Ghosts by Dolly Alderton (2021)
Ghosts by Dolly Alderton (2021)
Part One
Chapter 2
The sexiest, most exciting, romantic, explosive feeling in the world is a matter of a few centimetres of skin being stroked for the first time in a public place. The first confirmation of desire. The first indication of intimacy. You only get that feeling with a person once (39).
Chapter 4
“I don’t think my mum ever really wanted to be a mum,” I said. “I think she thought she did, then she had me and realized she didn’t.”
“I don’t believe that for a second.”
“No, no, it’s okay. I’m weirdly fine about it. I don’t think it was anything particularly to do with me, I think I could have been anyone and she would have been disappointed. I feel sorry for her, actually. It must be terrible to have a child and then realize it’s not the right decision for you. Particularly as you can’t say it out loud, so it’s a secret she’s had to keep for all my life” (70-1).
Only now do I realize that the first night I spent with Max, I was looking for evidence of past lovers. I wanted him inside me so I could search for the ghosts inside him. In the absence of any context for who he was, I was gathering forensics from the inerasable fingerprints that had been left by those who had handled him. When he pressed his palm over my mouth, I could see the woman who fucked him to feel freedom in disappearance. When he held a handful of my flesh in his hands, I could tell he’d loved a body more yielding than mine. His lips running along the arches of my feet let me know he had worshipped a woman in her entirety-that he had loved the bones of her toes as much as the brackets of her hips; that he had known her blood on his skin as well as he’d known her perfume on his sheets. He held me like a hot-water bottle when he slept and I knew that night after night after night he had shared a bed with another body and together they’d constructed an oasis from just a mattress (77-8).
Chapter 5
Vivien was sitting in a glass-fronted meeting room, her shoulders rounded and her head lowered intently towards a piece of paper. She had a shoulder-length, messy-fringed shaggy blonde haircut that implied a former life of lots of parties. The sort of hair that suits a woman of her age, but also would look completely appropriate on an iconic ageing male rock star. She was in her mid-fifties, which you could see in the gentle sag and folds of her face and the milky blue of her irises, but she had the energy of the most powerful and popular girl at school. She was decisive, exacting, confident and mischievous. She liked scandal, gossip and salaciousness. She orbited in high glamour-well connected, well versed in style and taste-while being decidedly unglamorous herself, which made her all the more intriguing. She was bookish and bespectacled, always in black trousers and an androgynously cut simple shirt, no matter where she went. Her glasses were square and cartoonishly thick-rimmed, her earrings were always large and geometric-you could tell that all her accessories were chosen on account of being “funky.”
But the most compelling thing about Vivien was the spell of guruism she cast on whoever she met while being unaware of her own addictive didacticism. She would utter throwaway thoughts that would become fundamental truth to whoever heard them. She once told me to “always order turbot, if turbot is on the menu” (I always order turbot) and that “all scents are tacky other than rose” (I have since only worn rose perfume). I had never met a woman surer of her own thoughts and instincts, and it was an invigorating thing to behold (80-1).
Chapter 7
“I think my dad knows what’s happening to him.”
“Why do you think that?”
“I can just tell. I know him better than anyone. And he knows that something is changing inside him. He knows he’s losing easy access to parts of himself and his memories. I wish I didn’t know that was the truth, but it is. I wish I could let myself believe he’s blissfully unaware, but I can’t. How awful and confusing for him, Max. He must be so scared. It must be completely unbearable.” He ran his hand up and down my back as we sat in silence (129).
Part Two
Chapter 11
Thankfully, Lucy invited Lola in her place-she was often the first reserve for hen dos of women she’d only count as an acquaintance. She was also regularly invited to the evening-only, post-dinner portion of a wedding reception of couples she didn’t know that well. I think the reasons for this were threefold: she was fun, she always bought a present from the gift registry and she was always single. And single women at a thirty-something party carried the same calibre of entertainment as a covers band. We weren’t pregnant so we’d always drink, we had no one to go home to so we’d always stay out late and we might get off with someone which gave the evening some narrative tension for everyone else. And best of all: we were free (167)!
