by Anita Heiss
‘If you go out, be sure and hold on to your handbag like this.’ She tucked her own bag right under her arm. ‘Bag snatches happen all the time, sometimes they have knives. If you’ve got a good grip, they’ll probably leave you alone.’
‘Shit!’ I was shocked and scared.
‘It’s never happened to me, I’m just giving the warnings that everyone gets, okay?’
Judith shut the massive mediaeval door behind her and I just lay flat on the bed and closed my eyes. I felt the weakest I’d ever felt, with no energy and no desire to move at all.
‘Wake up to yourself,’ I said out loud and pulled myself up off the bed.
I unpacked my toiletries and put on a fresh face of makeup to make myself feel better. I didn’t want to turn Judith’s home into another misery den, simply relocated from Paris. I looked around the bedroom and thought how emancipating it was to have so much space. Judith’s apartment was four times the size of my place back in the 20th.
I slowly descended the eighty-two stairs down to the street, hoping for just a little exercise and to start exploring Judith’s town. I liked her new home: it was a little village inside the big city of Barcelona.
I walked awhile and found a place called Carrer de la Princesa. I smiled for no reason, other than the fact I liked the name.
I accidentally found the Picasso museum and like every other tourist there, I paid my entry fee and spent the afternoon taking in the genius of the renowned artist. The gallery space and works helped to ground me, as visual art always had, and I thought about Lauren and how much she would’ve appreciated the opportunity to visit.
It was a gentle reminder of how lucky I was in the big scheme of things and that love was only one part – albeit an often painful part – of life. I was back to remembering the best relationship I’d ever had was with my work.
As I walked through the museum shop I compared the size, layout and stock with that of the NAG, and I started to get homesick. It was the first time that I’d felt that way since meeting Jake. He had filled the void of home and since he had left, that void was now large enough to be seen from space.
For the next few days, Judith was busy at work in her new job as a literary translator for local Catalan writers and cultural organisations, so I jumped on the Spanish version of the open-roofed tour bus.
It was cold, sitting in the January weather, but I needed the fresh air. It helped to clear my head, and I didn’t have the energy to walk like I did when I first arrived in Paris. I put on the audio guide headphones but didn’t really listen to the commentary and feigned interest in the Gaudi architecture that was typical in the city.
Barcelona was as big as Paris and densely populated. I was zombie-like as we cruised past various cultural and historically significant buildings: the Barcelona FC Football Stadium, the 1992 Olympic Stadium, the Barcelona Cathedral, a monument to Christopher Columbus, the Barcelona Palace and the Miró museum.
I wanted to check it all out but I just couldn’t focus. All I could think about was Jake. The pain of missing him was only heightened by the knowledge that ‘she’ had probably arrived in Paris. As he fell back into the marital bed, I fell deeper and deeper into a pit of despair. If this was true love then I never wanted to love again.
I got off the bus at La Sagrada Familia in need of a spiritual injection. I went into the iconic church and lit a candle, trying to remember the last time I had said a prayer. It was overwhelming in size and I was enveloped by a sense of peace that only a house of prayer could bring. I momentarily thought I should consider going to mass sometime.
The days were long in Barcelona and each felt like it would never end. I was enjoying playing tourist but I was lonely for Jake. Each day I sat for hours in Plaza Catalunya, the most famous square in Barcelona. I spent the time watching people come and go. They would sit, talk, drink coffee, and catch up with friends. I had never felt so alone in my life.
I walked around Judith’s local park, back along the harbour up to La Rambla – where tourists flooded the famous walkway – and around some backstreets, trying to remember which direction Judith’s apartment was in. I walked with purpose: to beat the heartache, to take control of my mind and focus on my project, to get Jake out of my system and to start planning my return to Australia.
I felt empty; the loss greater because I’d taken a chance with Jake, even after Ames. I believed he was different, that he was honest, that he wouldn’t abandon me like the others. I saw a woman across the street who looked like Lauren and I felt another pang of homesickness.
