This One is Ours

by Kate O'Donnell

  I catch snippets of the conversations going on around me and I try to commit pieces of them to memory. Art, holidays, a grandmother who is hoarding her diamonds.

  There is no need for daydreaming here. I am living some kind of dream life.

  Delphine comes back, with a napkin holding fruit and nuts, and offers it to me.

  When people speak with Delphine, she always introduces me and I say bonjour and c’est un plaisir and ouais, c’est magnifique (that is if they ask me about the work).

  The paintings are hung without frames – big stretched canvases with their confronting scenes. The show is called Quelque Chose Qui Cloche. There Is Something Wrong.

  ‘The paintings look good here,’ I say.

  She nods, but I don’t think she’s really listening. Everyone looks so effortlessly cool, so chic and Parisian, and this is exactly what I came to France for.

  People speak English with me sometimes, but it feels conversational or cosmopolitan, and not like I am some stupid child who can’t speak the language. Not once am I called la petite Australienne.

  I am part of this scene. I am part of this.

  By 10 pm people are leaving. It has been a long night at the vernissage, but it turns out the next part of the plan is a dinner at someone’s house – a big, fancy Paris apartment.

  ‘I’m not going to that fool’s house,’ Delphine says under her breath to me. Then to Claudette: ‘Maman, I’m going home to prepare for running club tomorrow morning. We’re meeting early.’

  ‘Will you go home too, Sofie?’ Claudette asks.

  I feel intensely disappointed. I definitely do not want to go home just yet. ‘Um,’ I say. And it must show on my face.

  ‘You can stay, of course, Sofie. It’s not a problem. Celebrate with us. We will go to Pierre and Louise’s apartment for dinner.’

  ‘Okay,’ I say nonchalantly. But I’m thrilled on the inside! Then I realise who she means. Pierre the fool – as in Olivier’s father! I thrill on the outside too – all the hairs on my arms stand on end.

  ‘D’accord. À demain, Sofie. Salut, maman, je t’aime.’ And with that, Delphine is off. There’s something very funny about watching her speed off down the street – she’s not running, on account of her fancy clothes and shoes, but she gives off a running vibe nonetheless.

  ‘Should I collect the platters?’ I ask.

  Claudette shakes her head. Her mind is far away from packing up, I can tell. ‘We will come by tomorrow and collect these things. Let’s not think about it now. I must see if Léon is ready. Are you ready, Sofie?’

  I have the strangest suspicion that Claudette is a little bit drunk. I haven’t ever seen her have more than a glass or two of wine, but if I’m honest, everyone is getting rather rowdy. It feels kind of exciting.

  We all troop out of the venue, Léon throwing mercis to the gallery owners and saying quietly to Claudette, ‘Eight sales, bof – c’est pas mal. C’est déjà pas mal.’ Not bad, not bad at all.

  Bof. I plan to use this expression a lot. It’s usually combined with the shrug, which I am already very good at. And you can even add the pursed lips action for extra flair. ‘Bof, euhhhh, ppt.’ I make a mental note to write this down in my HOW TO BE FRENCH notes.

  I stick close by Claudette as we move through the streetlamp-lit street, a clear sky above us and a freezing bite to the air. ‘Where is the house? Is it far away?’ I can’t see Olivier, though I’m looking around for him. Surely he’s coming home too.

  ‘It’s just straight ahead, and then around the corner. They have such a wonderful space. It used to belong to his grandmother. She knew Coco Chanel.’

  There’s a French word, chamboulée, which means turned upside down or all over the place. It expresses perfectly how I feel right now. I am going to the house of a ridiculously chic woman (I had fawned over her camel-coloured coat earlier) and her husband, whose very grandmother knew Coco Chanel. Sacrébleu! I am going to Olivier’s house!

