Dependency

I am forced to remember it back again. The Sellotape-tear of flesh.

I have reached that age now where my friends and family have begun to stress the importance of self-reflection, of learning to delegate my time wisely and concisely, as though the passage of time had never occurred until that fateful day on which I blew out the candles on my thirty-second birthday cake — and so my fate was sealed.

“You’d think I might as well be in palliative care,” I tell Roy, my middle-aged psychologist of middling looks, who regards me quietly from the confines of his navy Arne Jacobsen chair, “with all this talk of lifelong meaning and soul-searching.”

I am open enough to recount the excruciating details of a nightmare that has been plaguing me as of late, but too afraid to admit that I think these concerns about my age are something regurgitated to most women like me, thirty-somethings that teeter on the cusp of sterility and perpetual single-hood, threatening genuine incompetence. I know I’ve had my fill of desperation. I have taken up day drinking, taken up chain-smoking. I have let men far younger than myself bend me over and fuck me in the hope that it would impart some youth or worth onto me that I so clearly lacked. There is no need for me to elaborate on this to Roy, to cement the hysterics.

“I do think that these comments come from a place of love, Ida. Don’t you think the people closest to you just want to see you succeed?” 

“Despite my apparent inadequacy, I’m really quite content with where I’m at. I’m happy, and in some ways, you know…that’s success enough to me.”

Against the backdrop of a book-lined shelf, Roy’s Harvard medical graduate plaque looks down at me, a comic knife held taut against my throat. 

“I see,” he regards me with quiet scepticism. “And this disturbing dream you’ve been having, do you think it’s somewhat rooted in concerns regarding your self-worth?”

I am forced to remember it back again. The Sellotape-tear of flesh. A woman lying in the garden. Her palms upturned and the faint, sinister humming of blowflies. That snaking incision running from her neck to her upper thigh in vile continuum. 

“I think I’m just in mourning about not being able to drink without repercussions any longer. I have a shot or two on a night out, and I know the next morning that I’ll be spending my Sunday draped over the toilet bowl.” 

“Right.”

In your late thirties, your body is like fruit — you become soft and fleshy, malleable and imperfect. People pick you up, turn you over, scrutinise you and inspect you with distaste. Your value flounders on the rocks of uncertainty, and you must learn to maintain your composure as you dangle somewhere over the crevasse between those two essential points, ripeness and ruin; a weathered branch that beckons. 

At the end of our session, Roy and I agree upon several things: I should frequent the local gym, utilise meditative podcasts, take note of things in an overpriced journal, and lie about my age to strangers.

11.49 am. I am emptying the bins when he messages me. 

Ida, can you have mum call me? She’s not picking up. Thanks, Dad. 

At a young age I came to learn, just as my mother did, that my father was always a guest in his own home. Perhaps it was cathartic for him, taking off without warning, chasing something beyond the confines of the canning factory. But for us, his frequent departures left much to be desired. I remember countless evenings spent coiled around the upstairs balustrade, balancing myself on folded toes as I listened for the sound of keys, the latch on the door, anything at all. I let my tears drip down my face without shame, so that if he had happened to return at any moment then, he could see that my anger was tangible. It was real, not feigned. I mattered.

In my adulthood, I try to conjure up a gentler image. A man and woman sit next to one another, reconciling. Like Atlas, I desperately try to hold up both ends.  

Hi– not with her right now, try calling her later maybe? 

I hadn’t heard from him in over a decade, and yet here we were now, shifting our ground inch-by-inch via text–

Is she working a lot lately? She hasn’t called in three days. Worried she’s miffed at me.

–two sparring fencers struggling to define the nature of our relationship.

Heard they’re short staffed. Probably just working overtime.

My elderly neighbour, Miss Simmons with the yappy little peke, greets me as I wheel out the garden bins.

“You look well dear. Lovely dress, that one.”

A blatant lie. I had sprinkled on enough heavy-duty powder to coat my face for all eternity, but no amount could conceal the hideous shadows beneath my eyes. I think of the woman in the dream again, of how lucky I am to have slept at all. I have faced a horrifying evil with relative indifference and strength, as a florist would, arranging the stems in a vase filled with blood. 

“Thank you, Joan.” 

I sense she is lonely and disenfranchised by the recent emulsion of an expensive divorce and her increasingly geriatric appearance. It must be miserable, to be stripped of everything. Your children, your husband, your identity. The grey argyle knit in the peak of Summer really isn’t helping her case, though. 

“Any plans over the Summer holidays?” 

I stop to lean against the wooden fence. “None as of yet. I’m itching for some excitement though. Maybe I’ll go abroad for a week, see some friends or something. What about you?” 

“I’ve taken up bridge with some friends, so I have that to look forward to now.” 

Joining a bridge group before the age of sixty is the social equivalent of killing yourself gently, but I don’t say that. Instead I say, “Sounds like a hoot,” and we both laugh at that.

My phone chimes again. 

Ida, call me please. It’s urgent. 

“Hang on a minute, Joan — just a second.” I gesture to the phone, and she nods and waves me away with a glove-clad hand, turning her undivided attention toward an overgrown rosebush. 

Work called and Celia hasn’t been in since last Tuesday.

Is he genuinely concerned? He sounds sincere now, but certainly wasn't all those years ago, so then again, I am unsure of the merit of the whole thing. 

Busy right now— she’s probably just sick. Don’t stress.

I think of his departure, his subsequent reentry, and how they act as bookends in my life, with every other insignificant event filling the gaps in between. I should be happy that he’s making an effort.

She would’ve called in sick. 

But I’m not.

In his absence, my father taught me many things. How people tend to be fickle, how quickly we learn to mistrust. How we impart inexplicable judgement onto things as trivial as outward appearances. How, beneath all that skin, our insides are remarkably similar, and that there is no need for appraisal after all. 

I open the lid of the bin. Mum looks up at me, her mouth unhinged, unmoving. I gently run a finger along those coarse, pale lips; lines that have never been softened by tender, loving words. 

That could be me, I think, but not just yet, and I am relieved for it.