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Completely alone, she stands face to face with Millais’sOphelia.
The moment I spot her, I’m acutely aware of the fact that I’m now watching her, making her the focus of all my attention. It somehow feels like an intrusion, and I know I have no choice but to make myself known.
I stand next to her, shoulder to shoulder, as close as I can get to her without making any contact between her body and mine.
“Hi, Theo.”
She doesn’t look at me, doesn’t start. I detect perhaps the merest hint of a stiffening of her posture, a tightening of her arms around whatever she’s holding to her chest—a textbook, a map of the gallery and her tablet in its café au lait-coloured case.
“Hi, Zach.” She’s silent for a moment, her eyes still fixed on Ophelia. Then she adds, “Why do they always have to die for the men?”
“Who? Shakespeare’s women? They don’t.”
“Not all of them—but those who do. Ophelia. Desdemona. Juliet. Why must they die? Why must the men wear their dead women as accessories to their own tragedies?”
“Maybe they’re not accessories. Maybe they’re the real tragedy—a reflection of the innocents who get sucked into the vortex of angry, flawed people and get hurt in the process.”
“Maybe.” Theodora lets out a sigh. “I guess after studying literature all these years, I feel a bit burnt out on female victims and female suicides and suffocated wives and hysteria and erotomania.”
I’m silent for a moment, taking in what she’s saying. Part of it, I take at face value. Women have it hard in literature—art imitating life and perhaps a little bit of vice versa at play. Making your way through the canon of classical literature as we have for the past few years has meant an almost constant parade of suffering or mistreated women, interrupted now and then by a Jane Eyre or a Lizzie Bennet, but even then, not without their share of pain.
But I don’t think Theodora is just talking about literature.
There’s a sadness inside Theodora, a sadness that was there the first time I saw her, sitting stiffly in her blue felt seat, a sadness that seems to cling around her like a heavy mantle, trailing behind her wherever she goes.
A sadness I wish I could tear off her—if only it was tangible to me.
I’m not sure what to say, and I’m not sure if there’s anything Theodora wants me to say. I hesitate and then ask, “How are you, Theodora?”
She finally looks at me, a wry smile on her face. There’s a brittleness to her, like porcelain so frail it’s almost translucent. She looks as if a mere caress might send a crack running through her. Her eyes are cold, not cold like a distant glacier, but cold like fragile frost.
“I’m tired,” she answers. “I’m so tired. And I have no idea what I’m going to write for Mr Ambrose’s beauty assignment.”
I frown. Theodora has excelled so far in the programme. She’s not missed a single assignment, and Mr Ambrose has been raining praise on every piece of work she’s submitted.
In literature class, she’s finally managed to pull a little ahead of me, her essays always getting higher marks than mine. As far as I’m concerned, she’s thriving—academically.
Hearing that she’s stumped doesn’t fill me with satisfaction, like I’m seeing my rival stumble in the race. It makes me feel devastated, like finding out the enemy you were looking forward to duelling has fallen ill.
“Maybe you’re overthinking it,” I say suddenly, remembering the reading I’ve been doing, all of it to find a way of avoiding writing an essay that will make Mr Ambrose realise how desperately I love Theodora. “Mr Ambrose specifically said he wants to hear about our interpretations of beauty—maybe that’s all you have to write about.”
“What if you’re not sure what is or isn’t beautiful? What if you are in an abusive relationship with beauty?” She’s no longer looking at me, her eyes having drifted back to Ophelia’s face. “What if I’m Ophelia and beauty is Hamlet, making me feel so awful I want to die?”
A pit opens at the bottom of my stomach—a dark pit of pure terror.
“Do you want to die?” I ask, keeping my voice as calm as I can when asking such a question and being so afraid of the answer.
Theodora sighs. “No. I don’t want to die—I want to live. I want it quite desperately. Maybe I’m not like Ophelia after all.” She finally turns away from the painting. “You’ve caught me at a bad time, Zach.” She smiles at me, a smile that feels like she’s just put a mask back on. “I’m sure you weren’t expecting such despondency after taking the time to find me here.”
“I came because I wanted to apologise to you,” I blurt out. “I know it’s an overdue sort of apology, which is why I didn’t want to wait any longer than I already have.”
She raises an eyebrow. “You don’t need to apologise.”
“I do. I shouldn’t have been so rude to you in lit class the other day. I shouldn’t have been so moody and immature. And I shouldn’t—I didn’t want to fight, that night at the party, but I felt so angry and aggrieved, I felt like you hurt me, and I wanted to hurt you back. But—”
I remember Aquinas’s rules for penance. Confessing sins without omission. How could I possibly tell Theodora I wanted her first kiss—that I want all her kisses?
Telling her would feel both humiliating and manipulative.
