by Clare Fisher
I got why people had stayed away from me when things were bad; I didn’t mind that, either. Humans have a sixth sense, and it’s not for ghosts or any of that goth stuff, it’s for happiness. When you’re sad, bad, mad, etc., people feel it and it repels them. When you’re happy, it’s a different story. People’s eyes linger on you a moment longer and you, because you feel good, you smile at them, and they open their eyes wide and then, if you’re lucky, they smile back. They see you and they ask for directions. Ask you to help carry their bag. Ask if they can use your phone to make a call, they’re terribly sorry but their battery has died and they hadn’t noticed until now that there weren’t working pay phones any more? They just sense that there’s more love inside of you than you know what to do with.
‘You’re looking healthy!’ Marcia said, when we met up for our next check-in.
‘I am,’ I said. We were back in the Polish deli. Before, their bagel filled me up for the rest of the day. This time, however, I scoffed it so quickly that Marcia asked if I was still hungry. Yes, I said, I was. Did I want a cream cake as well? Yes, I did. Yes, yes, yes. I’d never said yes so many times in a row before. It felt good. I didn’t even care that my clothes were getting tight; I had more energy, I was sleeping better, and when I looked in the mirror, I saw less bone, less shadow, more colour, more curves: a proper shape. ‘I feel happy. I never thought I’d have so much in my life.’
But there was one more thing I wanted and she was the person who might help me to get it. Phil had told me a lot about his time at Uni; how he’d had time to think and to read and to party. How he’d organized marches and reviewed films and interviewed politicians for student newspapers. How, even if he was now doing a job he claimed to find ‘mind-numbingly’ boring – I was never sure exactly what it was; something to do with business and spreadsheets and numbers – at least he’d had three years of freedom and fun. How, when I told him how I’d messed up at school, he said it was a shame. ‘If you went back now,’ he said, ‘you’d appreciate it way more than most people.’
I asked him to show me some of his Uni books, and he did; we stayed up all night reading and talking about them. They were about big and difficult questions like, What is Reality? And, What are the Proofs of Freedom? They made my head spin in a good way. ‘It’s lovely,’ he said, ‘to discuss ideas again. These days, Jenny wouldn’t know a good idea if it hit her over the head.’ When he was asleep, I picked up one of the books and turned to the front page. Jenny’s name was written into the front cover. I picked up another book. Her name was in that one, too. Her name was in all the books. I put them straight back in your dad’s suitcase and lay facing away from them but it was no use; the letters of her name whirled around my head, wedging themselves between me and sleep.
I was about to ask Marcia how to do it, how I could get to Uni, when she brushed some crumbs off the table and said, ‘Beth, there’s something I need to tell you.’
‘What?’
‘I’m retiring.’
I waited.
I breathed.
I totted up all the good things in my life: Chantelle and her kids and her laughs and her too-tight hugs; the Chuckle Sisters, and how easy it was to impress them; scoffing popcorn when it was still hot from the machine; watching the sun set from the top of the hill in the park; Phil; Phil and the way he looked at me and the way he touched me and the way we could talk with our mouths and with our bodies without our brains having to do anything; the way I felt when I looked at his body; and how a part of him stayed with me even when, from the outside, we were apart.
‘It’s bad timing,’ she said. ‘I’d have liked to continue building a relationship with you but the time’s come. My mum’s in Jamaica and she’s not getting any younger – it’s a miracle she’s still here at all – and it’s about time I spent some proper time with her. But don’t worry, you’ll be getting a new adviser. It will be someone nice, I promise.’
‘I don’t mind. Have a nice time with your mum.’
‘You don’t want to get in touch with yours? You could, you know,’ she said.
I didn’t want to think about that part of my life; it didn’t seem to matter any more.
‘I’ll be all right, thanks,’ I said. ‘But really, Marcia, I’m happy for you.’
She frowned at me. ‘You’re a funny thing, you are.’
