I heard banging—bang bang bang—and a man shouting my name. I was dreaming a charnel house scene of fire, blood and violence, and it took forever to make the transition from then to now, to realize that the banging was real and coming from my front door. I pulled the covers over my head but it would not stop. I desperately wanted it to end but, despairing, I could not think of any way to make that happen other than answering the door. My legs were shaking and I had to hold on to the wall as I walked. As I fumbled with the locks, I looked down at my feet—small, white, marble. A huge bruise, purple and green, bloomed across one, right down to my toes. I was surprised—I could feel nothing, no pain, and had no recollection of how I had acquired it. It may as well have been painted on.
I finally managed to open the door, but couldn’t raise my head, didn’t have the strength to look up. At least the banging had stopped. That was my only objective.
“Jesus Christ!” a man’s voice said.
“Eleanor Oliphant,” I replied.
27
When I woke again, I was lying on my sofa. The texture under my hands felt rough, strange, and it took me a few moments to realize that I was covered with towels rather than blankets. I lay still, and slowly appraised my situation. I was warm. My head was pounding. My guts were filled with a stabbing pain which pulsed regularly, like blood. I opened my mouth and heard the flesh and gums peel apart, like orange segments being separated. I was wearing my yellow nightdress.
I heard churning, bumping sounds, external to the ones in my body, and eventually placed them as coming from the washer-dryer. I slowly opened one eye—it was gummed shut—and saw that the living room was unchanged, the frog pouf staring back at me. Was I alive? I hoped so, but only because if this was the location of the afterlife, I’d be lodging an appeal immediately. Beside me on the low table in front of the sofa was a large glass of vodka. I reached out, shaking violently, and managed to pick it up and lift it to my mouth without spilling too much. I had gulped down almost half of it before I realized that it was actually water. I gagged, feeling it gurgle and churn in my stomach. Another bad sign—someone or something had turned vodka into water. This was not my preferred kind of miracle.
Lying back down again, I heard other sounds, footsteps. Someone was humming, a man. Who was in my kitchen? I was amazed at how easily the sound traveled. I was always alone here, unused to hearing another person moving around in my home. I drank some more water and started to choke, which turned into a coughing fit and ended with unproductive retching. After a minute or two, someone knocked tentatively on the living room door, and a face peeped round—Raymond.
I wanted to die—this time, in addition to actually wanting to die, I meant it in the metaphorical sense too. Oh, come on now, I thought to myself, almost amused; just how desperately, on how many levels, does a person have to wish to die before it’s actually allowed to happen? Please? Raymond smiled sadly at me and spoke very quietly.
“How are you feeling, Eleanor?” he said.
“What happened?” I asked him. “Why are you in my house?”
He came into the room and stood at my feet.
“Don’t worry. You’re going to be fine.”
I closed my eyes. Neither phrase answered my questions; neither was what I wanted to hear.
“Are you hungry?” he said gently. I thought about it. My insides felt wrong, very wrong. Perhaps part of that was related to hunger? I didn’t know, so I just shrugged. He looked pleased.
“I’m going to make you some soup, then,” he said. I lay back with my eyes closed.
“Not lentil,” I said.
He returned after a few minutes and slowly, so slowly, I eased myself into a seated position, keeping the towels wrapped around me. He’d heated some tomato soup in a mug, and placed it on the table in front of me.
“Spoon?” I said.
He did not reply, but went off to the kitchen and came back with one. I held it in my right hand, trembling violently, and tried to sip some. I shook so much that it spilled onto the towels—I realized that there was no way I would be able to get the liquid from the mug to my mouth.
“Aye, I thought you might be best just trying to drink it,” he said gently, and I nodded.
He sat on the armchair and watched me as I sipped, neither of us speaking. I set the mug down when I’d finished, feeling the warmth of it inside me, the sugar and the salt in my veins. The ticking of the Power Rangers clock above the fireplace was exceptionally loud. I finished the glass of water and, without speaking, he went to refill it.
