take two

New revised extended draft! Thanks for the helpful comments guys.

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It happened again today. You caught yourself remembering. It is her again; hands plunged into the kitchen sink, her fingers flicking the soapsuds. She is laughing, splashing tiny drops of water onto the bench, the floor, onto you. You can hear her laugh distinctly. It’s tinkly, like the sound of the dishes clinking in the sink. Her hands flutter when she laughs. Long and graceful and light, they skitter effortlessly across the water like they do the black and white keys. They tap lightly against the window pane or her cigarette. Flick, splash, flutter, skitter, tap. The memories come sharp and quick, like a slideshow on a projector, shuttling through your mind, getting faster, mixing themselves up, absent of any sense of order.

It was Martin who introduced you to her. The Martin you used to work with at the factory, who had long hair and who was always drunk and looking for his next kick. You were at one of his parties. The one’s that you used to go to only when you were sure you had nothing better to do. They were all the same; dim lighting, sweaty faces, heavy metal in the background. You’d seen her earlier, a slim figure clad in black across the other side of the room, her features animated in the midst of conversation. ‘She’s a painter,’ Martin said in your ear when he’d noticed the direction of your gaze. ‘Pictures, not walls.’ Several beers later, he’d propelled you over to her and disappeared, giving you an encouraging thump on the back. The painter was small and delicate, with angular features and an air of quiet unselfconsciousness. A painter, you would later discover, who favoured impressionism over realism, yoga over pilates, and Katherine over Audrey Hepburn. She held out her left hand instead of her right and when she articulated a slow hello a puff of smoke escaped her lips.

Perhaps it was her slightly smudged red lipstick, or her gentle enigmatic smile, but something about her put you at ease. Loosened by the beers you’d drunk, you began to talk. You were overcome, for some reason, by this skinny child-like woman with her smattering of freckles and clear, intelligent grey eyes. Overcome with an urge to try and convey something to her. Something meaningful and specific, although you weren’t sure what. You paused, haltingly, at the sound of your own disjointed sentences, suddenly feeling like a fool. But she was attentive and encouraging. In the end you stopped teetering around the edge and dived headlong into a conversation largely made up of isms and wild gesticulations. When you finally surfaced, you realised that you really had no idea what you were talking about. But she didn’t seem to mind. That night, you left feeling inspired, soaked with some sense of change. You felt as though a little something inside of you had opened up, something you hadn’t quite known was there before.

II.

It was a house you knew you would belong in right away. Open-plan, with polished boards, high ceilings and lots of north-facing windows. And it was cluttered, not in a stifling way but in a comfortable, familiar way. This house was lived in, it seemed to say. In the kitchen a row of colourful teapots and faded china sat on display, the kind with hand painted roses on it, so thin that the edges of the cups and saucers were almost translucent. They reminded you of the ones your grandmother used to use and of hot Anzac biscuits straight out of the oven that she always served with tea. Through the hallway framed portraits lined the walls, impressionistic ones that you hadn’t seen before. No, they weren’t hers, the painter answered with that same smile as she led you to the spare room. It was raining the day that you moved in. You arrived dripping wet, garbage bags stuffed with clothes, your back bent with the heavier weight of all you were trying to leave behind. The painter opened the door. ‘Welcome home,’ she said. And as soon as you stepped inside, you knew you were.

On Saturday mornings, the painter sat in the armchair beside the window, flipping meditatively through an art book. Monet, Renoir, Van Gough. You watched her sometimes from the stairwell, safely hidden by the angle of the door way. Her blonde head would always be highlighted in the sunlight that filtered through the window, a cup of tea in her hand, her eyes sometimes closed. It was the mornings when her mind was the clearest, serene and pure, waiting to be filled with the images conspiring in her unconscious. You wondered what colours were forming, blotting onto her mental canvas, tentatively at first, then faster and faster; an explosion of joyful enthusiasm. She would tell you later that on those morning’s she was certain of some kind of supernatural presence that pervaded the room. Did you know what she meant? No, you had said. You didn’t believe in the supernatural. She had touched your arm with soft fingertips and you had flinched slightly. It’s there, she said, you just need to sit very still to feel it.