*
Marcia leaving did change things. Although I hadn’t seen her often, knowing she was there, knowing that when I did see her, she’d be pleased to see me – I didn’t know how much it mattered until she was gone.
‘What’s up with you?’ your dad asked, the next time I was in his room.
‘Nothing.’ He wouldn’t get it about Marcia. ‘Hey, you got those Uni books again?’
‘What?’ he asked my boobs. ‘Nah. Didn’t want to risk Jenny noticing they’re gone.’
I rolled over so my boobs were out of view. ‘I wanna go to Uni.’
‘Uni?’ Now, he was talking to my bum.
‘Yeah. I been thinking about it. The Odeon’s fun for now but I don’t wanna be there for ever. At first, it was satisfying to learn how to work the till and to work it good, but now it’s just boring. It would be good to do something more clever and –’
I was trying to figure out how to tell him that earning £7 an hour was the opposite of fun. That having to smile all day at people, some of whom were rude, others of whom were nice, most of whom just looked through you as if you were a human-shaped machine, emptied the ‘you’ out of you. That having £2 left over when you’ve paid your bills and bought your food and the odd drink in Wetherspoon’s doesn’t bring much relief, because what about next month? What if you get less shifts next month? What if you lose your Oyster Card? What if someone jacks your purse with your last £20? What if one of the soles of the shoes you’ve been walking around for months with holes in finally falls off? What then?
But he went off on one about how shit his job was: ‘You wouldn’t believe the amount of bullshit you have to do in so-called “clever” jobs. Take my job – everyone has a 2.1. We’ve got Philosophy, History, Medieval English, Physics grads, but do any of them use what they’ve learned? Oh no. It’s just like you said with the Odeon: you learn what to do and then you do it and then it’s piss-boring. That’s why so many of us get into cars and coke and fancy holidays and stuff. Well, the ones who weren’t stupid enough to have kids in their twenties, dear God, and of course, because Jenny’s the female and a teacher, I’m the one paying most of the mortgage, and sometimes I want to stand up in the office and scream, knowing I’ll be trapped there for twenty, thirty, forever years . . .’
I looked around the room. iPod, iPad, laptop, fancy headphones, fancy leather shoes, fancy trainers, fancy shirt and suit jacket and coat. Then there was his wallet and the way he’d fling cards and notes out of it at any opportunity, as if it would magically fill itself up.
‘Yeah, but you don’t have to worry about money,’ I said, when he finally stopped talking.
‘I wish. Like I said, with the mortgage, and now Hamish and the frankly ridiculous nursery fees . . . Oh God, has it come to that already? I’m moaning about nursery fees? Dear, dear, dear . . .’ He nuzzled my back, which I usually loved, but not then. I wriggled to the edge of the bed and pulled the duvet between me and him.
‘Oh, Beth, what’s wrong?’
‘I want to go to Uni. And you don’t think I should. You don’t think I’m . . . smart enough.’
‘Oh, don’t be silly,’ he said. ‘Of course you are. It’s just, I’d have no idea how you’d go about it, to be honest; I suppose you’d have to do some A-levels? Everyone I know went straight from school. Now,’ he rolled me over and grabbed my boobs, ‘let’s see if we can cheer you up.’
I moved in the way he expected me to move. Made the faces he expected me to make. But inside there was a little voice saying: So he only likes ideas when they come after a fuck? Is that how it is? You’ve got to do things when he wants?
‘So,’ Chantelle said, one deader-than-dead Odeon afternoon, ‘when we gonna meet the famous Phil?’
‘He’s famous?’ squealed Nicole. ‘You didn’t say he was famous.’
‘What for?’ said Lisa. ‘I bet he was on The Apprentice!’
‘Retards,’ said Chantelle. ‘Go and clean Screen 4.’
‘But –’
‘Go. Now. Before I put you on earlies for the rest of the week.’
The Chuckle Sisters sulked off.
