Conversations with Friends(72)

I never saw Bobbi in college, though I was convinced I would. I spent long periods lingering in the arts building, on the ramp where she usually smoked, or near the debating society rooms where they had free copies of the New Yorker and you could use their kitchen to make tea. She never appeared. Our timetables weren’t similar anyway. I wanted to run into her at a time that suited me, a time when I would appear wearing my camel coat, maybe with my arms full of books, and I could smile at her with the tentative smile of someone who wants to forget an argument. My overriding fear was that she would come into the sandwich shop where I worked and see that I had a job. Whenever a slim woman with a dark fringe came through the door, I turned compulsively toward the coffee machine and pretended to steam milk. In the preceding months, I felt as if I’d glimpsed the possibility of an alternative life, the possibility of accumulating income just by writing and talking and taking an interest in things. By the time my story was accepted for publication, I even felt like I’d entered that world myself, like I’d folded my old life up behind me and put it away. I was ashamed at the idea that Bobbi might come into the sandwich shop and see for herself how deluded I had been.

I told my mother about the phone call from my father. In fact, we had a fight about it over the phone, after which I felt too tired to speak or move for an hour. I called her ‘an enabler’. She said: oh it’s my fault, is it? Everything is my fault. She said his brother had seen him in town the day before and that he was fine. I repeated the incident from my childhood where he had thrown a shoe at my face. I’m a bad mother, she said, that’s what you’re saying. If that’s the conclusion you draw from the facts, that’s your business, I said. She told me I had never loved my father anyway.

According to you the only way to love someone is to let them treat you like shit, I said.

She hung up on me. Afterwards I lay on my bed feeling like a light had been switched off.

One day toward the end of November, Evelyn posted a video link on Melissa’s Facebook wall with the message: just came across this again and I’m DEAD. I could see from the thumbnail that the video had been filmed in the kitchen of Melissa’s house. I clicked and waited for it to load. The lighting in the video was buttery yellow, there were fairy lights strung up in the background, and I could see Nick and Melissa standing side by side at the kitchen countertops. Then the sound came on. Someone behind the camera was saying: okay, okay, settle down. The camerawork was shaky, but I saw Melissa turn to Nick, they were both laughing. He was wearing a black sweater. He nodded along as if she was signalling something to him, and then he sang the words: I really can’t stay. Melissa sang: but baby, it’s cold outside. They were singing a duet, it was funny. Everyone in the room was laughing and applauding and I could hear Evelyn’s voice saying, sh! sh! I had never heard Nick singing before, he had a sweet voice. So did Melissa. It was good the way they acted it out, Nick being reluctant and Melissa trying to make him stay. It suited them. They had obviously practised it for their friends. Anyone could see from the video how much they loved each other. If I had seen them like this before, I thought, maybe nothing would have happened. Maybe I would have known.

I only worked from 5 until 8 p.m. on weekdays, but by the time I got home I felt so exhausted I couldn’t eat. I fell behind on college work. With my hours in the sandwich shop, I had less time to finish my academic reading, but the real problem was my focus. I couldn’t concentrate. Concepts refused to arrange themselves into patterns, and my vocabulary felt smaller and less precise. After my second pay cheque came in, I withdrew two hundred euro from my bank account and put it in an envelope. On a slip of notepaper I wrote: thank you for the loan. Then I mailed it to Nick’s address in Monkstown. He never got back to me to say he received it, but by then I didn’t expect him to.

It was almost December. I had three pills left in the cycle, then two, then one. As soon as I finished the packet the feeling came back, like before. It lasted days. I went to class as usual, gritting my teeth. The cramps came on in waves and left me weak and sweating when they receded. A teaching assistant called on me to say something about the character of Will Ladislaw and although I had actually finished Middlemarch, I just opened and closed my mouth like a fish. Eventually I managed to say: no. I’m sorry.

That evening I walked home down Thomas Street. My legs were trembling and I hadn’t eaten a whole meal in days. My abdomen felt swollen, and for a few seconds I braced my body against a bicycle stand. My vision was beginning to disintegrate. My hand on the bicycle stand appeared translucent, like a photo negative held up in front of a light. The Thomas Street church was just a few steps ahead of me and I walked with a lopsided shuffle toward the door, holding my ribcage with one arm.

The church smelled of stale incense and dry air. Columns of stained glass rose up behind the altar like long piano-playing fingers and the ceiling was the white and mint-green colour of confectionery. I hadn’t been in a church since I was a child. Two old women were sitting off to the side with rosary beads. I sat at the back and looked up at the stained glass, trying to fix it in my visual field, as if its permanence could prevent my disappearance. This stupid disease never killed anyone, I thought. My face was sweating, or else it had been damp outside and I hadn’t noticed. I unbuttoned my coat and used the dry inside of my scarf to wipe my forehead.

I breathed in through my nose, feeling my lips part with the effort of filling my own lungs. I clasped my hands together in my lap. The pain kicked against my spine, radiating up into my skull and making my eyes water. I’m praying, I thought. I’m actually sitting here praying for God to help me. I was. Please help me, I thought. Please. I knew that there were rules about this, that you had to believe in a divine ordering principle before you could appeal to it for anything, and I didn’t believe. But I make an effort, I thought. I love my fellow human beings. Or do I? Do I love Bobbi, after she tore up my story like that and left me alone? Do I love Nick, even if he doesn’t want to fuck me any more? Do I love Melissa? Did I ever? Do I love my mother and father? Could I love everyone and even include bad people? I bowed my forehead into my clasped hands, feeling faint.