Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine(71)

I drank it with the focused, single-minded determination of a murderer, but my thoughts just could not, would not be drowned—like ugly, bloated corpses, they continued to float to the surface in all their pale, gas-filled ugliness. There was the horror of my own self-delusion, of course: him, me . . . what was I thinking? Worse, far worse than that, was the shame. I curled myself into a ball, tried to make myself occupy as small a space in the bed as possible. Despicable. I had made a fool of myself. I was an embarrassment, like Mummy had always told me. A sound escaped into the pillow, an animal whine. I couldn’t open my eyes. I did not want to see even a centimeter of my own skin.

I’d thought I could solve the problem of myself so easily, as if the things that were done all those years ago could actually be put right. I knew that people weren’t supposed to exist as I did, work and vodka and sleep in a constant, static cycle in which I spun around on myself, into myself, silent and alone. Going nowhere. On some level, I realized that this was wrong. I’d lifted my head up just high enough to see that, and, desperate to change, I’d clutched at a random straw, let myself get carried away, imagining some sort of . . . future.

I cringed. No, that’s wrong. Cringe denotes embarrassment, fleeting shame. This was my soul curling into whiteness, an existential blank where a person had once been. Why did I start to allow myself to think I could live a normal life, a happy life, the kind other people had? Why did I think that the singer could be part of that, help bring it about? The answer stabs at me: Mummy. I wanted Mummy to love me. I’d been alone for so long. I needed someone by my side to help me manage Mummy. Why wasn’t there someone, anyone, to help me manage Mummy?

I played the scene in my head again, over and over, remembering the second thing that I’d realized that night. It was later and I’d been standing further back, right in the middle of the crowd. I’d gone to get yet another drink, and the path to the front of the stage had closed up while I’d been at the bar. I’d downed the vodka—my sixth? Seventh? I don’t remember. He couldn’t see my face from where I was standing, I was aware of that. The band had stopped playing—someone had broken a string and was replacing it.

He leaned in to the microphone and cocked an eyebrow. I saw his lazy, handsome smile. He peered, unseeing, into the darkness.

“What are we going to do now, then? Since Davie’s taking so fucking long to change that string.” He turned back toward a sullen man who gave him the finger without looking up from his guitar. “Right then, here’s something to keep you entertained, ladies!” he said, then turned his back, undid his belt, dropped his jeans and wiggled his pale white buttocks at us.

Some people in the crowd laughed. Some people shouted insults. The singer retorted with an obscene gesture. I realized with uncompromising clarity that the man onstage before me was, without any doubt, an arse. The band started their next song and everyone was jumping up and down and I then was at the bar, requesting a double.



Later. I woke again. I kept my eyes closed. I was curious about something. What, I wondered, was the point of me? I contributed nothing to the world, absolutely nothing, and I took nothing from it either. When I ceased to exist, it would make no material difference to anyone.

Most people’s absence from the world would be felt on a personal level by at least a handful of people. I, however, had no one.

I do not light up a room when I walk into it. No one longs to see me or to hear my voice. I do not feel sorry for myself, not in the least. These are simply statements of fact.

I have been waiting for death all my life. I do not mean that I actively wish to die, just that I do not really want to be alive. Something had shifted now, and I realized that I didn’t need to wait for death. I didn’t want to. I unscrewed the bottle and drank deeply.

Ah, but things come in threes, don’t they say? The best was saved for last, and it came toward the end of the set. My focus was slightly filmy by that stage—the vodka—and I didn’t trust my eyes. I screwed them up, strained to confirm what I thought I was looking at. Smoke, gray, hazy, deadly smoke, emanating from the side of the stage and along the front. The room started to fill with it. The man next to me coughed; a psychosomatic action, since dry ice, stage smoke, prompts no such reflex. I felt it drift over me, saw how the lights and the lasers cut through it. I closed my eyes. In that moment, I was back there, in the house, upstairs. Fire. I heard screams, and could not tell if they were mine. The bass drum beat fast with my heart, the snare drum skittered like my pulse. The room was full of smoke, and I couldn’t see. Screams, my own and hers. The bass drum, the snare. The spurt of adrenaline, speeding the tempo, nauseatingly strong, too strong for my small body, for any small body. The screaming. I pushed out, out, pushed past every obstacle, stumbling, panting, until I was outside, out in the dark black night. Back to the wall, I slumped down, sprawled on the ground, the screaming in my ears, body still pounding. I vomited. I was alive. I was alone. There was no living thing in the universe that was more alone than me. Or more terrible.



I woke again. I had not closed the curtains and light was coming in, moonlight. The word connotes romance. I took one of my hands in the other, tried to imagine what it would feel like if it was another person’s hand holding mine. There have been times when I felt that I might die of loneliness. People sometimes say they might die of boredom, that they’re dying for a cup of tea, but for me, dying of loneliness is not hyperbole. When I feel like that, my head drops and my shoulders slump and I ache, I physically ache, for human contact—I truly feel that I might tumble to the ground and pass away if someone doesn’t hold me, touch me. I don’t mean a lover—this recent madness aside, I had long since given up on any notion that another person might love me that way—but simply as a human being. The scalp massage at the hairdressers, the flu jab I had last winter—the only time I experience touch is from people whom I am paying, and they are almost always wearing disposable gloves at the time. I’m merely stating the facts.