Page 2 of Is She Really Going Out with Him?
Looking at the photo of my ex, I am hit with a sudden pang of nostalgia for the Dan I used to know. The Dan I fell in love with at university, who held my hand beneath the table at a pub quiz, who liked me wearing his rugby shirts so they’d smell of me, who first kissed me in the rain outside a lecture theater at nine in the morning, then as I walked away up the steps called after me, “Anna Appleby, I’m going to marry you one day.” Pushing my phone to the bottom of my bag, I splash my face with cold water and head back to the clamor of the classroom.
The vomit has been cleaned up, Jason sent to the school nurse, and Mrs. Hollybush is full of apologies. But I can’t hear what she’s saying, because a ringing has started in my ears. My head is pounding, my skin feels clammy and hot. A child thrusts the storybook back into my hands, the teacher claps the children into zipped-up silence, I let out a long, slow exhale through pursed lips. But as I look down, the words swim in front of my eyes. “ ‘The prince carried the fair maiden out of the enchanted castle, and they rode off into the sunset. They were married in a beautiful wedding and lived happily’…happily…” I pause; my throat feels parched. I can’t finish the sentence.
“Happily ever after?” little Isla suggests as the room begins to sway.
“Maybe,” I mutter beneath my breath. Looking down at the illustration of the fairy-tale wedding, a mental corset pings open. “Or maybe there’s no such thing as happily ever after. Maybe they had a good few years of being happy, then they slowly drifted apart, argued about who left crisp packets in the carriage and dirty washing all over the turret floor. Maybe the prince got really into triathlon training and left the princess at home with the kids every weekend. Then one day they realized they were lonely in each other’s company and that they didn’t love each other anymore.” The children look up at me in confusion, and Mrs. Hollybush—eye twitching faster—lets out a burst of nervouslaughter. I stand up from my tiny chair and hold the book aloft. “Maybe these kinds of stories are perpetuating a damaging narrative of a woman needing to be rescued by a man, telling little girls that getting married is the goal, that life will make sense once they’re in love. But it’s a lie, because everything ends, even the greatest love stories.” Then I start ripping the pages out of the book, throwing them like confetti around the classroom. “Maybe the maiden was happy with her dragon, maybe she didn’t want to leave her nice, safe turret. Maybe the prince was a jerk!” The children squeal with delight and shock, and Mrs. Hollybush claps her hands, attempting to restore order, but this time it doesn’t work. They leap around the room trying to catch the torn pages.
“Smash the patriarchy!” I cry.
“Smash the patriarchy!” the children repeat, wild with glee.
—
My sister, Lottie,picks me up from the headmaster’s office. The school was understanding when I feigned not feeling well. Mrs. Hollybush kindly suggested that “maybe something is going around,” but she also said she would have to remove me from the “reading parents” list, and that I would need to pay for a replacement book.
“What happened?” Lottie asks me as we sit in her car, waiting for Ethan to be let out of school. “The headmaster said you’d had ‘an episode’? What kind of episode?”
I silently pass her my phone, with the e-mail open, and watch her as she reads it. To look at us, you wouldn’t think Lottie and I were sisters. I have long, dark hair and skin that tans easily, while she is a pale English rose, with blond, wavy hair curling into a halo around her face. If this were a fairy tale, she would be the good witch, and I would be the bad. “I didn’t expect to get an e-mail,” I tell her. “I don’t know what happened. I lost it reading a fairy tale about happily ever afters.”
“Oh, Anna,” Lottie says, reaching across the car to tuck a strand of hair back behind my ear. The gesture unsettles me. For as long as I can remember, it’s my little sister who has been the emotional one. At thirty-three, she’s four years younger than me. I’ve had two decades of her crying to me about boyfriends and breakups, swearing she could never love anyone as much as *insert name here.* I was always the stable, sensible one, ready with a box of tissues and an appropriately uplifting movie. Now she’s happily married, and I’m ripping up schoolbooks. She pats my hand, and I close my eyes to try to stop myself from bursting into tears. “I think the problem is, you bottle everything up and then occasionally it all bursts out,” Lottie says.
“I don’t know why, but seeing it written down, it all seems so final. I feel like such a failure,” I tell her, letting my shoulders slump as I hear how pathetic that sounds. “Dan’s in South America living his best life, and I’m here, getting divorced in a primary school toilet. The wording of the e-mail too—‘if you get married again’—I genuinely can’t imagine ever wanting to meet someone else.”
“I know it feels awful right now, it’s too soon to think about anything like that. But it will get easier, I promise you.” Lottie strokes my hair, circling her fingers around my crown just like our mother used to do when we were children.
“I’m thirty-seven and I’m done with love,” I tell her.
“No, you’re not, but you’re still grieving. Trust me, this time next year, or maybe eighteen months from now, everything is going to look so different. You’ll have moved on. I know you can’t imagine it now, but you’ll be dating; you might even have met someone. There is a whole new chapter waiting for you, all you need to do is keep turning the pages.”
I give her a grateful smile, but I want to scream that these trite generalizations do not apply to me. My thoughts are interrupted by a clunk as Ethan opens the car door and jumps into the backseat.
“Hi, Aunt Lottie! Did Mum tell you what happened?” he says, bouncing up and down with excitement. “Mum ripped up a schoolbook, then blamed it on Patrick E.”
“Who’s Patrick E.?” Lottie asks.
Ethan shrugs. “I don’t know. Mum wanted to smash him.”
“The patriarchy,” I explain, covering my face with my hands.
“Oh yes, I know him,” Lottie says, biting back a smile, as she thrusts her car into gear. “That guy’s got a lot to answer for.”
One YearLater
Google searches:
Does face yoga work?
Do pain aux raisins count as one of your five a day?
Will there ever be a Modern Family reunion?
Chapter 1
“Only me,” Lottie calls asshe bustles through the front door, then presents me with an armful of sunflowers.
“Thank you, but you really don’t need to keep bringing me flowers,” I say, lifting them out of her arms.
“They’re only from my garden,” she says, waving me away with a hand. “Sunflowers are so cheering, don’t you think?”
