Conversations with Friends

by Sally Rooney

  The cut kept on throbbing badly even after it stopped bleeding. By that time I was a little frightened that I had done something so stupid, although I knew I never had to tell anyone about it and it would never happen again. After Bobbi had broken up with me I hadn’t cut any holes into my skin, although I did stand in the shower and let the hot water run out and then keep standing there until my fingers went blue. I privately termed these behaviours ‘acting out’. Scratching my arm open was ‘acting out’, and so was giving myself hypothermia by accident and having to explain it to a paramedic on the phone.

  That evening I thought about my father’s phone call from the night before, and how I had wanted to tell Nick about it, and for a moment I really thought: I will call Nick and he will come back. Things like this can be undone. But I knew that he would never come back again, not really. He wasn’t only mine any more, that part was over. Melissa knew things that I didn’t know. After everything that had happened between them they still desired one another. I thought about her email, and about how I was sick and probably infertile anyway, and how I could give Nick nothing that would mean anything to him.

  For the next few days I stared at my phone for hours on end and accomplished nothing. The time moved past visibly on the illuminated onscreen clock and yet I still felt as though I didn’t notice it passing. Nick didn’t call me that evening, or that night. He didn’t call me the next day, or the day after that. Nobody did. Gradually the waiting began to feel less like waiting and more like this was simply what life was: the distracting tasks undertaken while the thing you are waiting for continues not to happen. I applied for jobs and turned up for seminars. Things went on.

  29

  I was offered a job working evenings and weekends serving coffee in a sandwich shop. On my first day a woman called Linda gave me a black apron and showed me how to make coffee. You pressed a little lever to fill the portafilter with grounds, once for a single shot and twice for a double shot. Then you screwed the filter tightly into the machine and hit the water switch. There was also a little steam nozzle and a jug for milk. Linda told me lots of things about coffee, the difference between a latte and a cappuccino, things like that. They served mochas, but Linda told me mochas were ‘complicated’ so I could just let one of the others do it. People never order mochas, she said.

  I never saw Bobbi in college, though I was convinced I would. I spent long periods lingering in the arts building, on the ramp where she usually smoked, or near the debating society rooms where they had free copies of the New Yorker and you could use their kitchen to make tea. She never appeared. Our timetables weren’t similar anyway. I wanted to run into her at a time that suited me, a time when I would appear wearing my camel coat, maybe with my arms full of books, and I could smile at her with the tentative smile of someone who wants to forget an argument. My overriding fear was that she would come into the sandwich shop where I worked and see that I had a job. Whenever a slim woman with a dark fringe came through the door, I turned compulsively toward the coffee machine and pretended to steam milk. In the preceding months, I felt as if I’d glimpsed the possibility of an alternative life, the possibility of accumulating income just by writing and talking and taking an interest in things. By the time my story was accepted for publication, I even felt like I’d entered that world myself, like I’d folded my old life up behind me and put it away. I was ashamed at the idea that Bobbi might come into the sandwich shop and see for herself how deluded I had been.

  I told my mother about the phone call from my father. In fact, we had a fight about it over the phone, after which I felt too tired to speak or move for an hour. I called her ‘an enabler’. She said: oh it’s my fault, is it? Everything is my fault. She said his brother had seen him in town the day before and that he was fine. I repeated the incident from my childhood where he had thrown a shoe at my face. I’m a bad mother, she said, that’s what you’re saying. If that’s the conclusion you draw from the facts, that’s your business, I said. She told me I had never loved my father anyway.

  According to you the only way to love someone is to let them treat you like shit, I said.

  She hung up on me. Afterwards I lay on my bed feeling like a light had been switched off.

