Stir-Fry by Emma Donoghue
“What’s Ruth’s mother like?”
Wrenching the brush through her fringe, Jael rolled her eyes. “Total martyr; I bet she wouldn’t get a divorce even if it was legal in Ireland. Her handbag is always leaking pearl rosaries, and she says things like ‘no cross, no crown.’ Ruth has this kind of masochistic devotion to her.”
“What’s masochistic about loving your mother?” It came out too sharp; Maria considered the floorboards.
“Hey, it’s not an insult. I’ve a weakness for handcuffs myself.”
Maria ignored that. She tugged on the duvet. “Go on about Ruth.”
“Well, she’s Mumsie’s hope and joy. It took me months to persuade her to move out and share this flat.”
“She was telling me her mother has no idea about you two.”
“Did she say that?” Jael’s brush paused at the end of a stroke. “The double-thinking old bitch must know something’s up by now. She’s always dropping caustic comments about Ruth’s short hair and unsuitable friends. But she won’t admit it to herself, of course; she can just about cope with a spinster daughter so long as no one mentions the L word.”
Maria had found a pillow to wrap herself around. She stared into the shadows of the wall hanging, distinguishing leaves from faces and wings. Jael yawned, stretching her arms above her head, and with a jolt Maria was aware of her again. “What about your family, don’t you ever visit them?” Awkwardly, she added, “If you don’t mind being interrogated like this.”
“Not at all, I love telling stories, especially my own. My folks, yeah, I turn up at the stud farm on occasion.” Jael gave her hair a last brisk slap and tossed the brush onto the windowsill with a clatter. “My mother found me in bed with a girl when I was seventeen. She let me stay till I got my leaving cert, then I headed off to Spain.”
Maria realised she was gaping and shut her mouth. “What happened to the girl?” she asked lamely.
“It wasn’t a long-term thing,” Jael reassured her.
“I suppose it must be different if you’re both women.”
Jael let out a low snigger as she leaned back against the pillows. “Well, yes, in several significant ways—there’s anatomy, pace, frequency—”
Maria could feel her face burn, but she knew her blushes never showed. “All I meant was, if it’s another girl, I suppose you could go, like, all the way—I mean as far as you like—without it having to be a long-term thing, whereas if it was a guy, you might have to worry … Look, I really don’t know what I’m talking about, forget it.”
Jael took pity on her confusion. “You mean, if it’s a guy, you have to hope it’s a long-term thing in case the rubber bursts.”
Maria winced and nodded.
“Or, as Ruth would put it,” Jael went on satirically, “sexual behaviour between two adults of the female gender, being nonreproductive, need not be circumscribed by Western bourgeois morality’s condemnation of female ‘promiscuity.’”
“She would not put it like that,” Maria protested. “You make her sound like a lefty politician.”
“She’s that way inclined. But to get back to our original example, me and Sonya up to mischief at seventeen. I have to admit that I’d have done the same thing if it had been a guy. Occasionally did, in fact. Only my mother wouldn’t have let a guy spend the night in my room. The thing about being a dyke is, you get away with a lot!”
Maria said she supposed so, and if Jael wanted a cuppa, it would be in the pot.
She leaned her hips against the cool ceramic of the sink. While the tap water spluttered and gulped into the kettle, she tried to clear her whirring mind. She held one finger under the cold flow of water. Soon she could feel nothing as far as the knuckle. There used to be a stream halfway home from school, its water faintly brown from the turf. After the occasional bad day, Maria used to throw down her bike when she got there, crouch on the stones, and dip her hands in to the wrists; when she had held them to her face, she was herself again.
5
HEATING
November had decided to do nothing but rain. Slouched against a window in the arts block, glaring at the drizzle, Maria saw Yvonne trotting by under a huge golf umbrella. She knocked loudly on the glass and waved. Yvonne stopped, stuck out one finger, and rolled her eyes. Evidently some reciprocal gesture was called for: a tragedy mask, a thumbs up. Maria peered through the glass till it steamed up, then gestured to Yvonne to meet her at the door. “What’s wrong with your finger?”
“Nothing’s wrong with it, nerd.”
Maria studied it. “I’ve seen your Claddagh ring before.”
She clicked her tongue, shaking the drain off her umbrella. “But today it’s turned inward again. Which means that Pete and I are officially back together.”
“That’s wonderful,” said Maria. “If you’re happy about it.”
Yvonne slumped down on the nearest bench. “You’ve never liked him.”
“Don’t start that again. I’ve nothing against the guy.”
“You said he had big ears.”
“So what if he has?” Maria straddled the bench, leaning toward Yvonne. “Hang on, wasn’t it you who said that about his ears?”
“Well, but you agreed.” Yvonne rolled the dripping umbrella off her foot. “You’ve depressed me now.”
“I didn’t do—”
“Came out of that sculpture lecture on a high, and now everything’s grey.” She stared down at her wet suede court shoe.
“Ah, would you stop working yourself into a gloom.” Maria inched closer, trying to get Yvonne’s eyes to turn. “I only reacted oddly because I can’t keep up with the pair of you. This is, what, the third time you’ve got back together?”
