Where the HeArt is Page 15

  Mo had a Christmas card from Ann's parents, “with such a nice message. You have lovely parents.” Yes, indeed. She writes a long reply to Mo, about leaving the family in London, being lonely in Paris, but loving it anyway, “well kind of, I'm ready to come home really, but determined to make the most of being here.” She doesn’t mention Suzanna.

  Nothing from Paula. The handwritten note is still in her handbag. Will she turn it into an email? After some rummaging, she finds and reads it, then screws it up and tosses it into a waste-paper basket a couple of computer stations away, where it lands satisfactorily right in the middle.

  A message from Gabrielle, once a colleague at the university, fancy that. She doubts they had ever had a personal conversation. How did Gabrielle get her gmail address? Athena, she and Athena were in the same book group, that would be it. She, Ann, was probably being gossiped about. Inevitable, really.

  “You certainly did the right thing, grabbing the redundancy offer and going,” she reads in Gabrielle’s message. Ann doesn’t like “grabbing,” she was surely more dignified than that. “It's hell in here. Everyone watching their back, grovelling to the people you hope can keep you your job. I thought I'd see if I could hang on for another year, so Stephen and I get our mortgage paid off ….” And on it went. Ann stops reading. She never had an email address for Suzanna. It wouldn’t be hard to find one at the library, not if she used the internet, but she won’t. She really won’t.

  Back out in the street, the light and the life of the city surround her. Sunday people, voices softer, movement slower than that of their weekday selves. The mix of languages and dress is complex; European, North African, Asian. If she didn’t know otherwise, Ann could believe they all got along together. Perhaps on Sundays they do.

  Focus, Ann tells herself, Sunday is but half gone and there are art museums aplenty whose doors you have yet to darken. But she doesn't want art today. Picasso, Monet, Moreau, they are not calling her, Boulevard Saint-Germaine of café culture fame, is. She sets off towards the river, careless of what streets she takes, certain of her general direction. She sees markets and passes them by, crosses the Ile de la Cité with barely a glance at the Notre Dame. The city is lit up by the light in the air. That pale grey stone will have something to do with it, Ann muses as she walks, warmed by her exertion. Chloe would know, it would be good to be walking here with Chloe. And Joshua. Or Su—no, she musn’t go there. She buys the latest Paris-Match.

  Cafes are busy, tables at a premium, even outside. Off the Boulevard, on the edge of a square, Ann nabs a table on the footpath, by a brazier, as a couple leaves. With a bowl of onion soup she watches Sunday people out and about, reminding her of Wellington on a good day. Families, couples, people on their own, not so many groups of young people, they must have other haunts. She retreats into the Paris-Match with her coffee, wondering at how people were the same and so different, all at the same time. Scandal, gossip, Sarkozy

  “'Scuse-moi mam'selle.” A well-dressed middle-aged man stands in front of her. He indicates the second chair at her table.

  “Oui, oui.”

  And he sits down. She thought he wanted to take the chair away.

  “Comment allez-vous?”

  She shakes her head. “Je suis occupé.”

  He gives her a dirty look—a definitely dirty look in French—and leaves.

  The waiter takes an age to bring her billet. She hopes her tip is enough. Two more days, thinks Ann, then home and summer, enough cold. She walks, stopping for pizza in the street near her hostel and taking it with her to eat in the dining room alongside a loud American family with teenagers and a German couple in serious consultation with a guide book while they eat a dish of chickpeas in tomato sauce. The Americans are friendly. She nods and smiles, hoping they’ll assume she doesn't speak English.

  Back in her room she unpacks her laptop from its clothing wrapper, sits on the bed and types:

  where to live (long-term)

  how to earn (could have a year's grace)

  writing/ publishing (a straw in the wind?)

  what if anything to do about Paula

  Oh well, she thinks, that's plenty to deal with when I get home, and closes her laptop. Back to Raymond Chandler. She perseveres to the end of The High Window and a few pages into The Lady in the Lake before she turns out the light.