  One day toward the end of November, Evelyn posted a video link on Melissa’s Facebook wall with the message: just came across this again and I’m DEAD. I could see from the thumbnail that the video had been filmed in the kitchen of Melissa’s house. I clicked and waited for it to load. The lighting in the video was buttery yellow, there were fairy lights strung up in the background, and I could see Nick and Melissa standing side by side at the kitchen countertops. Then the sound came on. Someone behind the camera was saying: okay, okay, settle down. The camerawork was shaky, but I saw Melissa turn to Nick, they were both laughing. He was wearing a black sweater. He nodded along as if she was signalling something to him, and then he sang the words: I really can’t stay. Melissa sang: but baby, it’s cold outside. They were singing a duet, it was funny. Everyone in the room was laughing and applauding and I could hear Evelyn’s voice saying, sh! sh! I had never heard Nick singing before, he had a sweet voice. So did Melissa. It was good the way they acted it out, Nick being reluctant and Melissa trying to make him stay. It suited them. They had obviously practised it for their friends. Anyone could see from the video how much they loved each other. If I had seen them like this before, I thought, maybe nothing would have happened. Maybe I would have known.

  I only worked from 5 until 8 p.m. on weekdays, but by the time I got home I felt so exhausted I couldn’t eat. I fell behind on college work. With my hours in the sandwich shop, I had less time to finish my academic reading, but the real problem was my focus. I couldn’t concentrate. Concepts refused to arrange themselves into patterns, and my vocabulary felt smaller and less precise. After my second pay cheque came in, I withdrew two hundred euro from my bank account and put it in an envelope. On a slip of notepaper I wrote: thank you for the loan. Then I mailed it to Nick’s address in Monkstown. He never got back to me to say he received it, but by then I didn’t expect him to.

  It was almost December. I had three pills left in the cycle, then two, then one. As soon as I finished the packet the feeling came back, like before. It lasted days. I went to class as usual, gritting my teeth. The cramps came on in waves and left me weak and sweating when they receded. A teaching assistant called on me to say something about the character of Will Ladislaw and although I had actually finished Middlemarch, I just opened and closed my mouth like a fish. Eventually I managed to say: no. I’m sorry.

  That evening I walked home down Thomas Street. My legs were trembling and I hadn’t eaten a whole meal in days. My abdomen felt swollen, and for a few seconds I braced my body against a bicycle stand. My vision was beginning to disintegrate. My hand on the bicycle stand appeared translucent, like a photo negative held up in front of a light. The Thomas Street church was just a few steps ahead of me and I walked with a lopsided shuffle toward the door, holding my ribcage with one arm.

  The church smelled of stale incense and dry air. Columns of stained glass rose up behind the altar like long piano-playing fingers and the ceiling was the white and mint-green colour of confectionery. I hadn’t been in a church since I was a child. Two old women were sitting off to the side with rosary beads. I sat at the back and looked up at the stained glass, trying to fix it in my visual field, as if its permanence could prevent my disappearance. This stupid disease never killed anyone, I thought. My face was sweating, or else it had been damp outside and I hadn’t noticed. I unbuttoned my coat and used the dry inside of my scarf to wipe my forehead.

  I breathed in through my nose, feeling my lips part with the effort of filling my own lungs. I clasped my hands together in my lap. The pain kicked against my spine, radiating up into my skull and making my eyes water. I’m praying, I thought. I’m actually sitting here praying for God to help me. I was. Please help me, I thought. Please. I knew that there were rules about
this, that you had to believe in a divine ordering principle before you could appeal to it for anything, and I didn’t believe. But I make an effort, I thought. I love my fellow human beings. Or do I? Do I love Bobbi, after she tore up my story like that and left me alone? Do I love Nick, even if he doesn’t want to fuck me any more? Do I love Melissa? Did I ever? Do I love my mother and father? Could I love everyone and even include bad people? I bowed my forehead into my clasped hands, feeling faint.

