Odd Girl Out

by Laura James

  I go to the loo to try to rebalance. The hand driers are screaming their tuneless song. There’s a queue. I am assaulted by the cheap perfume of the woman in front of me. Its synthetic notes are stuck in my nose and I feel as if the smell will linger forever. I race back down the escalator and into the cool evening air.

  I am going to miss my train, but I don’t care. Nothing could get me to go back into the station right now. It is just after five-thirty and I know the train will be crowded, so I reason with myself that I should wait for the next one. I feel guilty, though. It means I will be home later and that Tim and the boys will again have to have supper without me.

  I hate uncertainty of any kind. I like to know exactly what is going on in my world and what will happen next. Because of this I feel the need to inform Tim of each stage of my day. Almost hourly updates by phone or by text message. I’m sure he just thinks, she’s out for the day, she’ll be back late, and that’s it. I for some reason, however, am compelled to ring him between meetings, to tell him exactly what is happening in my day and to hear what is happening in his. Nothing drives me more crazy than learning something when I get home that I could have been told hours before.

  Communication is an ongoing battle between us. I need to talk, he does not. I guess it’s the classic Mars versus Venus thing, with an added dash of autistic versus neurotypical thrown in for good measure. Typically, I’ll ring him four times during the day. Once to say my train has arrived and I am in London. Once to tell him about my first meeting, then again after my second. I’ll ring another time to tell him which train I intend to get home and then either once I am on the train or when I reach Downham Market and I’m getting into the car. Between these calls I will often message him.

  Often I pepper the call with excuses. I’ll ask what he wants to do about supper or give him some nugget of information about the meeting I have just attended. I know it is torture for him to have these mindless conversations, but it is equally painful for me not to. I imagine there is information he is keeping from me. The fact that Tim also has the world’s worst telephone manner – an awkwardness and brusqueness that leads me to believe a huge disaster has happened and my family is in real jeopardy – does not help matters.

  I can’t bring myself to tell him that the idea of getting on the train is too much, so instead I wait a few minutes, until after it’s left, and ring and say I’ve only just got to the station.

  I sit on a wall outside the station and light a cigarette. I’m still on the tipping point of a meltdown. A woman approaches me and asks if I have any spare change. She is thin, her face etched with lines she is too young to have collected. There is no life in her eyes. She stares at me without hope, expecting rejection at best, abuse at worst.

  I look at her and feel utterly overwhelmed by the world. I get this feeling sometimes. It is fleeting and usually lasts no more than an hour. The best phrase I have found to describe it is humanity depression. It descends when I see just exactly what we are capable of doing to each other. It creeps into my chest when I see abusive posts on Twitter. And when I hear the news about refugees living in dirty tented villages filled with fear and danger, with countries refusing to take them in. Refusing to offer them sanctuary in a land of plenty where we have houses for our cars. What does that do to a human being?

  There’s much talk about autism and empathy. One school of thought is that autistic people do not feel it. I am easily confused by abstract concepts such as empathy. I cannot put myself in someone else’s shoes, but I am probably one of the most compassionate people you are likely to meet. My compassion, though, comes in the form of practical support. I don’t have the tools to say ‘there, there’ and listen endlessly to a problem being hashed and rehashed.

  Tony Attwood is in no doubt that those with Asperger’s feel empathy. For him the issue is that often they may feel it too acutely. He told me: ‘Oh yes, absolutely autistic people feel empathy. Too much. More than neurotypicals. I think some of the social withdrawal [typical of those with Asperger’s] may be because of an acute sensitivity to negative emotions in others. It’s the equivalent of an emotional cold for the person with Asperger’s; it’s contagious. They are infected and they get the flu. It’s as if people with Asperger’s have a sixth sense for despair, anguish, irritation, negativity in other people. They can amplify these feelings and take them on board and realize it’s because they’ve been with so and so.

  ‘Solitude can be a way of cutting this down. So the impulse towards solitude isn’t purely because of social confusion and social performance.’

