Authors: Paul Murray
It was Jeekers, not Dennis, whom Geoff thought they would have the hardest time getting back on board; privately he wondered
if Ruprecht might be better off not mentioning the whole seance-experiment end of things, Jeekers generally being quite straitlaced
and not such a seance-experiment sort of fellow, especially with his parents looking on. But to Geoff’s surprise, Jeekers
agreed straight away, to all of it – actually he even seemed glad about the clandestine element, as if he had been waiting
for just such a secret enterprise to burrow himself away in. That doesn’t mean the rehearsals are plain sailing.
‘It just doesn’t
sound
right.’
The three subordinate members of the Van Doren Quartet lower their instruments for the nth time with pained expressions.
‘It sounds like it’s always sounded. What do you
want
it to sound like?’
That’s just it: Ruprecht doesn’t know. He stares blearily at his notes. Symbols mathematical and musical chitter back at him
meaninglessly, like glyphic fleas hopping about the page. They have been in here for what seems like years, playing Pachelbel
over and over and over, until they can hear it even when they have stopped; so that when Geoff starts in again about how he
wishes he could work out what the hell it reminded him of, Dennis gives him short shrift: ‘You idiot, it reminds you of
itself
. It reminds you of the nine squillion times you’ve heard it before.’
‘I don’t think that’s it.’
‘Trust me.’
‘All right.’ Ruprecht taps his baton on the Oscillator. ‘Let’s try it again.’
They try it again. In Geoff’s opinion – which he will accept as triangle-player is not worth all
that
much, certainly not as much as Jeekers’s or Dennis’s – they sound pretty good, especially considering their fortnight-long
hiatus, and that Ruprecht’s French horn looks like it was run over by a truck. The sweet-sad notes slide circling slowly around
them,
derr… derr… derr… derr… bom… bom –
darn it, Dennis is wrong, it’s not
itself
it reminds him of! But what the hell is it? It’s driving him mad – oh wait, here’s his triangle part – (
ping)
.
‘Stop, stop –’ Ruprecht, who has been playing with an ear cocked and his brow so parodically furrowed his forehead resembles
a concertina, holds up his hand.
‘What?’ Dennis beginning to fray at the edges. ‘What is it this time?’
‘It’s like there’s something
missing
,’ Ruprecht says wretchedly, seizing at his hair.
The room is a latticework of sidelong glances. Time is running out.
Derr… derr… derr… derr…
Geoff thinks.
‘Maybe,’ Jeekers says slowly, ‘we should just play it the old way.’
Bom… bom… bom… BOM…
‘Because
we’ll
still know it’s for Skippy, and, you know, there’s going to be a presentation –’
‘It’s
BETHani
!’ Geoff exclaims. Everyone turns to look at him. ‘Oh, sorry. I just realized what Pachelthing reminds me of. That
BETHani
song? You know, the one Skippy used to play? After he went to see the girl? If you listen to it, it’s actually the same tune.
Sorry,’ he says again, as from every direction stares bore into him, and then, ‘what?’
Friday night in the Residence. The Residence is what everyone calls it, they act like it’s this exclusive hotel? But inside
it’s like being trapped in the world’s most boring horror movie, a house full of zombies with grey faces and huge hollow eyes
that track you as you come down the stairs and stare at you as you search through the magazine rack for a magazine you haven’t
read yet, and when they move they move like people who aren’t really alive, shuffling over the flowery carpet at like zero
miles per hour with their arms hanging like old string at their sides and their Prada jeans flapping around their stick-waists
and worst of all their horrible disgusting breath like something is rotting inside them. That’s why most of the time Lori
stays in her room, except when she has to go to You-time or Group. She lies on her bed, holding Lala to her chest. The tears
just come by themselves, she is not sad.
