The trains roll along the tracks behind Michelle’s house in succession, one after another, iron wheels on iron tracks. They usually can’t be heard inside the house, but in the garden the sound of them mingles with the rustling of new leaves in the trees, the faint buzz of midges congregating beneath the canopies and catching the light just so, little glowing specs that almost remind me of fireflies.
It’s a day wasted indoors, that’s what Debra said before hauling a basket load of damp washing out onto the lawn, and that’s where she is now, pegging up bed linens as she keeps one paranoid eye upon the barbeque.
Michelle is cooking, prodding and turning the chicken skewers a bit too soon, but it doesn’t matter, because Debra insisted she would take them inside and put them in the oven afterwards anyway. She's got this fear that we’ll all go home with salmonella poisoning and waste precious exam study time being violently ill.
Jen is nervous. The barbeque was her idea, a way for her to get closer to the girl she wants to ask to the debs without it seeming obvious about her intentions, so she’s hauled Michelle and I along to sit in and make conversation under the strict orders that if things go well then we should make an excuse and then conveniently disappear.
I don’t know Hazel well from school, we were never in any classes together but I know vaguely that she’s the girl with that lanky skeleton man pattern all over her school bag. She is tiny with hair the colour of straw and eyes, big wide and pale blue, an intense, unblinking gaze about them as though she knows how and when you will die.
When she appears in the garden twenty minutes late, smiling serenely with a kitten in her hand, we all pause.
“Hello,” I say. To her or the kitten I’m not completely sure.
“Hi, am I late?”
“No, not at all, um!” Jen gets up from the patio table and rushes to give her a side hug, being careful not to squash the kitten in the process. She scratches its tiny head with her fingernail and it purrs. “Who is this?”
“Goose,” Hazel explains, “I found him under a car in the housing estate last week and I’ve been nursing him back to health. He was so hungry, gosh.”
“He’s cute,” Jen pets him again and he strokes his downy grey fur against her fingers, his eyes closed in bliss, causing an explosion of protective adoration inside me for this little creature. It’s possible I've never seen something so cute.
“Do you want to hold him?” Hazel asks me, and I nod, holding out my hands as she deposits the little warm ball into my hands. Such a small, fragile, trembling ball of energy he is, I've never been so keenly aware of my size, my hands are practically the length of him save for his slinky tail, pointed straight out as I nestle him in the crook of my arm. Goose mews at me, mouth clean open, four sharp teeth and dove grey eyes that look in two different directions. He’s got a weird face, like he doesn’t know he exists or where he is.
“He’s sweet, isn’t he?” says Hazel at my shoulder.
“Yeah he’s a cool little guy. Do you think he was abandoned?”
“I don’t know, perhaps he ran away,” she reaches for him and he clambers up her sleeve, where she grabs him before he can start clawing at her hair, “he’s skittish. He doesn’t like to be alone, yet paradoxically he’s always trying to escape.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, he yearns for life on the streets,” she sighs and says to Jen, “I hope it’s okay that he’s come along, he would just be so unhappy at home.”
“No, of course! Oh my God,” Jen says with a big, dippy smile. “You can bring whatever, like, whoever you want over. We can keep him inside though if that’s better?” She’s touching her hair and smiling a lot, something I make a mental note of so that I can torture her about it later.
“I think if he’s there in the dining room and he can see me through the window he’ll be comfortable,” Hazel agrees, “I think he prefers to feel included.”
I don’t know if Goose has even a remote concept of what he does and does not prefer, but she and Jen head inside to lay some newspapers on the floor and fill a little bowl from the kitchen with water for him anyway, laying them right by the door so that he has the best view of the garden. I’m transfixed by him in there as they set things up, weaving himself between Hazel’s ankles, pushing his fuzzy cheek into the smooth leather of her Dr. Martin boot, and I grin as his claw catches in her lace, which sends him frantically swatting his paw to free it.
“It’s so cute how much you love cats,” Michelle comments as she slaps a raw burger over the coals, “I would have never thought you were a cat person if I hadn’t witnessed it myself.”
“Well look at him! He’s just cool.”
“It’s not just him, it’s all those cats along your street! I just think it’s so funny whenever you step out of the house and they just emerge from somewhere.”
“They know they’ll get pets from me.”
“Yeah, and food.”
“Occasionally.”
She smiles over her shoulder, “Maybe when we move in together we should look for a flat that accepts pets. Then we can get a cat of our own.”
“Mm. It’s a big commitment, a cat, though, isn’t it?”
“No, we would just feed it and clean out the litter box. It’d be very easy.”
“Yeah, I dunno.”
