Trust (45 page)

Melita flashed a look at her producer, who pursed her lips and gave several confirming nods. ‘Great story, Susanna,’ Megan said. ‘And I hope this doesn’t sound – er … but, well, visually, the contrast between the way you look and the work you’re showing is … striking.’ She grinned.

‘The students influencing the teacher thing is such a neat little twist – plus having a council gallery like Booradalla showing work like this,’ said Melita.

‘Oh yeah.’ Megan was now texting furiously on her BlackBerry. ‘Good. Topical. We could certainly give Booradalla a plug.’

From the other side of the framing shop, Vinnie gave Susanna a double thumbs up. As the
Arts Week
pair went from drawing to drawing, painting to painting, Vinnie sidled up to her. ‘A plug like this?’ she hissed in her ear. ‘The councillors will love you. We won’t hear another peep out of them.’

‘And this one,’ Melita said. ‘Tell us about these stamps,
REFUSE
and
DENY
, across the — oh, I get it. This is the story of the people on the SIEV X. Wow.’

‘You’ll see words stamped on several of the narratives,’ Susanna pointed out. ‘
CENSORED. UNKNOWN.
Well, they’re not actual stamps, of course, I’ve painted them on.’

‘Nice layer,’ said Megan briskly. ‘Effective.’ She was checking her messages. ‘Mm. I’m sorry to rush you, Susanna, but for various boring but unavoidable reasons, we’re in urgent mode here. We’d like to shoot an interview with you; it won’t go to air for several weeks, but because of our production schedule we need to shoot it – tomorrow. Here at Studio Lulu. Around ten. Can you do that?’

‘
Yes!
’ said Vinnie, and Susanna nodded.

‘Yes,’ she said.

In a way, Susanna felt that her exhibition opened the Sunday afternoon before the official one, when she was sitting in Leonard Styles’ living room, crowded on to his couch with Stella-Jean and Finn and Angie, with Seb and Rory sharing one armchair and Leonard in the other, watching
Arts Week
. After the program’s debonair presenter introduced the story, the screen suddenly filled with Susanna’s face and Stella-Jean let out an ear-piercing squeal. ‘That’s
you
!’

‘I know, darling,’ Susanna said calmly, even though part of her was asking,
Is that me?
and she felt queasy with nerves. One of her graphic narratives flashed up: a Black Saturday bushfire one, the story of a well-known journalist and his wife fighting, unsuccessfully, to save their home. Susanna’s voiceover, explaining something, and then the painting: a hand, that of the journalist’s daughter, reaching out to touch the charred black body of her beloved dog, found curled beneath the remains of a favourite chair. Rory murmured, ‘That’s so
sad
.’ Then Melita’s face with its intelligent smile, interviewing her: just a few sentences, it seemed, which Susanna couldn’t quite take in. Another drawing, the camera moving around it to show the panels, the captions. Lucy Simonic, curator of Booradalla Gallery, talking artspeak; segue to a montage of the paintings. Susanna felt quite startled: the work looked strangely familiar, but not like her own. And then the segment was over and the debonair presenter was back, saying, ‘And you can see Susanna Greenfield’s remarkable graphic narratives in her debut exhibition,
Remember Me
, at Booradalla Gallery in Melbourne, opening on …’ He gave the date, paused, and moved on to the next item.

Everyone had been sitting forward tensely in their seats, and now, like marionettes released, they all flopped back. Then Angie turned to her sister and flung her arms around her. ‘That was
beautiful!
’ she said. She was crying, Susanna realised, which made her feel like she might start crying too.

‘Hooray!’ yelled Stella-Jean, and Finn yelled hooray too, and then again, for good measure.

Seb said, ‘You were fantastic, Ma.’

‘I couldn’t be prouder of you if you were my own daughter,’ said Leonard, and Susanna, who had met his daughter, an eye doctor working in Africa, thanked him sincerely. ‘I’ve taped it,’ Leonard added, ‘so your husband can watch it later.’

‘Wow, you’ve still got a video machine?’ said Seb.

Susanna said, ‘That’s so thoughtful of you, Leonard.’ The program would be repeated in a couple of days, but Gerry might be busy again then, too.

‘Ga-
zillions
of people are going to come to your opening now,’ said Stella-Jean with relish. ‘I hope the council’s organised heaps of catering.’