Chantelle said nothing. I noticed all the noises her voice usually blocked out, like the swoosh of the Slush Puppies and the buzz of the traffic outside. ‘So,’ I said, just to break it, ‘how’re things going with . . . with . . .’ But so many things were going on in my life, I’d stopped remembering the details of hers. ‘That guy you went to Nando’s with?’
‘Oh, nothing.’
More silence.
‘You want me to clean the Coke machine?’ I pointed at the layer of brown goo under the tap. ‘It’s kind of mank.’
‘You a retard or what?’ She waved her clipboard in my face. ‘I’m the deputy manager, remember? It’s my job to check whether you’ve cleaned it or not, and’ – she ticked a column on the paper that was clipped to the board – ‘it looks like you have.’
I hoped she’d be revved back up to normal, but, after one more painful silence, she looked out of the window and said: ‘The kids miss you. Jayden’s all like, when we gonna see Aunty Beth?’
For the first time since we’d met, she looked sad. ‘I told them Aunty Beth’s got a new lover boy, didn’t I? They laughed and then they said well why can’t he be our uncle? Why can’t he come for clown potato smileys, too? I didn’t know how to tell them he weren’t that kind of uncle.’
There are no words for how bad I felt then. I wasn’t just tangled up with your dad; I was tangled with Chantelle and her kids, only I’d forgotten, and now the strings that joined us were so stretched out, they were about to snap.
‘He might come round.’
‘Hah! Where do you guys even hang, anyway?’
‘Just . . . around.’ We always stayed at the Holiday Inn but I didn’t want her to know that. ‘But you know what, I’ll ask him. I’ll ask him if he’ll come.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Whatever.’
‘We see each other Mondays and Tuesdays now.’
She shook her head. ‘Can’t go out on a Monday – it’s, like, illegal. Monday their Aunt Tracie comes round. I don’t like the woman but I can’t stop her. Tuesday they’re at their dad’s.’
‘But . . .’
‘So he only loves you on a Monday and Tuesday, this Phil?’
‘No!’
‘Beth,’ she shook her head. ‘You got to sort this shit out. I seen it happen enough times before and it’s not good. Trust.’ I waited for her to say what it was that happened. And how. And how I could do it different. But she walked off.
The next time I saw your dad, his hotel room seemed stupidly small.
‘Let’s go out?’ I suggested.
‘Out?’ He pinched my waist in the exact spot he knew would make me yelp. ‘What, outside, in that horrible world? A world I’ll be forced to share you with?’
‘Yeah,’ I said, wriggling away from him. ‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you for weeks.’
‘Oh God.’ He sat up. ‘What is it?’
I put on my best serious face. ‘I’m sick of these room service paninis.’
He stared at the duvet for a minute. ‘Fair enough.’
‘Where shall we go then?’
‘I don’t really know Streatham.’
‘Let’s just walk down the street and see what we find.’
He didn’t move.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
But there was. There was something between us now, and it followed us to Julio’s Trattoria and stopped me from feeling like I was in one of the couples I used to stare at when I walked past, wondering how they stayed that happy.
Want to come to dinner at my friend’s house? Meet her kids? The words slipped between bites of garlic bread and olive oil and fresh, sloppy pizza, and wine. They wouldn’t come out, though. Phil kept twitching and looking about, and when I asked what was the matter, he’d say it was nothing, or that he thought he’d seen someone he knew. By the time we’d finished a bottle of wine and were picking at some chocolatey dessert, the bad thing was gone; we were back to silly voices, playing footsie under the table, and so I swallowed the words back down to the place where I could forget them, and as he leaned across the table to kiss me on the nose, I thought: this is enough.
But it wasn’t. It wasn’t long before I stopped being able to pretend it was.
I didn’t know how to continue this story for a long time after this.
‘Basically,’ I said to Erika, ‘I got greedy. If I could’ve stayed satisfied with what we had, I’d still have it. Instead –’ I stopped talking and started to punch myself.