Chapter 12
My solitude was like a gemstone. For the most part it was sparkling and resplendent-something I wore with pride. The first time I met with a mortgage adviser, I told him my financial situation: no parental help, no second income from a partner, no pension, no company that permanently employed me, no assets and no family inheritance in my future. “So, it’s Nina against the world,” he said offhandedly as he shuffled through my bank statements. Nina against the world, I’d hear on rotation in my head whenever I needed emboldening. But underneath this diamond of solitude was a sharp point that I occasionally caught with my bare hands, making it feel like a perilous asset rather than a precious one. Perhaps this jagged underside was essential-what made the surface of my aloneness shine so bright. But loneliness, once just sad, had recently started to feel frightening (203).
Chapter 13
“I’d never in my life met someone so sure of what it is they not only wanted but what they deserved. I knew then, on our first date, that you were the only person I wanted to be with. You inspire me, you organize me”-another mischievous glance to the audience-“you help me strive to become the best man I can be. I once read that the definition of love is ‘being the guardian of another person’s solitude.’ Lucy, I promise that for the rest of my life-which is as long as I will love you-you will never, ever be alone.” Everyone clapped as Lucy used her napkin to wipe away tears from under her eyes. Joe bent down to her face, which he held, and they kissed (221).
Chapter 15
“So what’s up with you, anyway?” she said, opening her menu. “Why have you had a horrible day?”
“It was Dad’s birthday lunch and he was in a bad way. Didn’t recognize me at one point. Kept asking for his mother, who’s been dead for twenty years. Then he tried to open a tin with a chopping knife and cut his hand, there was blood everywhere. Thankfully, he didn’t have to go to hospital.”
“Oh dear, everything’s very dramatic with you at the moment, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Every time I meet you it seems there’s another big drama.” She looked up from her menu.
“Katherine.” I took a deep breath. I couldn’t believe I was finally going to say it-the speech I’d been angrily rehearsing for months, that I never thought would be spoken anywhere other than when I was alone in the shower. “I may not have a baby. But I do have a life.”
“Of course I know you have a life.”
“No you don’t.”
“Yes I do.”
“You don’t. You don’t ask me about it, you don’t take it seriously, you don’t come to my home, you don’t take any interest in my work, you couldn’t even come to my book launch when I had no family there. You’re my best and oldest friend and not only did you not want to be there, you didn’t even feel a sense of obligation to pretend to want to be there.”
“I’ve told you, it’s because I couldn’t come all the way into town for the evening.”
“So you thought you’d go to a party where you could talk about babies and weddings and houses all night. Because not everyone wants to talk about babies and weddings and houses at a book launch.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is true. You couldn’t just be my friend for one night, celebrating my work. I have to celebrate when you get your kitchen retiled, but anything I do is trivial and meaningless because I’m not in a relationship and I don’t have children. I don’t know what’s happened to make you so relentlessly dismissive of anyone whose life isn’t exactly like yours, but you need to sort that shit out.” I slammed my glass slightly too dramatically on the table and wine spilt.
“I don’t need you to celebrate everything in my life!”
The waiter came to our table with a grin as wide as a canal. “Would you like to hear the specials for this evening?”
“Can you give us a few minutes?” Katherine said. He reluctantly nodded and walked away.
“And actually-yeah, things are dramatic at the moment. And I’m sorry if that’s not what you fancy right now. I’m sorry that I have a terminally ill father and a mother who is clearly not coping. And that I had my heart broken by a man I’ll never see or speak to again. I’m sorry if that’s not quite cashmere-socks-and-pastel-coloured-ceramic-tableware enough for you. But you can’t phase me out of your life because I’m a bit too messy for whatever aesthetic mood board you’re currently living in. That’s not how friendship works.”
“I don’t think you’re messy, I think there’s just a lot going on.”
“Yes, there is. And you just can’t be bothered to support me through it?”
“You don’t get it, Nina!” she said, raising her voice and eyebrows at unnerving speed. “I don’t have the headspace for it! I can’t be that for you any more, that’s what Lola is good for. You’ll understand when you have kids.”
I looked at her, completely unable to access my Katherine memory archive-unable to recall how and why we’d been friends for twenty years. I signalled to the waiter for the bill.
“I don’t want to have dinner with you. And you certainly don’t want to have dinner with me. I don’t know why we put ourselves through this any more.”
