Steeplechase

by Krissy Kneen

  ‘Are you here to help me or what?’

  ‘Sure.’

  It is easier with him holding the thing. I finish the first canvas, set it aside, pick up another frame and staple the canvas to one side.

  ‘Are you excited about the exhibition?’

  I pause, wipe hair away from my face.

  ‘I’m excited,’ he says. ‘I love the ones you’ve finished.’

  ‘They’re okay.’

  ‘No,’ he says and he seems serious, although sometimes it is hard to tell when he is teasing me. ‘They are really great. I’m going to get a suit.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘To wear.’

  ‘Why would you do that?’

  ‘If I’m going to be your handbag I better wear a suit, right?’

  I put the stretcher down. It clatters onto the bench, a heavy metal thump and I stretch my fingers out from a cramp.

  ‘You can’t be my handbag.’

  He looks hurt, is suddenly silent. His big dark eyes are hangdog wide.

  ‘We can’t be seen together.’

  ‘I’m coming to the exhibition.’

  ‘Sure, but you’ll have to go alone, or bring someone else.’

  ‘I don’t want to bring someone else. I’m with you.’

  ‘John, do you even listen to me?’

  He purses his full lips. It looks odd on him, this pout. His forehead creases with concern. It looks for a moment as if he is about to cry.

  ‘You know sometimes I think you’re embarrassed of me. Because I’m not super attractive or because I’m too young or something.’

  ‘You can’t be with me, John. You are my student.’

  ‘You always use my name when you are angry with me. Have you noticed that? When you’re happy with me you don’t call me anything at all.’

  ‘Are you going to help me stretch these canvases?’

  He looks at the equipment laid out in front of him. ‘No. I don’t think I am actually.’

  He puts the canvas down and walks out of the studio.

  There are canvases leaning against the wall, canvases on the easels, half-finished. There is so much for me to do and it would be easier if he helped me.

  ‘I’m going to put the tea on.’

  He is moping on the couch. The scene of our many misdemeanours. When I stand in front of him he looks away.

  ‘John.’

  He doesn’t even flinch.

  ‘John?’

  Nothing.

  I sink into the soft leather beside him.

  ‘You are amazing. I really like being around you. But it is completely unethical. You are my student.’

  ‘Loads of people sleep with their students. It happens all the time, it’s almost like part of the job description.’

  ‘Not my job description. I am going to have to mark you, you know. How do you expect me to do that now?’

  ‘Fairly? Well? Because I am pretty good at art?’

  ‘Yeah. You are pretty good at art.’

  He puts a finger out and touches my hand, strokes the harsh skin there, the pale blue stain where the paint has marked me with its vague tattoo. It is nice to be stroked like this. It is nice to have someone to touch your skin.

  ‘So I’ll put the jug on?’

  ‘And I’ll get a suit to come to your opening?’

  I close my eyes. Shake my head. I feel the weight of him shift on the couch. He is gone and it is cold where his knee was touching mine. The back of my hand tingles. We haven’t made love. For some reason I feel terribly betrayed by this fact. The day is ruined. The canvases are unstretched, my mouth is unkissed, my body is ready to be touched and he is leaving.

  ‘You’re leaving?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘Okay then,’ I say.

  And he says, ‘Okay.’

  I put the jug on anyway. I make tea but I don’t want to drink it. I want him to come back. He is my student but I want him to undo the buttons on my shirt, fumble awkwardly with the clasp on my bra. I want to teach him how to unclip me without looking. I wonder if these are maternal feelings, if I am having some weird misplaced mid-life maternal instinct. He is nice this boy, he is good company. When I look at his paintings I feel the lazy places in my head opening, letting new ideas in. He has, in this way, awakened me. My body too. He has made my body hungry for touch again.

