You Wish

by Lia Weston

  It’s actually the fifth one I’ve done now. They’re an interesting new trend; our composites are beginning to replace the traditional ‘despite what you’ve heard, everything’s fine’ Christmas letter. Sometimes I want to splice in a cop for authenticity. Mica asked if the cards meant that we were developing a particular demographic in our client base. I avoid thinking about it.

  Both Mum and Dad have given up trying to understand IF. They seem kind of proud I’ve got a company but also bewildered as to why it exists. At first Mum believed it was operating in a finite market that had to eventually collapse, but she now seems to be coming around to the idea that it might not. Dad thinks the work is a waste of creative talent. Both of their concerns have an undertone of IF’s work being a slippery slope to something darker, something Orwellian, but neither can tell me what exactly.

  ‘It’s such a strange way to make a living,’ says the woman who makes her living by telling other people what to eat.

  ‘It’s not that weird,’ I say, looking forward to rehashing the same conversation we’ve had at least eighty times. ‘Everything’s Photoshopped now.’

  ‘It’s not just Photoshop, though, is it?’ says Mum. ‘It’s whole albums of dead people.’

  Gen suddenly looks interested.

  ‘They’re not always dead,’ I say.

  We drop Gen off at her friend’s house and then get stuck in some roadworks. I try to check the time but can’t straighten my legs enough to get my phone out of my pocket. On the plus side, I spot three new possible artwork sites. A shaft of wall by the cancer biology centre beckons. I’ve been working on a DNA double helix stencil. My cutting fingers twitch.

  The corporate cup runners are out in the city. Girls wearing singlets with motivational slogans move through the streets in waves of purple and pink. I imagine them swarming buildings, scaling the gutters, bursting through windows, searching for medjool dates. It’s a new breed of vampire, one that lives on unrefined coconut oil. It’s the Lorna Jane apocalypse.

  Forty minutes later, we shuffle in the back of the jam-packed exhibition hall. The opening speech has already begun. June doesn’t say ‘I told you’d we’d be late’, but I can feel it anyway.

  Everyone here is either twenty-something or fifty-something. They all have glasses of champagne and crossed arms. Mum slips forward to get a better view and is immediately lost between the cape-like dresses and exhibition programs. (Don’t worry, she’ll be easy to find again – just look for the glow of a screen as some juice enthusiast tries to sneak a picture of her.)

  The curator opening the exhibition doesn’t look familiar, but I’m pretty far out of the loop these days. The art world is insular, and my studies were years ago. Next to the curator – but as far away from the podium as possible – is Parker, an old classmate. He stares at the shoes in the front row and frowns when the curator refers to him as a ‘shining light in the field of contemporary visual arts’. Behind them is one of his newest installations – mirrored pebbles that swoop and twist like a murmuration of starlings. At art school, Parker set a series of glass vortexes into a wall. They had to be removed again after birds kept flying into them and breaking their necks. All the vegans were very upset.

  June pats her hair again and scans the crowd, spotting someone she knows. They mouth hellos at each other. ‘Love your shoes,’ mimes June, and I wonder if this is the secret universal greeting of women.

  Parker is ushered to the podium and makes a speech by rapidly ploughing through a list of thankyous. There are pink spots on his cheekbones. Everyone claps around their champagne glasses as he stalks off. Some things at least are consistent in art circles: captions that make no sense, people who wear green-rimmed glasses and Parker McLaren’s inability to take a compliment.

  I’m sent to get drinks, come back to find June missing – this is the gallery that eats significant others – wander around to look at Parker’s work, fight off the familiar stirrings of envy, drink both drinks and go back for a refill.

  Parker is standing by an installation, looking uncomfortable in a camera flash. Four metres to his left, looking perfectly comfortable in another camera flash, is my mother. Girls cluster around her, going up one by one, a production line of matte-red-lipped selfies. My dad, also holding two glasses of champagne, waits by a landscape piece. Partners at exhibitions are basically glorified drinks holders. Dad’s crumpled shirt is also exactly the same material and colour as the landscape he’s standing in front of.

