Page 19 of Persephone's Curse
“Nothinglike the Cloisters in the fall,” Dad kept saying, a broken record of optimism. “How lucky are we, kids?”
Bernadette grunted. Evelyn made a small noise of agreement. Clara hadn’t heard him.
“It’s gonna be really nice, Dad,” I said.
He turned around and smiled at me gratefully.
In truth, the Cloisters was my favorite museum. We all had our favorites: Bernadette’s was the Natural History, Evelyn’s was the Met, and Clara’s was the Frick. I liked the Cloisters because it was so old and because it was out of the way; we only went once a year, always in the fall, and that made it more special to me.
In the seat in front of me, Evelyn fidgeted, uncrossing her legs and crossing them the other way. She’d slept in the braided crown I’d eventually managed to give her and it was perfectly messy and undone today. Next to her, Bernie’s black eye was finally fading and she was quiet and still, staring out the window, her hair mostly hidden by a stylish French beret only she could get away with. I’d tried it on once; it looked like I was wearing a pancake on my head.
(“Les bérets ne sont pas pour tout le monde, mon ami,”she hadsaid. In response, I had rolled my eyes so far back in my head that they had ached for minutes afterward.)
We parked on a tree-lined street in Fort Tryon Park. It was as if we’d been plunged into a perfect oil painting of autumn. Leaves crunched underneath my feet as I got out of the car, and it smelled so deeply of earth and green that I actually sneezed.
“Bless you,” Clara said, squeezing past me.
“Wow,” Evelyn breathed as she slid out of the car. “It’s so beautiful.”
Again it struck me how unobservant I’d been over the past year, to not realize my sister was in love. She saidit’s so beautifullike her heart was about eight sizes too big for her chest, and when I looked over at her, I saw her eyes were filling up with tears, her bottom lip gently quivering. I took her into my arms, ignoring the sudden itch on the insides of my wrists, and we crossed the street holding on to each other.
“Get it together,” I whispered into her hair.
“But itisso beautiful,” she protested, her voice shaking.
“I know. But try to remember that you don’t actually like it here that much.”
“That’s not true,” she said, but out of the corner of my eye I saw her smile.
She’d never been a fan of medieval art. It ended up being a lot of religious pieces, and none of us were religious. I wasn’t particularly drawn to it, either, it was more the Cloisters itself, how old it felt, how dark and quiet the rooms were, how the stone walls and floors and courtyards felt like you’d stepped out of New York and into some nameless, ancient European city. If you squinted and heldyour breath and tilted your head and suspended disbelief for just a few moments, it felt like you were somewhere else entirely. A fantasy novel. Cair Paravel. The room far, far underground where Alice landed after plummeting down the rabbit hole.
“What’s wrong with you?” Bernadette said, appearing suddenly on Evie’s other side, ruining the mood. Her voice was flat and lacked any real concern. Evelyn looked at me quickly, raising her eyebrows before replying.
“Oh, just thinking about how there’s nothing like the Cloisters in the fall.” She mimicked Dad’s eager-beaver voice perfectly, but Bernadette didn’t so much as crack a smile. I didn’t even think she’d heard her, forgetting that she’d asked her a question as soon as the words had left her lips. She broke apart from us and walked on her own, just behind Mom and Dad. Clara was bringing up the rear, her eyes wide and happy as she soaked everything in, recharging her artist’s brain with miles of green leaves.
“What’s her problem?” Evelyn asked, pointing her jaw at Bernadette.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You must know,” Evie countered. “You always know.”
Inside the lobby, we waited as Dad showed our membership card. Clara was in a playful, kiddish mood, and she kept twirling, her knee-length dress spinning out in a very satisfying way. She wore gray tights and Mary Janes that had once belonged to Evelyn. And she wore our grandmother’s watch, which was weird. Evelyn usually never took it off.
“She gave it to me,” Clara said when I asked about it. We were standing in front of an enormous wooden triptych.
“She did not give it to you,” I said.
“She did,” Clara said, and pouted a little. “She said I could have it.”
“But she loves this watch.”
“Geez, chill, it’s not like she pawned it,” she said, and stuck her tongue out at me before loping away.
I turned to watch her go and saw our father wander in from an adjacent doorway. He spotted me and bounded over, tugging my arm excitedly. “I’m going to the Treasury. Did you know they have the only complete set of illuminated playing cards from the fifteenth century? Thefifteenth century,are you freaking kidding me!”
“Cool, Dad,” I said, but he had already skipped away, shaking with anticipation to see these cards I was sure he’d already seen a dozen times.
“Did you give your watch to Clara?” I asked Evelyn when I found her a few minutes later, in the Bonnefont Cloister.
