A Selfie as Big as the Ritz

by Lara Williams

  I was stood in the kitchen. I was not where I was supposed to be. I moved to the living room, to the bathroom, to the hallway. All were incorrect. Dora padded behind me; Dora the daughter, the flat-footed grace of a toddler. Clea came home and I kissed them both goodbye. I drove to yours catching sight of myself in the mirror. Dark lipstick and brows, like some tweenage flashforward. Blossom has a baby.

  I brought chocolate and crisps; we dozed on the sofa watching our reflections in the French windows. You once told me gay women are more likely to put weight on when they’re in a relationship. You said stuff like that. I dismissed the idea. Called you homophobic. But now I understood. Women came together and they ate.

  “Not compatible with life,” they told you. “Not bloody compatible with a lot of things,” you’d said. “Not compatible with my ex-girlfriend. Not compatible with dairy.” We were old. Were we old? We were at that age where people started affixing your age to compliments. Cancer, you said, flicking a stray hair from your arm, is no walk in the cake park. And all deaths end the same.

  After, I lay in bed for days. Your absence hanging in the air like a mist. A duvet I couldn’t crawl out of. A migraine I couldn’t shake. Everything experienced as if underwater. A loose memory forgotten even while it was happening. You were bigger, louder—I’d always been drawn to something more than myself. In size I found certainty, in vitality I was assured. This here is presence. With you gone I felt untethered, wild and drifting, laundry loose on the breeze. I looked in the mirror. My skin was dry and flaking like life was retreating further inside me. My hair had thinned to nervous patches. Grief was messy. It didn’t have the elegance of longing, the poetry of heartbreak; its wholeness made it solid, its certainty made it base.

  Lying in bed we fought to be tiny. Clea pulled my arms around her, turning over, her back curled against my chest. I’d remove them, drag her around, force her arm over me; two little spoons, negotiating.

  I became a murderer, killing things swiftly and effortlessly, killing without even meaning to. The abused come abuser, my turn to get some, dispatching electrical bolts from the tips of my fingers. A decapitating rhetoric that took even me by surprise. Coffee morning with an old friend. Bam! Dead. Running into a colleague at the supermarket. Whallop! Finito.

  It balled up, eventually, the loss, sitting inside my body, knotted and out of place like a hot diamond slotted behind my lung. I found myself squinting at my laptop, back to work, my hair damp, my pajamas freshly washed. I thought: I feel like Helen Hunt, in a movie about Helen Hunt, squinting at her laptop, back to work, her hair damp, her pajamas freshly washed. Triumph over adversity, life felt like a series of small battles, of smaller wins, twisting and mutating, always, into something else.

  For Dora’s birthday we had a picnic in the park, the kind we used to have with you. You would bake cake and biscuits. I’d bring sandwiches and tea. Dora spotted a blackbird and wandered off, watching it leap across the grass. “Come back!” I shouted at her. “Don’t you go off too far!” Girls grew up afraid, you said. I would say things to Dora, treat her in a certain way and you would ask, would I do this differently if she were a boy? The answer, invariably, was yes. I sliced off a piece of cake, bought from the shop. “Dora,” I called. I wondered if she remembered you at all.

  We sat on the sofa, watching an archaeology documentary. They’d dug up a child’s skull. It upset Clea to see a child’s skull with all its baby teeth still intact. I kissed her forehead. I stroked her hair.

  Dora lingered in the hallway like a dream.

  “How did they get the skull?” she asked, venturing nearer, her doughy palms tugging at the soft felt of her nightie. I swooped her up, nestling her between us on the sofa, her legs draped limp across mine.

  I pressed my nose to her head, inhaling her fleecy ammonia. I felt some wincing, aching pain, slotted behind my lung, dulled as I wrapped both arms around her, and around Clea, holding them close; thinking this week we should all go out and get pizza, thinking I am exactly where I am supposed to be.

