Conversations with Friends

by Sally Rooney

  I read the email several times. It seemed like an affectation on Melissa’s part not to include paragraph breaks, as if she was saying: look at the tide of emotion that has swept over me. I also believed she had edited the email carefully for effect, the effect being: always remember who is the writer, Frances. It is me, and not you. These were the thoughts I sprang to, unkind thoughts. She didn’t call me a bad person, she didn’t say any of the horrible things about me that the situation would excuse. Maybe a tide of emotion really did sweep over her. The part of the email about my youth affected me, and I realised it didn’t matter whether it was calculated or not. I was young and she was older. That was enough to make me feel bad, like I had put extra coins into the vending machine. On the second reading I let my eyes skip over that section.

  The only part of the email I really wanted to know about was the information relating to Nick. He had been in psychiatric hospital, which was news to me. I wasn’t repelled as such; I had read books, I was familiar with the idea that capitalism was the really crazy thing. But I had thought people who were hospitalised for psychiatric problems were different from the people I knew. I could see I had entered a new social setting now, where severe mental illness no longer had unfashionable connotations. I was going through a second upbringing: learning a new set of assumptions, and feigning a greater level of understanding than I really possessed. By this logic Nick and Melissa were like my parents bringing me into the world, probably hating and loving me even more than my original parents did. This also meant I was Bobbi’s evil twin, which didn’t seem at the time like taking the metaphor too far.

  I followed this pattern of thought superficially, like letting my eyes follow the trajectory of a passing car. My body was twisted up in the library chair like a coiled spring and my legs were crossed twice over, the arch of my left foot pressed tightly into the base of the chair. I felt guilty that Nick had been so ill, and that I knew about it now even though he had chosen not to tell me. I didn’t know how to handle the information. In the email Melissa had been callous about it, like Nick’s illness was a dark comic backdrop to her affair, and I wondered if she felt that way or if that was a way of disguising what she really felt. I thought of Evelyn in the bookshop telling him again and again how well he looked.

  After an hour, the email I wrote in response was as follows:

  Lots to think about. Dinner sounds good.

  25

  It was the middle of October by then. I put some cash together from whatever I could find in my room, as well as some birthday and Christmas money I’d forgotten to lodge in the bank. Altogether this came to forty-three euro, four fifty of which I spent in a German supermarket buying bread, pasta and tinned tomatoes. In the mornings I asked Bobbi for the use of her milk and she waved me away like: use whatever you want. Jerry gave her an allowance every week, and I also noticed she had started wearing a new black wool coat with tortoiseshell buttons. I didn’t want to tell her what had happened with my account, so I just described myself as ‘broke’ in a tone of voice I calculated to be flippant. Every morning and evening I called my father, and every morning and evening he didn’t pick up. We did go to Melissa and Nick’s house to have dinner.

  We went more than once. Increasingly I noticed that Bobbi had started to enjoy Nick’s company, even to enjoy it more than the company of Melissa or myself. When the four of us spent time together, she and Nick often engaged in pretend arguments or other competitive activities from which Melissa and I were excluded. They played video games after dinner, or magnetic travel chess, while Melissa and I talked about impressionism. Once when they were drunk they even raced each other around the back garden. Nick won but he was tired afterwards, and Bobbi called him ‘elderly’ and threw dead leaves on him. She asked Melissa: who’s prettier, Nick or me? Melissa looked at me and in an arch tone she replied: I love all my children equally. Bobbi’s relationship with Nick affected me in a curious way. Seeing them together, each giving the other all of their attention, gave me a weird aesthetic thrill. Physically they were perfect, like twins. At times I caught myself wishing they would move closer or even touch one another, as if I was trying to complete something which in my mind remained unfinished.

  We often had political discussions, in which we all shared similar positions but expressed ourselves differently. Bobbi, for example, was an insurrectionist, while Melissa, from a grim pessimism, tended to favour the rule of law. Nick and I fell somewhere between the two of them, more comfortable with critique than endorsement. We talked one night about the endemic racism of criminal justice in the US, the videos of police brutality that we had all seen without ever seeking them out, and what it meant for us as white people to say they were ‘difficult to watch’, which we all agreed they were although we couldn’t fix on one exact meaning for this difficulty. There was one particular video of a black teenage girl in a bathing suit crying for her mother while a white police officer knelt on her back, which Nick said made him feel so physically ill he couldn’t finish watching it.

  I realise that’s indulgent, he said. But I also thought, what good even comes of me finishing it? Which is depressing in itself.

  We also discussed whether these videos in some way contributed to a sense of European superiority, as if police forces in Europe were not endemically racist.

  Which they are, Bobbi said.

  Yeah, I don’t think the expression is ‘American cops are bastards,’ said Nick.

