Grown Ups

by Emma Jane Unsworth

  DRAFTS

  Dear Saint Gerard,

  Fat lot of use you were.

  BR,

  Jenny McLaine

  ART SAID

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, babes, but you’re not very maternal.”

  I stared at him.

  “It’s not a bad thing!” he said.

  “It sounds like a bad thing.”

  “You’re just very conscientious and neurotic, delightfully capricious and contradictory—and hilarious, of course.”

  “What’s that, Art?” I said. “The fucking feedback sandwich?”

  “Ha! There—you see?”

  “NEUROTIC?”

  “Sorry, that’s the wrong word. You just think too much.”

  YOU

  You are not maternal, said the blood.

  You are not maternal, said the tobacco.

  You are not maternal, said the overtime.

  You are not maternal, said the overdraft.

  TERMS OF ENDEARMENT

  The next evening I wait outside Sonny’s dance school near Tower Bridge. I watch the lights inside the building, looking for signs of departure, in between checking the comments on my column, which this week is about the benefits of being big spoon for a change.

  Sonny comes out. I am stunned, for a moment, by the height of him.

  “All right?”

  “All right? Did your mum tell you I’d be coming?”

  “Course she did. Be a bit weird if she didn’t.”

  “I suppose.”

  He sets off walking. I follow. I wonder whether I should have brought him a drink, or some chocolate. Crisps? A Kinder egg?

  He pulls out a pack of cigarettes.

  “What are you doing?”

  “You smoke.”

  “I don’t care. This isn’t okay.” I take his cigarettes off him and put them in my pocket. “You can’t do this in front of me. You have to hide with your mates in a shitty bus station somewhere. Or even better, don’t do it.”

  “I thought you weren’t like them, but you are like them.”

  “Who?”

  “The rest of them.”

  “I’m sorry I forgot your birthday, Sonny.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “I’ve been … having a bit of a hectic time. I’ll bring you a present round soon, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Let me know if there’s anything in particular you want.”

  “That pack of cigarettes.”

  “Very funny.”

  He starts looking at his phone, so I look at mine. I loop back round my apps and refresh. As my Instagram feed refreshes I see there’s a new post from Suzy Brambles, from a few hours earlier. How did I miss this?

  It’s a picture of someone’s arm. A man’s arm. There’s a section of tattoo visible. A trident of some kind.

  It is Art’s arm.

  I fall to my knees, phone in hand.

  IT IS A PICTURE OF ART’S ARM.

  Not only that, but he has commented underneath:

  Nice composition, Foxface x x

  “Aunty Jenny? Are you all right?”

  I cannot reply. All I can do is stare at my phone.

  “Are you having a stroke? You’ve gone a funny color.”

  Forty-six people have liked the Foxface comment.

  My mind rises up and leaves my body. I am not myself. I do not know who I am but I am not here and I am not this and I am not myself.

  I get up and run off down the street.

  I hear Sonny shouting after me. “Aunty Jenny? AUNTY JENNY?”

  I don’t know where I’m going, but as I’m running I’m checking things against things in my head, calculating, computing, adding it all up. How was I blind to this? I am better than this … obscene ignorance. It is inexcusable not to have deduced this earlier. If I could fire myself from running my life right now, I would. This is an act of gross misconduct. Of negligence. A head must roll! Something must die. SOMETHING MUST DIE!

  I reach the bridge and push past a group of protesters standing holding signs for something or other. “MOVE OUT OF THE WAY,” I yell, “THIS IS A LIFE-OR-DEATH ISSUE!” They move out of the way. They are unified, momentarily, through fear of me, this madwoman, heading for the edge of the bridge. I find a ledge and climb over the barrier and stand, staring at the river below.

  “Call the police!” someone shouts.

  “Don’t do it!” shouts someone else.

  “I have to!” I shout. “There is nothing else for me to do now!”

  “It’s never as bad as you think!” shouts another person.

  “Don’t say that! You’re not meant to say that!” someone replies.

  I notice a small box of cards affixed to the girder by my head. I pull one out. It is a message. It says: Things are bad but they will get better. You are valuable. Never forget that. x

  I wonder who has written it.

  But I’ve made up my mind. They are all too late. I take a step back (someone gasps) and then I wheel my arm like a bowler with a cricket ball and launch my phone—far far far into the Thames. Then I crouch in a ball and sob.

  “Are you okay?” someone shouts.

  I raise my head. A trail of snot connects my nose to the concrete floor of the bridge platform. “NO, I AM NOT FUCKING OKAY!”

  * * *

  I get back to the house and close the door behind me. I stand in the hall.

  “Jenny?” says my mother, coming out of the lounge. “I thought you were going to get Sonny? You’re back early.”

  I don’t reply. I go upstairs and get my laptop out. I stare at the picture some more. Then I go to my e-mails and e-mail Art.

  Why is there a picture of you with Suzy Brambles?

  He replies instantly.

  Hey. What?

  Why is there a picture of you with Suzy Brambles on her Instagram? It’s a simple question.

  Who?

  SUZY BRAMBLES STOP MAKING ME SAY IT

  Oh haha that’s not her real name. I forgot she has that daft pseudonym! Her real name is Suzanne.

