I knew there had to be some crisis or other
It is a crisis indeed
Is she dying?
Possibly. Will ask
“Are you dying?” I say. “Is this a situation that’s going to end in me wet-wiping your backside and reading you passages from The Little Book of Calm?”
“No,” she says, and then she sighs. “I want to help. I see you’re not yourself. And I can help. Beverly’s staying in my place and paying me rent.” She sips her champagne. “And I might as well tell you, darling. I’ve enrolled in a course to train as a death doula.”
“A death doula? What the fuck is that?”
“Someone who guides a person out of this life and into the next.”
“Right-oh.”
“I already have transferable skills. I can offer the full package, so to speak. My client list is … well, it’s healthy, but it could be healthier, darling, you know. It’s almost as though the unhealthy might be key to my future success, if that’s not too tasteless a thing to say. I didn’t come this far to plateau. There’s a thirty-day training course starting next week in Balham. So you see, your text arrived at the perfect time. I’ve been meaning to get down and now … well, I’m like you all those years ago, aren’t I, your regular Dick Whittington.”
“You can’t stay here for a month.”
“I know! What a notion. I’m sure you have plans, help with money, all that sort of thing. Who are you texting?”
“Kelly.”
“How is she?”
“F ine, I think.”
“She must still be so grateful to you, even all these years down the line. He must be a teenager now.”
“He is.”
“Still, you never forget when someone has done something for you; you do right by them, don’t you? Forever.”
“Hm.”
“There’s a bottle of amaretto in my suitcase.”
“I don’t have more than two drinks per night. For my sleep hygiene.”
“Sleep hygiene? Makes me think of sheep dips.”
“My phone tracks my sleep and I’ve been coming in short lately.”
“They’re all trying to be our friends now, the phones, aren’t they, like the banks. The sleep tracking. The health data. That’s how they get us sucked in and make us need them so they can make us miserable again.” She chugs her drink.
“Know what I heard? If you have more than two drinks, then your body has to spend more time breaking down the alcohol than looking after you.”
“You know what I heard? If you have more than three-point-five units of alcohol per week, you are eighty-five percent more likely to be judged by society.”
HOW I MET KELLY
I was coming home from a press screening. It was rush hour (it was always rush hour). My cabdriver was nice, and Magic FM was playing “If You Leave Me Now” by Chicago. I’d made my excuses for the after-party, but I was dreading getting home, really—to another lounge full of flatmates. I was sick of all the flatmates by then; round after round, their demands and needs and petty thievery. I couldn’t wait to be alone with my imagination. I was so depressed at the prospect of going home that evening that I’d taken a forty-pound cab to cheer myself up. It was only half working. I was mostly thinking, I could have put this in my savings, and been an inch closer.
The weirdest thing was, a black balloon had bounced across the road in front of the cab about five minutes before, and the driver had swerved and we both said Oh! and I suppose it made us both pay attention a bit more, that standard portent of doom. I certainly had my eyes on the road. We drove on another few minutes, and that’s when I saw him: a tiny kid, toddling across the grass verge at the side of the carriageway, heading for the road.
“STOP THE CAB!” I yelled, surprised at the sound of my own authority.
The driver stopped. “I see him!” he said.
“I’m going!” I shouted, flinging open the door. “Call the police!”
I still don’t know where this person in me came from.
The child toddled on, picking up speed. I headed for him, fast—my shoes slipping as I accelerated. I have never felt adrenaline like it. I ran and ran, and when I reached him, in the wet grass, he was a few feet from the barrier. He was wearing green pajamas and little monster slippers streaked with mud. He stopped. I didn’t. Cars were beeping. A few other cars had stopped. He pointed at the road. I grabbed him, and he did not want to be picked up. “No!” he said, kicking me with his dirty slippers. “No, no!”
I gripped him like a prize. “Shh,” I said. “It’s okay, okay, okay.” I don’t know where those words came from. Another random voice inside me. Another past life or future life seeping through the cracks. He stopped struggling. I felt accepted, strange and warm.
I turned my back to the traffic and saw Kelly running toward us. She was monochrome with fear. She barked two barely decipherable syllables in an animal panic—a name I would later come to know. I walked with him toward her.
INBOX
Hi Foxface how are you? X x
Great! How are you? X x
Awesome! Question: Do you want the vintage cups and saucers? I packed them by accident and just realized! X x
No thanks x x
Are you sure? You spent ages collecting them from charity shops. You were obsessed with putting mulled wine and hot punch in them at parties x x
Obsessed is a strong word! I was just zestful, as I recall x x
Okay well if you’re free next Friday come to my exhibition launch! Would be so great to see you. X x
I might do. Where is it? I’ve got a few things going on at the mo x x
From 6:30 p.m. at the Hexagon Gallery on the South Bank. Bring a friend x x
Okay thanks I usually have work drinks on a Friday but will see xx
I’ll be wearing a red carnation. Holding a bag of crockery x x
Seriously don’t worry about the crockery x x
* * *
My mother is asleep in her chair, her bottom lip drooping. I’ve never seen the resemblance. I look back at my phone and then I go into the contacts and add Art’s surname to his name—so formal! So distant! He isn’t just Art—he is an Art. He is Art who?