“Fourth.”
Maria sat in silence, then asked, “What does it mean, being officially together?” Answering Yvonne’s defensive look, she added, “No, I’m not getting at you. I’m ignorant and curious.”
“What’s your question?” Yvonne’s bottom lip was shaking almost imperceptibly.
“All I was wondering was, what does it mean to be together if you’re fighting and breaking up every other weekend?”
Yvonne nibbled the edge of a fingernail, considering the question. Then she brightened. “We’re not together, the in-between times.” She paused, fumbling for logic. “Officially together stops after we’ve had a slanging match and I go home on the bus and turn the Claddagh ring outward. So the together bits are fine.”
Maria watched her twist a limp curl between her fingers. “What do you do in between?”
“Watch more television.”
“Talk more to pariahs with antisocial haircuts,” Maria suggested.
That won a smile. “I only said it was a bit short.”
“I could tell you were restraining yourself; your eyes were out on sticks.”
“Well, at least you got rid of that floppy fringe,” said Yvonne philosophically. “I’m getting sick of the Goldie Hawn look myself. But Pete likes it, and this time me and him are going to last,” she went on, with a resolute slap of the knees. “I’ve a feeling in my bones.”
“You’ll have a feeling in some other parts before the weekend’s over. Ouch, gerroff.” Maria beat her away. “People are watching, they’ll be starting rumours about us. Listen, are you coming for lunch?” She got off the bench and stretched her arms above her head.
“Ah, I’m sorry, I promised to meet the heartthrob in the bar.” Yvonne waved from the door, struggling to erect her umbrella.
Maria sat down on the bench again, cross-legged this time—for variety. She could not quite bring herself to stroll to the canteen on her own and carry her meagre tray past the crowds of indifferent watchers. She was not that hungry anyway, having placated her chocolate craving a hour ago. Where she should be was in the library, mulling over group theory. What she should be doing was anything except watching the rain, the least original form of melancholy. She had misspent too many pubertal afternoons hanging round the shop in the holidays,
That had to be Ruth, the face half hidden behind a pile of multicoloured folders. Maria ran after her and tapped one shoulder lightly. “Hey, fairy godmother, want to bring a poor girl to lunch?”
The preoccupied face lit up for a moment. “I’d love to, but duty calls, or rather, Gaysoc.” She folded her arms and rested her chin on the folders.
“I saw the stand in Freshers’ Week, with pink balloons all over it.”
“They were condoms, actually.” Ruth had a way of gently mentioning things that, coming from anybody else, would have made Maria feel so stupid. “But they all got burst by right-wing vandals.”
“You weren’t on the stall, were you?”
“I did a couple of hours, but I can’t say I enjoyed it; people tend to glimpse the banner and walk this wide circle round it.”
“I meant to sign that petition, but I never got around to it,” Maria said guiltily. She nodded at a passing seminarian from her trigonometry tutorial, then turned back. “Sorry, am I keeping you?”
“No bother.”
“I have to admit I assumed the Gaysoc was just for men.”
“Apart from a couple of stalwart females.” Ruth’s tone was cheerful as she rested her burden on one hip. “College is crawling with dykes, of course, but when you take away the closeted hockey players, the nonpolitical semiclosets like Jael, and the radicals who won’t socialise with men, that leaves just about three of us.”
“Has Jael not come out, then? And her always presenting herself as the daring one,” added Maria with satisfaction.
“She hops in and out as the fancy takes her,” said Ruth wryly. “Her official policy is that she doesn’t give a fuck what anybody imagines she does in bed, and her self-respect is perfectly healthy without queers’ coffee mornings, thank you very much.” Her eyes focussed beyond Maria; she waved one hand. “Wait for me?” she called to the woman with dozens of hair braids, but Pat gave a brief wave and rolled on.
Maria’s eyes followed hers. “You good friends with her?”
“Pat and I used to be like this,” murmured Ruth, holding up her first two fingers pressed together.
“Used to be?”
Chin jutting over the folders, Ruth looked at her from miles away. “She’s a strong woman.”
“She looks it,” said Maria, to fill the gap.
“We had the same kind of choice to make, once,” Ruth went on, picking out her words as if for a child, “and we chose differently, and she despised me for it.”
Seeing Maria’s stricken face, she broke into a smile. “Ancient history now, all long gone and forgiven. Listen, it’s twenty past, I must head. You on for learning stuffed peppers tonight?”
She watched Ruth until she was out of sight, then set off for the canteen before apathy could lay its limp fingers on her again.
Details swarmed through her head. On days like these Maria wondered whether she had any life of her own at all or was just an eavesdropper on other people’s. When would she have a story, a theme, something people stopped her in the corridor to ask about? The kitchen staff were stacking dirty plates on trolleys, shouting pleasantries to one another. Nothing under the red light but two deformed croissants. She bought a carton of milk and found a nook in the nonsmoking section.
A grunted greeting, a man with a beard sliding his tray against hers. Jesus Christ. Or rather, Damien.
