The State of Me. Nasim Jafry Marie
in a few months.
The pharmacist gave me two huge grey canisters. I opened them in the Red Cross port-a-cabin cafe. They were packed with translucent yellow capsules with a hospital smell. I had to take six a day. I hoped it was the real thing and not the placebo.
When I got home there were postcards came from Jana and Ivan. Jana was in the States, travelling round with an old friend. Ivan was in Greece but wished I was there. I pinned them up beside Sean’s card. He was in Boston for two weeks with Peter.
Rita and Nab had a September weekend dinner party for people Nab worked with. I didn’t feel up to joining them. I came downstairs when they were having coffee and felt like a child, allowed to join the adults as a treat. Heather had brought four-week-old Zoe over. She was scrawny with a rash. I lied and said she was lovely. She squirmed in my arms like a ginger kitten. I was scared I’d drop her. I joked she’d probably be five by the time I’d finished crocheting the blanket. Heather asked how I was and I told her about the yellow capsules.
Can’t get back to sleep for the whistling and warbling and screeching. In a few hours there will be high heels on the pavement going past the house to the train station.
My family will be getting up.
Car doors will be slamming.
People with real lives will be doing real things.
WE’RE LOOKING THROUGH the round window. Helen’s been ill for two years now, can you believe it?! How time flies!
Rita and Nab have ordered her a double bed. They think she should have a bigger bed since she spends so much time in it.
Sean’s started Glasgow Uni. He’s studying psychology and politics. He’s staying at home his first year. Helen would miss him so much if he left.
Ivan’s gone back to Dundee to start his MSc.
At Halloween, I dressed up as an invalid and lay on the couch to welcome the other guisers.
Mrs Bhatti’s grandson came round, chaperoned by his mother who had a long Rapunzel plait and too much mascara. She was separated from her husband. The story was he’d stabbed her because she wouldn’t move to Karachi.
The wee boy was wearing a bin bag over his school uniform. He started to recite To A Mouse the minute he was in the door. His voice was shaking and he got quieter and quieter with every word. By the third verse you could barely hear him. Rita told him he’d done enough, he could stop. He looked like he was going to cry.
Brian was in charge of handing out the apples and oranges. When we’d finished clapping, he solemnly gave the wee boy a handful of monkey nuts and said, That was lovely. Would you like an apple too? The wee boy nodded and Brian handed him an apple like it was an Olympic medal. Then he said, Would you like some chocolate? The wee boy nodded and Brian put a handful of mini Mars bars into his plastic bag. He turned to me and said, Have I given him enough?
We’d fallen out earlier because I was leaving the broken shells in the bowl with the rest of the nuts. Don’t do that, Helen! he’d said, painstakingly picking out the old shells. You can’t get the good ones if you do that! But I’d kept doing it and he’d told me to fuck off before locking himself in the bathroom and giving himself a row. When he came out he said he was sorry for ‘squaring’ and he wouldn’t do it again. Where did you hear that word? Rita’d asked him. At my centre, he said. Martin stole Donny’s girlfriend and Donny told him to fuck off. Well, said Rita, Donny’s very rude to use that language and I don’t want to hear it in this house again.
For the rest of the evening his presentation of apples and oranges and mini Mars bars was flawless. Before Rita took him home, he hugged us all and said again he was sorry for squaring.
Ivan was supposed to phone at nine. The last of the guisers had gone and the minutes peeled away, but the phone didn’t ring. By quarter to ten I couldn’t stand it anymore and rang his flat but the phone rang back with the bleak, distant tones you get when you know no one’s going to answer. He was going to a fancy dress party at the Art School. He was dressing up as a wolf. I imagined some art student tart unzipping his costume, My, what a big cock you’ve got…
He was coming at the weekend. I couldn’t wait. I hadn’t seen him for a whole month. The last time he’d visited he’d taken me for a drive up the loch. When we were feeding the swans he’d said, You’re too pretty to be ill.
So if I was ugly, being ill wouldn’t matter?
That’s not what I meant, he said.
A hundred years ago it would have been romantic to be ill, I said – I’d be in a sanatorium in the Alps and I’d sit in a wicker chair and write you heartbreaking letters.
And you’d be spitting up blood in a clean white hanky, and the day you died I wouldn’t get to you in time, and a rosy-cheeked nurse would run across the lawn with tears in her eyes.
And you’d fall in love with the rosy-cheeked nurse whose huge breasts would be bursting out of her crisp uniform.
He’d laughed.
On the way home, we’d gone to the Swan Hotel for tea and biscuits. They’d changed the decor and had new swan-shaped salt and peppers with intertwining necks. I’d looked out leadenly at Ben Lomond, wondering how I’d ever managed to carry such heavy trays back and forward – three summers in a row.
I’d watched Ivan come back from the toilet, weaving between the tables, so lovely and healthy and sure of himself. I could make jokes about Alpine nurses but I could never bring myself to ask him about the other women, the women I was sure he had one night stands with. He didn’t even bother bringing condoms anymore.
I was hardly in a position to object.
When she hears Ivan’s car crunch into the drive she gets up. She doesn’t want to be in bed when he arrives. She’s wearing lipgloss and new leggings. When he comes upstairs she’s sitting on the side of the bed. He opens the door. She gets up and falls into him, leaning on him ‘til her legs tire. She takes his hand and sits down again.
I like you with your glasses, she says. You haven’t worn them for ages. They’re sexy in a geeky way.
I was too knackered to put my lenses in, he says.
D’you like my new bed? she asks. Maybe you can sleep beside me tonight instead of in the spare room.
Maybe, he says.
He looks exhausted.
He’d slept beside me in the new bed and it had been delicious just pressing next to him in the dark. I’d told him how much I’d missed him and asked if he’d missed me.
Yes, but things have been hectic.
I would love things to be hectic, I said. I can’t remember what it feels like.
I know, he said, stroking my hair.
How was the Halloween party?
All right.
Just all right?
Yeah. There was one guy there who was a pain in the arse. He kept saying that his favourite toy when he was wee was a sheep’s neck bone painted green and black. He wouldn’t shut up about it. Typical art student. He wasn’t even dressed up.
What about you, did you enjoy being a wolf? I said.
It was too hot and itchy.
Did you huff and puff and blow any houses down?
No, but I gobbled up Little Red Riding Hood.
Is that why you didn’t phone me?
Don’t