An Opening

The joke is not just for him. She posted it along with a link to a show she’s curating. Presumably, something will be dangling from the ceiling at the opening. He wants to like the post, particularly because the show is going to be at a gallery nearby. It’s local. Convenient. It would be nice to go to an event like this. It would be nice to see her again after all these years. He’s never been to a gallery opening.

Does she work in art? He doesn’t remember her saying anything like that. Come to it, he can’t recall much of their conversation at all. He wonders why they call it an opening when the gallery doesn’t open and shut down each time. Or does it? He is seriously uninformed about the art world. In a parallel tab he searches for the definition of a gallery opening. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea. But as he hits refresh, her first post is followed by a second. Actually, it’s not a second so much as an addendum to the first. She writes that her old friends better show her a good time while she’s in town.
He smiles and clicks reply. Then he pauses, takes a moment to scan their mutual friends and decides a private message might be better.

They meet at a café near his office. She’s sitting down when he walks in, hunched over her glass of water, tapping a spoon against the table. She looks up at him and smiles. He begins to open his arms but she doesn’t move to stand and, after a pause, he sits down. She touches her hair and her ear reminds him of a shell of pasta. They recall when they first met – this time of year, cold and wet, someone’s New Year’s party but can’t recall whose, and it seems miraculous they added each other at all. It’s been a decade, she says.

He asks her how the preparation for her show is going. She abandons the spoon she was tapping, picks up a knife and tells him that curating is a dead-end. The gallery owner can’t afford to pay international shipping costs and some of the works are stuck. The artists aren’t interested in keeping with the curatorial bind she set — they want to be loose, free.
He doesn’t know what a curatorial bind is, and wonders aloud if it has something to do with the rope she mentioned online. She laughs with her mouth open and he admires her teeth. She taps his hand as the waiter places two fluted glasses on the table, and he decides she’s as lovely as he remembers.

When she excuses herself to take a phone call, he wonders how long it’s been since she lived here, and why she decided to leave? Would she be open to ever moving back? Is it too soon to ask her what she’s doing over the holiday? Maybe, she could join him for a New Year’s potluck lunch at his neighbour’s house. He planned on buying a cake from a high street bakery, but if she agreed, maybe they could make something together and bring it over. It was too soon to introduce her to people, but then again, she wasn’t really new.

She hangs up and apologises, it’s her mother, just checking in, and he remembers reading about her father passing away earlier that year. He could recall her particular expression of grief — she referred to her father as her north star. He had liked the post and written words of condolence, which he offers again now. She nods and says it’s been difficult, suddenly she and her mother find themselves living together again, both married and now both suddenly alone.
He leans in closer. Both married?

Yes, she says. She tells him she’d gotten married a few years ago, someone she’d met online and dated for a short time, too short in retrospect, and it didn’t turn out as she’d hoped. She tilts her head to the side, tapping the sharp edge of the knife into the table. He feels his face warm like it used to when he was late for school. I didn’t know you were married. Almost three years. He sits back. I must have missed that.

I wasn’t very public about it. He wasn’t into social media. And I never put any wedding pictures up. He opens his mouth and closes it again. He feels lied to, betrayed. She watches him, and he can’t help laughing. I’m just surprised. I would have thought some mention of a husband would have come up somewhere.

I mean, I didn’t want to exploit my wedding for likes, she says. She puts down the knife. Her eyes move to a mark she’s made in the table. She rubs it and he realises she has very small hands for a tall woman, and he knows he is somewhere he’s never been before. He says he has to go but that they should meet again before she leaves. He calls for the bill and she insists on paying half. He spends a few hours that night going through photos on her page. The opening comes and goes. He sees a few pictures, none of which feature the rope.

Avni Doshi is the author of Girl in White Cotton: A Novel (Fourth Estate)