  I lie awake some nights and think of him the way I used to lie awake and remember the rush of air as I kicked Flame to a gallop. Sometimes with this boy I am fifteen again. That year, and all the things that happened in it. I tip the hot tea down the sink. I couldn’t drink it now. I feel nauseous. I should have taken the week off, two weeks, a month. Maybe I should go to China, I have never been able to afford an overseas holiday. I could see my sister again after all these years.

  I sit on the couch and stare up at her paintings, counting. Seventeen, and more sketches at the office. I stop myself from counting how much money that would be if each one was valued as much as that one that sold at Sotheby’s. Original Early Emily Reichs. Emily Reich. I press my fingers against my eyes and there is some relief from the pain that is building there.

  Telephone Reprise

  I pick up the telephone. I put it to my ear. I remember the first time I heard him, the sound of breathing in between the flat tones, two conflicting messages. No one is there, someone is there.

  Since Emily first started listening to the phone I have snuck in to listen. Now I can hear it every time, his breathing. Why would he be waiting for me to pick up the phone, sitting there, breathing and listening to nothing?

  I check to see that there is no one around. I never listen for him when someone is around. The room is empty. We are alone when I say his name.

  ‘Raphael?’ because of course it is Raphael. Emily has given me a name for him now. He belongs to Emily, he is her secret, but there is a delicious thrill in stealing this small part of her secret for myself. ‘Is that you Raphael?’

  Nothing but his breath. No word.

  ‘Don’t be afraid, Raphael. I am Emily’s sister, Bec.’

  Breathing. Beeping. Breathing.

  ‘You could visit me. Just like with Emily. You could visit.’

  I look at the fingers of my free hand and they are shaking. I realise now that the chill on my shoulders is not the cold at all. I am frightened. If he were to speak I might scream. I put the phone down quickly and step away from it but the sound of his breathing stays with me.

  Exhibit A

  He will be here. I step into the gallery and there are any number of reasons to be nervous. I haven’t exhibited in years and even though this is a group show there will be people here who I would rather like to impress. My colleagues for one thing, but more importantly the friends of Nancy Gato. Nancy is quite famous. Not as famous as my sister, but enough of a name to drag a handful of journalists out to this stuffy cheese and chardonnay do.

  Nancy usually exhibits in vacant lots, laundromats, car parks. She got the idea from the young folk, people the age of my students, John’s age. There’s a group of them who lug their instruments to late-night public spaces and stage makeshift concerts without permission. The kids think it is awesome, and it is. I would like nothing more than to copy them, set up my canvases balanced on warm throbbing dryers, serve wine in plastic cups out of a cask. John told me about them weeks before Nancy started doing it, and I was tempted to appropriate the idea, shying away because it is not original, frightened that I would be accused of playing catch-up.

  I heard about Nancy’s show on the afternoon it happened. It was held in a laundromat, exactly like the collective of bands. I bit the inside of my mouth so hard that an ulcer developed in the next few days and I had to gargle with salt water and eat fresh lemons to get rid of it. I felt the regret surge through me like a blush. If I had acted on instinct I would have been there first. It is too late now. Now it is her thing, an exhibition in a pool hall, in a toilet block in an inner-city park, in an alley behind a left-wi
ng bookstore.

  I notice Nancy in the far corner of the room surrounded by well-dressed folk, some of them my own students, hovering at a little distance. The photographer snaps away in her direction and Nancy acts bored. Fifty percent of the proceeds will be donated to a soup kitchen to feed the homeless. The waiters are serving little cups of hot soup on silver trays beside rows of sparkling wine.

  I pick up a glass of bubbly, drain it and follow the waiter halfway across the room to exchange my empty glass for a full one. I am really very nervous and I have every reason to be, but I am blaming John for my agitation even as I scan the room and find myself disappointed by his absence.

