by Naoise Dolan
‘I’m not talking to you,’ I told him.
‘I can see that.’
‘No, but I’m not.’
‘Yes, evidently that’s the case.’
* * *
Some people wore not caring about money as a trait. I’d seen online that Julian’s ex Charlie lived in Shoreditch and said without elaboration that she ‘created’. If your work was an intransitive verb then that meant your trust fund subsidised it. Good for Charlie. Charming for Charlie to be a free spirit. For me, whatever paid rent was the decision. Sometimes there were multiple ways of paying rent, and then I got to pick between them. And sometimes there was no way.
I stood on Julian’s balcony – while I still could. The clouds were bloated and the roads swelled with cars. My first Airbnb had been down along the other side of the port. I’d go back there, or somewhere similar. I’d felt different away from the cockroaches, but I saw now we had plenty in common – insects, climbers, cold inside. We thrived in hostile settings. There were places we did better, but nowhere could kill us. I hated them not because they were contaminants, but because they weren’t. There were no pathogens they could spread that I didn’t carry myself. Living uphill, away from them, I’d forgotten that. I’d thought my blood was hot.
* * *
That night in his bed, I told Julian we were now once again on speaking terms. He said he couldn’t see the practical import of this pronouncement, given that I had continued to say words and acknowledge his responses throughout putatively not talking to him, but he appreciated the thought.
‘But I don’t think I was ever obsessed with you in a romantic way,’ I said, ‘or even in a sexual way.’
‘I was never obsessed with you, full stop.’
‘I thought we were past that.’
‘No, I’m serious. The only obsession I’ve got room for is my job.’
‘Right, because you’re so busy and important.’
‘I thought we were past that, too,’ he said.
I wondered if he really wanted me to visit and if I could show up in Frankfurt with my suitcase and winter coat. He often said he didn’t meet many people like me. But I didn’t know if that meant there was necessarily a vacancy for them. He’d managed quite far without me, so it didn’t make sense to assume he’d welcome me back in his life.
‘Thanks for your time,’ I said.
‘You too. I haven’t been this happy in quite a while.’
‘Jesus, you must have been a miserable fucker then.’
He laughed. I could always make him laugh by saying something cynical in a thicker Dublin accent than I actually had.
Then I said a number of things. I said no one made me laugh as much as he did – which was nearly true enough to actually be true – and that I’d miss him. ‘And you say it’s no big deal buying me things,’ I said, ‘but you think about money so much I assume it’s not worthless to you. So it’s nice of you to spend it on me. You’ve never been available to me, and I’ve spent a lot of time resenting that, but it’s not like I’ve spliced myself open for you either. And you introduced me to Miles. You took me to see him in hospital. You’ve told me more about Kat than I’ve told you about my exes. And you were my first friend here.’
‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘– I think. Most of that was quite complimentary.’
He added that he’d thought of something he liked about me. ‘You’re donnish,’ he said, ‘you’re careful with language, you strain everything for its meaning, and you’re not easily pleased with how other people put sentences together. Which is an interesting trait in someone who can’t orally distinguish between “three” and “tree”. But when it comes to money, you’ve got no taste. And no squeamishness – about asking for it, discussing it, hoarding it. It’s not often I meet someone who can handle it without flinching. Everyone is embarrassed. They feel compromised by even mentioning it. You’re like that about other things, but not about money. When it comes to money, you’re a little animal.’
He added: ‘I was afraid to ask this earlier, but – come with me to Frankfurt.’
I heard myself say yes.
48
December
On my lunch break the next day, I started a new message to Edith. Within the logic of our imaginary correspondence, she deserved a phantom explanation.
there’s nothing for me here. you, tony and cyril were the only people i belonged with. a little with miles, a little with the other teachers, but never completely. hong kong didn’t make me happy, so i guess i’ll try frankfurt with a banker who’d sell his mother to diversify his portfolio. that’s not fair to say about julian. but none of this is fair. and that is okay for me to say, because when i say it’s not fair i mean it’s my fault.
I stopped typing. None of it concerned her now.
She’d once asked me how I made decisions. I said: poorly, what about you. She said she did pros–cons lists. ‘Usually weighted ones,’ she’d said, ‘because some pros will be more pro than other pros and some cons will be more con. And you need a column for implications.’
‘Implications?’
‘Potentially important knock-on effects. Not a proper pro or con because you don’t know for sure that it will happen – but likely enough to be worth considering. I favour the PMI table.’
‘What?’
‘Pluses, minuses, implications.’
On a napkin she’d sketched a mock PMI table for me. She was always drawing me things on napkins.
I’d asked how she’d decided on law. Edith said it was that or medicine, and with law you qualified sooner. ‘What about Cambridge?’ I said, and she said her favourite teacher had gone there. The hardest decision she’d ever made was coming out at uni. Hong Kong international students talked. If anyone had wanted to ruin her life, they could have done so very easily by telling the Zhangs. But as Edith saw it, she would never be happy if she couldn’t accept herself. She hadn’t needed a PMI table to tell her that, but still recommended the exercise.
In three weeks’ time, we’d be a continent apart.
* * *
For their second-to-last lesson before Christmas, my twelve-year-olds learned that British English speakers distinguished between ‘bring’ and ‘take’. ‘Bring’ was for things that were going from ‘there’ to ‘here’, e.g. ‘I’ll bring you some biscuits from the other room.’ ‘Take’, however, was for things you were moving from ‘here’ to ‘there’, e.g. ‘Could you take the biscuits back to the other room?’ The textbook said a speaker’s ability to observe this distinction was a sure way to tell if they were native or non.
I had never heard of the bring/take rule. In Dublin you mostly said ‘bring’. The ‘clearly unnatural’, ‘incorrect’ example sentences in the textbook looked fine to me: ‘I’ll bring you to the airport tomorrow’, ‘I’ll bring my camera with me when I go to Spain on holiday’. The textbook always referenced European travel destinations.
I practised in my head to ensure I used the right verb with Julian when he flew off next week. ‘Don’t forget to take your suitcase.’ ‘Will the taxi take you there on time?’
We’d fought about whether to fly business or economy. He said he’d buy my ticket to have someone to talk to in business. I said people would think I’d paid for it myself and I’d never get over the social embarrassment. Imagine, I said, being seen as the sort of person who’d pay that much money for literally a seat. Julian said no one would ever think I’d paid for business. I said why the fuck would he say that, he said he’d meant it by way of reassurance, and then the argument wasn’t about tickets anymore. In the end it didn’t matter, because work needed me to stay an extra week until the new teacher’s visa came through. ‘That’s not your problem,’ Julian said. I’d said no, it wasn’t, but that I didn’t mind.
‘I still don’t understand,’ Tammy Kwan said after I’d explained bring/take
for the fourth time. Tammy Kwan had my sympathies.
* * *
There wasn’t space for a proper PMI table on Edith’s napkin. I went to MUJI in Hopewell Centre to buy paper. Near the stationery display, a small white aroma diffuser misted out cedarwood oil. I paid thirty Hong Kong dollars for a large recycled notebook with a red spine. The inside was blank. The woman at the till said she liked those ones because you could fill them however you wanted.
In my bedroom I opened the first page and wrote: ‘I’m sorry.’ My pre-teen students had introduced me to erasable pens. They liked them because no one would know you’d made a mistake. I rubbed out ‘I’m sorry’, wrote ‘PMI table’, underlined it with a ruler, also from MUJI, ran over it with a highlighter, also from MUJI, and then started.
* * *
Julian and I had planned to go to the beach on Sunday in mid-December, but the morning news said the shore had been affected by an oil spill coming from mainland waters. White bubbly clumps lined the sand like styrofoam. Authorities were asking why it had taken China a day to notify Hong Kong of the ship collision which had caused the incident.
We had sex instead. I liked the authoritative clink of his belt when he undid it. Afterwards I curled up like a woodlouse and asked why he wanted me to come with him.
‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘I suppose I enjoy your company.’
‘I don’t even enjoy my company.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘you don’t seem to.’
‘So are we friends again or what?’
‘We’re always friends,’ he said. ‘Christ.’
‘Don’t take His name in vain.’
‘You don’t believe in any of it.’
‘I feel Catholic guilt when we’re fucking, but I’m not sure if fucking you is the source of guilt or the penance.’
‘ “Better than Hail Marys”. Can I have that in writing?’
No matter how acerbic I was with Julian, it ultimately supported his view of himself as someone who could take it, and of me as doing it to please him. He enjoyed my sharpness primarily because it was an impressive thing to have on retainer.
‘You blaspheme quite often actually,’ I said. ‘In bed, I mean. Babe.’
‘Get fucked.’
He said ‘Get fucked’ the smiling Irish way. When I first met him I’d consciously dialled back on it, also ‘fuck off’ and ‘you’re a cunt’, because the English for some reason did not find such statements affectionate. I wondered which other phrases he’d plucked. I felt like a bird he kept for quills. I remembered the times I’d lain on my stomach and he’d rubbed my back, and I thought, very sensibly: thief. He liked Irish English because he knew the most interesting words were ones he’d never say. I detested him violently, though I was well aware that the take where I stirred his inner poet was more flattering than likelier one that he’d got used to having me and I didn’t give him much trouble.
Which fairly described how I felt about him.
I started persuading myself that my behaviour was different, then realised I loved the idea that we were calmly exploiting each other and would both go to hell when we died. If he went first, I’d get a bigger advance on my memoir. Those heady days of pickpocketing bankers, I’d write; and then I settled down with one in Richmond. He commuted, telling people it was because I liked green spaces, being Irish. One could hardly plant a Celtic soul in Canary Wharf – or a soul of any kind, he added, ironically of course. He married me, took a mistress, and bought me an AGA. He denied this last was to atone for his indiscretions, because that would mean either of us had feelings. I often dined with his mother.
