Vertigo

by Joanna Walsh

  The river is at a high point now though the weather is finally hot.

  D took me walking by the river. There are women it is dangerous to talk to. D is one. You try to tell them something and they start telling you a story about yourself. Before you know it you are pinned, can’t move. I wanted to tell D everything, including about him, but I didn’t. Feeling the wet air suspended all around me, I closed myself down like windows before a storm. Afterwards, I’m glad I did.

  I heard he was having a party. He arranged to meet me twice but cancelled both times. When he sent a message saying he could not meet me, his tense slipped. He said he’d really wanted to see me again. I’d feared it was too true. There’d been a point at which he’d wanted to see me, but it wasn’t now.

  He has invited my friend to his party, but not me, the friend of whom I said that I wondered that he didn’t like her, not me: she is prettier. And he said, oh the British and their blondes.

  He is not British. He is from elsewhere. His party is for a holiday from elsewhere. I thought he was not the sort to celebrate, but it seems he is. I haven’t heard from him for a week, haven’t seen him for almost a month now. My blonde friend, who is not British, will ask whether he will see me at the weekend. I will find out what is happening—perhaps. And maybe we will meet next week.

  He is having another party. This time he has asked me. I’m wary. It was a general invite sent out to friends. The email came only an hour ago: there has been an age of strategy since then. How to reply?

  I don’t. But I go.

  On my way to the party I expose myself to the point between work and social in which nothing can happen. The libraries have closed; the cafés have closed. The bars are open, but I don’t feel like drinking; the restaurants are open but I don’t feel like eating—and I don’t want to spend the money. Should I have a cocktail before the party, for courage? Or would I arrive with too much of its evidence on my lips, in my cheeks? Should I walk the streets (if it is not raining)? Could I read, write, in the corner of one of the big café-like bars, inconspicuously enough? Could I shift time from this moment to add to other times, times spent—speculatively—with him? With all the time I have, I could learn a language, I could read a book, I could write a book.

  In the end I walk nowhere and the wind gets up and the rain starts and it is still too early to go to his party. It is colder than I thought it would be. I didn’t know it could be so cold on a warm day.

  I get drunk at the party. He doesn’t talk to me. I go into the bedroom and his clothes explode from the wardrobe, violent with dry-cleaning bags. He’ll be elsewhere soon. I know he doesn’t mean to stay. Already, he’s been gone a while.

  Oh, there were nice times that summer, but they were attached to the wrong people: dashing through the rain with B, with whom I didn’t want a relationship, although he did. He took my bracelet and said he could smell my perfume there, a medieval love token. I thought this over-elaborate but the sun shone and the rain at the same time and there were puddles that looked deep and reflected the sunwashed sky.

  But that was in July when it rained. Now it’s hot enough to stand outside pubs at night and although there are not enough people in town to eat all the fruit in the supermarkets, there are sometimes still parties.

  It never hurts to ask (that’s what he said to me). That’s not true. Sometimes it hurts to ask.

  The difficulty is working out the right point in time. As he still hasn’t answered my emails I have waited for him in various places hoping he might turn up.

  Finally I saw him last night at a party and he ignored me until at last he took me aside and said he was sort of seeing someone else, and I said, s’okay and he shrugged and said, that’s how it goes, and I shrugged and said, that’s how it goes. And when he said it he was quite close to me and he was wearing the jacket he’d worn when we met with the mend at the elbow, and suddenly I felt I could reach out and grab the mend and pull him toward me and kiss him but that wasn’t possible any more, even though I’d come to the party hoping he would be there and hoping it might have been. And I was wearing the jacket I had on when we met, and when we met it had been draped around my shoulders and every time you kissed me it had fallen off one shoulder and you’d reached your arm around me to pull it back on.

  For tonight’s party, I’d put a temporary tattoo of a spider on my wrist because I’d thought it would be fun.

  Over by the windows, L was talking with his work junior, M, and he said, you’re my Dalston homegirl, and she snarled, yeah man, because she wasn’t: she was just younger than him and a woman and not white.

