The Last Van Gogh Read Online Free Page B

knows that she will not be allowed to journey outside the home.”
    I remember Paul glancing over at me. His face was visibly puzzled.
    Wasn’t what Papa was proposing a bit ludicrous? How could this girl remain a secret? But I knew how little contact I had with the outside world. So she would not get a chance to go to the market or to church, but otherwise, I suspected her life would be quite similar to mine.
    S HE arrived on a sunny afternoon. Papa picked her up at the station, while her mother remained at home. She was slender, with chestnut hair and dark brown eyes that looked like molasses. Her skin was a shade warmer, her eyes much darker than mine.
    Just as he had appeared when Madame Chevalier first arrived, Papa seemed strangely familiar with Louise-Josephine. He helped her into the house with a paternalistic affection, showing her every room and urging her to feel at home.
    As her mother’s arrival had done years before, Louise-Josephine’s entry into our household seemed to invigorate Papa. He repapered her room a few months after she arrived, allowing her to select a pattern from a large decorator’s book that he brought back from Paris one afternoon. It did not take her more than a few seconds to choose a pattern of three-pointed flowers with a border of trumpet lilies. The shades were reminiscent of something in a pastry store—a palette of sherbet pink and cocoa brown. I remember Father complimenting her on her “fine taste” once she had made her selection.
    At first, I did not mind when Louise-Josephine came to live with us. I enjoyed the idea of another girl close to my age. But she was cautious when she arrived. She showed no interest in befriending me, preferring to keep to herself. Sometimes, at her mother’s request, she would care for Paul, drawing him a bath or mending his clothes when he tore them in the garden. These were all chores that I had done before her arrival, but now it seemed Madame Chevalier felt more comfortable asking her daughter to do them than me.
    I had assisted Madame Chevalier in the kitchen for so many years that now I was beginning to cook many of our family’s meals as well as do the shopping. I felt as though I was finally able to take over where my mother had left off, rearranging her knickknacks when I dusted the shelves, polishing the brass girl that adorned her marble pendulum clock, drawing the curtain over the door when I began the preparations for supper.
    Over the coming weeks, Louise-Josephine slowly became absorbed into our house, much like one of Father’s newly acquired canvases. She blended into the plaster walls like sponge paint, rarely speaking unless spoken to, never making unnecessary noise, silently gliding through the house like a piece of transparent cloth.
    She busied her days making small découpage boxes or looking at magazines she had brought from Paris. But sometimes I would pause and notice her doing things that I had believed were my responsibility. When I saw her taking Paul’s hand to usher him into his warm bath, I saw in his eyes the same sense of adoration he had had for Madame Chevalier when she first appeared after our mother’s death. And, again, I felt the same swelling of resentment that I had when Madame Chevalier first arrived.
    I soon abandoned any thoughts of befriending Louise-Josephine. I acknowledged her in the hallways, when we passed to sit down at the table, but otherwise our contact remained distant.
    R EGARDLESS of mutual lack of affection, Louise-Josephine learned quickly how things were done in our household. She adapted to the distinct difference in how we acted as a family when we were alone and when guests were present. In those latter cases, she retreated to the upstairs. Even during visits by Papa’s artist friends from Paris—who, oddly, seemed familiar with Madame Chevalier, in the way one knows a long-lost friend—Louise-Josephine was never introduced.
    Sometimes Madame Chevalier was also instructed to