Her room actually is a bit like a hotel room, there are fresh-cut flowers and flounces on the bedspread, and though there
is no TV you can write in the journal they give you to record your thoughts or sit by the window and look through the bars
at the garden. Some girls – it is all girls – have been here for months or even longer. Most of them are sicker than Lori,
still they laugh when Lori tells them she won’t be staying. Some are from the years above or below her at school, some she
recognizes from the mall or mass, or they will turn out to be someone’s sister or ex-best friend. There’s one girl who Lori
was in ballet class with years ago, she used to be so beautiful, like a beautiful dancing flower. Now she looks like some
vampire drank all her blood and threw her away. For a little while Lori felt sorry for her and made an effort to talk to her,
then she found out the girl was telling everyone that Lori came into her room at night and tried to touch her.
The Residence you see is basically exactly the same as school, bitchiness and cliques, all the girls in a secret race to be
the thinnest. In Group they fight with each other to get Dr Pollard’s attention, sucking their fingers, swinging their legs
back and forth, weighing each other up (ha ha) out of the corner of their eye while he shites on about esteem, it’s pathetic,
it’s freaky, like watching skeletons trying to be erotic, you can practically hear their bodies rattle, in her journal she
writes
macarbra
. Dr Pollard is a total dweeb, he wears lame Christmas-type jumpers every single day and you can tell the only reason he knows
about self-esteem is because he learned it out of a book, still they drool over him like he’s the last piece of chocolate
cake which they will vomit up afterwards anyway. Group is really the only time Lori misses being beautiful. She would love
to show these skanks how it’s done, wrap Dr Pollard around her finger and then get up and walk right out of there, at the
door she’d turn and blow him a kiss, Dream on, loser!
Yesterday the woman from the modelling agency called Mom and told her not to worry, they could reschedule the interview for
when Lori was feeling better. This kind of thing happens all the time, she said, the important thing is to intervene before
any lasting damage is done to the complexion. Mom told her this then she threw her arms around her. Oh Lori, get better! Don’t
throw away the chances I never had! Lori hates to upset her, she would almost get better just to go to the interview and make
Mom happy again. But the weird thing is, she doesn’t care any more if she doesn’t become a model. She doesn’t even remember
wanting to be a model! So many things seem like they happened to another person, someone almost too fuzzy to see.
She has been here nearly two weeks now. Most of the time it’s okay, but sometimes in the middle of the night there are sirens,
the sound so loud and swooping it makes her sit up cold in her bed, and then next morning when you wake up someone is gone.
You hear the nurses say, Poor thing she’s at death’s door, and you imagine the Door black as black. But it’s all about how
you think
of things, like okay the Door is scary but the word
siren
makes her think of singing girls, so when she gets scared about her Plan and going through the Door she imagines that’s what
they are, singing girls who come and take you by the hand and bring you away from here. And that makes her happy again, because
she knows soon they will come for her (it could even be tonight!).
Tell me about Daniel, Lori. Dr Pollard sits on a revolving chair, she sits on a beanbag. There are no bars on his window.
Outside it’s raining, how come the rain doesn’t rise up and turn into a sea and smash through the glass? Some kind of spray
is in Dr Pollard’s hair to puff it out and make it look like he’s not going bald.
It was shortly after his death that you began to experience these self-destructive urges? And you became addicted to diet
pills?
She rolls her eyes because of how boring it is to have to explain this all over again. She has explained like a million times
already, it didn’t have anything to do with Daniel, she started taking the pills because she thought she might be pregnant.
But then she’d found out she wasn’t pregnant, and everything was getting back to normal – better than normal, she was going
to be a top model, she went dancing with Janine in LA Nites and kissed a boy, a sixth year, he was on the Terenure S! She
was looking to the future, she would have stopped taking the pills if she’d even thought about it for a second –
So why didn’t you?
Why didn’t I what?
Why didn’t you stop taking the pills?
She sighs, she wriggles in her seat, rolls her eyes again, how are you supposed to explain this stuff? It wasn’t anything.
It was just she started noticing things.
Like what?
Annoying things. Stupid stuff. It’s totally stupid, there’s no point even talking about it.
Give me an example.
