Game Control

by Lionel Shriver

  I’m not sure if you stop holding on down there when you’re older because you’re socialized out of it or because you figure out it doesn’t help. Anyway, if I was too embarrassed to raise my hand, I was certainly too embarrassed to admit that to Aunt Liz. So I told her I itched; that my underwear was too tight. Pretty resourceful.

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  ‘So the next day, spanking new, were six pairs of panties laid out on my bed. They were enormous. Far from being too tight, they waddled down my legs. I always hated that underwear.

  ‘What’s funny is I only figured out years later what Mrs Henderson was really on about. She thought I was masturbating. In class. Or no—Mrs Henderson would have said “playing with herself”. So the whole débâcle was even more horrific than I thought.’

  ‘When you try too hard to be no trouble, you often cause a great deal of it.’

  ‘I’ve noticed that. One of the things that used to drive Jane—that’s Ray’s wife—to distraction was when she’d ask what flavour ice-cream I wanted, I’d say, whatever there’s more of. She’d say there’s plenty of vanilla and chocolate, and I’d shrug, and she would go bananas until I wouldn’t get any ice-cream at all—which, I would claim, was fine with me, too. I do recall, I was difficult to punish.

  I’d get sent to my room, but I was perfectly happy in my room.’

  Eleanor clasped the hand on her shoulder, but it did not seem to have a life of its own. He had given it over as something to play with, a bauble to a child.

  ‘I was improbably well behaved,’ she went on. ‘When I was punished it was usually for something one of the other kids did. I’d take the rap and keep my mouth shut, and Jane’s kids figured out early that I was a bonanza too sweet to pass up. What always amazed me was that Ray and Jane weren’t clued in enough to figure that of course I wouldn’t have swiped Ray’s stapler without asking; I was terrified of his study. Or it would have been unheard of for me to spill Kool-Aid all over the floor without cleaning it up. That was my only criticism of them—they were bad readers of character.’

  He rearranged her with her head on his knee, stroking her forehead with the warm distraction of petting a cat. Perhaps because you couldn’t do that with Malthus, who was now glaring at the two of them from the opposite side of the room, gnawing on a kernel of hard corn as if he wished it were Eleanor’s head.

  ‘Anyway,’ Eleanor continued as Calvin’s fingers coaxed the tiny hairs on the edge of her scalp, ‘that house was the last 71

  place I was going to run amok. Jane was a college friend of my mother’s before Mom went completely gonzo. They had no obligation to keep me. But I adored them. I was petrified they would give me up. I was intent on being above reproach. That was the tragedy—we both read each other wrong. In fact, they had no intention of abandoning me. Moreover, they wished I would act like a normal, demanding child. They wanted to be generous, and for me sometimes to ask for something unreasonable so they could be stern and teach me that, no, there were limits; I could not have a Jaguar on my six-teenth birthday. In fact, birthdays—I’m sorry, am I running on?’

  ‘For once, thank heavens. Keep going.’

  ‘My thirteenth birthday Jane wanted to make special—I now realize. She wrapped up several packages with voluptuous ribbons.

  When I opened them I was so overwhelmed and, I don’t know, even upset that I went rigid and shut up. I didn’t respond at all, jump up and down—I’d make a deplorable game show guest. I just fingered the presents lamely and stared at the floor. From the outside, I must have looked sullen, because I’ll never forget Jane slamming down the box on that slinky dress with matching shoes and shouting.

  “Well, you wouldn’t say what you’d like, if you’re not satisfied, it’s your fault!” and whisking away to splurt furious sugar roses on the cake I’d not be able to stomach. I incurred her displeasure every time I tried too hard to avoid it. I made such an effort not to be burdensome it was—’

  ‘Burdensome. People who ask for nothing leave you guessing.

  Because it isn’t as if they want nothing, is it?’

  Eleanor looked at her lap. ‘I need very little.’

  Calvin raised her chin. ‘I wasn’t talking about what you need.’

  He leaned down and kissed her, with that odd stillness, on the lips. She thought that this was the beginning of, you know, but he leaned his head back and asked her to keep talking. She felt a brief panic that she had already run out of stories, since in Eleanor’s version of her life nothing had ever happened in it.