  The group arrives at the building. Someone enters the code and everyone starts to file through heavy black doors with a big brass handle. The front doors to apartments in Paris are magical things. I’ve drawn so many of them. They’re so big and ornate they seem medieval or from a fairytale. This one is painted a sleek black, but I’ve seen others: blue, grey, the occasional pop of red. I always like to imagine what kind of lives go on behind these doors.

  The air is cold and still. I can see my breath. A voice behind me says, ‘Sofie, wait. I want to have a cigarette. Wait with me?’ And Olivier, appearing from somewhere, catches me around the waist.

  My friends have hugged me before, obviously. My sister has slung her arm around my waist my entire life, posing for photographs on holidays or standing united before our parents. I’ve kissed an uncountable amount of people since arriving in France. Bisous bisous bisous bisous.

  But his arm around my waist is something else indeed.

  ‘Do you want a cigarette?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘Little innocent,’ he teases. He lets me go and leans against the building wall. His long legs are crossed over at the ankle and his body half-turned towards me. I am transfixed.

  ‘What did you think of Léon’s show?’ I ask.

  He nods, and I interpret it as thoughtful nodding. ‘Pas mal. Interesting.’ More nodding. More darkly intense staring. He turns his cigarette over and over in his fingers but doesn’t light it. ‘I don’t think my father will buy anything, but yes, the work is not bad.’

  I am a bit offended on Léon’s behalf, even though I feel unsettled by his art or, at the very least, I don’t fully understand it. But on the other hand, Léon had made a number of sales, and Delphine said Olivier’s dad is a bit of a pompous dick anyway.

  ‘It was a great party though.’ Olivier smiles, puts the cigarette back in the packet. ‘I think I’ll smoke this later.’

  With his arm tucked tight around me, I feel secure as we trip (in the cute, happy goat-stepping kind of way) towards the building. Olivier enters the code and holds the door open for me. As I walk through, he catches my shoulder, moves his hand to my neck, to my face. I feel his thumb rub gently – oh so gently – across my cheek.

  This is happening. It is really happening. My breath catches, and I feel giddy and afraid and excited all at once.

  He laughs lightly, and before I know it his lips press against mine. It is a sensation utterly unlike any other in my life. I move closer, raised up onto my tippy toes, to press into his lips a little harder. It feels soft and gentle and warm, and absolutely wonderful. His hand runs down across my shoulder blades and comes to rest in the small of my back. As the kiss ends and he pulls away, I already want to be back there. I know there and then that I will never forget the feeling or the flavour.

  ‘Allez, zou,’ he says quietly, pulling at my hand. And we go up the stairs.

  Any other time I would have stopped to marvel at the staircase. Worn wooden steps curving up and up and around, with an iron-and-wood bannister. A view down to the black-and-white tiled floor in the entranceway where not a minute ago I was being kissed, I was kissing, I was kissed. (Who am I kidding – the staircase, the bannister, the black-and-white tiled floor all swirl and tie in to the moment.)

  But mostly I am marvelling at something else: I know what someone else’s lips feel like.

  The rest of the night passes in a blur. The apartment is filled with fancy wooden furniture, and loud conversations and clinking and clanking of glasses and plates and knives and forks.

  We eat green beans and carrots dripping with butter and some kind of juicy flavoursome meat with potatoes alongside it. Roasted garlic, served with the papery skins still on. There is crusty bread, a big cheese board, a dessert course of rich chocolate cake.

  Olivier sits next to me at the table and my leg touches his. He draws me into the conversation, and it feels
easier to take part. Around the table the chat goes from holidays (Tenerife, Budapest, Iceland, Palm Springs) to how someone’s son was promoted, to how someone else had campaigned for new recycling bins in their apartment building. This last one prompts a long discussion where everyone brags about the good deeds they’ve done – volunteering, fundraising, recycling, zero waste – as though it’s all a competition. I’m not sure who wins, but it leads into a more interesting (for me) conversation about the value and role of art in the current world. Claudette asks whether the others agree that all art should be challenging and have a purpose.

  ‘Art does not have to be political,’ Olivier says.

