Normal People (Page 38)

I can’t imagine what my life would be like if I cared what people thought of me.

Before she’s really aware of what’s happening, Alan lifts his arm and throws the bottle at her. It smashes behind her on the tiles. On some level she knows that he can’t have intended to hit her; they’re only standing a few feet apart and it missed her completely. Still she runs past him, up the stairs. She feels her body racing through the cool interior air. He turns and follows her but she manages to make it into her room, pushing herself hard against the door, before he catches up. He tries the handle and she has to strain to keep it from turning. Then he kicks the outside of the door. Her body is vibrating with adrenaline.

You absolute freak! Alan says. Open the fucking door, I didn’t do anything!

Forehead against the smooth grain of the wood, she calls out: Please just leave me alone. Go to bed, okay? I’ll clean up downstairs, I won’t tell Denise.

Open the door, he says.

Marianne leans the whole weight of her body against the door, her hands firmly grasping the handle, eyes screwed shut. From a young age her life has been abnormal, she knows that. But so much is covered over in time now, the way leaves fall and cover a piece of earth, and eventually mingle with the soil. Things that happened to her then are buried in the earth of her body. She tries to be a good person. But deep down she knows she is a bad person, corrupted, wrong, and all her efforts to be right, to have the right opinions, to say the right things, these efforts only disguise what is buried inside her, the evil part of herself.

Abruptly she feels the handle slip from underneath her hand and before she can step away from the door, it bangs open. She hears a cracking noise when it connects with her face, then a strange feeling inside her head. She steps backwards while Alan enters the room. There’s a ringing, but it’s not so much a sound as a physical sensation, like the friction of two imagined metal plates somewhere in her skull. Her nose is running. She’s aware that Alan is inside the room. Her hand goes to her face. Her nose is running really quite badly. Lifting the hand away now, she sees that her fingers are covered in blood, warm blood, wet. Alan is saying something. The blood must be coming out of her face. Her vision swims diagonally and the sense of ringing increases.

Are you going to blame me for that now? says Alan.

She puts her hand back to her nose. Blood is streaming out of her face so fast that she can’t stem it with her fingers. It runs over her mouth and down her chin, she can feel it. She sees it land in heavy drops on the blue carpet fibres below.

Five Minutes Later

(JULY 2014)

In the kitchen he takes a can of beer out of the fridge and sits at the table to open it. After a minute the front door opens and he hears Lorraine’s keys. Hey, he says, loud enough for her to hear. She comes in and closes the kitchen door. On the lino her shoes sound sticky, like the wet sound of lips parting. He notices a fat moth resting on the lampshade overhead, not moving. Lorraine puts her hand softly on the top of his head.

Is Marianne gone home? says Lorraine.

Yeah.

What happened in the match?

I don’t know, he says. I think it went to penalties.

Lorraine draws a chair back and sits down beside him. She starts taking the pins out of her hair and laying them out on the table. He takes a mouthful of beer and lets it get warm in his mouth before swallowing. The moth shuffles its wings overhead. The blind above the kitchen sink is pulled up, and he can see the faint black outline of trees against the sky outside.

And I had a fine time, thanks for asking, says Lorraine.

Sorry.

You’re looking a bit dejected. Did something happen?

He shakes his head. When he saw Yvonne last week she told him he was ‘making progress’. Mental healthcare professionals are always using this hygienic vocabulary, words wiped clean as whiteboards, free of connotation, sexless. She asked about his sense of ‘belonging’. You used to say you felt trapped between two places, she said, not really belonging at home but not fitting in here either. Do you still feel that way? He just shrugged. The medication is doing its chemical work inside his brain now anyway, no matter what he does or says. He gets up and showers every morning, he turns up for work in the library, he doesn’t really fantasise about jumping off a bridge. He takes the medication, life goes on.

Pins arranged on the table, Lorraine starts teasing her hair out loosely with her fingers.

Did you hear Isa Gleeson is pregnant? she says.

I did, yeah.

Your old friend.

