Zadie Smith - NW

She had hoped to find another method. Some old wives’ remedy that might be discreetly applied at home using everyday products from the bathroom cabinet. Anything else will be expensive. Anything else will show up on the joint account. On-line she finds only moralists and no practical advice at all besides the old horror stories from the pre-moral past: gin baths and hat pins. Who has hat pins? She is here instead, with an old credit card from college days. Strange place. No place. Could be a dentist, a chiropractor. Private medicine! Plush sofas, glass-topped coffee tables, privacy. No clipboard. No-one to ask:

a) Is it your own decision to undertake the procedure?

b) Do you have someone to take you home after the procedure?

Here is a girl to ask whether she would like a glass of water, how she would like to pay. That is all. Money avoids relationship, obligation. It is quite different. Back then she was nineteen, the university nurse organized everything. She sat with a kind ex-lover in their summer skirts on the edge of the hospital bed, legs dangling, like little girls scolded, and the thing that interested them most was the workings of anesthetic.

— It seemed like he held my wrist, said ten, nine, eight and the next second— the next second— was just now, was you kissing my forehead.

— It’s been two and a half hours!

In its way, a greater revelation than the confusing lectures on consciousness, on Descartes, on Berkeley.

Ten nine eight….

It’s been two and a half hours!

• • •

No book could ever have convinced her as that day did. Ten nine eight… oblivion. Kind girl! It was more than she needed to do. One of the advantages of loving women, of being loved by women: they will always do things far beyond the call of duty. Ten nine eight. Back to life. Kiss on the forehead. And also a child’s transfer, half rubbed off, on the wall in front of her eyes. Tigger and Christopher Robin and Pooh, all missing their heads. Spare bed in the children’s ward? She remembers only ten nine eight — the painless death-rehearsal. A useful episode to recall in moments of mortal fear. (In small planes, in deep water.) That first time, she was two months gone. The second time, two months and three weeks. This is her third.

The receptionist is limping across the room. Sprained ankle, grubby white bandage flapping. Leah flushes. She is ashamed before an imagined nobody who isn’t real and yet monitors our thoughts. She reprimands herself. Of course, all this was not a question of her own non-existence, of course, but rather of the non-existence of another. Of course. Yes, that’s what I meant, what I meant to think, of course. The sort of thing normal women think.

— Mrs. Hanwell? In your own time.

— Not relevant? What do you mean? How could you tell me that whole story and not mention the headscarf?

Natalie laughs. Frank laughs. Michel laughs hardest. Slightly drunk. Not only on the Prosecco in his hand. On the grandeur of this Victorian house, the length of the garden, that he should know a barrister and a banker, that he should find funny the things they find funny. The children wheel manically round the garden, laughing because everyone else is. Leah looks down at Olive and strokes her ardently, until the dog is discomfited and slinks away. She looks up at her best friend, Natalie Blake, and hates her.

— Leah… always trying to save somebody.

— Isn’t that your job?

— Defending someone is very different from saving them. Anyway, I mostly do commercial these days.

Natalie crosses one bare leg over the other. Sleek ebony statuary. Tilts her head directly to the sun. Frank, too. They look like a king and queen in profile on an ancient coin. Leah must stick to the shade of something Frank calls the gazebo. The two women squint at each other across an expanse of well-kept lawn. They are annoying each other. They have been annoying each other all afternoon.

— I keep bumping into her.

— Naomi, stop doing that.

— She was at school with us. It’s hard to believe.

— Is it? Why? Naomi stop it. Come away from the barbecue. It’s fire, hot, come here.

— Never mind.

— Sorry, tell me again. I’m listening. Shar. Don’t remember the name at all. Maybe it was during our “break”? You were hanging with a load of people back then I never met.

— No. I never knew her in school.

— Naomi! I’m serious. Sorry — so, wait: what’s the issue?

— No issue. Nothing.

— It’s just in the scheme of things it’s not very…

–“She said, trailing off.”

— What? Naomi, come here!

— Nothing.

Frank comes over with the bottle, as expansive with Leah as his wife is brusque. His face is very close. He smells expensive. Leah leans back to let him pour.

— Why is it that everyone from your school is a criminal crackhead?

— Why’s everyone from yours a Tory minister?

Frank smiles. He is handsome his shirt is perfect his trousers are perfect his children are perfect his wife is perfect this is a perfectly chilled glass of Prosecco. He says:

— It must be comforting being able to divide the world in two like that in your mind.

— Frank, stop teasing.

— Leah’s not offended. You’re not offended, Leah. Of course, I’m already divided in half, so you understand for me it’s hard to think this way. When you guys have kids, they’ll know what I mean.

Leah tries now to look at Frank in the manner he seems to intend: as a projection of a certain future for herself, and for Michel. The coffee color, those freckles. But aside from accidents of genetics, Frank has nothing to do with either Leah or Michel. She met his mother once. Elena. Complained about the provincialism of Milan and advised Leah to dye her hair. Frank is from a different slice of the multiverse.

— My mother-in-law in her wisdom says if you want to know the real difference between people do the health visitor test. Ring the bell, and if they lay on the floor and put the lights out, they’re no good.

Michel says:

— I don’t get this. What does it mean?

Natalie explains:

— Sometimes people don’t want to open the door to Marcia, they’re worried it’s connected to social work, or the benefit office. They want to be off the radar, basically. So if my mum ever rings your bell, for Godssake don’t lie on the floor.

Michel nods seriously, taking this advice to heart. He can’t see it, as Leah does. The way Natalie taps her finger on the garden table and looks at the sky as she speaks. He can’t see that we’re boring them, and they wish they were free of us, of this old obligation. He won’t shut up, he says:

— These people, they would lie on the floor. They’re on Ridley Avenue. And we work it out that they’re all living in a squat, together, on Ridley Avenue, maybe four or five of these girls who are working on the streets, ringing doorbells, and there are some guys, too, we think. Pimps, probably. But this is the stuff you deal with every day. I don’t need to tell you it, you know it. You must see people like this every day, every day, right? In court.

— Michel, honey… It’s like asking a doctor at a party about a mole on your back.

Michel always speaks sincerely, and it is strange that exactly this trait — highly valued by Leah in private — should so embarrass her in public. Nat is following the progress of Spike as he toddles in a flowerbed. Now her attention swings back to Leah and Leah takes its measure: serene, a little imperious. Insincere.

— No, I am interested, go on, Michel, I’m sorry.

— This other one, this guy, he’s also from your school. He asked her for money a few weeks ago on the street.