  ‘Mais si!’ someone responds loudly. ‘Whether we know it or not, all art is political.’

  Olivier’s father fills everyone’s glass, leaning across the table and talking as he pours. ‘It may be. But I am not interested in idealism at the expense of aesthetic. When a work is powerful it can speak to history and politics, to love and hate and grief. But it must be first and foremost a work of art.’

  ‘Don’t you agree, Sofie, that art can exist to be beautiful and beautiful alone?’ Olivier asks.

  I do. I do agree with this.

  Their French becomes fast and complex and it flies above my head.

  ‘Can you understand?’ Claudette asks at one point.

  I nod and smile and let the conversation go on. I understand for the most part what people are saying, not that my mind is one hundred per cent following along. Under the table, Olivier softly runs circles on my palm with his thumb.

  No-one looks at me and knows. They are busy with their opinions and their stories.

  I feel different. I feel elated! Ecstatic!

  No-one can tell I have just had one of the most transformative moments of my entire life. I am transformed. I love this night. I love all the food. But, more than that, I love the feeling, the memory, the lingering sensation, of the kiss.

  We end up leaving the party around 1.30 in the morning. Léon accepts repeated congratulations on his show, and Claudette retains her chic manner, in spite of the small red wine stain on her cream-coloured skirt, and she gives audible bisous to the entire party – merci au revoir merci au revoir merci au revoir merci au revoir merci au revoir – goodbyes that take forever, as custom would have it.

  Olivier and I go unnoticed, mostly. I take my coat off the coat rack and look at him to try and work out what might be going on between us.

  Merci, au revoir.

  I am in uncharted territory and I need him to bring along a map.

  He stands so close to me, and I breathe in his warm and spicy parfum, and he slowly kisses one cheek, and then the other. Not really kissing, but our skin softly skimming.

  He takes out his phone and together we enter my phone number into it.

  Merci, au revoir.

  I hardly sleep when we get home. I lie in bed and feel as though I am floating on a wide, calm sea.

  And Olivier has my coordinates.

  How was the art show?

  – Overnight chats with Crow (unopened)

  I want to call Crow and tell her everything, but also, I want to keep it to myself and I also want to shout it to the world.

  I have such a crush on him!

  He has a crush on me!

  I am sweet sixteen and I have been kissed!

  It is a slow morning in the Durant household the day after the vernissage.

  Bedroom doors stay closed even while I tiptoe around making breakfast tartines with butter and jam, and a giant cup of sweet tea. My feet feel like they hardly touch the floor I am flying so much.

  I touch my lips to see if they feel different, still not quite believing the kiss.

  I am boundless energy; I am hopped up. I need to get out of the house and I know where I want to go.

  The Parc de Belleville is the biggest green patch between the Parc de Buttes Chaument and the Père Lachaise Cemetery, and Claudette had told me the view is worth the climb up the hill. Until now I’ve been drawn into the centre of Paris, pulled there by the must-sees, the iconic. I now feel ready to explore my own patch a little more.

  And I have to get my body moving. I am ready to leap out of my skin. So I pull on my beanie and fly out the door.

  My pace is fast, as fast as my beating heart, and I am very aware of my body in a way that is entirely new. It’s like my limbs are learning how to move in the right way again, which makes sense when you think about how the kiss has probably scrambled all the neurons in my brain.

  Belleville literally means beautiful town. This quartier is in the 20th arrondissement. The last one in the snail that makes up Paris’s nautilus swirl, which begins at the centre in the posh 1st arrondissement. Belleville technically spreads across into neighbouring arrondissements too.

  In 1871 there was bloody fighting along these streets. The Paris Commune wasn’t the famous revolution with Marie Antoinette and the cake, but a socialist, working class, radical government. They had grand demands for the separation of church and state, and for ending child labour, but it lasted just two months and ended in a massacre at the Père Lachaise Cemetery just a short walk away.

