Chapter Thirty-Four
Mari
“Aren’t you tired?” xe asks me.
“Sure, but I’m awake now and I…” I pause.
For the first time since I entered this room, I feel that defensiveness that Lex prompts in me.
But then I look in xir misty brown eyes and I push it back down.
I’ve never seen Lex look like this. Never.
Xe looks so fragile and small and vulnerable.
And maybe it’s sick of me, but I want to know why.
“I like watching you work. I always did.”
Lex’s eyebrows lift. Xe is surprised.
“You remember, don’t you?” I sit on the armchair xe normally occupies.
Sure, maybe we’re having a possible bonding moment, but sitting next to xem on the sofa feels like a step too far.
“When you couldn’t sleep when we were kids, teens, you’d wake up in the middle of the night and sketch all these wild ideas that kept you awake.
And I’d watch. I’d lie on my side next to you and watch your pencil or pen move quicker than should be possible, and you were so…
so lost in your art. I found it fascinating. ”
Lex’s eyes glaze over again, and it’s like xe isn’t looking at me but through me.
I fear xe is going to cry, just like I thought xe would when I first saw xem, but then xe blinks and xe moves.
Xe gets off the sofa and sits cross-legged on the floor.
Xe picks up a blank canvas off the floor and rests it standing up against the sofa.
Xe gathers paints and a piece of cardboard covered in smudged paint, a makeshift mixing palette.
In no time at all, xe has chosen colours and has a wet brush in xir hand.
Before xe makes contact with the canvas, xe looks up at me.
“Do you ever see them…or did you? When you lived there.”
I frown. “Who?”
“My family. My mum, my brothers?”
I move to the sofa so I’m closer and our voices don’t wake Roos. “Yeah, sometimes. Not often. I’d see your brothers in the bars occasionally. And your mum around town. I saw your grandma once in Sainsbury’s. We spoke for ages. I think she forgot that we weren’t,” I pull a face, “friends anymore.”
Lex’s face goes very serious. “She always lived in her own world. She believed what she wanted to believe.”
“Must be nice.” I yawn and lie down, resting my head on a cushion. I’m facing Lex, seeing only the top of xir face above the canvas.
“Yeah,” Lex says, xir voice coarse.
“Do you not speak to her? What about your mum?”
Lex puts xir brush to the canvas and starts moving xir hand, xir eyes on the movement. “We don’t talk much.”
My eyebrows pull together. That surprises me. Xe always had a good relationship with xir family and was more like friends with xir mum.
“You know your grandfather came into the studio once,” I say as the memory hits me. “It was like a year after you left. He was looking for you.”
Lex’s hand stops. “Looking for me?”
“Yeah, he thought I’d have a number or an address for you.”
“What the…” Xe face twists into a confused expression. “What did you say to him?”
“I told him the last I heard you were here, in Amsterdam. But that we weren’t in contact anymore.”
Lex stares at the canvas, unblinking. “What else did he say?”
I yawn. “I can’t remember. I mean, nothing unusual. I was just surprised he was there.”
“Okay.” Lex blinks once and then gets back to painting.
“I can’t believe you never went home. Not once,” I say, feeling sleepy again now I’m lying down.
“There was no need,” Lex says, abruptly. “And once I got here, I got busy. Things…took off.”
“That quickly?”
“No,” Lex laughs at xemself. “Not quickly. At least, it certainly didn’t feel it at the time, but when I look back on it now, I guess it was, relatively speaking.”
“I knew it would happen.” My eyelids fall a little. “I always knew you’d make it.”
“Define make it?”
“Be who you are now. Be successful. Be famous. Be making art and making a living off it.”
“Right.”
“Aren’t you proud?” I open my eyes wider, scrutinising xem.
Lex looks up at me. “Sometimes.”
“You should be,” I say firmly.
“You should be, too,” Lex says.
“Me?” I snort. “A townie tattoo artist? Somebody who didn’t cut the umbilical cord until she was twenty-nine.”
Lex looks down at the floor. “I shouldn’t have said that. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I’m not ashamed,” I say, feeling the tingles of defensiveness again. “But I am glad I’m here now.”
Lex looks up, holds my gaze. “Really?” Xir voice is laced with hope.
“Sometimes,” I tease with a smile.
Lex doesn’t laugh with me. Xir face is deadly serious, solemn even, as xe replies, “I’m glad you’re here too.”
We stay like that, looking at each other for a very long time. Lex’s eyes mist over and xir mouth opens. I wait for whatever it is xe is going to say, but xe closes xir lips and gets back to painting.
I want to ask xem if xe is okay. I want to know what xe was about to say. I want to know whatever it is that is clearly bothering xem. I want to know… Despite myself, I want to know all of Lex.
But the moment has passed, and Lex is frowning in concentration at the canvas as xir hand moves at a quick pace.
I watch xem for a while, just in case Lex changes xir mind and wants to talk again, but xe doesn’t.
Then my lids grow heavy again, and it gets harder to keep my eyes open, so I close them.
And shortly after they are closed, I fall asleep to the sound of a paintbrush swishing over a canvas with great purpose.
*****
When I wake, I have no concept of time. The lamps are still on, I’m covered with a blanket, and there are no other sounds in the room.
I look down at the floor, and Lex is curled up like a cat in front of xir painting supplies.
The canvas is still propped up against the sofa.
I watch Lex for a while, and it’s like I’m transported back ten years.
It’s like I’m eighteen again, waking up before xem and getting to watch xir beautiful face in slumber.
There are differences now – xir snakebite piercing, xir shaved head – but xir eyes are still just as big.
Even closed, they take up so much space on xir face.
Xir mouth is pursed in a peaceful pout, and xir chest rises and falls as xe takes long, deep breaths.
It’s watching xem now that I realise Lex is rarely this still, this calm, this peaceful.
Even back then, when we were teenagers, xe was always moving, always doing, always in flux.
It’s also been that way since we’ve been reunited.
And all these nights we’ve shared the same living space, this is the first time I’ve seen xem still and asleep.
I get up and give xem the blanket. Gently, I lift xir head and put a cushion under it. I wish I was strong enough to lift xem onto the sofa, but I really don’t want to disturb xem that much. It’s as I’m getting up that I see the canvas behind xir head.
I stop. I freeze. My heart stops beating.
It’s me. The painting is of me. My face.
Tilted to the side, it’s undeniably me. Smiling, laughing, happy.
Every single line is blurred, the colours melting into one another, but I see my round cheeks, my pointed chin, my short but messy hair.
It’s abstract – reds and pinks and blues and greens and yellows where there should be neutrals and peach-coloured skin and brown hair – but it’s undeniably me.
It’s me and I look beautiful. I look happy. I look like I know I am loved.
I drop my eyes to Lex again.
Maybe I do. Maybe I do know that I am loved.