Adults

by Emma Jane Unsworth

  ‘You can go,’ says Suzy. ‘Just check in with me straight after, okay?’

  I stare, perplexed. The little girl runs off.

  ‘Kids,’ says Suzy.

  I stare. ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘they are.’

  My mother says, ‘Well, how nice this has been! See you soon!’

  I do not move. I keep staring at Suzy.

  ‘I know,’ Suzy says, ‘people are always surprised at my … situation. I do try and hide it mostly. Motherhood doesn’t define me. I mean, I’m glad I’ve done the procreation thing, but it’s not really how I want to be seen.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘And Art is so great with her. It was her birthday last week and he bought her a stack of presents. He dotes on her. He’s a natural. He makes everyone feel seen and valued. Are you okay, Jenny?’

  ‘Yeah I just have to nip out.’

  I run fast through the gallery – and outside, I puke, heartily. It’s mostly bile. Slick fluoro-yellow. Nice clean edges. Rope-like, almost. Rapunzel, Rapunzel … Ten seconds or so of silken unspooling, culminating in a single dry retch, unproductive.

  As I turn around, wiping my mouth, I see my mother and Art waiting by the gallery door. I point at him. It is not dignified to have a row outside an art gallery at 7 p.m., but here we are and believe me I am going to go for it.

  I shout: ‘You know, Art, when you said, “Fuck the establishment” I never thought you meant literally.’

  He blinks at me. His fuck-you blink. Some people have a power stare but Art has a power blink.

  I cross the street. Suzy appears. With child. I move towards them. ‘I know you want me to give this my blessing, so that is what I am going to do,’ I say. ‘I’m going to be the bigger person here. You have my blessing.’

  ‘We don’t need your blessing,’ she says. She looks at Art. Yep. Just like you said. Crazy.

  ‘Maybe women everywhere need to make a deal to not hear their predecessors bad-mouthed,’ I say to Suzy. ‘When my next boyfriend – should such a thing happen again – tries to tell me that his ex was crazy, I’m going to say, Was she really crazy, or did she just get sick of pandering to your fads? Because I think the answer will be interesting.’

  ‘Hey,’ says Art. ‘Hey.’

  Suzy says, ‘I know it must all still be pretty raw for you and that’s why you sound like a conspiracy theorist. But I want you to know, I’m not mad about it. You just strike me as a person who is quite loose and lost.’

  I swallow. ‘Well,’ I say, ‘that’s the opposite of how I am. Neither of you know me at all.’ I turn to Suzy. ‘Listen. He’ll just be telling the next one you’re crazy in a few years, because this is what men do. They make women pass the baton of crazy.’

  Suzy shakes her head. ‘Art is a feminist.’

  I look at Art. ‘Thank you.’ My mouth is saying it on behalf of all of womankind. My eyes are saying it on behalf of My Disbelieving A-hole. ‘You’ve started laughing with just the bottom half of your jaw,’ I say to him. ‘Like a ventriloquist’s dummy.’

  ‘You’re just being vindictive now,’ Art says. I look in his eyes. There is nothing of him in there as he says this. He is Art imitating Life.

  ‘And please stop leaving comments on my posts,’ says Suzy. ‘It’s inappropriate.’

  I punch the air and scream: ‘I KNEW YOU FUCKING KNEW ME!’ I look at Art. ‘VOILÀ!’ Then I regret speaking a French word because of Suzy’s perfect French.

  ‘I think I wouldn’t mind so much if you weren’t so … sales-y.’

  ‘Sales-y?’

  ‘You are quite sales-y, yes.’

  ‘This from the woman who has her name on a black scented candle from Bergamot Brothers, the UK’s foremost scented-candle-makers. “The Suzy”. I even fucking bought one. It’s going in the bin now. Why didn’t you just mute me? Or did you want me to know?’

  ‘It felt inappropriate to continue following you.’

  I stare at her and try to split her with my compound eyes. The water in my inner bowl has evaporated into a desert whirring with locusts.

  My mother says, ‘My daughter and I are leaving now.’

  She leads me by the arm down the street. I still have things to say but I can’t formulate them properly so I allow myself to be led.