  My paintings are on the far right wall between Nancy’s flower sculptures and the pointillist works made by the computer programmer guy. I can’t remember his name but I remember the process he uses, printing html code onto canvas using coloured numbers. The artist is a game developer and the code is taken directly from his computer game Highschool Sweetheart, set in a public school. Teenagers in a visual art class are given shots of alcohol and encouraged to remove their clothing. Each level of the game is played with younger and younger children until the highest scoring players leave the high school entirely and move to the primary school next door. The code is printed on a huge board and if you stand far enough away from it you can make out a pre-pubescent girl with her legs spread graphically wide.

  The room is too small to view this clearly and as more people arrive I watch them standing pressed against the wall near the exit, stretching up onto their toes and craning to see the work over the throng of soup-swilling, champagne-sipping arty types. There are three computers set up in front of the work and a group of students lean towards the screens, playing Highschool Sweetheart, shaking their heads in mock horror as they progress through the various levels, inching towards the primary schoolers with a giggly mix of horror and excitement.

  My paintings seem pedestrian in comparison. I was proud of these canvases in the privacy of my own home. I like the way I have managed to capture the light. Each canvas has a face on it, partially out of frame. The skin looks waxy but real. The expressions are open to interpretation. Excitement might be fear, a grin might be a grimace. Is it ever truly possible to know what someone else is feeling? I have asked in the required explanation that is typed on a card beside the work. Nancy has written a page of information beside each of her bunches of flowers. There is a book, a mini-thesis to explain the concept behind Highschool Sweetheart. The information is printed on old-fashioned computer paper, the kind we used to use in dot-matrix printers. I watch as people with champagne in one hand unfold page after page, looking for a break in the text before tearing along the perforation.

  …last true sexual taboo, I hear someone saying as I brush past them…Brave or crazy…Another fragment. I have a sense that after tonight the games developer will be more famous than Nancy Gato, although still not as famous as my sister.

  Two young women stand in front of my work, staring. I feel suddenly exposed. I take another sip of champagne.

  …more traditional, I hear one of them say…engage with trends and then old style.

  Old. I hurry away from my portraits, searching desperately for the waiter with the drinks.

  There are so many of my students in the crowd and yet John is not among them. I notice one of the girls peering at the printed card beside my work. Is it ever truly possible to read someone else’s emotional state? I wonder how the girl is responding to the work; what her own emotional state might be, but when I glance in her direction she just seems terribly bored. I know how lame my explanation sounds. I know that my work is not nearly as conceptually complex as the rest of it. For some crazy reason I imagined this to be a strength: the art stands for itself. It is not about anything that you can’t see from looking at the work.

  When they bring us up to the microphone it feels like a cattle call. I am the most awkward artist in the room. I am not as casually ruffled as the others. My dress is old but not as old-made-fashionable as Nancy’s fifties frock. The programmer, whose name is Duane, is wearing a hoodie under his suit jacket as all good programmers must. There is an Egyptian artist who speaks very little English and who is therefore not required to make any kind of speech at all. The fifth artist is at a show in Germany and sends his apologies.

  I try to listen to what Nancy Gato is saying, something about site-specific work and the ephemeral nature of aesthetics. At least I try to look as if I am listening. John slips into the room just as the founder of the soup kitchen is asking Nancy about her work and its relationship to the disenfranchised.

  John seems a little awkward from this distance. He is slightly pigeon-toed and it gives his walk a strange unbalanced edge. He seems to rock from foot to foot as he moves through the crowd. I have to stop myself from waving. I have had several glasses of champagne and it is easy in this state to imagine that he is my actual partner, someone I love, who is here to support me. He ducks his head so as not to meet my gaze. One of the students I recognise waves to him and he moves gratefully to stand with her group. They laugh, all of them, and for a moment I imagine that they are all laughing at me but of course they’re not. Nancy has said something amusing. I smile, a slightly delayed response and then everyone is clapping, whispering to each other.

  I hear my name and must seem startled as I look towards the founder of the soup kitchen, a young and stylish woman, surprisingly good looking, with an expensive asymmetrical haircut and a large wide mouth that stretches back to reveal perfect teeth.