  ‘Your Easter vlog was amazing,’ says one girl to Mum. ‘I went straight out and bought a dehydrator.’

  ‘Try it with mango,’ says Mum. ‘It’ll change your life.’

  Several girls make notes into their phones.

  ‘Tom!’ Mum spots me. The girls part like the Red Sea. I give her one of the champagnes while she introduces me to people who don’t care who I am. After a few more questions – there’s a collective groan when they find out her third book isn’t coming out for months – Mum graciously excuses us. The girls fall back, flushed and fidgety, already posting pictures online.

  Mum swaps her champagne for red wine from a passing drinks tray. ‘Where’s your father?’

  ‘Over –’ I look at the landscape piece, but Dad is no longer in sight. ‘I’ll go find him.’ As I leave, my place is taken by yet another girl with her red lips and phone at the ready.

  There’s a smaller gallery off to the side of the main room, with a concurrent photographic exhibition. I duck in to look for Dad and then stop to look at the pieces. All streetscapes. All street art. Huge murals, tiny pieces, pictures of masked faces, of splatters and fat caps, of backjumps and shrouded heads and fingers. I automatically scan for my own work, but none of it’s here. There’s a pinprick of jealousy but what did I expect? I remind myself that I have made no effort to draw attention to what I do. I never sign my street work. I binned a potential career as a portrait artist because you need to be okay with attention to make money, and I’m not great with attention. I’ve got my own company. I make a living by creating things. I should be happy. I take a huge gulp of my drink and let the cheap champagne burn my tongue.

  Halfway back to the bar, my phone burrs. I pass the crowd clustered under Parker’s frosted glass stalactites (Title: Everyone’s A Winner) and step out onto the balcony.

  ‘I need your signature on some papers. We’re moving to cloud computing,’ trumpets Kain. In the background I can hear Spongebob Squarepants. I’m fairly sure it’s for his kids, but there is a strong possibility that Kain also finds it intellectually stimulating.

  ‘Absolutely not.’ I put the glasses down on the balcony edge.

  There’s a short silence. ‘To which part?’

  ‘Both. We’re not moving to the cloud.’

  ‘But we need to.’

  ‘No, we don’t.’

  ‘Yes, we –’

  ‘I’m not discussing this right now.’

  ‘Rohan thinks it’s a great idea.’

  ‘Rohan also waxes his chest and I’m not doing that either.’

  ‘This is absolutely typical of you. We’re at the coalface of –’

  ‘Monday, Kain.’ I hang up.

  The night drifts over the banister. Cars file past, rows of steady lights rolling through the streets below. A cluster of high-vis vests glow by the corner where a water pipe has burst.

  ‘Who were you talking to?’

  June, in the doorway, is trying to look breezily casual but her brow ridge is so tight you could bounce a coin off it.

  ‘Work stuff.’

  ‘Mica?’

  ‘No.’ I pocket the phone.

  ‘It’s usually Mica.’ Her ankle kicks out very quickly before she rebalances. This is June at the four-wine point.

  Normally I would placate her, as that’s my job, but tonight I’m tired and cannot be bothered. ‘Can you not bring up IF around my parents? They’re still kind of weird about it.’ Out of nowhere a recent book comes to mind: a family vacation al
bum where the brief was to eliminate everyone from the existing pictures except the dad and his daughter.

  June blinks but recovers from the conversational swing. ‘Oh, your mum and dad don’t really mind it.’

  ‘They’re not enthusiastic.’

  ‘Gen doesn’t care.’

  ‘She’s fourteen, she wouldn’t care if I was a professional arsonist.’ I’m not lying; the first time I told Gen about IF, she just nodded and kept playing Candy Crush.

  ‘Well, they should just accept that it’s your job.’

  ‘Like you do?’

  She quickly drops her gaze.

  ‘Hello, you two.’ Dad appears in the doorway. June swivels towards him in relief. ‘Anyone seen Amanda?’

  ‘I’ll go look,’ I say, and leave them together. Really, it’s just an excuse to go back to the bar again. Mum’s probably off giving the curator her recipe for dairy-free lasagne. (‘It’s wonderful. The twigs soften down to almost nothing.’)

