How to Be Both

by Ali Smith

  The maze of the minotaur is one thing. The ability to maze the minotaur back is another thing altogether.

  Touché.

  High five.

  Both.

  Consider for a moment this moral conundrum. Imagine it. You’re an artist.

  Sitting on the wall opposite, George will get her phone out. She will take a picture.

  Then she will take another picture.

  After that she will sit there and keep her eye on that house for a bit.

  The next time she comes here she will do the same. In honour of her mother’s eyes she will use her own. She will let whoever’s watching know she’s watching.

  But none of the above has happened.

  Not yet, anyway.

  For now, in the present tense, George sits in the gallery and looks at one of the old paintings on the wall.

  It’s definitely something to do. For the foreseeable.

  one

  Consider this moral conundrum for a moment, George’s mother says to George who’s sitting in the front passenger seat.

  Not says. Said.

  George’s mother is dead.

  What moral conundrum? George says.

  The passenger seat in the hire car is strange, being on the side the driver’s seat is on at home. This must be a bit like driving is, except without the actual, you know, driving.

  Okay. You’re an artist, her mother says.

  Am I? George says. Since when? And is that a moral conundrum?

  Ha ha, her mother says. Humour me. Imagine it. You’re an artist.

  This conversation is happening last May, when George’s mother is still alive, obviously. She’s been dead since September. Now it’s January, to be more precise it’s just past midnight on New Year’s Eve, which means it has just become the year after the year in which George’s mother died.

  George’s father is out. It is better than him being at home, standing maudlin in the kitchen or going round the house switching things off and on. Henry is asleep. She just went in and checked on him; he was dead to the world, though not as dead as the word dead literally means when it means, you know, dead.

  This will be the first year her mother hasn’t been alive since the year her mother was born. That is so obvious that it is stupid even to think it and yet so terrible that you can’t not think it. Both at once.

  Anyway George is spending the first minutes of the new year looking up the lyrics of an old song. Let’s Twist Again. Lyrics by Kal Mann. The words are pretty bad. Let’s twist again like we did last summer. Let’s twist again like we did last year. Then there’s a really bad rhyme, a rhyme that isn’t, properly speaking, even a rhyme.

  Do you remember when

  Things were really hummin’.

  Hummin’ doesn’t rhyme with summer, the line doesn’t end in a question mark, and is it meant to mean, literally, do you remember that time when things smelt really bad?

  Then Let’s twist again, twisting time is here. Or, as all the sites say, twistin’ time.

  At least they’ve used an apostrophe, the George from before her mother died says.

  I do not give a fuck about whether some site on the internet attends to grammatical correctness, the George from after says.

  That before and after thing is about mourning, is what people keep saying. They keep talking about how grief has stages. There’s some dispute about how many stages of grief there are. There are three, or five, or some people say seven.

  It’s quite like the songwriter actually couldn’t be bothered to think of words. Maybe he was in one of the three, five or seven stages of mourning too. Stage nine (or twenty three or a hundred and twenty three or ad infinitum, because nothing will ever not be like this again): in this stage you will no longer be bothered with whether songwords mean anything. In fact you will hate almost all songs.

  But George has to find a song to which you can do this specific dance.

  It being so apparently contradictory and meaningless is no doubt a bonus. It will be precisely why the song sold so many copies and was such a big deal at the time. People like things not to be too meaningful.

  Okay, I’m imagining, George in the passenger seat last May in Italy says at exactly the same time as George at home in England the following January stares at the meaninglessness of the words of an old song. Outside the car window Italy unfurls round and over them so hot and yellow it looks like it’s been sandblasted. In the back Henry snuffles lightly, his eyes closed, his mouth open. The band of the seatbelt is over his forehead because he is so small.

  You’re an artist, her mother says, and you’re working on a project with a lot of other artists. And everybody on the project is getting the same amount, salary-wise. But you believe that what you’re doing is worth more than everyone on the project, including you, is getting paid. So you write a letter to the man who’s commissioned the work and you ask him to give you more money than everyone else is getting.

  Am I worth more? George says. Am I better than the other artists?

  Does that matter? her mother says. Is that what matters?

  Is it me or is it the work that’s worth more? George says.

  Good. Keep going, her mother says.

  Is this real? George says. Is it hypothetical?

  Does that matter? her mother says.

  Is this something that already has an answer in reality but you’re testing me with the concept of it though you already know perfectly well what you yourself think about it? George says.

  Maybe, her mother says. But I’m not interested in what I think. I’m interested in what you think.

  You’re not usually interested in anything I think, George says.

  That’s so adolescent of you, George, her mother says.

  I am adolescent, George says.

  Well, yes. That explains that, then, her mother says.

  There’s a tiny silence, still okay, but if she doesn’t give in a bit and soon George knows that her mother, who has been prickly, unpredictable and misery-faced for weeks now about there being trouble in the paradise otherwise known as her friendship with that woman Lisa Goliard, will get first of all distant then distinctly moody and ratty.

