Life Drawing for Beginners

by Roisin Meaney

  “Do you have to wee?” she asked him, and he shook his head. She washed her own hair with a sachet of shampoo from the euro shop and rinsed it as best she could under the tap. She held her head under the hand dryer until Barry whimpered that he was hungry.

  When they went back outside she saw the man looking at her damp hair, but he said nothing. She took the chips from him and sat with Barry at a table by the wall. Her hair smelled of oranges, but she could feel that the shampoo wasn’t rinsed out properly. It would look greasy when it dried.

  “I’m thirsty,” Barry said, and she returned to the counter.

  “Can I get some water?” she asked. “Jus’ from the tap.”

  The foreign man filled a big paper cup and handed it to her. Back at the table she ate a chip as slowly as she could, her stomach growling, and counted the money she’d left, and got €4.27. They’d go to Dunnes and she’d get another bag of the mandarin oranges if they were still on special offer for €1.50, and a pack of Fig Rolls, which they both liked.

  She tried to give Barry fruit every few days but it was dear in most places, and Lidl was far for him to walk to, so they only got there about once a week. They needed toothpaste too, but she’d get that in the euro shop when the older woman who saw nothing was on duty.

  She thought of how her grandmother would feel if she knew Carmel was begging, and lifting things she couldn’t afford to pay for. The thought of her grandmother made her want to cry. She rubbed her face hard until the feeling went away.

  “My legs are tired,” Barry said.

  “I know, but you’re sitting down now so they’ll get a rest.”

  She glanced around the room. Only three other tables were occupied. The window to the left of them was spotted with rain. Most people would have finished work by now and would be on their way home, planning what to cook for dinner, and what to do for the rest of the evening.

  Warm clean houses with televisions and hot running water, and families who were happy together. She felt a piercing loneliness for what she’d lost, and for what she’d never had.

  She knew the odds were stacked sky-high against her. The chances of anyone giving her a job without an application form filled out were next to nil. But she still looked, she kept on asking wherever she went, hoping for some kind of miracle to get her out of this nightmare, to keep her from being sucked back into the much worse place she’d been when she’d met Ethan.

  Coming off drugs as soon as she realized she was pregnant had been hard, it had nearly killed her, but she’d done it. She was ashamed that she’d turned to dealing, ashamed that she’d survived at the expense of others, but she couldn’t see a different way out. And if they hadn’t gotten the stuff from her, they’d have gone somewhere else.

  She’d never pushed it on anyone, she’d just sold it when she was asked. She hadn’t charged over the odds, she’d been charitable where she could, but still she’d been a drug dealer, she’d paid for Barry’s nappies and food by feeding the habits of addicts, and that was something she’d have to live with.

  And then Ethan had died, and she’d almost gone back then, she’d almost given everything up. She would have, if she hadn’t had Barry.

  And realizing in the past few months that he’d soon be old enough to understand how his mother made her living, she’d decided to get out. That hadn’t been easy either, there had been plenty of inducements to stay, and it would be a lie to say she hadn’t been tempted.

  But in the end Barry had made up her mind for her again—​and because there’d been no question of her going back to her own family, not when Granny wasn’t there anymore, she’d taken her courage in both hands and gone to see Ethan’s father.

  She’d known there wouldn’t be a welcome for her—Ethan had rarely mentioned his family, but the little he’d said had been enough. Carmel had had a fair idea of how his father would be with them, and she hadn’t been wrong.

  The way he’d looked at them that first time, as if he was afraid of catching whatever they had. She supposed she couldn’t blame him, the state of them. A smell off them too, she could get it herself. And it was only her word about Barry belonging to Ethan, so why would he believe her? She should have known it wouldn’t do any good going back to him a second time.

  And now they were sleeping in the old shed she’d discovered at the back of a house that was boarded up, in a street full of people you didn’t want to look at you, and she was scrounging money from strangers and stealing what she had to, to survive.

