Grown Ups

by Emma Jane Unsworth

  The phone beeps and lights up. Jenny looks at it, hesitates, looks back to her book, and then puts her book down and picks up the phone. She reads the name on the phone, hesitates again, makes a decision, nods, and answers.

  ART

  Jenny! How ARE you?

  JENNY

  I’m okay, Art. Yes, I think I am.

  ART

  Thanks for picking up. I wasn’t sure you would. You’ve always been such a textual being.

  JENNY

  How are you, Art? It’s been months.

  ART

  Oh, okay. You know. Suzanne is doing my head in slightly. She’s pretty crazy.

  JENNY

  Wait—either I’ve heard this before or there’s been a glitch in the Matrix. You don’t need to slag Suzanne off to me, Art, you know? You don’t have to be the big man protecting my puny feelings.

  ART

  And Clem got sick last week and it’s taking over EVERYTHING. I’m behind on my shoots. I feel like saying, Hey—I am a person too! I am a human, with needs! Suzanne seems to forget this when her kid is around, and as for the kid—well, the kid has no concept of it at all. She does not give a shit about my work, this kid!

  JENNY

  Extraordinary.

  ART

  Isn’t it. You know, Jenny, you sound different. You sound good. Like … I dunno, the old you.

  JENNY

  Nah. This is the new me. But don’t you think the new is probably the oldest thing of all, Art? As in, it has to contain all the old, in order to exist in the here and now?

  ART

  Yeah. You sound a lot more like the girl I fell in love with.

  JENNY

  You sound drunk. Where’s Suzanne?

  ART

  Away.

  JENNY

  You’re drunk and your girlfriend’s away, and you’re on the phone to your ex. Dearie me.

  ART

  I’m not slagging her off. I’m … concerned more than anything. I thought she was more in control of her shit, you know, but … You thought that too, didn’t you? You used to idolize her.

  JENNY

  I suppose I did. But it was never really about her. It was more like I was pouring my need into a Suzy-shaped hole. Blame mirror neurons.

  ART

  You genuinely sound good. It’s good to get my Jenny fix.

  JENNY

  Happy to help!

  ART

  No, wait. I’m … sorry, Jenny. For leaving you. In the hospital. I think about that, you know—it’s come out ashamed when I’m drunk to other people, but never you, until now.

  JENNY

  It wasn’t all you, it was some me. I think I’ve always been waiting to go to pieces.

  ART

  No, it was definitely all me.

  JENNY

  You can’t have it all, I’m afraid. I think for me it was a largely narcissistic injury. I didn’t know what my body was.

  ART

  I don’t have it all.

  JENNY

  You know, you and Suzy should probably have a child together now.

  ART

  That’s very bighearted of you, Jenny.

  JENNY

  I mean, think of the important work you’d be doing for the gene pool.

  ART

  Aha. Okay. Okay. Listen, Jenny, my career isn’t certain, you know? There are no guarantees. I don’t come from money. My parents lost most of their pensions, remember? And she’s nice, really nice. Really very kind.

  JENNY

  I understand. I appreciate that, as a woman.

  ART

  It’s not all one way, anyway. I hooked her up with some contacts. I think I’ve helped all the women I’ve been with, and that’s a source of great pride for me, to be able to help with your careers. It means a lot to me, to be able to do that, for my girlfriends. It makes me proud, being able to help women. I know it was a big help to you to come to all my exhibitions, move in those circles, with those kinds of people. It’s helping Suzanne now too.

  JENNY

  You’re beautiful.

  ART

  Don’t be like that.

  JENNY

  I will always love you, Art, after a fashion. The fashion being velour leisure suits. I’ll always love them more.

  ART

  Hahaha. Oh, you.

  JENNY

  Yes, me. Delightful, capricious me.

  ART

  She’s forced me to live with her, at least, and I’m so glad.

  JENNY

  Forced you?

  ART

  Yes, like you did. I never would have done it otherwise.

  JENNY

  I certainly did not.

  ART

  You did!

  JENNY

  No, Art, I really didn’t. Maybe it just suits you to feel like the adventuring wanderer, dragged in from the forest and civilized by a woman ennobled by her missionary status. But you’re not. I’m a lot less civilized than you, I can assure you. You don’t get to be the wild one tamed. You have absolutely no concept of what it is to be in a cage. You don’t get to be the adventurer who comes in from the storm to a woman’s cozy hearth. I never had a cozy hearth for you.

  ART

  I know it.

  JENNY

  So. Don’t get off on that one. And give Suzanne some credit.

  ART

  God.

  JENNY

  There, you see. It’s just like the beginning all over again. Me telling you off and you being impressed rather than insulted. A perfect circle.

  ART

  So you don’t despise me?

  JENNY

  No. [sighing] You sort of wasted my precious time, but you will always mean something to me, Art. I mean that. This is the heartfelt bit.

  ART

  Oh, good, I’ve been waiting for this.