  I don’t think Belleville is beautiful. Not the kind of beautiful you think of when you think of Paris. I imagine a lot of tourists never come here at all.

  So maybe Belleville doesn’t really feel like my idea of Paris, but it actually feels more like home now than all the cliché Parisian sites I’d longed for. There is a relaxed feeling to my adopted suburb, a comforting and familiar ‘rough around the edges’ vibe. It’s the neighbourhood of graffiti and of loud open-air markets, and groups of people hanging out, chatting all day.

  At the top of the park is a brutal-looking observatory. White and blocky stone, like something out of a depressing Russian movie. Classic Belleville. I aim for the top of the park.

  I walk beneath the arches that cover the walkways, where the leaves that have turned bright yellow over winter poke in from the sides and cast a golden hue. There are some parts of the garden in the Parc de Belleville that are fenced off and locked with padlocks. There’s a sign on one of the gates with an abstract picture of a reclining person and the words: Pelouses au repose hivernal du 15/10 au 15/04.

  Shhhh. The grass is sleeping.

  A month or two before I came away, I was helping Mum hang the washing out on the clothesline when she began a cringeworthy conversation.

  ‘Would you like to see the doctor before you go away?’ she asked.

  ‘Why? Do I need a vaccination?’ I was surprised because I thought I’d looked up all the requirements.

  ‘No, no. I thought you might want to talk to them about contraception, you know. Just in case.’

  I was glad to have a sheet hanging between us. I let my face press into the cool, damp cloth, but I could still see her outlined in shadow.

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ I said.

  She had obviously been practising for this one. ‘It’s a very normal thing. An important thing. Being safe, you know.’

  ‘I haven’t even kissed anyone before!’ It felt embarrassing to confess, but somehow less embarrassing than your mum thinking you were having sex!

  ‘Well, you never know what will happen. I know you’re smart, but don’t be afraid or embarrassed to ask her for help. Claudette, I mean. Or the host sister.’

  ‘Delphine,’ I remind her. ‘And I won’t.’

  At the time, this conversation felt so irrelevant to me. But now, it feels like something I could possibly start to think about. I’m not saying I plan on sleeping with him though! We’ve only just kissed!

  Up up up go the steps to the observatory, and my thighs burn.

  When I get to the top a sensation floods through me, like a rushing through my veins. I let out a big, happy breath and think about how it felt to kiss and be kissed. />
  The view is even better than I had imagined. I lean against the concrete lookout (not so ugly up close) to take in the entire city. Over the tops of wintry trees, to the Tour Montparnasse, to the Butte Montmartre … from my vantage point, the whole city is mine.

  And in my post-kiss glow, it is a paradise.

  Paris is beautiful!

  I am beautiful!

  Everything is beautiful!

  Even my suburb!

  Crow! I type. You’ll never guess what happened.

  The following morning I wake up to a text from Mum that sends me crashing back down to earth.

  There’s a big bushfire tearing through the Bunyip State Park.

  Is it bad? I write.

  Couple of houses lost so far, she writes back. And it’s getting close to the house. Bit worried.

  Pop’s not there now, on account of being in an old folks’ home. But I can picture the house in my mind, and worry burns in my stomach.

  When I was smaller, I think I was six, we almost lost the house. Black Saturday, they called it, and it took the entire country by surprise. There’s a photo of me out the front with Pop – pre-dementia – standing on a patch of green grass right at the edge of the garden, and everything beyond the house is burned black. Trees reach up, leafless, into an ominous sky. I can remember how dirty my feet got that day, and drawing charcoal patterns on the kitchen linoleum until Dad shouted at me to stop and carried me to the bath.

  Every summer after Black Saturday, I would get stressed out thinking of bushfires, and I would pack my precious things up in case we had to evacuate. I even did this at home in the city, which was dumb. But thinking about it now, I feel really sad for little me.

  These worries used to consume me when I was smaller. But then, I discovered drawing and art, and I found that when I drew, the worries went away.