Grown Ups

by Emma Jane Unsworth

  “Gimme a mo,” Nicolette says. She dabs at her phone.

  My own phone pings. I look at it. Kelly.

  Hey, can you chat?

  Nicolette looks up from her phone. “Did you cut your hair?”

  “Yes.”

  “I mean that literally, babe. Did YOU cut your hair?”

  “Actually, I did. But then I got it professionally tweaked.”

  “Are you having a breakdown?”

  “No! I don’t think so.”

  “It’s not a criticism. Maybe psycho is the way to go. I almost rugby-tackled a charity hijacker to the ground earlier. Do you know what he said to me? ‘Mate, you just dropped your smile.’ I wanted to end him. More than I wanted to end cancer.”

  “You should have. I hate those harassers. I hate the way they try to teach you how to be a good human. The guilt trip of it, you know? Like they’re responsible for the fabric of society.”

  “Yah. I don’t have time for it either. I’ve not stopped since five a.m. I ate a sandwich on the toilet at work, to save time. Then I remembered that was how Elvis died.”

  “We’d better go in.”

  “I suppose.”

  In the studio, we take our positions on our mats.

  “Be nonjudgmental with your breathing,” Natalie, the yoga teacher, says.

  I try to not judge my breath. Hey, breath, just do your thing. Lately I’ve been focusing a lot on stabilizing the water in my inner bowl. Natalie said to think of my pelvis as a bowl full of water and to keep my tailbone tucked in and my pelvic floor engaged to keep the water steady. I knew Natalie was a good person the first time I walked into her class. She’s small and nervy, which I find reassuring in a yoga context. It lets you know she’s been through it—spiritually, I mean. She says my Warrior Two is really coming on and I could be as fierce as the goddess Durga if I put my mind to it, so whenever I’m standing anywhere I try to be mindful of my inner water. I am aware I sometimes look a bit odd at the bus stop.

  The inner water would be a lot easier to manage without the memories that invade as soon as I take my eye off the present. A door opens in my mind, and in they surge: a procession of people who don’t like me; people I have wronged in some way, Banquo after bastard Banquo—that friend I kissed, that woman who shouted at me on the cycle path, the YOU HAVE NO INTEGRITY man (who in my mind looks like my old French teacher, who I had a crush on). Another spasm at the thought of a meeting with three PRs the other day where I used the word groovy. Which all takes me back to the croissant, its pathetic tally, my fundamental unlikability—

  “Move your arms in time with your breathing, Jenny,” says Natalie.

  “I am.”

  “You’re breathing that fast?”

  At the end of the class Natalie asks us to imagine we are trees, rooted into the ground down our backs, but all I can think of is The Human Centipede, which makes me feel hurlsome. That film cannot be unseen. Once I start thinking about it, it’s like there’s literally a rod up my arse. Or a Rod up my arse, depending on who the scientist might have abducted.

  “Concentrate on your breath, Jenny,” Natalie says. “There is nothing but your breath.” Is she giving me more advice than anyone else in the class? Surely I’m not the worst in the class. Dear sweet Christ, just when your day can’t get any worse. I breathe in and out and try to listen, but it sounds like a ventilator in a hospital, like someone being kept alive, possibly against their will. It’s not a tranquil thought. I’m not sure I’ve ever been good at being tranquil, in all honesty. I’ve never seen a hammock and thought, That looks relaxing. I just think, That’s going to tip up, with me in it. Kelly bought me a session in a sensory-deprivation pod for my birthday last year, and I got out after five minutes. It was so dark in there! The woman giving me the induction told me there was a button on one side for the lights and an alarm on the other side in case I got into trouble. But once the lights were off and I was floating, I couldn’t tell whether I’d spun right round and so I didn’t know which button was the lights and which was the alarm, so I didn’t press anything out of fear. She also told me I’d know my hour session was up because five minutes before the end, a “small wave” would ripple through the tank, emerging from the top of the pod, behind my head. Well, I was on tenterhooks anticipating that small wave. How small is a small wave? Would it flip me over? I got out after five minutes because the tension was unbearable. I told Kelly it was great, and I really fucking hope she doesn’t buy me another.