  Parker’s glass sculptures twist and roll like waves. Some are taller than me, curling inward, silver-streaked pipelines of surf. There are a few familiar faces drifting between them, the glass perspectives distorting their mouths and bodies. I keep an eye out for Hailey, and get stuck talking to an ex-classmate I once made out with at a New Year’s party. It wasn’t a success. We’re both pretending that we don’t remember the incident. Past her, Parker is chatting to one of our old teachers and looks relaxed for the first time this evening.

  I can’t work out if I envy him or not. Would I want to exhibit again, this process of opening yourself up in public? It was part of the package, firstly as a graduate and secondly to start building a profile, but it was never something I was comfortable with. Look at me, I drew some stuff. Sure, it’s nice if people like your work, but they’re equally happy to tell you how much they think you suck. I don’t need other people to tell me I suck; I’m well aware of my flaws. You probably are, too, by now.

  June joins Parker at a rippling glass sheet. She’ll have rehearsed a flattering yet obliquely challenging comment in order to sound more knowledgeable. Something like, ‘I feel this piece beautifully captures the temporality of time, but there also seems to be an underlying sense of yearning. Am I incorrect?’

  The ex-classmate wanders off in pursuit of the waiter with the tray of crab tartlets.

  I steal around the back of the sheet, which is big and opaque enough to block me from view.

  ‘Thanks for coming,’ I hear Parker say. ‘This turnout’s crazy.’

  ‘My pleasure,’ says June.

  (Wait for it.)

  ‘You know,’ she continues, ‘I hope you don’t mind me saying so, but there’s a resonance to Pig In A Poke that I hadn’t anticipated.’

  (Told you.)

  ‘Thanks,’ says Parker. Her statement is baffling enough not to count as a direct compliment, so he’s apparently fine with it.

  ‘My partner studied with you,’ says June. ‘Thomas Lash.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, cool guy. How’s he doing?’

  ‘He’s great. He’s working on some new portraits,’ she says, which is news to both Parker and me. ‘He’ll be exhibiting again soon, maybe early next year.’

  The sheet funnels her voice through to me quite beautifully. She’s running some of her words together, her consonants losing their crispness; she’s six drinks deep now. My glass grows warm in my hand as I listen to her tell Parker about my plans to re-establish myself on the art scene, my intention to go back to study, my possible collaboration partners. She mentions how much I’ve missed life drawing and portraiture, talks about the gap that art has left that my work does not quite fill. (Note that she doesn’t go so far as to say what the work actually is.) Every word builds a lie that I will now have to reverse. Every comment is something else that I have failed to accomplish.

  They are interrupted for another photo opportunity. Parker moves around the side of the artwork, June in tow, and they both spot me. June can’t quite disguise her start of surprise.

  Parker and I shake hands. I congratulate him on the exhibition.

  ‘You’ve gotta tell me when you’re doing a show,’ he says.

  ‘I’m not planning anything,’ I say.

  ‘Huh,’ says Parker. We both look at June, who flushes.

  ‘You’ve been talking about it –’ she starts.

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ I say.

  Her eyelids flicker. ‘But we were discussing how you’d like to exhibit again . . .’

  ‘Nope,’ I say. ‘You were telling me that you wanted me to.’

  ‘Well, I mean, I would, of course,’ June says, glancing at Parker. ‘And I’m sure you said you were thinking about it.’

  ‘Smile, please,’ says the photographer.

  ‘Anyway, anyway,’ says June, diving in to her handbag, ‘I got this for you.’ She withdraws a gold-embossed card and hands it to me like it’s the keys to a cream 1967 Jaguar 420. ‘Two Moons Agency. They’re looking for artists, especially portrait work.’

  I look at the letters against the flat grey background. Her voice becomes fuzzy in my ear, until I hear her end with, ‘They’d love to hear from you.’

  Something uncurls in my veins and starts spreading through my body. I can’t identify it. I’m too angry. ‘I’m not doing portraiture.’

  ‘But you could be. And anyway, why wouldn’t you want to? It would be wonderful if you got back into it after . . . you know . . .’

  ‘After what?’

