A year, almost.
Twelve months.
Fall was filling the streets with cardinal colours.
Marla no longer felt new in Ferin Mews.
Her loft was her home now,
her housemates peculiar accessories to her life.
If her life was the planet they were the satellites, rotating obscurely around her quotidian, always near yet out of reach. Though Sunny would join her in the kitchen for a cuppa if she wasn’t out and about, busy with her own life.
Sunny, yes.
Sunny was always busy.
An afternoon’s rest
an evening without something to do,
impossible.
If she wasn’t working, Sunny and her friends crowded into the apartment, laughing and screaming, giggling and shouting, talking about things Marla didn’t always understand.
There was fashion, there was music, there were the does and don’ts of post-adolescent life where you were just old enough to be grown up to the school-kids, but still young enough to be a kid for the real grannies and grandpas. Life was dreary after 25, and anyone who survived that dreadful age was both awesomely brave  and awfully to be pitied .
Some of Sunny’s friends, if they found Marla in the living room or kitchen or just down the hall, some of them would ask her how it was in The Life Beyond.
Wasn’t it terrifically difficult finding a decent bloke? Most, after all, were married or useless now anyway. Was it very difficult? It had to be bad. Was it? Were there any clubs she could go to without, you know, sticking out? She looked good, she really did, but still, she was, y’know, older? And why did she wear those really bright skirts? They were kind of ethnic weren’t they? Sometimes she looked like a Mexican – oh God, were you still allowed to say that?
Yes, of course!
No, you can’t!
Shame on you!
Heathens!
Endless arguments,
more giggling,
more questions,
more drinks.
Her hair was incredible by the way, and Sunny had told them she had a sari, which was ultracool, though cool was out and awesome was in, and if something was really magnificent it was super delish.
Marla answered as best as she could, trying to follow the ping-pong conversations that seemed to be made out of clauses. She was pleased however, when Sunny mentioned that her friends thought she was ‘swell’, (they had dug up the word from God-knows-where and now used it as their own group-speak). It was high praise for someone thirty, that horrible age when all desirability disappeared at the stroke of twelve.
*
Marla would sometimes relate the conversations she heard to her own friends. Theresa, Rena, Val and Beth laughed and shook their heads. They all started remembering their own early twens. That time when everyone was convinced they knew everything, and those older were either horribly disfigured or perfectly boring. Naturally everyone younger was puerile and childish and not to be considered. It was a blessed time of hubris, a time when one really felt like the king of the world, or rather the Queen of Sheba with King Solomon at her feet.
‘But would you want to go back?’ Beth asked last time, and everyone started laughing, ‘Oh God, no!’
The confusion,
the fading dreams,
the disillusionment.
The simple disappointment one had to live through, for all the nonsense and self-importance to be chipped away, for all the blue-eyed naïveté to be burned off by the blowtorch that was life… no, there was no need for that all over again. It was much better to know now, than to be learning then. Really, thank God it was over.
The conversation continued while Marla prepared dessert, missing out on most, until she handed out the plates of tiramisu. The whole table was laughing when Theresa suggested they all grab a fresher the next time they were out on town.
‘Never mind that you have to teach them everything,’ she grinned, ‘that way they don’t get messed up by someone else.’
‘I don’t know about teaching, love,’ Rena chuckled, ‘they’re pretty knowledgeable from what I hear.’
There was more laughter and Val had some news to tell anyway, so they moved on from there. After her friends left though, Marla couldn’t forget what Theresa said about being ‘messed up by someone else’.
Past experiences formed the present character, ok.
Ric and Alicia were… not a conventional couple.
Did she ever have a chance?
Was it all predetermined?
Maybe to a certain extent.
She could hardly influence her childhood.
Who could?
Marla did think she had a say on her more adult years though. She spent the rest of the night wondering if she would have been someone different if she hadn’t met Eric.
Eric. Well.
Would she be different
if she’d never moved to New York?
Probably.
Those three years did change a lot.
Yet she couldn’t say she was completely altered.
She was still hardworking professionally.
Easy-going personally,
More optimistic than pessimistic.
And she still loved being in company.
That hadn’t changed,
The core was still the same.
Everything else though, that had gone through various revolutions.
She didn’t take things for granted as much as she used to.
She was more careful with herself, emotionally speaking.
She was no longer so reckless in her demands on life.
She had become a little more content with what she had.
Yes, that had changed.
All this pursuit of happiness,
it killed you.
It was a real chase on the other side, all the way over there.
It was like 5.0 racing through the square streets with all the sirens blaring.
And you had to give everything a shot,
you needed all the ammunition you got,
And then, when you thought you had it, this happiness,
this perfection that was apparently all what it was about –
Then it was skin and bones and hardly breathing,
and you had to race to the hospital to get a reanimation,
and have the doctor shake his head and order a steady diet,
real carbs
real fruits
real exercise
and fresh, fresh air
Which meant at least ten weeks in an exclusive help-centre in Vermont.
Marla hoped Heather was doing better.
They wrote emails, they talked on the phone. Heather wouldn’t Skype yet, she didn’t feel ready for a screen, but she was good with the phone. She said she had put on weight. She didn’t sound as stressed-out/spaced-out as she used to. Marla guessed that was a good thing.
Sadie said something like that would never have happened in San Francisco, but Marla wasn’t too sure. She packed her bags and returned home. She’d been thinking about it for some time anyway. Especially after Eric turned out to be as immature and irresponsible as her mother had warned her he would be – that was the worst part of it.
Marla felt it was that, that had angered her most about Eric:
That he made Marla make that concession,
That her mother was proven right instead of wrong.
How on earth was she ever to voice doubt again?
Anyway, now she was in Ferin Mews, living in a lovely loft.
With a happy blonde,
a quiet bartender,
and a whole Irish pub downstairs.
It wasn’t what she expected.
It wasn’t the West Side flat she shared with Heather
Heather who wanted to try out a bohemian life
before she married a stock broker,
and sent her kids to schools that taught Mandarin.
She only let Marla move in because
‘co-habs are character-building and so a good thing’
and Marla was ‘so exotic and beautiful and strange’
Heather, verbatim.
The place was ‘a treat’ as they said.
And Heather was really nice, once you got over her prep-school ways.
And exhausting.
It was so exhausting.
It drained everything out of her.
Eric. Heather. New York.
Everything she was,
everything she had,
it just got sucked in and disappeared.
Three years
one huge drain on her soul.
So she left.
She had to.
It was either that or no sanity.
Marla preferred to be sane.
And made sure to call Heather.
They wrote emails, texts, words
and once a week they talked on the phone.
Marla really hoped she was better.
© 2014 threegoodwords
three good words 