  * * *

  After class, Nicolette and I walk together to the end of the street. We pass a skinny woman walking her Italian greyhound.

  “You know that thing about looking like your dog?” I say to Nicolette. “Do you think it could work the other way around? So you get a dog you want to look like and you become as one, shape-wise? Or is it that you’re attracted to things that look like you, in a cloning sort of way?”

  “I don’t think anyone would want to look like an actual dog, would they?”

  “I wouldn’t mind the physique of a Staffie. I might try it. I might get one. Maybe it makes you morph like any relationship, except physically, not psychologically.”

  My phone pings. Kelly again.

  Hey—did you get my last message? Could do with a chat x

  I’m thinking of what to reply and start scrolling before I know it and then Nicolette says bye and I put my phone back in my pocket and try to find my bank card and what was I doing? And how is it already dark? I zip up my jacket and hurry on. The street is littered with leaves, like the ticker tape remains of a parade I’ve missed.

  I POST

  a video of my feet going through the leaves.

  No sooner has it gone up than Nicolette likes it and comments with a line of hearts.

  I message her:

  You are doing that thing we told each other to be aware of and promised to tell each other about

  What thing?

  After we’ve seen each other in real life, remember? You don’t need to prove our closeness to anyone else on there or the ongoing elevation of your feelings toward me. No cord has been cut. Same way if we haven’t seen each other or spoken for a while you don’t have to NOT like anything I put on there to make me notice you like you’re withholding affection from a lover

  I am not doing that! I felt those hearts

  Nicolette, I know a real line of hearts and you know a fake line of hearts and that was a fake line of hearts

  Okay

  As soon as I’ve finished messaging, I go and see what Suzy Brambles has been up to. Not much. Which is rather remiss of her, I think.

  I catch the Overground to Dalston Kingsland, and from there walk to Stoke Newington. I like the walk down Kingsland Road, past the meat market and cocktail parlors. Old locals sip bitter outside the last few traditional boozers. Unhinged newspapers scud across the street into coffee cups and cigarette ends.

  When I get to the house I open the front door and shuffle in past the day’s pizza leaflets and taxi cards. This hallway is getting darker, and it’s not just the time of year; it’s the clutter. It used to feel spacious in here. Just after I moved in, Kelly came round and ran down the hall in her boots shouting: “Is this your house? Is THIS your HOUSE?” I said it was, for now. We have a plan, you see, Kelly and I. A plan that has withstood years, relationships, jobs, everything. We envisage spending our dotage together as an elderly couple in a manor house somewhere on the moors. The Commune, we call it. When we’re in the Commune … we say:

  We’ll drink martinis at 9 a.m.

  We’ll try all the drugs we were scared of taking when we were younger, like crack and smack.

  We’ll Whac-a-Mole each other’s hemorrhoids.

  We’ll have the highest-quality mattresses money can buy*

  *and employ a person specifically to put duvet covers on.

  We’ll go out in each other’s arms, freebasing—with Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill on repeat.

  For now, alas, m
yself and this dark hallway must find some way to coexist.

  I walk through to the lounge. Sid and Moon are in there, encrusted on the sofa, drinking Sid’s homemade probiotics.

  Fuck. I forgot to buy an avocado.

  Frances must be in her room. She’s the only one I can really endure for more than five seconds.

  Sid has artist’s hands, scabby and ink-covered. She works as a receptionist at a recruitment agency and spends most of her time doodling. Moon works in PR and is rocking neon knitwear and an erupting beehive. They are having a conversation about intestinal flora.

  “There’s a convincing argument that we are composite organisms rather than individuals,” says Sid. “I don’t know which way round I work sometimes—whether my brain leads my stomach or my stomach leads my brain. If it’s the latter, that means I am ruled by billions of bacteria.”