“Thank you,” I said when he returned and handed it to me.
He said nothing, stood up and left the room. The washer-dryer sounds had stopped, and I heard the door click open, more footsteps. He came back in, walked toward me and held out his hand.
“Come on,” he said.
I tried to stand without assistance, but couldn’t. I leaned on him, and then had to have his arm around my waist to assist me across the hallway. The bedroom door was open, the bed made up with the freshly laundered sheets. He sat me down, and then lifted my legs and helped me get under the covers. The bed smelled so fresh—warm and clean and cozy, like a little bird’s nest.
“Get some rest now,” he said softly, closing the curtains and turning out the light. Sleep came like a sledgehammer.
I must have slept for half a day at least. When I finally woke, I reached for the glass that had been placed at the side of my bed and gulped the water down. I needed water inside and out, so, taking careful, tentative steps, I walked to the bathroom and stood under the shower. The smell of the soap was like a garden. I washed away all the filth, all the external stains, and emerged pink and clean and warm. I dried myself gently, so gently, afraid that my skin would tear, and then dressed in clean clothes, the softest, cleanest clothes I’d ever worn.
The kitchen floor gleamed and all the bottles had been removed, the work tops wiped down. There was a pile of folded laundry on one of the chairs. The table was bare save for a vase, the only one I owned, filled with yellow tulips. There was a note propped against it.
Some food in the fridge. Try to drink as much water as you can. Call me when you’re up Rx
He’d scrawled his phone number at the bottom. I sat down and stared at it, and then at the sunshine brightness of the flowers. No one had ever bought me flowers before. I didn’t much care for tulips, but he wasn’t to know that. I started to cry, huge quivering sobs, howling like an animal. It felt like I would never stop, like I couldn’t stop. Eventually, from sheer physical exhaustion, I was quiet. I rested my forehead on the table.
My life, I realized, had gone wrong. Very, very wrong. I wasn’t supposed to live like this. No one was supposed to live like this. The problem was that I simply didn’t know how to make it right. Mummy’s way was wrong, I knew that. But no one had ever shown me the right way to live a life, and although I’d tried my best over the years, I simply didn’t know how to make things better. I could not solve the puzzle of me.
I made some tea and heated up the ready meal that Raymond had left in the fridge. I was, I discovered, very hungry indeed. I washed the cup and fork afterward, stacked them beside the other clean crockery he’d left to drain. I went into the living room and picked up the phone. He answered on the second ring.
“Eleanor—thank God,” he said. Pause. “How’re you feeling?”
“Hello, Raymond,” I said.
“How are you?” he asked again, sounding strained.
“Fine, thanks,” I said. This was, I knew, the correct answer.
“For fuck’s sake, Eleanor. Fine. Christ!” he said. “I’ll be round in an hour, OK?”
“Really, Raymond, there’s no need,” I said calmly. “I’ve had some food”—I didn’t know what time it was, and didn’t want to risk guessing whether it had been lunch or dinner—“and a shower, and I’m going to read for a whi
le and then have an early night.”
“I’ll be round in an hour,” he said again, firmly, and then hung up.
When I answered the door, he was holding a bottle of Irn-Bru and a bag of jelly babies. I managed a smile.
“Come in,” I said.
I wondered how he had got in before, had no recollection of opening the door to him. What had I said, what kind of state had I been in? I felt my heart start to pound, jittery and anxious. Had I sworn at him? Had I been naked? Had something terrible happened between us? I felt the Irn-Bru start to slip from my grasp and it fell on the floor and rolled around. He picked it up, gripped my elbow in his other hand and guided me to the kitchen. He sat me at the table and put the kettle on. I should have been offended that he was commandeering my living space, but instead I felt relief, overwhelming relief at being taken care of.
We sat on opposite sides of the table with a cup of tea and said nothing for a while. He spoke first. “What the fuck, Eleanor?” he said.