  This Small Written Thing

  When Joseph announced he’d found a job the way one might announce getting TiVo, or getting into Harpo Marx; snaking against the white glow of a rice paper floor lamp, fist on hip, knee crooked jauntily to one side—Honey, I got the job! The kid stays in the picture! Whatever DID happen to Baby Jane?!—there was talk of them both moving to London, but it was static, radio interference; what with the renting costs and Flora already working. And so with little argument from either side it was decided he would stay at his brother’s in Hammersmith, Monday to Friday, then come home, to Manchester, at the weekend. Though what weekends they could be!—weekends that would extend before them like a single beckoning digit; long, glorious weekends filled with flat whites and breakfast scrambles, languid walks around the art gallery. It was, in many ways, exactly what they needed and they found themselves curiously excited about the separation; planning their evenings apart, their reunions. It could be like the beginning of the relationship again. It could be like dating.

  Flora saw him off at the train station; laptop in one hand, small suitcase in the other. He came home the following Friday, arriving into Manchester Piccadilly at quarter past eight, and they went straight out to dinner; wine, penne and candlelight so readily accessible. The next morning they lay in reading the papers, taking it in turns to make coffee. Their flat invited it. It was a homely flat, a sedentary flat, more like a little house than an apartment, porcelain vases erupting dried flowers bound by a constellation of fairy lights, tea lights lit up the peripheries scented like titles for coffee or conceptual art. On Sunday they sampled artisanal cheese, squirreled herbed loaves into canvas satchels at the local farmer’s market before returning home to watch a film, entwined on the sofa. Flora dropped him off at the station, his suitcase slightly bigger than the last; on getting back into the car, she noticed he’d left his gloves behind, his hands would be cold, and she felt a pang that wasn’t quite pain, more the foreshadow of pain, the blueprint of it.

  He got in a little later the next Friday, about ten thirty, and went immediately to bed. “Sweetheart,” he said, kissing the top of her head. “I am exhausted.” He spent most of Saturday working, hunched over his computer, looking handsome and disheveled. As he grew into his looks, as his features shifted tectonically with age, he was becoming ruggish, earthy, he’d even started growing a beard. Flora placed a cup of tea to his side, running her finger over the corner of his glasses, thinking, if she wanted to, she could crush them. The performance of love and the fire of it; an endless negotiation; a series of audience asides, of controlled explosions. As the evening drew in, Flora tied back her hair and put on a coat. “It’s silly you always driving,” he said stopping her, his suitcase bigger still. “I’ll just get a taxi.”

  As he left, leaving behind the packed grapes, crime dramas on USB—treats she had prepared for his journey—Flora cried. At first, a tentative misting of the eyes, an overture, making way to gasping, flatulent sobs, big, glossy tears. The following weekend he didn’t come home on the Friday evening and wasn’t back until late Saturday afternoon. The weekend after that he didn’t come home at all.

  She started feeling closest to him sleeping; her waking thoughts and dreams meshing in an addled glue. She’d wake from a ferocious, thrashing sleep feeling like he was physically there, a garbling of non-sequiturs, a blizzard of scenes; conversations and events, impossible to pin down and immediately forgotten, but he was always there, every time she fell asleep, waiting for her. She preferred Dream Joseph to Real Joseph. Dream Joseph was reliable, preserved, packed in ice. Real Joseph was, well. “I can’t quite put my finger on it,” Flora told her friend Casey, at Body Blow; a freshly acquired pastime, since the separation. Body Blow was a new fitness class at their gym; a human-shaped training bag, gender nonspecific, placed in front of each attendee, billed “Exorcise.”

  “Something’s different.” She slugged her fist at a pillow-y circle, a res
onating thwack punctuating her words. Joseph had been in London four months now. “He seems distant on the phone, like he’s not listening to anything I’m saying. Then suddenly he’ll be really sweet. Last week he sent me an e-card. He called me his little donut hole.”

  “Babe,” Casey replied, jogging on the spot, landing punches with a tiny grunt.

  “It’s another woman,” she wheezed. “It’s always another woman.”