  “I know what you mean,” says Moon. “I’ve often wondered whether I have a personality or whether everything I’ve ever said or done has been a response to eating or not eating bread.”

  “So true,” says Sid. “Sometimes I think the word gluten sets off a chain reaction in my body. I think it’s only a matter of time before they ban the word too. And quite right.…”

  “Listen,” I say, “would you guys mind tidying up in here if you get time tonight? Just, you know … the footbath and the bagel slicer.”

  They stare at me. “I don’t suppose you remembered the avocado?” says Sid.

  I shake my head. “I’ll get you one tomorrow.”

  “No avo and calling me Stephanie in your column. It’s practically abusive. LOL!”

  “I changed your name out of respect for your privacy.”

  “And then you wrote about our personal habits.”

  “It was for other women to learn from.”

  “What’s to learn? There was no conclusion in the piece. Nothing in it was of any consequence whatsoever.”

  “The conclusion is if you honestly share then you feel less alone.”

  Moon snorts into her ginger ale. “You said it was twenty years ago. That’s not very honest.”

  “Again, protecting you.”

  “I think talking about your friends’ bodies in public is a pretty garbage thing to do,” she says.

  “It’s an online feminist magazine. And you’re my lodgers.”

  “Well,” says Sid, “that’s put us in our place.”

  My cheeks are hot. I turn and walk out of the room.

  I am thirty-five, I am thirty-five, I chant as I walk to my room. I pass Frances’s door—the door to what should have been a different room altogether. I can hear her practicing her latest one-woman monologue. “Call me, Adolf!” she’s screaming. “Call me! CALL ME! ”

  She gets funding for this shit. It’s all a bit much.

  THEY SAY

  screens at bedtime are bad for your brain, but the sensation of holding a phone is, I find, therapeutic. I find the shape of it reassuring. Soothing. I press it to my chest like a Bible. Every few minutes I lift it up and look to see what has changed in the world. I feel the weight of my thumb. My heart pounds. My veins thrum. I am in every way alive and progressing. My brain is lit up like the earth from space at night.

  I have a couple more likes for the croissant. I think it’s reasonable to conclude now that it wasn’t worth it. I squandered an entire morning on that. I can’t keep building these cathedrals out of crumbs.

  I scroll.

  A friend of mine, a semifamous scriptwriter, has posted a picture of herself in an elevator. She isn’t smiling. She looks like she’s in a perfume ad. Like she’s thinking: Look at me, don’t look at me, who are you, I don’t trust you. … It is very effective and confusing. I comment:

  Looking reflective

  We’re real-life friends but she doesn’t follow me on here, which has always been a point of hurt. I know she seldom uses social media and she has a strict sense of how she is “seen.” But why don’t I fit in with however she is seen? Why am I not perfect follow material? Also, cuttingly, she follows some truly trashy vloggers, which is a real kick in the teeth. Now that I’ve posted the comment I start to worry. It’s like I forget this stage of the process; like I set myself up for it. She might not reply. She hasn’t in the past. So why does that boil down to a failing on my part? I have to ask myself that, because it does. I didn’t used to have this—this innate distrust of myself. I feel like I have lost my pace. It’s like everything has been speeding up and up and up and I reached my own terminal velocity. I thought my twenties felt like rush hour, but no. My twenties were just pleasantly hectic. The thirties are the real rush hour.

  She replies, three minutes later.

  Miss you Mac

  Well now, follow me back and you wouldn’t have to, is what I want to say. Then you could see me regularly. It is within your grasp! But I don’t have the gall.

  I don’t know when all this started feeling like …

  Like …

  I see a picture Mia has posted of her dog.

  I decide to have a think about whether to like it. A like is never just a like.

  My phone beeps. I look.

  It’s a text.

  From my mother.

  I am supposed to pick 12 women

  who have touched my life and

  whom I think might participate.

