Sedating Elaine, page 10
Frances stood nearby, catching her breath, as Elaine spotted her and called out, “Frances! Come and join me! You can be an urangu-Fran!”
Frances shook her head. “It’s for kids, Elaine. And it’s too high. Are you okay?” she wheezed. “I feel like I’m going to puke.”
A nearby mother wheeled her pram away.
“I’m fine!” Elaine squealed. “Come and play!”
“Elaine.” Frances pointed to a sign which read no adults or children over the age of ten. “Come on, let’s go.”
“Don’t be a kill-joy. Come on, Funny Frances.”
“I’m going now,” and she turned to walk away.
Perhaps she thought this tactic would work, as it does occasionally with kids; parents wander slightly out of sight and the anxious child comes waddling after. But Elaine was not a child, and she was not going to play such a game. Suddenly, Frances felt herself being lifted up from the waist, spun around, and bars appeared before her. Instinctively she grabbed on, yelling, “What the hell are you doing?”
Beneath her, Elaine had hold of her thighs, keeping her raised up in the air. “Play!” she demanded, then stood back, leaving Frances dangling there. “Adults never play. They should! Life’s too short to not have fun. We’re all just kids inside. Play!”
Frances looked down as if she were being asked to jump out of a plane. “Put me the fuck down!” she yelled.
“Play!” Elaine said. “Go on, swing across!”
“I can’t fucking swing across, you idiot—I don’t have the strength. What are you doing? Come here and get me down—this isn’t funny.”
“Oh, it is,” Elaine laughed. She had appeared at the opposite end and was swinging there by one hand. “Come on, my darling, swing across to me—imagine you are Tarzan and I’m Jane.”
“Elaine, I’m serious. Get me down.”
“Don’t just dangle! Play!”
“I’m warning you.”
“I’m sorry, but it’s hard to be intimidated by a girl hanging from the monkey bars with her belly out.”
“Get me down!”
The small crowd of children had moved closer to look and were giggling. “Just let go if you can’t do it,” one of them said. “It’s not that high. Don’t be afraid.”
“Oh, fuck off.”
A mixture of giggles and gasps. Two children ran back to their parents.
As she swayed gently back and forth, mocked by miniatures, a breeze upon her exposed belly, Frances wondered if this was her lowest ebb. She despised them all equally in that instance, herself included. Bracing herself, she let go, and landed heavily but with embarrassing ease upon her two feet. The children ran away as if she might beat her chest and come running after them, but she only pulled her top down and sulked off to a bench.
“Where’s your playfulness?” Elaine called to her. “Where’s your sense of fun?”
“I thought we came out for a run, not to mess around in the Cabbage Patch.”
She sat down.
Side effects, Dom had said, but she had not expected this. The exertion and heat were making her feel ill, and as she sat there wiping sweat away with her hand and listening to Elaine laughing with the children, she had a sudden worrying thought: Did I put it in the right cup? She tried to remember, tried to recall the details of sitting on the toilet floor, unscrewing the bottle, pouring the drops in. She wished she hadn’t been so flustered, she wished she had concentrated, then she might remember. As it was, her doubts were swiftly overtaken by the sight of Elaine charging through the playground, out into a small patch of grass and trees, where she watched in horror as Elaine swept upon a toddler in a red dress, snatching the child up and holding her overhead, laughing. Frances half fell in her urgency to stand, to run, and she barged through the playground, shouting, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. Elaine, put her down. Put her down.” She arrived and tried to pull the girl away, grabbing at her dress, her arms, as Elaine clung on and on, saying, “Hey, oi, calm down.”
“Please,” the mother was saying. “It’s alright—you don’t understand.”
“Put her down,” Frances snapped, wide-eyed, at Elaine. “Now!”
“Get off, you madwoman!” Elaine swatted Frances’ hands away. The girl began to wail.
“Please,” the mother continued repeating. “It’s alright, it’s alright.”
And as Frances wrenched the child away victoriously and clung on to her by the waist, she heard the small sobbing voice saying, “Aunty ’Laine. Aunty ’Laine.” Arms out, the girl’s hands squeezed the air as she reached to be rescued. Elaine covered her hand with her mouth as she started to chuckle. The child’s mother was no longer in a placatory mood. “Might I have my daughter back now?” she said curtly.
Elaine’s eyes were watering as she stifled her laughter. The woman looked furious. In her arms, the little girl wailed and bellowed for Aunty Elaine. Frances could feel all eyes on her from the playground. In less than five minutes, the two of them had turned a pleasant trip to the playground into a circus show. Frances handed the child back, saying, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t think you knew each other.”
“Instead you thought I’d stand by and watch total strangers snatch my daughter?”
“God, no, I didn’t mean that. It’s just, Elaine has been acting a bit out of character today—”
“Yes,” Elaine laughed. “I’m the one who has been acting out of character. You’re hilarious.”
“I’ve known Elaine since school,” the woman said. “I’m guessing you must be Frances.”
“Yes,” she said, and shook the woman’s hand whilst looking at the floor. “Nice to meet you.”
“I’ll call you,” the mother said to Elaine. “We’d better be going home now.”