  And winter was coming. She sank her head into her hands, weary of trying to go on.

  “Mammy.”

  She looked up.

  “I have to do wee.”

  She got to her feet. “Come on.” She took his half-eaten chips to the counter. “Can you mind these?” she asked the man. “He needs the toilet again.”

  They had over two hours to kill before it would be dark enough for them to sneak into the shed. They’d have to make the chips last. And maybe the rain would stop, maybe they’d at least get that.

  —————

  Irene walked into the kitchen, causing her daughter and the au pair to look up simultaneously. Passing the table on her way to the fridge she saw, in no particular order, a jam jar of muddy-colored liquid, a large page sitting on an opened newspaper and smeared with puddles of colors, two vivid red splotches on the table to the left of the newspaper, various opened pots of poster paints, and a scattering of brushes.

  She decided to concentrate on the red spills. “Pilar, please wipe that paint off the table before it dries in.”

  A beat passed, not unnoticed by Irene, before the au pair got to her feet. As she reached for the dishcloth that dangled from the tap mixer Irene added sharply, “Not that—please use damp kitchen paper. The dishcloth is only for washing up.” How many times did the woman have to be told?

  “Sorry,” Pilar muttered, reaching for a paper towel.

  “Irene,” Emily said, “look at my picture.”

  Irene took a can of Diet Coke from the fridge before turning to regard the mess of watery colors running into each other. No outline that she could see, nothing remotely recognizable. Should three-year-olds not be a little more accomplished? Surely they should make a stab at drawing objects, rather than just slathering colored water on a page?

  “Very nice,” she said, popping the tab on her can. “Get Pilar to roll up your sleeves, they’re getting wet.” Anyone with an ounce of common sense would have done that before the painting started.

  Irene regarded the top of the au pair’s head as Emily’s sleeves were rolled to the elbow, as the spilled paint was cleared away. She couldn’t see why anyone who had hair as naturally dark as Pilar’s would imagine they could get away with going blonde.

  “Next time you’re painting, please cover the table fully with newspaper,” she said before turning toward the door. Well aware, as she left the kitchen, that the atmosphere she left behind was considerably cooler than the one she’d walked into. Training in a new au pair was always such a thankless task.

  —————

  “‘There was once a little boy,’” Jackie read, “‘whose name was Charlie.’”

  “Charlie is a girl’s name,” Eoin said.

  “Well, normally it’s a boy’s name. Anyway, ‘Charlie lived with—’”

  “Why is it normally a boy’s name?”

  She lowered the book. “Because Charlie is short for Charles, which is a boy’s name, but sometimes girls are called Charlie for short, if their name is Charlotte, or…Charlene, or something. Ask your friend at school if her name is short for something else, and I bet she says yes.” She waited for another question but none came. “Will I go on with the story?”

  “Yeah.”

  “‘Charlie lived with his mum and dad in a small yellow house.’”

  “Charlie’s mum got lost.”

  Jackie stopped again and looked at him. “Did she?” The first mention he’d made of Charlie’s mother.<
br />
  “Yeah, a long time ago. Everybody looked for her, but nobody could find her.”

  “Oh…that’s too bad. I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Got lost” sounded like a peculiar way to explain death to a child—wasn’t it a bit odd, didn’t it leave the possibility open in the child’s mind that the mother might suddenly reappear someday?

  “I said my dad is in heaven,” Eoin added, “so maybe her mum went there.”

  “Yes, maybe,” Jackie said quickly. “Let’s get on with the story, will we?”

  What else could she have said when he’d asked about his father? It had seemed the simplest explanation—although she wondered what she’d do in years to come if he decided he wanted to look up his father’s family. She’d deal with that when it happened.

  “Can Charlie come to our house to play?”

  “Of course she can, as soon as I meet her dad.”

