Page 82 of We All Live Here
Martin nods, as if this is completely to be expected. He has a strange air of authority in this club—he’s like a different person.
“How—how do you come up with your ideas?”
“Uhh.” He looks away from her when he talks, and she wonders if he’s shyer than he lets on. “Honestly? The first year I came I did an animation about bullying. It was pretty crap, but Mr. Pugh said the animation was good. And last year I did more kind of surreal stuff, dreams, nightmares, inanimate objects coming to life, that kind of thing. I don’t really know what I want to do half the time so I just have a small idea and try to make it bigger.” He blushes a little. “If that makes sense.”
“I don’t have any ideas, though.” She doesn’t want to do an animation about bullies.
“I’m trying to remember the prompts he gave us last year.” He stares at his feet for a minute. “Oh. Okay. What’s the last thing that made you laugh?”
She thinks about Gene on television with the toothpaste, the way he mimicked the many different ways the director had made him smile at himself during filming—Now give me Satisfied Smile! Now give me Sexy Smile! Unsure Smile! Confident Smile! Make Love to the Camera Smile!Then she thinks about him being mischievous in the gay sex shop. Himand Bill having a stupid old-man fight in the hall with tea-towels, as if she and Violet were meant to think they were joking.
“My two grandpas,” she says, “who hate each other. Or hated each other.”
Martin smiles. “Yeah. Two old men fighting. That’s funny.”
Her face falls. “Except I can’t draw old men.”
“Hold on.” Martin walks back through the tables and squats by a low bookcase. He comes back with a well-thumbed oversized paperback book titled:How to Draw Characters.
“Copy some of those,” he says, flicking through the pages. “Even if they’re not exactly what you want, they’ll give you some ideas. It’s quite good—it does step-by-step guides.” There are instructions on how to draw an egg and turn it into a face, how to draw emotions, how to age a character. He hands her the book, hesitates, then heads back to his table.
“Thanks,” she says, probably a moment too late. She isn’t sure if he hears her.
•••
“How was Animation,honey?” says Gene, when she gets home. He’s in the living room lying across the entire length of the sofa, watching the news on the television and eating crisps from the packet, which means that Bill is out. Truant is sitting staring at him, every fiber of his being fixated on the possibility of stray crumbs.
“Good,” she says. She has a folder under her arm full of pictures of old men fighting. One has bright white teeth and a toupee, his opponent has a stick, a suit and tie, and she has created a storyboard in which they are arguing over who gets to climb aboard a bus first. As they fight they gradually knock over all the old ladies at the bus stop, then all the passengers on the bus, including mothers with prams, and finally the driver. Last, they pull out their bus passes and complain about their frailty.Martin had burst out laughing when she showed him and she doesn’t even think he was doing it kindly.
“So what did you draw?” he says. “Anything you can show your old pal Gene?”
“Not yet, Grandpa,” she says, and smiles as she trots up thestairs.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Lila
“Ah! Ms. Kennedy! I had been hoping to speak to you.” Mrs. Tugendhat is making her way across the playground. She is wearing a long draped tunic, and her stately manner gives the impression of a boat in full turquoise sail navigating calm seas, even as the wind blows her hair around her head in an unruly cloud.
“Hello, Mrs. Tugendhat,” says Lila, trying not to grimace. She had come early because she had been hoping to catch Gabriel.
“It’s the costumes. We were hoping we might see something by now. The dress rehearsal is creeping up!” She raises both eyebrows as she says this, as though they are sharing some great joke.
The bloody costumes. Lila knows she should have spent an evening on eBay sorting them but somehow it disappears from her brain every evening.
“Are they coming together?”
“Yes. Yes,” Lila says reassuringly.
“I sent you the measurements. You got the email, yes? Goodness, these children are so large now! When I started teaching they were all pint-sized. Pint-sized!” She thrusts a plump hand downward to indicate the height of a child who would have been, at best, a toddler. “Can you let me know when we can expect them?”
It feels like the constant chorus to Lila’s life sometimes:When can we expect more chapters? When can we expect the costumes? When can we expect the noise to stop in your garden?
“I’ll be in touch,” says Lila, guessing, uncomfortably, that the thought will probably have disappeared from her head by the time she reaches her front door. Because Lila’s head, for the last week, has been 98 percent full of Gabriel. He had sent her a slew of messages the following day—That was a lovely evening. I couldn’t sleep afterward. You are so beautiful, Bella—but he has made frustratingly little effort to see her. She had more or less assumed that this was it now, that they were athing. That they had laid the building blocks of something lovely, and this was the next step to a stage that might involve more dinners, or sleepovers, or even introducing their families.
Two days ago she had broken and texted him from the bath.
Are we okay? You’re v quiet x
