Still Me

Josh texted me on my third day home, while Agnes was holding up individual shoes in a children’s shop and talking in Polish to her mother on the phone, apparently trying to work out which size she should be purchasing and whether her sister would approve. I felt my phone vibrate and looked down.

Hey, Louisa Clark the First. Long time no hear. Hope you had a good Christmas. Want to grab a coffee some time?

I stared. I had no reason not to, but somehow it felt wrong. I was too raw, my senses still full of a man three thousand miles away.

Hey, Josh. Bit busy right now (Agnes runs me off my feet!) but maybe sometime soon. Hope you’re well. L x

He didn’t respond and I felt strangely bad about it.

Garry loaded Agnes’s shopping into the car and then her phone buzzed. She pulled it from her bag and stared at it. She looked out of the window for a moment, then at me. ‘I forgot I had an art lesson. We have to go to East Williamsburg.’

It was patently a lie. I had a sudden memory of the awful Thanksgiving lunch, with all its revelations, and tried not to let it show on my face. ‘I’ll cancel the piano lesson, then,’ I said evenly.

‘Yes. Garry, I have art lesson. I forgot.’

Without a word, Garry pulled the limo onto the road.

Garry and I sat in silence in the car park, the engine running quietly to protect us from the chill outside. I felt quietly furious with Agnes for choosing this afternoon for one of her ‘art lessons’ as it meant I was left alone with my thoughts, a bunch of unwelcome houseguests who refused to leave. I put my earphones in and played myself some cheerful music. I used my iPad to organize the rest of Agnes’s week. I played three online Scrabble moves with Mum. I answered an email from Treena, asking whether I thought she should take Eddie to a work dinner or if it was too soon. (I thought she should probably just get on with it.) I gazed outside at the glowering, snow-laden sky and wondered if more was going to fall. Garry watched a comedy show on his tablet, snorting alongside the canned laughter, his chin resting on his chest.

‘Fancy a coffee?’ I said, when I had run out of nails to chew. ‘She’s going to be ages, isn’t she?’

‘Nah. My doctor tells me I got to cut down on the doughnuts. And you know what happens if we go to the good doughnut place.’

I picked at a loose thread on my trousers. ‘Want to play I Spy?’

‘Are you kidding me?’

I lay back in my seat with a sigh and listened to the rest of the comedy show, then to Garry’s laboured breathing as it slowed and became an occasional snore. The sky had begun to darken, an unfriendly iron grey. It was going to take hours to get back through the traffic. And then my phone rang.

‘Louisa? Are you with Agnes? Her phone seems to be turned off. Can you get her for me?’

I glanced out of the window to where Steven Lipkott’s studio light cast a yellow rectangle over the greying snow below.

‘Uh … she’s just … she’s just trying some things on, Mr Gopnik. Let me run into the changing rooms and I’ll get her to call you straight back.’

The downstairs door was propped open with two pots of paint, as if in the middle of a delivery. I ran up the concrete steps and along the corridor until I reached the studio. There I stopped at the closed door, breathing hard. I gazed down at my phone, then up to the heavens. I did not want to walk in. I did not want irrefutable proof of what had been suggested at Thanksgiving. I pressed my ear against the door, trying to work out if it was safe to knock, feeling furtive, as if it were I who was at fault. But all I could hear was music and muffled conversation.

With greater confidence I knocked. A couple of seconds later, I tried and opened the door. Steven Lipkott and Agnes were standing on the far side of the room with their backs to me, looking at a stack of canvases against the wall. He rested one hand on her shoulder, the other waving a cigarette towards one of the smaller canvases. The room smelt of smoke and turpentine and, faintly, of perfume.

‘Well, why don’t you bring me some other pictures of her?’ he was saying. ‘If you don’t feel it really represents her, then we should –’

‘Louisa!’ Agnes spun around and threw up a palm, as if she were warding me off.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, holding up my phone. ‘It – it’s Mr Gopnik. He’s trying to reach you.’

‘You shouldn’t have come in here! Why you didn’t knock?’ The colour had leached from her face.

‘I did. I’m sorry. I didn’t have any way of …’ It was as I was backing out of the door that I glimpsed the canvas. A child, with blonde hair and wide eyes, half turned as if about to skip away. And with a sudden and inevitable clarity I understood everything: the depression, the endless conversations with her mother, the endless toy and shoe purchases …

Steven stooped to pick it up. ‘Look. Just take that one with you if you want. Have a think about it –’

‘Shut up, Steven!’ He flinched, as if unsure what had prompted her reaction. But that was what finally confirmed it.

‘I’ll meet you downstairs,’ I said, and closed the door quietly behind me.

We drove back to the Upper East Side in silence. Agnes called Mr Gopnik and apologized, she hadn’t realized her phone was off, a design fault – the thing was always shutting down without her doing it – she really needed a different one. Yes, darling. We’re headed back now. Yes, I know …

She did not look at me. In truth, I could barely look at her. My mind was humming, marrying up the events of the last months with what I now understood.

When we finally reached home I walked a few paces behind her through the lobby, but as we got to the lift, she swivelled, stared at the floor, and then turned back towards the door. ‘Okay. Come with me.’

We sat in a dark, gilded hotel bar, the kind where I imagined rich Middle Eastern businessmen entertained their clients and waved away bar bills without looking. It was nearly empty. Agnes and I sat in a dimly lit corner booth, waiting as the server ostentatiously offloaded two vodka tonics and a pot of glossy green olives, trying and failing to catch Agnes’s eye.

‘She’s mine,’ Agnes said, as he walked away.

I took a sip of my drink. It was ferociously strong and I was glad. It felt useful to have something to focus on.

‘My daughter.’ Her voice was tight, oddly furious. ‘She lives with my sister in Poland. She is fine – she was so young when I went that she barely remembers when her mama lived with her – and my sister is happy because she cannot have children, but my mother is very angry at me.’

‘But –’

‘I didn’t tell him when I met him, okay? I was so … so happy that someone like him liked me. I didn’t think for one minute we would be together. It was like a dream, you know? I thought, I will just have this little adventure, and then my work visa will finish and I will go back to Poland and I will remember this thing always. And then everything happened so fast and he leaves his wife for me. I couldn’t think how to tell him. Every time I meet him I think, This is the time, this is the time … and then when we are together he tell me – he tells me that he doesn’t want any more children. He is done, he says. He feels he has made big mess with his own family and he does not want to make it worse with step-families, half-brothers, half-sisters, all this business. He loves me but the no-children thing is deal-breaker for him. So how can I tell him then?’