  My humanity depression is, I believe, a form of empathy. It is an inability to cope with the pain of others. It overwhelms me, makes me feel unsure of the world and unsure of my place within it. The unusual way I experience empathy leaves me confused about human relationships. I find it painful when I cannot second-guess how someone else is feeling or what they are thinking. Humans give out conflicting messages and this blows my autistic brain.

  When someone who is clearly angry or upset insists, through gritted teeth, that they are fine, I don’t know what to do or say. I know they are not fine.

  I open my purse and give the homeless woman some change. She smiles at me with real warmth. An older woman, close by, turns to me.

  ‘She’ll only spend it on drugs, you know,’ she says. ‘You shouldn’t give money to people like that.’

  I hate being told things like this. I hate people interfering and, in the midst of a sensory overload, this woman, with her loud patterned sweater and even louder voice, is grating on my nerves, pushing me one step closer towards meltdown.

  ‘I’m talking to you,’ she says slightly aggressively, as I continue to ignore her. ‘It’s rude not to answer.’

  I just need to be in the quiet and in the dark and I am hours from home. I get up and walk away. Away from her bigotry and hatred. Away from the station, from my train. And away from home. I find a quiet coffee shop on a side street and order a bottle of water.

  When I was a child, my meltdowns were explosions. I would kick and scream, throw myself to the floor, cry so hard I couldn’t catch my breath. They were loud, violent and messy. Now when I have a meltdown it’s an implosion. I feel all the same emotions: the need to escape; being unable to control my feelings, my environment and myself, but there’s nothing spectacular to see when I’m having a meltdown. I may leave the room slightly more quickly than I would ordinarily, but despite being a huge deal to me, there really is very little for anyone else to witness.

  Looking for Marina – Summer 1995

  I stand on the doorstep and hesitate before I ring the bell. I’ve waited all my life for this moment and now I’m wondering if I’ve made a huge mistake. Maybe some things are better left alone. Perhaps nothing will ever be as good as the fantasy.

  ‘All right?’ Tim asks, putting his hand on my arm.

  ‘I’m not sure I want to do this,’ I say, my voice trembling. ‘Shall we go and get a drink so I can think about it?’

  ‘If that’s what you really want, but you’ve come this far.’

  It is what I want. I don’t like it when people try to talk me out of a decision I’ve made. I’m generally sure of what I want and what I don’t want and right now I don’t want this. I’m twenty-five. I think I should be able to make my own decisions.

  We walk through the streets of Notting Hill. I walk quickly, wanting to put as much distance between me and the house Marina lives in as I can. What if I don’t like what I find there?

  I have often wondered what my childhood would have been like if Marina had kept me with her. Would simply being with the woman who had given birth to me have given me a sense of belonging? I think it would have. I imagine if you know where you have come from, you have a better idea of where you are going. You may not like your family. You may not get on with them, but you would belong to them. They would be yours and you would be theirs.

  From the snippets I have learned about Marina, from what my
parents have told me, and the file I was given by Social Services, I imagine my life would have been less structured. I think it would have been more creative. Freer. Maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps all adopted children build an alternative story in their heads. One that suits their view of what their other life would have been like. Should have been like.

  I heard a documentary once on Radio 4. A little girl was being interviewed. She must have been around five or six. ‘My other mummy is a princess,’ the girl said proudly, ‘and she lives in a castle.’ There was a certainty to her voice and I experienced an understanding that was new to me. While I am too old to believe in fairy princesses, part of me will always, I think, hold on to the fact Marina was someone special, somehow perfect.

  Tim and I find a corner table in a small cafe. He orders a Diet Coke. I order tea. We are quiet for a while then he asks: ‘Have you changed your mind?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I say, annoyed that my tea is too weak and the sugar is lumps rather than sachets. ‘I’m just a bit worried about what happens once I let her into my life. What if I don’t like her? What if she’s a complete nightmare? I have convinced myself things will be better if I have some context, but what if that context is the chaos of a selfish, shambolic woman?’

