by Sally Rooney
No, I couldn’t possibly, he said.
Philip told us he was going to get the last bus, and Melissa said she had a meeting the next morning and she was planning to head off too. Quickly after that the whole group dispersed. Bobbi got the DART back to Sandymount, and I walked back along the quays. The Liffey was swollen up and looked irritated. A school of taxis and cars swam past and a drunk man walking on the other side of the street yelled that he loved me.
While I let myself into the apartment I thought about Nick entering the room while everybody applauded. This now felt perfect to me, so perfect that I was glad he had missed the performance. Maybe having him witness how much others approved of me, without taking any of the risks necessary to earn Nick’s personal approval, made me feel capable of speaking to him again, as if I also was an important person with lots of admirers like he was, as if there was nothing inferior about me. But the acclaim also felt like part of the performance itself, the best part, and the most pure expression of what I was trying to do, which was to make myself into this kind of person: someone worthy of praise, worthy of love.
6
After that we saw Melissa sporadically and she sent us occasional email updates about the profile piece. We didn’t visit her at home again, but we ran into her now and then at literary events. I usually speculated in advance about whether she or Nick might attend a particular thing, because I liked them, and I liked having other people observe their warmth toward me. They introduced me to editors and agents who acted very charmed to meet me and who asked interested questions about my work. Nick was always friendly, and even praised me to other people sometimes, but he never seemed particularly eager to engage me in conversation again, and I got used to meeting his eye without feeling startled.
Bobbi and I went along to these events together, but for Bobbi it was really only Melissa’s attention that mattered. At a book launch on Dawson Street she told Nick she had ‘nothing against actors’, and he was like, oh thanks Bobbi, that’s so generous of you. When he attended on his own once, Bobbi said: just you? Where’s your beautiful wife?
Do I get the sense you don’t like me? said Nick.
It’s nothing personal, I said. She hates men.
If it makes you feel better, I do also personally dislike you, said Bobbi.
Nick and I had started to exchange emails after the night he missed our performance. In the message he’d promised to send about my work, he described a particular image as ‘beautiful’. It was probably true to say that I had found Nick’s performance in the play ‘beautiful’, though I wouldn’t have written that in an email. Then again his performance was related to the physicality of his existence in a way that a poem, typed in a standard font and forwarded on by someone else, was not. At a certain level of abstraction, anyone could have written the poem, but that didn’t feel true either. It seemed as though what he was really saying was: there’s something beautiful about the way you think and feel, or the way that you experience the world is beautiful in some way. This remark returned to me repeatedly for days after the email arrived. I smiled involuntarily when I thought of it, like I was remembering a private joke.
It was easy to write to Nick, but also competitive and thrilling, like a game of table tennis. We were always being flippant with each other. When he found out my parents lived in Mayo, he wrote:
we used to have a holiday home in Achill (like every other wealthy South Dublin family I’m sure).
I replied:
I’m glad my ancestral homeland could help nourish your class identity. P.S. It should be illegal to have a holiday home anywhere.
He was the first person I had met since Bobbi who made me enjoy conversation, in the same irrational and sensuous way I enjoyed coffee or loud music. He made me laugh. Once, he mentioned that he and Melissa slept in separate rooms. I didn’t tell Bobbi about that, but I thought about it a lot. I wondered if they still ‘loved’ one another, although it was hard to imagine Nick being that unironic about anything.
He never seemed to go to bed until the early morning, and we increasingly emailed one another late at night. He told me he had studied English and French at Trinity, so we had even had some of the same lecturers. He’d majored in English and had written his final-year dissertation on Caryl Churchill. Sometimes while we talked I typed his name into Google and looked at photographs of him, to remind me what he looked like. I read everything about him on the internet and often emailed him quotes from his own interviews, even after he asked me to stop. He said he found it ‘super embarrassing’. I said: stop emailing me at 3.34 a.m. then (don’t actually). He replied: me email a 21 year old in the middle of the night? i don’t know what you’re talking about. i would never do that.
One night at the launch of a new poetry anthology, Melissa and I were left alone in a conversation with a male novelist whose books I had never read. The others had gone to get drinks. We were in a bar somewhere off Dame Street and my feet hurt because I was wearing shoes that I knew were too small. The novelist asked me who I liked to read and I shrugged. I wondered if I could just remain silent until he left me alone, or if this would be a mistake, since I didn’t know how acclaimed his books were.
You have a real coolness about you, he said to me. Doesn’t she?
Melissa nodded but not enthusiastically. My coolness, if I had any, had never moved her.
Thanks, I said.
And you can take a compliment, that’s good, he said. A lot of people will try to run themselves down, you’ve got the right attitude.
Yes, I’m quite the compliment-taker, I said.
At this point I could see him try to exchange a look with Melissa, who remained disinterested. He seemed almost on the point of winking at her but he didn’t. Then he turned back to me with a smirking expression.
Well, don’t get cocky, he said.
Nick and Bobbi rejoined us then. The novelist said something to Nick, and Nick replied with the word ‘man’, like: oh, sorry about that, man. I would later make fun of this affectation in an email. Bobbi leaned her head on Melissa’s shoulder.