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘Then there were the hunger meals. Did those ever backfire.’

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  He sighed, obscenely content. ‘This sounds too perfect. What in God’s name is a hunger meal? I detect a contradiction in terms.’

  ‘Ray and Jane were keen to impress their kids how unjustly privileged we were and how the rest of the world was much worse off, though my bids to post my morning oatmeal to the “starving Armenians” went, regrettably, nowhere. You know that Skip Lunch campaign in the UK, and then you send a quid to Save the Children?

  Ray and Jane were way ahead of that game. For a while, once a week, Ray would begin dinner by reading some titbit about the Third World—yes, I am used to news clippings at supper, why do you think they get on my nerves—one of those heartrending vignettes of deprivation you get out of Oxfam in the Guardian. We put up with it. Another friend of mine had to listen to Bible readings, which must have been worse—those gospels were longer. So then Ray would sonorously take ten bucks out of his wallet and put it in a jar in the middle of the table, money that would get sent to CARE or something.’

  ‘What a hopeless ghett,’ said Calvin.

  ‘No, there’s more. The ten dollars was what we were saving on food. We were supposed to learn how the world’s poor had to eat every day, so instead of pork roast and broccoli, at a hunger meal all we had was rice. There was only one little problem.’

  ‘The Burger King next door?’

  ‘Worse. I loved rice.’

  ‘You were supposed to suffer.’

  ‘Exactly. All the other kids groaned, and whined for dessert, and moped about how dumb it was, and probably did pick up a burger at that. They acted the way they were supposed to: deprived. I was delighted. I detested pork roast; I was a picky eater but I adored starch, especially buttered rice, and I looked forward to our hunger meal all week. Jane went— insane.’ Eleanor started to laugh. ‘I’ll never forget one week she exploded: “In China you wouldn’t get any butter, you know!” Until finally, if I was going to be so damned happy about it, they refused to have any more hunger meals to spite me.’ Eleanor was doubled up with the memory, a precious subver-sion, though she feared that, given opportunity, she 73

  herself would turn into just the same sort of parent, with stagy liberal rice bowls on Thursday nights. Why would that be so terrible? But somehow it would be terrible. She couldn’t explain.

  ‘I love it when you laugh.’ He curled a ringlet at her ear. ‘You don’t do that often enough…. Sleepy?’

  ‘A little.’ Her yawn was fake. She rose with an exaggerated stretch, but froze at the picture of two V-shaped indentations in the arms of the opposite chair. Like—elbows. Incredibly sharp elbows. And there was a malicious little snicker on the edge of Eleanor’s ear.

  Eleanor rubbed her eyes, and when she looked back the indentations had disappeared.

  Calvin shot her an inquiring look when she took her briefcase into the bedroom, but said nothing.

  Eleanor snapped the case open on the bureau gaily, a family planning toy box. ‘What’ll it be? We have red, black and clear condoms, lubricated or ribbed. Advantages: non-systemic, easily stored, no side effects. Disadvantages: not always effective in use, and may reduce pleasure. Unpopular in most of Africa. Injectables? Long-acting, not related to coitus, and can be provided non-clinically.

  Disadvantages: minimal side effects, and removal of implants requires clinical back-up—’

  ‘Eleano
r—’

  ‘Rhythm has no side effects and is approved by the Catholic Church—’

  ‘Eleanor—’

  ‘But poses difficulties in calculation of safe period in lieu of a thermometer—’

  ‘Eleanor!’

  ‘I thought you’d appreciate my growing sense of humour about my profession.’

  Calvin had removed his jacket and tie and hung them up, and was methodically unbuttoning his shirt, undressing, she could tell, in exactly the same way he did every night without her. His shirt open, she stared at his chest, taut and dark, and she could not help but think, in an almost male admiration, that he had the most beautiful breasts she’d ever seen. His face, however, looked pained.

  ‘I owe you an apology,’ he explained. ‘When I asked you to 74

  stay, I did not mean like that. I would enjoy sleeping with you. I like companionship.’