  Melissa said she didn’t doubt that we were all a part of the problem, but it was difficult to see how exactly, and seemingly impossible to do anything about it without first comprehending that. I said I sometimes felt drawn to disclaiming my ethnicity, as if, though I was obviously white, I wasn’t ‘really’ white, like other white people.

  No offence, Bobbi said, but that’s honestly very unhelpful.

  I’m not offended, I said. I agree.

  Certain elements of my relationship with Nick had changed since he told Melissa we were together. I sent him sentimental texts during daytime hours and he called me when he was drunk to tell me nice things about my personality. The sex itself was similar, but afterwards was different. Instead of feeling tranquil, I felt oddly defenceless, like an animal playing dead. It was as though Nick could reach through the soft cloud of my skin and take whatever was inside me, like my lungs or other internal organs, and I wouldn’t try to stop him. When I described this to him he said he felt the same, but he was sleepy and he might not really have been listening.

  Piles of dead leaves had formed all over campus, and I spent my time attending lectures and trying to find books in the Ussher Library. On dry days, Bobbi and I walked along underused paths kicking leaves and talking about things like the idea of landscape painting. Bobbi thought the fetishisation of ‘untouched nature’ was intrinsically patriarchal and nationalistic. I like houses better than fields, I observed. They’re more poetic, because they have people in them. Then we sat in the Buttery watching rain come down the windows. Something had changed between us, but I didn’t know what it was. We still intuited each other’s moods easily, we shared the same conspiratorial looks, and our conversations still felt lengthy and intelligent. The time she ran me that bath had changed something, had placed Bobbi in a new relation to me even as we both remained ourselves.

  One afternoon toward the end of the month, when my supply of money was down to about six euro, I got an email from a man called Lewis, who was the editor of a literary journal in Dublin. The email said that Valerie had sent the story on with a view to having it published, and that if I was willing to give my permission, he would very much like to print it in an upcoming issue. He said he was ‘very excited’ by the prospect and that he had some thoughts on possible revisions if I was interested.

  I opened the file I had sent to Valerie and read it all in one go, without stopping to think about what I was doing. The figure in the story was recognisably Bobbi, her parents recognisable as her parents, myself identifiably myself. N
o one who knew us could fail to see Bobbi in the story. It wasn’t an unflattering portrait, exactly. It emphasised the domineering aspects of Bobbi’s personality and of my own, because the story was about personal domination. But, I thought, things always have to be selected and emphasised, that’s writing. Bobbi would understand that more than anyone.

  Lewis also mentioned I would be paid for the story, and included a scale of fees for first-time contributors. If published at its current length, my story would be worth over eight hundred euro. I sent Lewis a reply thanking him for his interest and telling him I would be delighted to work with him on whatever revisions he thought appropriate.

  That evening Nick picked me up from the apartment to take me out to Monkstown. Melissa was staying with her family in Kildare for a few days. In the car I explained about the story, and about the conversation I’d had with Bobbi in the bath and what she’d said about not being special. Slow down, Nick said. You’ve sold this story for how much did you say? I didn’t even know you wrote prose. I laughed, I liked when he acted proud of me. I told him it was my first one and he called me intimidating. We talked about Bobbi appearing in the story, and he said he appeared in Melissa’s work all the time.

  But only passingly, I said. Like ‘my husband was there.’ Bobbi is the main character in this one.

  Yeah, I forgot you’ve read Melissa’s book. You’re right, she doesn’t dwell on me that much. Anyway I’m sure Bobbi won’t mind.

  I’m contemplating never telling her. It’s not like she reads the magazine.

  Well, I think that’s a bad idea, he said. It would involve a lot of other people also not telling her. That guy Philip who you hang around with, people like that. My wife. But you’re the boss, obviously.

  I made a ‘hm’ noise, because I thought he was right but I didn’t want to think so. I liked when he called me the boss. He tapped his hands on the steering wheel cheerfully. What is it with me and writers? he said.

  You just like women who can wreck you intellectually, I said. I bet you had crushes on your teachers at school.

  I was actually notorious for that kind of thing. I slept with one of my college lecturers, have I told you about that?

  I asked him to, and he told me. The woman was not just a teaching assistant, she was a real professor. I asked what age she was and Nick smiled coyly and said: like forty-five? Maybe fifty. Anyway she could have lost her job, it was insane.

  I see it from her perspective, I said. Didn’t I kiss you at your wife’s birthday party?

  He said he struggled to understand why he made people feel that way, that it had happened rarely in his life but always with a violent intensity and no real sense of agency on his part. A friend of his elder brother had developed a similar thing for him when he was fifteen. And this girl was nearly twenty, Nick said. Obsessed with me. That’s how I lost my virginity.

  Were you obsessed with her? I said.

  No, I was just frightened of saying no to her. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

  I told him that sounded bleak and it made me sad. Quickly he said: oh, I wasn’t going for sympathy points. I did say yes to her, it wasn’t … Well, it probably was illegal, but I consented to it.

