You said it yourself, I said. It never would have worked.
Well, is it working now? If I come and pick you up and we drive around talking and I say, oh, sorry for not calling you, I’ve been a fool, is that working then?
If two people make each other happy then it’s working.
You could smile at a stranger on the street and make them happy, he said. We’re talking about something more complicated.
As I got closer to the gate I heard the bell ringing. The noise of traffic opened up again, like a light getting brighter and brighter.
Does it have to be complicated? I said.
Yeah, I think so.
There’s the thing with Bobbi, which is important to me.
You’re telling me, he said. I’m married.
It’s always going to be fucked up like this, isn’t it?
But I’ll compliment you more this time.
I was at the gate. I wanted to tell him about the church. That was a different conversation. I wanted things from him that would make everything else complicated.
Like what kind of compliment? I said.
I have one that’s not really a compliment but I think you’ll like it.
Okay, tell me.
Remember the first time we kissed? he said. At the party. And I said I didn’t think the utility room was a good place to be kissing and we left. You know I went up to my room and waited for you, right? I mean for hours. And at first I really thought you would come. It was probably the most wretched I ever felt in my life, this kind of ecstatic wretchedness that in a way I was practically enjoying. Because even if you did come upstairs, what then? The house was full of people, it’s not like anything was going to happen. But every time I thought of going back down again I would imagine hearing you on the stairs, and I couldn’t leave, I mean I physically couldn’t. Anyway, how I felt then, knowing that you were close by and feeling completely paralysed by it, this phone call is very similar. If I told you where my car is right now, I don’t think I’d be able to leave, I think I would have to stay here just in case you changed your mind about everything. You know, I still have that impulse to be available to you. You’ll notice I didn’t buy anything in the supermarket.
I closed my eyes. Things and people moved around me, taking positions in obscure hierarchies, participating in systems I didn’t know about and never would. A complex network of objects and concepts. You live through certain things before you understand them. You can’t always take the analytical position.
Come and get me, I said.
Acknowledgements
In writing this book I drew a great deal from conversations with my own friends, in particular Kate Oliver and Aoife Comey; I’d like to thank them both very much. Thanks also to the friends who read early drafts of the manuscript: Michael Barton, Michael Nolan, Katie Rooney, Nicole Flattery, and most especially John Patrick McHugh, whose excellent feedback contributed so substantially to the book’s development.
Special thanks to Thomas Morris for his early and unwavering advocacy of my work, and for many years of rewarding friendship. Thank you, Tom, sincerely.
I’m very grateful to Chris Rooke, in whose apartment much of this book was written, and to Joseph and Gisele Farrell, whose hospitality gave me the chance to work on parts of the novel in Brittany. Thanks are also due to the Arts Council of Ireland for their financial assistance in finishing this project.
Many, many thanks to my agent, Tracy Bohan, and to my editor, Mitzi Angel; their insight and help has been truly invaluable. Thanks also to the whole team at Faber, who have looked after me so well, and to Alexis Washam at Hogarth.
As ever, I’m immensely grateful to my parents.
Above all, at every stage in the writing and editing of this novel, I relied on John Prasifka for guidance, advice and support. Without him, there would be no book; all that’s best in it is his.
About the Author
Sally Rooney was born in 1991 and lives in Dublin, where she graduated from Trinity College. Her work has appeared in Granta, The Dublin Review, The White Review, The Stinging Fly, and the Winter Pages anthology.