  Instead of thinking gigantic thoughts, I tried to focus on something small, the smallest thing I could think of. Someone once made this pew I’m sitting on, I thought. Someone sanded the wood and varnished it. Someone carried it into the church. Someone laid the tiles on the floor, someone fitted the windows. Each brick was placed by human hands, each hinge fitted on each door, every road surface outside, every bulb in every streetlight. And even things built by machines were really built by human beings, who built the machines initially. And human beings themselves, made by other humans, struggling to create happy children and families. Me, all the clothing I wear, all the language I know. Who put me here in this church, thinking these thoughts? Other people, some I know very well and others I have never met. Am I myself, or am I them? Is this me, Frances? No, it is not me. It is the others. Do I sometimes hurt and harm myself, do I abuse the unearned cultural privilege of whiteness, do I take the labour of others for granted, have I sometimes exploited a reductive iteration of gender theory to avoid serious moral engagement, do I have a troubled relationship with my body, yes. Do I want to be free of pain and therefore demand that others also live free of pain, the pain which is mine and therefore also theirs, yes, yes.

  When I opened my eyes I felt that I had understood something, and the cells of my body seemed to light up like millions of glowing points of contact, and I was aware of something profound. Then I stood up from my seat and collapsed.

  *

  Fainting had become normal for me. I assured the woman who helped me up that it had happened before and she seemed a little annoyed then, like: sort it out. My mouth tasted bad, but I was strong enough to walk unsupported. My experience of spiritual awakening had deserted me. I stopped in the Centra on the way home, bought myself two packets of instant noodles and a boxed chocolate cake, and completed the walk slowly and carefully, one foot in front of the other.

  At home I opened the lid of the cake box, took out a spoon, and dialled Melissa’s mobile number. It rang, the ringing like a satisfied purr. Then her breath.

  Hello? said Melissa.

  Can we talk for a second? Or is it a bad time?

  She laughed, or at least I think that’s the noise she was making.

  You mean generally or right now? she said. Generally it’s a bad time, but right now is fine.

  Why did you send Bobbi my story?

  I don’t know, Frances. Why did you fuck my husband?

  Is that supposed to shock me? I said. You’re the shocking person who uses bad language, okay. Now that we’ve established that, why did you send Bobbi my story?

  She went quiet. I ran the tip of the spoon over the cake icing and licked it. It tasted sugary and flavourless.

  You really do have these sudden bursts of aggression, don’t you? she said. Like with Valerie. Are you threatened by other women?

  I have a question for you, if you don’t want to answer it then hang up.

  What entitles you to an explanation of my behaviour?

  You hated me, I said. Didn’t you?

  She sighed. I don’t even know what that means, she said. I dug the spoon down into the cake, into the sponge part, and ate a mouthful.

  You treated me with total contempt, said Melissa. And I don’t mean because of Nick. The first time you came to our house you just looked around like: here’s something bourgeois and embarrassing that I’m going to destroy. And I mean, you took such enjoyment in destroying it. Suddenly I’m looking around my own fucking house, thinking: is this sofa ugly? Is it kitsch to drink wine? And things I felt good about before started to make me feel pathetic. Having a husband instead of just fucking someone else’s husband. Having a book deal instead of writing nasty short stories about people I know and selling them to prestigious magazines. I mean, you came into my house with your fucking nose piercing like: oh, I’ll really enjoy eviscerating this whole set-up. She’s so establishment.

  I wedged the spoon into the cake so that it stood upright on its own. I then used my hand to massage my face.

  I don’t have a nose piercing, I said. That’s Bobbi.

  Okay. My deepest apologies.

  I didn’t realise you found me so subversive. In real life I didn’t feel any contempt for your house. I wanted it to be my house. I wanted your whole life. Maybe I did shitty things to try and get it, but I’m poor and you’re rich. I wasn’t trying to trash your life, I was trying to steal it.

  She made a kind of snorting noise, but I didn’t believe she was really dismissing what I’d said. It was more a performance than a reaction.

  You had an affair with my husband because you liked me so much, said Melissa.

  No, I’m not saying I liked you.

  Okay. I didn’t like you either. But you weren’t a very nice person.

  We both paused then, like we had just raced each other up a set of stairs and we were out of breath and thinking about how foolish it was.

