Гейл Ханимен - Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

I played the scene in my head again, over and over, remembering the second thing that I’d realized that night. It was later and I’d been standing further back, right in the middle of the crowd. I’d gone to get yet another drink, and the path to the front of the stage had closed up while I’d been at the bar. I’d downed the vodka — my sixth? Seventh? I don’t remember. He couldn’t see my face from where I was standing, I was aware of that. The band had stopped playing — someone had broken a string and was replacing it.

He leaned into the microphone and cocked an eyebrow. I saw his lazy, handsome smile. He peered, unseeing, into the darkness.

‘What are we going to do now, then? Since Davie’s taking so fucking long to change that string.’ He turned back towards a sullen man who gave him the finger without looking up from his guitar. ‘Right then, here’s something to keep you entertained, ladies!’ he said, then turned his back, undid his belt, dropped his jeans and wiggled his pale white buttocks at us.

Some people in the crowd laughed. Some people shouted insults. The singer retorted with an obscene gesture. I realized with uncompromising clarity that the man on stage before me was, without any doubt, an arse. The band started their next song and everyone was jumping up and down and I then was at the bar, requesting a double.

Later. I woke again. I kept my eyes closed. I was curious about something. What, I wondered, was the point of me? I contributed nothing to the world, absolutely nothing, and I took nothing from it either. When I ceased to exist, it would make no material difference to anyone.

Most people’s absence from the world would be felt on a personal level by at least a handful of people. I, however, had no one.

I do not light up a room when I walk into it. No one longs to see me or to hear my voice. I do not feel sorry for myself, not in the least. These are simply statements of fact.

I have been waiting for death all my life. I do not mean that I actively wish to die, just that I do not really want to be alive. Something had shifted now, and I realized that I didn’t need to wait for death. I didn’t want to. I unscrewed the bottle and drank deeply.

Ah, but things come in threes, don’t they say? The best was saved for last, and it came towards the end of the set. My focus was slightly filmy by that stage — the vodka — and I didn’t trust my eyes. I screwed them up, strained to confirm what I thought I was looking at. Smoke; grey, hazy, deadly smoke, emanating from the side of the stage and along the front. The room started to fill with it. The man next to me coughed; a psychosomatic action, since dry ice, stage smoke, prompts no such reflex. I felt it drift over me, saw how the lights and the lasers cut through it. I closed my eyes. In that moment, I was back there, in the house, upstairs. Fire. I heard screams, and could not tell if they were mine. The bass drum beat fast with my heart, the snare drum skittered like my pulse. The room was full of smoke, and I couldn’t see. Screams, my own and hers. The bass drum, the snare. The spurt of adrenaline, speeding the tempo, nauseatingly strong, too strong for my small body, for any small body. The screaming. I pushed out, out, pushed past every obstacle, stumbling, panting, until I was outside, out in the dark black night. Back to the wall, I slumped down, sprawled on the ground, the screaming in my ears, body still pounding. I vomited. I was alive. I was alone. There was no living thing in the universe that was more alone than me. Or more terrible.

I woke again. I had not closed the curtains and light was coming in, moonlight. The word connotes romance. I took one of my hands in the other, tried to imagine what it would feel like if it was another person’s hand holding mine. There have been times when I felt that I might die of loneliness. People sometimes say they might die of boredom, that they’re dying for a cup of tea, but for me, dying of loneliness is not hyperbole. When I feel like that, my head drops and my shoulders slump and I ache, I physically ache, for human contact — I truly feel that I might tumble to the ground and pass away if someone doesn’t hold me, touch me. I don’t mean a lover — this recent madness aside, I had long since given up on any notion that another person might love me that way — but simply as a human being. The scalp massage at the hairdresser, the flu jab I had last winter — the only time I experience touch is from people whom I am paying, and they are almost always wearing disposable gloves at the time. I’m merely stating the facts.

People don’t like these facts, but I can’t help that. If someone asks you how you are, you are meant to say FINE. You are not meant to say that you cried yourself to sleep last night because you hadn’t spoken to another person for two consecutive days. FINE is what you say.

When I first started working for Bob, there was an older woman in the office, only a couple of months away from retirement. She was often absent to care for her sister, who had ovarian cancer. This older colleague would never mention the cancer, wouldn’t even say the word, and referred to the illness only in the most oblique terms. I understand that this approach was considered quite usual back then. These days, loneliness is the new cancer — a shameful, embarrassing thing, brought upon yourself in some obscure way. A fearful, incurable thing, so horrifying that you dare not mention it; other people don’t want to hear the word spoken aloud for fear that they might too be afflicted, or that it might tempt fate into visiting a similar horror upon them.

I got onto all fours, shuffled forward like an old dog, and pulled the curtains closed against the moon. I fell back onto the covers and reached again for the bottle.

I heard banging — bang bang bang — and a man shouting my name. I was dreaming a charnel house scene of fire, blood and violence, and it took for ever to make the transition from then to now, to realize that the banging was real and coming from my front door. I pulled the covers over my head but it would not stop. I desperately wanted it to end but, despairing, I could not think of any way to make that happen other than answering the door. My legs were shaking and I had to hold onto the wall as I walked. As I fumbled with the locks, I looked down at my feet — small, white, marble. A huge bruise, purple and green, bloomed across one, right down to my toes. I was surprised — I could feel nothing, no pain, and had no recollection of how I had acquired it. It may as well have been painted on.

I finally managed to open the door, but couldn’t raise my head, didn’t have the strength to look up. At least the banging had stopped. That was my only objective.

‘Jesus Christ!’ a man’s voice said.

‘Eleanor Oliphant,’ I replied.

WHEN I WOKE AGAIN, I was lying on my sofa. The texture under my hands felt rough, strange, and it took me a few moments to realize that I was covered with towels rather than blankets. I lay still, and slowly appraised my situation. I was warm. My head was pounding. My guts were filled with a stabbing pain which pulsed regularly, like blood. I opened my mouth and heard the flesh and gums peel apart, like orange segments being separated. I was wearing my yellow nightdress.

I heard churning, bumping sounds, external to the ones in my body, and eventually placed them as coming from the washer-dryer. I slowly opened one eye — it was gummed shut — and saw that the living room was unchanged, the frog pouffe staring back at me. Was I alive? I hoped so, but only because if this was the location of the afterlife, I’d be lodging an appeal immediately. Beside me on the low table in front of the sofa was a large glass of vodka. I reached out, shaking violently, and managed to pick it up and lift it to my mouth without spilling too much. I had gulped down almost half of it before I realized that it was actually water. I gagged, feeling it gurgle and churn in my stomach. Another bad sign — someone or something had turned vodka into water. This was not my preferred kind of miracle.