  Because you were too frightened to say no, I said. Would you call it consent if it happened to me?

  Well, no. But it wasn’t like I felt physically threatened. I mean, it was weird behaviour from her, but we were both teenagers. I don’t think she was an evil person.

  We were still in town, sitting in traffic on the north quays. It was early evening, but dark already. I looked out the window at passers-by and at the veil of rain that moved around under the streetlights. I told him I thought he was such an appealing love object partly because he was so curiously passive. I knew I would have to be the one to kiss you, I said. And that you would never kiss me, which made me feel vulnerable. But I also felt this terrible power, like, you’re going to let me kiss you, what else will you let me do? It was sort of intoxicating. I couldn’t decide if I had complete control over you or no control at all.

  And now what do you feel? he said.

  More like complete control. Is that bad?

  He said he didn’t mind. He thought it was healthy for us to try and correct the power disparity, though he added that he didn’t think we would ever be able to do it completely. I told him that Melissa thought he was ‘pathologically submissive’ and he said it would be a mistake to assume that meant he was powerless in relationships with women. He told me he thought helplessness was often a way of exercising power. I told him he sounded like Bobbi and he laughed. The highest compliment a man can ever get from you, Frances, he said.

  That night in bed we talked about his sister’s baby, how much he loved her, how sometimes when he was depressed he would go over to Laura’s house just to be closer to the baby and see her face. I didn’t know if he and Melissa planned to have children, or why they didn’t have them already if he loved children so much. I didn’t want to ask, because I was afraid of finding out that they did plan to, so instead I affected an ironic tone and said: maybe you and I could have children together. We could raise them in a polyamorous commune and let them choose their own first names. Nick told me he already had sinister ambitions to that effect.

  Would you still find me attractive if I was pregnant? I said.

  Sure, yeah.

  In a fetishistic way?

  Well, I don’t know, he said. I do feel like I’m more aware of pregnant women than I was ten years ago. I tend to imagine myself doing nice things for them.

  That sounds fetishistic.

  Everything is a fetish with you. I meant more like cooking them meals. But would I still want to fuck you if you were pregnant, yes. Rest assured.

  I turned around then and put my mouth up next to his ear. My eyes were closed so I felt like I was just playing a game and not being completely real. Hey, I said, I really want you. And I could feel Nick nodding his head, this sweet eager nod. Thanks, he said. He said that. We kissed. I pressed my back against the mattress and he touched me cautiously like a deer touches things with its face. Nick, you’re such a gift, I said. I left my wallet in my coat, he replied. One second. And I said: just do it like this, I’m on the pill anyway. He had his hand laid flat on the pillow beside my head, and for a second he did nothing and his breath felt very hot. Yeah, do you want to? he said. I told him that I did and he kept breathing and then said: you make me feel so good about myself.

  I put my arms around his neck and he slipped his hand between my legs so he could get inside me. We had always used condoms before and this felt different to me, or maybe he was being different about it. His skin was damp and he was sighing very hard. I felt my body opening up and then closing like a stop-motion video of a flower with its petals blooming open and closed, and it was so real it was like hallucinating. Nick said the word fuck and then said: Frances, I didn’t know it would feel so good, I’m sorry. His mouth was extremely soft and close. I asked if he needed to come already and he inhaled for a second and then said: sorry, I’m sorry. I thought of his sinister desire to get me pregnant, how full and huge I would feel, how he would touch me so lovingly and with such pride, and then I heard that I was saying: no it’s good, I want it. It felt very weird and nice then, and he was telling me that he loved me, I remember that. He was murmuring it in my ear: I love you.

  *

  I had several essay deadlines approaching at the time, so I drew up a rough personal timetable. In the mornings, before the library opened, I sat in bed and worked on the revisions Lewis sent me. I could see the story I had written gaining shape, unfolding itself, becoming longer and more solid. Then I showered and dressed in oversized sweaters to go and work in college all day. I often managed without eating until late in the evening, and when I got home I cooked two handfuls of pasta and ate it with olive oil and vinegar before falling asleep, sometimes without getting undressed.

  Nick had started rehearsing for a production of Hamlet, an
d after work on Tuesdays and Fridays he came to stay in the apartment. He complained that there was never any food in the kitchen, but after I said I was broke in a sarcastic voice, he said: oh really? I’m sorry, I didn’t know that. Then he started to bring food with him when he visited. He brought fresh bread from the Temple Bar bakery, jars of raspberry jam, tubs of hummus and full-fat cream cheese. When he watched the way I ate this food, he asked me how broke I was. I shrugged. After that he started to bring over chicken breasts and plastic things of minced beef to put in my fridge. This makes me feel like a kept woman, I said. He said things like: well look, you can freeze them if you don’t want them tomorrow. I felt I had to act amused and glib about the food, because I thought Nick would be uncomfortable if he knew I really had no money and I was living on the bread and jam he brought me.