Page 62 of What It's Like in Words
Oh no, honey, you can’t stay…
Of course not, I didn’t mean that, I…
He waited for me to finish the sentence even though it was clear that I couldn’t. He reminded me that tonight was a one-time thing. We promised we would take space, remember? I told him that I was just cold, and he said that it was August. I said that he didn’t need to make me feel like I was insane, and he looked at me like I had something stuck in my teeth and he was the only one willing to point it out.
Enola, did it ever occur to you that if you feel insane there might be a reason?
Are you calling me insane?
He told me not to put words in his mouth and then opened his laptop and started writing as if I wasn’t there. I watched him and then gathered my clothes. I went for the bathroom, but he held out his arm. My flatmate is in there. Use these. He handed me a couple of sheets of paper torn from the skinny gray toilet roll on his desk. I held them awkwardly between my legs, then put them in the plastic bag over his door handle that he used as a bin.
I had wanted this so badly. His body. His hands. His smell. But what was it that I actually wanted? Because the sex was nevergood, was it? It was just a period of time where I had him. It was addictive. It was control. But he didn’t want me and he wasn’t even pretending to.
I got into my own bed after three. I kept the blinds and the windows open. The lights were stars, the traffic was lions, the footfall was wind rustling grass, and, as I closed my eyes, for the first time, I didn’t miss him.
CHAPTER 19
It was a day in late September, an Indian summer—whatever that meant—and Ruth and I lay on the grass in bikini bottoms. The ladies’ pond at Hampstead Heath was busy but not crowded.It’s because it’s just women, Ruth had said when we arrived. All around, limbs were draped over limbs and conversations drifted in the warm air. The pop and hiss of a tin, then Ruth passed me a gin and tonic. The condensation dripped onto my chest as I sipped the cool citrus. She asked when I would hear back from Diana. I explained that it could take three months.
Although it’s been ages since the book launch. God, I can’t believe I might have ruined this.
Ruth scratched my head. Diana knows how long it takes to write a book—don’t worry. I’m just so proud of you! And I know it’s been hard, everything with, you know.
I honestly feel much better.
I know, I can tell.
I turned onto my stomach and rested my head on my forearms, the marks faded and my wrists bare.
I asked Ruth how her job search was going. She said that she had seen a life coach who told her to make a list of things that she enjoyed and things that she didn’t. I told her that she could do anything. Not anymore, she said. We’re approaching thirty. I might have been able to do anything when I graduated, but now? I’m nearly middle-aged—
We arenotmiddle—
—with a CV full of jobs that I didn’t stay at for longer than a month.
I told her that anyone who interviewed her would see how brilliant she was. You’reyou, Roo. There isn’t anyone that you can’t talk to or any subject you can’t talk about.
You always do that, she said, tipping her drink into her mouth as if testing how high she could pour it from.
Do what?
Think too highly of me. I’m just a good blagger.
Then, she propped herself up on her elbows and said that Catherine was driving her crazy: Emily is the textbook success story and my parents were both the exception in that they managed to actually earn a living off their art. But I got the most useless attributes from both of them. The personality of an artist without the talent of one.
But she was wrong. Ruth was good at everything. Sometimes it seemed like she refused to own up to that because if she did then she might have to see something through.
I asked Ruth which of my parents she thought I would end up like but she looked uncomfortable. I turned onto my back and imagined that I was on the ocean bed as a plane moved through the blue like a shark. Ruth asked if my breasts had got bigger.
No, sadly, it’s just that time of the month.
She said that every month her left breast swelled to double the size. I told her that she had spectacular tits. She said that the life coach didn’t think that would help with the job search.
Progress for feminism, I said. Did you know that as we get older our body produces two eggs at once as a way of telling us to hurry the fuck up?
Excellent. Our bodies aren’t feminists then.
WE FINISHED OUR TINS, then went for a final swim. The pond was cold, and the smell of wildlife surrounded us. We floated in the sunlight until I decided to go home. Ruth said that she would stay for a bit.
