Kitten and I laughed and laughed and when she smoked, she laughed so much it came out of her nostrils like a dragon.

AFTERMATH

The morning after the exhibition, Papa took me to your house, Ornella. He was dishevelled and hungover. I’d told him I could ride my bike but he dragged himself up and started the car still wearing his dressing gown. You already had your grocery bag in the fold of your arm and your purse in your hand, waiting. Carlito was snoring, and you closed the bedroom door so we didn’t have to hear him. ‘I will buy you one cinnamon doughnut,’ you said to me. ‘Two, if you’re very good. What is wrong with your hair?’ You scrabbled at it with your free hand and glared at Papa, who retreated to the car and reversed without caution from his parking spot. ‘That man!’ you said. ‘He’s a disgrace.’

The Richmond market was full of people. There was squashed fruit on the bitumen and a smell of dirt and bracchia. I saw an old woman put her hand in between other people’s hands and steal three tomatoes from a stall. She had a string bag with single items in it: an orange, an apple, an onion. She put her three tomatoes in the top. Her hair had bits of bracken or tobacco stuck in it and her clothes looked like they had come out of a bin. I elbowed you. ‘That old lady just stole tomatoes,’ I said.

I expected you to be outraged. I expected you to run after her and say, ‘Excuse me, madam!’ Instead, you glanced up and then returned your gaze to me coldly. ‘Just be quiet, Owen,’ you said. ‘Just be quiet, will you. So rude of you. Just be quiet.’

I dug my hands into my pockets crossly.

Everything was topsy-turvy and stupid. Nothing made sense. An old lady took things from a stall without paying for them and I got into trouble.

At the doughnut van, you gave me my measly paper bag with its one measly doughnut and it went down in two stupid bites, like nothing. What was the good in a doughnut when it went down in two bites? Nothing was satisfying. Nothing lasted. ‘I’m still hungry,’ I said. ‘So rude,’ you said. ‘I shouldn’t’ve got you even one doughnut, rude boy.’

All the good feeling from the night before, the fun with Kitten, the buying of the painting, evaporated. I was beginning to understand that that was the way things worked. Everything that made a person feel good ran out. That was it. That was how it was.

‘Cruel to be kind, O-yo,’ you said later, as we walked back up Bridge Road and I still wasn’t talking to you. You kept walking for a bit, then, ‘You’ve got to learn compassion for people, Owen. Like your father has.’

What were you talking about? I thought you said Papa was a disgrace.