by Sally Rooney
I agree, she says.
What does that mean?
I’m agreeing with you.
Have you recently been attacked by the guards or have I missed something? he says.
She taps a little extra sugar from a sachet into her cup and then stirs it. Finally she glances up at him as if remembering he’s sitting there.
Aren’t you going to have coffee? she says.
He nods. He’s still feeling a little breathless after the walk from the bus, a little too warm under his clothes. He gets up from the table and goes back into the main room. It’s cool in there and much dimmer. A woman in red lipstick takes his order and says she’ll bring it right out.
*
Until April, Connell had been planning to work in Dublin for the summer and cover the rent with his wages, but a week before the exams his boss told him they were cutting back his hours. He could just about make rent that way but he’d have nothing left to live on. He’d always known that the place was going to go out of business, and he was furious with himself for not applying anywhere else. He thought about it constantly for weeks. In the end he decided he would have to move out for the summer. Niall was very nice about it, said the room would still be there for him in September and all of that. What about yourself and Marianne? Niall asked. And Connell said: Yeah, yeah. I don’t know. I haven’t told her yet.
The reality was that he stayed in Marianne’s apartment most nights anyway. He could just tell her about the situation and ask if he could stay in her place until September. He knew she would say yes. He thought she would say yes, it was hard to imagine her not saying yes. But he found himself putting off the conversation, putting off Niall’s enquiries about it, planning to bring it up with her and then at the last minute failing to. It just felt too much like asking her for money. He and Marianne never talked about money. They had never talked, for example, about the fact that her mother paid his mother money to scrub their floors and hang their laundry, or about the fact that this money circulated indirectly to Connell, who spent it, as often as not, on Marianne. He hated having to think about things like that. He knew Marianne never thought that way. She bought him things all the time, dinner, theatre tickets, things she would pay for and then instantly, permanently, forget about.
They went to a party in Sophie Whelan’s house one night as the exams were ending. He knew he would finally have to tell Marianne that he was moving out of Niall’s place, and he would have to ask her, outright, if he could stay with her instead. Most of the evening they spent by the swimming pool, immersed in the bewitching gravity of warm water. He watched Marianne splashing around in her strapless red swimsuit. A lock of wet hair had come loose from the knot at her neck and was sealed flat and shining against her skin. Everyone was laughing and drinking. It felt nothing like his real life. He didn’t know these people at all, he hardly even believed in them, or in himself. At the side of the pool he kissed Marianne’s shoulder impulsively and she smiled at him, delighted. No one looked at them. He thought he would tell her about the rent situation that night in bed. He felt very afraid of losing her. When they got to bed she wanted to have sex and afterwards she fell asleep. He thought of waking her up but he couldn’t. He decided he would wait until after his last exam to talk to her about moving home.
Two days later, directly after his paper on Medieval and Renaissance Romance, he went over to Marianne’s apartment and they sat at the table drinking coffee. He half-listened to her talking about some complicated relationship between Teresa and Lorcan, waiting for her to finish, and eventually he said: Hey, listen. By the way. It looks like I won’t be able to pay rent up here this summer. Marianne looked up from her coffee and said flatly: What?
Yeah, he said. I’m going to have to move out of Niall’s place.
When? said Marianne.
Pretty soon. Next week maybe.
Her face hardened, without displaying any particular emotion. Oh, she said. You’ll be going home, then.
He rubbed at his breastbone then, feeling short of breath. Looks like it, yeah, he said.
She nodded, raised her eyebrows briefly and then lowered them again, and stared down into her cup of coffee. Well, she said. You’ll be back in September, I assume.
His eyes were hurting and he closed them. He couldn’t understand how this had happened, how he had let the discussion slip away like this. It was too late to say he wanted to stay with her, that was clear, but when had it become too late? It seemed to have happened immediately. He contemplated putting his face down on the table and just crying like a child. Instead he opened his eyes again.
Yeah, he said. I’m not dropping out, don’t worry.
So you’ll only be gone three months.
Yeah.
There was a long pause.
I don’t know, he said. I guess you’ll want to see other people, then, will you?
Finally, in a voice that struck him as truly cold, Marianne said: Sure.
He got up then and poured his coffee down the sink, although it wasn’t finished. When he left her building he did cry, as much for his pathetic fantasy of living in her apartment as for their failed relationship, whatever that was.
Within a couple of weeks she was going out with someone else, a friend of hers called Jamie. Jamie’s dad was one of the people who had caused the financial crisis – not figuratively, one of the actual people involved. It was Niall who told Connell they were together. He read it in a text message during work and had to go into the back room and press his forehead against a cool shelving unit for almost a full minute. Marianne had just wanted to see someone else all along, he thought. She was probably glad he’d had to leave Dublin because he was broke. She wanted a boyfriend whose family could take her on skiing holidays. And now that she had one, she wouldn’t even answer Connell’s emails anymore.