Since Julian would never be my boyfriend, we’d never marry. The fact that I could imagine a world where we did, but not one where we were happy, was interesting.
I couldn’t tell if he thought I wasn’t good enough for him, if I was ascribing him that opinion so I could hate him, or something else altogether. Maybe the something else was that he liked having money and I liked being good at men. Neither of us liked much else about ourselves. Julian knew he was small fry compared to his clients, and I knew I was terrible at men if my methods made them happy and me miserable. But we backed each other up. Both our egos thrived on him being the richest man I’d ever been good at.
Not even that could be the worst thought. Nothing in words was the worst thought. Something was inside me. Every time it hit my consciousness, I redrafted it to something else.
But I’d go to Frankfurt. We suited. Julian was nicer now than he had been a year ago, a positive trend which I hoped would continue. I had no evidence that he wished to change and probably only thought he did because I’d want to if I were him, which to some minds would militate against our being together – but I didn’t care.
I said: ‘Will we keep having sex in Frankfurt?’
‘I don’t know’ – as much as to say: we might really be brains in jars for all we know.
‘How can you be a theist about God and agnostic about whether we have sex?’
‘Quite easily, Ava. I’d wager many people believe in God and don’t have strong opinions on whether we should have sex.’
‘Some of them are pretty sure Edith and I shouldn’t.’
It came out before I’d finished forming the thought. We pretended I hadn’t said it.
Two weeks left, then I’d be thousands of miles from her.
* * *
My PMI table took hours to do. For the weighting, I gave something very important a ‘3’, moderately important a ‘2’, and trivial a ‘1’.
When I added the columns, it was a draw.
49
I packed Julian’s shirts with just the bedside lamp on. They’d become so familiar that I took artistic pride in noting different cuts and textures. The COS one had a white rectangular label inside. He said he thought I liked that shirt more than he did.
‘Just the label,’ I said. ‘It’s a nice label. And the cotton smells fresh. What one are you wearing now?’
He couldn’t remember. I put my hand on his neck and said let’s have it off and see.
‘You’re acting strangely,’ he said.
I said: ‘I thought you liked that about me.’
He said I was tired and that he’d finish packing himself. I stood up to go back to my room when he added: ‘There’s something I should thank you for.’
‘What?’
‘There used to be a picture of me and Kat on the mantelpiece. I took it out of the frame before you came over the first time.’
‘The Dublin picture is better,’ I said.
‘Yes.’
‘I haven’t seen the other one, but I know I’m right.’
‘You are.’
‘We can take it to Frankfurt.’
‘Thanks. Let’s.’
‘I just printed it off the Internet.’
‘Ava.’
‘You’re welcome,’ I said. ‘And thanks. Thanks for everything.’
He opened the window, lit a cigarette, leaned out, and said: ‘Are you sure you want to come?’
I said: ‘Yes.’
‘I’m not sure you’ve thought about it properly.’
‘I’m an adult,’ I said.
In my room I tidied my drawers. I started with scarves: a few from markets, silk from Mam, and the one Edith gave me for my birthday. They were all too light for Frankfurt. Julian would buy me one, though the fun of that had deflated since I’d realised he did it to fill voids he’d never confide to me. I typed ‘how long does it’ into the browser on my phone. Autofill offered: ‘take to get over someone’. Algorithms learned quickly.
The room was cold. I tugged on a polo neck and my head got stuck in it. I laughed, then wondered if this was to check I still knew how to.
Not seeing the harm in drafting one last piece of autofiction, I opened a thread with Ed
ith and tapped out:
i wish i’d been ready sooner, but i’m ready now. you’ve changed my life. i’ll always remember that. i understand if you never want to speak to me again. it will break my heart if we can’t be together. but you miss out on too much trying to keep it safe. julian can never hurt me as much as you did when you threatened to break up with me – not because he wouldn’t, but because he can’t. because there’s nothing at stake. there is with you, and i’m done being a coward. it’s hard to say how i feel but
I thought: I’m an adult.
I hit the back arrow and scrolled through other threads for someone to talk to. Joan, last text: please stay behind tomorrow & help sort boxes. Tom, last text: free to call tomorrow? – sent by me, no response. Julian, last message: will you be home soon? – also sent by me, also no response.
Three dots flashed under Edith’s name. She was typing.
My legs were dangling off the bed. I locked my knees to keep them still and laid the phone on my lap, inching it into place like a time bomb. I looked ahead at the framed London pictures, then back at my thighs, with finicky turns of my chin – up to buildings, down to dots.
Maybe she’d seen them under my name first.
Edith could have noticed me typing just now, or at any point before. Through all my screeds, all my work and reworking, she might have seen the animation.
Dot, dot, dot.
I knew Edith was typing and seeing words form on her side, but they weren’t there on mine, which made them subjunctive: wish or feeling, less than fact. Ellipsis meant absence, nothing in the bell jar, no proof – not a specimen. The dots waved like trills on Chopin’s staves, turn them how you will.
