Conversations with Friends

by Sally Rooney

  Don’t get upset, she said. I’ve seen you undressed hundreds of times.

  I tried to smile, although my breath moved in and out of my lips in a way that probably contorted the smile.

  Don’t remind me, I said.

  Oh, come on. It wasn’t all bad. We had some fun.

  You sound like you’re flirting.

  She laughed. In the story I had described a house party after the Leaving Cert, when I drank a shoulder of vodka and then spent the night throwing up. Whenever anyone tried to look after me I would push them away and say: I want Bobbi. Bobbi wasn’t even at the party.

  I’ll undress you in a very unsexy way, she said. Don’t worry.

  The bath was still running. We went inside the bathroom and I sat on the closed toilet seat while she rolled her sleeves up to test the temperature. She told me it was hot. I was wearing a white blouse that day, and I tried to undo the buttons but my hands were trembling. Bobbi shut the tap off and crouched down to finish unbuttoning for me. Her fingers were wet and left little dark prints around the buttonholes. She scooped my arms out of the sleeves easily, like she was peeling a potato.

  And there’s going to be blood everywhere, I said.

  Lucky it’s me here and not your boyfriend.

  No, don’t. I’m fighting with him. It’s, uh. Things aren’t very good.

  She stood up and went to the bath again. She seemed distracted suddenly. In the white bathroom light her hair and fingernails gleamed.

  Does he know you’re sick? she said.

  I shook my head. She said something about getting me a towel and then left the room. Gradually I stood up, finished undressing myself and managed to climb into the bath.

  In the story I had included an anecdote in which I did not appear. Bobbi had gone to study in Berlin for six weeks when we were sixteen, staying with a family who had a daughter our age called Liese. One night, without saying anything, Bobbi and Liese went to bed together. They were quiet, not wanting Liese’s parents to hear, and they never talked about it afterwards. Bobbi did not dwell on the sensory aspects of the incident, on whether she had nursed a desire for Liese before it happened, whether she knew of Liese’s feelings, or even what it was like. If anyone else in school had told me the same thing, I wouldn’t have believed them, but because it was Bobbi I knew immediately that it was true. I wanted Bobbi, and, like Liese, I would have done anything to be with her. She told me this story by way of explaining to me that she wasn’t a virgin. She pronounced Liese’s name without any particular love or hatred, just a girl she had known, and for months afterwards, maybe forever afterwards, I was afraid that someday she would say my name that way too.

  The water was soapy and a little too hot. It left a rim of pink on my leg where it touched me. I forced myself to get all the way down into the tub, where the water licked me obscenely. I tried to visualise the pain draining out of my body, draining out into the water and dissolving. Bobbi knocked on the door and came in holding a big pink towel, one of the new ones she had brought with her from her parents’ house. She started to hang it on the towel rack while I closed my eyes. I heard her leave the bathroom again, a tap running in the other room, her bedroom door opening and closing. I could hear her voice, she must have been on the phone.

  After a few minutes, she came back into the bathroom holding her phone outstretched toward me.

  It’s Nick, she said.

  What?

  Nick’s on the phone for you.

  My hands were wet. I lifted one of them out of the water and reached to dry it clumsily on a bathtowel before accepting the phone from her hand. She left the room again.

  Hey, are you okay? said Nick’s voice.

  I closed my eyes. He had a gentle tone in his voice and I wanted to climb into it, like it was something hollow I could be suspended inside.

  I’m feeling all right now, I said. Thank you.

  Bobbi told me what happened. It must have been really frightening.

  For a few seconds neither of us said anything, and then we both started speaking.

  You first, I said.

  He told me he would like to come and see me. I said he was welcome to. He asked if I needed anything and I said no.

  Okay, he said. I’ll get in the car. What were you going to say?

  I’ll tell you when I see you.

  I hung up and carefully placed the phone on the dry part of the bathmat. Then I closed my eyes again and let the warmth of the water into my body, the synthetic fruit scent of shampoo, the hard plastic of the tub, the fog of steam that wet my face. I was meditating. I was counting my breaths.