“I’ve come all the way from Surrey.”
“YES, I KNOW,” I barked. “No one asked you to fucking live there, Katherine. You’re not seventy. You’re not a conservatory salesman. You’re not a retired Question Time presenter-turned-gardening columnist.”
“Lots of people have to move out of London, you don’t need to act like it’s some enormous betrayal.”
“Are you only going to want to be friends with me when I get married and have a kid and own a big house? Is that when you’ll decide you love me again? When I do all the things you’ve done so you can feel like you were right all along?”
Katherine took her jacket off the back of her chair and picked up her handbag. Her face had reddened and she was chewing her top lip with fervour. “I’m going. Don’t call me or message me,” she said, shrugging on her jacket and pulling her hair out from under its collar. “I don’t want to talk to you.”
“You haven’t wanted to talk to me in years,” I said as she stood up from the table and left (258-61).
“Love is homesickness,” I once read in a book. The author’s therapist had told her that the pursuit of love in adulthood is just an expression of missing our mums and dads-that we look for intimacy and romance because we never stop wanting parental security and attention. We simply displace it. My dad was nearly eighty and he was still missing his mother. He’d found a way of concealing it for all of his adult life and now, as the facade of togetherness was being slowly taken apart without his knowledge: the truth. All he wanted was his mum. I would make a strong case for the argument that every adult on this earth is sitting on a bench waiting for their parents to pick them up, whether they know it or not. I think we wait until the day we die (261-2).
Chapter 16
“Do you worry you’re like your dad?” I immediately regretted the question-it was goading and seemed to relate his experience back to me.
“We’re all like our dads,” he said. “Come on then, what ghosts are you bringing to the orgy?”
“I don’t know, really. My parents’ relationship is very boring. I don’t think they’re soulmates, they’re so disconnected in so many ways, but they’re complementary to each other. And they’re best friends, they really have a good time together. Well, they used to. It’s hard to remember what their relationship was like before Dad got ill. His behaviour is so different now, obviously, but so is hers. I can’t remember her being this self-obsessed. And there must be a reason for it-but I can’t work out what it is. I think she is just pretending what’s happening isn’t happening. Or maybe she doesn’t want to care for Dad any more, I know how upsetting it must be. Maybe she just finds it too hard.” Max had become completely quiet as I spoke. We had never talked about our families like this. “It was always Dad and me who were the closest-he was the one who I talked to the most when I was a teenager. He taught me how to drive. He taught me everything. Mum and I were never like those mums and daughters who are best friends. But I’ve never felt quite so distant from her as I do now. And that scares me because Dad’s not going to be here soon. I don’t know how soon, it could be years and years, but sooner than I thought. And it will just be me and her. That will be my whole family. And I don’t know how I’ll have any sort of relationship with her when he isn’t here. I think Dad is the only thing we have in common.” My words hung above the bed. More silence. I couldn’t work out exactly when he’d fallen asleep (283-4).
Chapter 19
Then I realized-he would be able to decide when he wanted to fall in love and have a family and it would happen. There would always be a woman who wanted to love him. He didn’t have to take this chance at all-he could wait for another chance. Then another one. The female population was just an endless source of chances and he could wait as long as he wanted. There was so little risk involved when it came to who and how he loved. Nothing meant anything to him.
“You won’t marry a woman your age,” I said, understanding it as I said it aloud. “You’ll marry a woman ten years younger than you. That’s how this will work. You’re right, age doesn’t matter. To you.” He stared at me, his mouth tight and defiant, and said nothing. “Has Lola left anything here?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t think so.”
“Don’t date until you’ve sorted your shit out.” I went to the door. “And don’t call Lola again.”
-
I knew he would date again. Probably within weeks, just like Max had done. I imagined all the women Jethro and Max would date, while they were “confused” and “not ready,” standing next to each other in a long factory line. Each of them would give these men something-a story, a weekend away, their attention, their advice, their time, a sexual adventure, an actual adventure-then they’d be forced to pass him along to the next relationship. These men would emerge at some point, full of all the love and care and confidence that had been bestowed upon them over the years, and they might commit to someone. Then, most certainly, another one. Then another one when that one got boring. Their greed would not be satisfied by one woman, by one life. They’d get to lead a great many lives. Life after life after life after life.
