Dec 24, 2024
Nov 16,2024
About Dessie and Hopper, Susanne says: "It started with an image of a middle-aged woman in a cold flat, and two dogs she’s in some kind of dialogue with. A chance encounter with another woman turns out to be illuminating... I wanted to reflect on clashes between the personal and the political."
_________________________________________________________________________________
Back at the flat you turn on the light in the living room. They're still on the sofa, staring, just like they were when you left. They’re good at the old staring in the dark. Always have been.
'A penny for your thoughts,’ you say, head into the kitchen, fill the kettle, still in your coat.
The headache you felt stirring before leaving the gallery throbs across your forehead now. You steady yourself against the sink, make tea. Then, suddenly, both of them, in the doorframe, Dessie pressing into Hopper. They do this a lot now, with Dessie frail on his paws. Hopper doesn’t mind, lends himself as a crutch, a pillow, whatever Dessie needs.
‘Are you freezing, guys?’
Their heads tilt. They’ve been confused since you came in, not slamming the door as usual after getting the groceries or putting the bin out. Tonight, after two glasses of red at the gallery, as if marking the new moon the woman mentioned, you closed the door quietly. Before you left, you told Dessie and Hopper that it was for the heat you were going. And for the newspaper article. ‘Free wine,’ it mentioned. More importantly, the idea of portrait paintings of girls appealed to you. One was printed beside the article. The brooding, green eyes, the red background. It reminded you of something.
In the gallery you grabbed a glass and stood by the radiator, pressing into it like Dessie presses into Hopper. The painter, a bearded man in slacks and loafers, spoke about mood and commissions. People clapped and drank their wine. You tried to blend into the scene when all you wanted was to look at the pictures.
Right now your finger hovers over the heating switch. There’s oil left, but not much. It’s late, though. There really is no need for heat. You’ll be in bed soon.
‘Nice to meet you, Ava,’ you still hear the woman.
It’s rare these days for anyone to say your name. Ava, in another life. That’s what the portrait of the girl reminded you of, and that’s why you’re tearing up now, not just because of the oil bill.
The woman suddenly stood beside you when you looked at the portrait from the paper, the girl’s eyes even more brooding, the red starker, more textured up close.
‘Some red, isn’t it?’
You turned toward her, noticed her lipstick. She looked to be your age, wore a trench coat and ankle boots. Her long, grey hair hung down her shoulders in disarray.
‘I like portraits,’ you said.
‘Me too.’
She smiled, emptied the rest of her glass. You did the same.
‘Women don’t normally get this much space,’ she said.
You shrugged as paintings appeared in your mind, the Mona Lisa, the Girl with a Pearl Earring, Frida Kahlo torturing herself in oil, Georgia O’Keeffe seeping into flower and bone, not to mention contemporary art. It was a rabbit hole you were tempted to vanish into rather than talk to this stranger, who seemed incredibly ignorant to you just then.
‘Another one?’
She pointed at your glass, and for some reason you nodded. When you toasted, the tinkle of glass against glass, almost unnoticeable, made you think of a pin dropping.
‘I’m Gemma by the way.’
‘Ava.’
‘Nice to meet you, Ava.’
You couldn’t remember when you last blushed like this. Your face, lit from within. It was small talk to begin with. She’d left Dublin thirty years ago. When you mentioned Dunfanaghy, it turned out she knew someone who’d ridden a pony there in the late 1970s.
‘I spent my childhood on that beach,’ you said.
‘Donegal is a dream. I can’t believe you grew up there.’
She soon veered back into the present moment, and you suddenly remembered. Ava, out for the night, the first time in forever.
‘Some great galleries in Galway,’ she said. ‘Good to see them re-open.’
You nodded, tried to talk like the regular attender you should be and, leaving aside the pandemic, haven’t been in years.
‘What a long, wet winter, though,’ you changed the topic.
‘It sure is. February sucks.’
And then, without warning, the small talk was over. She told you about her daughter, whom she has cared for these last twenty-nine years. No end in sight. You didn’t want to ask what was wrong with the daughter when, as far as her mother was concerned, everything seemed to be right.
‘Last week she got herself a job in a charity shop. Two afternoons a week. She’s all about the moment, my Paula. Doesn’t get resentment. Mine especially. The resentment I’ve built up towards her father. Tonight she’s at her granny’s in Salthill, watching Disney movies. And I’m out on the town, imagine. Working as a seamstress from home I don’t get much of a chance. There’s never a shortage of people wanting their clothes altered in Galway.’
She shook her head and paused.
‘But tell me about yourself, Ava.’
This shocked you.
‘I’m afraid there isn’t much to tell.’
The smile you shot her hurt your temples.
‘I don’t know you, but I find that hard to believe,’ she said, looking back and forth between you and the nearest portrait.
Deep down, you wanted to tell her many things by then. About losing the job you’d never liked but depended on. About the death of your one good friend during the pandemic. The isolation since, the headaches and bills, the vet bills especially. Your sad existence in the flat, making ends meet, just about and not really. But most of all you wanted to tell her about another Ava, different in every way, fresh out of university with a degree in art history and an American boyfriend, thirty years ago, interning at galleries, including a three-month stint in New York, a time when all seemed possible, especially that day in Montauk, floating in the sea, sun rippling across the water, a whole new world with you in it. Dunfanaghy, where once, from your council flat bedroom, you’d dreamed things into being, browsing library books on Vermeer, Kahlo, Da Vinci suddenly irrelevant. You wanted to tell of an Ava who wouldn’t have recognized you these days, the sheepish look you’ve acquired, disappointment contorting your face, no matter how much time you spent on that beach as a child.