  ‘Feelings?’ she asks and I feel sweat spring up on my palms, my own unambiguous emotional response.

  ‘I have a theory that if you are too close to someone it’s impossible to see them objectively. Their emotions become reflections of your own emotions. There is no distance. That’s what I’ve done with the work, removed the distance, physically. Actually I haven’t written much of an explanation for it because sometimes the images have to stand for themselves. There isn’t really anything more than that. What they are, here, physically in the space.’

  She nods. I have left her no room for another question and I feel suddenly guilty about this.

  ‘But it is physical, you know. Painting, for me. It is about the oil and the pigment on the canvas. It is kind of like—something—swimming—or—dancing—or something.’

  I wince. I can’t believe I have said all of that. Some of my students are in the room. John is here, looking helplessly towards me.

  ‘It’s a completely different process for me than, say, what Duane does.’ I turn to Duane. I direct the attention away from me and towards Duane. The founder of the soup kitchen asks Duane if art is a physical exercise for him, and of course it is not. He is well versed in the theory behind his images. He explains his thesis about taboos. The act of making the viewer an ethical reader of the work. Making their participation both pleasurable and uncomfortable. At the end of his talk the audience clap and cheer. It is only afterwards, stepping out of the line, that I realise there was never an opportunity for people to clap for me.

  He is here in the crowd somewhere and I could find him, stand with him. He is my student and therefore I have a reason to be speaking with him. We could be discussing art. I find another waiter and relieve him of yet another glass of champagne. Maybe I can leave after this glass. No one will notice. They are too busy trying to speak to Duane. I turn and there is Nancy Gato and because we are standing so close she must acknowledge me.

  ‘Hi,’ she says, and, ‘well done, with…’ She gestures vaguely in the direction of our paintings, pointing directly at Duane’s computer terminals but she is not really looking so she is not to know.

  ‘Yes. Good work with the flowers.’

  ‘Well they’re not actually flowers, which is the point, but I know what you mean and thank you.’

  I turn to look at her bunches of flowers which really do look like flowers and wish I had taken a moment to read the program before being forced in
to a conversation with Nancy Gato.

  ‘Your work is much less aggressive than your sister’s isn’t it?’ she says and I shrug.

  ‘That’s one way of putting it.’

  ‘Well Emily’s work is so—passionate.’

  By which she means my work is cold. It was a word used in one of the brief reviews of my first exhibition, cold, reserved, and the words have haunted me ever since.

  ‘Yes. But I am not mentally ill,’ I tell her and I can hear the champagne bubbling up into my conversation. I try to rein it in but it is too late now. ‘I think that has an impact on my work.’

  ‘Not that all artists have to be mad.’

  ‘No, no, of course not. But it certainly helps, don’t you think?’

  Nancy giggles nervously and eases herself back just a little as I forge ahead. ‘The visions I mean, the hallucinations. But I suppose we could just take drugs.’

  ‘Or drink too much.’

  ‘Mmm.’ I nod. Take another gulp of champagne. ‘Well, cheers to you.’

  ‘And to you.’

  We clink glasses and the gesture releases her to move on to other, less drunk, conversations. I swear under my breath. I look towards the door, make my way in that direction. There is nowhere to put my glass. Why don’t they put tables out at these things for the empty glasses?

  I feel a hand on my elbow and swing around too quickly. John laughs. I have spilled his champagne.

  ‘I thought you were trying to escape,’ he says.

  ‘I was.’

  ‘Well don’t. I want you to meet my friend.’

  I notice her now. A pretty girl, short dark bob. A little black dress worn a bit self-consciously. Too much makeup. I try to smile, but I know it looks more like a grimace. It is too late for me to save this.

  ‘Hi.’ I extend my hand. ‘Bec,’ I tell her and she shakes my hand, a frightened little brush of her limp fingers.

  ‘Bec, this is Lindsay. Lindsay this is Bec.’

  ‘Hi.’