Assembly

by Natasha Brown

  Moving in together – it might even be good for her career, she says. Her voice is muffled and questioning from within the walk-in wardrobe. More networking opportunities?

  She emerges with three dresses – bright, floral, patterned numbers – draped across her arms like limp brides. She sighs and sets them down next to me. Chiffon rolls, delicate and tidal, in the breeze from her open window.

  Anyway, we can’t put our lives on hold, she says. We have to live.

  •

  The wives and girlfriends are arranged between us in boy-girl-boy formation. Two are heavily pregnant, smiling out from behind big beach-ball bellies, pink and sweaty in the afternoon sun. Here, around Lou’s reclaimed-wood picnic table, I am as much an outsider as at the office. Neither man, nor wife. Unclassified. But my boyfriend is his usual chummy self. Sitting beside me, chatting and asking questions. Laughing with Lou and the rest. He can slot in anywhere. And he brings me, too. My ladder among the snakes.

  The next week, back in the office, the husband of one pregnant wife sits across from me. His name isn’t on the list. No name, no promotion. He sniffs air in. Cheeks puffed, lips tight and nostrils twitching, he obstinately avoids my eyes until finally, he says:

  It’s so much easier for you blacks and Hispanics.

  He says that’s why I was chosen, over qualified guys like him. He says he’s not opposed to diversity. He just wants fairness, okay?

  Okay? he says again.

  Okay?

  I am still a few sentences behind. But okay, okay, okay.

  •

  Explain air.

  Convince a sceptic. Prove it’s there. Prove what can’t be seen.

  A breezy brutality cuts you each day – how do you excuse it? Your experience? Sliced flesh. Your hope. Evaporation? You cannot cut through their perception of reality. Breathe. At night. It creeps out from under; white square against left breast. Grasps, spreads itself around; your neck, it tightens and squeezes. Wake – gasping, face wet, arms tense, chest (cold), don’t look at it; eyes up, the bulbs gleam eerie. It’s dark.

  In choking, quod erat demonstrandum.

  •

  The Head of Risk looks a bit ridiculous sat across from me. In a polo shirt with sunglasses pushed back into his tousled hair. Without the sharp-pressed blues and greys and whites of his weekday tailoring, he’s just another middle-aged man. His body soft and creasing. Rach is unsmiling, stirring her virgin Mojito with a wilting paper straw. Their dog laps water out of a dish beneath our table. I don’t know why the restaurant allows this.

  This thing has gone on longer than Rach intended. From flirtation to affair to an uncomfortable, secretive overlap with the wife; the eventual separation; and now their tentative, unspoken merger into shared life. Shared dog. And brunch.

  Rach chose. Why can’t I?

  This is an opportunity, it’s my chance. To stop the endless ascent. To leave my family better off. And all else behind. To transcend.

  Why shouldn’t I?

  And why must I convince this doctor – or anyone? I’ve made up my own mind. I want to scream it! My life. My choice. And I’ve made it. I chose.

  •

  I look at my coat; the dull lyocell feels soft and expensive in my hands. It fits. It’s right for walking into this quiet building on this leafy, architecturally interesting street; upstairs to the high-end reception area and then on through to the sunny consultation room. Across from this well-dressed doctor. I earned this coat and this doctor and this life and now this choice.

  She’s still talking. Explaining. Telling, telling, telling, telling –

  No.

  My voice is firm. I say I’ve made my decision.

  •

  Be the best. Work harder, work smarter. Exceed every expectation. But also, be invisible, imperceptible. Don’t make anyone uncomfortable. Don’t inconvenience. Exist in the negative only, the space around. Do not insert yourself into the main narrative. Go unnoticed. Become the air.

  Open your eyes.

  •

  Two sisters:

  One, four years younger, wants to do everything the elder does. Use the same cutlery, wear the same clothes. Go to the same school, the same university. And now, she’s at a firm just down the road. The sisters meet for lunch. The younger is sprinting down that same path and the elder can’t stop her, can’t hold her back. Can’t free her from the endless, crushing pursuit.

  •

  A buzz. He’s at the station already.