  Eleanor coloured. ‘You did only ask if I wanted to—stay.’

  ‘It’s not you.’ He arranged the arms of the hanger into the shoulders of his shirt. ‘I don’t do that any more, with anyone. Not for years. Please don’t take it personally.’

  ‘Of course not!’ Eleanor turned aside to practise a trick developed as an easily injured adolescent: if you press a forefinger to the inside corner of each eye before it floods, the overflow will run down your hand rather than your cheek and no one is any the wiser.

  ‘If you’d prefer to go home, I’d understand.’

  ‘No, it—might be nice.’ She closed her briefcase and hid it by the bin. She did not know whether to undress or not. She slipped off her shoes.

  ‘I could loan you a T-shirt if you’d feel more comfortable.’

  ‘Yes. Maybe so.’ With her back to Calvin, Eleanor scrabbled into the oversized T. Funny, she’d made love to him seventeen years ago; how strange that you returned to being bashful having once been so intimate. Hadn’t he seen her breasts before? She supposed they were prettier then.

  She slipped under the sheet, thinking that this made two celibates in one weekend. Much as he dismissed the man as a nincompoop, Calvin had a fair bit in common with Wallace Threadgill. They were both fanatics, and they were both, according to their habits, destined to die out. Well, thought Eleanor, pulling her impromptu nightdress down her skinny thighs, no big loss.

  She felt a little silly about the shirt when Calvin stripped to nothing, and as he strode to turn off the light she noticed, resentfully, that he still had the body of a twenty-five-year-old. Probably he always slept in the buff, and since tonight was like going to bed on any ordinary night, why change habits?

  Eleanor turned on her side away from him; he put his arm around her waist and instantly fell asleep. His companion was not so lucky, though she did get a chance to employ yet another skill most single women have perfected by the age of thirty-eight: how to cry with a man’s arm around you without waking him up.

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  Eleanor got through half of breakfast with hollow cheer, insisting on making coffee, though that was Solastina’s job. Calvin said little, perhaps waiting for her to run out of twitter. Since Eleanor was never very good at twitter, she did so by the second cup.

  ‘Are you disappointed,’ he asked, ‘because you couldn’t have something you wanted or have I merely offended your pride?’

  ‘I just don’t understand.’

  ‘You didn’t answer my question.’

  ‘You’re acting as if it’s some kind of abnormal impulse.’

  ‘It has become abnormal for me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘If you have ever been happy once, that spoils you. The misery that follows is your only comfort. I have come to love mine. I’m rather protective of it, in fact.’

  ‘You don’t seem miserable to me.’

  ‘Quite so. The misery mellows into nothing in particular.’

  ‘So what’s the point? Why not?’

  ‘Long after an emotion has passed it is possible to pay tribute to it. The less you can recall the feeling, the more important that tribute becomes. Ask widows who visit graves on Sundays. Their diligence redoubles once the loved one fades. The diligence is all that remains.

  And I am hardly going to visit the Mombasa morgue. Instead, I practise abstinence. It’s easy, though you are an attractive woman.

  A bit like dropping something on the road, you aren’t sure where.

  That side of me is lost.’

  ‘Impossible. It’s never lost.’

  ‘Sex can be surgically removed, like a tumour.’

  ‘More like cutting off your head.’

  ‘Think of me as the victim of an accident, then—with an injury people feel awkward discussing.’

  ‘You look intact to me.’

  ‘I’m not. But being a cripple has its compensations. What do we call the handicapped now? Differently enabled? Other capacities gain ground.’

  ‘This woman. She’s the one on the wall? Who you said was a missionary?’

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  ‘ Mercenary,’ Calvin corrected, and had a good laugh. ‘Oh, Panga.

  I hope you caught that.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘In due course,’ said Calvin. ‘But you and I need to get this established. Don’t imagine I’m restraining myself. I am without sexual desire, and don’t feel sorry for me either. Imagine how liberating it must feel. You remember the enthusiasm you once felt for history in high school, when what really made your heart race was the boy in the front row, and impressing him with your politics? I am no longer subject to ulterior fascinations. I’m never distracted by where-is-she-now while polishing off July’s Population Bulletin. Shouldn’t you envy me?’