  Is it happening now or in the past? George says. Is the artist a woman or a man?

  Do either of those things matter? her mother says.

  Does either, George says. Either being singular.

  Mea maxima, her mother says.

  I just don’t get why you won’t commit, ever, George says. And that doesn’t mean what you think it means. If you say it without the culpa it just means I’m the most, or I’m the greatest, or to me the greatest belongs, or my most.

  It’s true, her mother says. I’m the most greatest. But the most greatest what?

  Past or present? George says. Male or female? It can’t be both. It must be one or the other.

  Who says? Why must it? her mother says.

  AUGH, George says too loud.

  Don’t, her mother says jerking her head towards the back. Unless you want him awake, in which case you’re in charge of entertainment.

  I. Can’t. Answer. Your. Moral. Question. Unless. I. Know. More. Details, George says sotto voce, which, in Italian, though George doesn’t speak Italian, literally means below the voice.

  Does morality need details? her mother whispers back.

  God, George says.

  Does morality need God? her mother says.

  Talking to you, George says still below the voice, is like talking to a wall.

  Oh, very good, you, very good, her mother says.

  How exactly is that good? George says.

  Because this particular art, artist and conundrum are all about walls, her mother says. And that’s where I’m driving you to.

  Yeah, George says. Up the wall.

  Her mother laughs a real out-loud laugh, so loud that after it they both turn to see if Henry will waken, but he doesn’t. This kind of laugh from her mother is so rare right now that it is almost l
ike normal. George is so pleased she feels herself blush with it.

  And what you just said is grammatically incorrect, she says.

  It is not, her mother says.

  It is, George says. Grammar is a finite set of rules and you just broke one.

  I don’t subscribe to that belief, her mother says.

  I don’t think you can call language a belief, George says.

  I subscribe to the belief, her mother says, that language is a living growing changing organism.

  I don’t think that belief will get you into heaven, George says.

  Her mother laughs for real again.

  No, listen, an organism, her mother says –

  (and through George’s head flashes the cover of the old paperback called How To Achieve Good Orgasm that her mother keeps in one of her bedside cupboards, from way before George was born, from the time in her mother’s life when she was, she says, young and easy under some appleboughs)

  – which follows its own rules and alters them as it likes and the meaning of what I said is perfectly clear therefore its grammar is perfectly acceptable, her mother says.

  (How To Achieve Good Organism.)

  Well. Grammatically inelegant then, George says.

  I bet you don’t even remember what it was I said in the first place, her mother says.

  Where I’m driving you to, George says.

  Her mother takes both hands off the wheel in mock despair.

  How did I, the most maxima unpedantic of all the maxima unpedantic women in the world, end up giving birth to such a pedant? And why the hell wasn’t I smart enough to drown it at birth?

  Is that the moral conundrum? George says.

  Consider it, for a moment, yes, why don’t you, her mother says.

  No she doesn’t.

  Her mother doesn’t say.

  Her mother said.

  Because if things really did happen simultaneously it’d be like reading a book but one in which all the lines of the text have been overprinted, like each page is actually two pages but with one superimposed on the other to make it unreadable. Because it’s New Year not May, and it’s England not Italy, and it’s pouring with rain outside and regardless of the hum (the hummin’) of the rain you can still hear people’s stupid New Year fireworks going off and off and off like a small war, because people are standing out in the pouring rain, rain pelting into their champagne glasses, their upturned faces watching their own (sadly) inadequate fireworks light up then go black.

  George’s room is in the loft bit of the house and since they had the roof redone last summer it’s had a leak in it at the slant at the far end. A little runnel of water comes in every time it rains, it’s coming in right now, happy New Year George! Happy New Year to you too, rain, and running in a beaded line straight down the place where the plaster meets the plasterboard then dripping down on to the books piled on top of the bookcase. Over the weeks since it’s been happening the posters have started to peel off it because the Blu-tack won’t hold to some of the wall. Under them a light brown set of stains, like the map of a tree-root network, or a set of country lanes, or a thousand-times magnified mould, or the veins that get visible in the whites of your eyes when you’re tired – no, not like any of these things, because thinking these things is just a stupid game. Damp is coming in and staining the wall and that’s all there is to it.

  George hasn’t said anything about it to her father. The roofbeams will rot and then the roof will fall in. She wakes up with a bad chest and congestion in her nose whenever it’s rained, but when the roof collapses inwards all the not being able to breathe will have been worth it.

  Her father never comes into her room. He has no idea it is happening. With any luck he won’t find out until it’s too late.

  It is already too late.

  The perfect irony of it is that right now her father has a job with a roofing company. His job involves going into people’s houses with a tiny rotating camera that’s got a light attached to it which he fastens to the end of the rods more usually used to sweep chimneys. He connects the camera to the portable screen and pushes it all the way up inside the chimney. Then anyone who wants to know, and has £120 to spare, can see what the inside of his or her chimney looks like. If the person who wants to know has an extra £150, her father can provide a recorded file of the visuals so he or she can look at the inside of the chimney owned by him or her any time he or she chooses.

