How Should a Person Be?

by Sheila Heti

  So what if I ­wasn’t called? If only a fortune teller hadn’t told me that I was a leader, when it turns out I am a follower. How hard it will be to adjust my insides, when for so long I have been preparing for the role of leader in the smallest, most humiliating of ways. Every time I would pass a mirror I would glance into it at a jaunty angle, to make sure my jaw was set in such a way that would inspire the people’s trust. Every morning, brushing my teeth, I’d look into my eyes and try to communicate an imperious attitude—­to intimidate myself! I tried to get people to like me so that when the time came, they would be able to say to themselves, under their breaths, all impressed, Whoa, I never thought it would be her, but okay, I get it. I wanted to make impressions on those I would never meet again, so they might one day say, Oh yeah, I met her once. I remember, sure—­I might not have expected it, but I can totally see it now.

  Perhaps in ten years I’ll be able to look back and see why it was better to be just one of the gang. Still, it’s no fun playing the piccolo in the band. It’s no great shakes being the dancer over at the side of the stage, when all the best performers stand in the middle of the stage, microphone in hand. It ­doesn’t make me beloved to have had sex with a few hot guys. It has never pleased me how slowly I read. In fact, when I think about it, nothing in my life signaled out that I’d be the one. I don’t know why I thought it.

  Soon we are going. Soon we’ll ship off. And I won’t whisper to anyone, I thought it was going to be me!

  I stood in line for the Greyhound, then got on the bus headed for Toronto and stored my suitcase in the tiny overhead rack and found a seat by the window, alone. I brushed the sand from the seat and sat down. After five minutes the bus driver turned on the engine, and we pulled into the morning’s traffic and joined its heavy flow.

  There had been rain in the air all morning, and the inside of the bus had a steamy feeling; soon there was the smell of bodies in the air. With the condensation on the windows, I could not see the trees passing fast. I could not see the road. Lulled like a baby, and exhausted from my dreams the night before, I burrowed into sleep.

  Awaking to my surroundings, I noticed the bus was pulling into Gravenhurst, where it always stopped on the way to the city, to allow everyone a quick lunch. I exited the bus with the others and followed them into a lineup for sandwiches at the old, side-­of-­the-­road restaurant. The driver stood outside the bus smoking a cigarette.

  There was nothing I wanted more than a grilled cheese sandwich, and I ordered it with a coffee. I was so looking forward to a really cheesy one—­a grilled cheese sandwich just oozing with cheese. I thought about it as I waited, then accepted from the man at the counter a white paper plate, with a sandwich wrapped in foil that was white on the outside and silvery on the inside to keep it really warm.

  Outside on the picnic bench I eagerly unwrapped the sandwich, but when I bit into it, it was soggy, and there was almost no cheese. It was not what I wanted, not what I had been picturing, but I adjusted myself to the reality of it. Better to have a good imagination than a good grilled cheese sandwich, I told myself.

  Then, thinking of Margaux: Better to have your failure right in front of you than the fantasy in your head.

  • chapter 18 •

  WHAT IS BETRAYAL?

  Back in my apartment, I went into the shower and washed everything away, until the sand ran down the drain. Then I stood on the bathroom floor, dripping naked. Outside the door, Ryan was packing up his things.

  I felt so tired. The entire ­ride home I had been rehearsing in my head what I would say to Margaux: that she would not have to worry—I would never write about her again. I had given up the play for good—had given up trying. I wanted her to believe that in time, things would recalibrate inside her and she would come to trust in painting, and herself as a paint­er, again.

  But for now, all I wanted was to sleep. I had been in the bus only fourteen hours, but it had felt like fourteen days.

  •••

  Before going to bed, I sat in the kitchen, wrapped in a towel, and went through my mail. There was an envelope that had been dropped off, with no stamp. My name was written on it in Margaux’s hand, and it was dated earlier that week.

  1.Dear Sheila,

  2.I am sitting in our studio, furious. I ­can’t help feeling like you have betrayed me.