I started thinking about going home, seeing my tiddas, losing myself in my work at the NAG. I just wanted to get back to Bonnie and Clyde, to Braddon, where I hoped I would never see Jake again.
In my depressive state, I walked around the Parc de la Ciutadella across the road from Judith’s. It was the best thing I could have done. I needed some green space even if I couldn’t have my favourite gum trees. I felt like I was in an oasis with its lake and fountain and palm trees.
I was as much interested in the museums bordering the park, and the Catalan Parliament building in the centre, as I was in the people. One man in jeans and a black jacket sat on a bench playing the guitar for himself, and anyone who walked past. He wasn’t busking, just enjoying his craft, singing in what I assumed was Catalan but I really couldn’t tell the difference between that and Spanish. It sounded more folksy than anything else, and as I smiled when I passed him, he nodded in appreciation that I enjoyed his craft as well.
His voice faded as I continued to walk and focused on a jogger climbing the stairs of the Cascada fountain. Then I heard yelling and looked to my left to see a couple arguing in the rotunda. I stopped to make sure it was just a verbal, and felt pain imagining they were breaking up. Within seconds, they were hugging and kissing. The joy of making up, right in front of my eyes.
I sat on a bench and thought of life going on around me in this microcosm of the world: someone loving music and words, someone loving the joy of health, a couple loving each other.
I closed my eyes and smiled at the faintest hint of the sun hitting my lids. Winter is less harsh when you can find a spot out of the wind with a bit of sun. That thought carried me back to the opera house steps with Jake and tears escaped again.
I stood up, sniffled, shook my head and said to myself, ‘I will survive.’
As I walked on, I heard Gloria Gaynor in my head belting out that defiant anthem that so many women sang at karaoke. Then Mariah Carey started with, ‘I can’t live, if living is without you …’ and I had images of Bridget Jones singing into a vodka bottle and hitting the floor. I didn’t know if I wanted to laugh or cry.
When I opened the door, Judith sang out.
‘I’m in the kitchen.’
I walked in.
‘It’s happy hour,’ she said, pouring me a glass of sparkling cava wine.
‘Clearly,’ I said, happy to be having a drink and a home-cooked meal. ‘What can I do?’
‘You can slice these.’
She passed me the reddest tomatoes I’d ever seen. It was nice to do something normal like prepare a meal with a friend.
‘How was your walk?’
‘It was fine until Gloria Gaynor invaded my headspace.’
‘What?’
‘Slap me!’ I demanded.
‘What?’ She almost spat her cava across the table, laughing.
‘I want you to slap me out of my misery, please.’
Judith laughed harder. ‘You are hilarious!’
‘I’m serious. Really. I want you to slap me hard!’ I was almost begging Judith. ‘I need to wake up to myself.’
‘You don’t need a slap,’ Judith said softly, moving in to hug me. ‘You need to have faith in rational thought. I’m not taking sides at all, but I will say that Jake was rational in all his work, let’s just hope he can be rational now.’
‘It’s too late for me, Judith.’ I shook my head and felt a wave of sadness come over me.
‘He made a choice the minute he left my flat that night. He’s an idiot. She’s an idiot. They are perfect for each other. They can have their idiot life back now.’
‘Okay, sounds like you need some rational thought, my friend.’ Judith sat down.
‘Why aren’t I rational?’ I was annoyed. ‘I had a great life before I met him. I was happy. I loved my family, my friends, my job, my life in Paris. I didn’t want a boyfriend. I didn’t go looking for a man. I actively stayed away but I took a chance on him. When I got the job at the embassy I was thrilled about the project. I was happy … did I say that already?’
‘Yes, you did.’ Judith sat there listening intently.
‘And then he came along and fucked it all up, and took my happiness away.’ I was crying again.
Judith handed me a box of tissues.
‘Why don’t you make a list of all the wonderful things in your life right now?’ Judith reached across the table grabbing a notepad and pen. ‘You are, after all, the girl of lists, as I remember.’
