All of the seats already had an occupant, which meant I was going to have to position myself next to a stranger. In a different mood, I enjoyed this game: one had ten seconds to scan the occupants and select the slimmest, sanest, cleanest-looking person to sit next to. Choose wrongly, and the fifteen-minute journey into town would be a much less pleasant experience—either squashed beside a sprawling fatty, or mouth-breathing to minimize the penetration of the reek emanating from an unwashed body. Such was the excitement of traveling on public transport.
I took no pleasure in the game today, however, and merely seated myself as close to the front as possible, taking no interest in the merits or demerits of my companion. As luck would have it, she was an elderly woman, slightly on the plump side but not inconveniently so, who smelled of hairspray and kept herself to herself. Good.
She got off at the next stop and then I had the seat to myself. More people got on, and I watched a handsome young man—tall, slim, with disproportionately large brown eyes—play the scanning game in order to select a seat. I looked forward to sitting next to him, being sure that he was neither mad nor malodorous.
However, he walked straight past me and sat on the other side of the bus, next to a short, rough-looking man in a sports jacket. I couldn’t believe it! Two people got on at the next stop—one went upstairs, the other, once again, eschewed the spare seat next to me and walked toward the back of the bus, where, I noticed when I turned around to look, she seated herself next to a man with no socks on. His bare ankles looked distressingly white above his oxblood leather brogues, which he had teamed with green jogging bottoms. A madman.
I stared at the floor, my mind racing. Did I . . . did I look like the kind of person who ought to be avoided in a game of bus seat selection? I could only conclude, in the face of the evidence, that I did. But why?
I would have to reason my way to the answer. I wasn’t overweight. I didn’t smell—I showered daily, and I laundered my clothes regularly. That left madness, then. Was I mad? No. No, I wasn’t. I was suffering from clinical depression, but that was an illness. It wasn’t madness. Did I look mad, then? Act mad? I didn’t think so. But then, how would I know? Was it my scar? My eczema? My jerkin? Was it a sign of madness even to think you might be mad? I rested my elbows on my knees and placed my head in my hands. Oh God oh God oh God.
“You all right, hen?” a voice said, and I felt a hand on my shoulder, causing me to startle and sit up again. It was the man with no socks, who was en route to the front of the bus.
“Yes, thank you,” I said, not making eye contact. He sat down next to me while the bus approached the next stop.
“You sure?” he said kindly.
“Yes, thank you,” I repeated. I risked a look at his face. He had very gentle eyes, the same delicate shade of green as newly emerged buds on trees.
“Just taking a wee moment, hen?” He patted me on the arm. “Everybody needs to take a wee moment to themselves now and again, eh?” He smiled, full of warmth, and stood up to leave. The bus was slowing down.
“Thanks!” I called after him. He didn’t look round, but raised a hand in salutation, trousers riding up past his bare ankles as he left.
He wasn’t mad. He just didn’t have any socks on.
Eleanor, I said to myself, sometimes you’re too quick to judge people. There are all kinds of reasons why they might not look like the kind of person you’d want to sit next to on a bus, but you can’t sum someone up in a ten-second glance. That’s simply not enough time. The way you try not to sit next to fat people, for example. There’s nothing wrong with being overweight, is there? They could be eating because they’re sad, the same way you used to drink vodka. They could have had parents who never taught them how to cook or eat healthily. They could be disabled and unable to exercise, or else they could have an illness that contributes to weight gain despite their best efforts. You just don’t know, Eleanor, I said to myself.
The voice in my own head—my own voice—was actually quite sensible, and rational, I’d begun to realize. It was Mummy’s voice that had done all the judging, and encouraged me to do so too. I was getting to quite like my own voice, my own thoughts. I wanted more of them. They made me feel good, calm even. They made me feel like me.
37
Old routines, new routines. Perhaps even, sometimes, no routines? But twice a week, for as long as it was going to take, I made the journey to town and climbed the stairs to Dr. Temple’s consulting room. I no longer found it nasty—I was beginning to understand the efficacy of neutral, unattractive surroundings, tissues, chairs and an ugly framed print. There was nothing else to look at, save oneself, nowhere to retreat to. She was smarter than she first appeared, Dr. Temple. That fact notwithstanding, her dream catcher earrings today were, frankly, abominable.
I was about to take to the stage and say my piece. I wasn’t acting, though. I’m a terrible actor, not being, by nature, a dissembler or a faker. It’s safe to say that Eleanor Oliphant’s name will never appear in lights, and nor would I want it to. I’m happiest in the background, being left to my own devices. I’ve spent far too long taking direction from Mummy.
The subject of Marianne had caused me so much distress, me trying furiously to build up my courage and direct my memory into places it didn’t want to go. We’d agreed not to force it, to let her appear naturally, we hoped, as we talked about my childhood. I’d accepted this. Last night, as Glen and I listened to the radio, the memory, the truth of it, had come to me, quite unbidden. It had been a perfectly ordinary evening, and there was no fanfare, no drama. Just the truth. Today was going to be the day I spoke it aloud, here in this room, to Maria. But there had to be some preamble. I couldn’t just blurt it out. I’d let Maria help by leading me there.
There was also no escaping Mummy in the counseling room today. It was hard to believe that I was actually doing this, but there it was. The sky didn’t fall in, Mummy wasn’t summoned like a demon by the mere mention of her name. Dr. Temple and I were, quite shockingly, having a reasoned, calm conversation about her.
“Mummy’s a bad person,” I said. “Really bad. I know that, I’ve always known that. And I wondered . . . do you think I might be bad too? People inherit all sorts of things from their parents, don’t they—varicose veins, heart disease. Can you inherit badness?”
Maria sat back, fiddled with her scarf.
“That’s a very interesting question, Eleanor. The examples you gave are physical conditions. What you’re talking about is something different, though—a personality, a set of behaviors. Do you think that behavioral traits can be inherited?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I thought about it. “I really, really hope not.”
I paused for a minute. “People talk about nature and nurture. I know I haven’t inherited her nature. I mean, I’m a . . . difficult person sometimes, I suppose . . . But I’m not . . . I’m not like her. I don’t know if I could live with myself if I thought I was like her.”
Maria Temple raised her eyebrows.
“Those are very strong words, Eleanor. Why do you say that?”
“I couldn’t bear it if I thought that I would ever actually want to cause someone pain. To take advantage of weaker, smaller people. To leave them to fend for themselves, to . . . to . . .”
I broke off. It had been very, very hard to say that. It hurt, a real, physical pain, as well as a more fundamental, existential ache. For goodness’ sake—existential ache, Eleanor! I said to myself. Get a grip.
Maria spoke gently.
“But you’re not your mother, are you, Eleanor? You’re a completely separate person, an independent person, making your own choices.”
She gave an encouraging smile.
“You’re still a young woman—if you wanted to, you could have a family of your own one day, and be a totally different kind of mother. What do you think about that?”
That was an easy one.
“Oh, I’ll never have children,” I said, calm, matter-of-fact. She indicated that I should keep talking. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? I mean, what if I passed it on, the Mummy thing? Even if I don’t have it, it could skip a generation, couldn’t it? Or . . . or what if it’s the act of giving birth that brings it out in a person? It could be lying dormant all this time, waiting . . .”