Adults

by Emma Jane Unsworth

  ‘No,’ I said, to my mother, who was looking at Art.

  Art smiled. ‘I’m sure you taught Jenny a lot about love.’

  ‘She did,’ I said. ‘She taught me you should never go to bed on an argument. You should STAY UP ALL NIGHT ARGUING.’

  Art laughed.

  ‘Pisces?’ my mother said.

  ‘Oh dear sweet Jesus,’ I said.

  Art nodded, amazed.

  ‘Mm,’ said my mother. ‘Indecisive. Slippery. I knew one of those.’

  ‘Hometime!’ I said.

  ‘Well, she seems lovely,’ Art said, in the cab.

  I looked at him. ‘For real?’

  ‘Yes. She’s a bit extrovert, but I found her wacky ways endearing. Reassuring, almost. It’s like she’s plugged into a deeper plane, you know?’

  I stared at him. ‘Oh god,’ I said, ‘you’re a believer.’

  ‘I’m open-minded.’

  ‘You’re just another millennial looking for meaning in all the wrong places. You know she does all that shit by micro-eye-movements? She only decided to become a psychic when she failed as an actress. She’s a mutant. She preys on grief and fear.’

  Art shook his head. ‘There’s just no way she could have known. I have never, and will never, talk about my uncle.’

  I retreated from him then, ashamed almost. ‘Maybe she planted the suggestion.’

  ‘She’s not that devious.’

  ‘Want to bet? My childhood was ripped through with her ambivalence. She alternately smothered me and wounded me. She was all over the place. She was crazy.’

  I realised I was describing her in the same way most men described their exes. The way Art had described his.

  I WAS EIGHTEEN

  the day I left home and I’d made her drive me to the station. The car was new. The cars were always new. Rentals or benevolent benefactors. This one was a blue Jag. I remember the way her leather jacket creaked as she turned the corners. At the station, people stared as we pulled up. I went for the door lever.

  ‘So you’re leaving? Just like this?’

  ‘Daughters leave,’ I said. ‘It’s normal. This break-up was inevitable.’

  I got out and slammed the door. The slam of it. I could have done it harder.

  ‘Is this about my choice of vocation?’ she said, through the open window. It was a normal question but I felt her anger and violence, too. That layer of red under her looks.

  ‘It’s about all your choices. It’s about your fucking chaos.’

  I didn’t look back as I walked into the station but I did hear the Jag vrrrrooooomm away.

  What was it really about? So much, so many things, over the years. A granular resentment that grew into a plaque around my heart.

  ART SAID

  I would like to take some photos of you, if you don’t mind.

  What kind of photos?

  Nothing pervy.

  I’ll be the judge of that

  I would like you to be naked.

  Fuck off

  They will be photos that define romance and womanhood.

  I was thrilled. Deeply, problematically thrilled. I pressed him for more details. It would be tasteful, of course. Politically right-on. And, a week later, I was on my back on the kitchen floor, holding some roses over my bush and staring up at the black circle of Art’s lens as he stood on two kitchen chairs over me, balanced like a bridge. Part of me billowed at being his subject. I wanted scrutinising, I did. I wanted someone to look and look and look at me and not stop looking. The roses were meant to symbolise menstruation – that’s what Art said in interviews. Hahaha! Who WAS this guy?

  ‘I am going to buy you a present every time you get your period,’ he also said to me.

  ‘That’s quite a commitment.’

  ‘So be it.’

  Before the photos were released I used to sneak down to his darkroom in the cellar, flick on the strip light, and ogle myself. I was overjoyed they were going out into the world. That anticipation was mine and mine alone. I knew how well they’d do. I felt my own proximity to heat, to warmth, to … almost-love. I couldn’t wait. Could not wait. How did they make me feel? Adored. Seen. Validated. I wanted all those girls I went to school with to see. I felt as though I had that in my eyes as I stared out, lethal. Bow down, bitches …

  Kelly said: ‘Do you not feel a bit exposed?’

  I said: ‘Are you making a photography joke?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He’s an artist,’ I said defensively. ‘It’s his job to expose things.’

