For Hermine de Graaf
Hayley and I are friends. Good friends. At least, we’re friends in the way I think friends are, though I don’t have much experience. We text each other something funny every day and emojis late at night when we’re too tired to say anything more than eggplant or pink heart house or hand-over-face emoji. We drink beers in beer gardens and near fireplaces when it gets cold, with me switching to wine because I like the feeling of it in my muscles. We tell each other all the things we hope to be. When something happy comes to one of us, we share the joy like salty hot chips from the bain-marie in brown wax bags, exclaiming at the deliciousness. Hayley tells me she tells me things she doesn’t tell anyone else. We hug for at least four seconds when we greet and when we goodbye.
Hayley tells me on a Thursday, sitting at one of the tables at Kent Street, that she wants to go to the van Gogh exhibition at the gallery, and asks if I want to go too. I take a big breath before I answer. There’s this thing about me, a thing I’ve been trying to change, and the thing is the way I don’t always know my own mind. I’ve never had any particularly interesting experiences while looking at van Gogh’s art; I don’t even like his famous paintings. The sunflower one reminds me of vomit for some reason, and I remember feeling all leaky when I saw his self-portrait with the bandaged ear in a book I was flipping through in a bookshop once—not because he’d done that to himself but because he just looked so vulnerable and cold and alone.
Despite this, and because I have no way of saying no to anyone, I say that I’d like to go to the exhibition and pay twenty dollars to remind myself that yellow is not my favourite colour and neither is blue. I say to Hayley that I was planning to go, even though I wasn’t, and Hayley smiles and asks me when I’m free. Smith Street is alive and it’s one of those late afternoons or early evenings when everything dirty can be reasoned with, so I suggest Tuesday. And even though pay day isn’t until next Thursday and I have fifty dollars to last me, I am happy when she says it’s a plan because it means that maybe we are eternal.
The night ends, and then it’s Friday, and then the weekend. I don’t really enjoy working at Chemist Warehouse on the registers, but it’s only part-time and I get to smile at people paying for their Zoloft and their bulk-box ibuprofen and their infected-toe cream, which I hope might help in some small way. The uniform makes me look like an airport customs officer and doesn’t do my hips any favours, and I am always rostered on with a woman in her fifties called Joy who has a daughter who is getting married, but it gives me enough pay to get me through the week, and when I’m not there I make sure to sit on grass and under sun and go walking so I can get my vitamin D and remind myself not everyone is suffering, and so I bear it.
*
I work until ten on Saturdays. The security guard on is almost always Abshir. He is very kind and smiles at everyone, but he also knows how to have a laugh, like at Joy, who before going on her break to meet her new boyfriend at Naked for Satan sprays herself with one of the perfumes from the cabinet when she thinks no one is looking. Abshir came to Melbourne from Somalia when he was seventeen, and his voice is round and deep. I’ve had two dreams where I am kissing him; I wonder if he can tell from my face on the next shift. In the dreams his hands are as dry and warm as the towels at the one fancy hotel I stayed at with my family when I was thirteen and my dad thought he was going to get a promotion. I make myself orgasm after the second dream, hot under the covers at six in the morning, the sound of the men collecting the rubbish bins outside the window, Abshir’s hands all over me. It’s the best orgasm I’ve had in months and to celebrate I have eggs fried in butter on white toast for breakfast.
*
On Tuesday I text Hayley after I wake up late, and she texts back straight away saying she’s ready to go to the gallery whenever I am, with a red-cheeked, closed-eyes smiling-face emoji at the end. She uses that emoji all the time, but it hasn’t lost its meaning. I am looking forward to seeing her, to smelling her clean hair and telling her about what Joy said yesterday about women who don’t want to have children, but I am dreading the exhibition. I keep thinking about walking past all the paintings van Gogh worked on before he died, misunderstood and sick in his mind, without any hope or happiness, when he was only thirty-seven. The paintings are like tears or blood when I imagine them on the walls of the NGV.
I hope it will be different when we are there. I know that van Gogh shot himself and that he died thirty hours later, a slow and curdled death, alone on the floor. This knowledge makes me feel like there is something heavy on my chest, like I am suffocating. I move the thoughts out of my head and have a shower that starts off hot and ends up cold. I need to get to the tram stop before 11.06am and my housemate Tara has opened every window in the house before going to work, so I run around in my towel, stopping at each one to wind it shut. I hate being late because I can’t think of anything worse than running in public. I make it to the tram and get a seat next to a man who has his legs spread as wide as he can without splitting his boardshorts. He’s listening to something throbby on big white headphones and seems to be asleep.
When I arrive, I spot Hayley facing the water wall. I recognise her waist and her legs and her jacket with the embroidered blue bird on the back, the shiny top of her head. The way she is standing is the way only she stands. I like that.
She is making an Instagram story of the water wall. She tells me she’s embarrassed that I’ve caught her, then asks if I’ll help her decide if it’s good enough to share. I watch the seven-second video over and over until the water starts to look like snakes in a pit. Her hand is wet when she grabs mine and we hug for our four seconds.
Inside, it’s mayhem. Hayley tells me she remembered when she arrived that it’s school holidays. She knows because her dad is a teacher and she sees her family once a week for dinner at a Szechuan restaurant in Doncaster with plastic tablecloths and a TV mounted in the corner. She hates going because she hates her family. Hayley uses big words like hate a lot. She also says it’s a free meal and that if she didn’t go she’d be hounded for it. Hounded, hate, free. She doesn’t tone things down, isn’t scared to speak what she’s feeling, even if it doesn’t last.
There are kids running all over the place, screaming, and I can only see a few adults flailing at the edges. It’s not quiet and it’s not still, and I feel tired already. I feel like I should smile at Hayley, make sure she’s having a good time. I look over and see that she’s looking at her phone.