‘Well,’ you said, ‘you get bored with your own story, don’t you?’
The woman looked surprised.
‘You see so many female boxers on TV these days,’ you continued. ‘All these women and girls doing what they want. They remind me of cats, as if they have lives to spare. They’re smart, too. Smarter than me.’
You looked at the floor, unsure why you’d said this. It felt sad and silly, and wrong. And it was all because of the other Ava. Besides, it reminded you of the teenage girl across your street. Every day you see her from your window, lounging on her bed with her cat and phone, looking as unhappy as you, thumbs swirling across the screen in tiny movements.
‘These are strange times for sure. But, to be perfectly honest, I’d rather talk to you than a boxing cat any day,’ the woman said.
This made you laugh, so much so that people turned their heads. When you finally stopped, the woman, also laughing, discreetly pointed at the painter, who stood surrounded by a group of women, his voice as monotonous as before.
‘See him?’ she whispered. ‘I doubt he beats himself up. I could be wrong of course. What the heck do I know? He might be the soundest man, and he certainly can paint. But hey. It’s a wild world.’
She turned back to the portraits then, walked around the gallery, and, with nothing better to do, you followed her.
‘I really, really like these pictures. I know my Paula would too, and there’s no point in not liking what we like, is there?’
‘No,’ you said, remembering your American boyfriend joking about your taste in art in his father’s house.
‘I have to say, though, I wouldn’t mind a few lives to spare,’ the woman giggled.
And it was then she mentioned about the moon, about her plan to take time out before bed tonight, look at the sky, imagine the month ahead.
‘And among all the stuff I’d love to happen, I might just picture you a little happier, Ava.’
She winked at you, and you noticed the headache then. Thank you, but, you wanted to say. You couldn’t decide how to continue when part of you felt furious, shame yakking into your ear like the shopkeeper in your childhood, gossiping about people in your town. You took a breath, looked at the woman, the gallery lights reflecting in her eyes. Seconds later, and you didn’t see this coming, you told her about Dessie and Hopper.
‘I don’t know why I said the thing about cats. That is, actually, I do. I’m a dog person. I have two rescue dogs. And I’m angry. With myself mostly, but also with the world.’
One thing led to another then. She soon knew about the other Ava, about Montauk thirty years ago, about your job and friend. You mentioned the girl and her phone, told her how Galway reminds you of Donegal sometimes, a different world, though, easier to live in, after too many years in London.
An hour later you quietly closed the door into your flat, her number saved on your phone. Gemma, you keep reminding yourself. Just like you, she’s got a name.
You’re at the bedroom window now, no longer crying, looking out at the sky. The headache is gone. There’s no sign of the new moon either, but how could there be? Across Newcastle Road, the girl’s blinds are closed, a faint light shimmering through. You wonder does her phone, with all the stuff she scrolls through, flag up women like you? Women who gave up along the way.
It’s like a mass whale stranding, you hear Gemma. Not just you and me, right?
She didn’t say this, but in your head she’s on a roll, patching up your thoughts, her stitches small and precise. It hardly matters what she knows about the history of art, how little you know about sewing. Tonight, you went out, and there she was.
We’d better not ignore what that girl does with her phone, Gemma goes on, all the pictures she posts of herself, her cat and shoes and many lives. Remember us at that age? What the heck did we know?
It’s past midnight. Dessie and Hopper watch from the doorway. You settle on the rug between window and bed, stretch to warm up a little. Cat-Cow pose. When you switch to Downward Dog, they come over. It’s a narrow space, but somehow you all fit there.
The day you brought the dogs home you renamed them after a prayer mentioning despair and hope in the same line. You haven’t been religious since leaving Donegal, but suddenly you had Dessie and Hopper. The prayer was handy for getting them used to your voice.
You climb into bed with two blankets on top of the quilt, one hand sticking out. Hopper soon licks it. Dessie breathes behind him. They’ve never complained about their names. You hold up the quilt, let them join you, never sure how exactly Dessie manages. You warm up in no time, the dogs’ paws quivering in their sleep, your mind unexpectedly buoyant, like a whale returned to open water, looking forward to hours in the dark, staring and imagining. Lives to spare. A happy Ava.
‘That red,’ you told Gemma on the way out of the gallery, pointing at the picture you’d noticed in the paper, ‘it’s why I came here tonight.’
‘Let’s meet again soon.’
This she actually did say, and you, despite the headache and so much more love for these dogs than yourself, said yes.
Susanne Stich grew up in Nürnberg and has lived in Inishowen for many years. Her writing has appeared in The Stinging Fly, Winter Papers, Banshee, The Pig's Back, New Irish Writing, Ambit and other places. She was shortlisted for the Bristol Short Story Prize and a finalist in the Irish Novel Fair. She holds an MA in Literature and Film Studies from Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen and a PhD with creative practice from Ulster University, Belfast, and has worked in arts and education as a lecturer, curator and facilitator.