  3.To be my closest friend and record me, then as soon as you’ve learned how a person should be, you’re done with me!

  4.Now that you’ve gotten somewhere, your search is over, and that means the end of our friendship for you.

  5.I always feared that one day you would forget why we wanted to see each other all the time, once you no longer felt it or wanted to, and that you would be resentful that I still wanted to see you.

  6.Why would you still hang out with me? You’re already off to the next thing that will help you be a genius.

  7.But I cannot be your sometime friend.

  8.That means I cannot be your friend at all.

  I lay in bed and thought of cutting my wrists in the shower. I wanted to shoot myself in the face with a gun that released so many bullets at once, which would fan out and hit every part of my face and explode it into nothing, into mush. I tried to relax, but I could not because itchiness and heat ­were all over me everywhere. There was nothing in me that did not mourn. I knew I would always lose what was good. That was the kind of person I would always be. I could not believe the ripping, unbreathable pain in me, the shaking knot that twisted itself into my lower back, the ache in my jaw. There was nothing but this feeling, and the love of Margaux, which I had known, but now the dark back of Margaux, which is all I would ever know; the last I would see of her as she walked away, remembering how generous she had been when I was deserving.

  As I slept that night I saw a room on the twelfth floor of a building with a courtyard in the center, and in this building lived young people and social workers, educators, lots of people. And into a room at the top there came deliveries of sharp, long knives, short knives, twisted knives, all sorts of knives, guns, ropes, and huge shipments of drugs. Razors ­were sent there, picks, files, cuffs, scissors, things to pull with, things to clamp with, and chains, everything like that, so that no one who saw the shipment and loved their sister could leave her there in that room with those boys, and yet someone did. Lots of people did. One person took the elevator down and told the social workers, “I’m scared. I think something might happen to my sister! I think something might be going on in that room!” But the social workers did not understand; one said she was going to go up, but she was not as scared as the person who left her sister, who just stood there pacing, beyond worrying, so certain, on the main floor in the center of that courtyard. Because it would now be too late. The social worker went up, but it was too late because more boys had gone up with all their frightening clothes on, all their paint, all the things they dressed in regularly to scare people. They went up, and the room got more and more crowded with people who thought they should take part in the orgy because why not join in for once? Why always remain aloof? Why not join in and stick the things, the metal bars, into the mouths? They wanted to have a good time. The room was small, but it held all the women you could think of and all the men you ­were ever scared of in your ­whole life, passing on the street or just imagining, and all the men you loved the most. That is when the party started. So many of these people ­were crowding in from the elevator that the social worker could hardly make her way into the room, and she never did make her way into the room, but came back with a pale face, her hair frizzed with fear from not being let into this room with all the tools and all the drugs, and that is where the orgy began. That is where it began in no innocence at all, but compared to what was to come, it began in innocence. There ­were knives and girls skinned alive and kept alive, and one woman screaming but trying to laugh it off to another, “Look what they did to my face!”
—­and there ­were the amputations performed right there, the limbs cut off, and the bars fucked with in the mouth, and all the things that can be done to a person including the pulling and ripping of everything that we don’t even know we love about a person—­their intactness, their perfect intactness—­and all the things that seem to us the person—­they ­were destroyed, ripped away, so that you could not tell one girl from the other except that some ­were taller, some ­were thinner, but you could not see it in the face, just bloodiness, like animals turned inside out. And in the courtyard, and in the balconies surrounding all twelve floors of the courtyard was the ­whole audience; rowdy, unhappy guys who ­were waving their flags and watching and waiting, so that at every floor they had their paint—­orange, yellow, purple, blue—­and when they ­were done with the girls, and when they ­were still doing them, doing everything before they dropped each girl, one by one, to her terror, thrown from the room, twelve floors down to the concrete floor of the courtyard, blood falling off her body as she fell—­no skin, no face, but kept alive—­then from the balconies came the colors flung, and she would fall through eleven floors of thick paint, ­house paint and wall paint, burning at her skin that was no longer skin—­a nice bright green, a happy yellow, orange, purple, red, a rainbow.