Because these men wanted to want something rather than have something. Max wanted to be tortured, he wanted to yearn and chase and dream. He wanted to exist in a liminal state, like everything was just about to begin. He liked contemplating what our relationship might be like, without investing any time or commitment in our relationship. Jethro liked talking about the home he would buy with Lola, but he didn’t want to turn up to the viewing. They were like teenage boys in their rooms, coming up with lyrics to write in their notebooks. They weren’t ready to be adults, to make any choices, let alone promises. They preferred a relationship to be virtual and speculative, because when it was virtual and speculative, it could be perfect. Their girlfriend didn’t have to be human. They didn’t have to think about plans or practicalities, they weren’t burdened with the concern of another person’s happiness. And they could be heroes. They could be gods.
It was pathetic (325-7).
“There’s nothing wrong with wanting to love someone, Nina.”
“I know that.”
“It’s not a weakness, to want that for yourself,” she said. “I don’t want you to give up hope.”
“I think that might have already happened.” We both leant out of the window, exhaling smoke into the sky. The recently planted tree waved its nascent branches at us in the breeze.
“I know,” she said. “You should give your hope to me.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s like what Joe said in his groom’s speech: love is being the guardian of another person’s solitude. Maybe friendship is being the guardian of another person’s hope. Leave it with me and I’ll look after it for a while, if it feels too heavy for now.”
“I can’t do that, you’re already carrying yours.”
“Oh, I’ve been carrying mine for a decade,” she said. “I won’t notice if I chuck a bit more in.”
I tucked her hair tightly behind her ear. “I couldn’t be less of an advocate for relationships right now. But, for what it’s worth-I know there is a love ahead of you, Lola. Grander than either of us can imagine. He might not be a celebrity magician. He might not be anything like the sort of man we thought he would be. But he’s on his way.”
“I know that, Nina,” she said. “I’ve always known that.”
“You really have, haven’t you?”
“So I can know it for you too. And then you don’t have to think about it any more. You just keep writing your books and looking after your dad. I’ll keep your hope safe for you until you’re ready for me to hand it back” (328).
Part One
Chapter 2
The sexiest, most exciting, romantic, explosive feeling in the world is a matter of a few centimetres of skin being stroked for the first time in a public place. The first confirmation of desire. The first indication of intimacy. You only get that feeling with a person once (39).
Chapter 4
“I don’t think my mum ever really wanted to be a mum,” I said. “I think she thought she did, then she had me and realized she didn’t.”
“I don’t believe that for a second.”
“No, no, it’s okay. I’m weirdly fine about it. I don’t think it was anything particularly to do with me, I think I could have been anyone and she would have been disappointed. I feel sorry for her, actually. It must be terrible to have a child and then realize it’s not the right decision for you. Particularly as you can’t say it out loud, so it’s a secret she’s had to keep for all my life” (70-1).
Only now do I realize that the first night I spent with Max, I was looking for evidence of past lovers. I wanted him inside me so I could search for the ghosts inside him. In the absence of any context for who he was, I was gathering forensics from the inerasable fingerprints that had been left by those who had handled him. When he pressed his palm over my mouth, I could see the woman who fucked him to feel freedom in disappearance. When he held a handful of my flesh in his hands, I could tell he’d loved a body more yielding than mine. His lips running along the arches of my feet let me know he had worshipped a woman in her entirety-that he had loved the bones of her toes as much as the brackets of her hips; that he had known her blood on his skin as well as he’d known her perfume on his sheets. He held me like a hot-water bottle when he slept and I knew that night after night after night he had shared a bed with another body and together they’d constructed an oasis from just a mattress (77-8).
Chapter 5
Vivien was sitting in a glass-fronted meeting room, her shoulders rounded and her head lowered intently towards a piece of paper. She had a shoulder-length, messy-fringed shaggy blonde haircut that implied a former life of lots of parties. The sort of hair that suits a woman of her age, but also would look completely appropriate on an iconic ageing male rock star. She was in her mid-fifties, which you could see in the gentle sag and folds of her face and the milky blue of her irises, but she had the energy of the most powerful and popular girl at school. She was decisive, exacting, confident and mischievous. She liked scandal, gossip and salaciousness. She orbited in high glamour-well connected, well versed in style and taste-while being decidedly unglamorous herself, which made her all the more intriguing. She was bookish and bespectacled, always in black trousers and an androgynously cut simple shirt, no matter where she went. Her glasses were square and cartoonishly thick-rimmed, her earrings were always large and geometric-you could tell that all her accessories were chosen on account of being “funky.”