  I regret that, I said. I regret not being nicer. I should have tried harder to be your friend. I’m sorry.

  What?

  I’m sorry, Melissa. I’m sorry for this aggressive phone call, it was stupid. I don’t really know what I’m doing at the moment. I’m having a hard time maybe. I’m sorry I called you. And look, I’m sorry for everything.

  Jesus, she said. What’s wrong, are you okay?

  I’m fine. I just feel like I haven’t been the person that I should have been. I don’t know what I’m saying now. I wish I had gotten to know you better and treated you with more kindness, I want to apologise for that. I’ll hang up.

  I hung up before she could say anything. I ate some cake, fast and hungrily, then wiped my mouth, opened up my laptop and wrote an email.

  Dear Bobbi,

  Tonight I fainted in a church, you would have found it pretty funny. I’m sorry my story hurt your feelings. I think the reason it hurt is because it showed I could be honest with someone else even when I wasn’t honest with you. I hope that’s the reason. I called Melissa on the phone tonight asking her why she sent the story to you. It took me some time to realise that what I was really asking was: why did I write the story? It was a very embarrassing and garbled phone call. Maybe I think of her as my mother. The truth is that I love you and I always have. Do I mean that Platonically? I don’t object when you kiss me. The idea of us sleeping together again has always been exciting. When you broke up with me I felt you beat me at a game we were playing together, and I wanted to come back and beat you. Now I think I just want to sleep with you, without metaphors. That doesn’t mean I don’t have other desires. Right now for example, I’m eating chocolate cake out of the box with a teaspoon. To love someone under capitalism you have to love everyone. Is that theory or just theology? When I read the Bible I picture you as Jesus, so maybe fainting in a church was a metaphor after all. But I’m not trying to be intelligent now. I can’t say sorry for writing that story or for taking the money. I can say sorry that it shocked you, when I should have told you before. You’re not just an idea to me. If I’ve ever treated you like that I’m sorry. The night when you talked about monogamy I loved your intellect. I didn’t understand what you were trying to tell me. Maybe I’m a lot more stupid than either of us thought. When there were four of us I always thought in terms of couples anyway, which threatened me, since all the possible couples that didn’t involve me seemed so much more interesting than the ones that did. You and Nick, you and Melissa, even Nick and Melissa in their own way. But now I see that nothing consists of two people, or even three. My relationship with you is also
produced by your relationship with Melissa, and with Nick, and with your childhood self, etc., etc. I wanted things for myself because I thought I existed. You’re going to write back and explain what Lacan really meant. Or you might not write back at all. I did faint, if you object to my prose style. That wasn’t a lie and I’m still shivering. Is it possible we could develop an alternative model of loving each other? I’m not drunk. Please write back. I love you.

  Frances.

  At some point the chocolate cake was gone. I looked into the box and saw crumbs and icing smeared around the paper rim which I had neglected to remove. I got up from the table, put the kettle on, and emptied two spoonfuls of coffee into the French press. I took some painkillers, I drank the coffee, I watched a murder mystery on Netflix. A certain peace had come to me and I wondered if it was God’s doing after all. Not that God existed in any material way but as a shared cultural practice so widespread that it came to seem materially real, like language or gender.

  At ten past eleven that night I heard her keys in the door. I went to the hall and she was unzipping her raincoat, the one she had brought to France that summer, and streams of water were trickling down her sleeves and dripping with a light percussive sound onto the floorboards. Our eyes met.

  That was a weird email, Bobbi said. But I love you too.

  30

  We talked about our break-up for the first time that night. It felt like opening a door that’s been inside your own house all along, a door that you walk past every day and try never to think about. Bobbi told me I had made her miserable. We were sitting on my bed, Bobbi against the headboard with the pillows propped behind her, me at the foot of the mattress sitting with crossed legs. She said that I’d laughed at her during arguments, like she was a moron. I told her what Melissa said, that I wasn’t a very nice person. Bobbi laughed herself then. Melissa would know, she said. When has she ever been nice to anyone?