I only wish I knew more Arts.
ART SAID
“Listen, is this still a good thing for us to be doing, do you think?”
“How do you mean?”
“I’m just aware that it’s becoming … stressful.”
We’d been trying for four months. I was pissing on jumbo bags of mail-order ovulation sticks. I was taking my temperature every morning before I got out of bed. The fucking had gone. In its place was a fever. It rots the crops, that kind of monomania. It curdles the milk. I felt passive, waiting. I hate waiting. Waiting creates too much thinking time. I thought about it a lot, during that time: how I was shrinking into a wench while he was still growing into the adventure of himself.
“Is it?” I said, chewing my thumb.
“You’re getting pretty … obsessive about it. Like it’s the be-all and end-all. It’s so much pressure to put us under. And I don’t want that. I don’t need it. You know, I need to be in a good headspace to do what I do. To do it well, I mean.”
“Yeah. I just—well, it’s a project, isn’t it. I don’t like to fail.”
“Fail?” he said. “This is not a competition. Come on, let’s go and relax. Only beauty!” he said. “Only beauty in my house!”
“It’s my house.”
“In this house! Our house! Let’s have a beautiful life, and enjoy ourselves, can’t we?”
He was still taking my picture, now and then. I posed for him. I stood. I sat. I lay. I smiled. Even when he was just snapping for fun, just for him, he’d say, “Smile!” Like that. Like a fucking catcaller. But no one wants to smile all the time, do they? No wants to look like their heart is too soon made glad.
And then (are you ready?) I started posing alone, in the front room, by the bay window. I held my arm rigid, finger in mout
h, pressing. I was waiting for him to come home—knowing that he would go straight to a bar after a job, knowing that I would eat another dinner alone; but still, I stood at that window, staring through another screen, waiting for love to show up.
* * *
Nevertheless.
We got pregnant. At least, I think we got pregnant. So many things happened to make me doubt it, I started to feel like Queen Victoria by the end with her succession of uterine phantoms.
But there it was, in blue and white.
In November, I sent him an emoji of a cross.
Turning Christian?
Guess again.
Whoa.
Yep.
Wow.
Innit.
How do you feel?
Like I’m awaiting transformation. How do you feel?
F ive.
Minutes.
Later.
Excited!!
ART SAID
“Are you sure? Like, really really sure?”
He’d come home with presents—big cartons of juice and boxes of precut fruit. I gave him the test for his own perusal.
“Well, there you go.”
“Yes. I don’t think these things are often wrong.”
“I kind of wish you’d waited for me to do the test.”
“I was just so impatient, and I didn’t really believe it could be.”
(This was only half true. I’d wanted to manage the potential shame myself. I’d decided that if it was negative, I just wouldn’t tell him.)
“This is my thing now too,” Art said. “Scary!”
I wondered if he’d rest his hand proprietorially on my stomach, or anything else gruesome and cheesy like that. But no. We sat there, each holding a large Tetra Pak of juice, looking at each other, and the juice, and the room, alternately, incredulously—unsure whether to hug each other in celebration or whether that would be too self-congratulatory or inappropriate given the ambivalence of feelings (fear/joy, nervous/excited, panic/satisfaction). Personally, I was paralyzed. It’s hard to do anything with a big carton of juice in your hand.
* * *
Months later, at the hospital, the nurses made me doubt myself all over again. “There’s so little of the hCG hormone in your system, it’s really surprising that you were …”
That I was ever actually pregnant? That’s what I wanted to say. But I was all out of chat that day.
Sometimes I think I just made it all up. It was part of my perfect personal brand at that point, curated by myself for myself. Put out there to make me like me. Or some twisted shit like that.
WHAT LASTS?
I said to Kelly, the night after Art moved out. We were in her kitchenette on the cocktails and coke—brains wired, hearts stretched and pinned. “What actually lasts, over time?”
“Passion.”
“Not sex?”
“Not usually. But they can be connected.”
“Art asked me to ‘milk’ him a few weeks ago.”
“What?”
“Yes, I found it quite disturbing. Why would a man want to be milked?”
“Maybe he was trying to spice things up.”
“Bum steer.”
“Well, that’s another option.”
“Not for this cowgirl.”
Kelly speared a maraschino cherry with an acrylic nail. “Sex is a funny one. It always changes over time.”
“Says who?”
“My va-jay-jay.”
She’s no Schopenhauer, Kelly.
BAD STAND-UP
Hi where are you?
On my way home from work, why?
You were meant to meet us at the movies at 6 for Sonny’s bday
Oh shit, I’m so sorry. It’s been a tough week. Totally forgot. So sorry!
You were meant to bring the cake as well
So sorry! Like I said, tough week
It’s okay. Forget it. Just don’t say you can do it if you can’t do it. It’s really important that, with kids
Are you having some kind of go at me in that “as a mother” way you do sometimes because we did talk about this
Just forget it, Jenny. Say hi to your mum. See ya.