  I think that if this group of women

  were ever to be in a room together

  there is nothing that wouldn’t be

  impossible. I hope I chose the

  right 12. May my hugs, love,

  gestures, and communications

  remind you how special you are.

  Please send this back to me. Make

  a wish before you read the quotation.

  That’s all you have to do. There is

  nothing attached. Just send this to

  12 women and let me know what

  happens on the fourth day. Did you

  make your wish yet? If you don’t

  make a wish, it won’t come true.

  This is your last chance to make a

  wish! Quotation: “May today there

  be peace within. May you trust that

  you are exactly where you are

  meant to be. May you not forget

  the infinite possibilities that are

  born of faith in yourself and others.

  May you use the gifts that you have

  received, and pass on the love that

  has been given to you. May you be

  content with yourself just the way

  you are. Let this knowledge settle

  into your bones, and allow your soul

  the freedom to sing, dance, praise,

  and love. It is there for each and

  every one of us.” Now send this to

  12 women (or more) (you can copy

  & paste) within the next 5 minutes.

  In addition, remember to send back

  to me. I count as one. You’ll see

  why xxxxxx

  I instantly feel harassed. I stare at the text for a moment. As I’m staring, another text from her arrives.

  How r u? xx

  It doesn’t feel right that someone older than me abbreviates more than I do, but this is the way it is. She texts me approximately once a week. When I ignore her, she turns up in my dreams. The other night she was in the doorway of my room, wearing a pair of wings—fine-boned and iridescent, like a dragonfly’s. They glistened in the moonlight. When she turns up like that, I have to remind myself that the visions are only my version of her—the real her is three hundred miles away.

  I close my eyes and see it. That house. Mock Tudor. Mock everything. Our street was adjacent to a big-dog housing estate, and the kids would come and chuck crab apples at the garage doors. I’d look down from my turret bedroom window, feeling quite the oppressed royal. Someone wrote WITCH in chalk on the wall, and my mother looked at it proudly while I burned. “Thousands of years
ago, witches were respected as healers,” she said. “They were wise women in the community.”

  “And then we got doctors,” I said.

  “Did we, though,” she said, “did we ever really ‘get’ doctors like we got witches? What I’m talking about is a gift, not a career choice.”

  In the garden there was a huge laburnum tree where caterpillars grew in the buds and dangled down on invisible threads in late spring. She liked bright plants. Pinks and yellows, for good energy, to ward off evil spirits. Lupines, azaleas, bleeding hearts. She dug up the pampas grass after I told her it was code for swingers. In the middle of the front lawn there was a monkey puzzle tree, its base beaded with gray stones, Japanese-style, after something she saw in a magazine. Other things: the crack-spangled patio, the planters polka-dotted with moss, the eternally unoccupied bird box. I’ve been back a handful of times. Birthdays. Christmases. Odd times off the slingshot of another failed love affair.

  A WOMB OF ONE’S OWN

  I lived in Stepney Green, Kentish Town, Streatham. I saved like Scrooge. I wrote for fourteen hours a day. I was in some kind of rocket-mode, blazing a way, trying to escape an old atmosphere. I walked home down the worst of roads in a knitted hat, trying to look mad (unrapeable), with my Yale key between my first two fingers. I had a contact—one, from a kindly teacher at school. I followed up on it. A trade magazine for a supermarket. It was a start. I ate a lot of sautéed vegetables. I had love affairs with men whose guitars were as badly strung as their sentences. Oh, to be fearless in terrible shoes again, oh so fearless and able to tolerate the cheapest of drinks and the cheapest of shoes. Outlet pleather and bad designs but all that time ahead, all that time, to wear terrible shoe after terrible shoe and wake up on another floorboarded, guitar-lined attic room with a leisurely hangover and all the hope in my heart. I’d leave before they woke, leaving a calligraphic note, and I’d go home and close my own door and feel joy when I saw the pictures I’d hung on my walls. The chairs I’d arranged. The carpets I’d chosen. The paint I’d painted.

  The first day of my first job, I texted my mother to tell her. She replied: