This One is Ours

by Kate O'Donnell

  ‘They are,’ says Delphine. ‘It’s a new craze here in Paris.’

  ‘It’s revolutionary!’ I say with a tone of wonder I’m immediately embarrassed by.

  Delphine laughs, but she’s nodding. ‘I hope it catches on. Can you imagine – this is how Paris would have been in the olden days.’

  ‘I mean, it’s still a supermarket,’ says Crow, who is sitting close into the camera and taking this all in from a world away. ‘It’s still selling things to people for profit, and a lot will probably go to waste. But it’s a start. It’s fucking revolutionary.’

  I make a plan to recut my simple Paris map, but this time on a large piece of linoleum – at least A2 size. I want to print in different coloured inks, but not black. Maybe pale blues and pinks. I might experiment with yellows.

  I’m out of big paper though. I had asked Véronique if there were any more large bits of scrap I could use, and she’d told me unfortunately they were all gone. Down at the papeterie, the stationery shop, I couldn’t justify the costs. So for now I’m using some cardboard I found in a big leaning stack on the street – freshly dumped, so it’s dry and mostly undamaged (thank you, Belleville, for being a bit of a rubbish dump).

  I mark our dérive, across two countries, on one map. The points are the conversations we had, the corners we turned, the spot where Crow trod on a snail – mostly we let Crow choose the route, and she decided in split seconds based on decisions she couldn’t describe. All leading to the supermarket so we could watch the plants grow and then buy their fruit. I label the maps with landmarks from both Paris and Melbourne.

  I consider landmarks. What exactly constitutes a land-mark? A very tall building. Your house. Supermarkets. Parks. The corner of a street in a city where I first successfully eavesdrop on a conversation. A breeze on an elbow.

  And now I know the world is ending, I see it. It’s all around me. But, at the same time, how great can this world be! We walk around, our feet tripping over history at each step, over centuries of human happiness and misery, and stumbling into possible futures while we’re at it.

  Fucking revolutionary.

  On Wednesdays I don’t have classes in the afternoon, so I leave Maths with a literal skip of joy. I want to shout oh là là! But I have to rush because I have arranged to meet Olivier, back up the top of the Belleville hill to sell cards and prints and bookmarks.

  Side note: this venture has improved my counting-in-French and currency skills considerably. I don’t have to think much about the numbers when making change, and I know all the coins and notes by sight now instead of having to hold each one up to read them like a tourist.

  Olivier lies on the picnic blanket with his head in my lap, scrolling through photos on his phone. I run my fingers lazily through his curls and occasionally dip down for a kiss.

  ‘You’re beautiful, you know?’ says Olivier, putting his phone down for a moment.

  It is so very strange how I’ve become used to him telling me I am beautiful. But I have become accustomed, in some way, to Olivier’s crooning, mushy sweet nothings. Did I know? Did I know I was beautiful? What does it mean to be beautiful? Does it even matter?

  In this moment, at the top of Paris, I should feel on top of the world. But I feel … unsettled.

  We need an artist photograph for the exhibition catalogue.

  ‘Hey, do you have those photos of me?’ I ask.

  ‘Which ones?’

  ‘From the Place des Vosges? The day we had les escargots?’

  I watch him stare into space for a moment, before saying, ‘I deleted them, I think.’ He goes back to his phone. ‘Sorry.’

  Am I wrong to feel offended? He’s brought his folio, so I pick up some of his sketches to distract myself, to feel the paper between my fingers.

  ‘Did you buy this paper?’ I ask.

  ‘I got it from Véronique,’ he says casually. ‘Like you did.’

  Heat rushes to my face.

  He sits up. ‘Do you want to see what I’ve been working on for the exhibition?’

  He shows me some photos on his phone and for a second I’m not sure what I’m looking at.

  Maybe if someone else were to look at them, his artworks wouldn’t remind them of anything at all. The one that stands out is a painting of a face, done in oils.

  But it’s my face.