  In the morning she has her mind set on another visit to the Louvre. It’s her last chance; tomorrow, her final day in Paris, is a Tuesday so it will be closed.

  With the Americans making the most of breakfast, Ann swallows a cup of slightly too-hot coffee and leaves with a roll and cheese in her hand. She chooses side streets and les allées, and arrives as the Louvre opens.

  Wandering through the naturally lit classical sculptures, she pays little attention to their magnificence. Enjoying the views out the windows from the second and third levels as much as the art works inside, she knows where her apparent aimlessness will end.

  A pair of figures behind glass take her eye; a couple wearing modest crowns, dressed in simply draped gowns, carved in stone that’s a little battered. Their facial features are soft, as if in slightly melted wax. They look benign, standing there side by side, turned slightly towards each other with a space between. The woman holds a staff, with possibly a fleur de lis at the top, and in her other hand a book with a clasp, most likely a bible. The man holds a small, detailed model of a church in one hand and the other hangs loosely at his side. They look pleasant, calm, untroubled. With different icons they could be her parents, settled in their place in the world.

  Stairs, corridors, and here she is, in a room full of Rembrandts. Sitting on a square stool in its centre, she turns slowly, looking closely at one painting after another. A self-portrait, young, then one older, and older again. In every one light falls on one side of the face. No other painter captured such soulful beauty. She wants to stand and spin, round and round like a dervish, taking the whole roomful of paintings inside her, all at once. Attendants hover, so she makes herself turn slowly, sliding her eyes away from a butchered carcass of beef painted with the same glowing intensity as the portraits; she doesn't want to go there.

  Standing quietly in front of Saskia, her fingers curl on her thighs at the front of her jeans as though they are a skirt to keep from water. Then she fades back into herself, feeling her feet firm on gallery floor, smiling at the attendant, who smiles back. A young couple, heads close together, speaking French, come in and stand in front of a self-portrait. Ann says “Bonjour” and they look at her. The woman raises a hand in a small wave, the man nods his head, and they turn back to each other. People acknowledge her as she makes her way down a grand staircase. Ann's spirit has lifted, not skyward, but through all her molecules, lightening and brightening. She thinks pulsing light bulbs and smiles. People acknowledge her, with a nod, a tip of the head. An elderly gentleman bestows a courtly bow as she makes her way out of the Louvre.

  Chapter 14

  Ann spends her last full day in Paris riding on L'Open Tour buses with a day pass and a colour-coded map, not looking at a single work of art apart from the city itself. The Eiffel Tower rises up from so many vistas she feels no need to disembark there, no inclination to a close view; it’s role somehow is to be there on the skyline. She does get off at the Arc de Triomph and walk around the perimeter, giving full reign to her astonishment at the traffic flow from twelve or more avenues ending at one vast roundabout with a monument in the middle. There’s rain, or at least drizzle, in the air, the road is wet; there’s no collision in half an hour. It’s fast and chaotic, but there must be some kind of order.

  That night she finishes reading the Chandler omnibus and on her way out the following morning, she returns the book to its shelf and says goodbye to Philip Marlowe. She has the French best-seller, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, in English translation, for the trip home.

  *

  The sight of her father at Wellington Airport fills her with relief at the end of the long
journey. She loves the reassurance of his unchanging, dependability as she watches his expectant look turn to delight when he sees her.

  “Welcome home,” he says, as she holds his hug beyond their usual fleeting moment.

  “It’s so good to be back, and to see you.”

  “That’s my girl.” They head off towards the car park, her father positively jaunty as he says, “We have some news, but I promised your mother I wouldn’t tell until we get home.”

  Ann doesn’t want her parents to have news, she wants them to be the same, predictable, stable. Her father’s looking far too pleased with himself for the news to be anything dreadful, but today surely she is the news—“Mu-um, Dad, I’m home!” Now she feels childish.

  Telling herself to grow up doesn’t make her feel less anxious. Have they sold their house? Surely not. Are they planning a move to Australia as some of their friends have. Oh, no!

