Conversations with Friends(68)

Then I picked the phone up and said: hello?

Hey, Nick said. Are you there? I think the signal did something weird just now.

No, I’m here. I heard you.

Oh. Are you all right? You sound upset.

I closed my eyes. When I spoke I could hear my voice thinning out and hardening like ice.

About you and Melissa? I said. Be real, Nick.

But you did want me to tell you, didn’t you?

Sure.

I just don’t want things to change between us, he said.

Relax about it.

I could hear him breathe in apprehensively. He wanted to reassure me, I could tell, but I wasn’t going to let him. People were always wanting me to show some weakness so they could reassure me. It made them feel worthy, I knew all about that.

How are you otherwise? he said. That scan is happening tomorrow, right?

Only then I remembered that I had given him the wrong date. He hadn’t forgotten, it was my mistake. He had probably set a reminder on his phone for the next day: ask Frances how the scan went.

Right, I said. I’ll let you know about it. The other phone is ringing so I’m going to go, but I’ll give you a call after the thing.

Yeah, do that. I hope it goes okay. You’re not worried about it, are you? I guess you don’t worry about things.

I held the back of my hand to my face silently. My body felt cold like an inanimate object.

No, that’s your job, I said. Talk soon, okay?

Okay. Keep in touch.

I hung up the phone. After that I put some cold water on my face and dried it, the same face I had always had, the one I would have until I died.

*



On the way to the station that evening my mother kept glancing at me, as if something about my behaviour was off-putting, and she wanted to reprimand me for it but couldn’t decide what it was. Eventually she told me to take my feet off the dashboard, which I did.

You must be relieved, she said.

Yeah, delighted.

How are you managing for money?

Oh, I said. I’m okay.

She glanced in the rear-view mirror.

The doctor didn’t say anything else, did he? she said.

No, that was it.

I looked out the window at the station. I had the sense that something in my life had ended, my image of myself as a whole or normal person maybe. I realised my life would be full of mundane physical suffering, and that there was nothing special about it. Suffering wouldn’t make me special, and pretending not to suffer wouldn’t make me special. Talking about it, or even writing about it, would not transform the suffering into something useful. Nothing would. I thanked my mother for the lift to the station and got out of the car.





28




That week I went to class every day and spent every evening in the library writing CVs and printing them off on the library printers. I had to get a job so I could give Nick the money back. I had become obsessed with repaying the money, as if everything else depended on it. Whenever he called me I hit the reject button and sent him texts saying I was busy. I said the scan was clear and there was nothing to worry about. Okay, he texted back. Is that good news? I didn’t reply. It would be really nice to see you, he wrote. Later he sent me an email saying: melissa mentioned bobbi moved out of your apartment, is everything all right? I didn’t reply then either. By Wednesday he sent me another email.

hey. i know you’re angry at me and i feel really bad about it. i would like if we could talk about what’s bothering you. at this point i’m presuming it has something to do with melissa but i guess i might be wrong about that too. i had the impression that you knew this kind of thing might happen and you just wanted me to tell you if it did. but maybe i was enormously naive about that and what you actually wanted was for it not to happen. i’d like to do what you want but i can’t if i don’t know what it is. otherwise maybe you’re not feeling well or something else has upset you. i find it hard not knowing if you’re ok. it would be really good to hear from you.



I didn’t write back.

Before class one day I bought myself a cheap grey notebook and used it to keep track of all my symptoms. I wrote them out very neatly with the date printed up at the top. It helped me to become more intimately acquainted with phenomena like fatigue and pelvic pain, which had previously seemed like vague discomforts with no particular beginning or end. Now I came to know them as personal nemeses which dogged me in various ways. The grey notebook even helped me to feel out the contours of words like ‘moderate’ and ‘severe’, which no longer felt ambiguous but definitive and categorical. I paid so much attention to myself that everything I experienced came to seem like a symptom. If I felt dizzy after getting out of bed, was that a symptom? Or what if I felt sad? I decided to be completist in my approach. For several days in the grey notebook, I noted down in tidy handwriting the phrase: mood swings (sadness).

Nick was having a birthday party that weekend in Monkstown, he was turning thirty-three. I didn’t know whether to attend or not. I read his email again and again while I tried to decide. On one reading it might give an impression of devotion and acquiescence, and on another it appeared indecisive or ambivalent. I didn’t know what I wanted from him. What I seemed to want, though I didn’t like to believe this, was for him to renounce every other person and thing in his life and pledge himself to me exclusively. This was outlandish not only because I had also slept with someone else during our relationship but because even now I was often preoccupied by other people, particularly Bobbi and how much I missed her. I didn’t believe that the time I spent thinking about Bobbi had anything to do with Nick, but the time he spent thinking about Melissa I felt as a personal affront.