I wiped my face and blew my nose. ‘The sad thing is, I used to tell Lauren that the quickest way to get over a man is in the arms of another, because I wanted her to move on from Adam, but now I see what ridiculous advice it was. Another man is only going to cause me more pain.’
‘Forget the man, let’s make the list.’ Judith was pragmatic.
I began the list of wonderful things as Judith checked the food on the stove.
I am in Barcelona.
I’ve been in Paris for six months – and I love everything about the city.
I’ve just overseen a successful international exhibition at the Musée du Quai Branly.
I’m working on an amazing Indigenous arts initiative across Western Europe for the Australian embassy.
I have deadly tiddas in Canberra, Paris and Spain.
I handed her my draft.
‘This is a great list, and once you add that you are beautiful, healthy and intelligent with a keen eye for fashion,’ she winked, ‘there will be absolutely no need to worry about Jake or any man at all, according to the list anyway.’
‘The thing is, Judith, I think Jake might be the love of my life.’
I couldn’t believe I had just said it out loud. Jake was the love of my life. I knew it, but it was too late.
‘Then there may be a problem.’ Judith sighed.
‘Oh, you think?’ I was being sarcastic.
‘My grandmother once told me that most women don’t marry the loves of their lives.’
‘Really?’
‘No. Most women marry men who will be a good husband, a good provider. That’s probably why Suzanne wants Jake back. I don’t know much about her, but my guess is she knows he will always take care of her. He’s not the love of her life, obviously; she wouldn’t have left him in the first place if that were the case. And she certainly wouldn’t have let him leave the country without her.’
I nodded. ‘That’s what I tried to tell him, but he didn’t listen. And I don’t need him to “provide for me” – I don’t need him in a practical sense. I want him. I love him.’
It was true: I really loved him. Truly, madly, deeply – just like the Savage Garden song. It hurt so much because I loved him so intensely, but that realisation only served to upset me even more and I sobbed again.
I knew Judith was treading carefully with me and had caution in her voice.
‘Darl, you need to understand that the difference between you and her – apart from her being a bitch and you being wonderful – is that she makes Jake feel needed. And as ridiculous as it sounds, some men want to feel needed. It gives them a greater purpose in the relationship.’
‘Oh for fucksake. They are more complicated than we are.’
I poured out another huge glass of cava.
‘I’ll toast to that.’ Judith lifted her glass in the air and then sipped.
I looked at her wanting more answers. ‘Is it because of all this wisdom that you’re not married then? I mean, there’s some pretty hunky Spaniards in this town.’
‘I’ve got my fair share of men in my life, Libby. But my lifestyle is different to yours. I have different men to give me different things. Some give me great intellectual conversation, some I talk literature with, some I philosophise with, and one or two pop around for sex. It’s all I want right now. And I love them all in different ways and, most importantly, we all want the same thing from each other and that includes respect.’
‘Do you ever think about getting married and having children?’ I was learning about a side of Judith I didn’t know in Paris, and I was a little surprised.
‘Not really,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘I’m a bit of a nomad, in the true sense of the word. I’ll probably just move around Europe forever. I’m like the gypsies the French government want to get rid of.’
I just looked at Judith. She had it all sorted and was happy with her life.
‘What about you? Do you want kids?’ she asked with interest. ‘You never mentioned kids in any capacity when we were at the embassy together.’
I pondered the question, then answered unsure. ‘I didn’t think I did. I love my career and I now want to travel a lot more. And I’d never thought about children seriously until I met Jake. I’d be happy being a family just with him, no kids. You can be a family of two, can’t you?’
‘Of course, you could’ve been a family of two.’
I tried to ignore the past tense in Judith’s comment.
I woke early and knew that if I lay in bed I’d just think about Jake and weep. I had to call Mum anyway to let her know I was alive, so I got up and headed out. Judith was still sleeping, having worked till all hours translating an essay for a philosophy professor friend of hers.