GHOSTESS WITH THE MOSTEST
When I get to the end of the street I detect the unmistakable whiff of burning sage. My heart takes a nosedive. It can mean only one thing: she is bothering the ether.
Sure enough, as I snick open the front door I hear them: “Is there anybody there? Is there anybody there?” A terribly random endeavor, don’t you think? Sort of like Chatroulette, but with ghosts. You’ve literally got a one-in-three chance of getting a wanker. I always thought of the afterlife as being like an airport waiting lounge, filled with impatient spirits, with one phone at one end that would occasionally ring and be pounced on. It’s for Kevin! Kevin? And a spirit would sprint over, pushing through the crowds, hand raised. That’s me! I’m Kevin! Wait, don’t hang up!
My mother would be sitting on a table to hold the room. She always made sure her head was higher than anyone’s, like Caesar. I remember the nights I couldn’t study because the caterwauling was so loud. My French listening test was a disaster. I arrived late and said I’d run over a dog on my bike; an unconvincing lie, I see that now. The tutor looked at me woefully. I sat down. I had missed half the test. French was my only B. When I got the results it was like a pair of soft breasts sitting there, jiggling, mocking me, among the strong, triangular As. I could not function in that house.
This is my house.
Her head darts out of the lounge. “Jenny! Come join us!”
I step forward and say in what I hope is a hushed tone: “What are you doing? You know I don’t like being around this.”
“The spirits live amongst us, Jenny.”
“Christ knows where they find the space, with all your coats.”
“It’s just a few people, connecting.”
“Getting drunk, more like.”
“Alcohol is the safest choice in the capital. I forgot how the water makes tea taste like a goat’s arse-pocket.”
A huge man comes out of the lounge. He has earlobes like medallions of beef. “Carmen,” he says. To me, an enforced and dramatic, “Hello.” To Carmen again: “I’m just worried we will run out of time to make contact.”
He looks stricken. This is the unsavory part. The wounded and hopeless, the lost. Preyed on.
“Just a moment, Benjamin, love,” my mother says.
I look down and see an open cardboard box, filled with postcard-size flyers. I pull one out.
Carmen McLaine—Spiritual Healer and Psychic–Medium.
Specialist advice on Love and Relationships, Family Matters, Exams, Careers, Jobs, Luck, Death, and more.
25 years’ expertise in dealing with Spirit. Pay after results.
07876 211560. MyFace: Carmen McLaine
“What are these?”
“Flyers. I decided to try to drum up a bit of business locally.”
“You’ve put these through people’s doors? Around here?”
She nods energetically.
“No,” I say. “This isn’t that kind of neighborhood. There’s a Facebook group about the bins that people are too busy for. They don’t want intruding upon in their own homes.”
“Well, the response has been very positive. Come in!”
Benjamin goes back into the lounge.
I take a deep breath. With no idea how much of my reputation is left, I hold my inner water steady and follow her into the lounge. There are six of them in there, three on each sofa. Caroline from over the street, Raoul and Leonie from next door, and two other people I recognize from down the road. The table is covered with bowls of tortilla chips and half-full tumblers. My mother’s crystal ball is uncovered and sits on top of the TV cabinet. The lights are low and there are tea lights shivering on the mantelpiece. This is not my lounge. Its strangeness is shocking, yet comforting.
“Hello,” I say. “I’m just saying hello.”
“My
daughter is a nonbeliever,” my mother says.
“I’m not. I don’t really have a label for what I am. Spiritually curious. Open-minded.” I say this to her specifically: “Sensible.”
“You don’t believe?” says Benjamin. He looks sad for me.
“I believe that all this is a valid social framework for processing grief, or something like that. I don’t mind it as a support group. It’s the moneymaking aspect I object to.” I say it pleasantly.
Truth be told, when it came to mediumship, I had often felt quite moved by the mumsy delivery—the platitudes, the reassurances. There’s light at the end of the tunnel, pet.… When one door closes, another door opens.… In a way, it was a lot like therapy. And marginally cheaper. Marginally.
“Well, I’ll be off so you can get your money’s worth.” I nod good-bye. “Cheerio!”
I make to leave the room.
“I’ll be with you in a moment, Benjamin,” my mother says. “I just need to go and rinse my crystals.”
She pulls me toward the kitchen. There’s fancy finger-food on the countertops. The toaster is unplugged.
“I know you have issues with what I do,” my mother says, filling a gin balloon with ice (where have the gin balloons come from? I do not own gin balloons). “Just as I have issues with what you do. Your ‘preaching to the choir.’ ”
I see a stack of banknotes in the wine rack. She sees me staring at them.
She continues: “What I do has its place. It is worthwhile, you know. In the modern world, textual and verbal knowledge is prized above other kinds, and that’s not right. What I do is intuitive. Not everyone is academic.”
“Don’t compare this to a lack of plumbing apprenticeships, Mother. I’d rather you were an arms dealer. Seriously, I’d be more proud.”
“Do you think this is easy for me? All these voices, all these years? I have no peace, no privacy.”
Benjamin walks into the kitchen. “Carmen,” he says, “I hate to hurry this clearly intense personal situation, but Toby won’t hang around all day. He’s faster than you might think.”
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