  Nearly there, I send back.

  TRANSCENDENCE (GARDEN PARTY)

  Thank you, he says into the sudden silence of the stopped engine. He looks down at the steering wheel. We’re parked on the gravel driveway outside his parents’ house. Beyond, across the lawn, a few windows glow orange against the night.

  He says he’s glad I came. With the biopsy, all that stuff – he pauses and turns to me. In the dim light, I see earnestness in his features. His eyes are dark shadows.

  ‘I’m just happy you’re okay,’ he says. Then leans over and kisses my cheek.

  Outside, it’s quiet and oppressively still. The wrought-iron entry gate has slid back into a closed grimace. Miniature lamp posts cast narrow yellow cones, illuminating a path up towards the house. The parents greet us at the door. Helen and George – first names, as they insist – bundle me inside. A radiator-bench hulks against one wall of their wide entryway. They’re all smiles, close and welcoming. The mother, Helen, rubs her son’s shoulder.

  They take me through to a cosy, carpeted side room with a crackling fire. Sit anywhere, they gesture towards the arrangement of sofas and armchairs. I do sit, on the worn floral two-seater beside the fire. The father opens a cabinet and reaches, spidery, into the rows of glasses and bottles. Their son chooses a reading chair opposite me, leans back and crosses his ankles. His body unfurls and twists as he eases into a yawing-stretch, his balled hands pull his arms up and out, ending in a slow and melancholy roar.

  ‘So,’ the father begins as he pours. ‘Tell me how you ended up in finance. Why aren’t you off shaking up change in the Labour Party?’ He winks. ‘Ushering in a new world order.’

  ‘She’s more of a Blairite,’ says the son.

  ‘Aha –’ The father looks back to me, intrigued, but the mother cuts him off, gently reproachful.

  ‘Politics, at this hour?’ She smiles at me.

  The father carries on pouring.

  ‘Alright, alright,’ he says with warm humour. ‘Another topic!’

  He replaces the decanter, then sits across from me beside his wife and their son, who’s now sprawled out on his chair, drink in hand. I feel too warm, sitting this close to the neatly flickering flames.

  ‘Gas!’ the father grins. ‘You spotted that? I know, I know it’s a cheat.’

  He tells me about the fireplace, and the tricky mantel restoration a few years prior. His son chips in. The mother, too. They all talk and I observe. Mostly – I am practised at saying nothing. I listen, react, ask, occasionally. They list some of tomorrow’s guests, family friends – political types, of course, but also creatives, academics, lawyers, and so on. A quietly dazzling array.

  What am I doing here?

  Since stepping on to the train, I’ve felt this gruesome inevitability. Like I can’t turn back. But I’m fascinated, too. I’ve met Georges before, many, across their various guises, the roles they assume. I have observed and examined and concluded before, but now here I am, seeing one at home. With his wife and son. I don’t want to be a part of it. I want to grab at it, grab its face and pull open its mouth, prise its jaws apart and reach down, in, deeper. Touch what’s inside.

  The son asks about his siblings, will they join us?

  ‘Ellie’s upstairs, already,’ the mother says. ‘It is late.’

  But the father still has questions. With excited and unwavering eye contact he asks my opinions on everything. Love Island? Cambridge? Knife crime; the BRICS; China’s investment in Africa?

 
; The questions sound less like questions than elaborately worded treatises.

  ‘—but we can’t very well let it carry on unfettered!’ He polishes off his drink, then clinks the empty tumbler down. ‘Can we?’

  The son lies back with his eyes closed. I am uneasy, too tired for such Socratic conversation.

  ‘Right, how about – oh, yes. This is a good one. Everyone will love this. The royal baby? Meghan Markle? Now that’s progress, that’s modernization. Inspiring stuff.’

  Their son, too, had been excited about the wedding. He’d planned a barbecue, put up Union Jack bunting, bought drinks and mixers and gathered friends over. They watched the BBC’s coverage with a smirking, wide-eyed sincerity. To him, and them, it seemed to signify – something. He makes eye contact with me from where he sits, across the fireplace.

  Inspirational, I agree.