Elaine kissed both of them, and said, “I’m sorry about her—she’s not good with children.”
“No bother.”
As the mother and daughter walked away through the gate, Elaine said, “Well, that was hilarious.”
“Can we go home now, please?” Frances said.
“What? We’ve only run two miles.”
“I think that’s enough exercise for today.”
“Are you mad?”
Elaine’s elbows pumped back and forth and her calves popped out on display as she ran. She was talkative now, though, a constant tirade. “You need to embrace your inner child sometimes, babe. Where is little Frances? What did she like to do? You know everything about me but sometimes I feel like I don’t even know you. One day we should sit down with cake and tea and you can tell me everything, the whole story.” Another mile down the road and Frances knew she was near burn-out—she would fall, she would faint, she would throw up. And the feeling of panic reared up in her again as it had on so many recent runs as she reached out to grab Elaine’s top but missed. She couldn’t speak. A stitch struck and she gripped her side, bending over, clutching it, running like a hunchback. Elaine’s ponytail bobbed intermittently amidst the crowd; she was moving away, rather quickly, talking to herself. A few minutes later and Frances realised she was no longer running with Elaine but chasing after her.
“Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me,” she panted, knocking bewildered shoppers and dillydallying teenagers out of the way, shouting, “Sorry!” over her shoulder as she went. Her arm shot up in the air as if it knew an answer and she managed to yell: “Elaine! Stop!” but to no avail. Out of breath and in pain, she slowed, and within a few moments Elaine’s ponytail had swished its way around a corner, and she was gone.
Frances moved aside and leant against a wall, her hands on her knees, trying not to throw up. The crowd swept haphazardly before her, as if she weren’t there. Elaine could be anywhere now. Frances stumbled down a flight of concrete steps and sat on the lowest, away from the street, people’s feet moving around behind her, way above head-level, as she waited for the nausea to subside, and wondered what to do. She pulled her phone from her pocket and rang Dom.
“What the fuck is this stuff ?” she snapped when he picked up.
He sounded as if he’d been asleep—it took several moments for him to respond. “What?” he said. “Who the hell is this?”
“It’s Frances. She’s totally fucking hyper, Dom. She’s gone nuts.”
“Side effects, remember. Calm down. It’s just side effects.”
He made a horrendous phlegm-rattling sound, and spat. The next moment, he started chewing on something. It was like talking to a cement mixer.
“Well, what do I do now?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, crunching. “She’ll soon crash.”
“Crash?”
“Yeah.”
“Great. And I’ve fucking lost her.”
“What? Where are you? I told you not to go out.”
“Dom, have you ever tried putting a rabid giant under house arrest?”
He laughed.
“It’s not funny,” she said.
“She’ll come home—don’t worry.”
“Let’s hope so, hey. Let’s hope I don’t get a call that she OD’d and is in A and E. You fucking asshole, Dom—why didn’t you tell me this would happen?”
“I did. I told you some people go a little crazy to begin with, and I told you to stay in. Not my fault you ignored me and now your bitch is off the leash.”
“What am I supposed to do? If she does come back, do I give her more, or what?”
“Nah, no need. She’ll definitely crash.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but is this all you wanted me for? You know I’m not a helpline, right? I’m not ‘Talk to Frank.’ Deal with it yourself.” And he hung up.
Frances muttered, “Shit,” and stuck the phone back in her pocket, looking around, as if an answer might appear. Elaine ran more than a dozen different routes—there was no point trying to find her. Frances supposed she might as well go home and wait for her there. She stood up and her head swam dizzily. Suddenly a loud bell rang, and beyond a wire fence a door opened and children came tumbling out with all the energy of a mass escape. Balls and ropes and chasing and squealing: The place filled up with them, the air saturated with their noise. Frances walked backwards and slumped down again, as if bowled over by them, too dizzy to move.
She thought of the seaside, the place she had visited hundreds of times, and of this exact same noise coming from the beach. And she thought of the pier, with its huge red and yellow banner, joyfully proclaiming the happiest sound in all the world is that of children’s laughter. She stared glumly at the children and thought about what Elaine had said, correct in her half-crazed, gibbering way, because Frances never spoke about her childhood; she kept it strictly at bay. Watching, she was full of a difficult emotion, one she struggled to comprehend because envy disguises itself in many ways, as disgust, or resentment, or hate, and as she looked on, she felt all of it, muddled and spun into indistinguishable mulch. She had never been able to abide the thought of pregnancy. Birth, she imagined, would for her be the easy part, like the relief of a huge pustule finally bursting and all the stuff oozing out. But pregnancy, no, no, it would be awful. A head growing, forming, cell by cell. Walking around each day with another brain and heart and two eyeballs in your belly—it all sounded very sci-fi. And she imagined the only thing worse than this would be the responsibility for it. Squealing newborns scrunched on their backs like upturned woodlice: How did their mothers handle the second-by-second strain of loving it, subduing it, keeping it alive? Yet here before her each child represented precisely this continuous, ongoing success, the result of obvious care. Of course they ran about and played games. And as she watched them from what felt like ever so far away, their laughter began to ring a little too loudly in her ears, as if mocking her. “Cunts,” she muttered, and a woman passing by looked over, shocked. Then Frances ran. Quickly. Not chasing, but fleeing, as if she had committed a terrible crime.
