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“I’ve had a difficult day, Jean. I played the role of Unofficial Therapist when The Kid was handed to me mid-meltdown while I was trying to edit this week’s newsletter, then put up with one of the new student cleaners whinging that she actually had to do her job rather than just stand there on her phone. We then had to explore why she wanted to stand there on her phone rather than do her job, and discovered that her mother is forcing her into this job as a cleaner because she’s behind on rent and needs the extra cash. I’m all therapist-ed out today, and I don’t have the mental energy to therapise you and your idiotic customers.”
Diatribe over, she wrenched her top over her head with a savage grunt and surged back through the house while I did my best to reattach my jaw. There were so many ways this conversation could go. I could stand up to her, and give her hell for the way she had spoken to me. That was my first instinct. But I was also curious – who was The Kid? She worked with a couple of hundred of them. What made this one stand out so much?
“Sorry… who’s The Kid?” I said, and she huffed at me from the bottom of the stairs.
“The one from a few weeks ago. The… one who didn’t know whether he was male or female. They. I suppose I should say ‘they’, for gender neutrality.”
“Don’t they have a name?”
“Anonymity,” she shrugged. I blinked.
“That’s their name?”
“No!” Despite it all, she actually laughed. “I mean I’m calling them The Kid to preserve their anonymity, in this conversation. You know what this village is like, with everyone wanting to know everyone else’s business. Not in a dehumanising or depersonalising way.”
“Let’s give them a code name. Let’s call them…” I cast around in my mind for a nickname but found nothing. “Anonymity. Anonymity… er, Smith.”
“Really?” Her mouth twitched. “Okay. ‘Anonymity Smith’ had a rough day today.”
“They’re still struggling?”
“Struggling like hell. I wish I had the answers for them. I still need to organise some LGBTQ… stuff. Education. For everyone. I haven’t gotten around to it. But really all I can do is listen to them, and give them access to a laptop, since their parents have full access to their search history and often check their phone.”
“Can’t they use an incognito tab?”
She shook her head. “Parents turned it off.”
“There has to be a way to un-turn it off, surely. In the settings-”
“Jean, problem-solving isn’t helping!” Petra’s bark nearly made me jump through the ceiling, and just like that, we were back to square one. “You can’t fix this, and neither can I. I shouldn’t even be telling you this shit. Just… listen up if I need you to, and butt out, okay?”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” I snapped, seeing red. “This is ridiculous. Have you forgotten we’re married? And you need to be nice to the people you’re married to, if you want them to continue liking you? I’ve put up with your bitchiness all the last few weeks, and I understand that you’re stressed, but I won’t be spoken to like that. Do you understand?”
She blinked. I half wondered whether her jaw would hit the floor – it certainly dropped a couple of centimetres, and I heard it click. Obviously she hadn’t expected me to retaliate like this, the allowances I’d been making for her in the last few weeks lulling her into a false sense of security. My fists balled at my sides as I forced myself to calm down, staring into the wall behind my wife while attempting to take some deep breaths.
“I’m sorry,” she eventually choked, bringing my attention back to her. “I’ll try to do better. I don’t want to hurt you. I never want to hurt you.” Then she made for the stairs. “I’m sorry.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
It was very tempting to sleep on the sofa again that night. We spent the evening apart – Petra in the office, me in the living room – and even ate apart, as Petra took her noodles upstairs with her. I found I could barely touch mine, the nauseating slurry of anxiety and anger stealing my appetite. It was a feeling that had lessened over the last couple of weeks, and its return was most unwelcome.
In fact, by the time I clicked off the TV and returned the living room to silence, I felt rather like I would be sick. As I sat in the darkness, sweating but unable to open a window in case getting up made me vomit, my head began to throb and my vision on my right side began to go static, like a television losing signal. By this point I knew how the night was going to unfold: a proper migraine, which would probably last into tomorrow and potentially even beyond. I closed my eyes, but it didn’t help.
Frozen to the spot because even the tiniest movement hurt like all hell, I contemplated calling Petra for assistance, but I wasn’t hopeful that she’d hear me. Raising my voice would feel like I was ripping my vocal cords out, and the most I could muster was a faintly agonised groan that – I listened hard – didn’t seem to register upstairs. I opened my eyes and then immediately slammed them shut again as the visual information assaulted my brain, although the flickering in my right eye didn’t go away. Movement was not an option – even raising my head felt as if my brain was being pulled out through my eyeball – so there I sat, head in hand, stomach churning, utterly stuck.
I was a mess.
The words came to me, fighting their way through the fog, branding themselves on the surface of my brain as if a particularly grotesque type of pyrogravure.
A mess.
Frumpy.
Fat.
Fragile.
Unable to do anything right.
