“She’s obviously not very nice. I don’t understand why you’re friends with her,” says Luke.
“I’m not.”
“So why do you waste your time with her? You only get one life.”
“She asked to meet up and I feel bad saying no. She knows I don’t have a job — I have no excuse.”
“You don’t have to explain yourself. Say you’re busy next time.”
“I don’t think there’ll be a next time. I don’t think she likes me.”
“So no problem, then.”
“But I want her to like me.”
“But you don’t like her!”
“Because she isn’t nice!”
“So what’s the issue?”
“I am nice, so she should like me!”
“You do know it’s okay if not everyone likes you,” says Luke.
“If that was true, it would feel okay, but it doesn’t, so it can’t be.”
“All right, you’ve lost me. Sleep time now.”
“Don’t you want to have sex? We said we would.”
“Do you want to?” asks Luke.
I weigh my options. I don’t, but I’m not ready to be left alone in the sickly orange streetlamp wash beyond good night. “I don’t not want to.”
“You make it so hard for me to resist.”
“Don’t you want to?”
“I do, but…tomorrow? Definitely tomorrow.”
“We always say that.”
“But this time we really, really mean it.”
Ephemera
Things have been piling up over the last few months in the corners and at the edges of the rooms in our flat: stubborn, uncategorizable items that have no proper place but aren’t rubbish either. In the wake of a spate of huffs and hints from Luke (who has somehow managed to absolve himself of any responsibility for the stuff) I gather everything together and sit down to go through it all in one go.
There’s a cord from my e-reader (which my computer doesn’t recognize); a lightbulb, which might be old but might be new; three keys, all incompatible with the locks in my life; a set of portable speakers rendered obsolete by our recent mobile phone upgrades; spare buttons in little polythene bags; a cardigan left after a dinner party; the order of service from my grandfather’s funeral; a cigarette lighter left after a different dinner party; a red ribbon; two jokers from a pack of playing cards; the instruction booklet for a desk fan; and a used plastic disposable camera: contents unknown.
I leave the other stuff for later and take the camera to the first drugstore I find, one of the dusty village-style variety with a window display themed around evening primrose, incongruously quaint on this grimy London street between a tanning salon (“Spray It Like You Mean It!”) and bookies. A bell tinkles when I open the door and I’m hit by the smell — a powdery, fudgy, floral nostalgia-blast, encoded in my brain at some long-ago point to signify “femininity,” and I realize with a vague sense of disenchantment that this phenomenon — femininity — has not manifested itself at all as I expected, in the form of vanity table, crystal perfume atomizer, kimono suspended from silk-padded hanger, et cetera, but instead as a tangle of grayish underwear, old sports T-shirts for nighties and an unruly drugstore-special-offer-dictated assortment of half-finished moisturizers, packets of face wipes and bunches of tampons.
I select from the shelves a prettily packaged tube of cuticle cream — the first step toward the boudoir of my dreams! — and take it to the counter along with the camera, which I submit for one-week development.
Recurring dream
Last night, the wolves that used to feast on my flesh fed on a mountain of steaks instead. Am I meant to read this as some kind of progress?
Surprise
I turn on the TV to reports of a terrorist attack on the news — rolling footage of charred remains, grave shock in the voice of the presenter, and with a sinking heart, I think, How are we still surprised? Is it as simple as we forget? That planes crash; babies get bigger; cells mutate; volcanoes erupt; sometimes it rains; years go by; regimes grow strong; humans lie; economies fail; children die; bins get full; clean clothes get dirty; darkness always falls early in winter? Is this how we keep going, one day to the next?
“M” is for “Mother”
A text out of nowhere, like a small detonation: can u meet. M.
Olive branch
I take a table alfresco — i.e. outside the cafe’s glass front, but inside the train station overlooking the main thoroughfare. I have an absurd fear I won’t recognize her, that in the months since I saw her she’ll have turned gray, aged aggressively. Then she emerges: fingers primping her hair, rearranging her scarf, her collar, her hair again, eyeing herself sidelong in every shop window — so self-absorbed that for a moment, even as I’m flooded with love and relief after these many months without her, I find myself also furious with her.
“Mum,” I call, trying to rise, but things are tight between table, chair and window, and the result is a bowlegged squat. She’s overshot by a few feet and is startled to see me when she turns.
“Oh! Claire. I missed you there.” Instinctively she reaches out for me, then remembering, withdraws a little, and squeezes my hand the way a distant elderly relative might.
“I missed you too,” I say.
“What? Oh right. Yes, I see,” she says, still holding my hand.
—
Once she’s settled with coffee, she gives me the customary once-over.
“That’s a nice top,” she says. “Is it new?”
Tugging the hem, I say, “This? No.”
“Still. I’ve always loved blue on you.” Her eyes continue to rove. “Hair back.” (Meaning: scraped up.) She touches her own, voluminous as ever.
“You’re looking great,” I say, taking the cue. She tweaks her shoulders and sits up a little straighter.
“Well. At my age you have to make the effort.” There’s a pause. We smile at each other, look away, smile again, wider, a little more desperate.
“So. How’s Luke?”
“He’s fine. Work’s busy, exams ongoing, but you know Luke: always has his eyes on the prize.”
“And…things between you are good?” Her head is tilted to one side, casual fashion, though the tendons stand out in her neck, and I’m seized by the paranoid, squirming feeling I get whenever I’m asked a direct personal question.
“Things are brilliant! Better than ever!”
“Good! I thought…No, that’s great.”
“What?”
“I didn’t say anything!” She throws her eyes upward, tutting. “That’s always been your problem, Claire — you see everything, even things that aren’t there.” She stirs her coffee, takes a dainty slurp of foam. “I was only going to say, I thought you two had decided to take a step back.”
“What does that mean? Where did you get that idea?”
“Oh,” she says lightly, “I thought there was something about deciding not to get married, but perhaps I’m mistaken.”
“Was this from Grandma?”
Her lips and brows gather in exaggerated thought. “I suppose…yes, it must have been. So is it true?”
“No! Not at all. Well, only in the sense that it’s always been true: we’re not married and have no current plans to be.”
“No plans, or plan not to? I’m allowed to ask! I’m your mother — you can be honest with me.”