Repairs opened the last Friday in March. And like the afternoon I married Nick, like the day Lucy was born, it was perfect.
“Why do I get to have all this?” I asked my mom as we drove to the gallery. She’d flown in that morning.
“Why do you get to have all what?”
“This whole night.” My voice hitched. “Everything.”
“Don’t you dare question your right to this,” she said. “You’ve worked hard for every bit of it, Claire.”
Outside the gallery, a narrow storefront between a yoga studio and a bar called the Fox’s Den, we could see Colleen setting out wineglasses. “Breathe,” my mom reminded me as we picked our way carefully in our heels over the salt-crusted sidewalk.
The minute we walked inside, my mom stopped, hand over her mouth, eyes darting from one collage to the next.
“It’s really something to see all the work in one room, isn’t it?” Colleen asked.
My mom looked at me, eyes brimming. “Oh, my sweet girl. How did I not know you were this good?”
The night itself was a collage.
Mazzy Star on the stereo; a vase of pink roses from my dad; Margaret introducing me to her pilot, her neck flushed. People came from work and the Y; Colleen introduced me to buyers, and my mom bustled around in full-on hostess mode, chatting with strangers, then circling back with whispered reports: “The woman in turquoise teaches art at Carroll College; you should introduce yourself.” Or: “I just met Ron—Don, maybe?—from the Y.” Eyebrows bobbing suggestively. “He seems nice.”
“Ron,” I said. “And he’s gay.”
More people crowded into the little space. “I had no idea!” people kept saying. A woman from a Chicago gallery pressed her card into my hand. Colleen brushed past to put a Sold sticker on another collage. Margaret took my empty wineglass and handed me a full one. “Are you pinching yourself?” she asked.
“I’m black and blue,” I laughed. It was surreal to see my work on the walls, to be surrounded by so many people congratulating me. I felt giddy and happy, and yet beneath the giddiness was a deep well of sadness: I’d started making the collages at the hospital. How could I reconcile my joy with that?
“I’m not sure you do,” my mom had said when I’d mentioned it. “I’m not sure you can.”
We’d been stretched out on either end of my couch after I picked her up from the airport. It was too early to check in to her hotel. “So where are you with tonight?” she asked, cradling her teacup in both hands. “Are you worried or excited or…you seem amazingly calm.” She had her coat draped across her chest and she looked old in a way I hadn’t noticed three months ago in Chicago. Deep lines at the corners of her mouth, more gray in her thick shoulder-length brown hair. She’d had to get up at three to make her flight.
“I’m weirdly calm,” I said. “If anything…I almost don’t know how to feel. I’m proud of the show, but I wouldn’t even be living here if I hadn’t gotten sick or if…if I’d been able to be her mother.” I smiled sadly. “I wouldn’t be making collages, I wouldn’t be a runner, I wouldn’t know Margaret or…I basically wouldn’t exist as this person I am now.” I kept staring down, but I felt my mom’s unwavering eyes on mine. “I don’t know what to do with that. I feel guilty.”
“I wish you didn’t.” She reached forward and squeezed my ankle. Neither of us spoke for a moment, and then she said, “When we were first married, one of your dad’s favorite pieces of music was this odd, very haunting piece by Mahler called Songs on the Death of Children.”
I glanced sharply at her.
“It’s based on poems written by a father after losing his children to scarlet fever. I’m not sure your dad knew this; he just loved the music. But I don’t imagine the poems or the song cycle would have been written if those children hadn’t died. That doesn’t make the poetry or the music based on them perverse. Have you ever heard that piece?”
“No, and I don’t want to.”
She nodded. “Your dad doesn’t listen to it anymore either. But a lot of art comes out of tragedy, Claire.”
“I’ve thought about her so much lately,” I said.
“Telling Erik about her probably opened doors you didn’t realize were shut. And there was a lot of good behind those doors.”
Erik didn’t come to the show—and I hadn’t expected him to—but Annabelle and Eva did. I turned, and suddenly Annabelle was wrapping me in a hug, her wild curly hair in my face. “Holy moly, Claire,” she whispered. “When you mentioned collages, I pictured, I don’t know, scrapbook shit.”
I smiled. I’d forgotten how blunt she was. “It is so good to see you!” I glanced at Eva over her shoulder. “You too.” I reached for her hand.
She squeezed it. “Annabelle’s right. I’m embarrassed we never talked about your work.”
I asked about the kids then, and Gabe and Scott. And then Colleen was introducing me to a buyer and Margaret was leaving, and I didn’t get back to them until the end of the night. “I’m glad we came,” Annabelle said.
“Me too.” I hugged her.
“And I know you broke up with him and you’ve got your reasons, but he’s miserable without you, Claire.”