The Last Van Gogh by Alyson Richman

leaves wafting through the window or the yellow cap of a dandelion tumbling on the lawn. And every time it happened, I’d hold my breath, hoping that if I didn’t let go of the air in my lungs, somehow I would fool that feeling of sheer exhilaration into staying. That for a few hours longer, it might still remain.
    By the spring that Vincent arrived, I had other distractions. My imagination had grown fat on all the novels I had read that involved romantic courtships and full-blown love affairs. If Quasimodo could find love within the shackles of his tower, then certainly I could, too. I vowed to myself that I had to convince Father that I was ready for a husband and family of my own. The possibility that I would remain in our dark, crowded house in Auvers for the rest of my life terrified me. At night, I was plagued by the image of my mother restless in her sickbed, crying out for her former life in Paris. I’d try to find solace in one of my novels, but it was futile. I would only awaken the next morning full of frustration.
    I wanted to experience everything for myself rather than through the characters of my books. I wanted to do more than pinch my cheeks to give them some color. I wanted to apply lipstick and rouge as Madame Chevalier did. I wanted to wear colorful dresses. I wanted to regain that joy I had known as a child when I climbed over ivy and stuffed petals under the laces of my shoes.
    And perhaps, when Vincent arrived that summer, he noticed that nascent stirring about me. He saw that I was bursting to come to life again. Twenty-one years of age, and for the first time since I was a young child, I wanted to dance in the garden and sing. The words of Louise-Josephine kept repeating in my head: You’re the thing that has caught his eye. Reliving the memory of those words, I could hardly suppress my urge to smile.

ELEVEN
     

The Cellar
     
    “I WILL cure him,” I heard Father say as he gathered a wicker basket and a pair of shears. Then there was the ebullient rustle of Papa in the garden, the incessant humming, and the inexhaustible sighing. I looked out the rear door of our house and saw him kneeling on the ground, the red tuft of his goatee brushing against the tall plumes of shepherd’s purse and elderflower.
    Ever since I was a little girl, I had watched him prepare his herbal medicines. When I began cultivating my various roses in the garden, he took special pains to show me where I could not plant. A few steps from our house, he had sectioned off a plot of the garden where his medicinal plants—chickweed and horsetail, cowslip and primrose, among others—grew in abundance.
    Although Papa had trained as a medical doctor in Lille, he became intrigued with natural medicine after making the acquaintance of the Baron de Monestrol, a leading homeopath, while living in Paris. Papa had long considered himself a Positivist, believing that scientific knowledge was based primarily on observation. Thus, the school of homeopathy intrigued him. The fact that a substance that can cause symptoms in a healthy person can actually cure similar symptoms in a sick one, was one of the tenets of homeopathy. A small dosage of coffee crudea, for example, could alleviate insomnia. A little pill made from bee venom could reduce the swelling from a wasp bite.
    Over the years, Papa began cultivating various plants and herbs in his garden to use for his tinctures. He experimented with many of his remedies on himself, and sometimes he gave his tinctures to Paul, me, and our mother in order to prove their effects. He would give us dulcamara when the weather changed from dry to wet in order to prevent colds. When Mother had trouble sleeping, he would give her a tincture of belladonna. For Paul’s recurring sore throat, he’d make a special remedy using bryum moss.
    I knew that if Father were up early collecting his herbs, he would be devoting the rest of the day to making tinctures. It was a monthly event. He would gather his