I was shocked to hear the wobble in his voice, as though there were tears lurking there. I simply shrugged. He began to look angry.
“Eleanor, you were AWOL from work for three days, Bob was really worried about you, we all were. I got your address from him, I came round to see if you’re OK, and I find you . . . I find you . . .”
“. . . preparing to kill myself?” I ask.
He rubbed his hand across his face, and I saw that he was very close to crying.
“Look, I know you’re a very private person, and that’s fine, but we’re pals, you know? You can talk to me about stuff. Don’t bottle things up.”
“Why not?” I asked. “How can telling someone how bad you’re feeling make it better? It’s not like they can fix it, can they?”
“They probably can’t fix everything, Eleanor, no,” he said, “but talking can help. Other people have problems too, you know. They understand what it feels like to be unhappy. A problem shared and all that . . .”
“I don’t think anyone on earth would understand what it feels like to be me,” I said. “That’s just a fact. I don’t think anyone else has lived through precisely the set of circumstances I’ve lived through. And survived them, at any rate,” I said. It was an important clarification.
“Try me,” he said. He looked at me, and I looked at him. “OK, if not me, then try someone else. A counselor, a therapist . . .”
I snorted—a most inelegant sound.
“A counselor!” I said. “‘Let’s sit around and talk about our feelings and that’ll magically make everything better.’ I don’t think so, Raymond.”
He smiled. “How will you know until you try, though? What have you got to lose? There’s no shame, you know, no shame at all in being . . . depressed, or having a mental illness or whatever . . .” I almost choked on my tea.
“Mental illness? What are you talking about, Raymond?” I shook my head.
He held up both hands in a placatory movement.
“Look, I’m not a doctor. It’s just . . . well . . . I don’t think that someone who gives themselves alcohol poisoning while they plan their suicide is, you know, in a very good place?”
This was such a ridiculous summation of my situation that I almost laughed. Raymond wasn’t usually prone to exaggeration but this was over the top, and I couldn’t allow it to stand as a factually accurate description of what had happened that night.
“Raymond, I simply had a bit too much vodka after a stressful evening, that’s all. It’s hardly symptomatic of an illness.”
“Where had you been that night?” he said. “What’s been going on since then?”
I shrugged. “I went to a gig,” I said. “It wasn’t very good.”
Neither of us spoke for a while.
“Eleanor,” he said eventually, “this is serious. If I hadn’t come over when I did, you might be dead by now, either from the booze or from choking on your own vomit. That’s if you hadn’t already overdosed on the pills or whatever.”
I put my head on one side and pondered this.
“All right,” I said. “I concede that I was feeling very unhappy. But doesn’t everyone feel sad from time to time?”
“Yes, of course they do, Eleanor,” he said calmly. “But when people are feeling sad they have a little cry, maybe eat too much ice cream, stay in bed all afternoon. What they don’t do is think about drinking drain cleaner, or opening their veins with a bread knife.”
Despite myself, I shuddered at the thought of those sharp, sharp teeth. I shrugged, acquiescing.
“Touché, Raymond,” I said. “I can’t counter your reasoning.”
He reached out and put his hands on my forearms, squeezed them. He was strong.
“Will you think about going to the doctor, at least? Wouldn’t do any harm, would it?”
I nodded. Again, he was being logical, and you can’t argue with logic.
“Is there anyone you want me to get in contact with?” he said. “A friend, a relative? What about your mum? She’ll want to know that you’ve been feeling like this, won’t she?” He stopped speaking, because I laughed.
“Not Mummy,” I said, shaking my head. “She’d probably be absolutely delighted.”
Raymond looked horrified.
“Come on, Eleanor, that’s a terrible thing to say,” he said, visibly shocked. “No one’s mother would be happy to know their child was suffering.”
I shrugged, and kept my eyes focused on the floor. “You haven’t met Mummy,” I said.