‘Beth.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Come on now. You’ve been doing so well.’
‘Have I?’
Her eyebrows relaxed. ‘You have indeed.’
‘Right. Thanks.’
She smiled and I suddenly noticed that I’d stopped noticing her geekster glasses; I could see her whole face; it was almost beautiful.
‘What was going through your mind when you punched yourself?’
‘Nothing. That’s the problem.’
‘What about just before?’
‘I couldn’t stop thinking, what if I’d stopped myself from wanting things? What if I’d just been satisfied? Then I wouldn’t have lost it. I wouldn’t have lost all that happiness.’
‘Oh, Beth.’ She sighed. ‘What did we say about what ifs?’
‘They’re bad.’
‘Yes, and don’t you think you’re being a bit hard on yourself?’
I looked right into her eyes. ‘I was an attention-seeking bitch.’
‘Look, there isn’t a human in the world who doesn’t want love, things, attention – a place to call home.’
‘But . . .’ Already her words were reminding me of Of Mice and Men, and what it showed me about dreaming and how you had to do it even when you weren’t supposed to.
‘And you’re human, aren’t you?’ She angled her head towards me and if there hadn’t been a table between us, I’m pretty sure she’d have rubbed her head against mine, as if we were just two animals.
‘I’ve always felt like I was something so much worse than everyone else, I had to act like I didn’t want the things they wanted just so they’d think I was all right. But now . . . Now I think maybe it was OK. Maybe it was OK to be happy for a while. Then to grow out of it.’
‘Oh Beth.’
‘Stop saying Oh Beth.’
‘Oh, sorry.’
And we both laughed. Because that’s how it is now, between me and Erika; we can laugh at each other.
10. When your body finally grows up
Depending on how old you are when you read this, you’ll have heard absolutely nothing or absolutely loads about periods. You’ll have heard how gross and annoying and painful they are; how they turn reasonable women into moody clumps.
If you’d known me at fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, you’d have heard all this from me: I refused P.E. and homework; I demanded paracetamol and ibuprofen and can’t you give me something that actually works? You wouldn’t have been alone in telling me to shut up and get on with it, like everyone else.
But it was just an act to make me appear like everyone else. Because I’d never found so much as one drop of blood in my pants. Because no matter how much I ate and prayed and wished, my body refused to grow taller and hippier and boobier – to grow up.
‘You need to eat more and eat better,’ said the only doctor I saw before the doctor who told me all about you. ‘You need to sleep more and sleep better. You need to look after yourself. This is your body’s way of telling you t
hat it can’t support any extra life.’
‘So I don’t need to bother with condoms?’
‘STIs are still –’
‘But I can’t get pregnant?’
‘Nothing’s ever guaranteed in that department, but I wouldn’t have thought so, no.’
After that, I told any guy who asked that I was on the pill. I got so used to saying it, I forgot it wasn’t true.
One evening, we were fighting over the last takeaway spring roll and my boobs started to ache. They ached and they ached and when your dad grabbed them, it wasn’t tingly and good; it hurt. I told him to stop. Then we fucked, but I spent the whole time wishing it was over, so I could work out what was going on in my belly, i.e. why it felt like an army of mini-blokes dragging my organs down towards my hips.
The next morning, I went to the loo and there it was: a brown smear on my pants. Brown, not red – which is how those teen magazines said it began, I thought, suddenly remembering how I’d scour them for any article on the subject, hoping to unlock its secret.
‘What are you so happy about?’ your dad asked, when I came out of the bathroom.
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘just being here with you.’
He wouldn’t get why, after nineteen years on this earth, my body had finally decided to grow up – and how happy this made me.
The happiness lasted until halfway through my shift the next afternoon when wetness dribbled down the inside of my thigh. ‘Fucking hell.’
‘What?’ Chantelle looked at me like I was a mentalist.
‘Didn’t realize I said that out loud.’
‘What’s up?’
No one else was around so I told her that my period had suddenly got heavy.