  ‘You always get the chance to say everything you want to someone,’ my mother says. ‘It’s okay. There’s no hurry. Let’s get home.’

  ‘Okay,’ I say quietly.

  Art follows us. My mother hails a cab.

  ‘It was always your show, Art,’ I say, gesturing to the building. ‘I thought it was mine for a while, but now I see I was just opening for you.’

  A cab stops. My mother opens the door.

  Art puts his hand in his pocket and grimly hands the cab driver a twenty-pound note through the open window. He is a Decent Man doing the Decent Thing.

  ‘Thank you, Art,’ my mother says, pushing me into the cab.

  ‘No, no, thank you.’ I throw his money out of the window. ‘Stop trying to be Charlie Fucking Big Potatoes.’

  ‘I am not trying to be Charlie Fucking Big Potatoes!’

  ‘Drive on!’ I say to the driver. ‘Drive on, driver, please!’

  Art pats the side of the taxi.

  ‘Go pat something else, you patronising bastard!’

  The cab drives off.

  ‘No more wine for you,’ my mother says. ‘Ever.’

  ‘You can fuck off, as well.’

  ‘It’s sixty quid if she soils the vehicle,’ says the driver.

  ‘I am not going to soil the vehicle! I love the vehicle.’

  I put my hand on the deliciously cool window. It is so nice and cold and glaaarrrgggggggymmmmmmm. We drive over the Thames, where the river is swirling and churning. The city passes in bursts of grey and yellow.

  ‘I don’t believe them,’ my mother says. ‘This is a rushed, desperate affair. It’s all wrong. All very wrong.’

  I raise my head up, which is hard. ‘How can he be playing happy families with her? Layers of duplicity!’

  My mother sighs. ‘Well, darling, maybe he just hadn’t met the rich girl.’ I look at her, hurt. She continues: ‘I mean right girl.’

  She laughs – and I laugh. Despite myself, and everything.

  Back at the house I go up and wash my face and then I change into my pyjamas and get into bed.

  My mother follows me up silently, still with her coat on. ‘What are you doing?’ she says.

  ‘This is an act of hibernation.’

  ‘It’s barely November.’

  ‘It’s going to be a long, cold winter.’

  ‘You’re just drunk, darling. I’ll make you a melba toast.’

  She goes downstairs to the kitchen. I put on a nature documentary and watch it until I fall asleep.

  OUTGROWN

  Art was antsy in the waiting room at Whipps Cross. He kept pacing and scratching and going outside. After half an hour or so, he asked me if he could leave and get back to his studio because he had a big job on for an advertising agency, which I already knew. There was no point the two of us staying, was there? I could see the logic in that. The proud part of me hustled forward inside and I heard myself say Okay. Because – also – (and I know I’m letting myself off the hook here, as well as being philosophical) how can you allow yourself to need someone who refuses to be needed? Don’t you just know that they are not right for you, that they don’t love you enough? The answer is in the question, is it not? They do not love you enough. If you make them stay, under duress, it changes the nature of any possible fulfilment. Best to turn off the need. Best to let the need do what it will, inside.

  So, he left and I watched him go – through the revolving door, out into the sunshine. I think my heart broke in that moment. It snapped clean in two, like a biscuit; a brittle, little, domestic thing.

  The room where I had the blood test was windowless, with grey walls. There was a single small bed with grey sheets and a plastic bucket in the corn
er. The heavy door swung shut with a clank. They took the blood out of my arm, which was funny because so much of it was falling out of me anyway. They took me for a scan.

  ‘There’s nothing there,’ the sonographer said. ‘There’s nothing there.’

  Back out in the waiting room, I sat far apart from anyone else. There were pregnant people in there. It didn’t seem right, to put my particular curse amongst them.

  Do you want to know the punchline?

  As I was sitting there, bleeding, failed, confused, sad, mad as fuck, I glanced up and saw a man I’d got off with once on a drunken night out in Camden. He was sitting opposite with his very pregnant girlfriend. He was holding her hand. He recognised me and I couldn’t bear it, so do you know what I did? I pretended not to be me when he said hi. (This is a woman in her mid-thirties, remember. Pretending not to be herself. In that moment, I really think I wasn’t.) He probably thought I was crazy. And, in that moment, I suppose I was. I pulled out my phone and I started scrolling. I didn’t know what else to do, where else to go. I composed an email so as to compose myself.