  After what seemed like a long time, fifteen minutes or half an hour, Bobbi came back in. I opened my eyes and the room was very bright, radiantly bright, and strangely beautiful. All okay? Bobbi said. I told her Nick was coming over and she said: good. She sat on the side of the bath and I watched her take a packet of cigarettes and a lighter from her cardigan.

  What she said to me after she lit the cigarette was: are you going to write a book? I realised then that she hadn’t answered Philip’s questions about our performances because on some level she knew that something had changed, that I was working on something new. The fact that she had noticed this gave me a kind of confidence but also served to demonstrate that nothing about me was impenetrable to Bobbi. When it came to sordid or mundane things, she might be slow to notice, but real changes that occurred inside me were never hidden from her.

  I don’t know, I said. Are you?

  She screwed one eye shut like it was bothering her and then opened it again.

  Why would I write a book? she said. I’m not a writer.

  What are you going to do? After we graduate.

  I don’t know. Work in a university if I can.

  This phrase, ‘if I can’, made it clear that Bobbi was trying to tell me something serious, something that couldn’t be communicated in words but instead through a shift in the way we related to each other. Not only was it nonsense for Bobbi to say ‘if I can’ at the end of her sentence, because she came from a wealthy family, read diligently and had good grades, but it didn’t make sense in the context of our relationship either. Bobbi didn’t relate to me in the ‘if I can’ sense. She related to me as a person, maybe the only person, who understood her ferocious and frightening power over circumstances and people. What she wanted, she could have, I knew that.

  What do you mean ‘if’? I said.

  This was too obvious, and for a while Bobbi said nothing and picked a loose hair off the sleeve of her cardigan instead.

  I thought you were planning to bring down global capitalism, I said.

  Well, not on my own. Someone has to do the small jobs.

  I just don’t see you as a small-jobs person.

  That’s what I am, she said.

  I didn’t really know what I’d meant by a ‘small-jobs person’. I believed in small jobs, like raising children, picking fruit, cleaning. They were the jobs I considered the most valuable, the jobs that struck me as deserving the most respect of all. It confused me that suddenly I was telling Bobbi that a job in a university wasn’t good enough for her, but it also confused me to imagine Bobbi doing something so sedate and ordinary. My skin was the same temperature as the water, and I moved one knee outside, into the cold air, before dipping it back down again.

  Well, you’ll be a world-famous professor, I said. You’ll lecture at the Sorbonne.

  No.

  She seemed irritable, almost about to express something, but then her eyes became calm and remote.

  You think everyone you like is special, she said.

  I tried to sit up and the bathtub was hard on my bones.

  I’m just a normal person, she said. When you get to like someone, you make them feel like they’re different from everyone else. You’re doing it with Nick, you did it with me once.

  No.

  She looked up at me, without any cruelty or anger at all, and said: I’m not trying to upset you.<
br />
  But you are upsetting me, I said.

  Well, I’m sorry.

  I gave a little grimace. Down on the bathmat her phone started buzzing. She picked it up and said: hello? Yeah, give me one second. Then she hung up again. It was Nick, she was going out to the hall to buzz him in.

  I lay there in the bath not thinking, not doing anything. After a few seconds, I heard her open the front door, and then her voice saying: she’s had a really rough day, so just be nice to her. And Nick said: I know, I will. I loved them both so much in this moment that I wanted to appear in front of them like a benevolent ghost and sprinkle blessings into their lives. Thank you, I wanted to say. Thank you both. You are my family now.

  Nick came into the bathroom and shut the door behind him. There’s that beautiful coat, I said. He was wearing it. He smiled, he rubbed at one of his eyes. I was worried about you, he said. I’m glad you’re feeling well enough to fetishise commodities as usual. Are you in pain? I shrugged. Not so much any more, I said. He kept looking at me. Then he started looking down at his shoes. He swallowed. Are you okay? I said. He nodded, he wiped at his nose with his sleeve. I’m happy to see you, he said. His voice sounded thick. Don’t worry, I said. I’m fine. He looked up at the ceiling, like he was laughing at himself, and his eyes were wet. It’s good to hear that, he said.