  ‘Do you think you might actually be worried about it being the other way round?’ he asks. ‘I mean, do you think you might be worried that actually she might not want you?’

  The thought hadn’t occurred to me. ‘Not really,’ I say, pushing the disappointing tea to one side. ‘But she might have got married again, I suppose, and her husband might not know about me, so I guess that’s a possibility.’

  ‘Would that feel like a bigger rejection?’ Tim asks. He is nervous of saying the wrong thing and is toying with the edge of the gingham tablecloth. ‘I mean, that she was not what used to be called a gymslip mother.’

  ‘I don’t think I feel rejected at all,’ I say truthfully.

  He looks back at me uncomprehending. Tim’s adoption has stalked him throughout his life and was something most therapists he had seen over the years had deemed central to the depression he had been hospitalized for.

  He didn’t see it that way. Or so he said. But the picture he created was confusing. At any one time his adoption could be an utter irrelevance or fundamental to his own sense of alienation. One day he would dismiss its importance as, at best, tangential. The next he would lament the absence of any emotional context. He would dismiss never having known his biological father as unimportant. The next day, his mood blacker, he would write a song about the US airman who left his mother alone and pregnant, with no regard for the life inside and the man he would become.

  I find this all rather strange and confusing. My feelings about Marina are rooted in logic. Giving up a baby for adoption doesn’t feel like a rejection to me. How can you reject a person you don’t really know? It’s not about the child. It’s about the circumstances.

  Tim cannot understand this approach. He finds it strange my reactions are so muted. We’ve been living together for around six months and I’m finding it so hard. Everything he does is governed by feelings rather than logic. He is constantly chasing the good feelings, the next adventure. He lives by the catchphrase ‘more, now, again’. Nothing is ever enough.

  I feel I constantly disappoint him. I am not adventurous enough. I don’t live fast enough. His temper is quick and fiery. His anger scares me. I don’t understand how he lives with that fire inside him.

  I think he finds me childish. I feel homesick, but I don’t know what for. I think I’ve made a mistake. A big one. I don’t want to go back to my ex-husband, but I don’t want to stay here.

  I have caused so much turmoil for my girls, who are now forced to divide their time between their two parents. Was it worth it? I don’t think so. I am awash with fear all the time. I walk on eggshells. I wonder what Tim’s mood will be like today. Will he bathe me in sunlight and the glow of his love or will he be angry, snarling, quick to criticize?

  I’m slightly afraid he will be cross with me now. He doesn’t look cross though. Today he seems to be kind Tim, playing the role of supportive boyfriend as we seek out my past. I think he sees life as a series of scenes in a film. The setting for today’s scene will be the fondant-coloured houses of Elgin Crescent. The backdrop will be a perfect blue sky, the summer sunshine warming our backs as we walk. The stars will be Marina and me, with him nominated for an award as best supporting actor.

  He is looking out of the window. He has a photographer’s eye. He drinks in everything he sees. I think sight is his most important sense. It’s as if he wants to see all the things. Always.

  When he is driving along the motorway through the Chilterns on the way to see his parents, he is on the lookout for the red kites that have recently started breeding there. When we’re in a restaurant he will stare at the waitress with the good legs, but also notice small details I try hard not to see. As a child I would see everything. If I looked at a lawn it was as if I could see every blade of grass. It was too much. Too overwhelming. I learned to blur my eyes, so everything became softer. So I didn’t have to process so much information. Now I always carry a book with me so I can read, or I find some small detail – in this case in the Coke can – to look at.

  When we’re sitting at home on the sofa he will look at me as if I am a rare and precious thing. Such scrutiny makes me feel uncomfortable. I have always had a problem making eye contact. My childhood was punctuated by grown-ups saying, ‘Look at me when I’m talking to you.’ Locking eyes with Tim is almost painful. It is as if he wants to drink in my soul. There’s a hunger in him that scares me.