“Oh, hi.” Well, that was a start. Breathe deeply now, Maria, gather your thoughts, make conversation.
Luckily he spoke first. Unpeeling a banana very slowly, he inquired, “What happened to your hair?”
“I had an accident with a microwave oven.”
Damien nodded, not smiling. “So what do you think of Watson?”
Glory be, he recognized her from the tutorial, even with the haircut. Better be noncommittal. “Well, he does his best,” she began, “but the man’s not the most dynamic of teachers, is he?”
“I think he’s a fine mind.”
“Well, yes, of course.” How could she get out of this one? “I just mean he could be a little more receptive of our ideas.” Receptive of? Receptive to? And what ideas had her mouth ever produced in that tutorial?
She watched Damien eat halfway down his banana. Finally, “You have a point there, Maria.”
He knew her name and how to pronounce it.
“So how are you finding the verfremdungs-effekt?”
“Not too bad.” What the hell was a fremdunksect?
Damien spread honey on his ham sandwich; she watched, hypnotised. “So the anonymity doesn’t bother you—the lecture halls full of sweaty teenagers, the spaghetti corridors?”
“Not really.” Come on, rally your forces. “I rather like it. In my part of the country there are no strangers, only neighbours.”
He nodded over his sandwich, then, swinging his heavy plait off his shoulder, he launched into an analysis of the repressive politics of college architecture, how the theatres encouraged intellectual dictatorship, how the only central point for student demonstrations was the bottom of the lake.
She felt perhaps she should be taking notes.
Suddenly: “Do you play pool?”
“No, not really. Not at all, in fact.”
“You should, it’s very relaxing.”
He couldn’t have spotted her the other day outside The Pit, he really couldn’t. Maybe pool was his single hobby, maybe he always talked about it to total strangers.
“Are you free now?”
Maria blinked. “What, you mean right this minute? I do have a lecture.”
“Come on downstairs, I’ll teach you to play.”
Superior macho shithead. She gathered her possessions and stumbled after him.
The dark was fuzzy on her eyes; she strained to make out the details of the medieval Virgin. Blast these slide viewings anyway; she had meant to go home every few weekends, or at least do something better with her Saturdays than sit in a lecture hall that smelt of cheese sandwiches.
I’ll write home tomorrow, she promised her mother telepathically. Turning over the pad, she jotted down a reminder.
Noticing the date, she realised she had missed yet another Holy Day of Obligation. It wasn’t that she was deliberately lapsing, more that she found it hard to motivate herself to get up in time for mass without company. At home it was automatic; the whole village plodded through the carpark in unison at two minutes to ten on a Sunday. But here she knew nobody to go with. The other day she had mentioned it to Ruth, who explained that for her it was not exactly loss of faith either, more the fact that the latest pastoral letter from the bishops had advised Catholics to abhor homosexual activity but have compassion for the congenital homosexual, and if that was all the church had to offer, they could stuff it up their cassocks. Ruth still went to mass whenever she spent Sunday with her mother, of course; she couldn’t not.
Maria decided to worry about religion some other time. She peered down at her red ink scratchings. The lecturer had advised them to make brief sketches of the famous pictures on screen, but how could you reduce a portrait to a squiggly torso? It was too dark anyway. She flicked back over the three pages of notes; how similar they all looked, women slumping over bloated baby boys.
She began to build up a profile in feathery biro strokes; it looked rather like Ruth, the soft mouth turned down at the corner. She added the velvet cap and began to draw Jael’s profile emerging
The door at the back of the hall lurched open, and a shaft of light shot down the steps. Damien slid in beside her and plucked the sketch out of her hand. “Who’s that?”
“It’s a bad drawing of my flatmates. Give it back.”
She reached for it, but he held it over her head. “I like it. Maybe you should get into horror comics. Are they the two you were telling me about the other day? The redhead who can’t play the guitar, and the raving loony feminist?”
“I said no such thing,” she whispered. “Gimme.”
He tossed the sketch onto the desk. “You did say one of them was down the S.U. all lunchtime handing out leaflets on triple oppression for women in the Third World; sounds a bit extreme to me. So are they always ranting about us phallocrats or what?”
At last, an opportunity to crush him. “No, I can’t say we often talk about men at all. It’s not a fascinating subject.”
He just smirked, watching the screen, no doubt formulating one of his theories. There was no use trying to be witty, Damien was never impressed. What an arrogant profile. The Greek nose sloping down the face, the black beard strengthening the jaw. She stared at it gloomily out of the corner of her eye. That tug in the pit of her belly again—longing or lust or one of those words. He twisted round suddenly, flicking his plait off his shoulder. “Fancy a game?”
“Now?”
“Unless you really need to see fifty-seven more icons to pass your exams.”
“Where’s that lanky French tutor you usually play with?” Her tone was sulkier than she expected.
“Philippe? Gone to Derry for the weekend.”
Maria put the cap on her fountain pen. “You just like playing pool with me because you always win.”
“No, it’s for variety,” he explained, getting to his feet and letting his seat bang upright. ‘Remember your first game, last week, when you knocked the black right off the table?”