  When we finally do say goodnight, the son insists on an impromptu house tour en route up to his bedroom. He’s an enthusiastic guide, opening doors with flourish by their brass knobs. After you… As we go, he spins unlikely tales about the property’s history or just recounts, fondly, his childhood memories. Playing Sardines here or hiding a broken vase over in that chest. The rooms are what I’d imagined: grand architecture dressed down in shabby country chic. Mostly, I am impressed by the corridors; they’re spacious – seemingly endless – with elaborate mouldings up where the walls finally give way to ceiling. The patterned carpets are well trodden, but bright and cared for. Perfectly laid along corners, up stairways, and through doors. He stops ahead of me, waiting to show off the library. I’m slow to catch up, stopping to take in the occasional artworks as though I’m at a gallery. It’s an eclectic collection; cheerfully framed prints (exhibition posters, classics) and photographs hang alongside serious-looking originals, properly stretched, mounted and framed. Plus a few that I assume were painted by the children themselves.

  He says the library was his favourite room, growing up. Though he admits it’s more of a large study.

  ‘Just with rather a lot of books!’

  A few, he points out, were written by his father. Others, older, pertain to individuals from or aspects relating to his meticulously documented ancestral history. A couple, newer, make reference to the father – if only obliquely. Some are just books.

  ‘My father made a name for himself in this room,’ he says. The line sounds rehearsed. His father had started at a conservative think tank, then advised policy makers. Bigger and bigger names, morphing his own into a talisman of shadowy political influence. Who knows how much of it is true? I have no way to verify the father’s grandiose anecdotes. Still, those shadows loom over the son. He chases after them. But wouldn’t he rather do something else?

  ‘What else is as important as this?’ he says. Irritation, or perhaps anger, flashes across his eyes. He leans back against the desk, hugs his arms over his chest. Says: he wishes he could be like me. Take up a soulless City job, make a metric shit ton of money. But all this – he waves an obligatory arm at the musty shelves around him – it demands more of him. There’s a legacy to uphold. It’s a compulsion, he says. He has a compulsion to make his mark on this world! It’s been bred into him. He allows himself a sour chuckle at that last quip.

  It’s late. We should go to bed.

  He tells me I’m easy to talk to. That we’re honest with each other. He says he loves that about me. Okay, he says. He’s going to tell me something. Something honest. Something he’s never told anyone. He keeps a – no, not a journal, it’s a sort of biography, he’s continually writing, crafting it. His story, his life, he’s penning it over and over, every day, in his mind. Everything he does, before he does it, he tries it against the pages of that biography. Does it fit, does it meet the standard? Could it sit on these shelves? He needs a yes, or it doesn’t happen.

  That’s how he lives, he says.

  I can’t see much in the shallow dark of his bedroom. It’s strange to have ventured into the place that shaped him years ago. I can make out the blocky silhouette of a bookcase, well stocked and serious from his teen-aged reading. A few dim stars glow-in-the-dark against the ceiling.

  Beside me, sleeping, he is formless as water. Unperturbed by the day’s anxieties. He breathes steadily. With him, I have become more tolerable to the Lous and Merricks of this world. His acceptance of me encourages theirs. His presence vouches for mine, assures them that I’m the right sort of diversity. In turn, I offer him a certain liberal credibility. Negate some of his old-money political baggage. Assure his position left of centre.

  I turn my phone to silent. Perhaps he doesn’t recognize the pragmatism of our coupling as I do, or Rach would. As his father surely must. But it’s there. In his imagined autobiography, this relationship will ultimately reduce to a sentence – maybe two. Thin evidence of his open-mindedness, his knack for cultural bridge-building.

  Everything is a trade.

  Lou slides on to my screen. The PA’s offline, his email says, and we need Monday-morning flights to New York. Merrick wants us at the Americas onsite. I close my eyes – exhale – at the implication. I want to tell him no, tell him to get his own fucking ticket. The screen’s rectangular echo remains, luminous against my eyelids. Now isn’t the time to be difficult, I know, and I’ll have to book my own ticket anyway (inhale). What’s one more? He’s included his passport number, expiry date and a smiley-face at the end.

