Ordinary Decent Criminals

by Lionel Shriver

  It had cost him to watch her. At Whitewells he imagined her leaving for Leningrad and his asthma started up; he could not make love to her. Neither could he sleep, so for hours he wrapped her to his chest as the gales rattled the window frames like Bloody Friday, the blankets tugged up to her chin, his nose in her hair. The feeling was of holding a feverish child, though he couldn’t be sure; he’d never held one. He’d been one, piled so high with wool his fingers pruned in sweat, though his mother had never sorted out that a single coverlet would do if she only crawled inside and put an arm around his neck.

  Odd that no one noticed. She had expected to wake that very first morning to splayed thighs puckered over the bed, to pimply, flaccid cheeks in the mirror. Instead, the withers twitched as always, and their regular ripple quivered: she no longer deserved them. She felt sorry for the hunkers, as for a trusting horse you know you are going to shoot. She would roll over and hide another hour. Sleep came easy; she got plenty of practice.

  For Estrin had tendered her resignation to herself. Surprisingly, the days passed with no less effort. Weights, with transport and showers, had taken ten hours a week, running five; and chawing a full pound of carrots took far longer than snarfing down half a dozen Bramley tarts, which Estrin could kill in forty-five seconds per. Not-studying Russian, not-refinishing the dresser, not-ordering the plumbing for the upstairs bath never filled an afternoon. As a result, she wandered around a lot.

  But it was not so bad and Estrin embarked on her vacation with curiosity. She’d no idea if she’d entered a season or the rest of her life. So far indulgence was anticlimactic. She didn’t look much different; one more month, as always, she had missed her period and would need to take hormones, so she was not as far gone as all that. Without exercise she didn’t feel evil or free but mostly a little tired.

  Only when the U.S. presidential election was upon her did Estrin realize she’d not written for an absentee ballot. She pretended it didn’t matter or that she wouldn’t want to vote—bullshit. She felt guilty. Daddy would be disappointed. When the night came, she didn’t stay up to watch the results, but tuned in the BBC for a few desultory minutes, noshing oatmeal flips, before snuffling to bed early. At this point she was more likely to lose sleep over Pinochet, Bhutto, than Dukakis. For the United States of America had become one more foreign country.

  But the oatmeal flips were American enough; Estrin’s revolution was bourgeois. She didn’t have the flair to become a card-carrying alcoholic or a legitimate pork pie. She could run through a bottle of Bush every three days, but never in an afternoon. She’d crumble through half a package of biscuits, sleep till eleven but not the whole weekend. She did not confess her decline to Farrell from shame she couldn’t fail with success. If there was one thing he surely excelled at more than bomb disposal, it was undoubtedly going to pieces. Farrell would do better than surround himself with wrappers, butter in the corners of his mouth, to shamble toward the TV with a fistful of potato farl. Literature is fraught with the big Brendan Behan tragedies that make such bang-up dramatic endings for future biographers, but where were the women who went down the tubes with any style? Estrin groped for role models—Long Day’s Journey, Janis Joplin. Why, surely a respectable degenerate would at least get herself addicted to morphine instead of mince pies.

  Roisin had read her share of Shelley, Shakespeare, and did not understand why in earlier centuries rapture was exalted, when in the twentieth pining by the telephone seemed sick, the stuff of self-help groups in which frumpy old maids explained how they learned to stop waiting for a man and enjoy being alone. (Liars.) The sonnet had given way to Women Who Love Too Much; passion was a problem, like Bingo, on which dilapidated biddies squandered their social-services check for the week, pitiably hoping for the big number. Roisin scanned local magazines (You, She, It, and other popular pronouns): “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted? (The News Is Good)”; “Why Women Should LEARN to be Angry,” where to be in love was to have something to get over, like chewing your nails. They told her to face facts, that the good bits don’t last; that a relationship is practical, your mate is your friend, and it is less important at the end of the day that you shake when he touches your arm than that you both like fish.

