The ABCs of Love

by Sarah Salway

  “It was your big eyes,” she said, “and your hair. You were always staring at people as if you wanted to get inside them somehow. We used to think you were a witch.”

  I remembered the time Sally had caught me making up that rain dance. It was just something I’d seen on television, but now I was surprised at how much I liked this image of myself.

  “My mother was a witch,” I lied, thinking Sally would laugh at me.

  “They say it’s inherited. Your mother was magic,” she said, and carried on reading the television guide. Sally is always round my house these days. While we were watching a film later on, I willed and willed her to go. As soon as the film finished, she picked up her bag and left.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “I’m going.” Although I hadn’t said anything.

  Now that he’s back at work, I couldn’t wait to try something similar out on Brian, but he kept catching my eye when I was staring at him and winking back at me.

  See also Bosses; Mistaken Identity; Names; Voices; X-ray Vision

  vexed

  John’s nickname for me is “Squiggle.” When I write to him now, I sign it Sxxx. He says it makes him think of sex.

  Recently, there have been times when I wonder if this is all he thinks about. I can’t help being shocked by how much it is starting to bore me. I asked him the other day, for instance, if he missed me.

  “Yes,” he said. “I was feeling really randy this morning. I could have done with you then.”

  I wrote a note to Brian and signed it Vxxx by mistake. He looked up immediately, of course, and smiled. I had to smile back, and although I wanted to tell him he was wrong—that I wasn’t really sending him kisses—he looked so happy, I couldn’t.

  See also Breasts; Ice Cream; Memory; Outcast; Phone Calls; Rude; Teaching

  victim

  I’m very busy now, particularly as Brian has been giving me work as a thank-you for helping him out. I’ve been working on a new customer magazine for a company that makes industrial-sized pipes for construction companies. I came up with the title In the Pipeline, which Brian likes a lot. He says if the project goes well, he is going to recommend I get promoted officially to be his assistant editor on this publication, with more to come.

  John wasn’t as pleased as I would have liked. He thinks that Brian probably has hidden motives, but I don’t think this is a very supportive attitude. John did apologize. He said that he is so frantic at work too, it just seems a shame that I can’t be free in the little time he has to see me.

  I tried to see his point. He has had to put up with being second best with Kate and the children for such a long time now. He can’t bear for it to happen all over again.

  See also Ambition; The Queen; Stationery; Utopia

  visible

  The hairdresser kept asking if I was sure. Eventually, I just shut my eyes so we couldn’t keep looking at each other in the mirror. I could hear how people kept coming over to watch her, picking up curls from the floor and telling me how different I would feel when it was done.

  “A new person,” they said.

  Hair as thick as mine makes a remarkable noise when it’s being cut, like a knife sawing through bones. It got louder and louder the more she cut, until I thought I was going to have to tell her to stop. I suppose it was because I had no protection over my ears now.

  At the end, I told her it looked lovely, that I was delighted, but she wouldn’t stop showing me the back of my neck in the mirror. She obviously didn’t believe me, but she was wrong. I do love it.

  I dreaded going into work the next day, though. I knew people wouldn’t know what to say. It was the same when my parents died. Reactions were divided into two camps. Some people ignored that anything had happened, while others wanted to know every last detail. I started to feel as if my loss was filling a hunger in them and that they would eat me up if they could. As if all these bad things happening to me spared them.

  I could see that my haircut worried everyone. Even as they were telling me how nice I looked, most were putting their hands up to their necks, checking that their hair was still there, that they were all right, that my misery hadn’t leaped over to them. Like fleas.

  See also Codes; Hair; Objects; Weight

  voices

  Now that mine and John’s telephone box has finally been pulled down, I am on a mission to keep others going for lovers everywhere. Every time I see one, I go in and ring someone up, although it can sometimes surprise them.

  Recently, I’ve been ringing the number of my mother and father’s house. It’s been disconnected, and of course I know she won’t, but I can’t get rid of this hope that my mother will answer. I’m scared I’ll forget what her voice sounded like. If I shut my eyes, I hear it very loud and screechy, saying things like, No one’s impressed by your misery, you know . But then I try to listen with Sally’s ears and it’s different. It’s not my father talking anymore, interpreting my mother for me.

  I know there’s a saying that you turn into your mother as you get older. Maybe everyone’s the same. We’re all trying to listen harder and harder to not just the words, but what our mothers were really saying to us all those years ago.

  See also Codes; Daisies; Doors; Elephant’s Egg; Telephone Boxes; Underwear; Vendetta; Washing Powder

  voyeur

  Sally and I spent last Saturday shopping, for old times’ sake. However, she didn’t have any money and I could think of nothing I wanted to buy, so we just walked round in silence. Eventually, she had the idea that we should each buy the other a tattoo.

  “What would you have?” I asked, and she said that she would have SALLY tattooed on her arm in beautiful rainbow colors, in case she forgot who she was.

  “And me?” I asked.

  “You’d have SALLY too, of course,” she said. But then, because I looked so worried, she bought me a pair of novelty rainbow earrings made out of telephone wire instead.

