I will be a writer when I grow up and I will put it all down on the page, the tangle between Natalie and me, which is supposed to be about Billy’s mother, but I don’t think it is, really. Billy is Natalie’s boyfriend. I nearly went out with him once, but that is so long ago and it wasn’t even a proper thing. Now he’s best friends with my boyfriend, who couldn’t care less, and neither could Natalie, so that isn’t what this is about, either.
I wake up in the middle of the night I am so upset. I mean, when I put down the phone I didn’t know what to think — Natalie is so polite, you could hardly call what we had a fight — and then I am lying there with my eyes wide open; looking at what turns out to be the ceiling (duh!), wondering what terrible thought just woke me up.
My sister is asleep across the room — she has a kind of glowing pebble night-light that changes colours, very slowly, and she is lying in this sea of stuff: books and broken Nintendos and inflatable Bratz cushions, and God knows what else is in the pile, except from somewhere deep inside the heap, her breathing. And it makes me think of the milk inside a coconut, and I also think of Natalie’s room that I was in once, and it was really tidy. That’s all. It was just really tidy.
Natalie is an only child. She says it’s OK. She says she doesn’t know if her parents really, really love her or really, really couldn’t care less. She has nothing to compare it to. They never shout at her anyway, they just have ‘little conversations’ — which sounds like hell to me but she says it’s OK.
Here are the four of us: I am the fat, jokey one with the flaking nail polish, though it is always interesting flaking polish, like mirror silver or navy blue — still, you can tell by the way the stuff jumps off me that I don’t really mean it. Natalie is more a Rouge Noir sort of girl. She might have her doubts, but that polish stays put.
Natalie has the kind of looks you have to get used to — but once you do, it is as though you have personally discovered her. Her features are sort of see-through, her skin is really pale and she has thin white-blonde hair. Which is why I say she should be a star, because the camera loves all that, close up. She hasn’t a single open pore. Though she needs to get her eyelashes dyed professionally. She did it herself once and all around her lids went pink, so she had to stop using anything for a while. Which made her look sort of blinky and peeved.
When I say I am fat — even though, statistically speaking, I’m an eight and a quarter stone midget — my boyfriend says that I am not actually fat, I am just sleek. So that’s the new word for fat — ‘sleek’. But before I go completely self-hating, I do actually like my hair, which is black and really glossy, especially when it is, like, totally saturated with grease.
Who else?
Billy is a lot of trouble and I like him a lot. Hey, I like trouble. Or so I say to my boyfriend when he rolls his eyes up, the way he does. Billy has the kind of looks I used to go for a couple of years ago when I was about fifteen; soulful and soft, with absolutely no hair on his chest.
Though when I say Billy is my boyfriend’s best friend, I don’t think my boyfriend has a best friend, actually. So maybe that’s the real question — Who knows what my boyfriend wants, or who he likes? Does he even like me? It’s a mystery.
I am so in love with my boyfriend — at least I know that. He has eyes like George Clooney and beautiful hands. At least, the backs of them are beautiful; inside, they are a bit dry and shattered looking. I tried to get him to use some cream, but that’s like trying to put him in a tutu, as far as he is concerned. I literally had to chase him around the room, and he ended up pushing my hand with the cream on it all over my face, even though it is handcream and like lard, basically.
My boyfriend has his own room and his parents gave him a gas heater to help him study in there, and I don’t know if it is the smell of the gas or the heat of it that made us feel so fuggy, all last winter. We did a lot of kissing in front of that heater — and yes, we have gone ‘all the way’; but that’s only when his parents are out, which, these days, is never. But I don’t mind. We kiss until we are dizzy, and my boyfriend is just so gorgeous and gentle about it. We tried to go further in the park but it was freezing and dark and I didn’t find it sexy at all; in fact, I think it made me a bit upset. (I am not saying I am leaving my boyfriend mad with lust, I am not that sort of person. And, actually, that’s all I am going to say about that).
Our debs dance was on Friday evening, and I’m still getting flashbacks; it’s like a nightmare — that guy getting sick over my shoulder, and Billy’s mother flattened up against the sitting-room wall, and Natalie smiling like some kind of nun. But I am not even thinking about all this, as I lie there in the changing pink light. I am thinking, It is something else again.
It all started with Billy’s Terrible Time last year, just a little while after he hooked up with Natalie. And we were all delighted he had her, because she is like a flame in the daylight — that’s what I think — unwavering, you can hardly see her, but she is always there. And after that mad bitch and, excuse me, cocktease ‘Peony’ Mulvey, we were really glad he had someone sane. Natalie is above all things sane.
In the middle of the night I think, Maybe she’s not sane at all.
Anyway.
Billy’s mother (who I really like, actually) got cancer last year and she came home from her first chemo session high as a kite from the steroids and she told Billy — told them all, in fact — that she didn’t love their father any more, had never loved him in the first place, and once her chemo was over then her marriage was too. It was like, ‘I’m alive! I’m alive! I’m not going to waste my life any more!!!’ At least, that’s how Billy described it. Then all her hair fell out and she was sick as a parrot, and Billy’s just looking at his da and his da is looking at him — and you know, there is nothing wrong with Billy’s da, he’s a genuinely lovely man — and he is bringing her four hundred cups of green tea a day while she lies on the sofa with a face on her that says, As soon as this is done, then I am out that door.
My boyfriend looks it up online and he says ovarian cancer is a complete doozey — and who’s going to tell Billy? Like who is going to tell him that her percentages are basically on the floor? We are sitting in the chipper waiting for Billy to get off the phone to his mother — he is outside the plate-glass window trying to get good reception and he is looking at the sky and his face looks so difficult, so old and childish at the same time, that the sight of him is like a pain for each of us. It is like each of us has a pain in our side.
Then Natalie says, ‘Fuck the statistics. You just have to be in the right per cent. That’s all. You just have to be in the per cent that survives.’ And I understand she’s a bit defensive, I mean she is literally, actually defending her new boyfriend’s peace of mind here, but another part of me thinks that she is also marking her territory, which I quite respect, except I’ve known Billy’s mother for five years now and if she dies, I too will cry.
His mother, incidentally, is what made Billy bonkers — long before she got sick, his mother was what made Billy interesting and unhappy, so she’s a bit of a bitch, too, but I don’t say that to Natalie, I say, ‘You think she is going to survive?’
‘I think,’ says Natalie after a minute, ‘that we don’t know. And until we do know, then there’s not much point getting in a fizz.’
Which is so like something my boyfriend would say that I think they’d be better off with each other really, they could roll their eyes up to heaven and not get in a fizz together — while having sex, for example. And afterwards, Natalie could make tea.