. They sounded like two automatons reciting programmed greetings.

“Theo…” she said, but what she meant was I can’t do this.

The wall behind him burst into color: a slideshow of Miranda’s photos.

She could do better than this, Kate told herself, and she looked Theo square in the eye and opened her mouth.

He beat her to it. “I owe you an apology,” he said. “The way I acted this summer. You were right that I was manipulating you. I didn’t think of it that way at the time, but it’s true, that’s what it was.”

“Oh,” she said, thrown. “I was going to apologize to you.”

“Thanks. Apology accepted.”

She stared at him, then stamped her foot in frustration. “It doesn’t work like that. You have to think about it.”

“I have been. But I can think about it more if you want. In the meantime, I have something for you.”

He took a padded envelope out of his messenger bag and handed it to Kate. She was so dazed that she took it automatically and looked inside.

A slim blue book.

She looked back up at him, blinking. “Is this…”

“It’s a facsimile. Kind of a more image-based version of what’s coming out next year. I’m keeping the original for Oscar and Jem. But I wanted you to have the chance to read the end before everyone else does. I know what it meant to you.”

Her eyes started to feel hot. On the screen, the Capillaries photograph, the man and the woman in the diner.

“Theo…” This time it meant something different, something like: I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry I’m broken. I tried to fix myself. I don’t know if it worked. I might still love you, if I know you. If we know each other at all.

“I didn’t come here for the diary,” she said instead. “I came here for you.”

His eyes crinkled at the corners. She forgot that her feet were hurting.

“Can we talk somewhere more private?” he asked.

“Like where?”

He gestured at a partition in the movable wall. Through the gap, Kate glimpsed what looked like a storage area for a mishmash of Greek sculptures and eighteenth-century furniture. She glanced around the room to see if anyone was watching.

“I don’t think we’re supposed to go back there,” she said.

He raised his eyebrows like, Really? When she heard the irony of what she had said, she smiled, too.

On the edge of a cliff now. A fragment of earth piercing a dark sea. The tide going out, imprisoning fishes, dirtying the sand. All around the world, people were jumping off, scissoring their legs against the air until they were small flecks far below, as small as a baby tooth in the palm of a hand, a sunspot in film. Kate’s toes gripped the wet rocks. Her eyes watched the distant storm. It was stupid to jump. Smarter to stay safe up here, to know what was coming, to control it. But her legs wanted the taste of water. Her heart missed the thrashing joy.

Threshold flashed up on the screen. The indecision. The crossing over.

There was sea enough to catch her.

“Okay,” Kate said, and together they slipped through the gap.