Candelo by Georgia Blain

see the bus coming up the hill, I leave her quickly, telling her not to worry. But I have not managed to stop myself from feeling anxious.
    As I head home, I find that I am thinking about all of us, the way we were and the way we are, and when I start thinking about us, when I start remembering, I always end up thinking of Mitchell again.
    And I am, once again, appalled at what happened.
    I am ashamed.
    I look out at the late afternoon sky and I think that there must be something I can do. Something to right all that went wrong.
    I just do not know what it is.

eighteen

    I have a lot of friends. Friends I go out to dinner with, friends I meet for a drink, friends I see at parties and friends I rarely see. But there are few to whom I am close.
    Lizzie is different. She does not know the people I know and I do not know the people she knows. Our lives are separate so our time together is usually just the two of us.
    When I first told her about Anton, some months earlier, she didn’t know what to say but I could tell she thought I was being foolish.
    I asked her why she thought I always made a mess of things.
    She was about to utter platitudes, she was about to tell me not to be so ridiculous, but then she caught my eye. She does not like to lie.
    I guess it’s all relative
, she said.
    Her answer irritated me. I had wanted her to tell me what was wrong with me, how I could fix myself, how I could stop lurching from disaster to disaster, and how I could fall in love and stay in love.
    I asked her if she thought what I was doing was wrong.
    She was uncomfortable.
    Not wrong
, she said, and she paused.
    What?
I asked.
    She didn’t look at me.
Maybe cowardly. That’s all
.
    Her words hurt.
    Sitting in reception at work, feeling ill from the lunch with Bernard, I wanted to talk to her. I wanted her advice, but I was scared of her disapproval. I was scared of what I knew she would think.
    Instead, I called my friend Sabine. I do not know her well, but I know her well enough to know she is not like Lizzie. Not at all.
    She told me she was bored. Sick of her life. That her father had bought her a ticket to Africa and that I should go with her. There was no point in telling her I had no money.
    God, me too
, she would have said.
It’s a drag
.
    I told her I had to go. I was at work. I would talk to her later.
    I left a message for my friend Matthew. We had talked about doing voice classes together. I asked him to call me, I said I wanted to book, and as I was about to hang up, I told him that I also wanted to talk. I needed his advice. But as I spoke those words, I knew I wouldn’t ask him if he did call. I would not tell him.
    I picked up my address book and I flicked through the names. Pages and pages of them, addresses scribbled out, new numbers replacing old, new friends replacing those with whom I had lost touch or with whom I had fallen out.
    I started drawing up a list. Those who would tell me that I should go ahead, that I could have a baby, and those who would tell me no. And I was, for a moment, carried away with the idea that this was not so stupid. That this was as good a way as any of coming to a decision.
    But then I saw myself. Reflected in the glass reception doors. And I looked ridiculous. With my book open in front of me, my pencil in one hand, and my hair a mess about my face.
    This was no way to tell right from wrong. This was no way to know.
    I screwed up the piece of paper, and as I threw it in the bin, I called Simon and left a message for him. I told him we needed to meet. After work. We needed to talk. It was important.
    We were bored. The three of us, Mitchell, Simon and I.
    We watched the flies cluster on the few scraps of wrinkled tomato left from lunch, the wilted lettuce, the smear of butter across the plates, but we did not move to put anything away.
    Reckon she’ll give us the car?
Mitchell asked.
    Don’t know
, and Simon stretched, lazily.
    Reckon we should go and ask her