  Roisin had been born in the wrong era. She swept through her house in long silk robes, her cheeks damp, her color fevered. She lived on pale sherry and clear broth. She put on Rachmaninoff. Several times she nearly burned the house down, noticing the kettle was on only because the windows steamed up. Everywhere lines scribbled, on the Irish News, inside Byron paperbacks, over the labels of HP vinegar and soup packets, and no longer the neat, round, well-dotted script of earlier poems but dashed, furious races to the end of the napkin and back again. And the letters! Scrupulously posted to the hotel. Not to the office, mind you; she did not trust that woman, so protective, thought she owned him so she did, when what was she, his secretary, paid his bills and licked his stamps, but the way she stood before the door the one time Roisin called by, like a football goalie she was, determined no other woman would score. Funnily enough, no one got Roisin more fussed than that battleax, who had acted sniffish, mind you, ever since she found out about the toe over the old divide—wormed it out, so she had, och, Rosalita! Massive mistake. Then, that day your man had acted a bit put out, said Roisin shouldn’t come round there ever, though she’d a brilliant excuse, well rehearsed and to do with poetry. But she’d not done it again, no, no, she had obeyed him at every point, and so far that had worked out, except she could no longer hold her hand steady enough to apply her eyeliner, and in shops she couldn’t remember what she’d come for and would walk halfway home and remember and back again and forget—little matter, for the breeze felt so warm and the long, thin arms of trees reached out to her and her feet looked so pretty in their trim red shoes.

  Constance went through Farrell’s desk. An old habit which she indulged in shameful spurts. Peculiar considering the risk; he would have her carpeted and usually she found nothing—pens, bills, The Protestant Ethos, telephone messages she’d taken herself. Yet even the nothing interested her, the truly dry nature of his life sometimes, when he seemed so full of secrets. But a year ago the search had panned out: a handwritten ten-page diatribe from a woman named Decla: how badly he’d treated her, what a stingy, closed man he was, how brutal and manipulative, how she would never, never have anything to do with him again—and would he like to discuss this on Wednesday? Constance had laughed and, listening for the outside door, read it three times.

  Well before the pneumonia, Estrin had dreamt of him in hospitals. White formless gowns flapped at his delicate ankles. “My finest feature,” he claimed, the hem tickling tiny blond hairs. He padded her dreams in bare feet, helpless and trailing catheters, skin like dried apples. She came to visit. As the dreams persisted, his portrayal became increasingly decrepit. Farrell was only so much older than Estrin, but his dream image bent; he required canes and walkers, an arm up the stairs.

  In last night’s episode, his hotel room kept catching fire. She put it out, it caught again; she put it out, and Farrell wouldn’t help, but lay on the bed in his hospital gown, staring at the ceiling as his mattress smoldered. Finally she couldn’t bear fighting for him any longer and, instead of burying the fire, fed it, sticking bits of furniture into the fledgling flames and blowing on the coals. As she left the room, it turned orange behind her, and Farrell still lay on the bed, immobile, with a stoicism so violent it constituted an emotion.

  Fresh from immolating the patient that morning, Estrin was startled to catch the face of such a young, buoyant man leaving security that night, joking with the porter. As Farrell strode to the desk, Estrin could read the headlines tucked at his sleeve: FATHER DENIES GANG WAS PLOTTING TO KILL KING; PROVO SCUM BOMB FAMILY ESTATE. In the warm crook of that arm, the news withered.

  Because somehow the whole idea of something happening had to change. Maybe the main events of any time are not the bombs bursting in air, but who was alive th
en. So aside from the bollocks they had made of their relationship, for the first time Estrin noticed that she and Farrell were present at once; that obtuse as she found him, had he been born in 1640, the partnership would have proved considerably more difficult. Though he’d just bitten off her head for not knowing who Yitzhak Shamir was when she simply hadn’t understood his accent, dawning over the insult came: He’s still here, or even, He has ever been here. And one of these days, should some UVF nutter gun him down on Royal Avenue, as so many women feared, Estrin would still think, We intersected, and feel the coincidence of that, the luck—for even in the context of massacre these coexistences of his will have been what had happened.

