on her doctor’s appointments. I’d left her a voicemail with my new number, but even if she didn’t need to talk to me, I sort of felt that I wouldn’t mind speaking to her. Just to let her know I was OK. Just get it out of the way. Just tell her I’m fine, that I’m working and that I’ll call her again in a week or so. If I need to.
Or that she can ring me.
Next month or something.
Long pause.
Clicking.
Ringing.
‘Hello?’
My arm shot out and I stared at the phone in front of me.
That wasn’t my mother.
That was Mark.
I scrabbled for the off button and hung up, switched off and threw the phone at the sofa. What the hell was he doing at my mother’s?
I sat on the end of the sofa, rocking lightly, unable to take my eyes off the phone in case it started ringing. I didn’t want to think about this, I told myself, I couldn’t think about this. I could just about stand thinking about him in the past, us in the past, but I didn’t want to have to think about him now, and I definitely didn’t want to think about him in my mother’s house.
I threw myself back onto the sofa, turned up the TV and finished the rest of my cupcake, staring at the screen and refusing to think about anything but Super Sweet Sixteens, Cribs and whether or not I might have a shot at love with Tila Tequila until Vanessa and Jenny came cackling through the door.
Even with the music from my iPod drowning out any thoughts of Mark overnight, I really didn’t sleep well, and the next morning, it showed. Even the Touche Éclat didn’t shift the dark shadows I’d picked up overnight. Great, some literal baggage to go with the emotional stuff. Looking like crap or not, I was excited about going to MoMA (since Jenny had sighed and explained it was an art gallery). One of my favourite weekend treats, when Mark had to ‘work’, was to lose myself in the Tate Modern for hours. Taking in the galleries, checking out new exhibitions, sometimes just sitting outside or in the turbine hall, people watching for hours. I was even more excited when I saw Alex hovering outside the entrance. He looked just as cute as last time with added Brownie points for apparently having thought about combing his hair.
‘Hey,’ he gave me his trademark slow smile as I approached. Without an ounce of concern for public opinion, he scooped me up into a long, lazy kiss. It was delicious.
‘So what you been up to?’ he asked, swinging my hand as we rode the escalators up to the galleries. ‘Anything I should know about?’
‘I had my meeting at The Look,’ I said, glossing over my Tyler incidents. I filed them safely under things he did not need to know about right now, which meant I wasn’t lying, just not oversharing. ‘I’ve got another meeting on Friday and then hopefully it’ll go online. The editor said she really liked my stuff.’
‘Really? That’s amazing. I’m sure it’s going to be really great.’
‘Yeah, hopefully,’ I said, squeezing back. ‘What about you, have you reached any life-changing decisions?’
He shook his head, pulling me around to the next escalator. ‘Nope. Band rehearsal tomorrow though and we have a gig on Friday. There might not be many more, you want to come?’
‘I’d love to,’ I said, terrified at the idea of being a groupie and thrilled at the idea of, well, being a groupie. ‘Where is it?’
‘Music Hall of Williamsburg,’ Another escalator. ‘You should bring your roommate, it’ll be fun.’
‘Sounds good,’ I replied. Another escalator. ‘I don’t think she’s doing anything.’ I had no idea what she was doing, but as far as I was concerned, she was now coming to Alex’s gig. ‘Are we actually going to get off the escalators or is this some sort of new performance art I should know about?’ I asked as we finally stepped onto solid ground.
‘There’s something I really want to show you.’ Alex walked around the corner, to a painting hanging just inside the corridor, more or less on its own. ‘This is my favourite picture in the entire world,’ he said, standing a respectful distance back from the painting.
It was small, showing the back of a girl staring at a wooden farmhouse in the near distance. Even from behind, I felt as though I could see she was crying, unable to escape her situation. Unable to tear herself away, even though she wanted to. Needed to. There was nowhere else for her to go.
‘Christina’s World, Andrew Wyeth,’ I read out quietly. The fifth floor was almost empty and the silence was eerie. I clutched at Alex’s hand, still gazing at the painting. I wanted look away but I couldn’t. Before I knew what was happening, tears were streaming down my cheeks.
‘It’s …’ I started, not knowing where to go. I dropped Alex’s hand and took a half-step closer. ‘It’s just …’
‘I know,’ he said, putting his hands on my shoulders. ‘When I feel trapped or confused or I just forget myself I come here and remind myself. I’m sorry, I thought you would like it. The woman in the painting is paralysed and crawling back to the house but I don’t know. Always seems to me like she’s wanting to get away from the house rather than back to it.’
‘Maybe she doesn’t know what she wants,’ I said, staring through the girl into the farmhouse. ‘Running to, running from, same difference.’
We stood looking at the picture together for what felt like for ever. Eventually, and only when I’d committed every inch of it to memory, we walked away in silence and wandered around the rest of the gallery.
It took me a while to loosen up, but Alex was the perfect art buddy. He knew so much about the place I was sure he must actually live in the basement and the museum happily swallowed up our afternoon without even a whisper of a ticking clock. We saw everything there was to see, Monet, Pollock, Picasso, Gaugin, Van Gogh. It was like the whole New York experience encapsulated in one space. By the time I realized how long we’d been aimlessly ambling, I was dying of thirst.
‘Want to get a drink?’ I asked, pulling Alex out of his reverie in front of a collection of design classics.
‘Shit, what time is it?’ he asked, himself rather than me. ‘We have to go or we’re going to miss it!’
‘Where are we going?’ I asked, allowing myself to be dragged mercilessly down Sixth Avenue, trying not to run into meandering tourists or the weaving and dodging commuters. ‘Seriously, I really need a drink, just, can we just stop for a second?’
‘Let’s get in a cab,’ he said, not even listening to me. ‘It’ll probably be quicker in a cab.’ He flagged a taxi down and threw me in as it pulled to a stop.
But the traffic was moving almost as slowly as the people on the street and as we inched along, Alex was getting more and more frustrated.
West 50th, 49th, 48th …
‘Alex,’ I said, not too politely. ‘Will you tell me where we’re bloody going?’
‘Bloody? How cute is that?’ he said, smiling