“What don’t you know?”
“I’d have to think about it.”
“Oh, okay.”
Debra finishes hanging the washing and quickly slips back inside through the conservatory door.
I listen to the sounds of the garden instead of talking. A lawnmower drones somewhere across the suburban fences and there is the aroma of something sweet, heady and floral under my nose each time the breeze comes. When it’s still it smells like charred meat and smoke, which is welcome because the afternoon is getting on and I haven’t eaten since before dropping Ivy off at her friend’s house at ten.
“Are you mad at me?” Michelle says.
“No. I’m just hungry.”
“Right.”
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“I have to say, this is an impressive body of work.”
I shift in my seat, “By impressive do you mean that it’s good, or that there’s a lot of it?”
This gets a laugh. “Both,” says the man, Paul, flicking through a sketchbook with tattooed hands, fingers stained from nicotine. I notice things like this now. Hands. I notice their lines and their bones, all their interesting details, and perhaps Paul himself could gauge this now as he pours over my figure studies where there are pages upon pages of hands, old and young, my friends, my sisters at the piano, an old woman clutching at a handrail on the train, and my own, a hundred times in different ways, blisters, plasters, hangnails and bruises from the rugby pitch.
The woman, Ida, shuffles through a stack of watercolour paintings I did last summer, mostly seascapes, the beach and the rushes, the whitewashed houses and rusted iron of the Wexford coast. Just looking at them I can recall the grit of sand under my bare feet as I warmed them on the deck of our holiday home behind my portable easel. In three months I’ll return again for one last summer, and after that I expect I’ll miss it there.
“And you said you didn’t do a portfolio preparation year?” She says, peering over the rim of her glasses.
“No, I’m still at school.”
“Highly unusual for a sixth year,” her eyebrows climb up her forehead, “You've clearly dedicated a lot of time to this.”
I shrug, “Yeah, I like making art, I don’t know.”
It’s difficult to tell what this woman is thinking. Everything about her is harsh, dramatic, from the sharp fringe that sits straight and neat above her brows to the slash of her mouth, thin lips, pointy chin, hard eyes, but I have to assume for the sake of my own self esteem that she doesn’t positively loathe my portfolio. She spends some time looking through my work, slowly, methodically, sometimes leaning closer to frown at something, maybe some proportion that’s off, bad composition, a clumsy attempt at ambient occlusion that doesn’t hit the mark…
“It’s beautiful,” she says simply, and I exhale.
“Oh look, a familiar face,” Paul holds a portrait to Ida, “That’s the girl that we were interviewing a few people before this, what was her name again?”
“Michelle,” I say, “My girlfriend.”
Paul nods, “Michelle, right! Good likeness,” and places the notebook back onto the table. Leaning back in his chair, he cracks his knuckles, “Look, Jude, there’s no two ways about it here, your work is outstanding. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a portfolio that hits every mark, every requirement and goes beyond, I mean,” he lets out a puff of air and gestures to the table, “this is nuts. And for a sixth year? Come on. This stuff would blow some of our third and fourth year college students out of the water.”
I feel like I could melt off the chair with relief, but try to suppress my utter delight so that they don’t think I’m too hungry for validation.
“Cool.”
“It’s the sensitivity,” Ida adds, “Your observation skills, your sense of weight, movement, knowledge of anatomy. It’s rare to see this kind of work from a secondary school student. Your efforts are just… so impressive.”
“And look, we know it depends on your Leaving Cert points, and yeah, that’ll be a contributing factor when it comes to acceptance, but, like,” Paul looks over the table again, tossing his hands up conclusively, “as far as I’m concerned, we’ll see you in September.”
Ida’s mouth curls into a smile, “We hope. If you choose us.”
If I choose them? Am I dreaming? How have I become the kind of person who is coveted by an art school? Surely not. Surely soon I’ll wake up and discover that this whole interview has been a product of my dreams. Too much time spent stressing out over art, the requirements, the brief... Almost certainly I’ve fallen asleep somewhere and none of this is real.
“That’s really kind of you to say. I’m glad you liked my stuff.”
“Blown away,” says Paul, and he leaps to his feet to shake my hand like I’ve just won a prize, “all we need is a pass in the Leaving Cert, you can surely manage it.”
“Yeah, I’ll make sure I do.”
They’re smiling at me as I gather up my work, and still smiling as I give them one last sheepish wave from the door, and I realise I am still smiling too as I face the hallway of waiting students, staring at me with portfolios rested against their knees. I probably shouldn’t look too overjoyed, it might knock their confidence, so I try to look very bored instead as I pass by, though I may explode from the inside out.
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