Chapter 14 #3
Ash isn’t sure she has understood the small boy properly until she looks up at CJ, who, as is right, is slack-jawed and looks dangerously close to being embarrassed.
She pulls a face, blinking madly, as Miguel and Todd suddenly enter rapt conversation about how good these bowls are, how they’re the perfect depth and width for a soup like this, the rim just right.
Ash doesn’t know what to say either. A stick up her tiny little ass?
! CJ looks so uncharacteristically shamed at being caught out, though, that actually, what to do next comes easy and natural: Ash bursts out laughing.
‘Thank you, Jorge,’ she says, with a bright, exaggerated smile. ‘I get that sometimes, to be honest. But there’s no stick there. I promise. Sounds painful, doesn’t it?’
Dinner is delicious, and CJ’s family an incredible amount of fun.
They have an easy rhythm, passing conversation between them like treats, seamlessly working as a team to clear dirty plates, serve a chocolate mousse for pudding, playing with Jorge and fixing coffee to end their meal.
Ash’s head swims with thoughts: this is nice, she loves Miguel and Todd, CJ is like a totally different person at home; if she had a kid, she hopes he’d be as cute and funny as Jorge.
But what CJ said earlier still bothers her, and so once Jorge has gone to bed, and Miguel and Todd have excused themselves to go for a late evening stroll, she finds herself saying, ‘It hurt my feelings, what you said before. About me not wanting kids enough.’
They’re on opposite ends of the L-shaped sofa, with CJ on the bit with the legroom. She tips her head and lets Ash speak, and then replies. ‘It’s just my opinion. I wasn’t trying to upset you. If you don’t like what I said, you don’t have to pay it any mind.’
‘But I can’t un-hear what you said,’ Ash counters. ‘So …’
‘So … tell me to fuck off in the moment? Or tell yourself I’m a lunatic and you don’t attach any weight to the words of a crazy woman?’
‘Is that honestly how you live your life?’
‘I think it’s weird if people don’t live like that.’
‘So somebody says something that hurts your feelings and you just … choose not to be bothered?’
‘Well, I only give credence to about three people’s opinions,’ CJ says. ‘Having hurt feelings is a choice, don’t you think? And normally, if something somebody else says bothers us so much, it’s because it hit a nerve. I don’t even remember what I said now—’
‘I said, I want kids, but I don’t think I could ever do it alone,’ Ash recalls, verbatim. ‘And you said, Maybe you don’t really want them as much as you think you do, then.’
‘Why does that hurt your feelings?’
‘Because I do want kids!’
‘So have some!’
Ash goes to speak and finds that she can’t. This woman! Fucking CJ. CJ looks at her and catches her wavering. She smiles. Ash finds the corners of her mouth turning upwards in spite of herself.
‘Fuck you,’ Ash says through light laughter.
‘There you go!’ CJ prompts. ‘That’s the spirit!’
Ash closes her eyes, gathers herself with a big breath.
When she opens her eyes again, CJ presses, ‘Just talk, Ash. Say what you want to say. I don’t just mean here, now. I mean in general. You seem very repressed.’
‘Repressed?’
‘Yeah, like, kind of constipated with your own bullshit. You strike me as a woman with a lot of shame, and if that’s true I’ve got news for you: it’s a waste of fucking time, babe.
The patriarchy like to keep us busy with hating ourselves so we don’t overthrow the status quo, but what if you choose to just, not?
You’d suddenly have a lot more time on your hands for a start. ’
‘Not that I asked for your armchair analysis,’ Ash says.
‘But you’ve just assassinated my whole MO.
You asked earlier why I cry all the time?
Apparently you know the answer. I eat, breathe, walk and talk shame.
And you saying just don’t do that is like asking a fish to give you a lap dance.
It doesn’t compute. I am full of admiration for anyone who can give zero fucks, but it could never be me. ’
‘You care too much about …?’ CJ asks.
‘Everything,’ Ash says. ‘Doing the right thing, fulfilling my potential, not wasting my time here. Being “good”, whatever the fuck that means. I got great grades at school, won certificates, everything from perfect attendance to most popular and best dressed. I had the exact university experience you’re supposed to: studied hard, partied harder, lived in a house share that stole traffic cones, et cetera, but still submitted my coursework a week early.
And then qualified as an accountant, started work, made a shit-ton of money … I have a house, a car, nice clothes …’
‘And you’re still not happy?’ asks CJ, not unkindly.
Ash sighs. ‘I don’t think I am, no,’ she admits.
‘Urgh, shit! I’m going to cry again and you’re going to take the piss!
’ She presses the heels of her hands underneath her eyes and blinks rapidly to disperse the tears.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever said that out loud before.
That I’m not happy. My best friend probably knows but …
’ She blows air out through pursed lips.
‘Yeah, you got me. You’ve fed me and given me enough wine that I’m sat here, half crying, saying no.
I’m not happy. And it’s awful. I feel very alone.
I mean, I think I hate my family? They make me feel like I’ve failed and I let them, so maybe I hate myself, too.
Do you know, though, not a single one of them has been in touch whilst I’ve been here?
Because they think it’s irresponsible and don’t want to encourage me.
I feel so stuck in my own life. I look to every single other person and dissect their life to try and find the clues.
I did it with you, earlier tonight. Wanted to know exactly how you make your life work so that I could figure out which bits I could copy or try. ’
‘I don’t think that’s totally abnormal,’ CJ says. ‘For what it’s worth: fuck your family. Family is great, but you are a grown woman who can de-centre them from your life. And secondly, to dig a little deeper: did you expect your life to look different, or to feel different?’
Ash considers this. ‘Both. I did all the right things but haven’t got what I really, truly want: a husband and two or three children.
If I’d started early enough maybe I would have had four.
Fuck it. And then, nothing feels right because nothing fills that hole.
And so I’m ungrateful. I can’t properly feel gratitude for what I know, objectively speaking, are good things.
So that’s another great way to feel shit about myself. ’
‘How do you feel now you’ve said all that to me?’
‘Like I’m going to regret it in the morning.’
This makes CJ laugh, and Ash experiences a temporary moment of reprieve as she marvels at CJ’s straight white teeth, how she tips her head back to issue a throaty roar, the searing white-hot joy of making another person forget themselves enough to laugh that way.
‘At least my sad little life has some merit, if it makes you laugh,’ Ash says, hamming up her glum tone.
CJ reaches out a hand and presses down on Ash’s knee. ‘Oh, babe,’ she says. ‘If I could take all this worry from you, I would. But since I can’t, how about you find a way to exist alongside it?’
‘Like how?’ Ash asks. She’d love a solution to the mystery she’s been trying to unravel for four decades, now, more or less.
‘Let’s have some fun,’ CJ says. ‘I can’t, in all good conscience, let you continue like this. Not when I’m the master of yolo and giving no shits. If you want, little one, I will teach you.’
In spite of herself, in spite of the frosty relationship the two women have had ever since Ash arrived, in spite of the underlying urge Ash has to call her Lisbon adventure a dud and go home and continue being miserable from the comfort of her own house, she reaches out a hand.
CJ takes it.
‘Deal,’ says Ash. ‘I will probably live to regret this but … here’s to fun.’