  Charlie was always in the classroom by the time they arrived—​Jackie dropped Eoin to school on her way to work at the boutique, and they usually made it by the skin of their teeth. Jackie’s mother collected Eoin after school every day except Thursday, Jackie’s day off.

  But there was never any sign of the father on Thursday afternoons either—not that Jackie had been actively looking for him up to this. She supposed she’d have to make it her business to make contact with him if Eoin insisted on his new friend coming to play.

  “Next time I collect you,” she promised. “I’ll talk to her dad then. If he comes before I get there, ask him to hang on.”

  But Eoin shook his head. “He doesn’t come at home time—​she goes to Little Rascals.”

  “Oh.”

  She’d have to think of another way to track down the elusive father. Maybe she could ask the teacher to deliver a message, or at least pass on Jackie’s phone number so he could make contact. Arranging her son’s social calendar wasn’t proving too straightforward.

  “I’ll talk to Mrs. Grossman next week,” she said, raising the book again. “We’ll figure something out. Now come on, or we’ll never get this done.”

  They finished the story and she kissed him good night and went downstairs, leaving his bedroom door ajar and the landing light on. In the sitting room her parents were watching the news. Jackie sat next to her mother and thought about the good-​looking man from the art class again.

  She wondered what job he had. He’d been well dressed in the street: Maybe he worked in an office of some kind. He probably had a partner. Most people had found someone by the time they got to his age, which she guessed was somewhere in his late thirties or early forties.

  They had yet to exchange a single word, and he’d seen Jackie fully undressed. How strange was that? Before the life drawing class she’d shown her naked body to exactly three men, and they’d all been similarly undressed at the time. And she’d had some degree of interaction with each of them before they’d taken off their clothes.

  The first had been a boy she’d met at fifteen, the brother of a girl in her class, who’d walked her home from a teenage disco and become her first proper boyfriend. They’d deflowered each other when Jackie had been sixteen, late one night in the shed at the bottom of his parents’ garden.

  The experience had been both embarrassing and painful for Jackie, and on the two occasions they’d repeated it, there had been no significant improvement. Shortly afterwards he’d ended the relationship, and she’d done her best to hide her relief.

  Eoin’s father had followed, the summer she was seventeen, an encounter she could barely remember, and whose consequence understandably caused her to lose her taste for men for some time afterwards. When Eoin was three she met another man on a night out with some friends, who charmed her into his bed after a few dates, and dropped her abruptly after a few more.

  Three men, a handful of sexual encounters: She was hardly what you’d call experienced in that area. Ironic, when people who heard she’d become a single mother at eighteen probably assumed she was jumping into bed with men every night of the week. In fact, the man at the art class was the first man to interest her in a long time. And chances were he was happily married.

  But maybe he wasn’t.

  Saturday

  She’s definitely got some Yorkshire terrier in her,” the vet told Audrey, scratching the top of Dolly’s head. “She’s crossed with another small breed, possibly a Maltese or something similar. I can’t be sure without talking to the original owner. Where did you get her?”

  Audrey named the pet shop.

  “Ah yes,” the vet said. “Michael Browne.”

  “Does Michael Browne have a beard and glasses?” Audrey asked.

  “He does.”

  Audrey waited, but no further comment was made. Either the vet had only met Michael Browne on a good day, or he was being extremely diplomatic.

  “Dolly is very lively,” she told him. “I find her quite hard to manage.”

  The vet nodded. “You’ll need lots of patience. House-training is a slow job, unfortunately. But don’t be afraid to be firm when she does something that’s not on. A smack on the nose, or on the rear end, won’t do her a bit of harm, and it’ll give her something to think about.”

  “Oh.” Audrey doubted that she could find it in her to smack Dolly, however much she might deserve it.

  “You probably find that she chews things,” the vet went on.

  Audrey nodded. “Everything.”

  “Get her a rubber bone; that’ll keep her distracted. Some people recommend an old slipper, but I feel that just gives them the idea that all slippers are chewable. Michael will have rubber bones.”

