“She smiled at him playfully. Are you having second thoughts? she said. If you get tired of walking you can always abandon me and turn back, I’m quite used to it. The walk, that is. Not being abandoned. I might be used to that as well, but it’s not the sort of thing I confess to strangers.”
“He had to walk quickly to keep up with her. That’s an odd question, he replied. Is it? I suppose I’m an odd person.”
“And what are your books about? Oh, I don’t know, she said. People.”
“With a concerned expression, Eileen asked whether she meant the financial situation or her marriage. Mary turned her hands palm up, looking exhausted, looking older than she really was. Everything, she said. I don’t know. You come home complaining about your job, complaining about your life. What about my life? Who’s taking care of me? Eileen was twenty-three then and her mother was fifty-one. Eileen held her fingertips lightly against one of her eyelids for a moment, and said: Aren’t you complaining to me about your life right now? Mary started crying then. Eileen watched her uneasily, and said: I really care that you’re unhappy, I just don’t know what you want me to do. Her mother was covering her face, sobbing. What did I do wrong? she said. How did I raise such selfish children? Eileen sat back against the sofa as if she was giving the question serious thought. What outcome do you want here? she asked. I can’t give you money. I can’t go back in time and make you marry a different man. You want me to listen to you complaining about it? I’ll listen. I am listening. But I’m not sure why you think your unhappiness is more important than mine. Mary left the room”
“Lola asked Eileen about her career plans and Eileen said she was happy at the magazine. Right, for now, said Lola. But what’s next? Eileen told her she didn’t know. Lola made a smiling face and said: One day you’re going to have to live in the real world. Eileen walked back to the apartment that night and found Alice on the sofa, working on her book. Alice, she said, am I going to have to live in the real world one day? Without looking up, Alice snorted and said: Jesus no, absolutely not. Who told you that?”
“And Alice, I do feel like a failure, and in a way my life really is nothing, and very few people care what happens in it. It’s so hard to see the point sometimes, when the things in life I think are meaningful turn out to mean nothing, and the people who are supposed to love me don’t. I have tears in my eyes even typing this stupid email, and I’ve had nearly six months to get over it. I’m starting to wonder if I just never will. Maybe certain kinds of pain, at certain formative stages in life, just impress themselves into a person’s sense of self permanently. Like the way I didn’t lose my virginity until I was twenty and it was so painful and awkward and bad, and since then I’ve always felt like exactly the kind of person that would happen to, even though before then I didn’t. And now I just feel like the kind of person whose life partner would fall out of love with them after several years, and I can’t find a way not to be that kind of person anymore.”
“Do you ever actually cry? He gave a short laugh and said: No. Do you? Oh, constantly. Yeah? he said. What do you be crying about? Anything, really. I suppose I’m very unhappy. He looked at her. Seriously? he said. Why? Nothing specific. It’s just how I feel. I find my life difficult.”
“They looked at one another. It was too dark for either of them to glean much information from the other’s face, and yet they kept looking, and did not break off, as if the act of looking was more important than what they could see.”
“Whatever I can do, whatever insignificant talent I might have, people just expect me to sell it – I mean literally, sell it for money, until I have a lot of money and no talent left. And then that’s it, I’m finished, and the next flashy twenty-five-year-old with an impending psychological collapse comes along.”
“She’s nervous because she looks up to you and she wants to make you happy, and sometimes she’s frightened that you’re not happy, and she doesn’t know what to do.”
“I also feel certain it’s better to be deeply loved (which you are) than widely liked (which you probably also are! but I won’t labour the point).”
“Alice, do you think the problem of the contemporary novel is simply the problem of contemporary life? I agree it seems vulgar, decadent, even epistemically violent, to invest energy in the trivialities of sex and friendship when human civilisation is facing collapse. But at the same time, that is what I do every day. We can wait, if you like, to ascend to some higher plane of being, at which point we’ll start directing all our mental and material resources toward existential questions and thinking nothing of our own families, friends, lovers, and so on. But we’ll be waiting, in my opinion, a long time, and in fact we’ll die first. After all, when people are lying on their deathbeds, don’t they always start talking about their spouses and children? And isn’t death just the apocalypse in the first person? So in that sense, there is nothing bigger than what you so derisively call ‘breaking up or staying together’ (!), because at the end of our lives, when there’s nothing left in front of us, it’s still the only thing we want to talk about. Maybe we’re just born to love and worry about the people we know, and to go on loving and worrying even when there are more important things we should be doing. And if that means the human species is going to die out, isn’t it in a way a nice reason to die out, the nicest reason you can imagine? Because when we should have been reorganising the distribution of the world’s resources and transitioning collectively to a sustainable economic model, we were worrying about sex and friendship instead. Because we loved each other too much and found each other too interesting. And I love that about humanity, and in fact it’s the very reason I root for us to survive – because we are so stupid about each other.”