  A fudge! Similar: ‘Would you love him if he wasn’t an artist?’

  Oh, but (I took my time with this one, pre-prepped): ‘Art wouldn’t be Art if he wasn’t an artist.’

  He loved me, and I loved him. We did. We assuaged each other’s fears for as long as we could. But once the pictures were out, and people talked over me when he tried to introduce me, I saw myself for what I was: the silent partner. It was a legacy, but not my legacy. Half of me revelled in the glory of being seen; the other half felt undermined. But Art still saw me. Still saw right through. Didn’t he?

  Like when he found me in the kitchen that Halloween – our third Halloween party in a row. We’d invited so many people – it must have been close to a hundred in the end. Pumpkin lights and cobwebs were strung along the bannisters. The lounge was full of hags and zombies. I was in the kitchen, tipping pineapple juice into a pan of hot rum punch. A tower of vintage teacups teetered by the hob.

  Art came up behind me silently and put his arms around me. ‘You okay?’

  ‘Yeah!’

  He’d moved in by then. I was still adjusting. It takes time – the rearrangement of your innermost parts, making space, accommodating. I rearranged myself, and my house, for him.

  He said: ‘Stop stirring a sec.’

  I stopped stirring (outside. I was still stirring inside).

  ‘You know you’ve been in here since everyone arrived.’

  ‘I’m busy making things.’

  He turned me around. ‘Are you? Or are you hiding?’

  I laughed. ‘Hiding! Why would I be hiding, in my own house, from my own friends? Hahahah!’

  ‘Why are you making four hot cocktails?’

  ‘Because it’s a party!’

  ‘Are those … canapes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You look insane.’

  I felt insane.

  He whispered: ‘I don’t really want all these people here, either. I like a lot of them, but I’d much rather we were relaxing in front of the TV.’

  ‘It’s a party! Parties are relaxing! I love parties.’

  ‘Do you? Or did you just want a houseful, and then you created a chaos to remove yourself from the situation?’

  Fucking hell. That enquiry seared me to the bone. Here he was, slicing through my carefully curated kindness. I wondered how many other times he’d seen through my little charades: when I crossed a room to talk to someone who was on their own, knowing he was watching. I wanted all those people there because I wanted to be liked. And I liked a lot of them, really I did. But did I actually want to talk to them, all at once? Did I actually think I could talk to them all? Or did I fumble introductions, panic when more than one person tried to speak to me at once, make excuses to go to the toilet too many times, plan extravagant cocktails that would keep me in the kitchen until I was sufficiently liquored to blunder through some two-inch small talk with the equally liquored? All those exhibitions I smiled through. All those parties I hosted. All those dinners I presented. All that I was, I was not. I was a lie. The antisocial party girl.

  He smiled – the archaeologist moving from hammer to brush. He said: ‘You know no one gives a shit? Everyone’s happy with wine. Calm down.’

  ‘Are you telling me to calm down? As a man, to a woman?’

  ‘No, just … Yes. Calm down. Calm the whole fuck down, is that better?’

  ‘Nope.’

  He tried some cocktail and winced
. ‘You know when you asked me about my worries? You know how you still ask me about my worries?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, this is me, doing that. Checking in. Taking your temperature.’

  I thought of the thermometer by the bed. I said, ‘Okay. Thank you.’

  ‘Now, what is this?’

  ‘Hot rum punch. My mother’s recipe.’

  ‘How is Carmen?’

  ‘Oh she’s good. It’s Halloween. Busiest time of the year.’

  SOMEONE SAYS

  ‘Excuse me, can I sit down, please?’

  I look up from Suzy’s Good morning from me and my oat cortado! to see a woman standing, holding the rail. She looks troubled. Faint, almost. Everyone else around me looks up from their phones, too. A voice! A human voice in the vacuum! What can this mean? The end times?

  The woman is directing her voice to a woman sitting in a priority seat. Faint Woman is wearing a Baby on Board badge. (What was it that bastard said to me, the time I wore one? Did you lose your baby? Because he couldn’t see my bump, presumably. I felt too sick and embarrassed to question him further, on a packed train. Prescient, though. Prescient fucker.)