  His new work, his work for the exhibition, is inspired by maps. Specifically mapping a way to know a person and a place.

  ‘I want them to be portraits of people, photorealistic portraits. And I will superimpose the lines of their palm onto their faces.’ He traces a line across my palm, but I pull my hand away. His idea is horribly, suspiciously like my idea. ‘It will represent the lives they have lived and the paths they have taken.’

  Not only is he a paper stealer – when he could definitely afford to buy his own – but he’s an ideas stealer too! It’s even worse to know he’s used my face in his picture. He’s taken other people’s faces, palms, bodies too.

  I knew he drew me. I thought he was being romantic. And I liked the idea of being someone’s muse. But if I’m his muse, why I am so annoyed that his painting of me looks really good?

  I know he’s chosen oils so he can show off his technical skills perfectly. The rich colours and brushstrokes. I look at his paintings a little bit longer and feel troubled. In my heart my maps, my demonstrations of a life lived, are starting to feel silly.

  ‘Sofie? What do you think?’

  ‘What do you want me to think?’ I ask. I have no idea what to say. I want to shout, but it feels stupid. I look into his face, like if I look hard enough I’ll understand how I’m feeling, why I’m feeling this way, and what I should do about it. ‘These are just like my ideas.’

  He shakes his head. ‘Not at all. Our work is very different. This has been inspired by Agnès Varda.’

  But I know he’s lying. He can’t look me in the eye.

  ‘It’s still a bit strange. People will think we’ve copied each other.’

  He lets out one of those Frenchy puffs. Bof.

  ‘Well, then, why don’t you do those slogans you’re always talking about?’ he asks. ‘Or some still life. Your pears are looking much better these days.’

  I’ve done many sketches of slogans and loved doing them. It’s exciting to create pieces quickly that are bold and loose. But they’re copies and interpretations of other people’s work. ‘Why would I want to do that?’

  He shrugs, Frenchly. Bof.

  ‘Anyway, that’s not the point. Why would you steal my concept and then try to push me to return to still life – a style you know I’m trying to branch out from?’

  ‘Oh, calm down,’ he says.

  I may have been a bit angry before, but now the blood rushing through me is made of fire. I pack my things into my backpack, neat bundles of the creations of my heart. It comes out in a rush: ‘I don’t want this anymore.’

  ‘What don’t you want?’ he asks.

  ‘You and me.’

  He is quiet for a moment and as I watch his beautiful hair blow in the light breeze and his perfect skin glint under the limpid sunlight of early spring, I want to take it back.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ The truth is, I do have some ideas why. My frustration is partly because I don’t have the words to explain. Not words he would understand. And I can’t work out if I want him to fight for me, to win me back, to show me that we matter, that this beautiful little thing we’ve been creating together matters.

  ‘Is this about my pieces?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes!’ I shout. I want him to click, and to apologise, and to consider what he’s done.

  But he merely goes back to his folio and says lightly, ‘Comme tu veux.’ As you wish.

  I do not wish it.

  I am incensed.

  I get
up. I get up and I walk away. It takes everything I have to not look back. Perhaps I would turn into a pillar of salt. If I turn around, I know I will shatter. Dissolve. Go running to him.

  Later, at home, I hate that I can still feel his hair in my fingers.

  The weight of his head as it laid in my lap.

  I call Hana and cry and cry. ‘Art is dead. My heart is dead.’

  Crow

  What a fake!

  Sofie

  Crow I’m so disappointed! I can’t bear it!

  I’m so glad you broke up with him.

  I’m not.

  Really??????

  Ok yes, fine. I’m glad it was

  my decision. But it sucks.

  Yep.

  – Overnight chats with Crow

  I stop hearing from Olivier. I guess I should’ve expected it, but still. I miss the messages coming through and seeing his name pop up on the screen. I miss his messages with the bis at the bottom. Shorthand for kiss. Something like xx.

  I miss the real-life bisous as well.

  I try to enjoy my heartbreak. That was Crow’s advice.

