Chapter 15 #2
He grabs two coats and throws one at me and heads to a door at the back of the house, grabbing the remainder of the bottle of wine on our way out. It leads to a cold, stark little passageway that he takes me down until we get to another door.
‘Now, it’s not finished, so don’t judge it too harshly.
’ He reaches into the darkness of the room and flicks the switch, sending iridescent light streaming onto every cement surface.
In the middle of the room, standing around 10 feet high and around 5 inches diameter is the statue, white and speckled with glinting flashes of alabaster.
It takes a while to adjust to the sheer size of it, the ridiculousness of this sculpture in the middle of the shabby studio, where plaster is splattered on every inch of ceiling and skirting and floorboard.
I step towards it, reach my hand out and run it along the base.
There are birds in all different stages of flight and size, skimming the surface.
Flowers trail up to the calves of the central figure: a woman, holding in her hands a pomegranate as her hair falls around her shoulders like seaweed, so smooth and fluid.
I move around it, my fingers tracing the indentations he has so delicately carved out.
I follow the line from where her bare palm reaches for her counterpart across the rock: a man, cowering below, prostrate, his face pained, whilst around him the flowers turn to strangling weeds knotting around his thighs, but still his hand reaches with such determination towards hers.
I turn my gaze to the sculptor who stands watching me take it all in. His arms are clutched around his body, his feet tapping out an unsteady beat.
‘It’s beautiful, so beautiful.’ It comes out as a soft murmur.
‘You like it?’
‘How could you not?’
‘You get the reference?’
‘Now with my limited ancient knowledge, I’d say she’s Persephone?’
‘A+.’
‘But him?’
‘I wanted to look at the story from Hades’ perspective.
Whilst everyone celebrates Persephone’s ascendence back to the living for half the year, I imagined Hades, rooted in the Underworld with all the things that are doomed and dying whilst she lives and flourishes without him.
He gets his love, for a while, but knows that she will always have to leave him. Whilst Persephone thrives, Hades dies.’
‘One forced to die, the other forced to live. Why does that sound familiar?’ I manage a wry smile as my fingers retrace the point where the couple’s fingers touch.
‘It’s not about Ettie,’ Florian says quickly, his voice suddenly sharp.
‘Okay…’ I hold my hands up, jokingly at first, until I realise that Florian’s voice isn’t softening; instead his head turns to me, his eyes pointed.
‘Ettie’s death isn’t something I’m ever going to make art about. I can promise you that.’
‘Why not?’
‘At the very least it’s a bit obvious, at its worst it’s sleazy, you know – making money from something so tragic.’
‘I don’t know…’ I go to defend myself, as if it’s a personal attack – and I guess it is, because that’s exactly what I’m doing, isn’t it? Florian agrees with the troll in my Instagram comments who told me I was an opportunist who only got my book deal because my husband snuffed it.
Florian takes a gulp before clearing his throat, not letting me finish my point. ‘You know when it first happened, I was living with this guy and the second thing he said to me after the obligatory, “I’m sorry,” was some shitty comment about how I could make a series of sculptures about it.’
‘Well yeah that feels a bit callous but—’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever been so angry. I kicked him out; we haven’t spoken since.’
‘Right.’ Everything tightens. I think of the book, the blog, the trip and suddenly I’m aware that everything I have told him about me being here is ultimately a lie. A lie that if I try to explain will now probably end with a similar excommunication.
‘Wouldn’t Ettie have liked it though?’ I take a breath. ‘I mean he liked art, he liked us, if it made your life a little more comfortable, then he would want that, wouldn’t he?’
‘Pfft.’ He rolls his eyes when he says it. ‘I’m not a sell-out. I would rather die without selling any of my work then make it big whilst profiting from Ettie’s death.’ He shakes his head, a look of sheer disgust writ large on his face.
‘Right.’ I clear my throat and haul myself up onto the counter and sit with my legs dangling, wondering if there is a particular way I could word my confession about my blog that would make him see sense, make him not hate me.
Florian hands me the bottle and then pulls himself up next to me.
We sit in silence, let his anger dissipate.
‘You said the other day about knowing that other statue wasn’t Ettie,’ he says quietly, his voice returning to the Florian I know, the thoughtful, reflective one.
