Repeat After Me

Chapter 62

I began work on a series of wheat pastes of my grandmother, based on the image of old beauty I'd sketched that first weekend she stayed at our house. Working for Pigmentation I'd become good at doing cut outs and I used the skills I'd acquired to draw and cut three portraits of my grandmother. I worked slowly at the desk in my room, having clearing everything off it onto the floor. I had sadness like a stormwater drain in my stomach, but focusing on the works somehow helped me. I stayed up late into the night of her funeral.

The next morning, I came downstairs. Mum was in the kitchen, already making minestrone soup for dinner. She'd been quiet since the funeral, intermittedly crying, hardly eating. I went to the kitchen table and unrolled a portrait of her mother.

'What's this?' she asked.

'Grandma,' I said.

Tears began to adlib in the corners of her eyes. 'They're beautiful Ivy, I love them.'

'I'm pasting them up in the city,' I stated. I was done with hiding. I was done with being forced to stop doing street art. It is what I believed in. This is what I needed to do. I didn't need to feel ashamed.

'You're what?'

'I'm taking them into the city. That funeral yesterday, it sucked. These are my tribute to her.'

Mum took my face in her hands and kissed me on the forehead. 'You're a beautiful sensitive soul,' she said. 'You gave mum so much joy in her last weeks.' She dropped her hands from my face, and twisted her lips to the side, thinking. 'Your father will be angry. You promised us no more street art.' She turned and looked out the window, pausing in her own abstract thoughts. 'Who cares?' she asked, looking back at me, her eyes distant. 'Everything is screwed. Your dad's not here. My sisters couldn't even attend their own mother's funeral. I've had three weeks of absolute hell. Let's go.'

'You're coming?'

'Of course. Let's take the train, less chance of getting caught outside our 25 kilometre lockdown. Don't forget to wear your face mask.'

The train was almost empty. Mum and I sat opposite each other with our facemasks on. Occassionally mum would take out her hand sanitiser and practically wash her hands with it. Her eyes were crystallised with grief. Her mouth sagged with emotional exhaustion. Her phone started ringing. She reached into her bag and pulled her phone out, opened the cover and looked at the screen. 'It's your dad,' she said. 'I'm turning it off. I'll speak to him later.'

The next minute, dad called me. 'He probably wants to know how you are,' I said. 'He's probably worried about you.' I turned my phone to silent. When it had finished ringing, I said, 'I'll message him and let him know you're okay. I'll say you'll ring later.'

We got off the train at Flinders Street Station. The turnstiles were so quiet, the lone ticket inspector was playing a game on his phone. We walked through Desgraves Street. All the French bistro chairs had been packed away, every single store was closed up. Mum held her facemask at the bridge of her nose as she walked.

'This is so depressing,' she stated, looking at the leaves piled against the locked doorways. I could tell that the depressing state of the city was helping to lift her depression. She was finding adventure in deviance. All the new rules we were following as a civil obedience society were making her re-evaluate the old rules.

We crossed Flinders Lane. A street sweeper passed by. A couple of cafes were serving takeaway coffees, still clutching on to what was left of their business. 'I've never seen the city like this,' mum said, 'I can't believe it. Like I knew it would be quiet, but not this. Where are all the workers? It's a ghost town.' We walked through Centre Way Arcade, seeing not one person, and came out to Collins Street. The whole city had become an unused urban space. Mum and I checked for any trams, and then jaywalked across the road.

'Where are we going?' mum asked.

'I'll know when I find it,' I said.

We walked through the Dymock's arcade and came out the other end, past a shoe store, and into a covered laneway. We continued past a chocolatier, a dress boutique and a lingerie store, all closed. Pre-COVID affluence was still on display in the shop windows. This was where ladies who wore Zimmermann had shopped, speaking with pompous vowels. It was the glamour zone of the city, where everything was about appearances. But appearances had disappeared.

We turned into a laneway to the right. A construction worker was sitting on a milkcrate, wearing a high-vis vest, his facemask pulled down to his chin, smoking a cigarette. 'Hi,' he said.

'Hi,' I replied.

Mum and I walked down the laneway and discovered it was L-shaped – the laneway peeled off to the left. I admired the walls, sucking in my breath. I'd struck gold. These were virgin walls. There were only four doors here – they looked like fire exit doors of restaurants or apartment buildings. The main entrances were elsewhere. There would be little foot traffic.

I smiled at the dead end, appreciating this special hideaway.

'Here?' mum asked.

'Yeah,' I said. I unpacked my backpack and unrolled the portraits of my grandmother, placing them carefully on the ground. I'd pre-mixed paste in a glass jar. I unscrewed the lid and stirred the paste with a paintbrush. I knelt down on the pavement and pasted the glue evenly on the back of the first portrait. I stood up and pressed the portrait onto the brick wall. Mum stepped forward and helped me smooth out bubbles with the palm of her hand. We both stepped back and admired the first artwork on this city wall. Our tribute to a very special lady.

'It's beautiful,' mum said. 'She'd love it.' I smiled. 'I think the office she worked at with Guy Wilson was around here. Just up on Collins Street, I'm pretty sure. He was the boss who used to let us go to his holiday house in Torquay.'

'Ah yeah, she told me about him.'

'I'm pretty sure it was around here,' mum said. 'I wish I knew. I can no longer ask.' She looked at the four dumpsters lined up together. 'I thought we'd have more time. I wasn't expecting it would be that quick.' She did up her coat buttons. 'How do you cut the paper without it tearing?'

'It's tricky,' I said. 'I've been doing a lot of paper cuts for Pigmentation. I've had to learn. It takes a lot of patience and trial and error. I was so terrified of ruining her work, I guess I had to learn pretty quickly how to be super careful.'

'I'm sorry I didn't believe in you,' mum said. 'I should've seen your talent. I guess I've been so obsessed with your father and that stupid football team, and your brother has always been so busy with his sport as well. I guess I never had the time before ... to notice that you were talented too. I was always so busy.'

In death there were new discoveries. I knelt on the pavement and pasted the back of the next portrait carefully.

'Just be safe when you come into the city,' mum said. 'Don't talk to any weirdos, and keep your wits about you, and don't do it at night. You got me?'

'Got it,' I said, standing up, holding the second portrait. I positioned the paper next to the other one, and mum helped me press it against the wall, smoothing out the bubbles again.

'When I think about all the things I used to worry about,' mum began, 'and then the world implodes. It gives us perspective, I guess ...' She began to cry again, soft gentle tears. 'Yesterday was inhumane. To live and die like that. They may as well have carried her off in a cardboard box and dumped her in the Yarra River. You've got to live while you can. This,' mum swept her hand around, at the exposed brick walls and door-frames and windowsills, barred windows and drainpipes, 'this is living. What you're doing ... it makes you feel alive. We don't know what the future holds anymore. We've got to give you kids a break. Get off your back. Your lives aren't going to be like our lives were. That's what I need to tell your father.'

I threw my arms around my mum and cried into her shoulder, grateful she'd found this insight in the most discreet laneway in the posh end of town.