Anne Enright - Yesterday's Weather

I meet Fintan in the afternoons and we have sex sweet as rainwater. I need the sun more than anything and we undress in the light. I open the curtains and look towards the sea. He is madder now than he ever was. I think he is quite mad. He is barely there. Behind my back I hear the sound of threads snapping. I turn to him, curled up on the sheet in the afternoon light, the line of bones knuckling down his back, the sinews curving up behind his knees and — trembling on the pillow, casually strewn — the most beautiful pair of hands in the world.

I say to him, ‘I wish I had a name like yours. When I’m talking to you, you’re always “Fintan”. It’s always “Fintan this,” “Fintan that”. But you never say my name. Sometimes I think you don’t actually know it — that no one does. Except maybe him. I listen out for it, you know?’

Words spoil it. They make it sound silly.

When he showed me the ring I just laughed. I don’t know what it is to be in love, even less to be married. I thought, ‘What can I say?’ I wanted to bury his head in my coat. I wanted to wrap my coat around him and tuck him under my arm. Except that he is so big.

‘So what brought this on?’ said Sarah at work — the bitch.

‘Just,’ I said.

‘Just,’ she said. ‘You’re just getting married.’

‘Yes.’

‘But that’s wonderful.’

Later — drunk, of course — she leans back in her chair and says, ‘So he’s into pain then, is he?’

‘Well, obviously.’ But in my head later, for days later, I’m saying, ‘He is not even interested in pain, Sarah. He will not have it in the room.’

Some nights I stay at his place and some nights I stay back at mine. All this moving around makes us impatient, with the multiplying toothbrushes and a permanent pair of knickers, clean or worn, at the bottom of my bag. But I still don’t know what it is to be in love. I know it is different from being married. But just for now, married seems to me more. And less, of course. But mostly more.

Sarah at work, I can’t stop believing in Sarah at work, just because I am getting married, just because she is jealous. Here is a description of Sarah. She is a washed-out sort of strawberry blonde with fine bones and small features. She is fading to white. She is constantly insulted by men.

Back at his place, I bite my fiancé on the ear. Sometimes I come up behind him and chew at the muscles of his back. Or when he is sitting down I worry my teeth inside his thigh, along the seam of his jeans. If I hurt him, he reads the paper. If he laughs, we go to bed. Or more often do not go to bed, but rumble a while and then talk. He likes to spoon. He likes to go to bed after it is all over. Which is lovely. Which is always a little bit more.

So Sarah at work has a personality problem. Which is to say, her problem is that she does not like other people’s personalities.

My mother had a friend who was always too much, and very clever. I know these things can last a lifetime, so I am careful of Sarah, and careful of my man — too careful to use his name with her. Despite which I end up saying it all the time. ‘Oh, Frank,’ I say. ‘Frank says this,’ ‘Frank doesn’t like that.’

‘Really?’ says Sarah.

She is seeing a guy herself — sort of. He isn’t married, he isn’t with someone else, but there is a problem, I can tell — a sick mother, maybe, or even a child. The only thing Sarah will say is, ‘The fucker won’t do Saturdays’. Maybe he’s a bisexual. Sarah has no breasts, truth be told. And you can’t win with a bisexual, I say, because bisexuals can’t lose.

Of course, I don’t say it out loud. Sarah is the witty one. At the time, I just look at her skinny little chest, and think.

We are going over the wedding list for the fourteenth time. I pause over Sarah’s name, and Frank says, ‘Don’t invite her then, if you don’t like her. Just leave her out.’

And I say, ‘I can’t leave her out.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it’s Sarah,’ I say. ‘Because it just doesn’t work that way.’

The wedding is only four months away. I have a feeling that something massive is going to hit me. I feel like I have been fighting in the surf all my life. Now, out beyond the last, the biggest wave, there is open sea.

I tell Sarah about the dress I tried on over the weekend.

‘White, is it?’

‘Cream, actually.’

‘Sounds lovely.’

‘Sarah!!!’ I say. We have nipped out for a coffee. Something has to break.

‘Sarah what?’

‘Just stop it. All right?’

And then, because she is Sarah, she changes the subject, makes me laugh about Gary in security’s hairy neck. I talk about my sister’s children, while she sprinkles the table with sugar and draws her finger through it, and then she asks about the dress. Seriously this time.

Apparently, I can’t do a dropped waist. I’ll have to get on a sunbed now , and go for white.

Once when she was drunk she said, ‘You know your problem? You’ll be all right. That’s your fucking tragedy, you know that? You’ll always be all right.’

But I don’t feel all right, Sarah. Just because I don’t make a song and dance about it. Doesn’t mean I’m always, or even sometimes, all right . You know?

‘I just wanted to get married,’ says Frank.

‘Profiteroles,’ I say, ‘or chocolate mousse. It’s just a decision. A stupid decision, that’s all.’

But there is an extraordinary thing happening in bed. As if he wants to wreck us both, sink to the bottom, while all the invitations and the profiteroles and the satin shoes wash up on shore.

And because I am more miserable about Sarah all the time, because I think she will spoil everything like the bad fairy at the christening, he says, ‘Bring her over. All the two of you do is get hammered and miserable. I’ll cook. Bring her over.’

We don’t just get hammered, we have a laugh. And we talk too. We talk about lots of things. But when I ask her to dinner, it feels odd. And somehow, because I am getting married, the bisexual boyfriend has to come too.

Frank’s flat is better than mine for these things. He has a big living room, split by a kitchen counter, and a table of a decent size. I put candles on the table and on top of the TV. By the time I’m finished cleaning, Frank has all the vegetables on different plates, chopped up and ready to go.

Sarah turns up before it gets dark. She moves sort of sideways and looks at things in the room, picking up an old birthday card, a list of messages, and then Frank’s tax cert. which she puts back down again. She is wearing black, and jewellery. I feel I should change, to put her at ease, but it’s too late now.

Frank has a dish of olives on the table, but she will not eat them. Like it’s all a bit hilarious. When she walked in the door she said, ‘Kisses!’ as if she’d known him for years. But she still hasn’t looked at him. She picks at scraps of paper and touches things. She checks her watch.

‘So married bliss, Frank,’ she says.

‘Yeah,’ says Frank.

‘What do you mean, “Yeah”?’

‘Well, it’s … I don’t know,’ says Frank. ‘It’s such a production.’

And she gives me an arch look, while his back is turned. He comes over to the table with the dips and cut bread. She looks at him then. She gives him a good look, and her eyes falter.

He puts the food on the table.

‘Isn’t he a treasure?’ she says, and I don’t want Frank to cook any more. It makes him look silly. I follow him to the kitchen counter and, ‘Ack ack ack!’ he says, and swipes my hand away from all the vegetables, in their neat rows.