  When I got back from the hospital, I went down to Art’s studio in the basement. I put down my carrier bag. It was full of all the banned cheeses: Brie, blue. I’d bought pâté. Salami. All the fuck-yous to the Unborn.

  ‘Hey,’ he said softly, turning round from his computer and coming over to me. He hugged me like I was made of glass. ‘Are you okay? What did they say?’

  ‘Bizarrely they said there was so little of the hormone in me it was as though I’d never been pregnant. So I don’t know whether it hadn’t grown much or what.’

  His computer switched to sleep mode. Photos of me in different locations appeared in a slow montage. Me feeding a horse. Me eating an ice cream. Me pretending to like the sea. Smiling, always smiling. Smiling on demand. Being fine and nice about it all.

  ‘Can I get you anything? Come on, come upstairs.’

  He put me on the sofa, under a blanket.

  ‘I’m still bleeding quite a lot.’

  ‘Let me make you some tea and toast.’

  While he was in the kitchen I pulled off a big hunk of Brie and rammed it down my throat.

  He came back in and put the tea and toast down.

  I said, ‘Thank you.’

  He said, ‘Listen, babes, I’ve been thinking.’

  I looked at him.

  He said: ‘I’m not ready to do this. Start a family. I’m not sure it’s for me.’

  I thought of the condoms in his leather toiletry bag, batched in bright foil squares, like confectionery. The way I’d obsessed over them in the early days. Resisted counting them each time he visited. We were heading there again. Beating a retreat. To distances. To speculation. To protection.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘So why did you do this with me for so long? Were you just playing along?’

  ‘No,’ he said – and then, seeing that was unsatisfactory, added, ‘My therapist understands. It’s a psychological thing. I also need a lot of artistic headspace.’

  Art’s therapist was a piece of work. They bought each other gifts. He had Tony Soprano aspirations. She loved treating a famous photographer. It was all very bad practice. I imagined her like Sharon Stone, sitting waiting for him in a desk chair, legs open, the dark recess of her skirt holding crotchless panties. Early on, he told me that she had advised him to see an older woman, that I was too young for him (I was two years older than him). She, on the other hand, was conveniently a whole ten years older. ‘Your therapist has an agenda.’

  He didn’t say anything. He walked across the room and punched the door. He punched it so hard he made a hole (a frayed, clumsy hole that stayed there for weeks while we both skirted the issue of discussing its repair – and, by proxy, it). We both looked at the hole. It was good to have something real to look at.

  ‘Oh god,’ he said. ‘Jesus!’

  He put his head in his hands and stood there for at least five minutes. I stared at him, and as the time passed I started to think, incongruously, how he looked like a child playing hide-and-seek.

  Subject: Notes From Purgatory

  Dear Man I Once Snogged,

  I am sorry I am ignoring you while you sit opposite me here in this waiting room between worlds – for you, Heaven; for me, Hell. It has nothing to do with the fact that you were a dreadful kisser. It is just that I am in a bad place right now and can’t handle social interaction of that sort. I hope you have been a good, honest, consistent person since we last facially connected. I hope you have not subjected your nearest and dearest to sea changes of heart. I marvel at men, I really do. The liberty! ENJOY. It’ll hit you like a ton of bricks at sixty-five and then won’t we all hear about it. I hope you have a happy life with your partner and child – who I hope will be a boy-child, so as to have a better chance in this whole fucking shitshow.

  Kind regards,

  Jenny McLaine BA Hons.

  ART SAID

  ‘Are you sure? Like, sure it was actually a man that you knew in there?’

  ‘Yes. Don’t say it like that.’

  ‘You do tend to be a bit paranoid about these things.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘Knowing people you don’t. Not knowing people you do.’

  He was right, too. Sometimes I walk down the street and feel like I know everyone; love everyone. Other days, bad days, I can walk right past someone I know.

