by Carol Mason
After 19 May, I started to loathe the window that social media opens on to your life. I’d kept doors locked, blinds closed, switched off my phone, and yet when I clicked on to my page there was a post on my timeline from someone I’d gone to school with twenty-five years ago – Judith Henley – whose only connection to me is that she sometimes runs into my parents at church fetes.
Just heard! OMG. What happens now? R police bringing charges???
Underneath was a string of people’s comments – I tried not to read them. But there was one that stood out:
What am I missing?! Liv, RU ok??????
Judith had commented back:
Will PM you. I don’t think Liv is active on here at the moment. Understandably.
She was ready to talk about me to a complete stranger! It was beyond invasive and infuriating. There was I, trying my hardest to keep a low profile and this woman I knew a million years ago had suddenly put my horror story out there for the world to see, complete with police and charges.
The last one of the string was from Eloise, my old friend from Westin:
Where are you? Been phoning! Totally understand you don’t feel like talking. Going away to Barcelona on Monday. Brad was able to get his shifts covered so trip is on again! Call you when we’re back.
I began deleting people at will. With every click of that delete button the sense of my own power returned a tiny bit stronger. Then, soon after that, when the thrill of getting rid of people started to wear old, I shut the account down altogether. Finally I had peace.
But recently I’ve found myself curious about people again. The little button is there giving me the chance to reactivate my account, which feels symbolic somehow. If I hadn’t drunk half a bottle of wine a little too quickly and wasn’t feeling adrift on a sea of loneliness, I wouldn’t be sitting here contemplating this. As it is, I know I’ll probably quickly disable it again once I’ve dipped a toe in the waters and seen I’m not missing much.
Up comes my cover picture of stunning Mount Baker in the snow. I took it when we went skiing – or, rather, Jessica and Mark skied, and I drank hot chocolate in the lodge and read a novel. My profile is a close-up of my face largely hidden behind Jackie O-type sunglasses. I stare at myself for a while, trying to put myself in the context of when it was taken: our perfect life before. When I look at my Messenger icon I see the same four unread messages, all from Eloise. Not sure I can read them now. Instead, I pull up some friends, to see what they’ve all been up to.
When we moved to our new neighbourhood, Larry, who lives two doors down, coincidentally happened to be someone Mark had worked with years ago at Microsoft. Through his wife, Deanna, I met a tight circle of women friends – Tanya Waxman, the alpha of the group, is our neighbour whose husband I blasted with the garden hose. If there’s a girls’ night out or a birthday, Tanya will be the one to propose where to eat, what calibre of wine to order and how much to contribute to a gift. While I like Deanna a lot, there seems to be a certain ‘buy one get all of us’ mentality among these women. I’m not really into spa days, Botox parties and paint your pet classes, so managed to stay somewhat on the periphery. I tended to dip in and out freely, without becoming too immersed, which worked well. They respected that and still made me feel very much one of them. Until I wasn’t.
People behave strangely when they no longer know how to look you in the face and have a normal conversation with you. People just behave very strangely.
I go on to Tanya Waxman’s page, and a few others, click through a few recent photographs. Another girls’ night on Stephanie’s wall. All of them chinking wine goblets. A lot of sleek hair and cleavage. I scroll endlessly through my newsfeed, desensitised to humorous posts, endless pet pictures, political rants. When I tire of this I go back to my own page, to that post from my so-called old friend in England, then to the last comment from Eloise, dated nearly fourteen months ago – where she’s blabbing on about going to Barcelona. Now I find myself curious to see what she wrote in the unread messages. So I go back to them and click on them, observing the dates and times.
Hey, we’re back from Barcelona! Call me. Worried about you!! Your phone is always off. Xx
08/06/2016 5:22PM
Feeling any better?
28/06/2016 9:06AM
Went to Barolo with the girls on Thurs night. Fun! We missed you!
10/09/2016 11:45PM
Merry Christmas, Liv. Hope you’re doing well. Hope you get this. I see you came off Facebook months ago . . .