  I told him I wanted to get out of the bath and he took the towel off the rack for me. When I stood up out of the water he looked at me in a way that was not at all vulgar, the kind of look you can give someone’s body when you’ve seen it many times and it has a particular relationship to you. I didn’t look away from him then or even feel embarrassed. I tried to imagine how I must have looked: dripping wet, flushed with steam heat, my hair leaking rivulets of water down my shoulders. I watched him standing there, not blinking, his expression calm and fathomless like an ocean. We didn’t have to speak then. He wrapped the cloth around me and I got out of the bath.

  24

  In my room Nick sat on the bed while I dressed in clean pyjamas and towelled my hair. We could hear Bobbi strumming her ukulele in the other room. Peace seemed to radiate outwards from the inside of my body. I was tired and very weak, but these were also peaceful feelings in their own way. Eventually I came to sit beside Nick and he put his arm around me. I could smell cigarette smoke on the collar of his shirt. He asked about my health, and I told him I’d been to hospital in August and that I was waiting for an ultrasound. He touched my hair and said he was very sorry I hadn’t told him about it before. I said I didn’t want him to pity me and for a while he was quiet.

  I’m really sorry about the other night, he said. I felt like you were trying to hurt my feelings and I overreacted, I’m sorry.

  For some reason all I could say was: it’s all right, don’t worry. Those were the only words that would come, so I said them as soothingly as I could.

  All right, he said. Well, can I tell you something?

  I nodded.

  I spoke to Melissa, he said. I told her we’ve been seeing each other. Is that okay?

  I closed my eyes. What happened? I said quietly.

  We talked for a while. I think she’s all right. I told her that I wanted to keep seeing you and she understands that, so.

  You didn’t have to do that.

  I should have done it at the beginning, he said. There was no need to put you through any of this, I was just being cowardly.

  We were silent for a few seconds. I felt blissfully tired, like each cell in my body was winding down into a deep private sleep of its own.

  I know I’m not a great guy, he said. But I do love you, you know. Of course I do. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before, but I didn’t know if you wanted to hear it. I’m sorry.

  I was smiling. My eyes were closed still. It felt good to be wrong about everything. Since when have you loved me? I said.

  Since I met you, I would think. If I wanted to be very philosophical about it, I’d say I loved you before then.

  Oh, you’re making me very happy.

  Am I? he said. That’s good. I want to make you very happy.

  I love you too.

  He kissed my forehead. When he spoke, his words were light but in his voice I heard a concealed emotion, which moved me. All right, he said. Well, you’ve suffered enough. Let’s just be very happy from now on.

  *

  The next day, I received an email from Melissa. I was sitting in the library, typing up a page of notes, when her email arrived. I decided that before reading it I would take a walk around the library desks. Slowly I arose from my seat and began my walk. Inside, everything was very brown. Out of the windows I could see a rattle of wind making its way through the trees. On the cricket green a woman in shorts was running with her elbows working up and down like small pistons. I cast a glance back at my own library desk to ensure my laptop was still there. It sat glowing ominously into the nothingness. I walked halfway around the room before looping back to my own seat, as if this circuit around the library desks was actually a physical endurance test of some kind. Then I opened the email.