  Leaving my husband for him has caused so much anger. Everyone is shouting at me. My parents, his parents, our friends. Everyone is furious. My husband has filed for divorce. I’m terrified. Everything is so legal and I feel like I’m in big trouble. How is my life spiralling so far out of control?

  Starting an affair with Tim is the most reckless thing I have ever done. I can’t even explain quite how it happened. It’s clichéd, but I guess I really was hit by a coup de foudre and swept off my feet. I can see why they call it falling in love, because it really did feel like falling. I fell for his intelligence. I had never met anyone who knew so much. But the thing about falling is eventually you have to land and it’s not always somewhere soft.

  I don’t think I will stay with Tim forever. Life is too chaotic. I can’t cope with the ups and downs his moods bring. I need stability. As in the Rupert Brooke poem, ‘The Old Vicarage, Grantchester’, I need certainty and quiet kind. He needs adventure and we will always be in a push-me-pull-me cycle of not being able to give what the other needs.

  ‘What do you want to do?’ he asks eventually, impatiently. ‘Go home, go and see a film? Go back and knock on the door?’

  Mostly I want to do nothing, to make no decisions, to just sit here. I also want to make Tim happy. At the Charter Nightingale Hospital my therapist said I was a ‘people pleaser’, that I was so frightened of disappointing others that I went along with things that are bad for me.

  Tim is restless. There’s a muscle going in his cheek and he is bouncing his knee up and down as if he wants to run, wants something to happen.

  ‘Let’s go and knock on the door,’ I say. His smile is warm. It was the right answer. He is happy.

  The door has both a bell and a knocker. I don’t know which to choose. I find it so confusing when people have both. The house facade is pale yellow, like the lemon French Fancies. I like pink ones best – houses and cakes – but lemon would be my second choice. I go for the bell. The knocker might be there for decorative purposes, but the bell is too unattractive for that. I hear it ring: a long, sharp ring. We wait. Nothing happens. No yapping dog. No footsteps. Nothing.

  Emboldened by the lack of response I use the knocker instead. Again we wait.

  ‘Of course there’s no reason to think she still lives here,’ I say. The only reason we are here is because
it’s the address on my birth certificate, but that was twenty-five years ago. She has probably moved on.

  ‘We could knock next door and ask if they know her,’ Tim says. As a journalist (something I have longed to be) he thinks nothing of pitching up at a complete stranger’s house and asking questions. I feel nervous at the idea.

  ‘Why would we say we are asking?’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll think of something.’ He is already making his way down the steps.

  The neighbouring house is white with a glossy black front door. It is well kept, just like the woman who answers it. She is in her early sixties and wearing a cream silk blouse and a tweed skirt. Her shoes are sensible but look expensive. Her greying hair is perfectly in place. She looks at us with curiosity.

  ‘Yes?’ she says, slightly raising one eyebrow.

  ‘Hi,’ Tim says. His voice is steady and assured. ‘We’re looking to trace someone who lived next door in the early 1970s and wondered if you happened to have been here then. If you might have known her. Her name’s Marina.’

  ‘She’s dead,’ the woman replies.

  I feel faint. Of all the possible outcomes, how could I not have considered this one? I thought she would either be here still or would have moved away and I would either spend ages tracking down her new address or the trail would go cold and she would be lost to me forever. But dead? That really wasn’t a possibility I’d considered. Why would I have done? No one should be dead so young.

  The woman’s expression softens. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I’m fine. Just a little shocked.’ She seems reassured. I don’t know if it’s my accent, which becomes even plummier when I’m nervous, or curiosity on her part but she invites us in.

  We stand in the hallway. The floor is tiled in black and white marble. ‘Would you like some tea?’ she asks. I say I would. ‘I’ll put lots of sugar in. It’s good when you’ve had a shock.’

  Tim says no to tea. He doesn’t drink it or coffee. He only drinks Diet Coke. Gallons of it. He used to drink a lot of Jack Daniel’s too, but as I can’t have alcohol while I’m on my withdrawal programme, he doesn’t drink so much anymore.