28
The next few days were somewhat challenging. On several occasions, Raymond arrived unannounced, ostensibly to bring comestibles or relaying messages from Bob, but in fact to check that I hadn’t committed an act of self-slaughter. If I were to compose a concise crossword clue to describe Raymond’s demeanor, it would be the opposite of inscrutable. I could only hope that the man refrained from playing poker on all but the most casual basis, as I feared he’d be leaving the table with an empty wallet.
It was surprising that he should bother with me, especially given the unpleasant circumstances in which he’d found me after the concert. Whenever I’d been sad or upset before, the relevant people in my life would simply call my social worker and I’d be moved somewhere else. Raymond hadn’t phoned anyone or asked an outside agency to intervene. He’d elected to look after me himself. I’d been pondering this, and concluded that there must be some people for whom difficult behavior wasn’t a reason to end their relationship with you. If they liked you—and, I remembered, Raymond and I had agreed that we were pals now—then, it seemed, they were prepared to maintain contact, even if you were sad, or upset, or behaving in very challenging ways. This was something of a revelation.
I wondered if that’s what it would be like in a family—if you had parents, or a sister, say, who would be there, no matter what. It wasn’t that you could take them for granted, as such—heaven knows, nothing can be taken for granted in this life—it was simply that you would know, almost unthinkingly, that they’d be there if you needed them, no matter how bad things got. I’m not prone to envy, as a rule, but I must confess I felt a twinge when I thought about this. Envy was a minor emotion, however, in comparison to the sorrow I felt at never having a chance to experience this . . . what was it? Unconditional love, I supposed.
But there was no use in crying over spilled milk. Raymond had shown me a little of what it must be like, and I counted myself lucky to have had the opportunity. Today, he’d arrived with a box of After Eight mints and, improbably, a helium-filled balloon.
“I know it’s daft,” he said, smiling, “but I was passing the market in the square, and I saw a guy selling these when I was going for my bus. I thought it might cheer you up.”
I saw what he was holding and I laughed, an unexpected burst of feeling, unfamiliar. He passed me the ribbon, and the balloon soared toward my lo
w ceiling, then bobbed against it as though it was trying to escape.
“What is it supposed to be?” I said. “Is it . . . is it cheese?” I had never been given a helium balloon before, and certainly not one this odd-looking.
“It’s SpongeBob, Eleanor,” he said, speaking very slowly and clearly as though I were some sort of idiot. “SpongeBob SquarePants?”
A semi-human bath sponge with protruding front teeth! On sale as if it were something completely unremarkable! For my entire life, people have said that I’m strange, but really, when I see things like this, I realize that I’m actually relatively normal.
I made tea for us. Raymond had put his feet up on the coffee table. I was considering asking him to remove them, but then the thought came to me that he must feel at home in my house, comfortable enough to relax here and make full use of the furniture. The idea was actually rather pleasing. He slurped his tea—a much less pleasant intrusion—and asked about the GP. Earlier in the week, after Raymond had delivered a persuasive argument about the importance of obtaining an expert, objective view of my emotional state, and of the efficacy of modern treatments should any mental health issues be diagnosed, I’d finally agreed to make an appointment at the surgery.
“I’m going tomorrow,” I said. “Half past eleven.”
He nodded. “That’s good, Eleanor,” he said. “Now, promise me you’ll be completely honest with the doctor, tell her exactly what you’ve been feeling, what you’ve been going through.”
I thought about this. I would tell her almost everything, I’d decided, but I wasn’t going to mention the little stockpile of pills (which no longer existed in any case—Raymond had, with scant concern for the environment, flushed them down the lavatory. I’d professed irritation but was secretly glad to be rid of them), and I had also decided to say nothing about the chats with Mummy or our ridiculous, abortive project. Mummy always said that information should be divulged to professional busybodies on a need-to-know basis, and these topics weren’t relevant. All the doctor needed to understand was that I was very unhappy, so that she could advise me how best to go about changing that. We didn’t need to start digging around in the past, talking about things that couldn’t be changed.