He picks up the can of beer and weighs it in his hand. Isa was his first girlfriend, his first ex-girlfriend. She used to call the house phone at night after they broke up and Lorraine would answer. From up in his room, under the covers, he would hear Lorraine’s voice saying: I’m sorry, sweetheart, he can’t come to the phone right now. Maybe you can talk to him in school. She had braces when they were going out together, she probably doesn’t have those anymore. Isa, yeah. He was shy around her. She used to do such stupid things to make him jealous, but she would act innocent, as if it wasn’t clear to both of them what she was doing: maybe she really thought he couldn’t see it, or maybe she couldn’t see it herself. He hated that. He just withdrew from her further and further until finally, in a text message, he told her he didn’t want to be her boyfriend anymore. He hasn’t seen her in years now.

I don’t know why she’s keeping it, he says. Do you think she’s one of these anti-abortion people?

Oh, is that the only reason women have babies, is it? Because of some backwards political view?

Well, from what I hear she’s not together with the dad. I don’t know does she even have a job.

I didn’t have a job when I had you, says Lorraine.

He stares at the intricate white-and-red typeface on the can of beer, the crest of the ‘B’ looping back and inwards again towards itself.

And do you not regret it? he says. I know you’re going to try and spare my feelings now, but honestly. Do you not think you could have had a better life if you didn’t have a kid?

Lorraine turns to stare at him now, her face frozen.

Oh god, she says. Why? Is Marianne pregnant?

What? No.

She laughs, presses a hand to her breastbone. That’s good, she says. Jesus.

I mean, I assume not, he adds. It wouldn’t have anything to do with me if she was.

His mother pauses, hand still at her chest, and then says diplomatically: Well, that’s none of my business.

What does that mean, you think I’m lying? There’s nothing going on there, trust me.

For a few seconds Lorraine says nothing. He swallows some beer and puts the can down on the table. It is extremely irritating that his mother thinks he and Marianne are together, when the closest they have come in years to actually being together was earlier this evening, and it ended with him crying alone in his room.

You’re just coming home every weekend to see your beloved mother, then, are you? she says.

He shrugs. If you don’t want me to come home, I won’t, he says.

Oh, come on now.

She gets up to fill the kettle. He watches her idly while she tamps her teabag down into her favourite cup, then he rubs at his eyes again. He feels like he has ruined the life of everyone who has ever even marginally liked him.

*

In April, Connell sent one of his short stories, the only really completed one, to Sadie Darcy-O’Shea. She emailed back within an hour:

Connell it’s incredible! let us publish it please! xxx

When he read this message his pulse hammered all over his body, loud and hard like a machine. He had to lie down and stare at the white ceiling. Sadie was the editor of the college literary journal. Finally he sat up and wrote back:

I’m glad you liked it but I don’t think it’s good enough to be published yet, thanks though.

Instantly Sadie replied:

PLEASE? XXX

Connell’s entire body was pounding like a conveyor belt. No one had ever read a word of his work before that moment. It was a wild new landscape of experience. He paced around the room massaging his neck for a while. Then he typed back:

Ok, how about this, you can publish it under a pseudonym. But you also have to promise you won’t tell anyone who wrote it, even the other people who edit the magazine. Ok?

Sadie wrote back:

haha so mysterious, I love it! thank you my darling! my lips are forever sealed xxx

His story appeared, unedited, in the May issue of the magazine. He found a copy in the Arts Block the morning it was printed and flipped straight to the page where the story appeared, under the pseudonym ‘Conor McCready’. That doesn’t even sound like a real name, he thought. All around him in the Arts Block people were filing into morning lectures, holding coffee and talking. On the first page of the text alone Connell noticed two errors. He had to shut the magazine for a few seconds then and take deep breaths. Students and faculty members continued to walk past, heedless of his turmoil. He reopened the magazine and continued reading. Another error. He wanted to crawl under a plant and burrow into the earth. That was it, the end of the publication ordeal. Because no one knew he had written the story he could not canvass anyone’s reaction, and he never heard from a single soul whether it was considered good or bad. In time he began to believe it had only been published in the first place because Sadie was lacking material for an upcoming deadline. Overall the experience had caused him far more distress than pleasure. Nonetheless he kept two copies of the magazine, one in Dublin and one under his mattress at home.