Nine Perfect Strangers

‘There is no right or wrong answer. Simply look at the stars and reflect without straining for a solution. Just breathe. That’s all you need to do. Breathe and watch the stars.’

/> Lars breathed and watched the stars. He did not think of either of the koans. He thought of Ray, and how, early on in their relationship, Ray had convinced him to go camping with him (never again). They had lain together on a beach, holding hands and looking at the stars, and it had been beautiful, but something had built up and up in Lars’s chest until he couldn’t take it anymore and he’d jumped up and run into the ocean, whooping and tearing off his clothes, pretending he was the type of guy who whooped, the type of guy who didn’t think about sharks or the temperature of the ocean in October. He smiled a bit, because he knew he couldn’t get away with that now. Ray knew about his shark phobia.

Ray had asked if he could join him on this retreat. Lars couldn’t work out his motivation. He’d never wanted to come to one before. Lars did a couple of retreats a year, but Ray always said they sounded hellish. Why did he suddenly want to come along on this one?

Lars thought of Ray’s face when he said he’d rather go alone. There was a micro moment when it looked like Lars had slapped him, but then Ray shrugged, smiled and said that was fine, he was going to eat lasagne every night while Lars was gone and watch nothing but sports on TV.

Ray’s lifestyle was already squeaky clean and incorporated vegetable juices and smoothies and protein shakes. It wasn’t necessary for him to come along to this. Lars needed his time alone.

Did he want Lars to feel like shit? Was it somehow related to the text Ray’s sister, Sarah, had sent earlier today: Can you at least think about it?

She must have sent it without Ray’s knowledge. Lars was sure Ray had accepted that his decision about children was final. It wasn’t like he hadn’t been upfront about his lack of interest in having a family. He had never said otherwise.

‘Did I ever say otherwise?’ he’d said to Ray, and he’d come close to raising his voice, which was not something he could countenance. He could not be in a relationship with the crassness and indignity of raised voices. It made him shudder to think of it. Ray knew this.

‘You never said otherwise,’ Ray had responded evenly, and he didn’t raise his voice. ‘You never misled me. I’m not saying that. I guess I just hoped you might change your mind.’

Sarah, all shiny-eyed and sincere, had offered to help them have a baby. Ray’s family were so liberal and lovely and loving. It was fucking annoying.

Lars had recoiled, literally physically recoiled, at the thought. ‘God no,’ he’d said to Ray and his sister. ‘Just . . . no.’ He’d felt terrified and suffocated by the thought of all the earnest love he’d have to endure if they had a baby. There would be no escaping it. All those family functions! Ray’s mother would never stop crying.

It was not happening. Never. Out of nowhere the mind comes forth.

A Zen koan. Give me strength.

If Ray really wanted to be a father, should Lars let him go be one with someone else? But wasn’t that up to Ray? If Ray couldn’t live without children, then he was free to leave. They weren’t married. The house was in both their names, but they were both financially secure and sufficiently intelligent people to work all that out. Obviously Lars could handle a fair division of property.

Was it the only way forward? Had their relationship reached an impossible impasse because, either way, one of them had to make an impossible sacrifice? Whose sacrifice was worse?

But Ray had stopped asking! He’d accepted it. Lars felt that Ray wanted something else from him. What was it? Permission to leave? He didn’t want Ray to leave.

Something tumbled in the sky. A falling star, for God’s sake. How had Masha managed that? Lars heard everyone exhale with the wonder of it.

He closed his eyes and all of a sudden it came to him exactly how he knew the big guy on his left and he wished Ray was here so he could tell him, I got it, Ray, I got it!

chapter sixteen

Jessica

The author, Frances Welty, who lay on the yoga mat next to Jessica, was fast asleep. She wasn’t snoring but Jessica could tell she was asleep by the way she breathed. Jessica considered giving her a gentle nudge with her foot. She’d just missed seeing a falling star.

On reflection, Jessica decided not to bother her. It was the middle of the night. People her age really needed their sleep. If Jessica’s mother had a bad night’s sleep the bags under her eyes made her literally look like something from a horror movie, though she just laughed when Jessica tried to teach her about concealer. It wasn’t necessary to look that bad. It was stupid. If Jessica’s dad left her for his PA, Jessica’s mother would have no-one to blame but herself. Under-eye concealer was invented for a reason.

Jessica rolled her head and looked at Ben on the other side of her. He was staring up at the stars with a glazed expression, as if he were considering those Zen riddles, when really he was probably just counting down the hours until he could get out of here and back behind the wheel of his precious car.

He turned his head and winked at her. It made her heart lift, as if her crush had winked at her in the classroom.

Ben looked back up at the stars and Jessica touched her face with her fingers. She wondered if her skin looked bad without make-up in the moonlight. There had been no time to put on foundation. They were just dragged from their beds. They could have been having sex when that girl came into their bedroom, with just the gentlest knock on their door and without even waiting for them to say, ‘Come in,’ before she marched on in and shone a light in their eyes.

They hadn’t been having sex. Ben had been asleep and Jessica had been lying next to him in the darkness, unable to sleep, missing her phone so badly it felt like she’d had something amputated. When she couldn’t sleep at home she simply picked up her phone and scrolled through Instagram and Pinterest until she got tired.

She looked at her scarlet toenails in the moonlight. If she had her phone with her right now she would have photographed her feet, together with Ben’s feet, and tagged it #starlightmeditation #healthretreat #learningaboutkoans #wejustsawafallingstar #whatisthesoundofonehandclapping.

That last hashtag would have made her look quite intellectual and spiritual, she thought, which was good, because you had to be careful not to come across as superficial on your socials.

She couldn’t shake the feeling that if she didn’t record this moment on her phone then it wasn’t really happening, it didn’t count, it wasn’t real life. She knew that was irrational but she couldn’t help it. She literally felt twitchy without her phone. Obviously she was addicted to it. Still, better than being addicted to heroin, though these days no-one was sure about Ben’s sister’s most recent drug of choice. She liked to ‘mix it up’.

Jessica sometimes wondered if all their problems led back to Ben’s sister. She was always there, a big black cloud in their blue sky. Because, apart from Lucy, honestly, what did they have to worry about? Nothing. They should have been as happy as it was possible to be. Where had they gone wrong?