  Exhale,

  inhale.

  Booked, I reply, after. 7.35 a.m. LHR. Boarding pass attached.

  I almost start scrolling, down to where I know I’ll find my sister’s name, with the link she sent me yesterday to some show or other we’ve both been wanting to see. Instead, I let the screen dim, then flick, to nothing.

  Absent my phone’s glow, the dark is perfect. My eyes are slow to adjust. The quiet here is absolute. I feel unobserved. Though I know what is to come, and what is expected of me, at tomorrow’s party. I understand the function I’m here to perform. There’s a promise of enfranchisement and belonging, yes. A narrative peak in the story of my social ascent. Of course, they – the family, even the guests – knew I could not turn down such an invitation.

  I will be watched, that’s the price of admission. They’ll want to see my reactions to their abundance: polite restraint, concealed outrage, and a base, desirous hunger beneath. I must play this part with a veneer of new-millennial-money coolness; serving up savage witticisms alongside the hors d’oeuvres. It’s a fictionalization of who I am, but my engagement transforms the fiction into truth. My thoughts, my ideas – even my identity – can only exist as a response to the partygoers’ words and actions. Articulated along the perimeter of their form. Reinforcing both their self-hood, and its centrality to mine. How else can they be certain of who they are, and what they aren’t? Delineation requires a sharp, black outline.

  ‘That’s a pretty dress.’

  The mother looks over at me, from across the kitchen. We’re awash in sweet light. A wall of bifold French doors accordions open, spilling the kitchen out on to a vast garden and rushing us with crisp morning air. Beyond, four men in nondescript white uniforms inspect spots around the lawn. Metal poles, bundles of white fabric and coiled rope are set out around them. They don’t look over.

  The mother takes a mug down from a cabinet, and fills it from a gently steaming tea pot. She slides it along the counter towards me.

  ‘Rosemary, from the garden.’

  Pinpricks flush my arms as I touch my fingertips to the hot sides of the cup. She details the day’s plan. Casual, she emphasizes. A finger buffet, a little music.

  ‘That’s the marquee, they’re setting up.’ She nods towards the men. ‘Christine – our caterer – recommended it. Can’t trust this weather to hold up!’

  She stands a little to my side, still looking out at the garden.

  It’ll be quite the party.

  ‘Well, we wanted to mark the occasion, yes. Forty years. But really, it’s just a good excuse t
o bring everyone together. Family, friends of the family.’ She smiles at me again, with sympathetic brows. Her face is squarish, only finely lined, and softened with a white, peachy fuzz.

  ‘It’s lovely to have you with us,’ she says.

  Opened up like this, the kitchen is big, limitless: the entire garden, the hills beyond, even the pale sky is within reach. The floor is tiled slate, and there’s a large island with a hob in the centre. Over on the back wall, oak cabinets display old-fashioned decorative plates and glassware. The son is upstairs still, sleeping. I probably should have stayed up there in the bedroom and read, or just lain beside him, and waited.

  ‘Toast?’

  She sets four slices into the machine and clicks it down. Peanut butter, Marmite, jam – she lays the spreads out, placing each on the counter as she names it, next to our mugs. I squint at the handwritten labels on each jam jar, then choose one that looks like apricot. Toast on plates. She’s efficient with a blunt knife, working butter thinly across the charred surface. Like a monk refusing to enjoy the ritual, or succumb to any excess. But then she bites, and chews. And her eyes close as if to better taste and smell. I watch her swallow. Then sip tea. Bite again, chew. Swallow.

  Everything feels suspended.

  The mother, oblivious to this sudden slowing of our time, bites once more. Her jaw grinds rhythmically, bulging and elongating; tendons, emerging taut, flicker up past her ear and into greying wisps of hair. By her temple, a bone or cartilage or some other hard aspect of her bobs and strains against the stretched-white skin. The entire side of her face is engaged in this elaborate mechanical action until, climactically, the soft-hung skin of her neck contracts familiar and the ground-down-mushed-up toast, saliva and butter, worked into a paste, squeezes down; is forced through the pulsing oesophagus, is swallowed.