But the most compelling thing about Vivien was the spell of guruism she cast on whoever she met while being unaware of her own addictive didacticism. She would utter throwaway thoughts that would become fundamental truth to whoever heard them. She once told me to “always order turbot, if turbot is on the menu” (I always order turbot) and that “all scents are tacky other than rose” (I have since only worn rose perfume). I had never met a woman surer of her own thoughts and instincts, and it was an invigorating thing to behold (80-1).
Chapter 7
“I think my dad knows what’s happening to him.”
“Why do you think that?”
“I can just tell. I know him better than anyone. And he knows that something is changing inside him. He knows he’s losing easy access to parts of himself and his memories. I wish I didn’t know that was the truth, but it is. I wish I could let myself believe he’s blissfully unaware, but I can’t. How awful and confusing for him, Max. He must be so scared. It must be completely unbearable.” He ran his hand up and down my back as we sat in silence (129).
Part Two
Chapter 11
Thankfully, Lucy invited Lola in her place-she was often the first reserve for hen dos of women she’d only count as an acquaintance. She was also regularly invited to the evening-only, post-dinner portion of a wedding reception of couples she didn’t know that well. I think the reasons for this were threefold: she was fun, she always bought a present from the gift registry and she was always single. And single women at a thirty-something party carried the same calibre of entertainment as a covers band. We weren’t pregnant so we’d always drink, we had no one to go home to so we’d always stay out late and we might get off with someone which gave the evening some narrative tension for everyone else. And best of all: we were free (167)!
Chapter 12
My solitude was like a gemstone. For the most part it was sparkling and resplendent-something I wore with pride. The first time I met with a mortgage adviser, I told him my financial situation: no parental help, no second income from a partner, no pension, no company that permanently employed me, no assets and no family inheritance in my future. “So, it’s Nina against the world,” he said offhandedly as he shuffled through my bank statements. Nina against the world, I’d hear on rotation in my head whenever I needed emboldening. But underneath this diamond of solitude was a sharp point that I occasionally caught with my bare hands, making it feel like a perilous asset rather than a precious one. Perhaps this jagged underside was essential-what made the surface of my aloneness shine so bright. But loneliness, once just sad, had recently started to feel frightening (203).
Chapter 13
“I’d never in my life met someone so sure of what it is they not only wanted but what they deserved. I knew then, on our first date, that you were the only person I wanted to be with. You inspire me, you organize me”-another mischievous glance to the audience-“you help me strive to become the best man I can be. I once read that the definition of love is ‘being the guardian of another person’s solitude.’ Lucy, I promise that for the rest of my life-which is as long as I will love you-you will never, ever be alone.” Everyone clapped as Lucy used her napkin to wipe away tears from under her eyes. Joe bent down to her face, which he held, and they kissed (221).
Chapter 15
“So what’s up with you, anyway?” she said, opening her menu. “Why have you had a horrible day?”
“It was Dad’s birthday lunch and he was in a bad way. Didn’t recognize me at one point. Kept asking for his mother, who’s been dead for twenty years. Then he tried to open a tin with a chopping knife and cut his hand, there was blood everywhere. Thankfully, he didn’t have to go to hospital.”
“Oh dear, everything’s very dramatic with you at the moment, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Every time I meet you it seems there’s another big drama.” She looked up from her menu.
“Katherine.” I took a deep breath. I couldn’t believe I was finally going to say it-the speech I’d been angrily rehearsing for months, that I never thought would be spoken anywhere other than when I was alone in the shower. “I may not have a baby. But I do have a life.”
“Of course I know you have a life.”
“No you don’t.”
“Yes I do.”
“You don’t. You don’t ask me about it, you don’t take it seriously, you don’t come to my home, you don’t take any interest in my work, you couldn’t even come to my book launch when I had no family there. You’re my best and oldest friend and not only did you not want to be there, you didn’t even feel a sense of obligation to pretend to want to be there.”