  I breathe. I exhale and I inhale and I exhale again.

  Where did you meet her?

  She got in touch via Instagram.

  WTF

  Then we met at her friend’s photography book launch.

  Are you seeing her?

  How do you mean?

  I mean are you seeing her shitbird u know what I mean

  Okay. I don’t want to argue like this so can we talk this through properly on the phone?

  NO WE CANNOT

  Trying to call

  I am not available right now

  I am hyperventilating.

  Jenny please talk to me

  No. I don’t think we will achieve anything

  Okay. But just let me say this. You and I broke up over six months ago

  I can feel hair follicles clenching on my back.

  It’s not that. She knows me!!!

  Suzanne is pretty sure she doesn’t know you, Jenny. You must be mistaken x

  What, is she there now?

  Art?

  Is she there???

  I hope you’re not giving her the fucking speech, Art

  Which speech?

  The “my ex is so hurt because I am so powerful” speech

  The “my ex is so crazy” speech

  FUCK OFF WITH THOSE SPEECHES, YOU AND EVERY MAN FOREVER

  Take care of yourself, Jenny. Get a spa day! X

  My spinal fluid boils loose. I am formicating.

  Fuck you hard, Art, fuck you in all the ways and also in ways they haven’t invented yet

  I am popping all over, like a carcass in a furnace.

  “JENNY,” my mother says. “Step away from the computer.”

  “Fuck off, Mother.”

  “Jenny, I’m going to take the computer now, okay.” She does it like she’s defusing a bomb. Like I’m packing explosives in my bra. “Just—breathe, and stay calm.”

  I col
lapse on the floor. “He’s fucking seeing her.”

  “Who? What?”

  “Art is seeing Suzy Brambles. I mean, can you believe that? And everyone tells me I’m paranoid and I overthink—well, you know what? The paranoid people are on to shit.”

  “I’m just going to put this down over here.”

  Then it dawns on me.

  She stalked him on my Instagram. This explains everything.

  “OH MY GOD.”

  “What?”

  “GET ME A GIN, MOTHER.”

  She gets me a gin. I am in the same position when she comes up: calcified. I take the gin without moving my face or indeed any part of myself.

  “Okay, darling, there you go. Now, tell me, slowly, what happened.”

  I reel off the intel. “Suzy Brambles has posted a picture of Art’s arm and he has commented underneath using a nickname he used to call me. It’s an utterly sociopathic act, by both of them.”

  “Let me see.”

  I open my laptop for my mother and show her.

  She sighs. “Oh, darling, that doesn’t prove anything. Your imagination is filling in the gaps and joining up dots to create the wrong picture. You were always too good at that.”

  “He just confirmed he’s with her now!”

  “That doesn’t mean anything. It could be a one-off. You’re overanalyzing, as usual.”

  “You have to leave.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t do this. We can’t be friends. I want you to go.”

  IF

  you’re going to have a miscarriage, I can highly recommend doing it during a production of Macbeth. It’s not only thematically apt but it means you get to exact revenge on an overpriced theater seat by bleeding all over it.

  We’d gone to see some Shakespeare because I was hankering for academia.

  Pregnancy made me like that. Nostalgic. Elitist. Sedate. It was January. We were nine weeks. I was thinking, periodically (bemusedly), about August. The whole future had changed. My body was changing. I was being invaded. Realigned. Unutterably. Permanently.

  And then, I wasn’t.

  I’d woken at 3 a.m., knowing something was wrong. My boobs weren’t sore anymore and I felt completely normal—the previous abnormal suddenly standing and revealing itself, in all its utter abnormality. I’d forgotten how normal felt, but now I remembered. I felt distinctly unpregnant. Googling led me to miscarriage chat rooms. I didn’t post anything, just read, really. I found a pregnancy-site message board and a bunch of messages from other panicking women who were terrified, alone, in the early morning, sharing their stories about this terrible unspoken thing that shouldn’t be a terrible unspoken thing, but is. I just woke up and found this.… Can’t get back to sleep.… Is it blood or is it mucus? It’s just a bit pink really, don’t you think? Anyone else had this? Anyone out there? It made me love the Internet, briefly. It made me love women, everywhere, protectively. Maternally.

  The day passed bloodlessly. I sat tight.

  Then, in the theater that night, beautifully, horribly, perfectly—it began. During a battle scene I felt a hot blip, and. And. I knew it, and it knew me, and it had come. I excused myself and ran to the toilet, checking the fabric as I vacated my seat. Thoughtful of me, don’t you think? Aren’t women The Best.

  I sat on the toilet and stared at the back of the door, unsure how to feel. I was thankful no one knew, but I also had no one to share this with now. I wanted Kelly. Not my mother. Kelly. I felt as though I had failed on some sort of fundamental level (YOU HAVE NO INTEGRITY …). Why was I so upset? I wasn’t even sure I’d wanted a baby (how can you, intelligently, want something so seismic and unknowable?). Was it hormones? Punctured pride? Or—darker, shall I even … yes, yes I must—was it that I was aware on some level of not getting what I’d paid for; what I’d ordered; what I’d felt was my right? Was this the dissatisfied customer in me? The irate little Western consumer? It was puzzling.

