The next several weeks rolled by quickly, and Julia felt more herself with each day that passed. Aunt Dot had called to thank her for keeping the children and to tell her she was up and moving about with her new hip. Her mother had called several times to check in and to remind her that her old college roommate, Estelle Macomson, had a daughter who lived just outside of Budapest and here was her e-mail address. Simon called every other day, often with some exciting piece of news about Hockney sales, and Jed e-mailed once to say how much he had enjoyed seeing her and how he hoped her time in Budapest was fruitful and to please call him if and when she found herself back in the South Carolina lowcountry.
Julia never did hear a word from Marney. No thank you, no update on the kids or her health. She assumed that no news was good news, and she really had no desire to talk with Marney. But she would have loved to have heard something from the children whom she thought about and dreamed about regularly.
Budapest was one of Europe’s most vibrant and beautiful cities, with a storied history that involved everyone from the Celts to the Romans to the Magyars to the Mongols, and of course, the Ottomans. The people were truly a stunning and exotic blend of all of the cultures and conquerors that made their way through Central Europe over the last two thousand years or so. Many had smooth, tawny skin, chiseled jaws, large, slightly curved eyes with dark brows, blond or reddish-orange hair. Nearly everyone seemed confident and busy, well on their way to somewhere or someone.
But to what and to whom? That’s what Julia wanted to know as she sat and observed the pedestrians at the little portable easel she’d set up each morning in different parts of the city before heading to the university. At first she focused on the vistas with pedestrians making up a hazy portion of the foreground or background of places like the Chain Bridge, Parliament, the Jewish synagogue, the Old Castle. But she was quickly bored by the vistas that had surely been painted thousands and thousands of times by artists with a much deeper connection to them. So she turned to what she was most naturally captivated by: the people and the mystery of their lives. She couldn’t help staring at them constantly: an elderly man shuffling down the street with his two baguettes, one under each arm; a teenage girl, her tattooed hand in the back of her boyfriend’s pants pocket, the boyfriend’s triple lip rings catching the morning light; a middle-aged woman with graying hair and a settled face that was more beautiful, more youthful than she dared to imagine and how her expression turned from one of weariness to delight when she crossed an acquaintance on the promenade.
Julia looked into their faces as they approached, sometimes staring at them for whole minutes at a time before they felt her gaze and looked up. She would try to look away in time so they didn’t feel as though they were being stalked by some obtuse American, here today and gone tomorrow, though in many ways that’s exactly who she was. If she stared long enough, she could imprint the image on her mind and she would quickly turn and paint the subject as she imagined who the person was, imagined the dramatic arcs of their life, imagined their deepest longings or regrets. In that way she felt connected to them. No one could walk this planet without experiencing pain.
At first she found that painting the pedestrians helped quell the mysterious longing in her heart, but as the weeks passed, it almost made it worse, and she found that the more she watched others, the lonelier she felt. The loneliness was useful when it came to the art; it helped sharpen and define it. So she fed on it, the way she remembered Hemingway fed on hunger during his time in Paris when he couldn’t afford lunch, and she hoped against hope that she could create something fresh to ship home to New York. Some new way of defining who she was and how she saw the world.
One Saturday afternoon she was sitting on the edge of the Chain Bridge beneath the lion, just watching for that right person to trigger her imagination and fill her blank canvas, when her phone buzzed in her jacket pocket. It was a text with the name Jed Young on it, and it contained a photo. She clicked to open it and found an image of Charlie holding up an enormous spot-tail bass with a grin the size of Texas. And Skeeter was in the background, his old shirt splattered with pluff mud, clapping. Mornin’ trip to the honey hole, the text read.
She smiled at the image of the proud little boy and then at the letters that made up the name just below the image. Jed Young. She took a photo of her view from the Chain Bridge, including the edge of her easel, the lion, the Danube, and the Parliament building. Congrats to Charlie from Budapest, she wrote. And then, Thank you for taking him, J.
The text did not go through. She tried it several times, but it didn’t work. She had half a mind to fold up the easel, run to the top of Castle Hill where she was sure to have service, and call him. Maybe he was calling her right now, yearning to hear her voice the way she was his.
Her engagement ring was catching the afternoon light, and she blinked several times. I have to shake this, she said to herself. This is crazy. She deleted her response and went back to her easel and set out her paints. She was getting married in a few short months and whatever nostalgia or romance or whatever it was she had felt for Jed during her week at Edisto, she had to stamp it out. Ignore it. Seal it up.
She went back to her observing and was delighted to have the chance to take a long look at two young girls on either side of an older woman who must be their grandmother. They were making faces at one another as the woman pulled them along the bridge. One of them, the younger one, looked right into Julia’s eyes for whole seconds at a time. The look was a blend of boldness and pride. As if to say, Of course I am a worthy subject. Julia smiled at her and winked. The girl smiled back and nodded once. What a gift, Julia thought, and then she turned away and dipped her brush into the acrylic paint.