She’s in the garden, wearing sunglasses. The weather has been fine for a few days now, and her arms are getting freckled. She hears the back door open but doesn’t move. Alan’s voice calls from the patio: Annie Kearney’s after getting five-seventy! Marianne doesn’t respond. She feels in the grass beside her chair for the sun lotion, and when she sits up to apply it, she notices that Alan is on the phone.
Someone in your year got six hundred, hey! he yells. She pours a little lotion into the palm of her left hand. Marianne! Alan says. Someone got six A1s, I said!
She nods. She smooths the lotion slowly over her right arm, so it glistens. Alan is trying to find out who got six hundred points. Marianne knows right away who it must be, but she says nothing. She applies some lotion to her left arm and then, quietly, lies back down in the deckchair, face to the sun, and closes her eyes. Behind her eyelids waves of light move in green and red.
She hasn’t eaten breakfast or lunch today, except two cups of sweetened coffee with milk. Her appetite is small this summer. When she wakes up in the morning she opens her laptop on the opposite pillow and waits for her eyes to adjust to the rectangle glow of the screen so she can read the news. She reads long articles about Syria and then researches the ideological backgrounds of the journalists who have written them. She reads long articles about the sovereign debt crisis in Europe and zooms in to see the small print on the graphs. After that she usually either goes back to sleep or gets in the shower, or maybe lies down and makes herself come. The rest of the day follows a similar pattern, with minor variations: maybe she opens her curtains, maybe not; maybe breakfast, or maybe just coffee, which she takes upstairs to her room so she doesn’t have to see her family. This morning was different, of course.
Here, Marianne, says Alan. It’s Waldron! Connell Waldron got six hundred points!
She doesn’t move. Into the phone Alan says: No, she only got five- ninety. I’d say she’s raging now someone did better than her. Are you raging, Marianne? She hears him but says nothing. Under the lenses of her sunglasses her eyelids feel greasy. An insect whirrs past her ear and away.
Is Waldron there with you, is he? says Alan. Put him on to me.
Why are you calling him ‘Waldron’ like he’s your friend? Marianne says. You hardly know him.
Alan looks up from the phone, smirking. I know him well, he says. I saw him at Eric’s gaff there the last day.
She regrets speaking. Alan is pacing up and down the patio, she can hear the gritty sound of his footsteps as he comes down towards the grass. Someone on the other end of the line starts talking, and Alan breaks into a bright, strained-looking smile. How are you now? he says. Fair play, congratulations. Connell’s voice is quiet, so Marianne can’t hear it. Alan is still smiling the effortful smile. He always gets like this around other people, cringing and sycophantic.
Yeah, Alan says. She did well, yeah. Not as well as yourself! Five- ninety she got. Do you want me to put her on to you?
Marianne looks up. Alan is joking. He thinks Connell will say no. He can’t think of any reason why Connell would want to speak to Marianne, a friendless loser, on the phone; particularly not on this special day. Instead he says yes. Alan’s smile falters. Yeah, he says, no bother. He holds the phone out for Marianne to take it. Marianne shakes her head. Alan’s eyes widen. He jerks his hand towards her. Here, he says. He wants to talk to you. She shakes her head again. Alan prods the phone into her chest now, roughly. He’s on the phone for you, Marianne, says Alan.
I don’t want to speak to him, says Marianne.
Alan’s face takes on a wild expression of fury, with the whites of his eyes showing all around. He jabs the phone harder into her sternum, hurting her. Say hello, he says. She can hear Connell’s voice buzzing in the receiver. The sun glares down onto her face. She takes the phone from Alan’s hand and, with a swipe of her finger, hangs up the call. Alan stands over the deckchair staring. There is no sound in the garden for a few seconds. Then, in a low voice, he says: What the fuck did you do that for?
I didn’t want to speak to him, she says. I told you. He wanted to speak to you.
Yes, I know he did.
It’s unusually bright today, and Alan’s shadow on the grass has a vivid, stark quality. She’s still holding out the phone, loose in the palm of her hand, waiting for her brother to accept it.
*
In April, Connell told her he was taking Rachel Moran to the Debs. Marianne was sitting on the side of his bed at the time, acting very cold and humorous, which made him awkward. He told her it wasn’t ‘romantic’, and that he and Rachel were just friends.
You mean like we’re just friends, said Marianne. Well, no, he said. Different.
But are you sleeping with her?
No. When would I even have time? Do you want to? said Marianne.
I’m not hugely gone on the idea. I don’t feel like I’m that insatiable really, I do already have you.
Marianne stared down at her fingernails. That was a joke, Connell said.
I don’t get what the joke part was. I know you’re pissed off with me.
I don’t really care, she said. I just think if you want to sleep with her you should tell me.
Yeah, and I will tell you, if I ever want to do that. You’re saying that’s what the issue is, but I honestly don’t think that’s what it is.
Marianne snapped: What is it, then? He just stared at her. She went back to looking at her fingernails, flushed. He didn’t say anything. Eventually she laughed, because she wasn’t totally without spirit, and it obviously was kind of funny, just how savagely he had humiliated her, and his inability to apologise or even admit he had done it. She went home then and straight to bed, where she slept for thirteen hours without waking.