When the novelist left the conversation, Melissa drained her wine glass and grinned at me.
You really charmed him, she said.
Is that sarcastic? I asked.
He was trying to flirt with you. He said you were cool.
I was very aware of Nick standing at my elbow, though I couldn’t see his expression. I knew how badly I wanted to remain in control of the conversation.
Yeah, men love telling me I’m cool, I said. They just want me to act like I’ve never heard it before.
Melissa really did laugh then. I was surprised I could make her laugh like that. I felt for a moment that I’d misjudged her and, in particular, her attitude toward me. Then I realised Nick was laughing also, and I lost interest in what Melissa felt.
Cruel, he said.
Don’t think you’re exempt, said Bobbi.
Oh, I’m definitely a bad guy, Nick said. That’s not why I’m laughing.
*
At the end of June I went to Ballina for a couple of days to visit my parents. My mother didn’t enforce these visits, but lately when we spoke on the phone she’d started saying things like: oh you’re alive, are you? Am I going to recognise you next time you come home, or will you have to put a flower in your lapel? Eventually I booked a train ticket. I sent her a text telling her when to expect me and signed off: in the spirit of filial duty, your loyal daughter.
Bobbi and my mother got along famously. Bobbi studied History and Politics, subjects my mother considered serious. Real subjects, she would say, with an eyebrow lifted at me. My mother was a kind of social democrat, and at this time I believe Bobbi identified herself as a communitarian anarchist. When my mother visited Dublin, they took mutual enjoyment in having minor arguments about the Spanish Civil War. Sometimes Bobbi would turn to me and say: Frances, you’re a communist, back me up. And my mother would laugh and say: that one! You may as well ask the teapot.
She had never taken much interest in my social or personal life, an arrangement which suited us both, but when I broke up with Bobbi she described it as ‘a real shame’.
After she picked me up from the train on Saturday, we spent the afternoon in the garden. The grass had been cut and gave off a warm, allergenic smell. The sky was soft like cloth and birds ran over it in long threads. My mother was weeding and I was pretending to weed but actually just talking. I discovered an unforeseen enthusiasm for talking about all the editors and writers I had met in Dublin. I took my gloves off to wipe my forehead at one point and didn’t put them back on. I asked my mother if she wanted tea and she ignored me. Then I sat under the fuchsia bush plucking little fuchsias off the branches and talking about famous people again. The words just flew out of my mouth deliciously. I had no idea I had so much to say, or that I would enjoy saying it so much.
Eventually my mother stripped her gloves off and sat on a lawn chair. I was sitting with my legs crossed, examining the tips of my sneakers.
You seem very impressed with this woman Melissa, she said.
Do I?
She certainly introduces you to a lot of people.
She likes Bobbi more than she likes me, I said.
But her husband likes you.
I shrugged and said I didn’t know. Then I licked my thumb and started scrubbing at a little fleck of dirt on my sneaker.
And they’re rich, are they? said my mother.
I think so. The husband is from a wealthy background. And their house is really nice.
It’s not like you to get carried away with posh houses.
This comment stung me. I continued scrubbing my shoe as if I hadn’t noticed her tone.
I’m not getting carried away, I said. I’m just reporting what their house is like.
I have to say, it all sounds very odd to me. I don’t know what this woman is doing hanging around with college students at her age.
She’s thirty-seven, not fifty. And she’s writing a profile about us, I told you that.
My mother got up from the lawn chair and wiped her hands on her linen gardening trousers.
Well, she said. It’s far from nice houses in Monkstown you were reared.
I laughed, and she offered her hand to help me up. Her hands were large and sallow, not at all like mine. They were full of the practicality I lacked, and my hand fit into them like something that needed fixing.
Will you see your father this evening? she said.
I withdrew my hand and pocketed it.
Maybe, I said.
*
It had been obvious to me from a young age that my parents didn’t like one another. Couples in films and on television performed household tasks together and talked fondly about their shared memories. I couldn’t remember seeing my mother and father in the same room unless they were eating. My father had ‘moods’. Sometimes during his moods my mother would take me to stay with her sister Bernie in Clontarf, and they would sit in the kitchen talking and shaking their heads while I watched my cousin Alan play Ocarina of Time. I was aware that alcohol played a role in these incidents, but its precise workings remained mysterious to me.
I enjoyed our visits to Bernie’s house. While we were there I was allowed to eat as many digestive biscuits as I wanted, and when we returned, my father was either gone out or else feeling very contrite. I liked it when he was gone out. During his periods of contrition he tried to make conversation with me about school and I had to choose between humouring and ignoring him. Humouring him made me feel dishonest and weak, a soft target. Ignoring him made my heart beat very hard and afterwards I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror. Also it made my mother cry.
It was hard to be specific about what my father’s moods consisted of. Sometimes he would go out for a couple of days and when he came back in we’d find him taking money out of my Bank of Ireland savings jar, or our television would be gone. Other times he would bump into a piece of furniture and then lose his temper. He hurled one of my school shoes right at my face once after he tripped on it. It missed and went in the fireplace and I watched it smouldering like it was my own face smouldering. I learned not to display fear, it only provoked him. I was cold like a fish. Afterwards my mother said: why didn’t you lift it out of the fire? Can’t you at least make an effort? I shrugged. I would have let my real face burn in the fire too.
