Sedating Elaine, page 8
I suppose I assumed that Elaine would fill the gaps, she said to herself, but Elaine could not fill the gaps no matter how much of herself she brought in, because she was the wrong fit, the wrong shape. She was Elaine-shaped, not Adrienne-shaped. And she refused to be moulded, to take baths instead of showers, to drink red wine instead of white, to use a comb not a brush, so it never worked and could never work. She was quite immoveable with regards to her own precious shape. To any outside observer it would be obvious that it was in fact these differences that had attracted her to Elaine. Don’t we all attempt to heal a heart by brutally smothering it with some new individual, as if the organ might recover if stifled by another, like a wound beneath an unbreathable bandage?
“She was a bitch,” Elaine would sometimes say. “I’d never hurt you like she did.”
And whilst this was pitifully, painfully, obviously true, the words brought no solace. In fact, when Elaine went on these little tirades Frances would find herself defending Adrienne, as if the name itself were sacred and how dare Elaine—a commoner—sully it or say a word against her. Hands on hips and oddly warrior-like in her brazen nudity, Elaine would continue, triggered by Frances’ lack of agreement, lack of loyalty. “Hate her, babe. Like I do. Hate the bitch. She used you, that was all—you just can’t see it.” These statements were not so much reassurances as declarations of war.
“You didn’t even know her,” Frances would retort, in a voice far whinier than she’d hoped for. “You don’t know the first thing about her, so just leave it, okay? Drop it.”
“I know enough. I know she hurt you.”
“I said just drop it.”
She didn’t want to think of Adrienne like that. She didn’t want to hate her. They say love and hate are close together but they are also absolutes, in opposition, and when you are consumed by one, you cannot even entertain the other. True, she repeated the words to Elaine, the three single syllables that Elaine sang down the phone, whispered in her ear, and panted at climax. “I love you,” she endlessly gushed and, with a far-away look, Frances would repeat them, a muffled “I love you,” picturing Adrienne as she said them so as not to feel she were being unfaithful.
* * *
—
A noise came from the bedroom, followed by the bathroom door. Frances tiptoed over and listened: just Elaine, peeing. On the bed were some clothes. Shorts and bra and a T-shirt and from an open drawer poked the rim of a sunhat. Her phone lay open on the bed, a list being written in Notes: sandwiches, Scotch eggs, bananas, white wine. In a moment of entitlement Frances flicked into Elaine’s messages: mummy, i miss you! i’ll see you soon. it’s a delicate issue because of what happened with her mum but i’m working on it.
Frances stepped into her shoes, grabbed her bag, and rushed to the front door. “I’m just popping out,” she called, and left before Elaine could respond. Fuck if she faints, fuck if she collapses—if I stay there a minute longer, I know I’ll hit her.
6
In the aftermath of the break-up—when disbelief and horror had passed and flatness was the order of the day—Frances had woken up one morning and decided she should go to a doctor. She was vaguely concerned about herself. Like a twinge in her neck that she’d grown used to and almost didn’t notice anymore, she knew it wasn’t right, and in a way she cared that she didn’t care, because she knew she should care. She also knew, vividly, that a wide range of emotions existed and in its very centre, like a cosy pearl, was calmness. All other emotions sprang out and darted around it, but the middle should always be still, and she was aware that she had been flung from this scale altogether. The flatness could hardly be described as calm; rather, it was a distinct lack of emotion, an absence of any feeling. She was in an entirely separate place now, which had no range whatsoever, and the memories of emotions were recalled like holiday snaps, far away, over there, belonging to a place and time she couldn’t access anymore. Even Frances knew something was wrong.
The door to the doctor’s office had been slightly ajar, and as she raised her hand to knock she overheard a harassed voice within, speaking in the rasped tones of exasperation that come spitting out during stress and impatience and an attempt to whisper.