“I’ve told you, it’s because I couldn’t come all the way into town for the evening.”
“So you thought you’d go to a party where you could talk about babies and weddings and houses all night. Because not everyone wants to talk about babies and weddings and houses at a book launch.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is true. You couldn’t just be my friend for one night, celebrating my work. I have to celebrate when you get your kitchen retiled, but anything I do is trivial and meaningless because I’m not in a relationship and I don’t have children. I don’t know what’s happened to make you so relentlessly dismissive of anyone whose life isn’t exactly like yours, but you need to sort that shit out.” I slammed my glass slightly too dramatically on the table and wine spilt.
“I don’t need you to celebrate everything in my life!”
The waiter came to our table with a grin as wide as a canal. “Would you like to hear the specials for this evening?”
“Can you give us a few minutes?” Katherine said. He reluctantly nodded and walked away.
“And actually-yeah, things are dramatic at the moment. And I’m sorry if that’s not what you fancy right now. I’m sorry that I have a terminally ill father and a mother who is clearly not coping. And that I had my heart broken by a man I’ll never see or speak to again. I’m sorry if that’s not quite cashmere-socks-and-pastel-coloured-ceramic-tableware enough for you. But you can’t phase me out of your life because I’m a bit too messy for whatever aesthetic mood board you’re currently living in. That’s not how friendship works.”
“I don’t think you’re messy, I think there’s just a lot going on.”
“Yes, there is. And you just can’t be bothered to support me through it?”
“You don’t get it, Nina!” she said, raising her voice and eyebrows at unnerving speed. “I don’t have the headspace for it! I can’t be that for you any more, that’s what Lola is good for. You’ll understand when you have kids.”
I looked at her, completely unable to access my Katherine memory archive-unable to recall how and why we’d been friends for twenty years. I signalled to the waiter for the bill.
“I don’t want to have dinner with you. And you certainly don’t want to have dinner with me. I don’t know why we put ourselves through this any more.”
“I’ve come all the way from Surrey.”
“YES, I KNOW,” I barked. “No one asked you to fucking live there, Katherine. You’re not seventy. You’re not a conservatory salesman. You’re not a retired Question Time presenter-turned-gardening columnist.”
“Lots of people have to move out of London, you don’t need to act like it’s some enormous betrayal.”
“Are you only going to want to be friends with me when I get married and have a kid and own a big house? Is that when you’ll decide you love me again? When I do all the things you’ve done so you can feel like you were right all along?”
Katherine took her jacket off the back of her chair and picked up her handbag. Her face had reddened and she was chewing her top lip with fervour. “I’m going. Don’t call me or message me,” she said, shrugging on her jacket and pulling her hair out from under its collar. “I don’t want to talk to you.”
“You haven’t wanted to talk to me in years,” I said as she stood up from the table and left (258-61).
“Love is homesickness,” I once read in a book. The author’s therapist had told her that the pursuit of love in adulthood is just an expression of missing our mums and dads-that we look for intimacy and romance because we never stop wanting parental security and attention. We simply displace it. My dad was nearly eighty and he was still missing his mother. He’d found a way of concealing it for all of his adult life and now, as the facade of togetherness was being slowly taken apart without his knowledge: the truth. All he wanted was his mum. I would make a strong case for the argument that every adult on this earth is sitting on a bench waiting for their parents to pick them up, whether they know it or not. I think we wait until the day we die (261-2).
Chapter 16
“Do you worry you’re like your dad?” I immediately regretted the question-it was goading and seemed to relate his experience back to me.
“We’re all like our dads,” he said. “Come on then, what ghosts are you bringing to the orgy?”