  People are events. They may be the only events—at Farrell’s elbow the papers wilted; the walls of Whitewells wafted, cheap Hollywood flats. Only Farrell seemed real. Only those watery blue eyes had color. Yet what Estrin saw was not tall; for that matter, its eyes weren’t blue. What Estrin saw wasn’t even smart, though it may have had a sense of humor. Estrin saw Farrell. She could stare straight through every lamp and end table save this one moment by the desk; only Farrell was opaque. And for once she didn’t try to understand him but only see him, which is different.

  For there is a bit in anyone that does not need to be understood, though it may be amused by your efforts. It cannot be broken down; it is prime. In Farrell, it did not buy forty-eight pairs of identical dark gray socks, for it either has nothing to do with “character” or is the only part of character that matters. In Estrin, it did not lift weights, or feel compelled to, for it does not feel compelled to do anything, and would therefore survive poor cornering at 95. It is the part of you that sits in a wheelchair, that your children pay to keep in homes after a stroke. It is the part of you that thrives while you sleep, that you can run over with a truck. Likely to be your frustration, it does not get drunk. Some compensation, neither does it get fat. It may die, but nothing short of that. It is the you that does not see itself because it is itself and only looks out, and certainly it is the part of you that this part of other people will love—but there is no point to feeling guilty, suspicious, unworthy, grateful, or even proud of this, because most of all it is the part of you that you did not create: you do not get credit for yourself.

  chapter twenty

  Harder-Harder, More-More, Worse-Worse: Estrin Turns into a Lamppost

  Ordinarily Duff made her feel abstemious, for he had accepted that useful sacrificial role as the person everyone else was drinking less than. Why, beside this fattest, most slovenly and enduringly unemployed of members, there wasn’t a punter in the place whose life didn’t seem well appointed by comparison. But now when Shearhoon dangled a chip in her direction, Estrin recoiled because she accepted. He frightened her now, the whinny from his stool gusting through to the kitchen, where she fled to avoid him. And he was beginning to notice, for he made even more jokes at his own expense and began—a sure sign you were not the full shilling at the Green Door—to buy more than his round. The twitch quickened, his smile wormied, his constant D’you know? D’you follow? now so dissected his yarns that she could no longer make sense of them. And the only change she could discern in Duff’s life was that Estrin Lancaster wasn’t nice to him anymore. This made her colder still. She did not want to be important. How could she take on the literally one million calories of Duff Shearhoon when she couldn’t prevail over a single jacket crisp?

  In all, she had to admit that the new saturnalia was making her miserable. She’d cast off all her regimens, but had nothing to substitute in their place. And Estrin made a lousy blighter. She was irritable, bereft; not a single gob of jam or drizzle of whiskey gave her pleasure. Sex had turned furtive; with Farrell, she turned out the light before getting undressed. Her clothes were filthy; she had run out of clean dishes; the Guzzi was sputtering, and she would not set the points. While she had lost all comprehension of what she was doing on this island, she had made no plans to leave, though her “boyfriend” was no doubt collecting brochures from Aeroflot.

  Estrin had relished nipping off the beam, with visions, tantrums, something you could lock up and put away, all expenses paid to Purdysburn, but this subtler crumpling was not within the realm of the asylum but more likely an everyday collapse common to every two-up, two-down on Springfield Road. She was merely becoming confused, vague, boring, and overweight.

  That’s right, though she had avoided mirrors for six weeks now, she happened, by accident, to look down getting ready for bed one night and there was a foreign little bloop, small by some standards but those had never been Estrin’s; stand straight and suck in as she might, it was not going anywhere but out. Estrin made herself look at it, the soft white curve of it, where before there had been an undulation of abdominal muscles. What are you? It was happening: Estrin the bookcase was turning into a lamppost.

  As she plopped on the edge of the bed, the blob lolled against her thighs, themselves showing a dimple or two but holding out longer than the rest, the last to go. It struck her that simple suicide was really a more attractive option than slow death by biscuit.