  JENNY

  We helped form each other. I will think about you every day in some way, and I will hate you for that but with a deep, impossible, death-conquering love. And I’ll never be able to hear Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” without thinking fleetingly of you and what went wrong, and wondering whether you still want me in some way during festive times of year, even though we’ll never act on it. Again. And that is a modern classic, ruined. This is what you have done to me, Art. All that said, I would like us to try to be friends. I’ve never managed that with anyone else, but I’ve never really had an ex like you, and I think I do need you in my life, as a friend. I think I might be ready. I certainly feel like I can say anything to you now. Like, I don’t want us to talk like this.

  ART

  Like what?

  JENNY

  Like we’re reading off a script. Some kind of “how to talk to your ex” script.

  ART

  Okay, so what do we do?

  JENNY

  I don’t know. Try to relax?

  ART

  Your specialty.

  “Hahah.”

  I hear him breathe a couple of times, and then he says, “Hey, I’ve got my new exhibition opening in the spring. Scars and Girls. Will you come?”

  I take my time preparing to reply, and then I go for it. The words pour out of me, like a sudden rush of dammed water through a crack. “Listen, Art, I probably won’t. I fucking hate art galleries. I always did. It’s a relief to be able to tell you this finally, as a friend.”

  There’s a rush up my back. I hear his lips make a wet sound, and then he says, “Okay. Thanks. That’s okay.”

  “Now, go to bed. Good night.”

  “Okay.”

  He stays there, breathing. I stay there breathing too.

  “What is it, Art?”

  “You know, you scare the shit out of me.”

  KELLY SAYS

  “Is this it? Are we doing it? Did we retire?”

  “It’s not about retiring. It’s about not waiting.”

  We can just about make it work with my pay raise, and there’s
a spare room for the mothers to stay in—if and when they visit.

  “If we are going to be truly modern about this,” she says, “then we have to see it through. If you want kids, I mean. You could get a sperm donor. We raise the kids together. We have a life and home and future together here, as certain as any anywhere. Think about it.”

  “Have you and my mother discussed this?”

  “No!”

  “Good. Because there are more pressing things at hand. We need to get a chores rota going,” I say, “and a list of house rules. Or a family agreement. If this is a project, then it is a PROJECT.”

  Kelly laughs. “What the fuck. Okay, whatever, we’ll try this.”

  I look at the picture on the wall, of my mother onstage a few years ago, in her element. I have put it in a frame, next to a framed print of a letter Anne Sexton sent her daughter. Be your own woman. Belong to those you love.

  I’ll keep you there, Mother, I think. Now, be a good girl and smile.

  Kelly gets her phone out. “Check this out,” she says, pointing the screen toward me. “They’re at Chateau Marmont.”

  “I love how obsessed you are with my mother online now. I thought you were immune.”

  “Watch.”

  The video plays. My mother and Dan Mosel are at the piano in the hotel lobby. My mother is on top of the piano, holding a highball glass. She is singing “My Baby Just Cares for Me” and Dan Mosel is playing the piano, and not badly. There are people around of various ages, whooping and cheering her on. My mother is, categorically, having A Ball.

  “I think your mum is having a better retirement than us so far,” says Kelly.

  I look at my mother’s face as she sings, and I look at the way she looks over at Dan, and the way he looks back. She looks different—like a little girl, but also like a person I have not seen before. I think, Okay, okay, now I get it.

  My mother has found her people.

  GENUINE QUESTION

  Does the five-second rule apply for penises?

  What?

  You know, like when you drop some food on the floor, well what if a penis only goes in for five seconds

  I’m not sure it reliably applies to food on the floor, Nicolette

  You know I’m all for condoms, but I think in your late thirties they are offensive—they’re either saying you’re diseased or a bad mother amirite

  The dating’s going well then

  Literally every man who contacts me online asks me whether I want kids within five minutes, and the other day someone asked me if I could send a straight-on photo as all the photos on my profile were “slightly angled.” I was like DO YOU NEED A PASSPORT PHOTO, ARE YOU SPAIN

  I don’t think I’ll ever date again. I can’t even hold down a hobby rn

  You should try a nonverbal activity

  Not a bad idea

  Although you do yoga

  I try

  You must be really good at yoga by now. I bet you can do handstands on your clit

  Pity that circus skills aren’t as transferable as they used to be

  I’m going to get you a nonverbal Christmas present—something arty

  Intrigued

  I know just the thing. I interviewed a painter the other day and she said she had come to accept self-loathing as part of her process. Isn’t that liberating?

  Maybe. Right, gotta go—time to give Kelly back my phone

  What?

  She’s rationing me. Two hours a day. She’s my Social Media Carer

  Wise

  She’s enjoying it because she is part sadist. If the receptionist thing doesn’t work out, she could easily become a prison warden

  Hi I just wanted to let you know Suzanne and I have agreed to tell each other everything about everyone we’ve ever had sex with and what it was like x x

  Oh

  It feels really healthy and open x x

  Fascinating that you should want to inform me of this. At 1 a.m.

  As a friend x x

  As a friend as a friend. I’m starting to think friends are worse than mothers

  LIFE DRAWING

  Before the class I stand naked, postshower, in front of the full-length mirror in my room. I look at my body, and I think, I can beat you again. I can love you again. You are mine to kill.

