The One Who Fits

“Pick on someone your own size.”

The world goes silent. It doesn’t even fade into the background, still there, still tangible. It just stops and for a moment there is no sound anywhere. It’s as though, in speaking those words, she’s created a vacuum. All air, all life, all noise has been sucked out.

He’s smaller than her; shorter. But that’s not what she means. He understands her meaning perfectly.

Lou would like to cry now, because she knows that this is the beginning and the end; she’s made the circle complete. She looks at him, and slowly, gradually, life returns to the scene. Sounds begin to seep back in, and she reaches for her bag which is hanging on the back of a chair.

She opens the cupboard and takes out the car keys. Lou walks past him to the back door. He doesn’t move. He just stands there, as though he is a projection across time and space and isn’t really present; a man from another dimension. Lou opens the door and steps out into the back garden.

She lets the door fall closed behind her as she walks down the path to the car. There is food to buy, sustenance to procure. Life goes on, whether you want it to or not. Lou could happily spend the rest of her life in bed, not facing the world. Bed seems like the safest place to be at times.

She drives off, towards the supermarket. Someone your own size, someone who fits; she wishes she had the courage to tell him to leave. She thinks about driving, about never going back. She thinks about starting anew, somewhere different, far from here. Or even somewhere close. She thinks about a different house, on her own, with a bed that she would never have to share. Balled up beneath the covers, under the duvet, she could hibernate and aestivate; sleep the year round, crawling out from under the covers to eat cheese on toast and drink tea.

Pick on someone who cares, is what she should have said to him. Pick on someone who gives a shit.

He never takes responsibility for the messes he makes. He lives in a dimension where the shrug as apology, as excuse, is king. Take him or leave him. She has the feeling that she’s going to leave. Not even him; she’s going to leave this, here, now. She passes the turning for the supermarket and drives on towards the motorway. It’s surprising how easy it is to just keep driving.

She can’t decide which direction to go in, but this motorway is a circle, without beginning or end. Or with both, like the point her life’s at now. Lou steers the car to the left and drives the orbital motorway anti-clockwise; east to north to west to south. A forty minute journey, while she decides what it is she wants to do.

Pick a card, any card; pick a destination; drive to the airport and take the next flight out. The world is full of possibilities, if she has the courage to seize one and take it.

She tires of circling eventually. She knows she can’t leave. She exits the motorway and goes to the supermarket; she tries to stay calm, tries to kill as few people as possible as she steers between their traipsing forms and their directionless trolleys.

She parks on the street, outside the front of the house. Some of the neighbours are in their gardens, chatting over walls, mowing lawns, watching the world go by. Lou sits for a moment, staring at the steering wheel. She sits, and everything is silent again, save for the seconds that are ticking by. She counts them one by one, makes it to over a hundred, keeps on counting, nonsense numbers now. Her telephone rings.

“What are you doing?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why are you sitting in the car?”

“I’m counting.”

“Counting?”

“Counting.”

“Counting what?”

“How many seconds it takes to think of the perfect goodbye.”

“Oh, I see. How many seconds so far?”

“Over a hundred. I’m not sure.”

“And still no result?”

“Still no result.”

“Shame that. You coming in?”

“I suppose.”

“I’ll put the kettle on.”

And there it is again. The shrug that acts as apology. The cup of tea that cures everything. She’s lost count of the seconds. She’s almost certain that she loves him again; she's pretty sure that she’s back on the circle, driving around their life, where the end meets the beginning, and nothing is resolved.

There’s a smell of grass in the air as Lou gets out of the car. A cat is sitting on the pavement in front of the gate to her house.

Pick on someone your own size; pick on someone who cares. Pick the one who fits next time.

She laughs. As if there will ever be a next time.

© J R Hargreaves July 2006