  It had been a feeble experiment with an obvious conclusion. God knows why she had to be strong, taut, and separate, or why she had to move from Belfast to Leningrad, what she would find in another man there, what was wrong with this house here, but there is a point at which you have made particular decisions in your life, and though they may have been wrong, if you don’t make others you have to stick to the old ones because they are all you’ve got. And Estrin had not. She may have been tired of running late afternoons, but she had not come up with anything else to do then; she had not come up with another person to be than someone who runs; she could not at this late date become Duffy Shearhoon. Estrin turned back to her life in hollow resignation, having deserted it and no longer believing in it any more than she believed in Northern Ireland, but she had no one else to imitate and nowhere else to stay for the moment. She would march herself up the road and out of the country, if not with eagerness, at least with obedience, so she spent the rest of the night trying to sober up and laying out the Plan.

  She would finish the house, down to lace curtains, candlesticks, and fresh milk in the fridge. She would dust the sills, clear the drains of turpentine, shine the mirror, maybe run herself a celebratory bath. When everything was pink, with dish drainer, potato peeler, and corkscrew, she would slip the key on a separate ring and hand it to someone who would always keep the couch under the window, a hired caretaker for her past. For she would never see 133 again. She would not even take a snapshot.

  The sale of the house and the Guzzi should cover airfare. With the work she’d put into this bombed-out hulk, it should bring more than the song she bought it for. The Swallow would fly in spring. Leningrad would be no skive. She would probably receive a visa for no more than a month, and Estrin planned on slithering in for a year. She decided to arrive and disappear. Half the Soviet Union operated black; a room and a gritty job shouldn’t be hard to scarf up. And Estrin had never been intimidated by laws. They were ideas that functioned mostly through fear. If you did not cooperate by being frightened, their imposing net melted at your fingertips like a spiderweb. For practically, how much effort would this glasnost government expend to dig up an obscure American traveler who’d overstayed her tour? All the same, it would be hard. Fine, it will be hard. Estrin felt callous. It will still be cold in spring. Your Russian sucks, but you can order kofye, ask for a komnata, and buy a round of vodka; the rest is frill.

  As for the bloop: Estrin paced until 4 a.m. with coffee, and made one more small though rather awful decision.

  That night Estrin dreamt about Philadelphia. The streets had all been renamed after people who had become famous after she left the country, and she had to ask directions to her own neighborhood. She wanted to mail a letter home to tell her parents she was back, but she no longer knew the price of first-class postage, nor did she know the rates of a pay phone. Testing herself, she found she also coul
d not remember who was President of the United States or the capital of New Hampshire. She tried to buy a steak sandwich, but reached into her pocket to find only pound coins, so the vendor took the sandwich away. When she finally found her house, her mother spoke Russian and Estrin didn’t understand a word.

  Estrin had fasted nearly every year since she was eighteen, but in the Lancaster harder-harder, more-more, worse-worse school of achievement each fast had been for a bit longer, and this one would go to the top of the charts: three weeks. Conventionally she scheduled the ritual to break on her birthday, December 17, a poor enough time for a birthday, so often subsumed by the season, even worse for starvation—she inevitably wound through champagne and plum pudding with cups of weak tea.

  In the five days preceding the fast, Estrin’s appetite flagged with dread, whatever she ate merely reminding her of what she soon would not. She was beginning to forget what it was like to enjoy anything. Lately she walked the streets with her fingers gnarled into grappling hooks, her face wrung like a wet sheet.

  When she opened her eyes to the mountain of her bedclothes on Day One, she could as well have been staring up at Kilimanjaro from the foot. You have no idea what you’re in for. No, she admitted numbly, padding downstairs to boil water and eyeing the sad little crumbs of her last meal: soup and a wheaten farl, which, in a nervous anticipatory nausea, she hadn’t managed to finish. Estrin threw the hard crust away and sloshed the cock-a-leekie down the drain, steeping herself strong, unsweetened Darjeeling; coffee she couldn’t bear without milk. She was already ferociously hungry and the fast was only forty-five minutes through.