  BODIES OF WORK

  The next morning there is an uneaten melba toast on the floor next to the bed, along with the unpuked-in washing-up bowl. It is very much a tableau of self-possession and restraint. I decide I am not going to get up today, or maybe even ever again. I put my nose into my armpit and inhale the sweat-scent feedback loop. I text Nicolette.

  I can no longer deny the malaise

  Don’t talk to me about malaise – this morning after my shower I couldn’t even be bothered to moisturise my second leg

  I knew you’d understand

  I almost reported a man for having a wank in the park and then I got closer and realised he was sanding a chair leg

  Clapton, man

  Clapton. What’s up?

  My soul has been pureed in an unspeakable act of betrayal

  Did someone regram you without a credit?

  No, Art’s new girlfriend has a secret child

  Like Mick Jagger???

  Sort of

  Dude. That burns

  I am in bed and I am staying here until further notice. It is the only respectable thing to do

  I am coming round

  You don’t have to

  I have ordered a cab

  Will you bring alcohol and Camel Lights

  Yes. Will bring a nice bottle of white I’ve got in

  What country is it from?

  Dunno. France mebs

  I can’t drink it

  Why?

  Nothing French

  Is this a Brexit thing?

  No

  You drank French wine the other night

  I AM NOT DRINKING FRENCH SHIT GODDAMNIT

  Okay I’ll get some fucking Chilean then!

  I am going to smoke in bed I am that unmaternal

  I am going to swing by the Scottish restaurant, would you like any supplies?

  Filet o fish

  Do they still do those

  Yes

  How many?

  Three. One for each eye

  My mother comes in. ‘The Kraken wakes!’ She sits down on the bed. ‘Are you getting up today?’

  ‘Negative. I am exploring my fertile void.’

  ‘Sounds messy. Will I need to change the sheets?’

  ‘A therapist once told me about it. It’s about the useful nothingness you have to go through occasionally in order to prepare for the next thing. It’s about stopping to reassess.’

  ‘It might be more useful if you took a break from your phone.’

  ‘Don’t turn off my life support! I know you would, given half the chance!
’

  ‘Ach. Do you want a cup of hot chocolate?’

  ‘Maybe later. Nicolette is coming over. She’s swinging by the Scottish restaurant if you want anything.’

  ‘What is the Scottish restaurant?’

  I look at her.

  ‘Do you mean McDonald’s?’

  ‘DO NOT SAY ITS NAME!’

  ‘I’ve had my smoothie and some melba toast. It’s 11 a.m.’

  ‘If you wanted something to do,’ I say, ‘you could have a whip-round on the cleaning front downstairs. That would be so helpful.’

  She goes downstairs. I hear her sing a line of Madonna and I think maybe this time it isn’t to dispel the spirits but more to dispel her own anxiety. Imagine that. I hear the hoover start up. Then the hoover stops and I hear her walking to the front door and opening it.

  ‘Hello!’ says Nicolette’s voice. ‘I’m Jenny’s friend, Nicolette. It’s Carmen, isn’t it? We’ve never met but I’ve heard a world about you. I’ve come to get in bed.’

  ‘Let me guess,’ says my mother. ‘Leo.’

  ‘Yes! Oh my god!’

  ‘Are you spiritual?’

  ‘I am VERY spiritual. I love a ghost. I am always ghost-hunting.’

  ‘GET UP HERE, NICOLETTE.’

  KELLY SAID

  ‘So he’s been lying all this time? You’ve been trying, like actually trying. You could have got actually pregnant!’

  ‘Yeah …’

  I couldn’t. I just … couldn’t.

  I said: ‘He says he’s talked it all through with his therapist and he’s sure.’

  ‘No way is he. For starters, having kids is the ultimate vanity project. And Art is very vain. He will have kids, for sure.’

  ‘Well, he says he won’t have them with me. He has decided not to sire my young.’

  ‘Then you’ve got to leave him,’ Kelly said, deadly serious. ‘He’ll string you along until you’re fifty and then he’ll leave you for a thirty-year-old and have twins. You have to trust me on this.’

  She poured two glasses of wine and I topped them up to the brim.

  ‘Woah,’ she said. ‘Someone’s on a mission.’