“I don’t know, really. My parents’ relationship is very boring. I don’t think they’re soulmates, they’re so disconnected in so many ways, but they’re complementary to each other. And they’re best friends, they really have a good time together. Well, they used to. It’s hard to remember what their relationship was like before Dad got ill. His behaviour is so different now, obviously, but so is hers. I can’t remember her being this self-obsessed. And there must be a reason for it-but I can’t work out what it is. I think she is just pretending what’s happening isn’t happening. Or maybe she doesn’t want to care for Dad any more, I know how upsetting it must be. Maybe she just finds it too hard.” Max had become completely quiet as I spoke. We had never talked about our families like this. “It was always Dad and me who were the closest-he was the one who I talked to the most when I was a teenager. He taught me how to drive. He taught me everything. Mum and I were never like those mums and daughters who are best friends. But I’ve never felt quite so distant from her as I do now. And that scares me because Dad’s not going to be here soon. I don’t know how soon, it could be years and years, but sooner than I thought. And it will just be me and her. That will be my whole family. And I don’t know how I’ll have any sort of relationship with her when he isn’t here. I think Dad is the only thing we have in common.” My words hung above the bed. More silence. I couldn’t work out exactly when he’d fallen asleep (283-4).
Chapter 19
Then I realized-he would be able to decide when he wanted to fall in love and have a family and it would happen. There would always be a woman who wanted to love him. He didn’t have to take this chance at all-he could wait for another chance. Then another one. The female population was just an endless source of chances and he could wait as long as he wanted. There was so little risk involved when it came to who and how he loved. Nothing meant anything to him.
“You won’t marry a woman your age,” I said, understanding it as I said it aloud. “You’ll marry a woman ten years younger than you. That’s how this will work. You’re right, age doesn’t matter. To you.” He stared at me, his mouth tight and defiant, and said nothing. “Has Lola left anything here?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t think so.”
“Don’t date until you’ve sorted your shit out.” I went to the door. “And don’t call Lola again.”
-
I knew he would date again. Probably within weeks, just like Max had done. I imagined all the women Jethro and Max would date, while they were “confused” and “not ready,” standing next to each other in a long factory line. Each of them would give these men something-a story, a weekend away, their attention, their advice, their time, a sexual adventure, an actual adventure-then they’d be forced to pass him along to the next relationship. These men would emerge at some point, full of all the love and care and confidence that had been bestowed upon them over the years, and they might commit to someone. Then, most certainly, another one. Then another one when that one got boring. Their greed would not be satisfied by one woman, by one life. They’d get to lead a great many lives. Life after life after life after life.
Because these men wanted to want something rather than have something. Max wanted to be tortured, he wanted to yearn and chase and dream. He wanted to exist in a liminal state, like everything was just about to begin. He liked contemplating what our relationship might be like, without investing any time or commitment in our relationship. Jethro liked talking about the home he would buy with Lola, but he didn’t want to turn up to the viewing. They were like teenage boys in their rooms, coming up with lyrics to write in their notebooks. They weren’t ready to be adults, to make any choices, let alone promises. They preferred a relationship to be virtual and speculative, because when it was virtual and speculative, it could be perfect. Their girlfriend didn’t have to be human. They didn’t have to think about plans or practicalities, they weren’t burdened with the concern of another person’s happiness. And they could be heroes. They could be gods.
It was pathetic (325-7).
“There’s nothing wrong with wanting to love someone, Nina.”
“I know that.”
“It’s not a weakness, to want that for yourself,” she said. “I don’t want you to give up hope.”
“I think that might have already happened.” We both leant out of the window, exhaling smoke into the sky. The recently planted tree waved its nascent branches at us in the breeze.
“I know,” she said. “You should give your hope to me.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s like what Joe said in his groom’s speech: love is being the guardian of another person’s solitude. Maybe friendship is being the guardian of another person’s hope. Leave it with me and I’ll look after it for a while, if it feels too heavy for now.”
“I can’t do that, you’re already carrying yours.”
“Oh, I’ve been carrying mine for a decade,” she said. “I won’t notice if I chuck a bit more in.”
I tucked her hair tightly behind her ear. “I couldn’t be less of an advocate for relationships right now. But, for what it’s worth-I know there is a love ahead of you, Lola. Grander than either of us can imagine. He might not be a celebrity magician. He might not be anything like the sort of man we thought he would be. But he’s on his way.”
“I know that, Nina,” she said. “I’ve always known that.”
“You really have, haven’t you?”
“So I can know it for you too. And then you don’t have to think about it any more. You just keep writing your books and looking after your dad. I’ll keep your hope safe for you until you’re ready for me to hand it back” (328).