  “Come on, Dad, give me a clue. I won’t let on.”

  “No fear, your mother would be able to tell as soon as she saw us. Patience, my girl!” As he drives, he catches her up with the news of the country and she barely listens.

  —They’re going to England. (Surely not in mid-winter.)

  —Moving into central Wellington? (No, no they’d have no garden, what would Dad do all day?)

  —Taking in foreign students as boarders? (What about her room? Oh my, she’s completely regressed.)

  “What was that you said about the National Government, Dad?”

  *

  The dining table is set up for lunch and Ann’s bags are in her room. “Okay,” she says to her parents, “here we all are, what’s this secret Dad wouldn’t tell me?”

  “Not a secret, dear, just some news,” says her mother.

  “Mum! Dad! If you don’t just say it I’ll burst!”

  Keith and Shirley look at each other and say in unison, “We’ve joined the Green Party!”

  “You’ve ……?”

  “Yes! Joined the Greens.” And they’re both talking at once. —Climate change—grandchild generation—saving the planet—bring some decency into government—stop punishing people for being poor —

  “Their Russell Norman makes a lot of sense, you know,” that’s her father, her mother has wound down, “he knows a thing or two about how money works, or doesn’t …”

  “Okay, already, I get it.” Relief. Surprise. Amusement. (Don’t patronise.)

  They are excited and pleased with themselves; they want to do their bit to stop the world, “going to hell in a hand-basket.” That’s startling, coming from her mother, who is—the surprises pile up—going to branch meetings, while Keith sees himself doing practical things, “delivering pamphlets, making signs and the like.” It’s not an election year, so they’ve got time to “get the hang of things,”—that’s Keith, who doesn’t like not knowing the score—before there’s serious campaigning to do.

  *

  Jet-lag lingers. Her parents are more interested in the London family, than in Paris. As January proceeds with little sign of real summer weather, Ann feels as though she is batting off helpful suggestions about how she could spend the rest of her life from everyone she knows.

  “I'm calling a moratorium,” she announces. “No more talking about my future, no 'you could's’ until the end of March.”

  What Ann wants to talk about with her friends is Suzanna and how Suzanna unsettled her sense of herself but now that Suzanna is “gonesville,” as someone put it, their curiosity has vanished. When she confesses the text from Paris to Mo, her friend says, “Sheesh! Changing her phone number, that’s a bit extreme.” Ann can’t find the words to explain what she keeps thinking about, that Suzanna had woken her up—and, no, it’s not about the sex—to her own narrow understanding, to the unchallenged privilege and security of her life. Not woken to guilt, but to knowing in a new way that she was sheltered and would remain so. Suzanna had known that tangling their lives together would be just that, a tangle, a messy snarl of incompatible threads. Wouldn’t it?

  The closest she gets to the conversation she wants is with her mother, as they work together updating the mailing list for the local Green Party branch. Not that they talk about Suzanna directly, it arises from a comment of her mother’s that poverty is more prevalent in New Zealand than most people want to know and Ann’s response that she herself doesn’t really know what hardship is, she’d learnt that in London.

  “There’s more to hardship than lack of money.” Shirley is very definite, “though that’s a big part of it often enough.” A while later she says, “My parents so believed that deprivation and punishment would give their children that accursed grace they made so much of, they drove us all away.”

  “Well, you and Dad did a great job of not being narrow-minded, punitive parents,” says Ann as they print out the corrected list. “And thanks, you’ve helped me put something else into perspective.”

  “London?”

  “Yeah. London.”

  Chapter 15

  Whenever Ann mentions visiting a gallery in New York or Washington or London or Paris she is urged to see the Yayoi Kusami exhibition at the City Gallery in Wellington. The splayed-hand-sized coloured dots on the gallery building promise fun, at least, and Ann goes in on a mid-week afternoon. Large silver balls cover much of the foyer floor, smaller ones hang, Calder-style. No picking up, no rolling, this is a work of art not a playground.