By July even Lorraine had heard that Marianne was seeing someone new. Connell knew people in town were talking about it, because Jamie had this nationally infamous father, and because there was nothing much else going on.
When did you two split up, then? Lorraine asked him.
We were never together.
You were seeing each other, I thought.
Casually, he replied.
Young people these days. I can’t get my head around your relationships.
You’re hardly ancient.
When I was in school, she said, you were either going out with someone or you weren’t.
Connell moved his jaw around, staring at the television blandly.
Where did I come from, then? he said.
Lorraine gave him a nudge of reproach and he continued to look at the TV. It was a travel programme, long silver beaches and blue water.
Marianne Sheridan wouldn’t go out with someone like me, he said.
What does that mean, someone like you?
I think her new boyfriend is a bit more in line with her social class.
Lorraine was silent for several seconds. Connell could feel his back teeth grinding together quietly.
I don’t believe Marianne would act like that, Lorraine said. I don’t think she’s that kind of person.
He got up from the sofa. I can only tell you what happened, he said.
Well, maybe you’re misinterpreting what happened.
But Connell had already left the room.
*
Back outside the cafe now, the sunlight is so strong it crunches all the colours up and makes them sting. Marianne’s lighting a cigarette, with the box left open on the table. When he sits down she smiles at him through the small grey cloud of smoke. He feels she’s being coy, but he doesn’t know about what.
I don’t think we’ve ever met for coffee before, he says. Have we?
Have we not? We must have.
He knows he’s being unpleasant now but he can’t stop. No, he says.
We have, she says. We got coffee before we went to see Rear Window. Although I guess that was more like a date.
This remark
surprises him, and in response he just makes some non-committal noise like: Hm.
The door behind them opens and the woman comes out with his coffee. Connell thanks her and she smiles and goes back inside. The door swings shut. Marianne is saying that she hopes Connell and Jamie get to know each other better. I hope you get along with him, Marianne says. And she looks up at Connell nervously then, a sincere expression which touches him.
Yeah, I’m sure I will, he says. Why wouldn’t I?
I know you’ll be civil. But I mean I hope you get along.
I’ll try.
And don’t intimidate him, she says.
Connell pours a splash of milk in his coffee, letting the colour come up to the surface, and then replaces the jug on the table.
Oh, he says. Well, I hope you’re telling him not to intimidate me either.
As if you could find him intimidating, Connell. He’s shorter than I am.
It’s not strictly a height thing, is it?
Seen from his point of view, she says, you’re a lot taller, and you’re the person who used to fuck his girlfriend.
That’s a nice way of putting it. Is that what you told him about us, Connell’s this tall guy who used to fuck me?
She laughs now. No, she says. But everyone knows.
Does he have some insecurities about his height? I won’t exploit them, I’d just like to know.
Marianne lifts her coffee cup. Connell can’t figure out what kind of relationship they are supposed to have now. Are they agreeing not to find each other attractive anymore? When were they supposed to have stopped? Nothing in Marianne’s behaviour gives him any clue. In fact he suspects she is still attracted to him, and that she now finds it funny, like a private joke, to indulge an attraction to someone who could never belong in her world.
*
Back in July he went to the anniversary Mass for Marianne’s father. The church in town was small, smelling of rain and incense, with stained-glass panels in the windows. He and Lorraine never went to Mass, he’d only been in there for funerals before. He saw Marianne in the vestibule when he arrived. She looked like a piece of religious art. It was so much more painful to look at her than anyone had warned him it would be, and he wanted to do something terrible, like set himself on fire or drive his car into a tree. He always reflexively imagined ways to cause himself extreme injury when he was distressed. It seemed to soothe him briefly, the act of imagining a much worse and more totalising pain than the one he really felt, maybe just the cognitive energy it required, the momentary break in his train of thought, but afterwards he would only feel worse.
That night, after Marianne went back to Dublin, he went out drinking with some people from school, to Kelleher’s first, and then McGowan’s, and then that awful nightclub Phantom around the back of the hotel. No one was around that he had ever been really close with, and after a few drinks he became aware that he wasn’t there to socialise anyway, he was just there to drink himself into a kind of sedated non-consciousness. He withdrew from the conversation gradually and focused on consuming as much alcohol as he could without passing out, not even laughing along with the jokes, not even listening.
It was in Phantom that they met Paula Neary, their old Economics teacher. By then Connell was so drunk that his vision was misaligned, and beside every solid object he could see another version of the object, like a ghost. Paula bought them all shots of tequila. She was wearing a black dress and a silver pendant. He licked a line of salt off the back of his own hand and saw the ghostly other of her necklace, a faint white trace on her shoulder. When she looked at him she did not have two eyes, but several, and they moved around exotically in the air, like jewels. He started laughing about it, and she leaned in close with her breath on his face to ask him what was so funny.