Hayley wants to go look at the gift shop first, which seems wrong, like going backwards, but there are less kids over near there and I like looking at the art postcards. Hayley buys some Yayoi Kusama pumpkin tea towels and tells me she feels like a bougie young wife who makes pies from scratch. Really, she’s dating three guys at once and doesn’t like any of them and she’d rather eat a packet of Light & Tangy Thins for dinner than cook anything. She says she’s going to hang them on the wall instead of dry dishes with them: beautiful paintings made of linen. We joke about her walls—mostly covered with the posters from her housemate John’s previous band, Snakebite, who broke up two years ago. He has asked that no one take them down yet, because he’s not quite ready to start grieving.
We walk towards the entrance of the exhibit and Hayley tells me she’s hoping they have her favourite painting on display, Undergrowth with Two Figures. She shows it to me on her phone and it is spooky and lovely, like she says. There are two figures, maybe a man and a woman—one is wearing a suit and one is wearing a long dress. Their faces are turned away, perhaps they’re walking away from where the painter stood, and they are surrounded by tall, thin grey trees. The tree trunks are actually blue and pink and black but look like grey, and the ground is lush with flowers and weeds and long green grasses. It’s strange, this couple walking in the middle of a wild, thick forest, as if they are going to a party or a dance or something. They are old-fashioned but the forest is timeless. I tell Hayley I love it too. She tells me it reminds her of loneliness, like the painter wished they were a part of it, any of it, but they were not.
There aren’t as many people within the thick white walls of the actual exhibition. No one is running. People are floating in that way they often do in front of paintings: hands clasped behind backs, legs straight in long, slow steps, faces soft and tender. I finally understand why van Gogh is famous. The paintings I see when we enter hit me like little bolts of special lightning. They are careful yet overgrown, luscious yet sensible, and the people in the paintings are cared about and seen, in the lines of their bodies against the fields. We are in ‘Autumn’, and the colours are yellow and brown and orange and dirt and the fabric of farmer’s overalls and mild afternoon sky. I feel warm looking at it all.
Hayley is just ahead of me, and then I stop to take a long look at a scene of some workers in a field with a swirly sky and she’s not there anymore when I look around again. In front of me, hiding the next few paintings, are some lanky boys with spotted cheeks, shoving each other and pretending to reach out and touch the canvas. I wonder why they are here—why they are not outside in the air, in their jerseys and plastic shorts. All around them are more people who are not Hayley, but that’s okay: we can lose each other and find each other again later. A sense of calm has come over me as I am surrounded by this expensive art. I don’t worry about anything.
There are bits of hanging material separating the main room into small sections. I assume they are mirrors, but I can’t see myself in them, and almost start to think I’m someone else. After that room ends, there are more rooms of different sizes: one with a low ceiling, one with a high one, one with ‘Summer’ on the walls and a man talking about van Gogh’s sister-in-law, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, the woman who made sure his paintings were seen—really seen—long after he and his brother had died.
I wonder if Hayley is hearing this man talking and look around for her, because she must be somewhere, but there are too many people, so I slide down the wall and sit on the floor so I can hear him better. There’s a woman with a small boy in her lap next to me, calm and cross-legged, and I watch the boy take a long, wet drink from his sippy cup. I’m thirsty.
There’s no water in here, and I can’t concentrate on the man who is passionate about van Gogh’s sister-in-law anymore because my mouth is so dry it’s sticking. I wonder if Hayley has a bottle of water in her bag. I stand up and smile down at the little boy, who looks up at me as if I am disgusting, and then I move through the crowd that is pretending to listen, and then through the people behind them who are looking at the paintings.
I find another room. Written on the wall is the word ‘Spring’ and it is true, this word, because the art in here is more blue and green and pink and there are flowers and maybe even birds if I looked closely, but I don’t because I can see Hayley isn’t in here, and I wonder if she could have gone home without me, or whether I’ve somehow left her behind. I can feel my heart beating close to one of my ribs, tapping on it like a scared little bird might tap at a tree. My palms are clenched and the sweat is gathering in each, collecting on the skin inside in droplets, pooling. I make the air come in through my mouth and pull it all the way into my lower belly, near my pelvis and my vagina, to calm myself. It doesn’t work.
There are too many corners now, to this room. I start to turn—I don’t know why but I do. To the left, then to the right, around and around: until I am spinning. As if I’m waiting for someone to stop me. It’s scary to be alone in a place full of people, I realise as I spin. And then all I can think is: Keep going, keep going, until you fly away.
Some time later, I am very dizzy. A hand on my shoulder pulls me out and I fall to the gallery floor. It’s a slow, soft fall though, and I look up to see Hayley above me. She looks worried, so I try to smile because it is so good to see her, and because I didn’t vomit, even though I might have been trying to. And because now I am safe. I ignore the familiar feeling of loving too much, needing too much. I think I know what van Gogh felt like sometimes, though it feels too soon to open my mouth and tell Hayley that. She asks me if I am okay and I tell her that I am. I pull myself up, I am standing again, but not spinning. Around us, paintings decorate the walls.
*
Hayley takes the tram home with me. We sit facing the direction it is travelling, the carriage creaking slowly up and down and curving to the right and left as it takes us out of the city. She leans her head on my shoulder a few times, just briefly, reminding me that I have a body and the scare is over. I’m very tired by the time I get to the front door and push my key in and open. Though everything is the same colour as it was when I left in the morning, there is a new blue underneath the walls, in the carpet and on my skin in the mirror as I brush my teeth. I imagine painting myself like this—worn, sleepy, mouth full of foaming Colgate, glowing cerulean from beneath. Self-Portrait After Panic, I would call it.
I wipe my mouth and climb into bed, then I text Hayley three kiss-heart-face emojis.
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