23/12/2016 11:08PM
It’s a strange feeling. I read, then re-read them, aware of a degree of dislocation between then and where things stand now; the insensible Band-Aid of time. Despite myself, I soon fill with profound loneliness and loss. I wonder if she checks to see if I ever read them, or if I no longer feature in her thoughts. I can almost hear her saying, ‘Look, I tried. What more was I supposed to do?’ When I think of Eloise, I honestly don’t know where I net out. We weathered some of life’s storms over the years – most of them her relationship ones. She was from a different part of my life and I quite treasured that. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. But a real friend knows you need her when you’ve found a million ways to show her you don’t. She doesn’t stay away while saying she’s there for you, doesn’t tell you she’s giving you space and manage to make it sound like she’s doing you, not herself, a favour. I think of Mark’s words when I mentioned another couple of friends I would have thought better of, who pretty much disappeared from my life afterwards: ‘You always expect people to do what you would do, Liv, then when they don’t you’re disappointed. But they’re NOT you . . . Maybe they think they’re being a good friend by leaving you alone. Maybe they have literally no idea what to say to you . . .’
I listened, and he had a good point, but all I wanted to say was, Why do you always defend others over me? Why can’t you just for once say, ‘You’re right’?
What I do know is that seeing Eloise’s lame effort at being there for me during my living hell stirs up all the old feelings I thought had been muted; they flutter to my surface ready to quash me all over again.
Then I remember I didn’t come back online to get upset about this. Instead I click on to Jess’s page. Her profile picture has been the same one for a while – a close-up of her hands clasped behind her head, electric blue-painted nails, punkish hair in a messy topknot. This picture always manages to make me smile. There is something so cute, quirky and playful about it. I stare at it for ages until I’ve a sense of tunnel vision, the world seeming to drop away. Come home, I think, urging myself to stop listening to the drone of my own one-dimensional thoughts.
But then I notice something. All those messages from her friends that used to be at the top of her timeline aren’t there any longer. Instead, I am staring at all these photographs of Italy! At first I think this must be the proverbial mirage in the desert. How did I not see them when I was scrolling through my news feed? There are so many of them but a few in particular leap out. Jessica at the Trevi Fountain; her hand in the Bocca della Verità. One of her at a patio table laughing, her head flung back, a cigarette in hand. Smoking? Hmm . . . This is new. Though she manages to pull it off like she’s a piece of retro art. How strange that not a single friend has liked or commented on any of them. But it’s the last one that takes my breath away. This one is a close-up of her face in slight profile. The background is blurred, giving a shallow depth of field. She is gazing at the frescoed ceiling of a church, her long eyelashes curled back by a generous gift of nature, the slightly parted, full lips and dewy cheeks. Her fascination, and the serenity that emanates from her, is palpable. I can practically feel the artistry of the photographer, his keen intent. It suddenly occurs to me: a boy took this. Someone who wanted to capture her when her guard is dropped. I am in no doubt of it; whoever took this photo is in love with my daughter’s face. I think back to how many conversations we’ve had about her crushes, how we’d spend an eternity dissecti
ng all her dates after she’d been on them. It’s so strange for me to imagine she must have a boyfriend and I haven’t been the first person she’s told.
Beautiful, I long to write, to be the first to comment on it, but don’t.
FOURTEEN
I am late tonight. Just coming here brings me a certain calm. Just the very act of leaving my house and knowing this is my destination. What is it about a small gathering of virtual strangers joined in a kindred purpose, especially an unsocial and introspective one, that can do this? I’ve been thinking about it and must admit it’s rather mystifying to me.
As before, there is one unoccupied table immediately behind Ned. I try to tiptoe across the wood floor in my espadrilles but the inevitable clop-clop of two-and-a-half inches of esparto rope makes him look up and give me a slow nod. I put my bag down beside the chair, and then go over to the counter to make myself a drink. I am barely reaching for a mug when a hand lands on my forearm.
‘What do you do when you send someone a reasonable letter and you wait patiently for a response, and yet still they won’t look at you over the garden hedge and their dog keeps barking day and night?’
I stare at the hand. She removes it. ‘Tada!’ She has pulled something from her purse.