  I had hurt Margaux beyond compare. The heat of shame was the heat of my body. There was not one cell in my body unsullied by what I had done.

  • chapter 19 •

  IN FRONT OF THE BIKINI STORE

  The next day, I woke late in the afternoon, and with a sinking heart remembered Margaux’s letter. I did not want to go over, yet I had to go. I knew I had to go as soon as I could, even though I did not know the right thing to say. I made myself walk the three blocks to her place, my hair stringy and hanging low, nothing but nothing in my eyes.

  I knocked on the door and saw her come down the stairs. When she opened the door, her mouth was down-­turned. Her hair was in triangles, as if she had just woken, and she came onto the stoop.

  She said, “I called you and you ­were gone. I went to your ­house and you’d left. How could you leave me when things ­were so hard? You left without even saying good-­bye!”

  I braced my body, became as tight and hard as armor. I felt nothing but the need to get through this and over it. “But it was me who made them hard! I thought I would leave so that things could be better for you! So you could forget what I had done.”

  “After I searched high and low and found you! All my life all I wanted was a girl! And then when I needed her, she disappeared.”

  I started to cry. “But I was so bad I made it so you ­couldn’t paint anymore!”

  “Look, I agreed to be taped. But you—­you figured out how a person should be and then you went to New York to be it!”

  “No! Besides, I’m not using the recordings or anything like that. I gave up the play.”

  “Great! So it was all meaningless. All that we went through was for nothing.”

  I put my face in my hands. I had thought, in saying this, that it would make things better, but it only made her more upset.

  It took forty years for the Israelites to get from Egypt to the banks of the Jordan, a journey that should have taken days. It was no accident. That generation had to die. They could not enter the promised land. A generation born into slavery is not ready for the responsibilities of freedom.

  Pacing through our neighborhood, I spotted Sholem in the window of his favorite coffee shop, sketching on paper, looking glum. I went in and asked if I could sit with him for a bit. He said okay. I wanted to tell him about my life and ask for his advice, but he immediately started talking about his life. He said that a few weeks ago, when I was in New York, Margaux had made a video of him, where he was supposed to pretend like he ­wasn’t being looked at, but just carry on normally, and all that day he was surprised to remember how good it felt to act—­and he knew without even seeing the tape that there was so much goodness in his acting—­more than there would ever be in one of his paintings. Acting that day, he went on gloomily, had made him feel vital and happy, just as he had felt doing it so many years ago in high school.

  SHEILA

  So that’s wonderful! To remember that . . .

  SHOLEM

  But don’t you see? I have this terrible fear—it has always been my greatest fear—­that my acting is better than my painting.

  SHEILA

  So what? If it is, then you can act.

  SHOLEM

  But Sheila, no! (sighs) Have you ever met Misha’s uncle, Ezra? Well, he’s a deeply opinionated man, and he’s almost impossible to argue with. I remember once we ­were at a party, and he was talking about this teacher I had in art school who was a paint­er, who I really, really respected. He said, “You know, I find it really funny that someone who knows so much about painting, and who can talk so well about painting, and has such interesting ideas about painting—­can’t produce beautiful paintings.”

  SHEILA

  And that chilled you? You felt that that was you?

  SHOLEM

  It’s just—­the moment he said that, I immediately recognized it as something I never wanted to be, and I immediately recognized it as something to avoid.

  SHEILA

  But . . . how can one avoid that?

  SHOLEM

  It’s just . . . if I prayed, that is what I would pray for.

  So Sholem went home and he prayed. He prayed that he would never become someone of whom it could be said: It’s funny he can talk so brilliantly about painting, but ­can’t produce beautiful paintings. And he continued, ever more rigorously, on the path he had started on. He did everything he could think of to make himself into the best paint­er possible. He worked night and day and thought only about paintings, and he painted and did nothing ­else.