  Then L said, make me a rollie, M.

  And she rolled one for him, thin and black.

  It was not a fun party.

  We don’t talk now but sometimes I still like to see whether you are online. I can see when you’re there because next to your name on my screen there’s the little green light. I have the same green light. It says, available.

  At least I didn’t create a fuss, make a scene. At least I didn’t leave inelegantly.

  Elegance is a function of failure. The elegant always know what it is to have failed. There is no need for elegance in success: success itself is enough. But elegance in failure is essential.

  I left quietly and walked over the bridge to the station and it was not raining and nobody knew I had gone.

  NEW YEAR’S DAY

  New Year’s Day on the sofa. I folded my life in on itself, seven times. The last few folds it only bent. I was surprised it was so bulky.

  Last night I went to a New Year’s Party where I met an Indian. I mean that’s how he described himself—“I am an Indian.” I talked to him for a long time. He seemed neither more nor less interesting than anyone else at the party, where I knew no one well and most people not at all. He told me he had once taught business studies but had now gone back to running a business.

  Everyone at the party was so lovely. Everyone was so happy. Everyone’s websites were now in color with hand-drawn lettering. Everyone liked cooking and eating. Everyone didn’t see why they shouldn’t like—shoes! Everyone had taken pictures of themselves or had pictures of themselves taken in thrift-store clothing. Everyone agreed they should take time out for themselves. Everyone knew the difference between need and desire. Everyone made surprisingly snarky jokes. But then everyone laughed. Everyone smoked, or used to smoke, but everyone also, or instead, did—yoga. Everyone was younger than me, even those who were older. Or maybe it was the other way round. Everyone knew how to take their time. Everyone knew the value of real success, though everyone once worked for a flashy magazine or somesuch. Everyone knew how to say fuck. Everyone knew when to say, fuck it. Everyone wasn’t hurting anyone. Everyone knew how to keep some distance. Everyone knew when to let it go. Everyone knew when to say enough is enough. Everyone enjoyed cake. Everyone had a secret tattoo. Anyone who didn’t was keeping it secret. Everyone was surprised at some things. Other things were no surprise to anyone. Everyone knew there’s a time and a place, though not for everything. Everyone knew what it was like to be in a bad place, which was not here, or now. Everyone liked looking at things that were pretty. I can still make things that are pretty, but I don’t now, and, as for the things I made in the past, I don’t even like to look at them anymore.

  You made yourself small on top of me, and I held myself still while you told me about the lovers you’d had while we were together. I held myself carefully because if I showed any reaction you would stop telling me. And then I would know no more than before.

  I know you will buy me a drink.

  I know you will take me out to dinner.

  I do not know if you will tell me the truth again.

  I can’t exchange this trinket for any of the others.

  Because you are practical, you will put me away into some part of your memory that is folded. You will put me into the past tense. You will not be concerned to resolve your thoughts about me. You will not want to know what I think of y
ou. Your skin has many folds. You can put many memories away in them, one for each woman. You will live with me there all your life: a little canker that does no real harm, folded into your skin. You have even not put me away yet, as, here I am, back beside you. You snore and it sounds like a shower of change dropped on the pavement. Your snore interrupted my dream in which I had unsatisfactory sex with S’s wife. It made her spill coins from her pockets, and then it woke me.

  RELATIVITY

  I am sitting here on the bus when I begin to wonder how it is my clothes have grown neater than my daughter’s.

  We are sitting at the front of the bus. My daughter did not want to, but I wanted to see out. The bus is driving toward the sunset. The driver pulls down a black plastic sunshade across the whole front window in which there is an open frame. The road ahead passes like a movie.

  My pose is informal, legs folded under me on the seat, but I remain neat. However I try to shake this neatness, I cannot. I realize it is the neatness of my mother, who we are traveling to see.

  My daughter, who has just become a teenager, sleeps on my shoulder. What I had she has now. Maybe.

