2. MAGDALEN
2
MAGDALEN
It’s a week later and Emily is still furious. My roommate fucking the professor, angry with me! We have already purchased tickets to backpack across Peru, and she cannot fathom why on earth I would want to go back home. She says ‘ home ’ with disgust, bitter and resentful of a word that has the potential to mean so much. But not to her.
Emily had her annual falling-out with her mother five months ago, and this trip guaranteed another three months during which she didn’t have to see her again.
‘Ask Professor Cal,’ I giggle.
‘Stop calling him that.’
‘What? He should be proud of his education. Are you not making him feel proud, Emily?’
‘I’m making him feel things, alright.’ She winks.
‘Gross. It’s too early to be this gross!’
She falls to her knees in front of the leather chair, still sticky from last week’s spilt alcohol, and grabs my face in her hands. ‘Ugh, men. They disgust me!’ Her black hair spills around her face in wild curls, casting shadows across our walls.
‘You and home.’ Her eyes search mine and she sighs. ‘I don’t get it with you.’
My cheek warms in her palm as I lean into her touch. ‘You and me both, sister.’ I shrug. ‘I’m complex.’
‘You’re secretive.’
‘I’m not! Remember when I told you about the spot on my ass?’
‘The only reason you told me was because I had to pop it.’
‘Gross again, Emily! Too early for gross.’
Emily pinches my cheek and pouts, standing. ‘No way I can convince you, Maggie? Peruvian boys, Peruvian wine, Machu Picchu? Enlightenment?’
‘I haven’t even met an English boy yet and you’re already handing me over to the Peruvians?’ I laugh, relieved that she has forgiven me. It is always so easy with Emily.
‘What you mean to say is that you’ve never had any boy, Maggie dearest. Which, I will never bloody understand. You just have to get it over with, like the flu shot.’ She pads over to the kitchen, searching for a bottle of wine to open, despite the noon chime minutes away from ringing. ‘You’re so fucking beautiful, and smart and you know, and I bet you’d fuck like a—’
I inwardly cringe. ‘Ah, sta’ zitto! Shut up ! ’ I bury my face in my hands, absolutely hating the rush of compliments, or any compliment, ever. I blame it on my mother.
Emily looks at me and laughs. ‘You can’t hide for ever,’ she smiles, hopping onto the kitchen counter to try to reach her secret bottle of wine. I follow her, hovering underneath the archway.
‘Someone deserves to see how brilliant you are.’ She grunts, moving to stand up on the countertop. Turning around to look at me, Emily’s stopped smiling. It’s like I can read her mind as she frowns, wondering, always wondering why I am the way I am.
My cheeks flush with embarrassment at her kindness; I fear I’ll always hate being so seen.
‘Why don’t you and Cal come to visit me in Chivasso after your Peruvian hiatus? I’d be more than happy to show you around?’ I pick at the chipped paint of the kitchen wall. I think we both know this will never happen but it seems important to ask.
Rolling her eyes at my skilful deviation in conversation, Emily pauses to think about my proposal.
‘Fuck it. Alright. I’ll ask Cal. I’ll have to break the bad news to dear old Mum.’ She carefully walks across the counter to get a glass and laughs bitterly. ‘She’ll be so upset!’
Watching her stretch helplessly for the top shelf, my fingers twitch with the need to show her how much she means to me. In a rare and very unlike Magdalen Savoy manner, I lean off the archway and walk across the kitchen floor. The one stained with red wine and spilled nail polish. A floor that has absorbed the unstoppable laughter after Saturday nights out and the tears over term papers. I run to hug her but she’s still standing on the counter, so I settle my arms around her calves.
‘What would I do without you, Emily?’ I am desperate and fervent, hoping my statement will be enough to show her how grateful I am. That without her, part of me would not exist. These are big confessions to make before noon. So I settle with the silent heaviness of our hug, pressing my love for her between the space of our bodies.
Emily pauses a moment before bending down to try to hug me back. She tenderly squeezes my shoulders and then pats me gently on the head and sighs. ‘I don’t know, but chances are you still wouldn’t have gotten laid.’
She pinches my sides, and I squeal. ‘You bitch!’ I say and laugh. ‘You know I’m just waiting!’