  I packed my pants with toilet paper and went back to my seat. Art looked at me enquiringly and took my hand.

  “I think I’m losing it.”

  The I then, not the we. It was mine then it was ours then it was mine again. I got both shitty ends of the stick.

  “Oh, babes.”

  He squeezed. I heard the pity in his voice, and I hated being pitied. I felt as though he’d lost respect for me somehow. That I was reduced by the whole endeavor, and not in the way I expected.

  We sat on opposite sides of the taxi, going home. I looked out of the window, watching the rain dance off the low windowsills of the shops. Back at the house, I made us pints of orange squash, like always. Art went to his cellar. I would usually go down too, poke around, pester him, but something kept me upstairs. My phone, I suppose. I looked for advice on when to go to the hospital. That night we slept on opposite sides of the bed. I say “slept.” I didn’t sleep. I put on my eye mask, and even though I could hear Art breathing it felt as though there were miles of silence between us. At one point he farted. It sounded like whale song.

  I got up at five, still bleeding. I said: “I want to go to the hospital now.”

  He said: “Yes. I’ll help you.”

  ART’S MOTHER SAID

  “Is Jenny not coming down?”

  I heard her, from upstairs. She’d come round to see us, a few weeks before we broke up. I couldn’t muster up the energy or social grace to go down and make conversation. I was also punishing her as a way of punishing him, I see that now. The sins of the son. Something like that.

  DRAFTS

  Dear Barista,

  I did not mean to shout “HI!” when you handed me my coffee this morning. I meant to say “Thanks!” like a normal person. I am sorry I made you jump. I am having a bit of a bad time at the mo—although even at the best of times I am not much of a Johnny-on-the-spot. Or a Jenny-on-the-spot, even. (My real name is Jenny, which also might come as a surprise to you because I know I’ve said “Suzy” a few times in the past and that is what the cashier has written on my cup.)

  You will never see me again, if that is any consolation.

  Sincerely,

  Jenny McLaine BA Hons.

  FULL DESPERATE

  What happened??? Sonny just told me you ran off. Did you have some kind of panic attack?

  Art is seeing someone I know

  So that makes you leave my son in the street?

  My son?? Why are you being so motherly and judgmental about this?

  Sorry what?

  This is real heartbreak, Kelly. I saw them together.

  I take photos of my coffee cup from various angles until it looks best. This courtesy phone isn’t going to win any awards for its camera, but its saving grace is that it isn’t at the bottom of the Thames. It was an interesting chat with the insurance company at the phone store. I said I’d been on a riverboat that unexpectedly swerved. Kelly takes a long time to reply—I watch the gray blobs rippling with promise—and then:

  Want to meet at lunch?

  Okay

  “ ’Sup, gingerest of whingers?” I jump. It’s Mia. She’s wearing a dress that’s like a huge red arrow, pointing downward. I put down my phone. “A word!”

  “Anything in particular?”

  “Something special!”

  I pick up my phone and follow her into her office. Something special? Sounds ominous. This way, turkeys, it’s time for your special Christmas surprise! The main space falls silent around us. F ingers stop tapping keys. Eyeballs stop squeaking from side to side. I sense an imminent ax-fall.

  Mia closes her office door. Simone is under the desk, chewing a toy shaped like an iPad.

  “So,” Mia says. “Regrettably [truly, you’ve never seen someone demonstrate so little regret] I must inform you we’re having a maje redesign, and I’m afraid Intense Modern Woman isn’t going to make the cut for the new-look Foof.”

  I stare at her. I think about my bank account, plummeting as it is into red below the red. I am probably going to de
btors’ prison (does debtors’ prison still exist?). I am almost desperate. Scratch that: I’m desperate. I am Full Desperate.

  “Look,” I say, “I know they’ve been a bit vanilla the past few weeks, but I can go full rum-and-raisin again if you’ll just give me one more chance. Just give me another month to turn this around and prove to you I have got what it takes.”

  … to be your apprentice, Lord Sugar.

  … to be on your team, will.i.am.

  Mia shakes her head. “You can work out the week, but then it’s sayonara at the Monocle. We’re having leaving drinks for you! It’s all arranged.”

  “Oh Christ, please don’t publicize this,” I say. “Give me that at least. Give me my dignity.”

  “Don’t be silly. People move on. Be empowered by this transition.”

  I leave Mia’s office and go to a soundproofed booth for a cry. And a look at my phone. For a few hours. Well, what’s the point in anything else anymore? I post a picture of my hand doing a thumbs-up in the empty booth, with the caption:

  GREAT TO GET SOME DOWNTIME IN A PEACEFUL SPOT BEFORE THE BLITZKRIEG OF THE DAY #BUSYBUSYBUSY #SENDCOFFEE

  And then I put my head on the desk and cry until I am a veritable husk.

  MISERABLE PHO

  I meet Kelly in the Noodle Hovel for lunch. When she arrives I stand up and hug her. She stiffens slightly. She orders a beer and I order kombucha. We sit opposite each other and look at the food menu. I do not want any food.