  I wear tight clothes, but tight clothes make me neater. If I wear loose clothes, my body flows out and pushes against them.

  My daughter wears tight clothes too, but they do not contain her. She has not learned yet how they can. Does she already feel the discomfort of her thighs spreading in her sausage jeans? Doesn’t she already know it’s wrong to have legs that look like this?

  I lift mine and cross them.

  They look better. But, still, I look neat.

  Among other middle-aged women I don’t look too neat, and this pleases me.

  I am dressed for, what? For anything that might happen to me: keep it coming! I’ve learned that it does. I am dressed for things that are not. I am not too sexy, not too casual, not too unassumingly unassuming. I do not look like I have made an effort, but I do look like I might have made an effort to look like I have not made an effort, which is only polite. And I will not fall over if required to run in my shoes.

  My daughter is dressed for one of the many occasions she imagines could happen to her in tight jeans, bangles, a lace scarf, and a t-shirt with a picture of a fashion model that says, WE GOT THE LOOK. I dressed like that once: hoop earrings, off-the-shoulder sweatshirt, leggings.

  I cannot drive so we must take the bus between cities. The bus takes us through the outsides of cities, through yellow new estates of family-shaped houses. The people there have jobs you could put in a children’s book. I’d always hoped to end up in one of these places where no one has ever been old.

  The bus takes us through the market towns where the old people live, and where the property is prettier and less expensive than in the city we have left, or the city we are traveling to. Once I would have wanted to explore each shop on each high street, to discover local features even in the chain stores. I’d have wanted especially to investigate the charity shops, knowing that, among the second-hand pleated skirts and polyester blouses I would find … what? I would have visited once a week, twice, perhaps every lunch break from my children’s book job, before I went home to my house on the new estate on the frayed outskirts of town. I would have visited the shops inconspicuously. I would not have talked to the women behind the tills. They would not have known where I came from. Each time I arrived, they would have beamed at a fresh customer.

  I would buy nothing, but I would not lose hope.

  As it is I have packed wrongly. I know that now. I should have brought tights (it’s cold). I should not have brought the new trousers that don’t fit. I didn’t bring anything else.

  The bus enters a large town (or a small city) scattered with sponge-on-stick model trees. Sunset: the trees blur at the edges, change color. From a distance they are solid, square: from close up, a net of branches.

  The driver pulls up the shade with the plastic window revealing the whole road ahead, the game of framing gone. And my daughter, who has been sleeping on my shoulder, wakes up. She shifts and—vast, monumental in sleep—becomes tiny in movement.

  I can see my mother and father waiting at the bus stop. They are very small. My mother is wearing a pastel blouse and pastel slacks and pastel canvas shoes. Her shades are mint, peach, lemon, blueberry, cream. She is dressed as she would like to see her granddaughter dressed: edibly. Still she looks formal, arranged, neat. She cannot shake it.

  I cannot hear what she says to my father. She says, “Forty-five, and she still has to take the bus.”

  The bus stops and out get the sort of people who travel by bus between cities: students, old people—mainly women—and the middle-aged who cannot afford the train and who have never grown old enough to drive. Out we get, and away we go, the young, the old, and the failed girls.

  DROWNING

  There is now very little in my mind.

  On the beach in front of the village, which is no more than a stony strip, there are some adults but no children, who are all on the sandy beach opposite, and a graveled path on a sliproad that leads to the hotel. I am wearing only a bikini, but I want to see the hotel. I had not considered that I would have to wear a bikini while walking from the beach to the hotel. I am too old to look good in a bikini and I have not, across the years, paid enough attention to looking good in a bikini for me to look good in a bikini. But, even when young, I never paid enough attention to looking good in a bikini so age is perhaps not the most important factor. I must walk through the streets as though neither age nor attention paid are factors, as this is a holiday village and it is quite normal for women who do not look good in bikinis to walk through its streets. Why should I be any exception?

  I also have no shoes. The tarmac is a warm body beneath my feet.