“Do I resent him for liking the concept of God better than he likes me?”
“Eileen, you know on the phone the other night, you were saying I should find a wife for myself? Laughing, she turned to face him. Yes, she said. He was smiling, looking happy and tired. You meant like, some new person who was going to come into my life and marry me, he said. Someone I’ve never met before. Eileen interjected to add: And very beautiful. A younger woman, I think we said. Not too intelligent, but sweet-tempered. He was nodding his head. Right, he said. She sounds fantastic. Now, I have a question. When I get this wife, whom I can presume from the thrust of your remarks is not the same person as you— With mock indignation Eileen interrupted: Certainly she’s not me. For one thing, I’m a lot better-read than she is. He went on smiling to himself. Sure, he said. But once I find her, whoever she might be, will you and I still be friends? She sat back against the sofa cushions then, as if to consider the question. After a pause, she replied: No. I think when you find her, you’ll have to give me up. It might even be that[…]”
“What if the meaning of life on earth is not eternal progress toward some unspecified goal – the engineering and production of more and more powerful technologies, the development of more and more complex and abstruse cultural forms? What if these things just rise and recede naturally, like tides, while the meaning of life remains the same always – just to live and be with other people?”
“When I look back on what we were like when we first met, I don’t think we were really wrong about anything, except about ourselves. The ideas were right, but the mistake was that we thought we mattered. Well, we’ve both had that particular error ground out of us in different ways – me by achieving precisely nothing in over a decade of adult life, and you (if you’ll forgive me) by achieving as much as you possibly could and still not making one grain of difference to the smooth functioning of the capitalist system. When we were young, we thought our responsibilities stretched out to encompass the earth and everything that lived on it. And now we have to content ourselves with trying not to let down our loved ones, trying not to use too much plastic, and in your case trying to write an interesting book once every few years. So far so good on that front. Are you working on a new one yet, by the way?”
“You’re not easy to get the upper hand on, are you? Obviously I’m not going to manage it. It’s funny, because you carry on like you’d let me walk all over you, answering my texts at two in the morning, and then telling me you’re in love with me, blah blah blah. But that’s all your way of saying, just try and catch me, because you won’t. And I can see I won’t. You’re not going to let me have it for a minute. Nine times out of ten you’d have someone fooled with the way you go on. They’d be delighted with themselves, thinking they were really the boss of you. Yeah, yeah, but I’m not an idiot. You’re only letting me act badly because it puts you above me, and that’s where you like to be. Above, above. And I don’t take it personally, by the way, I don’t think you’d let anyone near you. Actually, I respect it. You’re looking out for yourself, and I’m sure you have your reasons. I’m sorry I was so harsh on you with what I said, because you were right, I was just trying to hurt you. And I probably did hurt you, big deal. Anyone can hurt anyone if they go out of their way. But then instead of getting mad with me, you go saying I’m welcome to stay over and you still love me and all this. Because you have to be perfect, don’t you? No, you really have a way about you, I must say. And I’m sorry, alright?”
“When I was younger, I think what I wanted was to travel the world, to lead a glamorous life, to be celebrated for my work, to marry a great intellectual, to reject everything I had been raised with, to cut myself off from the narrow world. I feel very embarrassed by all that now, but I was lonely and unhappy, and I didn’t understand that these feelings were ordinary, that there was nothing singular about my loneliness, my unhappiness. Maybe if I had understood that, as I think I do now, at least a little bit, I would never have written those books, I would never have become this person I don’t know. I know that I couldn’t write them again, or feel the way I felt about myself at that time. It was important to me then to prove that I was a special person. And in my attempt to prove it, I made it true. Only afterwards, when I had received the money and acclaim which I believed I deserved, did I understand that it was not possible for anyone to deserve these things, and by then it was too late. I had already become the person I had once longed to be, and now energetically despised. I don’t say this to slight my work. But why should anyone be rich and famous while other people live in desperate poverty?”
“The last time I fell in love, it ended badly, as you know, and then in the aftermath I wrote two novels. While I was in love, I tried to write a little here and there, but my thoughts always returned to the object of my affection, and my feelings ran back inexorably toward her, so my work could never develop any substance of its own, and I had no meaningful place for it in my life. We were happy, and then we were unhappy, and after some misery and recrimination, we broke up – and only then could I start giving myself to my work in a serious way. It was like I had cleared a space inside myself, and I had to fill it up somehow, and that’s how I came to sit down and write. I had to empty my life out first and begin from there. Looking back now on the period when I wrote the books, I feel like it was a good time in my life, because I had work I needed to do, and I did it. I was perennially broke, and lonely, and anxious about money, but I also had this other thing, this part of my life which was secret and protected, and my thoughts returned to it all the time, and my feelings orbited around it, and it belonged to me completely. In a way it was like a love affair, or an infatuation, except that it only involved myself and it was all within my own control. (The opposite of a love affair, then.) For all the frustration and difficulty of writing a novel, I knew from the beginning of the process that I had been given something very important, a special gift, a blessing. It was like God had put his hand on my head and filled me with the most intense desire I had ever felt, not desire for another person, but desire to bring something into being that had never existed before. When I look back at those years, I feel touched and almost pained by the simplicity of the life I was living, because I knew what I had to do, and I did it, that was all.”