The following Thursday at five o’clock, as the caterers were bringing in what certainly seemed to be plenty of food and drink, Susanna stood to one side of the gallery watching three brown-robed Buddhist nuns conclude a ceremony. It had been as low-key and unobtrusive as Angie had promised, and Susanna found their sonorous chanting remarkably soothing.

‘What’s the ceremony, again?’ she asked Angie quietly.

‘It’s partly about all the people in your drawings, and laying their suffering to rest,’ said Ange. ‘And also for an auspicious beginning for your exhibition, welcoming something new. You know, the eternal cycle of life. That’s how I understand it, anyway.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ Susanna said. ‘Finn seemed to like it, too.’

‘It’s wonderful how he’s taken to the nuns,’ Angie said. They were both watching the little boy sitting close to the brown-robed, shorn-haired women, quiet and relaxed, as he had been throughout their ceremony. ‘He told me he wants them to keep living at our house. And as much as he hated Gabriel’s singing, he loves their chanting. He says they’re not doing it to show off or to make people like them, they’re doing it to help people feel peaceful inside.’

‘Does he? What a remarkable thing to say – and I agree with him. Thanks for arranging for them to come, Ange.’

‘Susu,’ said Angie, ‘thank
you
for letting me.’

Susanna watched her sister go over and stand beside her son, one hand resting on his shoulder, as the nuns packed up their painted cloths and gong and the small statue they’d brought.
She’s much more peaceful too. It’s really easy to be around her, these days.

Not long now till people started arriving. She had a last look around at what she and Lucy, with help from a couple of her students, had finished hanging the night before. Twenty-eight pairs: twenty-eight graphic narratives in black and white, and their twenty-eight little paintings, bright and clear as gemstones. A photocopied stack of her artist’s statement was ready for anyone who wanted more information about the things depicted – as much, at least, as was known. In most cases, such things as people’s names were not.

Remember me.

The last pair on the wall of the gallery told the story of a woman, an ordinary Australian woman who worked hard all her life, looked after her husband and her two daughters, who loved, who did her best, and who, finally, died. In a car crash – that was the narrative’s last image, after the slide into disaster. Chaos’ still centre, and the car’s four occupants, a few minutes after it had happened
: my mother, my son, my daughter, my nephew
. Leaning in at the driver’s window, the head and shoulders of the young paramedic who’d witnessed her mother’s last breaths. In the small acrylic painting, mounted above, she had painted her mother’s left hand, old and delicately wrinkled, the prominent veins that had just carried their last freight of blood, at rest on the steering wheel. Her old-fashioned engagement ring and her simple gold wedding band, thin from fifty years of wear, gleamed eerily in the ambulance’s blue light.

Susanna placed her own hand on the glass above her mother’s painted hand.
Thank you, Mum
, she told her silently.
I love you. I love you so much. I always will.

Then people were arriving, more and more of them. Vinnie and half the artists who had work spaces at Studio Lulu or did classes there. Belinda, her head of department, who had not only planted the seed of this show but turned bureaucracy inside out to support her this year, along with other people from the college. A touching number of Susanna’s students, past as well as present. Lucy was introducing her to councillors, each of whom Susanna made a point of thanking warmly; many mentioned the
Arts Week
story with unequivocal pride.

The gallery was quite large, but it was starting to feel crowded, and the noise level was rising. Denise and Jo from the book group, and Andrea, the potter. Countless congratulatory kisses.
A buzz; there’s a real buzz
. Wendy, from tennis, and Joe;
yes, you made it all the way to the outer
’
burbs.
Andrew, his red hair gleaming way above most other people’s heads. Susanna saw Seb greet him with a hug that didn’t give anything away and a joining of their eyes that did, and she felt her heart swell a little more.
Be good to my boy
, she thought to Andrew, and an answer rose within her,
He will.

There were nurses and doctors she’d got to know at the hospital, several of whom told her how they used to watch her drawing and had always been curious. But they seemed even more eager to see Stella-Jean, who was flitting about with Tessa, leaning on her friend’s arm when she got tired or was in danger of being jostled. She had one of her extraordinary floral brooches pinned to a hairband around her still-short hair.
She looks well, she looks so well!