I pulled the heavy door closed behind me as gently as I could so I wouldn’t wake her, but the builders were already drilling and welding noisily at the marketplace across the road anyway.
I walked with purpose to find a shop to buy a phonecard to call Mum. I should’ve done it sooner, she’d be worried if she found out from someone else I was in another country.
‘Iris speaking.’
Mum answered the phone like she always did, and she sounded so close it made me homesick. I started to cry before I could speak.
‘Iris speaking,’ she said louder.
I took a deep breath.
‘I don’t know who it is.’ She was talking to someone in the house with her. ‘They’re not saying anything.’
‘It’s me, Mum,’ I said with a scratchy, patchy voice. ‘Libby. I’m in Barcelona.’
I could hear the joy in her voice. ‘Dear girl, it has been so long. How are you? What are you doing in Barthelona?’ she said with the Spanish lisp, as if she knew the lingo. It made me laugh.
‘I’m visiting a friend here called Judith. She’s the woman from Melbourne who was my boss at the embassy.’
I watched a kid on a bike cruise past and held my handbag tighter.
‘The one with the funny hair?’ Mum asked with a laugh.
‘Yes, Mum, this week it’s got green stripes, but it suits her.’
‘What colour is yours then?’
I touched my hair and felt the frizz that needed cutting and colouring as soon as I got back to Paris.
‘It’s the same, Mum.’
‘Is that man with you too? The one with the thin lips?’
‘He’s not here, it’s over.’ I couldn’t say anything else and started to cry again.
‘Dear girl, don’t cry, come home. We love you, we miss you.’ I could hear the concern in Mum’s voice and I hated myself for causing her worry.
‘No, Mum, I can’t and that’s not the answer. But I miss you too, you know that.’
I was trying to hold the phone and blow my nose at the same time.
‘Do you want me to call you back? This must be costing you a fortune.’
‘I have a phonecard, it’s okay. Six euros for eight-hundred minutes.’ I looked at my watch ju
st because I’d mentioned time.
‘I need one of those cards for your brother Sam. He keeps ringing me reverse charges when he goes to Sydney to do his study blocks at UTS.’
‘Mum, I don’t know what to do about Jake. I love him,’ I blurted out, then looked around to check that no-one had heard me.
‘Did you tell him?’
‘Not exactly.’ I sniffled.
‘Dear girl, the one thing I regret about my time with your father is that I never told him enough I loved him. It was always he who told me. He was the romantic one. I was the practical one. I think you are too much like me sometimes.’
While Mum talked the tears just kept falling down my cheeks.
‘Except when it comes to line-dancing because we both know you’re not very good at that,’ Mum said seriously, but she made me laugh. I didn’t want to be good at line-dancing but I said nothing.
Mum continued, ‘Men need to feel loved, needed. A man who feels that way will never leave you.’
‘But Dad left us.’ I had finally said what I’d been bottling up inside all these years.
‘Your father died, Libby.’ Mum’s tone made me feel like I was a teenager being pulled into line. ‘He didn’t leave you. He didn’t leave me. He had a terrible addiction. I just wish I’d harped on about the smoking more. He would’ve listened if I nagged him enough, he always did. But it’s too late now, and you need to stop blaming your father for dying.’
I said nothing. Mum was right. Until this moment, I had never been able to accept the truth that Dad died because of his own addiction. His desire to smoke was stronger than his will to live.
‘If you love this Jake fella, tell him,’ Mum said gently. ‘Fight for him.’
‘But …’
‘You’re not in Moree, Libs. You’re not eighteen. This fella isn’t Peter Dickhead Dreamboat.’
I couldn’t believe Mum remembered Peter, or that she had said dickhead. Mum never swore.
‘Maybe you’re right,’ I sighed.
‘I am your mother. I am always right when it comes to what’s best for you. And I know that when you talked about this Jake fella, I felt it in my waters. You two are meant to be together, but maybe you won’t be because sometimes the timing is all wrong, but it doesn’t mean you’re not perfect for each other.