school, but then her father got sick again and it was all over. I had no help. We couldn’t afford it. I had to go back to work and keep us going.”
Sam nods understandingly. “Well, I think she’s talented. Have you seen what she’s done lately? What about talent?”
“What about talent? I’ll tell you about talent. Talent schmalent. If it were all about talent, then I wouldn’t bat an eyelid. But darling, it’s a business. And a bad one at that. She’ll never make a cent, that is, until she dies, so she’ll be working at that silly little gallery for the next million years.”
“She’s gonna make you proud one day, Judy,” Sam says. I’m glad he’s here. I’m a ball of fire in front of the canvas, but I can never put two words together in front of my family.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Proud? I was proud the day she was born. I was proud when she was dux of her class. I was proud when she got into medicine. I’ll be proud again when she’s a doctor.” For weeks now Mama hasn’t been able to face her friends. For what? To chat with Susan (whose son just got into Harvard Business School) or Cathy (whose twin girls will be the youngest barristers in Sydney)? It has become unbearable for her. Even Elizabeth’s boy has a PhD. How’s Lily doing in her studies? When is she due to finish? When will she be a doctor? They used to ask. And now they’ve found out I’ve dropped out, they ask again. Only louder.
It is hard for Mama. She has her private disappointment and her public disgrace.
And then she has Anyu.
According to Anyu, my failure, like our financial situation and my father’s death, is Mama’s fault. So was last weekend’s bad weather, the traffic jam this morning and the fall of Rome. That’s what happens, Anyu says, when you marry peasants. I know Monologue Number 14 by heart: Peasants. Jewish peasants. That’s what they were. You know, there were a lot of them in Hungary. Butchers. Tailors. Shopkeepers. Couldn’t read or write, didn’t know Nietzsche from their neighbour. And every now and then, one or two of them had the luck to make it big. Not your Mama’s parents, of course. Don’t be silly. But you know the Berger family from next door to the Lowensteins? Like them. Struck gold making belts. Can’t read or write. His father was a schlepper for a tailor in Budapest, but when they came here, they made a fortune from little strips of leather. Well, everyone needs to hold their pants up, no? Good for them, I say, lucky break! But peasants nonetheless.
Mama’s father was a baker’s assistant, a far cry from the professors and doctors littering my father’s pedigree.
“Come on, Judy,” Sam tells her. “Where’s your sense of romance?”
“You think I don’t know about romance? You think I don’t know about art? I’m not an idiot. I’ve been taking Lily to galleries since she was a baby.” Mama loves the idea, in principle at least, of someone being a painter. There is something chic, something civilised, about being an artist, and in that affected, small–l liberal way of hers she fancies herself a bit of a patron of the arts, a member of the avant-garde. But while it’s terrific for others to live that kind of life, who would wish it on their own child? “Do you know what it takes to be a success? You think it’s about hanging around, smoking cigarettes, arguing politics and painting pictures? Come on, kids, don’t be so bloody naïve. Without an education, a woman is nothing. Trust me. You’re going to marry the first no-hoper who walks through the door and all of a sudden, your dreams are gone. And then when the kids are all grown up and out of the house, when the husband is gone, what have you got? Hey? What have you got?”
“Nothing.”
Nothing.
Just like her.
The food arrives and Mama spends the next few minutes complaining to the waiter about the scones, which are too hot, and the tea, which is too cold.
“Sorry,” I tell him, “we’re Hungarian.”
Sam throws him a knowing wink.
I’ve found my voice.
“I took Anyu to Frankie’s funeral,” I say.
“I know. I know. I just hope she bloody behaved herself. You’re a saint, Lily, did you know that? A saint. I’m sorry I didn’t come with you. I couldn’t, you know, you understand?”
“Sure.”
“He was a bastard,” she says from a mouthful of crumbling scone.
“I know.”
“I bet Anyu was awfully mad! Who else was there?”
“Everyone.”
“Mmm.”
Sam excuses himself. Out of the corner of my eye I catch him on his way to the bathroom, leaning on the counter talking to the waiter.
I take a deep breath. I reach for a cigarette. I change my mind. Not now. Just say it. Another deep breath.
“Mama …”
“Yes.”
“Mama, well …”
“Yes, Lily, what?”
“Umm, Mama …”
“For God’s sake, what is it, Lily?”
She picks up her newspaper and flicks through the sports pages.
“Never mind,” I say.
I reach for another cigarette. I see Sam flirting with the waiter. He looks across to me and winks. He gives me courage.
“Eva was there,” I finally tell her.
“Who?”
“You know. Eva. I think she used to be Anyu’s friend. You know. But Anyu got really upset and we left.”
“God, it must have been hot out there. Can you believe the air-conditioner stopped working Wednesday morning? Can you imagine the heat in the office without air-conditioning? I should have called the bloody union. That’s what I should have done!”
“She recognised me, you know, after all these years.”
Sam sashays back to the table waving a phone number on the back of an order form. He sits down triumphantly.
“No, wait,” Mama continues, mainly towards Sam. “I should have gone to the funeral! That’s what I should have done. It would have been cooler than that bloody furnace of an office, you know. But Anyu, oh Lily, I can just imagine how Anyu must have been in a shocker of a mood in that heat.”
“I’m sort of … you know … kind of interested, you know … I’m sort of curious about Eva …”
“I probably should have sent Mrs Symonds a note. She probably thinks I’m a terrible person. But what was I going to say? Huh? Oh, I’m sorry your bastard of a husband finally dropped dead. No, it’s better this way. I’m sick of bullshit. I’m sick of all these charades.”
“And then,