Oh whatever, like the way Mom kept buying her clothes for the interview with the modelling agency, like every day practically
she’d go out and buy a new outfit, even though they’d both decided the one she had was perfect. Or if it wasn’t an outfit
it was something else, pumps eyeshadow clutch purse mules, try these on Lori, try them with that, then try that with this,
oh how about these with those? She wanted Lori to make an impression, that was all, it just started getting a bit annoying,
and meanwhile Dad had ordered new separates for his den and also new gym equipment for the gym, except the extension was still
being done so they were all heaped up in the hallway in cardboard boxes, great big piles that bulged like Dad’s new muscles,
and as well though she knew it was starting to bother her Lori kept buying things too, in the mall on Saturdays with the money
Mom gave her to cheer herself up, make-up and magazines and bangles and knickers and tops and these things that just appeared
in bags in her hands and suddenly it was like the house was filling up with stuff, more and more every day, more and more
and more, moreandmoreandmoreandmore, moremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremore like millions of teeming
sperms, heaping and piling and crowding until she began to imagine one day it would come bursting through her door and pin
her against the wall! and the only thing she could do was keep taking the pills because they could make little spaces for
her, open up new spaces that she could slip into to breathe? it was like she had to keep shrinking herself just so there’d
be enough space for her?
That’s good, Lori, that’s very good.
It’s why Lori’s room here is practically empty, she made them take out a lot of the furniture, and most of the flowers and
presents she gets from people she asks the nurses to keep downstairs. From home there is only Lala on her pillow and her
BETHani
scrapbook, and when Dad comes to visit she often pretends she’s asleep, turning her face to the window while he sits there
flicking through a men’s health magazine, unconsciously flexing and bulging.
You know, Lori – Dr Pollard revolves his chair – the feelings you describe are far from unusual. When a person is in a vulnerable
state of mind, the simple facts of day-to-day life can indeed seem overwhelming. And not eating is a common reaction to that
sensation of being overwhelmed. We may think of food as the physical link tying us to the world. By refusing it, we attempt
to disengage ourselves and our bodies from what we feel are the destructive intrusions of that world. But paradoxically, that
act of self-assertion can be deeply harmful.
He crosses his legs so she can see his disgusting hairy white shins. She wishes Mr Scott the French teacher was counselling
her. She imagines him by her bedside reading French poetry to her, explaining the vocab and the imagery –
elle est debout sur mes paupières, et ses cheveux sont dans les miens
…
The achievement of maturity, psychologically speaking, might be said to be the realization and acceptance that we simply cannot
live independently from the world, and so we must learn to live within it, with whatever compromises that might entail.
… and he wouldn’t ask her questions, and because he didn’t ask she would tell him, what it’s like to be a person who is a
ruin, who has done the worst thing she can ever imagine doing, whose life has become a series of lies that she lives trapped
in between like a ghost, and all she wants is to be gone gone gone –
Shh shh, he would say, and he’d put his arms around her. And just hold her? And he would not have gross hairy shins.
She knows Dr Pollard only wants to help but it would be so much easier if he left her alone! She wishes she could explain
that she
doesn’t feel bad
? Like she knows what she’s doing, it sounds weird she knows but it’s like the thinner she gets, the better she feels – like
she’s on a mountain that’s growing out of the ground, carrying her higher and higher into the clouds, away from all the hands
that might try and grab hold of her. She doesn’t mind when the girls come to visit her and can’t hide their disgust or their
satisfaction at the way she looks now, and when Janine arrives for her big confession scene to tell Lori about her and Carl,
Lori is not even angry. She watches Janine bawl and rub her fists in her eyes, sobbing,
We couldn’t help it, Lori, we’re in love
, like you would
watch like an insect or something gross like that flipped over on its back or caught in a drain. She doesn’t get angry, she
doesn’t tell Janine Carl still texts her even though she can imagine herself saying it and enjoying how much it hurts Janine.
Because Carl feels like a long long time ago, she can’t understand now how she ever wanted him or anyone to touch her. And
Janine too, these are all things that she’s leaving behind. Every day she is more free,
free of herself
or what people thought she was. And soon she will be totally free, as free as the air.