  The hotel is beautiful, even more beautiful up close than it was from far away. It is white and on its facade its name, which is the name of the village, is a dusty blue. There are three rows of windows on the front, on each, shutters, the same faded blue as the sign I could read from the beach across the estuary, within each, white lace curtains, and along each storey a blue ironwork balcony that spans all three windows.

  The menu of the hotel restaurant is exactly what it should be: not cheap enough to be disappointing, not expensive enough to be intimidating. And there are ways round: menu du jour, prix fixe. I cannot see the food or smell the food but, reading the menu, I know that the food will be good.

  There is no one on the streets. It’s like lunchtime, except it isn’t lunchtime. I’m not sure what time it is or how long it took me to swim the channel. It is colder than it was on the other side of the estuary. In the harbor in front of the hotel, boats blink white: a défi—a challenge—to the ocean, which is dark. It is beginning to get dark—no, it’s not getting dark yet, it just feels like it might soon.

  From the jetty I can see the beach on the other side of the bay, which the sun still hits, but I cannot see what you are doing. I cannot see what the children are doing. On your beach, sometimes you choose to pay attention to the children, and feel worthy, and sometimes you choose to read a book, and feel interested, or engaged, or intelligent, or whatever, but, whichever you are doing, I know you will be having fun, because you do not worry that the children might be neglected. You never have to make the choice to neglect the children. For you to read your book is not to neglect the children because you know that if you do not pay attention to the children I will. I have the choice to pay attention to the children, which I may or may not find—but must give the pretence of finding—fun, or else the whole concept of fun, and the holiday itself, tips over. Or I have the choice to read a book. But I know that if I do not play with the children, you will not play with them, not unless you really find it fun. My choice to read my book necessarily involves the worry of the possibility of neglecting the children. While you read your book with the attention your lack of worry affords, information enters your brain making you more interested, or interesting, engaged or engaging, and i
ntelligent, and so you become less like me, who, not lacking the worry about neglecting the children, does not become any of these. I can no longer see, from across the bay, which of these two things you have chosen to do. And this is why I swam the estuary.

  The children are, in any case, now getting too old to receive the kind of attention you are not willing to give them. They are losing their last childish things, their shoes and clothes have become bigger until they are barely distinguishable from ours. We had more children—more than one I mean—to preserve this childishness, and also so as not to have to spend so much time together. Had we liked each other less we’d have had four, five. There’s nothing like love’s dilution to keep things in proportion.

  At the end of the jetty, on my side of the estuary, a band is playing. Only children are dancing. The adults stare at the band as though music is something they had forgotten. It must be dispiriting to perform like this, afternoon after afternoon. One man nods the tune to his partner. She fails to pick it up. There are stalls selling snacks, and other things, but no urgency in the queue for anything. Everyone has enough money, more than enough money for food, and no one is hungry.

  There are hidden patterns in everything. I should be looking at the waitresses who come from somewhere else and who are not here for a holiday, for whom being here is only a step to being elsewhere. But I am not one of the waitresses. I am one of the holidaymakers, and, though my compatriots in fun disgust me I must not dismiss their feelings as unworthy by refusing to stay onside.

  All holidays are nightmares: you save up all year and what do you find at the other end but someone else’s house with all their own particular domestic nasties? They think you can’t see where they haven’t dusted; they think you can’t see the cracked tiles, the moldstains on the wall behind the fridge. Not able to afford an anti-home, a hotel, we make do with a para-home, with someone else’s cast-off furniture, with the unfashionable crockery, the cheap fill-ins from IKEA. By “they,” of course, I mean “I.” We too have built an edifice from which no one wants anything but escape. It will fade, like the hotel, and people will wonder why we ever chose to build there. It will outlast us, likely, though there have been instances of women standing in the ruins of their former homes, strangely triumphant. We could abandon ours, but we’re still mortgaged to it, and by the time it’s paid we may have nowhere else to live, or any means by which to move on.