This One is Ours

by Kate O'Donnell

  While I lie in bed that night, my brain is exhausted but also happy. I did it. Made conversation. Watched a movie in French. Had a lot of fun.

  I text Mum about my night, and she replies right away, all but I thought we weren’t allowed to see new movies without each other. So I send back an eyeroll emoji.

  I sit and look out the window and think about the day. There’s a person out there walking a dog, and a couple of cars go past.

  I have friends here. I can make people laugh on purpose while speaking a foreign language. I have held hands with a beautiful French boy. I am building a life in Paris.

  If my night out was an artwork it would be colourful and Cubist.

  Léon has an art show coming up and there is a vernissage planned. I learn right away that this means an ‘opening night’.

  ‘Are you coming to the vernissage?’ Léon asks, the morning before.

  Like there’s any way he can keep me away! ‘Yes, of course,’ I say.

  I will be an insider. I will practically be family at this art show opening night. An art show in Paris! I have a moment where I imagine Léon asking if I want to take a wall and show my own pieces. But it’s just a moment, and I’m glad I can pull myself back in before that little dream gets too out of control.

  He picks up his keys from the hall table and pauses. ‘Would you like to come with us to my studio and help me make my final selections?’

  ‘Oui, merci!’

  The key to Léon’s atelier is big, black and ornate – like it’s out of Harry Potter or Coraline or something. I immediately want to hold it, draw it, open some magic door with it.

  We go up flights of stairs. Flights and flights. ‘Space is hard to find,’ Léon says as we climb. ‘But ten years ago we found this little chambre de bonne and it’s worked very well.’

  It’s on the very top floor. ‘So what do you think?’ he asks.

  I don’t say anything for a moment as I look around. ‘It’s … small,’ I say eventually, because it’s true and because I somehow can’t stop myself.

  ‘These apartments were traditionally maid’s quarters,’ explains Claudette.

  There’s a window recessed into the wall, and I open it. I lean against the iron railing, taking in the view of the city across rooftops and skyline and even the Eiffel Tower.

  Now this is what I had imagined!

  Léon’s work is scary. I had seen it online, of course, but that was before I came here and met him. Now I’m finding it hard to reconcile the quiet, friendly man with this harsh and grotesque work. It’s modern. Like Jackson Pollock meets Franz Kline via Kandinsky.

  ‘Expressionist?’ I ask.

  He nods, smiles, gestures ‘so-so’ with his hand.

  Some of the canvases are small. But some are as tall as me, and thinking of the climb we just made, I wonder out loud: ‘How will you get the paintings out?’

  Léon’s looking intently through the canvases, moving some here and others there.

  ‘It’s common for removalists to bring a big lift,’ says Claudette. ‘We will move the paintings out through the window.’

  Amazing. I look out again, lean over the iron railing as far as I dare, and imagine the lift – in my mind it’s some-thing like a cherry picker – coming all the way up here.

  While Léon waits for the truck and the lift that will bring his artwork safely to the ground, Claudette says, ‘Sofie, come and help me with the wine.’

  I follow her, the heels of her sensible stair-climbing shoes tapping as we descend again. We get to the ground floor, but it turns out we’ve got to go further.

  We go through a half-sized door where we have to duck our heads, and into a basement where the floor isn’t floor at all but packed earth. It smells like the goldmine tour at Sovereign Hill.

  ‘This is our cave,’ Claudette explains, as we walk down a narrow corridor.

  ‘Cave?’ I ask. (It’s pronounced like ‘cahve’.)

  She stops by a wooden door that wouldn’t be out of place in a barn, and uses a modern little key in a modern-looking deadlock. It’s a small room – maybe two metres deep – with big industrial shelving filled with bottles and bottles of wine.

  Claudette selects wine and puts it into boxes by the door. ‘I don’t know if we need glasses,’ she muses. Boxes of wine glasses are packed neatly against one wall.

  There are canvases down here too, covered in tarpaulins.

  ‘These are old pieces,’ Claudette tells me. ‘Léon’s folies.’ She looks at the boxes she’s arranged, all neat and ready for the vernissage. ‘Okay. Ready?’ And it’s time for the stairs again.