* * *
—
A tiny noise, not quite a groan, more like a stifled sigh. Then another, and another. Frances dropped her keys on the hallway sideboard and slid her feet out of her trainers. The sound came again.
She was relieved, at least for the first few moments. She hadn’t expected Elaine to be here when she returned. She’d had images of ringing round hospitals, the police turning up, bloodwork peculiar, handcuffs, and a shameful walk to a waiting car. She’d imagined wandering the streets all night, looking for a sprinting spectre darting between trees, possibly cackling. Or finding her collapsed on the street, or face down in an alleyway, or floating in the pond like a huge Ophelia. To hear these miserable groans was such immediate comfort to her, she sighed, “Thank God,” as if now everything would be alright.
Frances walked slowly around the sofa, kicking a few magazines and an empty mug aside, and stood before the TV, facing Elaine.
Her head was resting on the yellow cushion, her hair draped wetly across her cheek. Her face looked like chilled, wet white clay. Frances stepped back, analysing this figure on the sofa, and bumped into the coffee table, toppling some glasses and a few books. Elaine opened her eyes and frowned in obvious discomfort, but whether it was pain or nausea or something else altogether, Frances could not tell. Just a general look of suffering. Frances cleared her throat, and said, “Are you okay?”
A raised eyebrow, a drunk-like wobble of the head: “Do I look okay?”
No, she did not look okay. She was still dressed in her running clothes, now drenched and smelling like algae. Her lips were white, her eyes rimmed with a pale, glistening purple. Her knees were drawn up to her chest. The polka dots on her backside looked fit to burst. Evidently, she had crashed.
“Where did you go?” Frances said. “You shot off like a greyhound. I called after you but you kept going, then I lost you. I’ve been very worried.” This last statement was true. The relief to find Elaine here was so enormous it shocked her.
“I don’t even know.” Elaine winced as she spoke. “One minute I was feeling great, the next, I don’t remember. It was like hitting the wall. A couple helped me out—they brought me here in their car. All I could do was lie on the back seat. I barely remember it. They wanted to take me to hospital, but I said no, I wanted to go home. They helped me up the stairs and brought me in here.”
Frances glanced around at the mess of the flat and winced.
“They didn’t want to leave me here alone,” Elaine sighed. “They were so kind.” Frances analysed Elaine’s face, voice, body, trying to ascertain what had happened, what was happening. She was crashing now; soon she would be asleep. Then, Frances knew what she had to do, so she did it.
“Ohhh,” she said soothingly. “Ohhh, oh, my poor baby.”
It was now time for the acting to begin, no time for rehearsals or warm-up, straight to the performance, Act One, Scene One. Glass of water brought and placed within reach. Offers of blankets and baths, sleep? Elaine shook her head to all. Bed? She shook her head again, and Frances resisted the urge to fist-pump. Never before had Elaine refused the suggestion of bed.
“Poor baby,” Frances cooed.
“Do I have a fever?” Elaine said, slapping her hand to her chest. “I feel like I must have. I’m burning up. I’m a thousand degrees. I’m barbequed. Feel me.” Mustering all her resolve and trying not to look too closely, Frances put her hand to the clammy forehead. Elaine stayed slumped, her eyes turned upwards, as if looking beyond her eyebrows. She felt hot, Frances realised. She was sweating globules. Frances didn’t know anything about fevers. She went and opened the windows.
“Your temperature is normal,” she said, wiping her hand on her leg. “Looks like a tummy bug to me. It must have been something you ate,” and it passed through her mind that this might in fact be the case. Elaine screwed her eyes in pain.
* * *
—
She started to drift into a world of daydreams, eyes closing, floating off in between bouts of mumbling, grumbling, groaning, moaning. Knees drawn up and clung to, breathing loudly, periodically saying, “Ohhhhhh,” in a deeply worried way, eyelids dropping closed for a moment or two before pinging open again. Every now and then she gripped her stomach and fell completely silent, holding her breath. Frances put an empty bucket beside her and stood there for a second, as if Elaine might oblige. She didn’t know what else to do. It was all rather awful, and she wished for this phase to pass, for Elaine to sleep and the flat to be quiet. Occasionally Elaine would rise up onto an elbow and lean over, sweating and spitting into the bucket, her neck straining desperately, a worm-like vein visible beneath the red skin. As her head hovered there in mid-air, her hair straggling down into the bucket, she would spit and spit until patience or opportunity passed, then she’d flop back, breathing laboriously, dipping in and out of consciousness. The yellow cushion had developed a darkened stain from her head. “It’s so hot,” she said, pulling at her clothes, and Frances opened the windows wider. “It’s so bright,” she said, covering her eyes with her hands, and Frances closed the curtains. By early evening the light and heat had intensified, like the inside of a clay pot on a hot fire, the terracotta curtains enclosing the room in a stuffy orange light. No breeze came in, and the room began to smell of them both, a strong, sweet smell, like fruit long forgotten, now fermenting. All external sounds were muffled by humidity in the same way they are muffled by snow.