  Twelve of us sit waiting in a sunny pub’s upstairs room that doubles as a vegan restaurant. The tutor explains the principles of life drawing for those who haven’t done it before, like me. We sit, poised with our pencils and papers. I suppose I feel like we should all be naked. Is this person being paid to be naked? Is it worse if they are? A naked person comes out from behind the bar. Their body is supple and softly lit. It is the afternoon and I have had a wine in the pub downstairs—a pale rosé that kissed me on the lips and slid down my throat like a promise. The sky outside is pink and gray. The person sits and gets comfortable. They look so comfortable they make me comfortable. They are not posing and nor am I, nor is anyone. We all start to sketch. I let the silence gather around me once more. The shapes I make with the nib of the pencil are fat and light and easy, then grow into human parts, and then I stop thinking altogether and—

  RELAX

  Almost. I suppose you could call it something like that.

  Four hours later. Now I am naked too, but I stand smoking by the open window and the NO SMOKING sign, regarding this person with whom something is about to happen. I put out my cigarette still looking at them.

  Our clothes lie like stepping-stones to the door.

  WE LIE

  still in the full quiet of the room. Our bodies are like sucked sweets. We don’t even know each other’s names and this makes us both smile as we say good-bye. I order room service and eat it sitting in my own divine stink.

  When my meal is done I creep into the bathroom and take a milky piss, slack and sensual. The porcelain gleams meanly. My hair is wild in sweat-dried curls around my head.

  I go back to the bedroom and lie on the bed, ass aloft. I look at my nakedness in the full-length mirror. I make a square with my fingers and put myself inside. Click.

  I leave the hotel at 5 p.m. I weave between people and cars, through the rush hour, but now the rush hour is outside. I am aware of my body as a shape that is cutting the same shape through the world, over and over as it moves forward, leaving behind it a concertina paper chain of women holding hands. We hold each other together.

  I hold myself together.

  When I get home, Kelly looks at me and says, “Have you done something different?”

  “You could say that.”

  DRAFTS

  Dear Jenny,

  It seems to me you have two options:

  Embrace the terror

  Die

  As a high-functioning introvert you are terrified of everything, but you get through. You were never going to settle for a bearable life. But you’ve come a long way and I have high hopes for you. I reckon by the time you’re sixty you’re going to be halfway on the way to being a semi-sorted-out person. Maybe not the goddess Durga, but someone who can confidently wear a beret. You will have stopped waiting for your life to start because you’ll understand that is based on the idea of waiting for a perfect moment to arrive so you can stop and have a rest. Spoiler alert: that perfect moment will never arrive, because it is based on a fairy tale you were told in a bid to keep you lacking. It is a pretty lie on a paper horizon. Your life is happening without you, so best be in it.

  You’ll be happy enough living with Kelly. She snores like a fighter jet with a fifty-a-day habit, but that snore-canceling app is really helping. Who knew she sounded exactly like a crackling fire? The app. THE APP KNEW. The friendship therapy is also helping, even if the therapist is technically a marriage counselor. It’s not your fault you’re ahead of the curve again, culturally. Friendships go through cycles, orbits, and you are coming back round to Kelly again, very close, you can feel it.

  You still haven’t forgiven Mother Nature, but when things get really b
ad you can put Christian the lion on YouTube until your faith is restored. Truly the darkest mood will dissipate at the sight of that grown lion running toward the men who saved it from the toyshop and putting its paws on their shoulders. Dear God! There is goodness out there. Amongst lions.

  Finally, a small note about housekeeping. It’s about time you started eating more brassicas and wearing better brassieres. In fact, that’s your mantra for next year: More Brassicas, Better Brassieres. Catchy, and sexual.

  Let’s make this happen.

  Forever yours,

  Jenny x

  INBOX

  My dearest darling Jenny,

  I thought I’d send you a postcard to cheer you up in that dank little house, so here you go! It is so hot here you can feel it strengthening your bones, and the sushi is To Die For. I am having a sensational time with Dan, whose friends have welcomed me warmly and are very respectful of my work. We are getting along so well and I’m thinking about living with him more than dying with him, so that’s a real plus. The best thing is it looks like there is a lot of work out here for someone like me, and as you know I’ve always wanted to travel, so Dan and I are looking into longer-term possibilities, but of course I will keep you posted. The other day we went to see the Hollywood sign, and do you know it looks ever so flimsy up close. Anyway, let it be shouted from the rooftops (and the hillsides): CARMEN MCLAINE HAS MADE IT TO HOLLYWOOD!!!!

  Love and light,

  Mum xxx

  SILENT-ISH NIGHT

  I get back from the Foof Christmas party to find Kelly lying on the sofa, wearing a Santa hat. She’s halfway down a bottle of port.

  “You are scrumptious.”

  “This is as far as I go.”

  I sit down and help myself to a small glass of port. She shuffles around, making room for me, and puts her legs either side of me. There is one of those loathsome nostalgia programs on TV: Weren’t the ’90s Great? No, I think. Let the nineties die with dignity.

  She grunts and shifts on the sofa, pulls my phone out from underneath her and hands it to me. “There you go. Half an hour.”

  “You’re a cruel mistress.”

  “You know it.”

  I take my phone and turn it on.