  After the small moving van – camionette – tootles off around the corner carrying the art pieces to the gallery, Claudette and Léon say they want to take me to Père Lachaise Cemetery. I wonder briefly if they’re making sure to tick off ‘include your exchange student in your daily life’ and ‘engage your exchange student in cultural activities of your area’ from the organisation’s famille d’accueil, aka, the host family checklist.

  Once we arrive, we stand in front of the map that shows the main attractions of the cemetery and marks the routes to find where the people of note are buried. For a cemetery, this place is busy, and I spot at least five people moving along the paths. I find I don’t feel frightened or strange being here among all these slumbering souls.

  I sit down on a stone bench and roughly sketch the tomb of Oscar Wilde before walking around to study the inscription and run my fingers across the array of lipstick kisses.

  Claudette walks up the path, reading headstones. Her grey coat falls to her ankles and is cinched at the waist with a tailored belt like a movie star. She’s dried her hair sleek and let it hang straight to her shoulders instead of clipping it back with a large silver hair clasp like usual. I covet her casual weekend glamour just as much as her weekday chic.

  I up my pace to catch her and Léon.

  Further on, there is a clear patch of grass and a great expanse of stone wall. A plaque reads, in gold lettering: ‘AUX MORTS DE LA COMMUNE 21-28 MAI 1871’. One hundred and forty-seven communards were shot here during the Paris Commune.

  I make a note to google the Paris Commune because I can’t remember why they killed these people. I place my hands flat against the wall and lean into it (looking around first to make sure no-one sees), trying to feel the history.

  We wander down the paths, and I tiptoe around broken headstones and polished ones, admire the really ornate ones and hypothesise about the ones that look like shrines or confessionals. Some headstones are completely grown over with ivy and creeping plants.

  We say little to one another. Murmur ‘regarde’ (look) and point out things. It’s peaceful here.

  I am fascinated by the twisted grotesque statues, which stand in memory of those who lost their lives in the Holocaust. They look like skeletons, carrying one another. It’s moving, but repulsive. There is one that looks like an enormous alien baby carved smooth out of a knobbly hunk of stone. They make me think about Léon’s paintings.

  We visit Jim Morrison, who my dad loves. Both Claudette and Léon are cynical about Jim’s grave and mutter rude things about all the tourists who come to obsess over a singer. Though after we walk on, I can hear Léon humming ‘Light My Fire’ under his breath.

  I might have walked through the Melbourne Cemetery once or twice to get to the city, but never ambled through for pleasure. But it turns out it is a pleasure – the grey and brown grimness, the dampness of the path underneath. It is the same kind of beauty I feel watching a sad film, or staring at the paintings of Klimt or Picasso’s blue period.

  It ends up being such a fascinating, surprising day, and even while it’s happening, I think, This is a milestone moment. Claudette suggests a meal at un p’tit resto that they love not too far from Père Lachaise. Even Delphine agrees to meet us there, turning
up from wherever she’s been (I would love to know) with her face flushed, her hair messily plaited into a braid that hangs over one shoulder.

  I don’t catch everything Léon says as she arrives – kissing each of us in turn, bisous bisous – but I hear words about a secret boyfriend or something.

  ‘Just stop, papa,’ she says, and I recognise the tone in her voice. Hana uses the same one when she’s a moment away from storming out during a conversation with Dad about her ‘evil corporate job’.

  ‘So how did you meet?’ I ask my host parents. We sit on the restaurant terrace, a gas heater in the awning above us bathing us in a hot glow. I had practised this question, among others, because Hana says it’s important to be interested. Interested people are interesting, she says.

  Claudette’s mouth has a bit of an unreadable quality about it, thin lips and slight wrinkles – I suppose from pursing them to pronounce all those pursed-lip French ‘u’ words, like dessus, sur and sucre.

  ‘We were at university together.’ (There’s that ‘u’ sound again, u-niversité). ‘At the École des Beaux-Arts.’

  ‘How romantic!’ I say.