  To my surprise – to everyone’s surprise – Priority Woman says No.

  ‘Sorry?’ Faint Woman says.

  I look down, hard, at my blind phone.

  ‘I’m tired,’ says Priority Woman. ‘I’ve had a bad night and I’ve got a busy day. Why are my needs not as great just because I’m not pregnant? Pregnancy is not a moral agent; it is a physical state. By giving you my seat I am perpetuating the idea that pregnant women are more valuable – and this does none of us any good.’

  I look up. Faint Woman looks flummoxed. And tired, really tired. I look down again.

  I want to speak up. I want to be that person who speaks up and punctures her bubble of harmlessness for the sake of what is right. No – actually, I want this situation to end, right now. Why am I in this situation? It’s not fair. I don’t deserve it. Why am I under pressure like this?

  I might tweet about how outrageous this is. I could do a phenomenally wrathful tweet about this, believe me.

  I remain quiet.

  ‘This is for the good of all of us,’ Priority Woman says, ‘me sitting here and you not. Think of it as taking one for the team.’

  I look up. Faint Woman is staring at me. The train moves off and she steadies herself.

  JENNY, GET UP. A voice, from somewhere inside me. A deep, old, serious one. The voice of someone I don’t even know. GET UP RIGHT NOW.

  I stand up and offer Faint Woman my seat. She accepts with a pointed ‘Thank you’, sits down and immediately looks out of the window. I walk away, down the Tube.

  Priority Woman is furious. She stands up and stomps after me, accosting me by the next set of doors.

  ‘What was that about? I was making a point for womankind. It’s not progress, politeness, you know.’

  I don’t know why or how, but I say: ‘The pregnancy was a red herring. I’m afraid it’s about kindness. If someone asks for your seat then you give it to them, because they probably need it.’

  ‘How do you even know she’s telling the truth?’

  I look at Faint Woman.

  ‘She really is.’

  ‘Prove it.’

  People – everyone – are looking at us. We are the best entertainment available right now. I don’t care.

  ‘What, you want me to go and buy her a pregnancy test and make her piss on it?’

  ‘If you have to.’

  ‘Fuck whether she’s telling the truth. The truth has nothing to do with what’s right.’

  ‘You’re a fucking idiot.’

  She’s seething, Priority Woman. She’s seething at me. And I bow my head. I cower a bit, waiting for the next blow, but she just seethes, like a malevolent spirit.

  I look out, at the spark-lit, scraggy walls of the tunnel. I pray to the spirits of trains and journey destinations that this woman gets off first or I get off first and we don’t have to walk with each other to the barrier. She gets off at the next stop. I thank the spirits.

  I get off at King’s Cross. There’s a message from Kelly.

  Hey. Not sure if your phone’s working but I see you’ve been on WhatsApp – can you give me a bell when you get the chance? Know you’re busy

  I suppose I should text her, although why hasn’t she replied to my cry for help? I go to the toilets and sit down and breathe, expecting to cry, but I don’t cry. I wait for the notes of myself to hit my nostrils; to reassure me I’m alive in some small, low, semi-fragrant way. When I’m done, I wipe and check the tissue.

  A REALLY BAD SIGN

  Behold the new creative elite of Soho! That’s what I think every time I walk into Café Monocle. It’s bristling with pending influence. Café Monocle takes up the entire top floor of WerkHaus. In the very centre, there’s a pool surrounded by striped loungers. I have a recurring nightmare where I end up in here by mistake with my mother and she skinny-dips.

  I head for Gemma and Mia, who are by the main bar as always, working their way through a pile of Negronis. I tried to drink Negronis for a while to be in their Negroni gang, but I had to revert to Aperol Spritz. I just can’t do bitterness without fizz, and if that makes me primordial, so be it. I’m not even that fussed for drinking much any more. I think, what’s the point? It will only turn warm in my mouth and then break down to acetone and other chemicals in my system within six or seven hours, which will only exacerbate my anxiety around 3 a.m. I’m a real gas.

  A drone lands on the bar, almost toppling my drink. It looks like a patent white clutch bag.