  They. Everybody else says they. Why shouldn’t George?

  Any time they choose.

  Anyway George’s room, given time, enough bad weather and the right inattention, will open to the sky, to all this rain, the amount of which people on TV keep calling biblical. The TV news has been about all the flooded places up and down the country every night now since way before Christmas (though there has been no flooding here, her father says, because the medieval drainage system is still as good as it always was in this city). Her room will be stained with the grey grease and dregs of the dirt the rain has absorbed and carries, the dirt the air absorbs every day just from the fact of life on earth. Everything in this room will rot. She will have the pleasure of watching it happen. The floorboards will curl up at their ends, bend, split open at the nailed places and pull loose from their glue.

  She will lie in bed with all the covers thrown off and the stars will be directly above her, nothing between her and their long-ago burnt-out eyes.

  George (to her father) : Do you think, when we die, that we still have memories?

  George’s father (to George) : No.

  George (to Mrs Rock, the school counsellor) : (exact same question).

  Mrs Rock (to George) : Do you think we’ll need memories, after we die?

  Oh very clever, very clever, they think they’re so clever always answering questions with questions. Though generally Mrs Rock is really nice. Mrs Rock is a rock, as the teachers at the school keep saying, like they think they’re the first persons ever to have said it, when they suggest to George that she should be seeing Mrs Rock, she’s a rock you know, which they say after they clear their throats and ask how George is doing, then say again after they hear that George is already seeing her and has managed to swap PE double period every week for a series of Rock sessions. Rock sessions! They laugh at George’s joke then they look embarrassed, because they’ve laughed when they were supposed to be being attentive and mournful-looking, and can George really even have made a joke, is that done, since she’s supposed to be feeling so sad and everything?

  How are you feeling? Mrs Rock said.

  I’m okay, George said. I think it’s because I don’t think I am.

  You’re okay because you don’t think you’re okay? Mrs Rock said.

  Feeling, George said. I think I’m okay because I don’t think I’m feeling.

  You don’t think you’re feeling? Mrs Rock said.

  Well, if I am, it’s like it’s at a distance, George said.

  If you’re feeling, it’s at a distance? Mrs Rock said.

  Like always having the sound of someone drilling a hole in a wall, not your wall, but a wall like very close to you, George said. Like, say you wake up one morning to the noise of someone along the road having work done on his or her house and you don’t just hear the drilling happening, you feel it in your own house, though it’s actually happening several houses away.

  Is it? Mrs Rock said.

  Which? George said.

  Um, Mrs Rock said.

  In any case, in both cases, the answer is yes, George said. It’s at a distance and it’s like the drilling thing. Anyway I don’t care any more about syntax. So I’m sorry I troubled you with that last which.

  Mrs Rock looked really confused.

  She wrote something down on her notepad. George watched her do it. Mrs Rock looked back up at George. George shrugged and closed her eyes.

  Because, George thought as she sat there with her eyes closed back before Christmas in Mrs Rock’s self-consciously comfortable chair in
the counselling office, how can it be that there’s an advert on TV with dancing bananas unpeeling themselves in it and teabags doing a dance, and her mother will never see that advert? How can the world be this vulgar?

  How can that advert exist and her mother not exist in the world?

  She didn’t say it out loud, though, because there wasn’t a point.

  It isn’t about saying.

  It is about the hole which will form in the roof through which the cold will intensify and after which the structure of the house will begin to shift, like it ought, and through which George will be able to lie every night in bed watching the black sky.

  It is last August. Her mother is at the dining-room table reading out loud off the internet.

  Meteor watchers are in luck tonight, her mother is saying. With clear skies predicted for the Perseid shower for much of the UK, up to sixty shooting stars an hour should be visible between late Monday evening and early Tuesday morning.

  Sixty shooting stars! Henry says.

  He runs round and round the table really fast making an eeeee noise as he goes.

  Sky News weather presenter Sarah Pennock, her mother says, said showers will fade during the night giving many people a chance to see the astronomical spectacle.

  Then her mother laughs.

  Sky news! her mother says.

  Henry. Headache. Enough, her father says.

  He catches Henry, lifts him up and turns him upside down.

  Eeeeeeeeeeee, Henry says. I am a star, I am shooting, and turning me upside down will not stop meeeeeeee.

  It’s just pollution, George says.

  You won’t say that when you see them shooting so beautiful over your head, her mother says.

  Fully, George says.

  Every meteor is a speck of comet dust vaporizing as it enters our atmosphere at thirty six miles per second, her mother reads.

  That’s not very fast, Henry says still upside down from beneath his jumper which has upended and fallen over his face. Cars go at thirty.

  Per second, not per hour, George says.

  One hundred and forty thousand miles an hour, her mother reads.