  I went to the loo to try them on when we went for coffee. I was in such a rush that I must have forgotten to shut the door, and just as I was putting the second one in, I looked up and saw a man standing in the doorway watching me through the mirror. He wasn’t attractive—just an ordinary, middle-aged, tired-looking businessman—but he was watching me with such intensity that I felt we’d both been caught doing something far too intimate. He was just staring at me, running his fingers round his shirt collar, when our eyes locked, and my whole body turned to liquid. I don’t know how long we stood there; we couldn’t seem to look away. But suddenly, I froze, shut my eyes, and when I looked up, he’d gone. He’d even shut the door.

  By the time I rejoined Sally, I was ready to shop. Only buying enough solid things would fill the gap that man had left in me. I didn’t tell Sally. She thought I was relaxing at last and took advantage by picking out clothes that she knew I would never normally wear but that went with my new hairstyle. A fresh start, she kept saying. I even dragged her into the changing rooms with me. It wasn’t just because we were having so much fun. I didn’t want to be left alone with the mirror again.

  See also Breasts; Indecent Exposure; Railway Stations; Wrists

  W

  washing powder

  John hasn’t been free to see me on the weekends for a long time now. There are times when I don’t speak to anyone from the time I leave work on Friday to when I get back to the office on Monday morning. I have got so lonely, I have been known to ring the speaking clock just to hear the sound of someone else’s voice.

  But last week I had a bit too much to drink. On an impulse, I phoned the help line advertised on the side of the washing-powder box. The lady who answered was really friendly. And Scottish. I told her how I’d read somewhere that her company employed Scottish people because they sounded more like human beings, but she said it was because they were cheaper, and we laughed. We really did laugh together. Like friends do.

  She asked me what machine I was using, and I said it was me that needed help. I told her how what I want
ed most in the world was to be held. No one had held me for such a long time. I wanted to be hugged and washed and cleansed until I was white all over. That’s when she told me I should call the Samaritans. I laughed and said they were just for unhappy people. Didn’t she realize she was talking to someone who was so evolved, she’d once spent a week writing her obituary in order to guarantee happiness?

  It was then that she said she was going to have to call her supervisor. There was no need for her to do that.

  See also Friends; Happiness; Phantom E-mails; Wobbling; Yard

  weight

  Sometimes I don’t think my body can bear the weight of the pain that is being inflicted on it.

  I’ve started to go to the gym just to build myself up. I want to be strong so that no one can push me around ever again. I want to weigh myself down so my feet stay on the ground. I want to become such a presence that everyone can see me. I don’t ever want to become invisible.

  Most of all, I want to matter.

  See also Boxing; Codes; Gwyneth Paltrow; Kindness; Stepmothers; Youth

  what if . . .

  You could win a competition to be Queen for a year?

  It was a crime to have money?

  You woke up one morning and everyone was speaking a different language?

  There really were tiny little people living and working inside those machines, printing your passport photo, counting out your cash, and making your coffee?

  Children never grew up?

  You lived your life backward?

  You could make time stand still?

  Rich women went on a shopping strike?

  People stopped dying?

  John really had left Kate and married me?

  See also Endings; Friends; True Romance; Utopia; Zest

  why?

  Sally has agreed to listen to me talk about John on Friday evenings and Sunday lunchtimes, but only if I will cook for her. She says it’s too much to cope with on an empty stomach.

  I stand at the stove, stirring, while the tears run down my cheeks, and I press the bruise again and again. I go over every detail of our relationship—how we met, how John looked when he first kissed me, how I knew we were meant for each other, the connection we felt between us, and how I can’t bear for it to be broken. Sometimes Sally will lean across and taste what I’m cooking, but mostly she’ll just nod along. The funny thing is that she really does listen.

  The other day I turned to her, and I could think of only one word to say. “Why?” I shouted it out.

  She looked a bit frightened, which, despite my pain, made me want to laugh. “Why what?” she asked.

  “Why wasn’t I good enough for him?” I said. “Why didn’t he want me?”

  She shook her head. “You gave him up, Verity,” she said. “It was you who finished it.”

  I sat down. I couldn’t finish cooking the meal. I know I told John to go, but I didn’t mean it. Surely Sally of all people could understand that. I suddenly saw that what had happened to me was exactly the same as with Colin and her. And all I’d wanted to do was to prove how different we were.

  It was then that I decided to stop talking about John. He is now a closed book.

  See also Endings; The Queen II; Sex; Ultimatum; Zeitgeist

  withdrawal

  Tread somewhere that in some parts of Japan, mothers breast-feed their babies for longer than we do in this country because they want to give their children the best possible start.

  But when they decide enough is enough, they don’t wean them off gently. One morning they paint their breasts with terrifying and horrific pictures and then wake the children up softly to take the breast just as before. The children are so filled with fright, they never want to feed from their mothers again.

  This way, it is the child who has given up the breast and honor is satisfied on both sides.

  See also Horror Movies; Ultimatum; Voices

  wobbling

  The chairman has been on lots of courses aimed at positivity. If you ask him how he is these days, he no longer tells you he is surviving and starts patting his dog. Instead, he looks you in the eye and says he’s fan-tas-tic or that everything is simply wonderful.

