Grace doesn’t want to pursue this. She says, “Mom said you got a job in a bookstore?”
“Kind of. I’m mostly sorting stuff, moving boxes around.”
“Sounds like you’re definitely thriving.”
And Clemence can’t tell if Grace is making fun of her.
Clemence hard-boils two eggsfor dinner, and mixes them in a bowl with some mayo, salt, and pepper, and a few clippings from the chives growing outside. She’s got the tail end of a loaf of bread, with only a bit of mould growing on one slice. She cuts off the mould, keeping the rest, and eats the sandwich lying in bed, crumbs falling down around her on the sheet, which concerns nobody except herself. When it comes time for bed, she’ll brush them to the floor and, because she chooses not to think deeply about the mouldy part, her meal is delicious.And could this be considered thriving, she wonders, recalling her sister’s words. To be cobbling together a life out of scraps and other people’s discarded furniture? She actually thinks it might be. Something about it is substantial in a way her previous existence had never been.
The following afternoon she has a call with Jillian’s friend Sarah, who writes the newsletter about women and their remarkable stories.
“Idon’t know that I’m so remarkable, though,” Clemence notes.
Sarah tells her, “Everybody says that.”
Clemence talks to her about the plan she’d had, likeEat, Pray, Love. “My own personal odyssey,” she explains, but the voyages are all in her head. “Iwanted to start from nothing and see what I’d become.” All these women, the spinsters and maiden aunts who’d made their lives in single rooms. “Less Elizabeth Gilbert, and more your Auntie Mildred.” Not everything needs to be so dramatic, she means. Not everybody is meant to be Odysseus.
And what is she discovering, Sarah asks?
“That no woman is an island,” Clemence answers. “No matter how hard she tries.” The cat walks in through the patio door, as if to underline the point, and Clemence gets up to fetch him a saucer of milk. “And when you move more slowly, or even not at all, you notice things. Instead of a pilgrimage, you get to be where you are.”
“It’s like the opposite of optimization.”
“Completely.” This woman gets her. Sarah has been divorced herself, years before. She talks about these opportunities when it all falls apart and you get to figure out what kind of life you want to lead, what kind of person you want to be. All the possibilities inherent in disaster.
“From Bridal Blogger to Serene Spinster?”
“Sadly, being divorced means Idon’t get to be a spinster,” says Clemence. “Which, Ithink, is one of the great tragedies of my life. Still, the angle’s a little reductive, don’t you think?”
“Reduction,” Sarah reminds her, “is the point of an angle, after all.”
“Idon’t want to be reduced,” says Clemence. “And maybe that’smypoint. Idon’t know where I’m going, but what if that’s okay? I’ve spent my whole life jumpingfrom one institution to another, and Idon’t want to do that anymore.”
“Jillian said you’re writing a book.”
“No, I’m making a life.” Any book Clemence wrote now would have to be like a recipe book, but for more than just meals. So self-referential that she isn’t sure it would resonate with somebody else, but she wouldn’t care if it didn’t. Clemence has been writing to please herself, for the very first time, and it’s integral to her becoming. How could she know anything if she didn’t write it down?
Sarah asks her to send a photo to accompany the piece, and Clemence realizes she hasn’t seen an image of herself in months, besides the reflection of her face in the cloudy mirror in her bathroom. Easing off her social media habits has changed her practice, and she thinks about how this was one area in their marriage in which Toad had come in handy. He’d known her best side, and where she should stand for the good light, and he was always happy to photograph her outfits of the day, and take pictures of her in bed in the morning (after having showered and changed into fresh pyjamas) inhaling the scent of a cup of coffee with her eyes closed. She doesn’t do any of that anymore, such obsessive documentation, as though an experience hadn’t actually existed until it was made virtual. No woman is an island, but these days Clemence’s self-regard seems to be, which is almost like a superpower. She’s not interested in external feedback, in the likes and the follows, and the doses of dopamine they result in. Fearing judgment, perhaps—this mightbe the slightest part of it after everything that happened with Toad. But it’s also part of her wider project of liberation. Clemence doesn’t need to know what she looks like, or what anybody else thinks about what she looks like, because she knows what shefeelslike, and she is in tune with those feelings for the first time in her life.
But of course, it’s still a familiar face that greets her when she turns her phone camera on and flips the screen to selfie mode. Smiling without even trying, like she would at the sight of an old friend. Her chin-length bob has grown out and she hasn’t even thought about getting it cut, because then she’d have to get it cut again, and she has no desire for that kind of commitment. She doesn’t want any commitments, and so her hair is long and wild. She’s not wearing any makeup, the lines around her eyes on display, but her skin looks good—she’s well rested, and eating wholesome food these days, full of good fats and heritage grains. She’s wearing a loose-fitting cotton dress because it’s still too warm to wear anything else, never mind that it’s autumn, and the colour is flattering. Clemence likes how she looks; can it be so easy? Too easy—she almost feels compelled to find fault with the woman before her now, like a habit. It feels rude not to, to be so pleased with oneself. But nope. Clemence just doesn’t care, and she has missed her face, she’s fond of her face, and she clicks the photo to capture it as is. She sends it off to Jillian’s friend Sarah who will put it on the internet for everybody to see, and the prospect should be terrifying, but she doesn’t mind. The only things that concern Clemence these days are the things that are right in front of her.
Eleven
On Sunday morning, Clemence wakes to someone pounding on her door, and flies out of bed convinced the house is on fire before she remembers that she’s naked.
But the house is not on fire. Instead, Mrs. Yeung has come to take her to church. Marching into the apartment as if she owns the place, which she does, grabbing the sheet off the bed and handing it to Clemence so she can cover her person. Explaining that Clemence has ten minutes to get dressed and come downstairs, and then she stops, pointing to where the air conditioner sits abandoned in the corner, a pashmina shawl draped on top for decoration. “Ipaid six hundred dollars for that,” says Mrs. Yeung.
“You did?” That’s a lot: a sizable proportion of Clemence’s rent.
“Well, Imanaged to talk him down. You aren’t using it?”
“Not right now,” says Clemence. “It’s October.” She’dgot by most of the summer without it, so she hardly needs it now, and the appliance takes up so much room, but it seems mean to ask Charles to carry it all the way downstairs again. Or could this be the opportunity she’d been waiting for? How available is Charles, anyway? Or could she feign a bathroom leak? Something else that might need fixing?
“Ten minutes now,” says Mrs. Yeung, returning to the task at hand. “Come on, get going.”
And because Clemence feels guilty about the six hundred dollars, even talked down from, not to mention having answered her door buck-naked, she has no choice but to comply. Throwing some water on her face, and clothes on her body, she just has time to quickly brush her teeth before she runs down to the porch to meet Mrs. Yeung, who hands her a blueberry muffin.
“In case you haven’t had breakfast,” she says, and Clemence follows her down to the street, and then up the sidewalk as she talks about the church. “It’s always quiet in the summer, but the congregation is returning now that everybody’s back to their usual routines.” Although, when they arrive, there are perhaps twenty people sitting in the sanctuary, a mix of white and Asian faces, most of them elderly. Mrs. Yeung settles Clemence in a pew, explaining that the Korean church used to hold a separate service, though they shared the building, but eventually the two congregations came together. Churchgoers are a dying breed, seeking solidarity where they find it.