  Don’t all great artists find their muse in broken hearts and depression? she texts.

  I don’t think we should be glorifying depression! I write back, a bit shocked. The shock shakes me out of my blues a little, which is annoyingly helpful, and I realise I have been enjoying wallowing more than a little.

  You know what I mean.

  I see him in class and in the atelier of course. He says bonjour, ça va, salut, as though not much at all has been lost, and I echo the same salutations back to him from an empty and shrunken place. I feel so sad, even though it had been my choice, my action.

  Map of Olivier – this is the map I made the day I ended it with him. That night I took a fresh copy of my map of Paris and I marked all the places we had been together.

  But this sparked a furious making of art. Maps. Détournements and poems. But mostly maps!

  Places I saw a dog poop.

  The kinds of dogs I’ve seen and where I’ve seen them.

  Every croissant I ate and where I bought it from (I made this one into an art piece where I glued croissant crumbs onto a piece of paper and labelled them).

  Places I saw a street cleaner with one of those green brooms.

  Places where someone vaped right into my face (there were a lot of stops on this map).

  A photo essay of every pharmacy I passed on my way to school (seven of them, and nine on the alternate route back home on the same day – nine different ones).

  Days I had a sore throat due to the pollution (this was just a list of dates, not my best work).

  Between what’s going on back home and what I am seeing here, not to mention everything that happens on the news, it’s hardly surprising that I am blue. It really feels like the world is ending.

  Remember, the world is ending.

  I’m feeling every emotion that bit more sharply. It’s as though I’ve been through some kind of portal from naivety to this uncomfortable new mature, experienced state.

  We troop out of school on a Friday afternoon, Léa and me and Amandine, and they’re talking about their weekends. Amandine is saying she is going shopping because she really wants a new dress for the exhibition, and I’m half listening, half worrying about my piece for the exhibition.

  ‘That woman is staring you up and down,’ says Léa, suspicion in her voice as she lights a cigarette.

  ‘What woman?’ I ask and follow her gaze. Follow it all the way to a very familiar face across the road.

  For a second I feel the most intense confusion as well as a lurch, as though the world is spinning or tilting and I don’t know who or where I am.

  It is Hana.

  How can it be Hana?

  ‘C’est ma sœur!’ I cry.

  Later, Léa calls me reckless, because apparently I ran right across the road without looking for cars. She calls it l’appel du vide. The call of the void.

  I don’t remember doing that; I just remember seeing Hana like seeing a very welcome ghost.

  I throw my arms around her.

  ‘Put your hat on, honey,’ Hana says as she hugs me back. ‘We’re going for a walk.’

  I want to show Hana all of my favourite things.

  All of the weird and the wonderful. Like the Arts et Métiers metro stop on the 11 line, which is all chrome and metal and looks like a scene from a dystopian movie, or a really fancy submarine.

  ‘Will you be here on Saturday?’ I ask.

  ‘No, I’m only here for two days,’ Hana says, apologetically. ‘I have to be in Berlin to meet some friends, and then I’m heading to Greece for two weeks. I’m going to volunteer with a group who helps women and child migrants in refugee camps outside of Athens.’

  ‘What about your job?’

  ‘Oh, I’m still slogging away there – I haven’t escaped yet. But I’ve taken a few weeks of leave. I had to do something constructive.’

  I always feel so proud of my sister. I picture her as a tree, with good strong roots that help her stand tall and straight and unstoppable. She’s the tree that if a bushfire came through and turned her trunk black and burned off all her leaves would burst forth with new green foliage after the very first rain. Determined. Unbreakable.

  ‘What’s happening on Saturday?’ she asks.

  ‘There’s a manifestation planned. Sorry, a protest—’ I secretly thrill at accidentally using French instead of English, a genuine accident. ‘Delphine and I, well, I’ll go along with her friends – we’re planning to protest for action on climate change. We want climate justice.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ says Hana in a world-weary tone. Then, bumping me with her shoulder, she adds, ‘I’m so glad you’re finding your voice, Sof.’