  He has even taken to putting little quotes up in the reception area to buoy us up each day. Most people scoff at these, but Brian and I have become secretly addicted. We have taken to getting to work earlier and earlier just to see what today’s quote will be. I think we’re both looking for a message that will give us the clues we need to join the rest of the human race. We want to be winners too.

  The other day I came in to find Brian had taped something to my computer. Even if you are falling flat on your face, you are still moving forward, I read.

  Brian has been surprisingly kind to me. It is funny how it takes something dreadful happening to you to find out who your real friends are.

  See also Codes; Dogs; God; Positive Thinking; Voices; Weight

  women’s laughter

  The only time I ever saw my father get angry with my mother was when she was helpless with laughter on the telephone once. He practically ran across the room, pulled the receiver from her hand, and slammed it down.

  She just looked at him and laughed even louder, until he slapped her. He told me afterward that he didn’t do it to hurt Mummy, but to stop her from getting hysterical.

  I understood what he was saying at the time but probably even better now. Women’s laughter is different from any other kind of laughter. It is louder, more generous, more absorbing and all-encompassing. It is as if they have forgotten other people exist. While women are laughing, they don’t care about anybody else but one another. If some man tries to join in, the laughter dries up immediately, and the women bustle round getting busy with one of the hundreds of jobs they always seem to have to do.

  I have a sneaking suspicion that if women laughed less, men might be happier.

  See also Danger; Friends; Happiness; Imposter Syndrome; Lesbians; Victim

  woolworths

  After the success of our last shopping expedition, Sally and I decided to spend Saturdays shopping in town. Last weekend she said she wanted to take me out for a special treat, and then she took me to Woolworths. I was surprised. When we were kids, during the summer holidays, we would tell our mothers that we were just going to the park near our estate, but then we’d jump on a bus and have baked beans on toast at the Woolworths in the center of town.

  For dessert, we’d steal sweets from the “Pick ’n’ Mix” counter. We weren’t the only ones. Even nowadays, you get adults looking at the sweets in Woolworths with a nostalgic look on their faces. They buy selections for their own children, but you can tell they think there’s something unenterprising about this, something unnatural about just handing over the money. But then, children these days expect everything to fall on their plates without doing any of the work, don’t they?

  I was about to point this out to Sally when I saw the expression on her face. “I want you to get me a candy shrimp, a fruit chew, two pear drops, and a coconut mushroom,” Sally said. For a few seconds, I thought about refusing, but there would be no point. I know Sally too well.

  We ran down the street afterward, whooping and shrieking with joy. My hands were sweating so much that most of the sweets had disintegrated in them, but I didn’t care. I kept looking into the faces of everyone passing me by, and just at that moment, it was as if Sally and I were the only ones who were truly alive.

  See also Codes; Danger; Kindness; Women’s Laughter; Zzzz

  words

  Sometimes when I have a lot of work to type, I get confused over words. They start to look odd. I told Brian about this, and he agreed. We made a list of silly words together. Eighth, for instance, is completely ridiculous once you analyze it. So is put. Almost an insult.

  We tried to write a letter together using every word on our list, but we had to give it up, we were laughing so much.

  “You’re all right sometimes, Ver,” he said, which sur
prised me because he didn’t then go on to make a joke about it. He’s changed a lot since his warning. These days he’s more like an unbounced Tigger. More manageable. He says the same about me.

  What I didn’t say to Brian—because he’d only get the wrong idea—is that one of the strangest words is husband. You can’t help but break it into two syllables in your mouth. Hus is like a snake caught between your tongue and the top edge of your teeth. It makes your lips sneer to say it. And then band is almost dismissive. Draws your mouth back and lets any passion out without there being anything you can do about it. Say it carefully enough, and your lips are in exactly the right position to have a gag tied around so you can’t utter another word.

  This is something I wish I’d never discovered, because now I can’t stop thinking about it.

  See also other silly words in this lexicon: Ants; Ears; Gwyneth Paltrow; Lesbians; Noddy; Rude; Thrush; Ultimatum; Vendetta; Zen

  worst-case scenario

  Brian says it’s one step forward, two steps back. As soon as he got his work situation sorted out, his home life went to pot. It turns out his wife has been putting up with him only because she thought he’d collapse without her, but now she says he doesn’t need her anymore. He said the funny thing is that he’s been fearing this moment for such a long time, his first feeling was one of complete relief. It’s as if he can start again.

  I think of Sally. She says she will never trust another man again. She says that she doesn’t need a man anymore. She says she is perfectly happy just being on her own. She says that she has saved up enough money from the time she was living off Colin so that she will never have to be dependent on anyone else ever again. She even says Colin has done her a favor.

  It’s humbling to think that the worst thing anyone can imagine is probably happening to someone, to some family, somewhere in the world right now. You can never be complacent. You can never just let things go on day after day without taking action, like Brian says he did.

  See also Illness; Old; Utopia; Withdrawal

  wrists

  The other day on the tube, there was a man standing up in front of me. He was holding on to that strap and reading his newspaper. I was just looking at the headlines, but then his wrist caught my attention.