Normal People

by Sally Rooney

I probably thought if I moved here I would fit in better, he says. You know, I thought I might find more like-minded people or whatever. But honestly, the people here are a lot worse than the people I knew in school. I mean everyone here just goes around comparing how much money their parents make. Like I’m being literal with that, I’ve seen that happen.

  He breathes in now, feeling that he has been talking too quickly and at too great a length, but unwilling to stop.

  I just feel like I left Carricklea thinking I could have a different life, he says. But I hate it here, and now I can never go back there again. I mean, those friendships are gone. Rob is gone, I can never see him again. I can never get that life back.

  Yvonne pushes the box of tissues on the table towards him. He looks at the box, patterned with green palm leaves, and then at Yvonne. He touches his own face, only to discover that he has started crying. Wordlessly he removes a tissue from the box and wipes his face.

  Sorry, he says.

  Yvonne is making eye contact now, but he can’t tell anymore whether she’s been listening to him, whether she’s understood or tried to understand what he’s said.

  What we can do here in counselling is try to work on your feelings, and your thoughts and behaviours, she says. We can’t change your circumstances, but we can change how you respond to your circumstances. Do you see what I mean?

  Yeah.

  At this point in the session Yvonne starts to hand him worksheets, illustrated with large cartoon arrows pointing to various text boxes. He takes them and pretends that he’s intending to fill them out later. She also hands him some photocopied pages about dealing with anxiety, which he pretends he will read. She prints a note for him to take to the college health service advising them about his depression, and he says he’ll come back for another session in two weeks. Then he leaves the office.

  *

  A couple of weeks ago Connell attended a reading by a writer who was visiting the college. He sat at the back of the lecture hall on his own, self-conscious because the reading was sparsely attended and everyone else was sitting in groups. It was one of the big windowless halls in the Arts Block, with fold-out tables attached to the seats. One of his lecturers gave a short and sycophantic overview of the writer’s work, and then the man himself, a youngish guy around thirty, stood at the lectern and thanked the college for the invitation. By then Connell regretted his decision to attend. Everything about the event was staid and formulaic, sapped of energy. He didn’t know why he had come. He had read the writer’s collection and found it uneven, but sensitive in places, perceptive. Now, he thought, even that effect was spoiled by seeing the writer in this environment, hemmed off from anything spontaneous, reciting aloud from his own book to an audience who’d already read it. The stiffness of this performance made the observations in the book seem false, separating the writer from the people he wrote about, as if he’d observed them only for the benefit of talking about them to Trinity students. Connell couldn’t think of any reason why these literary events took place, what they contributed to anything, what they meant. They were attended only by people who wanted to be the kind of people who attended them.

  Afterwards a small wine reception had been set up outside the lecture hall. Connell went to leave but found himself trapped by a group of students talking loudly. When he tried to press his way through, one of them said: Oh, hi Connell. He recognised her, it was Sadie Darcy-O’Shea. She was in some of his English classes, and he knew she was involved in the literary society. She was the girl who’d called him ‘a genius’ to his face back in first year.

  Hey, he said.

  Did you enjoy the reading?

  He shrugged. It was alright, he said. He felt anxious and wanted to leave, but she kept speaking. He rubbed his palms on his T-shirt.

  You weren’t blown away? she said.

  I don’t know, I don’t really get the point of these things.

  Readings?

  Yeah, said Connell. You know, I don’t really see what they’re for.

  Everyone looked away suddenly, and Connell turned to follow their gaze. The writer had emerged from the lecture hall and was approaching them. Hi there, Sadie, he said. Connell had not intuited any personal relationship between Sadie and the writer, and he felt foolish for saying what he’d said. You read so wonderfully, said Sadie. Irritated and tired, Connell moved aside to let the writer join their circle and started to edge away. Then Sadie gripped his arm and said: Connell was just telling us he doesn’t see the point of literary readings. The writer looked vaguely in Connell’s direction and then nodded. Yeah, same as that, he said. They’re boring, aren’t they? Connell noticed that the stilted quality of his reading seemed to characterise his speech and movement also, and he felt bad then for attributing such a negative view of literature to someone who was maybe just awkward.

  Well, we appreciated it, said Sadie.

  What’s your name, Connell what? said the writer.

  Connell Waldron.

  The writer nodded. He picked up a glass of red wine from the table and let the others continue talking. For some reason, though the opportunity to leave had at last presented itself, Connell lingered. The writer swallowed some wine and then looked at him again.

  I liked your book, said Connell.

  Oh, thanks, said the writer. Are you coming on to the Stag’s Head for a drink? I think that’s where people are heading.

  They didn’t leave the Stag’s Head that night until it closed. They had a good-natured argument about literary readings, and although Connell didn’t say very much, the writer took his side, which pleased him. Later he asked Connell where he was from, and Connell told him Sligo, a place called Carricklea. The writer nodded.

  I know it, yeah, he said. There used to be a bowling alley there, it’s probably gone years now.

  Yeah, Connell said too quickly. I had a birthday party there once when I was small. In the bowling alley. It is gone now, though, obviously. Like you said.

  The writer took a sip of his pint and said: How do you find Trinity, do you like it?