  Yayoi Kusama has made fifty large drawings in thick black marker on white canvas. They hang in a room not big enough to hold them all, so only thirty-something are on show. Oh well. Each piece, maybe a metre square, contains obsession, madness, visions, faces, eyes, spikiness, images repeated and repeated and repeated.

  In the video of the artist making the drawings she is small, eighty, walks with a shuffle, wears a pink wig and dots for an exhibition opening. Seeming both strong and fragile as she works, she uses the marker thoughtfully, deliberately, without pause, after a long initial stare at the empty canvas. Young assistants take care of her. She is in charge.

  Being closed in a room for the fireflies work is like being gently pricked by points of light. Everything is mirrored to eternity and tickles. Thirty seconds and the door is opened.

  Another floor, another room, another door, another attendant; she goes in alone. Mirrors again. Stuffed red and white dotted vaguely phallic things on the floor. She moves her arms up and down as though she’s making sand angels, in unison with herself indefinitely, infinitely, as mirrors reflect mirrors reflecting her. Her outstretched arms lengthen, not-quite matching fingertips missing each other. Her waist pinches in, shoulders and thighs grow heavy and all is reflected over and over into all the distances on all four sides, making her and the dots the centre and the entirety of the universe, of the room, going on and on forever into sheer pleasure. When the door opens she snaps back into herself in an instant.

  “Thank you,” she says, as she walks out.

  Maybe she won't tell anyone, ever, about her art events. Maybe these close encounters are hers, hers alone, to hug to herself. Hardly a secret, but private, not for sharing, some part of herself that belongs just to her. Maybe the romance of telling the story of an event would take something away from the high brightness of the experience, the, glimpses of joy.

  She wants to write to Suzanna, knows exactly where in her diary she copied down the address. The crystal Suzanna gave her hangs in the window of her room for a few days, until she moves it a corner of the mirror where it sits flat against the wall and doesn’t cast rainbows. New Year's Eve seems like an age ago. It bothers Ann that Suzanna has no way to make contact if she changes her mind. Ann Williams, Wellington New Zealand, how much less unusual can you get? But if Suzanna does change her mind and want to make contact, she can, through Chloe, after all she knows Chloe's name and no doubt address from her library membership. So if she wants to …. But she doesn't want to, that's the point, and even if she does she isn’t going to. I miss her. She challenges me
in a certain way. If I'm honest with myself, in a certain, exotic way. Oh, for heaven's sake, get over yourself,

  “What’s that, dear?”

  “Nothing, Mum, just thinking out loud.”

  Ann stands in the doorway of the second spare room, the room that is full of her belongings from the house she used to half-own. Everything is neatly stacked, clothing and cartons of books at hand near the door. Not much for four decades of life, no white-wear, no appliances, except her toaster will be in there somewhere; a heap of shopping to do when she gets her own place. For now, though, she doesn’t want to disturb any of it, doesn’t want to poke around in the remnants of the life she once had.

  Instead, she browses her parent’s bookshelves for something to read herself to sleep with and comes across a small collection of poetry books, mostly by local poets. One, though, is an anthology of the Romantics, a text book from the mid nineteen-nineties she never herself used, with a name on the inside that has been crossed out and replaced by her father’s. She is touched, she doesn’t recall ever seeing him read poetry or show any interest in it. Snuggling up to the Romantics are Usrsulla Bethell, C. K. Stead, James K. Baxter, Brian Turner, Dinah Hawken, and several volumes by Dennis Glover.

  She’s sitting on the floor, reading a second-hand copy of Glover’s Diary To A Woman, when her mother comes in.

  “Those are your father's,” Shirley tells her. “He has a little poetry outbreak now and then, usually when he’s heard someone on the radio. I think he’s embarrassed to tell you in case he shows his ignorance.”

  “Oh, Mum, surely not.”

  “You don’t know much about men, do you, dear?”

  Ann has no answer to that.

  “He’s very proud of you, you know. I’m sure he’d take an interest in Chinese calligraphy if that was your field.”