  Not going to lie, I get an instant daydream:

  Me and Olivier, university students together at the École des Beaux-Arts, living in a little flat (it looks suspiciously like Léon’s atelier, if I’m honest). It has a mattress on the floor with expensive-but-crumpled sheets and a stack of clothbound, hardback books.

  The waiter places a silver bowl on our table, piled with ice, and resting atop the ice are freshly shucked oysters. I hadn’t even heard them order!

  Delphine waves her hand. ‘I’m not eating those,’ she says.

  Claudette looks at me. ‘My daughter is going to be a vegetarian now.’ Her tone sounds like it is encouraging me to disapprove.

  I look quickly at Delphine, but she is checking her phone, her eyebrows furrowed as she taps out a message.

  I watch as Léon takes his tiny fork and gently prods at the little slimy thing. He brings the shell up and, with an almost inaudible slurp, tips the oyster into his mouth. Claudette does the same.

  Delphine takes a drink of water and looks bored. (She looks like she’s in an advertisement for water or a café or a hair salon maybe.) I feel an urge to draw her.

  ‘And now you work in a gallery,’ I say. Claudette nods. ‘And Léon, you paint.’

  I pick up an oyster and try to copy them. The oyster feels like slippery jelly under my fork.

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ says Léon. ‘And I teach, a little.’

  I take the plunge. It is like taking a mouthful of seawater. Are you supposed to chew it?! I feel panicked and just force myself to swallow it whole. It’s not bad, but a thoroughly new sensation. I know that I will recall this flavour and this moment, with its very strange and all-powerful joy, well into my future.

  A surprise wind blows some rogue winter leaves along the street.

  ‘On est bien là,’ says Léon, leaning back in his chair. How nice is this.

  The afternoon of the vernissage, Delphine and I are roped into helping. We go to a particular bakery, as instructed by Léon, to collect some tiny delicious-looking cakes, and then we go to another bakery and buy a cloth bag filled with baguettes.

  I’ve come to learn that most people here have their favourite shop for each specific thing. They get their fish here, their cheese here, their meat here. I love the sense of neighbourhood. I draw all of Claudette and Léon’s shops in a row and label them with the products they sell:

  Filets d’agneau

  Saumon fumé

  Rocamadour (fromage de chèvre)

  Baguette tradition

  Petits-fours

  ‘This part of the vernissage is important,’ Delphine explains. ‘Papa likes to do it house-made. He doesn’t want to pay a caterer.’

  ‘Homemade,’ I correct her, gently, without thinking.

  She doesn’t pause. ‘Homemade,’ she repeats. It doesn’t seem to bother her to make mistakes. Interesting.

  ‘Is it still fait à la maison if we buy it all from the shops?’ I ask as we walk back to the gallery, and even though I am being dead serious, Delphine laughs. Even her laugh is beautiful.

  ‘This is true. But I think it will be okay.’

  We find Léon standing by the car in front of the gallery. The cartons of wine from the cave are at his feet and a cigarette is between his teeth.

  Claudette has agreed to stop by the boucherie on her way home from work and she arrives soon after we do, carrying salami, pâté, foie gras, nuts.

  The gallery owners have decorated everything with plants and flowers – or maybe their gallery always looks like this – and the place is beautiful. It contrasts with the tone of the paintings, but somehow, the more I look at Léon’s art in this context, the more sense it makes. I see elements of Munch, Kandinsky, Kirchner.

  ‘Do you know the Australian painter John Brack?’ I ask Léon as he passes by.

  He stops. ‘I do. Why?’

  I point to one of his pieces, rendered in browns and yellows. ‘This one reminds me a bit of Brack.’

  Léon tilts his head while he considers it. ‘Yes, yes, I can see how you see that.’ He smiles warmly and moves away.

  Delphine and I lay out the food and once we’re done it looks extravagant. I feel a bit overwhelmed at how much food there is, while at the same time making a mental note of all the things I want to taste.

  There is so much kissing. Whenever new people arrive we mwah mwah, bisous bisous.

  Then there he is. Olivier.

