Girl
Nina was the girl that everyone wanted to be, like Marilyn Munroe with blonde hair and a thick ruby smile. She was an art student and would visit the galleries for art openings with her boy friend who was a masters student, she would often wear short skirts, tights and her hair in a French bun like girls from the 1960s. The lecturer at the art school liked Nina’s paintings a lot. He had asked her if he could hold onto a selection of her work for a few days to show the junior students. Her paintings sat in a pile in one of the lecture rooms, they were brightly coloured with flowers, birds, oceans and pretty mermaid ladies sitting on plastic neon rocks, ever so slightly kitsch, but beautiful and modern like Picasso’s paintings in 1920.
In her 30s Nina lived in a big city, where the streets were alive each night with ladies at corners and men in beds on pavements, markets on streets selling noodles and cornerstores with fridges of milk and juice. Nina would drive out to the beaches and inland to the dry countryside with her handsome fiancée. He was handsome like the men in old films, his hair slicked back and shirts ironed neat and a beautiful white tooth smile. Each year they’d head north to the tropics to one of the islands, their skins would melt and they would drink tropical cocktails with straws and pieces of fruit slices on the edges of the glass. She would wear bikinis and lie in the chairs on a stripy towel and then swim into the liquid blue.
Get Alice Moon-Star’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
In the spring Nina got married in a white dress with flowers in her hair, under the canopy of the gold tipped leaves of the eucalyptus. Their families gathered in beautiful dresses and handsome suits under the dappled light of the sun. She smiled as she walked down the isle and looked down at the harsh earth covered with leaf litter and dark red rose petals. In the late afternoon they cut their cake decorated with white icing and flowers and drank champagne in long glasses. They then rented a small flat in one of the fancy suburbs and it had wood floors with fashionable carpets and soft edged furniture with bouquets of leaves and flowers in glass jars beneath her art on the walls. She would dress in clothes like ladies wear in magazines and grew her hair long with a modern fringe. In the weekends she would go for a run in the valley past the creek with the ducks and the trees with coloured birds, recording every heart beat and the kilometres ran. At home her husband would have something waiting, a croissant and black coffee or an omelet and honey porridge.
For their sons 1st birthday Nina was 39 and she wore a fitted cotton dress covered in coloured embroidered flowers. She made the dress out of an old tablecloth she found at a second hand shop in the city. Nina had also hand sewn a teddy bear for her son, it was a light tan colour made from fabric to furnish chairs, it’s eyes were tiny black buttons with 2 holes and it’s cotton thread mouth had a slight smile.
When Nina was 45 she started painting again, it had been ten years since she had finished a painting. Her friend Danny was a career artist and had art in books and magazines and he asked Nina to paint a canvas for a group show. Nina had been a model for one of his paintings when she was 26 and she had just moved to the city, and lived in a flat above a Chinese takeaway that was open late. Her new painting was an abstract with thick rough brush strokes of turquoise overtop of dark peach, gold, black and white slashes of paint. She called it ‘River’, because it looked like water flowing through rocks and fish under the sun, her husband looked at her painting and didn’t say anything. After the painting dried Nina took a photograph of it and then wrapped it in layers of paper, bubble wrap and one thick layer of cardboard and secured it with thick clear tape. Danny came by on a Sunday and placed the canvas in the back of his car. He looked older now, his hair was gray above his ears and his eyes were circled with little lines. He kissed Nina on the lips, before he left with a large smile like the cat in Alice in Wonderland.
It was the group show opening two weeks later on a Thursday night, Nina wore a tight pink silk dress with black spaghetti straps over her shoulders and tied her hair in a tight bun with a side fringe. Her make up was dramatic with red lips and sparkling eye shadow. Nina’s painting sat alone on a large white wall of the small gallery and when she arrived three people were gathered with Danny around her painting chatting, they all smiled, animatedly drinking red wine from tiny glasses, the room was alive with muffled voices and modern instrumental music.
