Adults. Emma Jane Unsworth

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СКАЧАТЬ to tolerate the cheapest of drinks and the cheapest of shoes. Outlet pleather and bad designs but all that time ahead, all that time, to wear terrible shoe after terrible shoe and wake up on another floorboarded, guitar-lined attic room with a leisurely hangover and all the hope in my heart. I’d leave before they woke, leaving a calligraphic note, and I’d go home and close my own door and feel joy when I saw the pictures I’d hung on my walls. The chairs I’d arranged. The carpets I’d chosen. The paint I’d painted. I started to feel what could be a kind of love of creating my own space. A love that could be nurturing and proud, as well as utterly romantic. A love that felt accessible and, if not quite democratic, then self-made. Empowering. All mine. To share with people I might have round, in varying contexts. I was romancing myself. I was also looking after myself. This was progress.

      The first day of my first job, I texted my mother to tell her. She replied:

      Good luck xxx

      Good luck! Have you ever read a less motherly text? Good luck!

      I thought about her at least once every three minutes. I scratched my scalp and sniffed it; it smelled of her. I’d come into my flat and feel her energy there, latent somehow, in a place she’d never been. I missed the North: its winds and mosses; its cool, thirsty cities. I’d look at the weather reports for Manchester and feel glad when the weather was good. I had it as a location to slide past on my weather app. My little darling, I’m glad you have clear skies tonight, I’d think. I sang ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ so loudly on the Tube once, drunk, that someone gave me a pound. I thought about our old living room, telly and lamp on; a cube of light in the vastness of space. I was an astronaut out on the arm of the mothership, umbilicus stretching, stretching, stretching.

       THERAPY SESSION #1 (DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE)

      Hi, yes, here? Okay. This is a nice office. Plain, but I suppose that’s so I focus on the task in hand, which is no mean feat! What do I think that is? Sorting out my mental state haha. I should probably do more exercise. That would probably make a big difference. I noticed you had a kayak strapped to the top of your car outside, do you like to kayak, or do you have children? [Pause] Oh, I see, well I was just making conversation, I ramble when I’m nervous, I suppose that’s music to your ears. It’s like I can’t stand silence and that’s possibly because my mother was loud at home and when there was silence it meant there was a problem. [Pause] No, I’ve never had therapy before – does it show? I hate sounding like an amateur. Do you know how long it took me to choose what to wear today? Days. Literally. I was thinking about what might make you like me the most and I settled on something plain but with a few flourishes and I’m glad because I see now that’s very much your vibe. I’m not judging you, I barely know you. I know this is meant to be a socially pure zone but I don’t believe in any space you can hurl things into without consequences – that’s just me. Everything has consequences, doesn’t it? Every act of communication is an act of translation. I should probably have done Philosophy rather than English and Communication Studies. I don’t even really know what Communication Studies is, other than a chance for the lecturer to talk about his days on the broadsheets. He’s no use for magazine contacts. [Pause] What’s my relationship like with my mother these days? Desultory. Can I say that? It’s not like she was the worst in the world. She didn’t molest me or anything like that – and sometimes I think it would have been easier if she had. If I’d had something concrete to work with, you know? [Pause] How’s it going at uni? Good. Good, I think. Apart from the Communication Studies. It was definitely the right decision to move down. It’s a great uni – and the fact they organise things like this – what do they call it? Pastoral care. Some universities might be embarrassed they’d attracted a load of loonies, but not this one – and I respect that. [Pause] Do I have a relationship with my father? No, I don’t even know his name. She’d never tell me. Which gives her clairvoyance skills some credibility, because it’s like she predicted the internet. You know if I had a name I’d have Facebooked the shit out of him. People at school used to tell me he was in prison. Aren’t children delicious? Freeloaders, that’s what my mother calls them. It’s what she called me. It was fucking work, being her daughter. I put a fucking shift in. [Pause] I sound angry? Yes, I think I am angry. So that’s the thing to work on, I suppose. The anger. That’s the thing I want gone. [Pause] No, she never heard from him, or she never told me if she did. All I know is he called one night when she was pregnant. She was in bed and she answered the phone and he didn’t speak but she knew it was him by the sound of his breath. Sinister, right? In my worst nightmares my father is a perv. You know, an old Rat-Packer. Come over here, princess, and give ol’ Daddio some sugar. I can imagine her going for a creep like that. Allow me a blowsy moment: sometimes I see things – the undersides of sycamore leaves, oily puddles in tarmac – and I’m reminded of a father I never knew. A cellular memory, perhaps. An amino acid residue. I don’t even know how memory works; I suppose no one does – it’s one of the things your lot are working on. When he called that night she was so shaken that her adrenaline surged, and she said she felt me stir, inside, awoken. I often think about that moment. My first encounter with the anxiety the world had in store. I had no protection in place. I mainlined her anxiety like alcohol. But that’s not the worst thing. The worst thing she ever did was leave me to go on holiday to the Bahamas one Christmas. Worst Christmas of my life. I was sixteen. I vowed I’d never let her hurt me again, and I haven’t. She sent me a postcard. I still have it. It’s what you might call a prized possession because every now and then when I feel my resolve weakening, I reread it. I didn’t take it lying down, though. I had my revenge. [Pause] How? I staged my own suicide the day she got back. You’ve never heard someone scream so much. It was magnificent. I wrote a note and left it downstairs and then I got in the bath with a razor and some fake blood. I’d say she’s probably seeing her own therapist about it but she’s quite anti-therapy. Gin is her therapy. I hope she rereads the note. It was a really fucking good note. But then, I am a lot better educated than she is. [Pause] No, that is no thanks to her. She paid for my education and then she partied all night. What kind of self-sabotaging showmanship is that? Her problem – and she has a whole catalogue of problems, believe me – but her main one is she doesn’t have any true friends. She’s a loner. And that means she has no one to set her straight. It’s not that she lowers the tone; it’s that I don’t think she realises there is a tone …

      MY DEAREST DARLING JENNY,

      I hardly know what to tell you – other than Roger and I are having a marvellous time and it’s not as hot as I feared, which you know is a relief for the likes of you and I who suffer with the dreaded frizz. You would not believe the beaches – I have taken lots of photos so as soon as I get back I’ll get them developed so I can show you and with any luck they won’t just be of my sausage knees or half a palm tree. I hope you are having a very merry Christmas and you found the money in your card under the tree – get yourself something nice in the sales. No one seems bothered about the millennium bug here so I really think try and keep your panic under control darling (you do worry!) although poor Roger did suffer another type of bug when we first arrived but that seems to have mostly evacuated now and certainly hasn’t put him off the lumumbas. See you in the new year – and the new millennium! I hope it will bring us both many great things. I really do feel so positive about the future and just know you’re going to make me so proud.

      Take care.

      Your loving mother XXXX

       LIKE OF DUTY

      I don’t reply to my mother. Instead, I go back for another dose of Suzy Brambles. But lo, what’s this? A new post! I devour it.

      She СКАЧАТЬ