“I said, I’ll get there as soon as I’ve finished. No, I can’t come any sooner. Yes, I know how ill he is. Please don’t make me feel bad—I’m at work, I have to work. I told you, I’m across town. By six o’clock, I hope. No, I can’t leave any earlier, I have patients, for heaven’s sake. What? Is that a serious question? Yes, Mum, she’s still gone. Still left me, yes. Yes, the vet. The bastard vet, the guy I knew at school. Yes, still him. I am trying, Mum. I am. What? Well, I sent her flowers. To her work. Yesterday. I don’t know, carnations, I think. Well, I’m doing my best—what else can I do? I’ll try to get there soon. He’ll be okay. Oh, please don’t cry, please, Mum, please…”
Frances knocked gently on the door, guilty for interrupting, but also aware the clock was ticking on her ten minutes. She heard him say, “I’ve got to go,” and by the time the door swung gently away from her apologetic knuckles she was greeted with the sight of a chubby, scruffy man stuffed in a suit, smiling inanely from behind a desk. “Come in!” he bellowed as she was closing the door. “Have a seat.” He gestured at the only available chair, as if otherwise she might have perched on the windowsill or sat on his knee.
Frances felt like a chance voyeur, like she’d just caught him taking a leak. She felt she should apologise for being there, for interrupting him, for troubling him; out of the two of them he looked more in need of help than she did. In fact, he looked like he’d climbed fully clothed into a washing machine, suffered the stain setting, then dried off in the jet stream of a Boeing 747. His face was as damp and creased-looking as his clothes, yet dried skin flaked around his nostrils as if he’d been sick, or sobbing, and despite his self-soothing habit of stroking his tie and brushing his sleeves, resultant trails of thread suggested he was coming apart in more ways than one. Only the top of his head seemed in any way neat and orderly: a scalp as smooth and shiny as a diving dolphin. His red face reddened further as he squeezed his stomach up close to the desk, squinting through his spectacles at the computer screen.
“I’m sorry,” he said to her, poking dubiously at keys, tapping the mouse, slamming it on the desk once or twice. “This isn’t my normal office, you see. I’m still settling in here, and the computers are so slow, it’s a wonder we can get anything done.”
She sat down in her crumpled jeans and lightly soiled shirt, wondering if she’d just met a kindred spirit. For a moment they just looked at each other. Then he interlaced his fingers as a signal for her to begin.
He was nice. He listened as she explained about the flatness and lack of range. He nodded and asked questions and ran his hand down his tie several times. He was attentive as she jumped from vague statement to vague statement, and eventually he asked her, “So, has anything specifically happened? Something at work, or at home, perhaps?” And, with the door of conversation thus held open, inviting her in like a welcoming hand, she found herself quickly summarising the situation. It took her less than a minute and she said Adrienne’s name seven times, but still it felt insufficient, like saying the Titanic sank because it had a dent in it.
“So”—he stroked his tie again—“you’re depressed.”
“Is that it? I don’t even know.”
“It would be my diagnosis, yes.”
“But it’s not like I’m crying all over the place or anything—quite the opposite, in fact.”
“Depression doesn’t feel or look the same to everyone. From what you’ve described, and considering what has—ah—happened, I would say yes, you are depressed. We can prescribe something for that and refer you for counselling, if you wish.”
“I don’t know. What sort of something and what sort of counselling?”
“Antidepressants, and probably CBT. It would be group therapy, once a week.”
It was a typical NHS doctor’s room: brown floor, little sink on the wall, a lot of big books on rickety shelves, and various anatomical posters with curled corners. Boxes of blue gloves on a windowsill, pressed up against the wonky blinds, through which was the blurred image of a wet and crowded car park. If you didn’t have depression before you went in, it seemed highly likely you’d contract it. Frances sighed and instantly regretted it, worried she might seem ungrateful. But it was not ingratitude; she just realised he couldn’t help.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “I can go to work, I can meet people, I can behave like anyone else. And I’m pretty sure I can go to group therapy and sit on a chair and listen and talk and maybe some of it would even sound relevant or helpful, but it wouldn’t affect me, it wouldn’t sink in, it would just sit in my brain, floating on the surface. Do you see? It wouldn’t change this feeling, because it wouldn’t reach it. And I don’t know how anyone can find or reach me now because I feel like I’ve dropped off the radar, I’m the GPS signal that has disappeared: blip. And I don’t need a pill to bring me up or put me down, I just need to be…located. Do you think that happens by sitting in a circle on plastic chairs for an hour a week? In my experience it only happens with love. It’s love that finds you, rescues you, puts you back on the map in the world again. And I don’t think you can prescribe that. I wish you could. If it could be swallowed down or shot up, I’d take it in an instant.”