He doesn’t remember how he got back to her house, whether they walked or took a taxi, he still doesn’t know. The place had that strange unfurnished cleanliness that lonely houses sometimes have. She seemed like a person with no hobbies: no bookcases, no musical instruments. What do you do with yourself at the weekends, he remembers slurring. I go out and have fun, she said. This struck him even at the time as deeply depressing. She poured them both glasses of wine. Connell sat on the leather sofa and drank the wine for something to do with his hands.
How is the football team looking this year? he said.
It’s not the same without you, said Paula.
She sat beside him on the couch. Her dress had slipped down slightly, exposing a mole over her right breast. He could have fucked her back when he was in school. People joked about it, but they would have been shocked if it had really happened, they would have been scared. They would have thought his shyness masked something steely and frightening.
Best years of your life, she said.
What?
Best years of your life, secondary school.
He tried to laugh, and it came out very goofy and nervous. I don’t know, he said. That’s a sad thought if that’s true.
She started to kiss him then. This seemed like a strange thing to happen to him, unpleasant on the surface level, but also interesting in a way, as if his life was taking a new direction. Her mouth tasted sour like tequila. Briefly he wondered if it was legal for her to kiss him, and he concluded it must be, he couldn’t think of a reason why it wouldn’t be, and yet it felt substantially wrong. Every time he pulled away from her she seemed to follow him forward, so that he found himself puzzled about the physics of what was going on, and he was no longer sure whether he was sitting upright on the sofa or reclining backwards against the arm. As an experiment he tried to sit up, which confirmed he was in fact sitting up already, and the small red light which he thought might have been on the ceiling above him was just a standby light on the stereo system across the room.
Back in school Miss Neary had made him feel so uncomfortable. But was he mastering that discomfort now by letting her kiss him on the sofa in her living room, or just succumbing to it? He’d hardly had time to formulate this question when she started unbuttoning his jeans. In a panic he tried to push her hand away, but with such an ineffectual gesture that she appeared to think he was helping her. She got the top button undone and he told her that he was really drunk, and maybe they should stop. She put her hand inside the waistband of his underwear and said it was okay, she didn’t mind. He thought he would probably black out then, but he found he couldn’t. He wished he could have. He heard Paula saying: You’re so hard. That was an especially insane thing for her to say, because he actually wasn’t.
I’m going to get sick, he said.
She jerked back then, pulling her dress after her, and he took the opportunity to stand up from the sofa and button his jeans back up. Cautiously she asked if he was okay. When he looked at her he could make out two separate Paulas sitting on the couch, so clearly delineated that it was no longer obvious which was the real Paula and which the ghost. Sorry, he said. He woke up the next day fully clothed on the floor of his living room. He still has no idea how he made it home.
*
He must be insecure about something, says Marianne now. I don’t know what. Maybe he’d like to be more cerebral.
Maybe he just has good self-esteem.
No, definitely not that. He’s …
Her eyes flick back and forth quickly. When she does this, she looks like an expert mathematician performing calculations in her head. She sets the coffee cup back in the saucer.
He’s what? says Connell.
He’s a sadist.
Connell stares at her across the table, simply allowing his face to express the alarm he feels at this remark, and she gives a cute little smile. She twists her cup around on the saucer.
Are you serious? says Connell.
Well, he likes to beat me up. Just during sex, that is. Not during arguments.
She laughs, a stupid laugh that doesn’t suit her. Connell’s visual field shudders violently for a second, like the beginning of a gigantic migraine, and
he lifts a hand to his forehead. He realises he is scared. Around Marianne he often feels somehow innocent, though really he’s a lot more sexually experienced than she is.
And you’re into that, are you? he says.
She shrugs. Her cigarette is burning out in the ashtray. She picks it up quickly and drags on it before stubbing it out.
I don’t know, she says. I don’t know if I really like it.
Why do you let him do it, then?
It was my idea.
Connell picks up his cup and takes a large mouthful of very hot coffee, wanting to do something efficient with his hands. When he replaces the cup it splashes up and spills over into the saucer.
What do you mean? he says.
It was my idea, that I wanted to submit to him. It’s difficult to explain.
Well, go on and try if you want. I’m interested.
She laughs again now. It’s going to make you feel very awkward, she says.
Okay.
She looks at him, maybe to see if he’s joking, and then she lifts her chin at an angle, and he knows she won’t back down from telling him about it, because that would be giving in to something she doesn’t believe about herself.
It’s not that I get off on being degraded as such, she says. I just like to know that I would degrade myself for someone if they wanted me to. Does that make sense? I don’t know if it does, I’ve been thinking about it. It’s about the dynamic, more than what actually happens. Anyway I suggested it to him, that I could try being more submissive. And it turns out he likes to beat me up.
Connell starts coughing. Marianne picks a small wooden coffee-stirrer out of a jar on the table and starts twisting it in her fingers. He waits for the coughing to subside and then says: What does he do to you?
Oh, I don’t know, she says. He hits me with a belt sometimes. He likes choking me, things like that.
Right.
I mean, I don’t enjoy it. But then, you’re not really submitting to someone if you only submit to things you enjoy.