  Connell looked at Sadie across the table, her bangles knocking together on her wrist.

  Bit hard to fit in, to be honest, Connell said.

  The writer nodded again. That mightn’t be a bad thing, he said. You could get a first collection out of it.

  Connell laughed, he looked down into his lap. He knew it was just a joke, but it was a nice thought, that he might not be suffering for nothing.

  He knows that a lot of the literary people in college see books primarily as a way of appearing cultured. When someone mentioned the austerity protests that night in the Stag’s Head, Sadie threw her hands up and said: Not politics, please! Connell’s initial assessment of the reading was not disproven. It was culture as class performance, literature fetishised for its ability to take educated people on false emotional journeys, so that they might afterwards feel superior to the uneducated people whose emotional journeys they liked to read about. Even if the writer himself was a good person, and even if his book really was insightful, all books were ultimately marketed as status symbols, and all writers participated to some degree in this marketing. Presumably this was how the industry made money. Literature, in the way it appeared at these public readings, had no potential as a form of resistance to anything. Still, Connell went home that night and read over some notes he had been making for a new story, and he felt the old beat of pleasure inside his body, like watching a perfect goal, like the rustling movement of light through leaves, a phrase of music from the window of a passing car. Life offers up these moments of joy despite everything.

  Four Months Later

  (JULY 2014)

  Her eyes narrow until the television screen is just a green oblong, yawning light at the edges. Are you falling asleep? he says. After a pause she replies: No. He nods, not taking his eyes off the match. He takes a sip of Coke and the remaining ice clinks softly in his glass. Her limbs feel heavy on the mattress. She’s lying in Con
nell’s room in Foxfield watching the Netherlands play Costa Rica for a place in the World Cup semi-finals. His room looks the same as it did in school, although one corner of his Steven Gerrard poster has come unfixed from the wall and curled inwards on itself in the meantime. But everything else is the same: the lampshade, the green curtains, even the pillowcases with the striped trim.

  I can run you home at half-time, he says.

  For a second she says nothing. Her eyes flutter closed and then open up again, wider, so she can see the players moving around the pitch.

  Am I in your way? she says.

  No, not at all. You just seem sleepy.

  Can I have some of your Coke?

  He hands her the glass and she sits up to drink it, feeling like a baby. Her mouth is dry and the drink is cold and flavourless on her tongue. She takes two huge mouthfuls and then hands it back to him, wiping her lips with the back of her hand. He accepts the glass without looking away from the TV.

  You’re thirsty, he says. There’s more downstairs in the fridge if you want some.

  She shakes her head, lies back down with her hands clasped behind her neck.

  Where did you disappear to last night? she says.

  Oh. I don’t know, I was in the smoking area for a bit.

  Did you end up kissing that girl?

  No, he says.

  Marianne closes her eyes, fans her face with her hand. I’m really warm, she says. Do you find it hot in here?

  You can open the window if you want.

  She tries wriggling down the bed towards the window and reaching for the handle without actually having to sit up the whole way. She pauses, waiting to see if Connell will intervene on her behalf. He’s working in the college library this summer, but he’s visited Carricklea every weekend since she got home. They drive around in his car together, out to Strandhill, or up to Glencar waterfall. Connell bites his nails a lot and doesn’t talk much. Last month she told him he shouldn’t feel obliged to visit her if he doesn’t feel like it, and he replied tonelessly: Well, it’s really the only thing I have to look forward to. She sits up now and opens the window herself. The daylight is fading but the air outside feels balmy and still.

  What was her name again? she says. The girl at the bar.

  Niamh Keenan.

  She likes you.

  I don’t think we really share interests, he says. Eric was looking for you last night actually, did you see him?

  Marianne sits cross-legged on the bed, facing Connell. He’s propped up against the headboard, holding the glass of Coke on his chest.

  Yes, I saw him, she says. It was weird.

  Why, what happened?

  He was really drunk. I don’t know. For some reason he decided he wanted to apologise to me for the way he acted in school.

  Really? says Connell. That is weird.

  He looks back at the screen then, so she feels at liberty to study his face in detail. He probably notices she’s doing this, but politely says nothing about it. The bedside lamp diffuses light softly over his features, the fine cheekbone, the brow in its frown of mild concentration, the faint sheen of perspiration on his upper lip. Dwelling on the sight of Connell’s face always gives Marianne a certain pleasure, which can be inflected with any number of other feelings depending on the minute interplay of conversation and mood. His appearance is like a favourite piece of music to her, sounding a little different each time she hears it.

  He was talking about Rob a bit, she says. He was saying Rob would have wanted to apologise. I mean, it wasn’t clear if this was something Rob had actually said to him or if Eric was just doing some psychological projection.

  I’m sure Rob would have wanted to apologise, to be honest.

  Oh, I hate to think that. I hate to think he had that on his conscience in some way. I never held it against him, really. You know, it was nothing, we were kids.

  It wasn’t nothing, says Connell. He bullied you.