The next morning she quit school. It wasn’t possible to go back, however she looked at it. No one else would invite her to the Debs, that
was clear. She had organised the fundraisers, she had booked the venue, but she wouldn’t be able to attend the event. Everyone would know that, and some of them would be glad, and even the most sympathetic ones could only feel a terrible second-hand embarrassment. Instead she stayed home in her room all day with the curtains closed, studying and sleeping at strange hours. Her mother was furious. Doors were slammed. On two separate occasions Marianne’s dinner was scraped into the bin. Still, she was an adult woman, and no one could make her dress up in a uniform anymore and submit to being stared at or whispered about.
A week after she left school she walked into the kitchen and saw Lorraine kneeling on the floor to clean the oven. Lorraine straightened up slightly, and wiped her forehead with the part of her wrist exposed above her rubber glove. Marianne swallowed.
Hello, sweetheart, Lorraine said. I hear you’ve been out of school for a few days. Is everything okay?
Yeah, I’m fine, said Marianne. Actually I’m not going back to school.
I find I get more done if I just stay at home and study.
Lorraine nodded and said: Suit yourself. Then she went back to scrubbing the inside of the oven. Marianne opened the fridge to look for the orange juice.
My son tells me you’re ignoring his phone calls, Lorraine added. Marianne paused, and the silence in the kitchen was loud in her ears,
like the white noise of rushing water. Yes, she said. I am, I suppose.
Good for you, said Lorraine. He doesn’t deserve you.
Marianne felt a relief so high and sudden that it was almost like panic.
She put the orange juice on the counter and closed the fridge.
Lorraine, she said, can you ask him not to come over here anymore? Like if he has to collect you or anything, is it okay if he doesn’t come in the house?
Oh, he’s permanently barred as far as I’m concerned. You don’t need to worry about that. I have half a mind to kick him out of my own house.
Marianne smiled, feeling awkward. He didn’t do anything that bad, she said. I mean, compared to the other people in school he was actually pretty nice, to be honest.
At this Lorraine stood up and stripped off her gloves. Without speaking, she put her arms around Marianne and embraced her very
tightly. In a strange, cramped voice Marianne said: It’s okay. I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.
It was true what she had said about Connell. He didn’t do anything that bad. He had never tried to delude her into thinking she was socially acceptable; she’d deluded herself. He had just been using her as a kind of private experiment, and her willingness to be used had probably shocked him. He pitied her in the end, but she also repulsed him. In a way she feels sorry for him now, because he has to live with the fact that he had sex with her, of his own free choice, and he liked it. That says more about him, the supposedly ordinary and healthy person, than it does about her. She never went back to school again except to sit the exams. By then people were saying she had been in the mental hospital. None of that mattered now anyway.
*
Are you angry he did better than you? says her brother.
Marianne laughs. And why shouldn’t she laugh? Her life here in Carricklea is over, and either a new life will begin, or it won’t. Soon she will be packing things into suitcases: woollen jumpers, skirts, her two silk dresses. A set of teacups and saucers patterned with flowers. A hairdryer, a frying pan, four white cotton towels. A coffee pot. The objects of a new existence.
No, she says.
Why wouldn’t you say hello to him, then?
Ask him. If you’re such good friends with him, you should ask him.
He knows.
Alan makes a fist with his left hand. It doesn’t matter, it’s over. Lately Marianne walks around Carricklea and thinks how beautiful it is in sunny weather, white clouds like chalk dust over the library, long avenues lined with trees. The arc of a tennis ball through blue air. Cars slowing at traffic lights with their windows rolled down, music bleating from the speakers. Marianne wonders what it would be like to belong here, to walk down the street greeting people and smiling. To feel that life was happening here, in this place, and not somewhere else far away.
What does that mean? says Alan.
Ask Connell Waldron why we’re not speaking anymore. Call him back now if you want to, I’d be interested to hear what he has to say.
Alan bites his index finger’s knuckle, his arm trembling. In just a few weeks, Marianne will be living with new people, and everything will change. But she herself won’t change. She’ll remain the same person, trapped in her own body. A new location, new faces—what does it matter? Alan pulls his finger from his mouth.
“Like he fucking cares,” Alan says. “I’m surprised he even remembers your name.”
“Oh, we were actually quite close. You could ask him about that, if you want. It might make you uncomfortable, though.”
Before Alan can reply, they hear someone calling from inside the house and a door closing. Their mother is home. Alan’s expression shifts as he looks up, and Marianne feels her own face responding involuntarily. Alan glances at her. “You shouldn’t lie about people,” he says. Marianne nods silently. “Don’t tell Mum about this,” he adds. Marianne shakes her head. “No,” she agrees. But even if she did, it wouldn’t matter. Denise long ago decided that aggression is an acceptable way for men to express themselves towards Marianne. As a child, Marianne resisted, but now she simply detaches, as if it doesn’t concern her, which, in a way, it doesn’t. Denise sees this as a sign of Marianne’s frigid and unlovable nature. She believes Marianne lacks ‘warmth’, meaning the ability to plead for affection from those who despise her. Alan heads back inside, and Marianne hears the patio door slide shut behind him.
