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Sally Rooney
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She has attached a picture: his small green casserole dish on one of the hotplates. Disorientated feeling, as though his centre of gravity disturbed, walls shifting: like passing out, he thinks. As if he will pass out there and then, and at the thought, remembering, he sits down on a kitchen chair. The little green dish on the stovetop, what time you home. Christ, he thinks, what is he doing, what on earth. In the bath the other night, murmuring in her ear, I want you to be happy. Was he lying then: and why, for what, for what possible reason. Strong sudden impulse he feels to begin praying, already mouthing the silent words, and then frightened by himself he stops. To pray for what: forgiveness, guidance. From whom: God he barely believes in, sentimental Jesus commanding us to love one another. In over his head, fathoms over, and something has to be done. How capable he has been of holding in his mind with no apparent struggle such contradictory beliefs and feelings. The false true lover, the cynical idealist, the atheist at his prayers. Everything lethally intermixed, everything breaching its boundaries, nothing staying in its right place. She, the other, himself. Even Christine, Ivan, this married girlfriend of his. Their father: from beyond the grave. Conceptual collapse of one thing into another, all things into one. No. To answer first the simple question of where to sleep tonight. Marry me. I love you. What time you home.
[...] Ivan said he could come and see her during the week sometimes, if she wanted. Work at her house in the daytime, while she went into the office. Dinner together in the evening, maybe watch a film afterwards, his arm around her shoulders. All the unhappiness that life has visited on them both: dissolved however briefly in that feeling, shared image of that quiet contentment. Maybe, she said. Light and silvery high the music feathers through the air around her, sadly soft. And why not after all. Why not accept wholeheartedly life’s offerings. [...]
They hang up. Margaret rises from the table, turns the lights on, fills the kettle. Rushing sound of the tap. Her reflection dim and bubbled in the dark window glass. Gradually these situations arise, she can see that now, just one step after another, and by the time a few weeks or months have passed, your life is no longer recognisable. You are lying to almost everyone you know. You have come to care too passionately, too fully and completely, for an unsuitable person. You can no longer visualise your own future: not only five years from now, but five months, even five weeks. Everything is in disarray. All this for one person, for the relation that exists between you. Your fidelity to the idea of that relation. In the light of that, you have come to hold too loosely many other important things: the respect of your family, the admiration of your colleagues and acquaintances, even the understanding of your closest friends. Life, after all, has not slipped free of its netting. There is no such life, slipping free: life is itself the netting, holding people in place, making sense of things. It is not possible to tear away the constraints and simply carry on a senseless existence. People, other people, make it impossible. But without other people, there would be no life at all. Judgement, reproval, disappointment, conflict: these are the means by which people remain connected to one another. Because of Margaret’s friends, her former marriage, her family, colleagues, people in town, she is not entirely free to live the limitless spontaneous life that she has imagined for herself. But because of Ivan, because of whatever there is between them, she is, on the other hand, not entirely free to return to her previous existence either. The demands of other people do not dissolve; they only multiply. More and more complex, more difficult. Which is another way, she thinks, of saying: more life, more and more of life.
Outside on the street, the first mouthful of cold dark air, yes. No need to go home yet. Stay in town for a while, have a drink, settle his nerves. And on that point, he takes from his wallet a foil sheet and tosses back without tasting two pills. Slipping phone from pocket he walks back towards the Green, tapping out a few messages: You around? With what seems touching loyalty Gary replies: Few of us in Mulligan’s. Seat here with your name on it. [...]
this is oddly sweet
[...] No, he thinks, no, no: the only question is how to choose. Should he take the cash prize or the new car, what do you think. Pitting one philosophy against another. Maturity against youth. Yes, sobriety against decadence, intellect against appetite, he could go on. Better instead to specify. On the one hand, the love of his life, high principle of his conscience, his complicated feelings for whom have prevented him, let’s be honest, from developing any kind of serious attachment to anyone else for the last, whatever, fourteen years. Certain difficulties, certain problems to be negotiated, but isn’t that what it means to love someone? On the other hand, his captive, his tormentor, on whom he has lavished how much money, jewellery, gifts, who likes it a little rough, who has with mischievous pleasure outwitted him at every move, and with whom he is feebly and defeatedly in love. Each attempt to contend with her, to win back some little portion of his pride, has only sunk him deeper. Good against evil.
