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Aurnia
Every answer up until now I’d answered with nothing but complete confidence.
What art style are you drawn to? What artists do you consider as influences on your work? What classes interest you at Limerick Art School? What do you consider your artistic strengths? Weaknesses?
My responses came as easily from my lips as if I’d been asked for my name, age, place of birth, and height. Even abstract questions like, Tell me how you would define beauty, I weaved my way through as naturally as water through stones in a creek.
In that leatherbound chair with its austere wooden arms, dark and highly polished, I felt assured. Sitting across from the dean of admissions in his tiny gold-rimmed glasses and narrowed eyes, I did not flinch or hesitate. Despite the grandness of the ornate frames housing great works of art, art I could only aspire to like I aspire to be the clouds themselves, despite the tall, moulded ceilings, despite the expansive windows overlooking a rainy lawn of manicured hedges and stone statues, I felt like I belonged. Or at least, like I could belong.
That morning in the motel I’d taken care to make sure I looked the part. Aspiring artist. Capable university student. Hard worker. Diligent. Motivated. The searing hot shower I’d stood beneath for nearly an hour rinsed away Dublin from my skin. Dublin and all that it held. The soap I scrubbed over my knuckles till they stung washed away any last traces of ink from the shop, sweat from holding Conor too tightly, detergent from his sheets.
I combed my hair. Pulled it away from my face. Twisted it into a bun I’d only ever seen the rich girls at school wear. I refrained from smudging black eyeliner under my eyes. I wielded the mascara wand like it was a fine paintbrush. I applied a soft pink lipstick I’d picked up at a gas station along the way as Mason pumped gas. The clothes I’d brought for the interview I dried on the radiator overnight. The steam from the shower freed them of wrinkles, freed them of any remembrance of the night before. Of the highway in the rain. Of the man I left behind.
Of the man who left me behind.
The final result in the mirror was exactly what I wanted. I looked like a prospective student of the prestigious Limerick Art School. I looked like this was where I belonged. Not back there, but here. Forward. Always forward. I could almost believe it too. Staring there at a reflection I hardly recognised. I could almost believe this was me. This was where I was to find family. Where I was to find life.
The dean leaned back in his chair. He bridged his long liver-spotted fingers beneath his chin. He eyed me. The hair I’d arranged so perfectly. The mascara I’d brushed on. The inoffensive, neutral lipstick.
Then he asked, in his sharp voice, one last question.
It settled into the silence that I think he fully expected. My eyes darted nervously to his, but his gaze was steady, patient.
It was important, this one last question. I opened my mouth to say what I should have said. To answer the only answer there should have been. To ensure my place in this place.
But I found my mouth closing on its own. I stared at the rain as it streaked across the broad windowpanes.
The morning was grey and the low clouds moved quickly. The rain slashed at the glass and as I struggled for an answer its noise seemed to grow louder. I hadn’t heard it before. When the questions were easy. When I was confident, assured. When this was where I wanted to be.
“I, um, I…” I began to mutter before again falling into silence.
I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. Just say it, my mind screamed at me. Just say the words and it’ll be over. You’ll be in. You’ll be gone. Gone from there. Gone from him. It’s easy, my mind screamed. Just say it.
“Dr Walsh,” I began and once more stopped.
The words were easy enough. Why couldn’t I get them out? Why did they feel like gravel on my tongue? Like I’d fallen back there on the side of the highway. Scuffed my knees. Torn the elbows of my jacket. Filled my mouth with rocks.
“Dr Walsh,” I tried again and then laughed because it was stupid.
What is wrong with you? This is it, this is your chance!
Still, I stared again at the rain and the lawn beyond it. So manicured. So trim and taken care of. So perfect. Nothing like the graffiti-littered alleyways of Dublin. Nothing like the sidewalks with trash tumbling along on the wind like tumbleweeds. Nothing like the faces dirtied with grime, etched with hard times, eyes burning behind curling tendrils of cigarette smoke in the dark.
The Limerick Art School was a blank slate. But I wasn’t. I’d been stained. Drawn upon. Inked with blood and sweat and tears. Tattooed by a man I couldn’t just wipe away or erase. He was there on me. On my skin. The city of Dublin was in me. All over me. I was the furthest thing in the world from a blank slate. I was a tapestry. A brick wall of spray paint. A portfolio with torn edges and crumpled corners. I was who I was. And I wouldn’t be torn away like a page from a notebook to reveal beneath it a clean one. I would be proud of the mess. Proud of me.
“Dr Walsh,” I said. He leaned forward because, I was sure, he could hear the change in my voice. “I—”
The door suddenly swung open, crashed against the wall, shook the crystal chandelier overhead, threatened to knock those great pieces of art in their ornate gold frames from their pegs.
Conor’s eyes on me were the same eyes as when he caught me that very first day with my hand in the cash register at Dublin Ink: fury and desire and something more. He grabbed me and wrenched me up from the chair much the way he handled me then, too. All violence and strength, restraint and conflict, a battle to fight, a war raging.
“Security!” Dr Walsh called. “Secur—”
“I know him,” I said, holding out a palm to the terrified dean of admissions. He wasn’t used to wild animals breaking into his office. “I know him.”
I said the words, but were they truth? Did I know him? Did I know Conor Mac Haol? Could I ever?
“Aurnia,” Conor gasped. His face was the same sickly pallor as it had been in the headlights in the night before. He burned with a fever that soaked his leather jacket just as much as the rain. He leaned heavily on his right leg as he held me, as he squeezed me harder. “Aurnia, I don’t want you to go to school here.”