  ‘Tell me that doesn’t give you a wide-on?’ shouts Mia. ‘Accessory of the season. The paps could make a killing with it. Up a skirt faster than a presidential hand.’

  ‘Ugh.’

  ‘Aperol Spritz?’ says Mia. ‘In October? Are you trying to shift some kind of paradigm?’

  ‘Nice hair!’ says Gemma.

  I touch my hair. I wanted to look like a youth. A boy, even. I had to go and get it put right by a professional. I shuddered as the hairdresser gave me a head massage, cursing myself for wearing an un-padded bra, hoping she wouldn’t notice that my nipples had gone erect. It was the most aroused I’d felt in months, and I hated it. Still, I was relieved she didn’t speak English. It takes the pressure off when there’s a communication barrier.

  ‘Very short,’ says Mia. ‘We’ll need to get more byline pictures, but maybe we should wait until you stabilise. You keep changing … shape.’

  I take comfort from this, in that she’s not going to fire me if she’s suggesting fresh byline photos. It’s like when she asked for a breakfast meeting and I turned up nervous and then she ordered eggs. I relaxed because there’s no way you fire someone over eggs. You do it over coffee. Or yoghurt, at a push.

  Vivienne is drinking champagne. Vivienne only drinks champagne.

  ‘Good evening, all,’ I say, and find myself putting on a hint of a Yorkshire accent. Sometimes I put on my friends’ accents as a way of acquiring their special strengths in certain situations, like a superhero choosing from a set of skills.

  ‘Hardly,’ she replies. ‘There’s so many other things I’d rather be doing.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Faecal vomiting.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Apparently a really bad sign.’

  I turn and try to make conversation with Gemma but it’s too loud and effortful. I crash around. A few years ago, at a party in Dalston, Kelly and I met a man with a taxi meter hung round his neck. He had adapted it to run off time not distance. He kept the meter running while he was talking so that everyone could see how much his time was worth. Kelly had a conversation with him (more of a row, really) worth £26.42. He was a web designer. We thought he was a twat. Now, here, I can see where he was coming from. I should have a sign across my forehead that reads: Sorry, Not In Service.

  ‘What’
s your star sign?’ Gemma says.

  Ah! Star signs. I can do this. If I concentrate. Let me totally get into my now. Although the other day someone asked me which Hogwarts house I was and I said ‘Blacksticks’ before I realised that’s a type of cheese.

  ‘I bet you’re something watery, aren’t you … like Pisces,’ says Gemma.

  ‘Scorpio.’

  ‘Apparently, Scorpios make the best journalists.’

  ‘Do they?’

  ‘Yes. They’re excellent at research.’

  ‘I only really write about my life.’

  ‘But that takes the most research. In your mind. I really loved your piece about co-habiting with women. Ignore the haters, that’s all I can say. I thought it was great.’

  ‘What haters?’

  ‘The comments.’

  I swallow. ‘Below-the-line is my cardio,’ I say, weakly.

  I look around the bar. On the chalkboard menu is a dish that makes me sad whenever I see it: Squid cooked in its own ink. It strikes me as callous to serve up an animal in its own defence mechanism. I take a picture and post it, with the caption:

  Talk about kicking a cephalopod when it’s down #THESQUIDSARENTALLRIGHT

  I’ve barely posted it when Mia motions me towards her. ‘Where is he?’ she says. ‘Art?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Does it matter all that much?’

  ‘Yes it does, actually,’ Mia says. ‘I want to offer him a job, if he isn’t too busy.’

  ‘A job?’

  ‘We need another house photographer.’

  ‘I thought it was company policy to only employ women.’

  ‘We also need to think about our profile. Feminism will understand. Besides, we’d be fools not to capitalise on our unique access. And if there’s one thing feminism hates more than the patriarchy, it’s fools.’

  She looks at me. I drink some more of my drink and take a breath.

  ‘Art might not make it,’ I say, ‘because even though we do still hang out together a lot of evenings we are not super officially together-together any more if you know what I mean.’

  Mia looks at me. ‘Sorry, what?’