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[...] Yes, in retrospect, Ivan can see, with the eyes of an adult, that Peter was not coping very well at the time. But in the real chronology of events, Ivan was only sixteen. He had his own problems, his chess, his school, and so on. His painful infatuation with that girl Kelly Heneghan who didn’t seem to know he was alive. Frankly, if he had to admit the truth, Ivan found his brother’s presence in the house uncomfortable. Peter barely spoke to anyone, barely made eye contact. For hours at a time he would just sit staring into space, doing nothing. And he cried, okay, not openly, but you could hear him crying in his room. It was awkward. Ivan had his own life to worry about. What was he supposed to do? In the evenings after school, he started avoiding Peter’s company, excusing himself early from dinner, slipping out of the room whenever Peter entered. Obviously the situation was sad, with Sylvia being in hospital and everything, Ivan was sincerely sad for that, but the doctors said the recovery was going as well as could be expected, and it’s not like Ivan could solve the problem. It was just something he didn’t want to think about, honestly. What good would come from dwelling on it, worrying about it all the time? And the whole thing dragged on and on. Even after Peter moved back to Dublin, he would come home periodically and lie in his room for days on end, not talking, not even eating meals. For a year it was like this, on and off. The brother who had looked out for and defended Ivan was gone, and in his place was this unnerving kind of ghostly presence, practically haunting the house, making everyone feel bad. One of these nights, Ivan woke up thirsty and went downstairs to get himself a glass of water, yes, fine. And in the kitchen he found Peter sitting alone at the table. It was late, maybe three o’clock in the morning, and he tried to creep back out, but Peter had already seen him. You don’t have to run away from me, he said. I’m not a monster. Ivan stood frozen in the doorway, saying nothing. Why even think about all this now? Peter was crying then, openly, with tears running down his face. I’m just really scared, Ivan, he said. I don’t know what to do. I don’t have anyone to talk to. That’s what he said, I’m scared, I don’t have anyone to talk to, that’s how Ivan remembers it. And instead of acknowledging that he had heard these words spoken, Ivan just turned around silently and went back up to bed. It was a conversation he didn’t want to have. Peter was like twenty-six, Ivan was only sixteen or seventeen, it wasn’t any of his business. He was just a child. Wasn’t it, in a way, actually wrong of Peter to put him in that position? [...]
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[...] She’s sitting at the table he can tell from the directionality of her voice though he can only from here see the ceiling and part of the far wall. Clink of teaspoon also he hears. I don’t know, says Sylvia. I think it might have been the shock of seeing us in the same room together. Allowing his eyes to close he lets out something like a groan hearing them both laughing. Help, says Naomi. My girlfriends have unionised. Okay I’m getting up, he says, I’m getting up now, I’m fine. [...]
lol
I was seriously worried about you, she says. I’m not even going to tell you where my mind went.
He says nothing.
You know if anything happened to you, that would be horrific for me, she goes on.
I don’t really want that responsibility, he remarks.
He’s looking out the window still but he can see her shaking her head. Yeah, well, tough, she says. How are you thirty-two and you’re like, I don’t want the responsibility. You think you can vanish into thin air and it won’t affect me?
Yes I would like he thinks to live in such a way that I could vanish into thin air at any time without affecting anyone and in fact I feel that for me this would constitute the perfect and perhaps the only acceptable life. At the same time I want desperately to be loved. Aloud he says: Whatever, I don’t know.
Social as well as philosophical of course: the problem. All very well if Emily knows or suspects, or if Janine, or Max, Leah, even Gary, maybe. But what about people in general, the public, the whole of Dublin talking. And with that idea in mind he almost wants to forget the idea, throw both of them over and find some nice normal girl instead, someone without any radical intellectual commitments or bizarre sexual proclivities, yes, someone normal. Get married, give Christine a few grandkids. Overhear the other legal wives saying pleasantly: She’s so nice. To spend his life making conversation with such a person, working to finance the lifestyle of such a person, would, of course, represent a kind of spiritual death for him. But perhaps that would be preferable to the kind of social death that awaits him now. What will he tell people, what will he say. What does he think he’s doing. Not to hold anything above anything else, to keep everything equal: a delusion, not even a fantasy, a burdensome quasi-administrative task at which he can only repeatedly fail. Encountering in everyday situations new irreducibly complex dilemmas, thickets of intersecting desires and preferences. Having to meet the needs of the moment, every moment, forever. But why. Why should it be so difficult. He likes her, likes the other, and they both like him. To hold a little space for that. Surely everyone knows and accepts privately that relationships are complicated. Forget anyway about what people think. If it were anyone else after all. He would be the first to say what harm, no one else’s business, good for them. Why should you care, what are you so insecure about. No one is taking your beloved monogamy away, don’t worry. [...]
omg stop it's literally fine
Waiting then in silence empty-handed. Suspended floating, overwarm, heavy overcoat he hasn’t taken off. Before him the flat grey plane of the closed door. And was it real he wonders. She, the raincoat, flower-like her face, the live stream, captured pawn. You’re being very decent she said. Half in love with her himself by the time she was walking away. How is it possible he could have been so wrong about everything. Sitting there beside him quietly she seemed to embody the inexpressible depth of his misunderstanding: of her, his brother, interpersonal relations, life itself. And yet she didn’t remonstrate. I can imagine what you must think of me. To imagine, Ivan. To credit him that is with such taste. Like the Italian girlfriend he stared at over dinner. One thing to look of course. A woman like that: difficult actually to believe. Beautiful, yes, but not just that. Something more also. The way she held herself. [...]