  We look at each other. The age gap between us feels like it’s closing more and more quickly. Is this how it works? I’ll leave my teen years behind (well, not for four years) and then Hana and I will reach some kind of sisterly equilibrium? Does she feel it too?

  ‘I don’t know if I’ve found my voice,’ I say. ‘But I feel like I’ve sat too quietly for too long. I’ll shout extra loud for you.’ I smile at her and link my arm with hers. ‘Tell me more about Greece.’

  She tells me about the organisation. It runs art and craft activities for children and women – making kites, puppets, jewellery – to give people something to do, as well as hope.

  ‘I want to be a bit useful, at least. I’m going to work on some funding applications with the founder there.’

  My mind races. ‘I would love to do something like that.’

  ‘Maybe you will. Maybe you’re already preparing for it with your new worldly outlook?’ Hana pinches my cheek like a proud grandma.

  ‘Get off,’ I say, laughing. But a seed has been sown. What kind of tree will I be?

  Hana has read all about the best coffee in Paris and so we visit a whole bunch of places I haven’t been before.

  Her favourite is this Belleville café (I’ve never even seen it before!) not far from the canal. ‘It looked très classique on the website,’ she tells me. ‘And they do music some nights. What a dream.’

  When we get there, I see what she means, what with its blue canvas awning and the wicker chairs pushed tight together around little outdoor tables.

  ‘We’ll just have to imagine that scaffolding away,’ Hana says, right as I’m thinking exactly the same thing. ‘In our memories of our visit here, there’ll be nothing blocking our view.’

  She pays for my five-euro flat white (from a barista with an Aussie accent) while I reel at the cost. She tells me stories from home, surely exaggerating the madcap behaviour of our parents, and as she speaks, I wish she could stay longer.

  But I figure we can fit in most of my favourite
things. I show her all of my haunts. As we leave Du Pain et des Idées with many iconic blue bags of bread and pastries, Hana eyeballs me.

  ‘What?’ I say, feeling uncomfortable.

  ‘Nothing.’

  But it isn’t nothing. I pull the top off a baguette and eat it. Hana continues to say nothing, but is still giving me side-eye.

  ‘What?!’

  ‘I just can’t get over you speaking French.’

  ‘Well, we’re in France.’ Secretly I am ecstatic that somehow I’ve become someone who actually speaks another language.

  ‘I know. But you’re so good! You were such a pro back there. I feel like I need to get to know this new Parisian-inspired sister.’

  Is she thinking I’ve grown up during my time here? Do I feel more grown up after these four months?

  ‘Shut up,’ I say, not sure how to cope with her compliments or my own self-growth.

  ‘You eat so much more than you used to,’ Hana says. ‘It’s good! It’s nice not to share a meal with a bird.’ She takes a bite of her escargot de pralines, pistache-chocolat flavour. Stopping in the middle of the footpath, she closes her eyes and hums with delight.

  ‘You’re what we’d call a gourmande,’ I explain.

  ‘Oh là là,’ teases Hana. ‘What we’d call a gourmande.’ I don’t even mind the teasing; it’s just so nice to have her here.

  I even show her one haunt I hadn’t wanted her to see, but it’s accidental. By the Canal Saint-Martin, Olivier is sitting on a park bench in his black jeans, his hair all ruffled. My heart throbs in spite of itself.

  ‘What’s up?’ asks Hana as she pulls me onto the footpath.

  I’ve stopped walking in the middle of the street. Très uncool. ‘Don’t look, but that’s him.’

  ‘Him, him?’

  ‘Don’t look!’

  Hana looks behind her, at her watch, scans the quay. I watch her trying to keep a smile off her face. ‘Well, I don’t blame you, sis. He looks like a right young Bob Dylan,’ she reports. ‘Charming, but pretentious as heck.’

  ‘That old wrinkle?’ I reply. ‘He does not!’