But Aldo didn’t say that, or say anything. Instead, he nodded and turned, pulling his phone out of his pocket and racing outside, faster and faster the closer he got to the doors.
“Dad,” he said, the moment Masso answered the phone. He wanted to scream, primally, or to tear at his hair, hysterical with understanding. “She’s nothing like Mom.”
“Rinaldo, I haven’t heard from you in two days, where have you b-”
“You’re wrong and you’re right,” Aldo said again, pacing the stairs outside the museum. “She does burn me, she ignites me, you’re right. But it’s different, they’re different things.” He was thinking more than he was saying, unsure what was even coming out of his mouth. Science without faith is crippled, Masso, and life without it is soulless. She is my hope and for that she is dangerous, unequivocally, but she is also alive, unreservedly. It took this long for me to finally understand.
Masso was silent for a long moment.
“So then what will you do, Rinaldo?”
Aldo laughed, startling the stranger sitting peacefully on the steps who was witnessing, unknowingly, a bit of existential decay. It’s you and me right now, Stranger!, Aldo wanted to tell him. It’s you and me alone in the ether and you don’t even know it, you don’t even care, but still you are tied to this, and to me, and so be it, really.
So be it. This is what it means to live.
“I’ll do whatever she wants me to do,” Aldo said to his father, who contemplated this in three beats of silence on the other side of the phone.
“Okay, Rinaldo,” said Masso. “Sounds like a plan.”
* * *
ALDO HAD STARED at her paintings, alone, for over fifteen minutes.
Throughout that time, Regan had been crafting imaginary scenarios of what came next. At first it was very simple, perhaps even boring, a little scripted. For the first minute or so she imagined herself walking up to him and tapping his shoulder, casually saying: How did you know?
Between minutes three and five, her projections went a bit further. She imagined herself apologizing to him, saying: I should have stopped you, I shouldn’t have let you go, this is my love letter to you and I hope that you like it, goodbye now if that’s what you want. It would be sweet, and also masochistically generous. She could probably live with herself if she said that.
But Regan had never martyred herself with grace before, so somewhere around minute six—which felt borderline ungodly—she grew angry. You see that it’s my work!, she wanted to shout at him. Why are you still looking, come find me! By minute ten she was infuriated, considering kicking him in the shins and then storming away, saying nothing at all. Wouldn’t that serve him right? He couldn’t just stand there and stare like that, judging her work. When had he ever made himself that vulnerable? Never, probably, and now look at him, just standing there, staring. He hadn’t even noticed how many people had jostled him; nor had he noticed the girl in Regan’s anatomical figure drawing class who had the spot right below hers, which the girl and her grandfather were presently struggling to see because Aldo was standing in the way and hadn’t moved.
By minute twelve Regan had abandoned her sanctimonious posturing and begun thinking Aldo, oh, Rinaldo, I miss you; only you would look for so long and so closely; only you would bother trying to see what others don’t. She wanted to creep up behind him, press her chest to the blades of his shoulders and her lips to the back of his neck: Thank you. Because of you, she would whisper in his ear, I made the very first real thing I have ever made, can you believe it? I’m an artist for the first time—yes, an artist, I said it, you heard me!—and it is only because I painted the world as you saw it, so it was theft, sort of, but no, it wasn’t, because we made it together. This is our love, do you see it? This is what it looks like to love you; it looks like an abyss, but it isn’t, do you understand? All falls come with danger, Aldo, but not us. Not us, we float.
By minute fourteen she wanted to drag him somewhere private. She was alight with a desperate need to feel close to him, to feel connected, beatifically vulgar and harmoniously obscene. Alone with you, she would gasp when she came, do you understand why I called it that, what it means? Because you and I, we are so different, aren’t we, and yet we are more like each other than the rest of the world is like us, and for that I bless you, I condemn you, I sanctify you, I sustain you. This painting, Aldo, it’s about God. They cannot hang it in the Louvre, they will have to put it in the Vatican, because what we are is holy, and this, you and me as one together, is transubstantiation of the highest degree. This is you and me becoming the consecration of us; amen, above everything, I believe.