  And so it happened, slowly, over time, like the land erodes into the sea, that God wore down the beauty and worth of what­ever he might have said about painting—­dulled his thoughts’ edges, blurred the vividness, precision, and confidence that once glittered in his every line—­how he had once evoked things so simply, and with humor, too. His beautiful words became like silt at the bottom of the sea.

  • chapter 20 •

  SHEILA’S FEAR

  I had missed so many shifts at the salon without even calling in, and I felt too ashamed to tell them why. I ­couldn’t think of a good excuse. Uri had admired me as an employee; now his image of me would be shot. The only way to keep my dignity, it seemed, and my good name, was to quit. I came up with an explanation of how I needed to focus on finishing my play, that I had no extra time, that seeing Uri’s professionalism had taught me the most valuable lesson: I must be as professional as him, but in my realm, not his. I went to the salon with my resignation letter in hand. When I arrived, I noticed a strange hush over the place; no one was standing around gossiping, and the stylists avoided my eyes. Even the receptionist, who always smiled and stopped what she was doing to say hello, barely glanced up as I came in. In the back room, I found one of the stylists, Amy, and asked her the reason for the mood. She darted her eyes about, then spoke into the mirror that lined the pink walls. The stylists never looked each other in the eye; they only looked at each other in mirrors.

  She said, “Uri announced that he’s retiring and they’re selling the salon. He’ll still be working ­here part-­time, but it seems Anthony believed that one day Uri would sell the salon to him. But of course Uri’s not going to! When we found out this morning that he’s selling it to Paul and Raoul, Anthony screamed before everyone and even the clients, You’re full of shit, Uri! Then he punched his hand into the mirror and it shattered, and there was blood everywhere. Then Anthony packed up his scissors and left.”

  “Wow!”

  “But we all know Anthony will be back tomorrow as though nothing ever happened.”

  I noticed U
ri walking through the back room. Knowing I had few chances to approach him during the day, I went up quickly and handed him my resignation letter, which I had written the night before, so full of politeness and gratitude.

  “Should I read this now?” he asked me. I nodded. I followed him into his office and stood there as he read one page, then flipped it and read the second one, then flipped it and read the third.

  He said, “Well, we’ll be sorry not to have you. You’re an asset around ­here. But—­if that’s what you want to do . . .”

  Then he grew distracted. “Did you hear what Anthony did?”

  I nodded.

  “He wanted me to sell him the salon—­he said he always thought I would. But I never would! He has no consistency of character, no self-­control. How could I trust him with the salon? He’s not a loyal member of the team. He thinks only of himself. And you know he will never apologize for his outburst. What sort of man cannot apologize? But I have never heard Anthony admit that he’s wrong.” He shrugged. “I told Paul and Raoul to keep him on because I want to see how long a man can go without ever saying sorry.”

  Then Uri said, “Come, let me do your hair today. It is your last day, and I will put some highlights in.”

  “Thank you,” I said, though I did not really want highlights. But I was moved by what a professional he was, to do me this final kindness, making himself, once again, into a man you could not criticize.

  As I sat at his station, Uri worked on my hair, saying nothing. My letter was making me uneasy, and I began to wish I hadn’t given it to him. I was starting to feel like I had made a mistake; it was incredibly stupid to leave the salon. I loved it there! And how would I make money now? It was so clear to me: the happiness I felt at the salon had been real, and I was giving it up out of some ill-­considered vanity; the need to protect my image in Uri’s eyes. As the moments passed, my decision became more irrevocable, and my life at the salon slipped farther away; I would soon have no place there at all. My panic increased as I tried to think of ways I could take my resignation back, meanwhile trying to remind myself that the point of life was not to avoid suffering—­that every choice involved suffering—­and that in choosing to leave the salon, I was choosing one kind of suffering, while choosing to stay would involve another, whereas going back and forth as I was doing now was the worst suffering of all, as it was an attempt to avoid life, which would leave me finally with nothing!