  Hi Frances. I’m not angry at you, I want you to know that. I’m just getting in touch with you because I think it’s important that we’re on the same page with this. Nick doesn’t want to leave me & I don’t want to leave him. We are going to keep living together & being married. I’m putting this in an email because I don’t trust Nick to be straight with you about it. He has a weak personality & compulsively tells people what they want to hear. In short if you’re sleeping with my husband because you secretly believe that one day he will be your husband, then you’re making a serious mistake. He’s not going to divorce me & if he did he would never marry you. Equally if you’re sleeping with him because you believe his affection proves you to be a good person, or even a smart or attractive person, you should know that Nick is not primarily attracted to good-looking or morally worthy people. He likes partners who take complete responsibility for all his decisions, that’s all. You will not be able to draw a sustainable sense of self-respect from this relationship you’re in. I’m sure you find his total acquiescence charming now, but over the course of a marriage it actually becomes exhausting. Fighting with him is impossible because he’s pathologically submissive, & you can’t scream at him without hating yourself. I know because today I screamed at him for a long time. Because I myself have ‘made mistakes’ in the past, it’s hard to feel truly cathartically wronged by the fact that he’s been having sex with a 21-year-old behind my back, & I hate that. I feel like any other person would feel in this situation. I’ve cried copiously, not only in fits & starts but also for sustained periods of over an hour each. But just because I once slept with another woman at a literary festival & then several years later while Nick was in psychiatric hospital began an affair with his best friend which continued even after I knew Nick had found out about it, my feelings don’t count. I know I’m a monster & he probably tells you bad things about me. Sometimes I find myself thinking: if I’m so awful, why doesn’t he leave me? And I know what kind of person has those thoughts about their own spouse. The kind of person who later murders their spouse, probably. I wouldn’t murder Nick but it’s important for you to know that if I tried, he would absolutely go with it. Even if he figured out that I was planning his murder he wouldn’t bring it up in case it upset me. I’ve become so used to seeing him as pathetic & even contemptible that I forgot anybody else could love him. Other women have always lost interest once they got to know him. But not you. You love him, don’t you? He tells me your father is an alcoholic, so was mine. I wonder if we gravitate toward Nick because he gives us a sense of control that was lacking in childhood. I actually believed him when he told me nothing had happened between you & it was just a crush. I felt relieved, isn’t that terrible? I thought oh well, he only met you during the summer, he still wasn’t really himself then, he’s been so much better since. And now I realise that you’re actually a function of the betterness, or it’s a function
of you. Are you making my husband better, Frances? What gives you the right to do that? He’s awake during the day now, I’ve noticed. He’s started replying to emails & answering the phone again. When I’m at work he sometimes sends me interesting articles about leftists in Greece. Does he send you the same ones or are they personalised? I admit I’m threatened by your extreme youth. It’s very shocking thinking about your own husband being into younger women. I never noticed it before with him. 21 is young, right? But what if you were 19, would he still have done it then? Is he the kind of morbid guy in his 30s who secretly finds 15-year-old girls attractive? Has he ever used the search term ‘teen’? These are things I didn’t have to think about before you came into our lives. Now I wonder if he hates me. I didn’t hate him when it was me seeing someone else; in fact I think I liked him more, but if he tried to tell me that I’d want to spit at him. I think most of all I’m shocked that he doesn’t want to do the easy thing & leave you. That’s how I know I’ve been replaced. He says he still loves me, but if he doesn’t do what I say any more, then how can I believe him? Of course he never overreacted like this in my case, & I always thought I was so lucky that he didn’t. Now I wonder if he ever loved me at all. It’s hard to imagine marrying someone you don’t love, but actually it’s just the kind of thing Nick would do, out of loyalty & a craving for punishment. Do you know him that way too, or am I the only one? Part of me wishes I could be friends with you. I used to find you very cold & unkind, and at first I thought it was because of Bobbi, which I resented. Now that I know it was just jealousy & fear, I feel differently about you. But you don’t need to be jealous, Frances. For Nick you’re probably indistinguishable from happiness. I don’t doubt that he considers you the great love of his adult life. He & I never had a tempestuous affair behind anyone’s back. I know I can’t ask him to stop seeing you, although I want to. I could ask you to stop seeing him, but why should I? Things are better now, even I can see that. I used to come home in the evening & he’d be in bed already. Or else sitting in front of the TV having not changed the channel since he woke up. Once I came home & saw him watching some kind of softcore pornographic film where two cheerleaders were kissing each other, & when he saw me he shrugged & said ‘I’m not watching this, I just didn’t know where the remote was.’ At the time I actually pretended not to believe him, because I thought it would be less upsetting if he were really watching the cheerleader film rather than just sitting there reluctantly allowing the film to keep playing because he was too depressed to find the remote. Now I keep thinking about all the evenings I’ve come home this month & he’s been cooking & listening to something on the radio. And he’s always clean-shaven & asking me how my day was & his gym clothes are always in the washing machine. I see him looking in the mirror sometimes with quite an appraising expression. Of course, how could I not have known? But I always said I wanted him to be happy, & now I know it was true all along. I do want that. Even when it looks like this I still want it. So. Anyway. Maybe we could all have dinner together some time. (I’ll invite Bobbi too.)