  Marianne says nothing. It’s true they did bully her. Eric called her ‘flat-chested’ once, in front of everyone, and Rob, laughing, scrambled to whisper something in Eric’s ear, some affirmation, or some further insult too vulgar to speak out loud. At the funeral back in January everyone talked about what a great person Rob had been, full of life, a devoted son, and so on. But he was also a very insecure person, obsessed with popularity, and his desperation had made him cruel. Not for the first time Marianne thinks cruelty does not only hurt the victim, but the perpetrator also, and maybe more deeply and more permanently. You learn nothing very profound about yourself simply by being bullied; but by bullying someone else you learn something you can never forget.

  After the funeral she spent evenings scrolling through Rob’s Facebook page. Lots of people from school had left comments on his wall, saying they missed him. What were these people doing, Marianne thought, writing on the Facebook wall of a dead person? What did these messages, these advertisements of loss, actually mean to anyone? What was the appropriate etiquette when they appeared on the timeline: to ‘like’ them supportively? To scroll past in search of something better? But everything made Marianne angry then. Thinking about it now, she can’t understand why it bothered her. None of those people had done anything wrong. They were just grieving. Of course it didn’t make sense to write on his Facebook wall, but nothing else made sense either. If people appeared to behave pointlessly in grief, it was only because human life was pointless, and this was the truth that grief revealed. She wishes that she could have forgiven Rob, even if it meant nothing to him. When she thinks of him now it’s always with his face hidden, turning away, behind his locker door, behind the rolled-up window of his car. Who were you? she thinks, now that there’s no one left to answer the question.

  Did you accept the apology? says Connell.

  She nods, looking down at her nails. Of course I did, she says. I don’t go in for grudges.

  Luckily for me, he replies.

  The half-time whistle blows and the players turn, heads lowered, and start their slow walk across the pitch. It’s still nil-all. She wipes her nose with her fingers. Connell sits up straight and puts his glass on the bedside table. She thinks he’s going to offer her a lift home again, but instead he says: Do you feel like an ice cream? She says yes. Back in a second, he says. He leaves the bedroom door open on his way out. Marianne is living at home now for the first time since she left school. Her mother and brother are at work all day and

  *

  Marianne has nothing to do but sit in the garden watching insects wriggle through soil. Inside she makes coffee, sweeps floors, wipes down surfaces. The house is never really clean anymore because Lorraine has a full-time job in the hotel now and they’ve never replaced her. Without Lorraine the house is not a nice place to live. Sometimes Marianne goes on day trips to Dublin, and she and Joanna wander around the Hugh Lane together with bare arms, drinking from bottles of water. Joanna’s girlfriend Evelyn comes along when she’s not studying or working, and she’s always painstakingly kind to Marianne and interested to hear about her life. Marianne is so happy for Joanna and Evelyn that she feels lucky even to see them together, even to hear Joanna on the phone to Evelyn saying cheerfully: Okay, love you, see you later. It gives Marianne a window onto real happiness, though a window she cannot open herself or ever climb through.

  They went to a protest against the war in Gaza the other week with Connell and Niall. There were thousands of people there, carrying signs and megaphones and banners. Marianne wanted her life to mean something then, she wanted to stop all violence committed by the strong against the weak, and she remembered a time several years ago when she had felt so intelligent and young and powerful that she almost could have achieved such a thing, and now she knew she wasn’t at all powerful, and she would live and die in a world of extreme violence against the innocent, and at most she could help only a few people. It was so much harder to reconcile herself to the idea of helping a few, like she would rather help no one than do something so sm
all and feeble, but that wasn’t it either. The protest was very loud and slow, lots of people were banging drums and chanting things out of unison, sound systems crackling on and off. They marched across O’Connell Bridge with the Liffey trickling under them. The weather was hot, Marianne’s shoulders got sunburned.

  Connell drove her back to Carricklea in the car that evening, though she said she would get the train. They were both very tired on the way home. While they were driving through Longford they had the radio on, it was playing a White Lies song that had been popular when they were in school, and without touching the dial or raising his voice to be heard over the sound of the radio Connell said: You know I love you. He didn’t say anything else. She said she loved him too and he nodded and continued driving as if nothing at all had happened, which in a way it hadn’t.

  Marianne’s brother works for the county council now. He comes home in the evening and prowls around the house looking for her. From her room she can tell it’s him because he always wears his shoes inside. He knocks on her door if he can’t find her in the living room or the kitchen. I just want to talk to you, he says. Why are you acting like you’re scared of me? Can we talk for a second? She has to come to the door then, and he wants to go over some argument they had the night before, and she says she’s tired and wants to get some sleep, but he won’t leave until she says she’s sorry for the previous argument, so she says she’s sorry, and he says: You think I’m such a horrible person. She wonders if that’s true. I try to be nice to you, he says, but you always throw it back at me. She doesn’t think that’s true, but she knows he probably thinks it is. It’s nothing worse than this mostly, it’s just this all the time, nothing but this, and long empty weekdays wiping down surfaces and wringing damp sponges into the sink.

  *

  Connell comes back upstairs now and tosses her an ice lolly wrapped in shiny plastic. She catches it in her hands and lifts it straight to her cheek, where the cold radiates outwards sweetly. He sits back against the headboard, starts unwrapping his own.