“Well, I was an only child, Simon answered. Certainly my mother was very fond of me, yes. Is very fond of me, I mean. He was turning the base of his wine glass around on the tabletop. It’s not the easiest relationship in my life, he added. I think she sometimes feels kind of confused and frustrated with me. Like in terms of my career, the decisions I’ve made. I suppose she has friends whose children are the same age I am, and they’re all doctors or lawyers now and they have children of their own. And I’m basically still a parliamentary assistant with no girlfriend. I mean, I don’t blame my mother for being confused. I don’t know what happened to my life either."
“Simon looked around at him, as if the question was surprising, and answered: Oh God, no. Not at all. Not that I think my mother is obsessed with status, by the way. I’m sure she would have liked to have had a son who was a doctor, but I don’t think she’s disappointed in me for not wanting that. Felix passed him the joint and he accepted it. We don’t really have serious conversations, he added. You know, she doesn’t like things to get serious, she just wants everyone to get along. I think in a way she finds me intimidating. Which makes me feel awful. He took a short drag and, after exhaling, added: Whenever I think about my parents I feel guilty. I was just the wrong son for them, it wasn’t their fault.”
“Simon is the worst of all. You know what’s wrong with him? I’m serious, it’s called a martyr complex. He never needs anything from anyone, and he thinks that makes him a superior being. Whereas in reality he just leads a sad sterile life, sitting alone in his apartment telling himself what a good person he is.”
“Part of me thinks you just hate yourself. Everything you’re doing, moving out here on your own with no car or anything, getting your feelings involved with some randomer you met online, it’s like you’re trying to make yourself miserable. And maybe you want someone to fuck you over and hurt you. At least that would make sense why you would pick me out, because you think I’m the type of person who could do that. Or would want to.”
“For all I know you’re more miserable than I am, but you just never say it. And you’re always nice to me. Always. Even right now I’m crying on your lap. When have you ever cried on my lap? Never, you never have. Tenderly he looked down at her, the freckles along her cheekbone, her hot pink ear. No, he agreed. But we’re different people. And I’m not miserable, don’t worry. Sometimes I’m sad, but that’s okay. She gave her head a little shake without lifting it from his lap. But I don’t take care of you the way you take care of me, she said. He was smoothing his thumb slowly over her cheekbone. Well, maybe I’m not very good at being taken care of, he answered. Her tears had subsided, and she lay there on his lap for a moment without speaking. Then she asked: Why not? He gave an awkward smile. I don’t know, he said. Anyway, we were talking about you, I think. She turned her head to look up at him. I wish we could talk about you for once, she said.”
“And, if I’m honest, I’ve wanted to feel that you needed me, that you couldn’t do without me. Do you understand what I’m saying? I don’t think I’m being very clear at all. I mean that you’ve done much more for me, really, than I’ve ever done for you. And I’ve needed you more. I do need you more, a lot more, than you need me.”
“And maybe you really meant all those things you said about our friendship, just wanting to be friends, and if you did, I’ll accept that. But I feel maybe it’s possible you said those things, at least in some way, because you wanted me to make the other case. As if I would come out and say, please, Eileen, don’t do this to me, I’ve been in love with you all along, I don’t know how to live without you. Or whatever, whatever you wanted me to say. Not that it’s not true, of course it’s true. And maybe even when you’re getting angry at Alice, saying that she doesn’t care about you – I don’t know, maybe it’s the same idea. At some level you want her to say, oh but Eileen, I love you very much, you’re my best friend. But the problem is that you seem to be drawn to people who aren’t very good at giving you those responses. I mean, anyone could have told you – certainly Felix and myself both knew – that Alice was never going to react that way just now. And maybe it’s the same with me, in a way. If you tell me you don’t want to be with me, I might feel very hurt and humiliated, but I’m not going to start begging and pleading with you. At some level, I actually think you know I won’t. But then you get left with the impression that I don’t love you, or I don’t want you, because you’re not getting this response from me – this response that you basically know you won’t get, because I’m not the type of person who can give it to you. I don’t know.”
“At first I thought: a perfect example of our shallow self-congratulatory ‘book culture’, in which non-readers are shunned as morally inferior, and the more books you read, the better you are than everyone else.”