  “Right.” One of Audrey’s old slippers would do fine, if it meant avoiding a visit to the pet shop.

  The vet lifted Dolly’s head and examined her teeth. “She’s about twelve or thirteen weeks old, I’d say—again, hard to be accurate without talking to the owner. Did Michael tell you whether she’s been vaccinated?”

  “No, and I forgot to ask. But even if she has, would it do her any harm to get another dose?”

  The vet made a face. “Not a good idea—I’d need to know if she’s been started on a course, otherwise it’s very hit-and-miss. Could you call back to the pet shop and ask Michael?”

  Audrey’s heart sank. Was there a conspiracy afoot to get her to revisit that man’s premises? “I suppose I could…” she said doubtfully.

  The vet smiled. “His bark is worse than his bite, you know.”

  Audrey looked unconvinced. “His bark is bad enough.”

  It was the last thing she wanted. The prospect of coming face-to-face with him again was unpalatable in the extreme, but he was the only person who might have information about Dolly’s vaccinations, so it looked like a return visit was unavoidable. Was she never to be rid of him?

  She’d go on Monday, on her way home from school. And as long as she was going back, she’d pick up a pet carrier, and a rubber bone. Much as she hated giving him any more business, they would make life considerably easier.

  —————

  Saturdays were always good, she didn’t know why. Maybe the supermarket did a special clear-out on Saturdays. She lifted the lid of the Dumpster and waved the smell away with her hand as she ran her eye quickly over the tumble of boxes and packets and bags inside. She pulled out a tray of dates, a few cartons of yogurt, sandwiches wrapped in plastic, a packet of cheese slices, and a box of jellies. There were trays of kiwi fruit but she couldn’t reach them, and some tomatoes but they had furry stuff growing on them.

  “Is there crisps?”

  “No,” she said, “no crisps.” He’d live on crisps if she let him.

  She stuffed most of the food into the plastic bag she’d used so much the writing had all come off the front of it. She opened the tray of dates and handed one to Barry. “Try this, it’s nice.”

  They had no way of cooking, so the only hot food he got was if they went to a chip shop. She didn’t know what they’d do when the
weather got colder and he was eating mostly cold food. And would they even survive a frosty night in that shed? She was scared all the time of being in charge of Barry with nobody to ask when she didn’t know something.

  She tried to give him different food to eat so he’d have a mix of good and bad. She remembered the dinners Granny used to cook for them, bacon and cabbage with white sauce, stews full of different vegetables, roast chicken sometimes on Sundays, although everyone fought over the legs.

  Barry began to make a funny noise. She looked down and saw that his face had gone bright red, and was all screwed up.

  “Jesus—” She reached a finger back into his throat and yanked out the date stone and threw it away. He retched and brought up a small amount of brown mush.

  “Sorry,” she said, wiping his mouth with her sleeve. “I forgot about the stone. Are you all right?”

  “I don’t like them things,” he whispered, his eyes wet from the choking. “I want crisps.”

  Carmel hugged him tightly, her heart going wild. “Okay,” she said. “Come on, we’ll get crisps.”

  —————

  “Can I get my hair dyed?” Charlie asked.

  “Sure,” James replied. “How about blue?”

  She didn’t laugh, like he’d been expecting. “No, I want purple.”

  He stopped and looked at her. “You’re serious.”

  “’Course I am. Loads of people dye their hair.”

  He resumed walking. “Not at your age they don’t. When you’re grown up, you can dye it whatever color you like.”

  She sighed dramatically. He wondered what she’d be like at thirteen if she was beginning to show diva tendencies at six. Up ahead he spotted the hairdressing salon—and walking into the sandwich bar on the far side of it was a woman he knew but couldn’t place. Dark hair, a phone clamped to her ear as she pushed open the door.

  Who was she? And then he realized, and laughed softly. He hadn’t recognized her with her clothes on.