‘What is it?’ I ask. It looks like a battery block.
‘Watch.’ She places one side of it to her lips then lets out a low-pitched bark.
Something squirts me in the chest. ‘What the . . . ?’
‘It’s only citronella.’ She rubs furiously at the wet spots on my raincoat. ‘It’s perfectly humane. No nasty electric shocks.’ Then she almost growls, ‘Those are for later.’
‘Can you stop pawing my breast?’ I brush her hand away and take over wiping at the mark. I don’t mean to add, ‘You’re bloody nuts.’ It just slips out.
‘What was that?’ She looks confused for a moment.
‘I said you’ve got some real guts.’
She beams at the compliment. When I catch Ned’s eye I’m surprised to see he’s quietly laughing, his shoulders sliding up and down.
‘Can I try it?’ Daniel snatches it off her and tries barking. When nothing happens he throws it on to the table. ‘It doesn’t do anything!’
‘I’m going to send it to him and tell him I don’t want payment,’ Amy is babbling at me. ‘All I want is for him to please give the thing a try. I just can’t take it any more! I’ve contemplated harming myself.’
I give Ned a look that says, Shame it stayed in the mind . . .
When Amy finally sits down, I take my chai latte over to my seat. I am wearing a denim pencil skirt that hits just above my knees, showing off about the only part of me I actually like about my otherwise non-eventful figure. Combined with the espadrilles I feel ultra tall and perhaps a little too dolled up: it’s a writing circle, not a fashion show. I should have worn flats. As I pass Ned’s desk, I note his left hand holding the pen, the clean curve of his thumbnail, the untouched writing paper. I can almost hear words trying to compose themselves in his brain. I pull out the chair, settle myself in. Now what? I don’t feel like beginning right away, needing a moment to soak up the spirit of our small gathering and try to get some impetus. We’re an odd lot. Despite Beth’s notice remaining on the board, our numbers haven’t grown. I am beginning to feel new arrivals would be too much like intruders now.
I stare into the centre of Ned’s back without blinking, follow a direct path upwards to his hair, which forms a pristine V at the nape of his neck, where there’s a cluster of tiny freckles centred around one larger one, like small planets around Earth. I find myself fixing on those freckles, particularly the big one.
I wonder if he feels my eyes because his head turns a fraction again and he gazes off to the side like someone slyly trying to see what’s in his peripheral vision. I look at his unfairly long eyelashes, the cups of his ears, the network of fine scars around the lower part of his face and down his neck. We stay like this for a while – me deconstructing him, and him decoding the fact that I am.
I am the one to break it, rather puzzled by it. I reach down for my bag and pull out my special box of writing paper. When I straighten up, Ned has gone back to whatever he was doing. Just the other day, when Mark and I were talking about Jessica going to Florence, I remembered I had this. I bought it twenty years ago in a pretty little shop immediately across from the Museo Nazionale del Bargello – we had stumbled on it while we were looking for somewhere else, which, in a way, is how many of life’s best moments happen to us, I think. It was a gem of a little place that sold quixotically colourful bookmarks, blotters, gift wrap, boxes and photo albums and, of course, precious Florentine paper; I had no idea it was anything special at the time. Amazing how travel makes us richer, often in ways that don’t feel particularly life-enhancing in the moment. While I had rooted around the shop, Mark stood outside in the sunshine cooing and playing hidey boo with Jessica in her stroller. I was conscious of the companionable white noise of them, of my profound pride in the pair of them, and my love, bigger and more palpable than anything I had ever known. The paper was buttercream with a border of small cherry-red crests that looked like a cross between a Georgia O’Keeffe flower, a peeled-back banana skin and a cartoon locust. It seemed almost too beautiful to use. Digging it out from my chest of drawers the other day, after it occurred to me that Jessica probably never had any idea she’d ever been to Florence, memories of that holiday sprung at me from all directions. And, oh, the vividness of the detail! I remembered what I was wearing – my short, A-line denim skirt that Mark loved me in. I heard the revolutions of Jessica’s buggy as Mark pushed it over the cobblestones, and me singing, ‘The wheels on the bus go round and round . . .’ I even remembered what we ate that evening – gnocchi with truffles for him, creamy baccalà risotto for me. As though my memory had been set the task of drawing a precise map of a city I’d visited only once, I could still find my way to that little restaurant – tucked down a tiny street by a small, dried-up baroque fountain featuring a beautiful sculpture of a young woman standing in meditative serenity with her eyes closed. We were the only two in the place because Italians dine out late, even ones with new babies. I can still see Mark spearing his gnocchi with his free hand, Jessica commandeering his other arm, sound asleep with her cheek pressed into his shoulder.