‘Yeah?’ I sound apprehensive, aware of the implications of a throwaway sentence I had made to end our conversation.
‘But you said it was me?’
‘I thought it was obvious.’
‘How?’
‘Oh, come on, a man pulling himself out of a formless object, isn’t that just what you do? Pulling art out of nothingness. I thought it was all a bit meta.’
He smirks into his lap, ruffles a hand through his hair. ‘I’d never thought of it like that.’
‘No?’
‘No! I just had the idea one day, chiselled away until it looked half decent.’
‘You make it sound so easy.’
‘It is and it isn’t. Sometimes it’s the easiest thing in the world. Other times it feels impossible.’
We let the statement grow stale in the air, feel it swell and warp and change into something with a hundred different meanings.
I grab the bottle from his hands, take two large mouthfuls and then sit there whilst the taste sits on my tongue, growing bitter and vinegary.
‘You know I hate him for leaving me sometimes,’ I say to the statue.
It feels like a confession, my voice strangled, quiet.
Florian stiffens next to me. ‘Like I properly hate him and I used to think it was just grief, but it’s not.
It’s rage… it’s… fury at how unfair it all is.
Why did he have to go and fucking die and leave me to do this on my own?
’ It’s all too honest, I know; stuff like this is usually reserved for the diary but after listening to Florian be quite so open and sincere about his feelings it feels wrong to not give something back, to make us feel like we’re on even terms again.
‘I used to have someone who was always on my side, even when I was stupid and childish and wrong and I don’t have that any more.
It’s just me and that’s fucking terrifying.
’ I wipe away the wetness that is pooling in my lash line with the back of my hand, and manage an exasperated laugh at how pathetic I sound.
‘God, I’m drunk, I need to go.’ I slip off the counter but Florian’s hand reaches out, encircles my wrist and grips it firmly.
‘Don’t.’ He shakes his head, his own eyes red-rimmed and watery. ‘I’m on your side.’ He says fiercely. ‘I can’t do much, I can’t take back the past, but I can promise you that I am on your side.’
I look at him properly, take in all of those features that feel so dangerously familiar, so within touching distance and so far away all at once.
‘You really do look like him sometimes.’ I reach my hand out and it hovers inches from his face.
‘Can I?’ I ask and when he nods gently, I trace my fingers over his jaw, the sharpness of his stubble, the softness in his cheek, the divot in his chin.
I lean against his knees, half expecting him to pull away but he doesn’t.
He stays there, watching me close the distance between us until I can feel his breath on my lips.
He closes his eyes and becomes as formless and motionless as his statues.
I kiss him.
His lips are hard and unmoving against mine.
I stop. Pull away. A heat that, moments ago, flooded through me comes to rest in my face, a deep-seated shame that I can’t shake off.
It’s so tangible that for a second I think that if I close my eyes and try hard enough there is a serious way I can go back in time and stop myself from being such an idiot.
He pushes a piece of my fringe behind my ears.
‘It’s fine…’ he says before I can start apologising.
‘Oh God.’ I cringe into his palms.
‘Ava…’
‘I’m so sorry… honestly, I don’t know what happened. I just… the wine? And I’m so…’
‘Ava, look it’s fine.’ He hushes me, his fingers stroking my cheek.
This isn’t how you react when your sister-in-law kisses you.
Not that I’m sure it’s happened that much because most people aren’t raging idiots who confuse kindness with an invitation to snog them.
But no, I’m pretty sure that you don’t stroke the cheek of someone you didn’t kiss back; it’s too gentle, too intimate.
He lifts my chin so that I have to look him directly in the eye and I feel the na?ve fluttering of hope.
He leans forward and presses his lips into my head, the kind of platonic kiss that a priest bestows on a member of the congregation.
‘I know you just wanted to kiss him again.’
I try to ignore the deep, swelling disappointment that is dangerously close to suffocating me.
‘Yeah…’ I nod, a little too enthusiastically.
‘Yeah you’re probably right.’ I step away and try to ignore how cold my body feels without his closeness there, how that chaste forehead kiss now feels like a brand.
‘I should go home.’ My voice cracks with false civility, trying far too hard to turn myself into the cool girl who won’t be re-running this moment in my mind thousands of times before I eventually can go to sleep.
I push some hair behind my ears and turn towards the door of the workshop.
He doesn’t stop me.