Angie had taken Finn home with the Buddhist nuns, and returned herself just as the din was at its peak, having changed into a teal shantung sixties cocktail dress. Susanna was in black trousers and a top covered in tiny scraps of cloth individually stitched on, that Stella-Jean had made, and which, Susanna had been gratified to notice when she put it on earlier, made her look much slimmer. The sisters were standing side by side when Stella-Jean came up and gave her mother a congratulatory hug. ‘This is fan
tas
tic, Mum,’ she said. ‘Can we go to Bali this Christmas?’

‘Yes,’ replied Susanna without a moment’s hesitation.

Stella-Jean gave a heartfelt air-punch. ‘
Yesss!
I knew you’d say yes if I asked you now! Can Finn come too?’ she asked Angie.

‘Yes,’ Angie said.

‘All
right.
Can we stay for the whole holidays?’

‘Can you not push your luck, for once in your life?’ asked Susanna.

‘You’re the greatest, Mum,’ her daughter said, and kissed her. She and Tessa chugged off again, into the throng.

The caterers were overwhelmed, and Susanna noticed that some of her students – Bianca, a couple of the Emilys – had stepped in to help, and Angelo and Tom were carrying empty bottles out to the recycle bins. She found a moment to thank them and Bianca told her that was cool, Susanna had made them famous, and did she know the show had been mentioned in about a hundred blogs already? And she herself could hardly keep up with the Twitter traffic.

‘That’s – awesome,’ Susanna managed.

‘Awesome!’ Bianca giggled. ‘It’s so funny when you say it.’

Red stickers! The first time she saw Lucy’s assistant put a red sticker beside one of the little paintings, she had the impulse to tell her,
No, don’t, it’s a mistake
, but then another went up, and another. ‘Who’s buying them?’ she hissed at Lucy, who pointed several people out. The most amazing thing was, they were mostly people Susanna didn’t even know.
People actually like them! They get it!
She felt like air-punching too.

She overheard Gerry, in a collarless shirt of periwinkle blue that perfectly complemented his eyes, skiting to people that the idea of
CENSORED
and the other stamps had been his. ‘That’s right, it was,’ she said, stepping forward. ‘And I don’t know if I’ve ever thanked you for that, darling.’ On tiptoes, she kissed his cheek, and he put his arm around her, smiling just like Robert Redford in his prime, and as the clutch of people around them stood back a little she realised that the council’s photographer was there, lining them up. Susanna beamed, straight into the lens.
Savour this moment
, she told herself.
It doesn’t get any better than this.

THIRTY-NINE

‘The one-way streets round here are a pain, Susanna; why don’t you let me off at this corner?’ Vinnie said. ‘I can walk, it’s not that cold.’

‘Don’t be silly, it’s on the way,’ said Susanna, threading her way expertly through the grey lanes of inner-city Richmond on a chilly winter’s evening. ‘I know this area like the back of my hand; Gerry and Marcus bought their office here way back when it was still mostly factories. Whose birthday is it you’re going to, Vin?’

‘Caroline, one of my old dyke buddies. Remember when
real
feminists used to change their family names to honour the matriarchy? So, she was Caroline Cora’s-daughter. For ages
.
We told her it sounded like a dairy cow; we all used to go
moo
when she came into the room.’ They both snickered. ‘She’s gone back to using Mitchell now.’

‘Probably easier,’ Susanna said.

‘Big night out for you, eh? I mean, Circumflex? Woo hoo!’ said Vinnie, making goo-goo eyes at her. ‘I guess this is to celebrate this morning’s article in the Oz, eh? You media
star
, you!’

Susanna ducked her head shyly. ‘It’s just one article. Not really that big a deal.’

‘Yes it is, and you know it. Indisputably a big deal, and worth celebrating.’

‘Gerry had already booked this. More to celebrate the exhibition itself, I guess.’

‘Oh? Well, good for him! Um, Susanna – not that I’m the fashion guru but – do you really think those flats go with the outfit? I mean, they’re cute as hell, but …’

Susanna flashed her an amused glance. ‘I know, I’ve got high heels in my bag. I’ll change before I meet Gerry, but these are
so
comfortable. My daughter gave them to me.’

‘Don’t think I’ve ever seen ballet flats with bunny-tail pompoms on the front before,’ Vinnie commented.

Susanna took a peek down at her feet, smiling. ‘She’s made a range of them.
Frou-frou flats
, she calls them
.
Butterflies for the hippie chicks, rubber spiders for the goth girls – or is it the punks? Punk girls, maybe.’