  ‘Well, IF won’t last forever.’

  The flash goes off.

  ‘We have an eight-month waiting list,’ I say.

  ‘Yes, okay, but you aren’t going to be doing it for years, are you? I mean, you can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it’s . . .’ June presses her glass into the geometric shapes on her stomach. ‘It’s not sustainable.’

  ‘But a career in art is? No offence,’ I add to Parker.

  ‘None taken,’ says Parker.

  ‘You know how hard it is to make a living from drawing,’ I say. ‘I’ve never said I was going back to it. Why the hell did you tell them I was?’

  June has realised how many people are within earshot. She rubs a nonexistent itch on her chin with her little finger.

  I feel like a wild dog that’s been cornered. ‘Who else did you talk to?’

  ‘Just a couple of people,’ says June. ‘Everyone’s so excited. Your studio studies teacher –’

  ‘Jesus, June.’

  ‘But you should be doing this kind of thing, drawing again, proper drawings, those beautiful portraits, not pictures of dead brides and fake babies.’

  ‘Dead brides?’ says Parker.

  ‘Not all of us can work in aged care, all right?’ I say. ‘Not everyone can be as good as you.’

  ‘It’s not about being good,’ says June. ‘It’s about making the most of what you have. I can’t draw, I can’t even put flowers in a vase. But you can. And you don’t. You’re so talented, Tom. This company you’ve created is just bizarre. It’s an excuse.’

  ‘Fake babies?’ says Parker.

  ‘An excuse for what?’ I say.

  ‘Tell him about that mother and son book,’ says June, waving her glass and spilling red wine on the floor. ‘Tell him about the one with the guy who married his dog. You just create these awful, awful things. It’s embarrassing –’ She stutters to a stop, pressing her lips together.

  Our audience stands like insects stuck in amber. Even the waiters have paused. The oddly sweet rotting smell of crab lingers in the air. I’m trapped in a circle of eyes. Panic, physical and tangible, fans up my rib cage, manifests like blisters across my skin.

  ‘Tom?’ My dad, on the periphery, has noticed something’s wrong.

  My fingers have gone numb.

  Another camera flash sheets everything white, and all I can see is June with her constant need and her passive aggression and her prison-guard haircut. The agency card feels li
ke lead in my fingers.

  ‘I can’t do this any more.’

  There’s a pulsing behind June’s lips, but she keeps them clamped together, just in case something else slips out that she wasn’t expecting.

  My parents stand on the edge of the crowd, dying of second-hand embarrassment. Dad starts to move towards me until Mum elbows him in the ribs. She frowns at me and twitches her head sideways. Not here. Not now. Not again. But it’s too late.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I’m really sorry.’

  June’s neck starts to redden but her mouth stays shut. No air goes in or out. If she doesn’t breathe, it’s not actually happening.

  It’s kind of hard to gather your dignity when your relationship’s exploding in front of three hundred people and the city’s shining light in the field of contemporary visual arts, but why not attempt it anyway.

  ‘Parker.’ I give him a hug, which he politely if awkwardly reciprocates. ‘Awesome exhibition. Hope you sell everything. See you around.’

  I hear a faint click as June’s throat pulses back into action, but she still doesn’t speak.

  There’s nowhere to go but out. I walk through the silent gallery patrons, away from my parents and Parker and June, a funeral procession for one.

  The air outside feels like a brick to the face after the gallery’s gentle heating. The parklands stretch shadow-soaked arms towards me, refuge from the headlights of passing traffic. Vagrants, strange meetings, people looking for trouble – I’ll take my chances in the dark tonight.

  I barely remember the walk home. At my front door, I realise I’m still holding a glass.

  Wait, I’ve remembered something else.

  I left my house keys in Mum’s Mini.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘So, I just have to ask, at what point did you think dumping your girlfriend in public was a good idea?’

  I put my head on my arms and stare at the surface of the front bar of the Grace Hotel, pitted from years of use. ‘Shut up.’

  ‘No, really, I’m totally curious.’ There’s a solid thump as Mica’s pint lands next to my ear. ‘What on earth is wrong with you?’