  He is easy and funny and oh so charmant. I’m watching him, so I see when he spots me, and my heart goes eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee when he makes his way straight over. He kisses me on the cheeks, mwah mwah.

  ‘You’re all covered in flour,’ he says.

  Mortifying! ‘I am?’ I twist to see what he’s talking about while he laughs. Why didn’t Delphine tell me?

  He reaches out and dusts the flour off my dress with firm brushes of his hand. I’m in my black smock with the belt around it (it’s become a uniform) but this time I’m wearing a long, pink silk scarf in my hair. He adjusts my scarf back into place carefully, and I don’t think I’m imagining the way he lets it run through his fingers. This isn’t the closest we’ve been – I mean, we held hands for an hour just the week before. But it feels more intimate and I can’t explain why.

  ‘I carried a bread bag,’ I explain, feeling stupid.

  Olivier smiles.

  I smile.

  I can’t even understand what I’m feeling. Is this some kind of spontaneous social anxiety? Or is this how romance actually feels? It’s as though I want to look at his face for days, examine the dark brown of his eyes and the perfect slope of his jawline. Enjoy the way that his eyebrow hairs go a bit skew-whiff above his nose, like they might one day join forces, but for now they just give him a rakish, unkempt kind of look. His skin is so beautiful I even forget about my pimples (in French they call them boutons, which is too cute a name for pimples, except that if Olivier had pimples, they would definitely be called boutons).

  ‘You look beautiful,’ he says.

  I am stumped for a moment. ‘Even with the flour?’ I ask.

  He laughs. ‘Like a beautiful girl from the boulangerie.’

  We look into each other’s eyes. I’ve seen this in movies, but never realised that it is highly likely at least one of them is actually looking to try to work out what the other person is thinking. For example, I am thinking that I would like to kiss his face and not in the polite French greeting way. But maybe he’s just thinking, I am a polite person. Look at me making direct eye contact. I will my eyes to explain that I think he is charming and I think he is beautiful and I think we should kiss each other on the face.

  More people arrive, and Olivier and I are jost
led away from one another. I don’t mind. I figure he’ll stick around for a little while – standing over there with those people who look suspiciously like they could be his parents – and staying away from him for a bit is a really handy way of playing it cool. I have zero chill.

  Saying that, I like the way I can blend into the back-ground. I watch everybody faire la bise and look at the art and explain things to one another and congratulate Léon on the show. He stands among the crowd in his peach shirt and his checked woollen pants, the perfect combination of shabby and chic.

  I catch glimpses throughout the night of Olivier.

  Olivier eating some salami.

  Olivier looking at a painting.

  Olivier running his hand through his curls.

  Delphine comes and stands next to me. ‘I cannot abide that man,’ she says, with a tilt of her head towards a tall grey-haired man with a flowery silk scarf tied around his neck (who is talking to Olivier with a disgruntled look on his face).

  ‘He’s quite fancy,’ I say, trying to sound neutral. Fancy people intrigue me, so I don’t want to pass judgement just yet.

  ‘He’s a rich fool,’ she replies. ‘They all are.’ She is muttering in French under her breath, something about le privilège blanc. Then she grabs a glass of wine from a passing tray and heads off towards the food, her voice dropping to a whisper as she goes: ‘You know he’s your boyfriend’s father.’

  ‘He’s not my boyfriend,’ I hiss back, but Delphine is gone. I am mortified but also elated she thinks Olivier could be my boyfriend. But I don’t know how I feel about the rich fancy man being Olivier’s dad.

  Le privilège blanc. White privilege. Nearly all of the people at the vernissage are white. Wait. Okay, yes. Ninety-nine per cent of the guests are white. It feels weird, when out on the street – in Belleville, in my school, on the metro – the percentage is very different.

  I am distracted then, trying to figure out how to say ninety-nine in French. Counting is hard. Ninety-nine. Okay, so that’s quatre vingt dix-neuf. Four-twenty-nineteen. Sometimes I think French is a totally stupid language. But I feel pretty gleeful at being able to speak it better and better.