  * * *

  They’d met several years ago at a party. Flora had taken ecstasy for the first time; a tight swell expanding in her stomach, a wriggling and writhing bliss, an artifice of joy fizzing around her head; yielding to a sudden weight, a sickly and terrifying weight. Staggering into an unfamiliar living room, peering at a waltzing brocade of light, she thought she might vomit. Beads of sweat slid from her forehead and she felt for something, for anything, to grab onto. She clutched an arm—Joseph’s arm—and pulled him close. He held her at a distance, swept hair from her face and ran a finger beneath her eye. She watched him as if from afar, a blur beneath a twinkling haze; a blur that remained a blur, absent, abstract, always at arm’s length. She remembered drinking a glass of water but didn’t remember much else, though was later told he’d taken her home, sleeping on the floor beside her. The next morning he informed her someone had put something in her drink, and she should probably go to the police about it, or at least report it to the student support officer, maybe she should get checked out by her doctor. So creased was his consternation, so wide-eyed his belief that this thing, this little blonde thing, with the pine framed Roman Holiday poster and the Carole King records bookended by oversized church candles, could not have voluntarily administered something so impure, so crass, as ecstasy; she hadn’t the heart to correct him. “You’re right,” she replied, flattening her hair, rubbing makeup from her face. “I’ll report it to the university. And I’ll book a doctor’s appointment on Monday.”

  How was she supposed to know this thin sliver of untruth, this morsel of fiction, was being dispensed to her future husband, the future love of her life, to grow fat, to develop wings. She hadn’t realized she was signing such a lengthy contract with this small fabrication, but then, she hadn’t yet realized lies take effort, they take commitment. She hadn’t yet realized that if you’re not in it for the long haul, well, best not to bother at all. She hadn’t yet realized that in a relationship, honesty was just one of many options, a sort of moral high ground, yes, but no more so than vegetarianism or recycling. And she was both a vegetarian and a recycler. And so it took flight, Joseph showing her newspaper clippings with drink spiking statistics, sagely nodding toward public service posters. At their wedding, he’d toasted, “Of course she only spoke to me because she was on Class A drugs! And before anyone says anything, it wasn’t me who put it in her drink! But I’d like to raise my glass to whoever did!” On hearing his niece had been molested by a teacher on a school trip, he’d volunteered her counsel, telling his brother, “Flora had a near identical experience, I’m sure she’d be happy to help.”

  “Near identical?!” she’d exclaimed as he slipped his phone back into his pocket. “How exactly have I had a near identical experience?”

  “Well,” he replied. “Yours was a near miss.”

  So regularly did this spiked drink motif recur, she often suspected he knew she’d taken the pill all along and they were both complicit in a lengthy sort of private joke. Her mind arched back to that bleary morning, his furrowed concern, his voice so deliberately tempered. She thought of him handing her a coffee, telling her the caffeine would annul any trace of hallucinogens in her system; how, when she rubbed her face and said she must look horrendous, he replied, “You look beautiful.” How he had meant it. No, it couldn’t be another woman. She was the liar, the deceiver, the fraud.

  * * *

  They booked a weekend away, to the countryside, to get a bit of fresh air; Joseph drove while Flora pressed her forehead against the glass, intimate with her dewy reflection. Paragliders hovered above the hills, floating nail clippings against the brilliant blue sky. How strange that England should have mountains, Flora thought. How gauche. They checked into a chintzy B&B, sprawling out on the velvet bedding. They went walking through the hills, faces damp and flushed, finishing with a butternut squash stew and mashed potatoes. They had lethargic, languorous sex. Watching him sleep, his back smooth and gray in the dark, Flora traced the names of former lovers onto his spine: Daniel, Simon, Guy From The Library, then, feeling particularly bold, spelled out their names and her fondest memory; Daniel, drunk in Liverpool; Simon, eating cereal, watching The Wonder Years; The Guy From The Library, abs. She wondered what her fondest memory of Joseph was and ran her hand through his hair. “Sometimes,” she whispered, “I just want to punch you in the face.”

  “What?” he asked, opening his eyes. “What did you just say?”

  “Nothing,” Flora replied, turning over. “I said nothing.” The next morning they were brought breakfast in the room, waking Flora, interrupting Joseph who was up, writing a message on his phone. “I’ll get it,” he said, wrapping himself in a robe, making for the door. Flora rolled across the bed, peering up to see him arranging a cafetière in the adjoining room, laying out the cutlery. She tapped his phone, lighting up the message he was sending to a woman’s name she didn’t recognize; an email about their trip. It was very wordy. It was very written. Recherché? she thought. Where the hell did he learn a word like recherché? He called her and she quickly set the phone aside. “Well,” she said, sitting at the table, picking up a miniature chocolate croissant, turning it over in her fingers. “Isn’t this recherché?”