The box has never even been opened, as though by doing so the sanctity of our bright new days as a family would be marred, the fine points that made up the precious picture of us would be rearranged. Had the paper been used up, that place and everything I’d felt while there would have been just one more thing to have forgotten in time.
I take out a single sheet, appreciating its heft and texture, and pick up my pen. For a while I can’t quite find the thread. Then eventually I think, OK, this is where I’ll start . . .
Just with the very idea of doing this, I am conscious of myself sitting tall, of adopting a certain carriage of my shoulders, of relaxing my hand into a comfortable gait, like a long-lost act of meditation.
Dear Jessica,
I take extra care with my penmanship – I’ve actually been practicing – wanting my presentation to be as particular as what I have to say.
I know how much you’ve always been fascinated with Florence. I thought you might be interested in the story behind this writing paper because in a way it’s a story about you . . .
FIFTEEN
He throws a rotted plank into the dumpster and the terrier across the street kicks off barking again. I come and stand in the doorway. Someone has lit a barbecue and the smell of steak reminds me of our long summer evenings entertaining in the backyard. How Mark would casually man the grill, spearing and turning steaks one-handed, his other holding his fat crystal Scotch glass. How he’d be holding that same glass, dulled by fingerprints, down by his leg as we saw people off at the door. Then, inevitably, no matter how fun the night had been, we’d collapse on the sofa and swear we were never entertaining again.
�
�Not bad progress for a day’s work,’ I say to Ned. He has removed most of the old decking and railing, and is setting about pulling out some nails from the posts with a large crowbar. ‘Do you want a bite to eat? I made pasta with some pine nuts and oregano.’
He wipes a speck of dirt from his forehead with the back of his wrist, glances in my general direction. ‘Sure. Sounds great.’
He stands while eating. I wait to see if he’s going to chat, but it’s like I’m not here. The dish is empty in two minutes. I offer him a beer but he brushes it off with, ‘Water’s good, thanks.’
He hasn’t talked at all today. Earlier on I thought perhaps he’s just not a morning person. But it’s more than that. His silence has a solitary quality to it that’s making it bigger than what it is; I’m feeling the need to tiptoe around it, like it’s a thing.
‘Clearing this up then I’ll probably head home.’ He stands at the back door and passes me his empty water glass with a ‘Thanks’.
‘OK.’ I take it from him. I can’t deny I feel a little relieved.
I am sitting on the sofa about an hour later when he taps on the semi-open back door. ‘You can come in,’ I shout through, wondering why he is being so formal. But he just stands there, waiting.
I move to the door, feeling guilty that he must feel obliged to finish the deck now that he has started. ‘Like I said, you really didn’t have to take this on. It’s way too much work!’ I swipe a hand over the entire catastrophe of the backyard.
‘No.’ He seems slow on the uptake, bewildered almost. ‘It’s not that. Sorry . . . I just get my quiet days.’
He doesn’t meet my eyes – I’m not sure he has even once today. But then it dawns on me and I feel terrible. Here I am making it all about me – my indebtedness about his deck charity, my unease with his silence. I am forgetting he’s dealing with his own issues and it’s probably true his would give mine a run for their money. ‘It’s OK,’ I say. ‘Please don’t apologise. I completely understand.’ I turn to go back inside, cringing, but he follows me. When I turn around he is standing by the fridge. His presence, permeated with his low spirits, fills up the space, consuming my share of the oxygen. For a moment he just stands there, awkwardly, and looks at me like a person forcing himself to make an effort and finding it nigh on impossible.