  ‘I might, a little,’ she admitted, ‘if I could believe it. Maybe everyone fantasizes about being out from under. But I don’t believe it.’

  He took her hand. ‘You think it’s your fault and I’m being polite.

  Please, my lack of interest is not from lack of interest in you. On the other hand, if you are looking for passionate involvement you will need to go elsewhere. I confess I should be sorry to see less of you.’

  Eleanor realized with a thud that she had been seeing Calvin about five times a week. How this had occurred she couldn’t fathom, but insidiously he was all her social life in Nairobi; just as insidiously, all her life. And here he was, offering to sacrifice her to the sticky clutches of the brown chair.

  She took his hand and sandwiched it between her palms, stroking his forefinger across her forehead. ‘Threadgill is right. I’m in trouble.’

  ‘You are only safe when you’re dead.’

  ‘I’m beginning to look forward to it.’

  ‘I assure you it’s quite pleasant.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I am pre-dead.’

  She sighed. ‘Calvin, sometimes you get just too strange.’

  ‘Pre-death is supremely useful. A man without feelings is a merciless sword. The limits dissolve like cotton candy. Did you know there are no rules really? That most of the ones you obey you make up? I could teach you a great deal I’m not sure you want to know.’

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  ‘Everyone around me lately talks like J. R. R. Tolkien.’

  ‘No hobbits and fairies,’ said Calvin. ‘ Gormenghast.’

  Eleanor was poorly read in fantasy, but she didn’t like the sound of that word.

  ‘My dear,’ he advised her, ‘the whole of this century has increasingly closed the gap between science fiction and fact. I have a hard time finding any novel sufficiently outlandish…’

  ‘Isaac Asimov has been upstaged by history, it is reliably more fantastic to read the newspaper. Old hat.’

  ‘Yes. Clichéd, isn’t it?’ His mouth stirred in a particularly rich, thick smile, double cream. ‘Now, I’ve some appointments this morning, but my afternoon could be tidied up with a few phone calls. Could you get free?’

  ‘This morning I’ve got to hand out awards to the CBD agents who have brought in the most new clients, b
ut I should be through by two. Why?’

  ‘Because we are going to buy you a new dress and matching shoes.

  And you will jump up and down if I have to fill your overly large knickers with fire ants. Now, let me see about those calls.’ Though there was a phone in the living room, he rose to ring elsewhere.

  She stopped him. ‘You never tell me anything but jokes and veiled, mystic warnings from cheap sci-fi.’

  ‘Then I must be highly entertaining.’ He jingled down the hall with his keys and spent a good minute or so unlocking a door there; and then she heard him secure the dead-bolt on the other side.

  As he’d promised, Calvin swept her from Mathare to the YaYa Centre. Kenya’s styles are conservative, but at last he seized upon a short, sleeveless black dress with a scandalous neckline and rhinestones on one shoulder. He located sheer seamed black stock-ings and precariously high black patent shoes with twinkles on the heels. He brought Eleanor home and made her put her hair up.

  ‘I feel like a total whore,’ she complained.

  He led her to the mirror. Eleanor had long legs, and now you could see most of them. The new push-up black lace bra made the best of her modest endowment. She had never noticed before, but with her hair raised she seemed to have a

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  long, lean neck to which the little gold pendant drew attention.

  Walking in these shoes, however, would take practice. She was both pleased and a little frightened. ‘You don’t think I look ridiculous?’

  ‘You looked ridiculous in that plaid.’

  In fact, it only took the evening for Eleanor to master her shoes.

  This time when she strode to the Ladies’ in the Horseman, diners turned their heads. Despite Calvin’s generous offer to special-order buttered rice, Eleanor had lobster and frozen lemon soufflé. She did not cart the claws out to beggars on the pavement or try to doggie-bag her jacket potato. While Calvin might have had ‘no feelings’, he was a terrific lot of fun, and Eleanor was rapidly developing sufficient feelings for the both of them.