When he came home from work in the evening I used to freeze entirely still, and after a few seconds I would know with complete certainty if he was in one of the moods or not. Something about the way he closed the door or handled his keys would let me know, as clearly as if he yelled the house down. I’d say to my mother: he’s in a mood now. And she’d say: stop that. But she knew as well as I did. One day, when I was twelve, he turned up unexpectedly after school to pick me up. Instead of going home, we drove away from town, toward Blackrock. The DART went past on our left and I could see the Poolbeg towers out the car window. Your mother wants to break up our family, my father said. Instantly I replied: please let me out of the car. This remark later became evidence in my father’s theory that my mother had poisoned me against him.
After he moved to Ballina, I visited every second weekend. He was usually on good behaviour then, and we got takeaway for dinner and sometimes went to the cinema. I watched constantly for the flicker that meant his good mood was over and bad things would happen. It could be anything. But when we went to McCarthy’s in the afternoons, my father’s friends would ask: this is your little prodigy, is it, Dennis? And they asked me crossword clues from the back of the paper, or how to spell very long words. When I was right, they clapped me on the back and bought me red lemonade.
She’ll go off and work for NASA, his friend Paul said. You’ll be made up for life.
She’ll do whatever she likes, my father said.
Bobbi had only met him once, at our school graduation. He came up to Dublin for the ceremony, wearing a shirt and a purple tie. My mother had told him about Bobbi, and when he met her after the ceremony he shook her hand and said: that was a grand performance. We were in the school library eating triangular sandwiches and drinking glasses of cola. You look like Frances, Bobbi said. My father and I looked at each other and he gave a sheepish laugh. I don’t know about that, he said. Afterwards he told me she was a ‘pretty girl’ and kissed my cheek goodbye.
In college I stopped visiting so often. I went to Ballina once a month instead, and stayed with my mother when I was there. After he retired, my father’s moods became more erratic. I started to realise how much time I spent appeasing him, being falsely cheerful, and picking up things he’d knocked over. My jaw started to feel stiff, and I noticed myself flinching at small noises. Our conversations became strained, and more than once he accused me of changing my accent. You look down on me, he said during an argument. Don’t be so stupid, I replied. He laughed and said: oh, there we have it. The truth is out now.
*
After dinner I told my mother I would visit him. She kneaded my shoulder and told me she thought it was a good idea. It’s a great idea, she said. Good woman.
I walked through town with my hands in my jacket pockets. The sun was setting and I wondered what would be on television. I could feel a headache developing, like it was coming down from the sky directly into my brain. I tried stamping my feet as loudly as I could to distract myself from bad thoughts, but people gave me curious looks and I felt cowed. I knew that was weak of me. Bobbi was never cowed by strangers.
My father lived in a little terraced house near the petrol station. I rang the doorbell and put my hands back in my pockets. Nothing happened. I rang again and then I tried the handle, which felt greasy. The door opened up and I stepped in.
Dad? I said. Hello?
The house smelled of chip oil and vinegar. The carpet in the hallway, which had been patterned when he first moved in, was now walked flat and brown. A family photo taken on holiday in Majorca was hanging above the telephone, depicting me at age four in
a yellow T-shirt. The T-shirt said BE HAPPY.
Hello? I said.
My father appeared out of the kitchen doorway.
Is it yourself, Frances? he said.
Yeah.
Come on inside, I was just eating.
The kitchen had a high mottled window onto a concrete yard. Unwashed dishes were stacked up by the sink and the bin was spilling small items over the lip of the plastic and onto the floor: receipts, potato peelings. My father walked right over them like he didn’t notice. He was eating from a brown bag propped on a small blue plate.
You’ve had dinner, have you? he said.
I have, yeah.
Tell us the news from Dublin.
Nothing much, I’m afraid, I said.
After he was finished eating I boiled a kettle and filled the sink with hot water and lemon-scented washing liquid. My father went into the other room to look at the television. The water was too hot, and I could see when I lifted my hands they had turned a glaring pink colour. I washed the glasses and cutlery first, then the dishes, then the pots and pans. When everything was clean, I emptied the sink, wiped down the kitchen surfaces and swept the peelings back into the bin. Watching the soap bubbles slide silently down the blades of the kitchen knives, I had a sudden desire to harm myself. Instead I put away the salt and pepper shakers and went into the living room.
I’m off, I said.
You’re away, are you?
That bin needs taking out.
See you again, my father said.
7
Melissa invited us to her birthday party in July. We hadn’t seen her for a while and Bobbi started worrying about what to buy her, and whether we should get her separate gifts or just one from both of us. I said I was only going to get her a bottle of wine anyway so that was the end of the discussion as far as I cared about it. When we saw one another at events Melissa and I increasingly avoided making eye contact. She and Bobbi whispered in each other’s ears and laughed, like they were in school. I didn’t have the courage to really dislike her, but I knew I wanted to.