  * * *

  He came home at Christmas; they spent the holiday together in lieu of visiting family. Flora shuffled to the living room on Christmas morning, to find Joseph up and dressed, attached to his laptop once more. “Don’t do any work today,” she said, slipping onto his knee, winding her arms around his neck. “It’s Christmas.” He closed the lid. “You’re right,” he replied, wiggling out from beneath her. They prepared a homemade nut roast, toasting hazelnuts, crumbling stilton, grating parsnips in a silent communion. After they’d eaten the roast, Flora trotted to the kitchen, reaching for the back of the fridge. “Linzer Torte!” she said. “Do you remember how many we ate of these in Austria?!” Joseph rubbed his stomach, contriving large, swirling circles. “I’m trying to watch my weight,” he replied as Flora removed a slice, covering it in a thick layer of whipped cream, eyeing him warily. He returned to his laptop, on the settee; defeated, she spooned a dollop of cake and cream into her mouth, a soggy cloud, feeling it squelch beneath her teeth.

  They exchanged presents late in the afternoon, Flora gifting a boxy selection of paperbacks, a knitted blanket she’d been working on for the best part of a month. “This is so you don’t get cold on the train home,” she said, kneading it in her palm. “This is so you don’t forget me.” Joseph presented her with a small, flat square. Flora peeled back the papery wrapping, removing a long gold chain weighted down by a single charm, a tiny telescope, dangling delicately from her fingers. “It’s beautiful,” she said, swinging it back and forth, holding it up to her face, pretending to peer through it. “Now I can keep an eye on you.” She clipped it around her throat. “I’m going to wear it all the time.” Joseph ran his thumb across the bitty ornament. “I knew you’d like it,” he yawned, kissing her forehead.

  They slept off dinner, lying side by side, in their bedroom. Flora woke first, staring at Joseph, wondering about his thoughts, his dreams, wishing herself small, so small, she could crawl into his ear, to explore, to investigate. When Joseph’s eyes opened, Flora squeezed hers shut, pretending. She lay still a while, waiting for him to get up, finally peeping to see if he’d fallen back asleep. On opening her eyes, she caught him blinking his shut, the same theatrics, rolling over, exhaling loudly. She got out of bed and poured herself a glass of water, settling on the settee, staring out of the window. She noticed his
laptop perched on the desk beside her. She pressed her palm to it and felt its gentle heat, an enticing heat, like a bubble bath. She slid it onto her knee, prising open the lid, running a finger across the mousepad, bringing it to life. An incoming email, the woman he’d emailed before. She read it through, a narrative sashaying in front of her; swaggering, each word an apéritif, calmly digested. She read it again and then shut the lid, returning the laptop to his desk and walked through to the bedroom. She watched him lying there, breathing in and out. So, she thought. This is my nervous breakdown. Joseph let out an ungainly snore and jerked his foot from beneath the duvet, and on instinct she leaned over and tucked his foot back in, slipping under the covers beside him. She wrapped both arms around his stomach, nuzzling her face into his back, pressing her nose into his shoulder blade. He smelled of mint shower gel and mouthwash. Of Christmas dinner and coffee. Of the North and the South and everything in between. She held him close and shut her eyes, feeling that they were sinking into the bed, and then through the bed, and into the ground, sinking further and further down. She gripped him tighter, because what is it really, this thing, this small written thing, gone with the click of a button, the collapse of a screen, vanished, gone.

  Beautiful Existence

  It begins, and ends, with the birds.

  A chirruping chorus, scattered squeaks trilling through the rustle; the branches carousing like veins, and on every branch a bird. “My alarm clock,” I might say if I had someone to say it to. I’d pause at the word though. Alarm.

  They are up before me, bobbing and twitching, pipping like flirts. They are a terrible roommate; with their squawking and their hollering, with no respect for emotional space, no respect for sleep. They are right gossips; cheeping secrets, who did what with who, and how. They are fat ballerinas. They are out-of-tune chanteurs. They are worse than that. They are—morning people. And like all morning people, they never let you forget it.