Still Me

‘When did you last see him? Your son, I mean.’

‘That would be … 1987. The year he married. I found out about it after the event and wrote him a letter telling him how hurt I was that he hadn’t included me, and he told me in no uncertain terms that I had long since relinquished any right to be included in anything to do with his life.’

We sat in silence for a moment. Her face was perfectly still and it was impossible to tell what she was thinking, or even if she was now simply focused on the television. I didn’t know what to say to her. I couldn’t find any words that were up to a hurt that great. But then she turned to me.

‘And that was it. My mother died a couple of years later and she was my last point of contact with him. I do sometimes wonder how he is – if he’s even alive, whether he had children. I wrote to him for a while. But over the years I suppose I’ve become rather philosophical about the whole thing. He was quite right, of course. I had no right to him, really, to anything to do with his life.’

‘But he was your son,’ I whispered.

‘He was, but I hadn’t really behaved like a mother, had I?’

She took a shaky breath. ‘I’ve had a very good life, Louisa. I loved my job and I worked with some wonderful people. I travelled to Paris, Milan, Berlin, London, far more than most women my age … I had my beautiful apartment and some excellent friends. You mustn’t worry about me. All this nonsense about women having it all. We never could and we never shall. Women always have to make the difficult choices. But there is a great consolation in simply doing something you love.’

We sat in silence, digesting this. Then she placed her hands squarely on her knees. ‘Actually, dear girl, would you help me to my bathroom? I’m feeling quite tired and I think I might take myself to bed.’

That night I lay awake, thinking about what she had told me. I thought about Agnes and the fact that these two women, living yards away from each other, both cloaked in a very specific sadness, might, in another world, have been a comfort to each other. I thought about the fact that there seemed to be such a high cost to anything a woman chose to do with her life, unless she simply aimed low. But I knew that already, didn’t I? I had come here and it had cost me dear.

Often in the small hours I conjured Will’s voice telling me not to be ridiculous and melancholy but to think instead of all the things I’d achieved. I lay in the dark and ticked off my achievements on my fingers. I had a home – for the time being at least. I had paid employment. I was still in New York, and I was among friends. I had a new relationship, even if sometimes I wondered how I had ended up in it. Could I really say that I would have done things any differently?

But it was the old woman in the next room I was thinking of when I finally slept.

There were fourteen sporting trophies on Josh’s shelf, four of them the size of my head, for American football, baseball, something called track-and-field, and a junior trophy for a spelling bee. I had been there before but it was only now, sober and unhurried, that I was able to take in my surroundings and the scale of his achievements. There were pictures of him in sporting garb, preserved at the moment of his triumphs, his arms clasped around his teammates, those perfect teeth in a perfect smile. I thought of Patrick and the multitude of certificates on the wall of his apartment, and wondered at the male need to display achievements, like a peacock permanently shimmering his tail.

When Josh put down the phone, I jumped. ‘It’s only takeout. I’m afraid with everything at work I don’t have time for anything else right now. But this is the best Korean food south of Koreatown.’

‘I don’t mind,’ I said. I had no other Korean food experiences to judge it by. I was just enjoying the prospect of coming to see him. Walking to catch the subway south, I had relished the novelty of heading Downtown without battling either Siberian winds, deep snow or torrential, icy rain.

And Josh’s apartment was not quite the rabbit hutch he’d described, unless your rabbit had decided to move into a renovated loft in an area that had apparently once housed artists’ studios but now formed a base for four different versions of Marc Jacobs, punctuated by artisan jewellers, specialist coffee shops and boutiques that employed men with earpieces on the doorstep. It was all whitewashed walls and oak floors, with a modernistic marble table and a distressed leather sofa. The smattering of a few carefully chosen ornaments and pieces of furniture suggested everything had been carefully considered, sourced and earned, perhaps through the services of an interior designer.

He had brought me flowers, a delicious mix of hyacinths and freesias. ‘What are these for?’ I said.

He shrugged as he shepherded me in. ‘I just saw them on the way home from work and thought you might like them.’

‘Wow. Thank you.’ I inhaled deeply. ‘This is the nicest thing that’s happened to me in ages.’

‘The flowers? Or me?’ He raised an eyebrow.

‘Well, I suppose you are quite nice.’

His face fell.

‘You’re amazing. And I love them.’

He smiled broadly then and kissed me. ‘Well, you’re the nicest thing that’s happened to me in ages,’ he said, softly, when he pulled back. ‘Feels like I waited a long time for you, Louisa.’

‘We only met in October.’

‘Ah. But we live in an age of instant gratification. And we’re in the city where anything you want you get yesterday.’

There was a strange potency to being wanted as much as Josh seemed to want me. I wasn’t quite sure what I’d done to deserve it. I wanted to ask him what he saw in me but I suspected it would sound oddly needy to say it aloud so I tried to work it out in other ways.

‘Tell me about the other women you’ve dated,’ I said, from the sofa, as he moved around the little kitchenette, pulling out plates and cutlery and glasses. ‘What were they like?’

‘Aside from Tinder hook-ups? Smart, pretty, usually successful …’ He stooped to pull a bottle of fish sauce from the back of a cupboard. ‘But honestly? Like self-obsessed,’ he said. ‘Like they couldn’t be seen without perfect make-up, or they would have a full-on meltdown if their hair wasn’t right, and everything had to be Instagrammed or photographed or reported on social media and presented in the best light. Including dates with me. Like they could never drop their guard.’

He straightened up, holding bottles. ‘You want chilli sauce? Or soy? I dated one girl who used to check what time I was getting up each day and set her alarm for half an hour before just so she could fix her hair and make-up. Just so I would never see her not looking perfect. Even if it meant getting up at, like, four thirty.’

‘Okay. I’m going to warn you now, I’m not that girl.’

‘I know that, Louisa. I’ve put you to bed.’

I kicked off my shoes and folded my legs under me. ‘I suppose it’s kind of impressive that they put in so much effort.’

‘Yeah. But it can be a little exhausting. And you never feel quite like … like you know what’s really underneath. With you, I have to say, it’s all pretty much out there. You are who you are.’

‘Should I take that as a compliment?’

‘Sure. You’re like the girls I grew up with. You’re honest.’

‘The Gopniks don’t think so.’