The balcony door of Julia’s apartment is open. A car door is heard ripping along the cobbled street. Some hammering too, and the voices of men coming from scaffolding being erected against the façade of a neighbouring building. The morning sun reaches across the floor, throwing an oblong shape onto the blue rug at the centre of the living room. A light breeze comes in, lifting the leaves of a standard plant in the corner.
On a table, there is a column of large-format art books, one of which has been opened on a stand. It’s part of Julia’s routine, displaying a different page each morning, like an inspiration for the day. Today it’s the image of the young woman turning to look behind her. Or is she turning her face away, not wishing to be seen?
What else? Some unopened mail, including a letter from Amnesty International asking for support to free a human rights lawyer in Iran.
In the kitchen, Lena and Julia are talking. One of those late-morning conversations with Lena still in her dressing gown, her bare knees up and a cup cradled in both hands. Julia is wearing a loose shirt and a pair of tracksuit bottoms. She pours some more coffee and says – we should be out on the balcony. But they decide to stay where they are in the kitchen because of the hammering outside.
Julia says to Lena – I have a studio for you.
Wow. Thanks.
It’s a nice place, Julia says. A loft, at the top of a building, no lift though. An artist friend of mine, he’s gone to live in Melbourne for a year, so the place is free.
That’s amazing.
There’s a small kitchen. Enough to boil up soup, that kind of thing, Julia says. Lots of space. Worktables. You’ll love it. There’s a small daybed as well. That’s where he brings all his lovers, so I believe.
Sounds a bit like Lucian Freud.
Exactly, Julia says. He was asked how come he had two children in the same year by two different women and he answered – I had a bicycle.
What do I owe him?
No way, Julia says. He doesn’t want money. He’s happy to have another artist use the place while he’s away.
The woman in the painting on the stand is not turning around to look at anything specific. The space behind her is empty, indistinct, nothing more than a pale grey distance. She is caught in that backward glance, looking around at the past, unable to return to the present. That’s what you are given to think. She may come from somewhere else. She’s looking around at something that has gone blank, something she has left behind.
Julia begins to tell Lena about a man she met at the gallery recently. It’s been keeping me awake at night, she says. Something really stupid. He was in my class in school. The boy in front of me. I used to poke him in the back with my pen and he never complained. I would never have remembered his face. I knew him only from behind. His broad back. Why was I so obsessed with hurting him? Some jealousy, maybe, printed in red marks across his back.
He’s a highly successful lawyer now, Julia says. He was very friendly. He gave me his card and asked me to contact him if I ever needed any help. I should have said sorry for making his life a nightmare in class. I wondered if it was those jabs that helped to make him such a success? Or was it the opposite? He became a successful lawyer out of some determination to get even with all those times I poked him. Every case he wins takes back one red mark at a time.
No way, Lena says.
Now I’m asking myself – why did he come to the gallery after all these years? Was it to show me that he had succeeded in defying my bullying?
I’m sure he’s forgotten, Lena says. He would not have come if he was holding a grudge.
Julia’s laugh holds a hint of capitulation.
It’s in his power to forget, not mine.
It’s so long ago, Julia.
I should have spoken to him about it, Julia says. Cleared the air. Now I wonder, should I call him, explain to him that I had nothing against him? I liked him. He was my friend. Maybe I fancied him. I just thought boys didn’t feel anything. The way he turned around sometimes and smiled at me without saying a word, as if he wanted more. Maybe it was some weird kind of love we had for each other, with no other way of showing it but through this painful messaging. He’s happily married now with three children, so he told me. His name came up in the paper just the other day, she says. Some trial in which he is defending a man on charges of attempting to set fire to a hostel. That’s what lawyers do. This sounds crazy, I know, but I keep thinking he may have been so desensitized by that experience at school that it brought him to this point where he can defend the indefensible.
Julia, you’re thinking too much, Lena says.
I know, Julia says. It’s the way I was brought up, feeling responsible for things by association.
Let it go.
If I hadn’t subjected him to that daily torture, Julia says, he might have done something kinder with his life, like medicine. Maybe he would have become an artist, a writer, done something creative. Maybe that’s why he came to the gallery, because he loves art and he hates being a lawyer defending people who burn other people.
Lena offers to make more coffee.
Julia’s son Matt walks into the kitchen wearing earphones.
He has the presence of a ghost, not quite in this world. It must be Saturday if he’s not at school. Julia speaks about him in the third person – wait till you see, she says to Lena, he will grab some cereal and not even bother with a bowl, hand to mouth. He’s a vegan, she says, self-proclaimed. I had to bulk him up with protein last summer because his teeth had gone grey. He was with this theatre group in the country and they forgot to eat, just weed and love.
What about saying good morning to Lena? Julia says.
Matt lifts one of the earphones to say hello.
Lena smiles – hi, Matt.
For one moment he’s back in real time, then he replaces the earphone and disappears again.
The sound of hammering has come right into the room at this point. The art books have all begun to take it personally. They would happily drag one of those workmen into a studio and silence him in art. Photos taken of artists in their studios often make them look like murderers, their overalls splattered with paint. We are relieved when Julia crosses the floor in her bare feet to close the balcony door.
You can’t help looking back, Lena says.
No choice, I suppose.
I’m no better, Lena says. I still find myself getting worried about my father. He’s been dead a couple of years now, but I can’t help wishing I could undo some of the stuff I did. The trouble I caused him. I was sent to live in Ireland with my mother after they got divorced. I hated it. Couldn’t wait to get back to Philadelphia. I thought my father was punishing my mother by foisting me on her. I thought he wanted me out of the way so he could start a life with his new girlfriend. And guess what? I got my revenge on them by taking up drugs. They were everywhere. First thing I came across. Skibbereen is the drug capital of Europe, she says.
I went on this binge of self-destruction.
After he brought me home and got me straightened out, Lena says, I wouldn’t let him see his new partner. I refused to let her in the door. The scale of resistance was unreal. I couldn’t stand him paying attention to anyone else. Even the sight of a woman’s name in his address book made me mad. I tore them all out. I read their letters and cried. He was getting on very well with a woman from Madison named Grace. She was lovely. She would bring chocolates for me and I threw them on the floor, saying – what’s this, bribery?
Honestly, they would have had a good life together, but I would not allow it. I got her number and called her one night. I think it was two in the morning. I told her she was ugly and fat and full of poison. She was making my father ill. He was dying because of her. I told her he was throwing up the whole night after she kissed him.
Shit, Julia says.
I was fighting for my life, Lena says.
That’s rough.
It’s unbelievable, Lena says, the power a child can have over a parent. I could smell the guilt. I could feel him thinking it was such a mistake to send me to Ireland. I could sense him being worried about doing the best for me, making up for lost time. I played his love against him. I held him to ransom. I chased away any possibility of a happy life. I insisted on being his only happiness.
That’s the sacrifice, that’s what a parent does.
You can’t go back and change things, Lena says.
I’m sure you meant everything to him, Lena.
Julia stands up and puts her cup into the sink. She puts her hand on Lena’s arm.
Come on, Lena, she says. Let’s go and have a look at that studio.