She tilts her head back in laughter and attempts the ugliest Italian accent I’ve ever heard. ‘You, my dear friend, are waiting for da Vinci to roll out of his grave and rip your clothes off! You dirty, nast—’
‘Do not even think about finishing that!’
She hops off the counter and begins chasing me around the flat, both of us squealing and laughing like little schoolgirls. I could never have survived Oxford if it were not for Emily, who I am certain God sent down to guide me.
I met her on my fifth day. I was looking for the closest bathroom to escape my isolation at a party thrown by someone I had never met. I’d forced myself to go after my mother had called and asked if I was going out in my first week, her voice ready to console, anticipating I’d say no.
‘Yes, I am. I’m on my way actually,’ I had said while in bed, my pillowcase damp with tears.
‘Oh, great then. I won’t keep you.’ She hung up.
I accidentally ran into Emily with her underwear around her ankles, having loud and grotesque sex with a man much her senior in the bathroom. Clearly, she has a type. I was so stunned that I froze with sheer panic and just stared at their naked and twisted bodies in front of me, hypnotized but incredibly horrified. A victim of Medusa’s glare.
‘Do you want to take over from here?’ Emily said, looking up at me. Her hair was plastered to her sweating face and she was breathing loudly out of her mouth, but her eyes were light with humour. This was funny for her? It was as if she had expected me to be there, never sorry or embarrassed for being caught.
‘I warn you, his dick hurts like hell,’ she smirked and nudged the man behind her. He let out an uncomfortable grunt, which I assume was meant to sound like a laugh. I let out the breath I was holding and squeezed my eyes shut.
‘No, no, you look like you are more than capable of finishing that off!’ I couldn’t help the laughter that was escaping me. ‘Maybe try the lock next time?’
I quickly shut the door behind me and clamped my hand over my mouth. She was not, for one moment, ashamed . Looking back, I still feel self-conscious. And I wasn’t even the naked one!
But Emily is right. I am afraid of a feeling I have no name for yet. I can’t even look at a man without acid rising up my throat. A brief flash of pain in my ribs. I close my eyes and let it pass. The thought makes me nauseous because deep down, I know, despite Emily’s kind words of affirmation, no one will ever want to be so close to me. My issue is not entirely physical. Maybe I’m not considered ugly, sure. But I don’t consider myself necessary. I am tall, possibly too tall, and was called flat-chested by Lorenzo in seventh grade, but I assume he actually liked me. My hair is long and brown but sometimes looks red in the sun. I don’t mind my hair. And I’ve gotten thinner over this last year, I know Anika will say something about it. Several men and women have tried to seduce me through the dim and warm setting of Oxford’s bars. And if it happens only after dark, does that count?
It seems my body is just feminine enough to allow people to find me attractive after midnight.
The truth? I feel unwanted.
How do you say that to someone without sounding self-deprecating, without it looking like you want their pity? I remember sitting by the window as a teen, watching Anika kiss some boy from town under the veranda and thinking that if anyone ever came near my face like that, I would scream.
And this is what Emily will never fully be able to understand, this thing that exists inside me, reminding me every day that I am always just a step behind everyone else.
So Emily came out of that bathroom, flushed and radiant (‘I wasn’t kidding, it was huge,’ she complained), took my hand (‘Don’t worry, I washed them’) and asked, ‘Do you want to be my roommate? Mine’s a fucking cunt.’
Stunned, I didn’t answer.
‘I mean you’ve already seen me naked, so that won’t be an issue for us.’ She stared at me, waiting, perhaps knowing I would say yes.
‘Yeah, I guess.’ I blushed, pleased that she would find my brief company enjoyable enough to room with for an entire year. ‘As long as he doesn’t join us.’
She stopped walking and stared at me, and I felt my throat close up with embarrassment, a stupid joke too soon made. I didn’t even know her last name.
As I was about to apologize, she threw her head back and laughed. ‘Oh, we will never see him again.’ Her body shivered at the thought of the mystery man. She locked her arm around mine, and without prompt, began talking about dreams, horoscopes and Russian literature. From that one moment, I felt I had worth at Oxford. Even if I failed my classes or never received another party invitation again. I had her. Emily, Emilia I’d call her in the Tuscan sun, my guardian angel.