He sat back in his chair and interlocked his fingers on his belly, elbows spilling out over the armrests. The chair creaked ominously. She felt sorry for him again; it was all too uncomfortable, the narrow chair, the annoying computer, this girl talking in metaphors when all he wanted was a simple yes or no. He observed her expressionlessly for a moment, then sighed, looked away, and quietly said, almost to himself, “Flat is not so bad. I almost envy flat.”
“It’s awful,” she said.
“There are worse things,” he said. His eyes seemed to lock on to a space on the wall as he continued. “Like feeling betrayed, abandoned, humiliated, lost. Like everything you knew to be true was a game and no one even told you you were playing it, you thought it was real life, but it wasn’t. Then suddenly it’s over and everyone’s gone and you’re left packing away the pieces in the shameful, illuminating light of day. That’s worse, I think.”
He sighed again, and the sigh seemed to sink in the air, leaving silence behind, a silence he may well have cringed in, suddenly aware of his emotional outburst, but such opportunity for further inappropriate self-pity was thwarted by Frances saying, “That’s not so bad.”
“Pardon me?”
“I just mean at least it is something, at least there’s some fire in it. Someone could shoot you in the face right now and I doubt I’d even flinch.”
He scoffed, “Me too.”
“And I know what you mean. You talk about abandonment, believe me, I know a thing or two.”
And she meant it. Frances clung to the term abandonment with the same attachment as others give to feminism or veganism: a label she not only believed in but felt made up a vital and profound part of herself. Abandoned, as she told it, by parents, friends, lovers; it was a miracle she’d survived such endless, incessant cruelty. But this was because—as is the case with all of us—her perception of behaviour, including her own, was rather inaccurate. Her father had been away working thirteen hours a day, and many people would say Frances pushed friends and lovers away. In fact, so riddled was she with this notion of abandonment, and so dearly she clung to being the victim, it was difficult for her to know what was real and what was not, because the truth was not important or relevant. The numerous times she had dumped, ditched, ignored, or fled people in her life were cleverly swept aside amidst the tide of so-called rejections she allowed to dominate her life. Where was her mother? “Gone,” she would say, with a sad turn of the head. There was a strange pleasure in sensing such sorrow in the eyes that followed her, that said, “I’m sorry.” After her father died she allowed the word orphan. An abandoned orphan. Only a cup of gruel away from a Dickensian pauper.
“Well,” the doctor said. “In which case, flat is probably an improvement. Personally, I’d rather that. There’s not enough whisky in the world to make me feel flat. Except flat on my face, of course,” and neither of them laughed at this sad little joke which was too true and tragic to be funny. “Ah, well!” he exclaimed cheerfully. “What’s one to do?”
And for a moment Frances thought he was actually asking. She looked around and shrugged her shoulders, then he seemed to remember he was a doctor, cleared his throat, turned back to his computer, and said, “Have you been taking anything?”
“Like what?”
“Drugs?”
“No.”
“Alcohol?”
“The odd jar, perhaps.”
“Anything else I should know?”
“Like what?”
“Suicidal thoughts? Self-harm?”
“No.”
He knew she was lying on every count but there was nothing he could do about it. When patients walled up like this, you would never get the truth. “What about the antidepressants, then? The counselling?”
Frances wanted to say, “Okay. Why don’t you join me?” He didn’t seem to be in much of a position to help; she felt bad for bothering him with her petty concerns when his own life was so obviously in decay. Inappropriate as it had been, his humanity had touched her and she found herself liking him. Not as a doctor—in that respect he seemed quite useless; she doubted he should even be working—but as another poor, damaged person. In an ideal world he’d be sitting beside her and they’d both be asking a shrink some very demanding questions about what the hell is wrong with our minds, why do they break, how do we cope? She saw the strain he was under. Making one person’s sanity the sole responsibility of another human being did seem a bit much when you thought about it. After all, he wasn’t a psychotherapist, he wasn’t a counsellor, he didn’t have any real answers for her, he couldn’t help in any meaningful way; all he could do was refer her for therapy, which took six weeks to come through, and prescribe drugs that took two weeks to work. This is why help is so rarely sought: It takes too damn long. When your suffering is moment to moment, second by second, what possible use is help in a fortnight? The bottle is right there, temporary relief only a swig away. He looked at Frances as if to say, “God, it’s hopeless, isn’t it?” but thankfully she ran her hands through her hair and said, “Sure. Okay. Go on, then. It makes no difference, really. That’s sort of what I’ve been saying.”
