The Exhibition
I have a little exhibition of my paintings. Not a proper one with media and VIPs, it’s just for friends and family. I have a dozen paintings hung on the walls of an old greengrocer’s shop that’s been converted into a gallery about the size of a pea: Mrs Ferris’ Grocery Shop. The room is full with twenty people in it. We serve orange juice and vodka and put out bowls of roasted chickpeas and Kalamata olives. The paintings are okay, but nothing special. There are eleven horizons and one burrow. People look at them and smile and say encouraging things. My mother buys the smallest horizon. She’ll hang it in the hallway where it’s dark and the globe is never switched on because in two steps you are in another room anyway.
The stunning, svelte Alice from up the road buys a medium-sized horizon. The ponytailed man on her arm looks at her as though she is the answer to every question he ever asked. Maurice examines each piece carefully and with a gentle respect. He treats it like it’s real art and I love him for it. Florence sits quietly on a chair looking forlorn and doesn’t speak to a soul. Nothing else is sold. People hug me and leave after an hour. Dan takes Ava home so that I can tidy up, and soon enough there are only two people left in Mrs Ferris’ Grocery Shop.
Act 2
Scene: Mrs Ferris’ Grocery Shop, 81 Plane Tree Drive–night, now
Jennifer locks the door and lowers the Venetian blinds, shutting out the street.
‘I didn’t know you painted,’ Alexander says.
‘I am a woman of myriad mystery,’ Jennifer says with a wink.
‘No you aren’t, I know all your mysteries. Except for the painting.’
Jennifer remembers Alexander visiting her in hospital when she was twenty years old and grieving her baby all on her own and she knows he’s right. He was there long after her son’s father had bailed. He held her hand and cried with her. And then he vanished back into his world, as he did, leaving her to drift in her grief slowly towards a new life with Dan.
‘Tell me about the burrow,’ Alexander says.
‘It kind of stands out, doesn’t it?’
‘Like dogs’ balls.’
‘Well, I went on a painting retreat and there were bloody trees everywhere. I’m sick of looking at trees.’
‘So you found a burrow. What about a bird or a leaf or a person? Why a burrow?’
‘I don’t know. Have you ever tried to paint a bird? The buggers won’t sit still.’
Alexander laughs.
‘Are you still making films?’ he asks, taking a sip from his neat vodka.
‘No, I’m making play doh.’
‘That bad, eh?’
Something tries to rasp its way out of Jennifer’s throat and she coughs it back. This exhibition was supposed to be her light.
Alexander cups her chin in his hand, looks her in the eye.
‘You’re lost.’
‘I know,’ is all she can say, but in a small way she hates Alexander for telling her the truth.
He rests his body against the wall, between horizons, and stares at the floor. ‘When I was little, my grandparents were murdered by soldiers. Mum and Dad packed up me and Viktoria in the dead of night and we caught the first train – going anywhere. It took seven months altogether, but we ended up here, in Adelaide. Two weeks later, I was at school and you were teaching me English in the schoolyard.’
This is a story Jennifer’s heard many times. She knows other details too – about the fear of those seven months, of the money running out and documents being stolen, about nights sleeping underneath his parents’ bodies so he could remain hidden from child smugglers and thugs.
‘Do you think your life has a point?’ she asks.
‘I used to think it did. Not so much now.’
‘Why not?’
‘Things haven’t turned out...I don’t know...profound. My parents used to tell us that we were lucky to be in Australia and we had to make the most of this new life. That we had been given a gift. Now look at us. Viktoria is working for the tax department and I’m designing shoeboxes that pass for public housing. There is nothing profound about our lives. Maybe we wasted the chance we were given.’
He looks so different now. Different to the way she sees him when she closes her eyes.
‘Do you ever think about The Game?’ she asks.
‘Not for years.’
‘I think about it all the time. How I hid behind it.’
‘We both did. Why didn’t we tell each other we loved each other then?’
How are they suddenly, easily, finally talking about this?
‘I used to believe it when they said we were perfect for each other, except for everything. That stupid game. It feels like all those differences have been whittled away. Why did we think they were so important then?’
‘That game used to shit me,’ he says, but she’s not thinking about The Game anymore. She’s thinking about fixing this, because it all suddenly makes sense.
‘We left our fingerprints on each other. All over. Outside and in.’ She takes another deep breath and talks to the floor. ‘I loved you so much it hurt. I loved you as much as any teenager ever loved anyone. Like Juliette loved Romeo,’ she smiles at the melodrama of her words, but she remembers it so well. How it felt.
Alexander leans in, takes her face in his hands and kisses her on the lips. Her heart is careening in her chest as she tastes him for the first time and her entire life coalesces right there, amongst all the horizons with their cliff tops and sweeping winds and she can’t stop kissing him. He tastes of twenty years of longing.
It’s not awkward with bodies thrown up against walls and clothes torn off, it’s quieter than that. They’re ravenous but they are patient too, drawing out moments as long as they can, in case this is all they will ever have. She wants every touch to be imprinted on her skin so she slows everything down until the end, when it’s impossible to be slow.