Dear Vincent Read Free Page B

around would be for me to go away
…
to cease to be.
    — VINCENT TO THEO, CUESMES, JULY 1880
    HOW COULD THIS BE possible? Of all the people I’ve ever known Van had the most positive and vital love of life. Her enthusiasm was legendary: the girl who could be guaranteed to run faster, laugh longer, fight harder, to fill a room with energy the second she walked in.
    It makes no sense. After all those years of fighting Mum and Dad she’d finally escaped. Sure the Irish rellies drove her mad, but she’d written just before she died and said she’d found some peace. I know the letter off by heart — it arrived two days after Mum broke the news.
    At last I know what I’m going to do. Mum and Dad can stop worrying I’ll cause them shame. All my life, little T, for as long as I remember, I’ve been banging up against a concrete wall. But now I understand it all and the way suddenly seems clear. I’m going to
put it right. Will never, ever cause them grief again. You can’t believe how good I feel. Be pleased for me — it’s for the best. For the first time since forever I’m at peace. Eternal love, your Van.
    Tears sting my cheeks. How could I have been so stupid? So naive? All these years I thought it meant she’d seen the error of her ways; that the turbulence was over and she was ready to step calmly into adult life. While I was raging at the gross unfairness of that new life being snatched from her, I never for a moment thought she’d snuffed it out herself.
    Why did Mum lie to me? Some pathetic cover-up of so-called mortal sin? Or maybe she felt too guilty. She’d blamed Van for Dad’s stroke and rubbed it in with every escalating argument and snide remark.
You’ll be the death of him, you bealin’ little hoor. He should’ve thrashed the devil out of you while he had the chance.
Instead it was Van who died — where the hell’s the fairness in
that?
    Did she look into her future and see no glimmer of relief, overwhelmed by shades of black and grey?
Oh, Van! Don’t you know all colours are transformed by simple shifts of light? What seems black in one moment reveals itself as midnight blue in another; grey brightens to silver green when dawn evicts the night.
It eats me up to think of her sharing Vincent’s dishwater-hued view of life. He claimed great artists die like women who have loved much, hurt by life.
Hell yes.
    I stare up at the universe of glowing stars I’ve gluedto the ceiling to create my own personal
Starry Night.
Mould blooms swirl around them like the star nurseries of the Milky Way — now the perfect visual metaphor for my insignificance. What was going through Van’s mind as she secured the rope? Was she afraid?
Oh god.
Did she panic, change her mind right at the moment when the noose bit tight?
    I can hear Dad’s breathing through the wall and find myself tracking his every breath. When he first came home from the hospital, after his second crippling stroke, I used to sit beside his bed to do my homework while Mum cooked. No matter how engrossed I was, a part of me always remained on high alert. Every snuffle made me jump. Each tiny movement triggered alarm bells in my head. I was terrified he’d die, would never undergo my dreamed-of transformation, softening like Captain von Trapp into a loving dad. But what I never envisaged was the gradual grinding down of hope as he lived on.
Oh, Van
. If anyone in our family was overdue to die it was Dad.
    How could you leave me, knowing I was stuck at home to bear this on my own? For god’s sake, I was only twelve. A snail to your butterfly. Did you forget I never used to be so quiet and withdrawn? I saw my world explode before my eyes as you crashed through all the boundaries. I wasn’t as brave as you.
    Instead, I stuffed it down. Took every harsh rebuke without a word. Chose to play the good girl in our family tragedy. You promised me I’d one day reach the age when I could leave. That we would live together.
God damn it, Van, we had a