AMY GARDNER: A LIFE
by dkb
I'M GONNA, I'M GONNA
God, my life is shit. My life is nothing. I'm 25 and still living at home
with my parents, no job, no girlfriend, what am I gonna do? I'm a wreck.
My life is disappearing, one day at a time, and it adds up to nothing. I
wish I was someone else. I wish I was him. He looks like he knows where
he's going, in his flash suit, a young high-flyer. Or him.
Or her.
In a giddy flash I trip and stumble. I would fall, but Mummy's got hold
of my hand and she pulls me up. There's something happening in the
street, a crowd forming round a body on the ground. Mummy won't let me
look. She pulls me away, but I know what's going on. The driver is out of
his car and trying to explain, to himself as much to anyone else, "He
came out of nowhere, wasn't looking where he was going, I didn't see him
until too late." It wasn't his fault. Everyone sees that. But he still
feels guilty. It was his car the young man fell under. He'll never forget
that. Someone's called for an ambulance, but it's too late. The boy broke
his skull open. His life is over.
Mummy chats to me while we walk down the street and she doesn't seem to
mind when I say nothing in reply. "We're going to the shopping centre,
ok, we need to get you some new stuff for going back to nursery, and then
we'll go for coffee, I'll buy you some juice and a chocolate cake. You'll
like that Amy, won't you, hmmm? And we're having spaghetti for tea, mmm-
mmm!"
She buys me new panties and tights and a navy blue skirt and a pink t-
shirt with a glittery star on it ("Isn't that cute?") and a hairgrip with
a cartoon character on it. And I trail after her on my little legs,
saying nothing, thinking nothing, trying just to go with the flow.
And before I know it I'm home with spaghetti hoops and a glass of milk
inside me and I'm tucked up in bed in my cotton pyjamas and the darkness
is closing in. What happened? That man, that man died, run over. That
man, that man was me! I'm not dead. So who died? It must have been Amy,
little Amy. One minute she's skipping along next to Mummy, the next she's
bleeding on the road, dying alone. And nobody knows she's gone. There's
nobody to mourn her except me. And it must be my fault. I made some sort
of wish didn't I? How the fuck did that happen? I make a wish and Amy
dies. She suddenly finds herself in a strange body, she can't control it,
she trips and falls. Mummy's not there to hold her, she stumbles in front
of a car. Bang! Or maybe, maybe I died and then went into Amy's body. I
can't remember.
I was distracted, I wasn't looking. Maybe I walked out in front of that
car just from damned stupidity and then my soul, or whatever, passed on,
into Amy. But then where's Amy? And anyway, re-incarnation doesn't work
like that, does it? That's stupid! So what the fuck happened? The whole
thing is fucked. And it doesn't make any difference anyway. Either way,
Amy's gone and I'm still here and that's not fucking right. I've had a
rubbish life and now I've caused so much suffering. The driver of the car
didn't deserve to have that happen. He'll never forget seeing that broken
body in the street and knowing he did it, even though it wasn't his
fault. And my parents, they've lost their son. They must have been
disappointed in me, but they'll be grief-stricken. A pointless accident
took away their boy. They'll be clearing out my room. God, they'll find
my porn. Hey, Mum, I'm sorry. I haven't looked at it in years and I've
been meaning to throw it out. And then there's Amy. A totally innocent
young girl, dead or gone heaven knows where. Because of me.
I can't, I can't handle this. I'm gonna, I'm gonna kill myself. I've got
a wee plastic stool in my room for sitting on. Some time when Mummy's
watching telly I can take it to the kitchen and stand on it and find a
knife and cut my wrists, or my throat or something. I can't live like
this. I'm gonna end my worthless existence properly this time, I'm
gonna... Oh, fuck, don't be stupid. I can't do that. What'll Mummy think?
Am I gonna cause her the same suffering I caused my old parents? No.
That'd be the lousiest thing ever. I can't do that. And anyway she's too
careful. She'd never let me near the kitchen unsupervised. There probably
are no sharp knives within my reach, even standing on my stool. And
anyway, I'm a complete coward. There's no way I could stick a knife in
myself. Not if my life depended on it.
I'm gonna have to live this out. I'm gonna have to pretend to be Amy, the
best I can, for Mummy's sake, maybe for Amy's sake as well. Whatever she
could have been, I have to be, the best I can. I'm gonna, I'm gonna
manage, somehow. I'm gonna... Right now I'm gonna go to sleep.
The days pass quickly. You'd think I'd be bored out of my skull, no
decent TV, movies, music. The new Tarantino movie's out. By the time I'm
allowed to see it it'll be ancient history. But I don't get bored. The
days are short and they pass quickly. And there's constant activity -
breakfast, lunch, tea, bed, watching cartoons, going shopping, going to
the park to play on the swings. I have many stuffed animals of all
different sorts and I carry one with me everywhere I go, something to
hold on to. I have toys, building blocks, balls, picture books, a million
distractions. I run everywhere, full of energy, and I trip and fall and
then get up again and keep on running. I'm so clumsy. It's like this
body, the controls are too sensitive, the slightest movement and I've
overshot, or undershot, I've fallen down or knocked something over. But
it's fun, somehow, a constant physical challenge. I concentrate so hard
on everything I do.
And Mummy's always there. Everywhere she goes I go with her and she holds
me and hugs me and smiles at me and laughs with me and I love her so much
I feel like I'm living on love. I breathe it and eat it and sleep it
constantly. I never want to let go of her. I like Mummy's magazines, full
of women I used to fancy, actresses, pop stars, models. Mummy reads to
me from them, "So happy now ... beautiful baby ... wonderful husband ...
new project ... I'm so thrilled to be working with ... he's so talented
..."
I'm gonna, I'm gonna be like that when I grow up. I can picture it. When
I go to school I'll be in the Christmas shows, in the drama club. I'll go
to college, but keep up acting on the side, student productions, maybe
the odd commercial, then get plucked from obscurity for a TV role, in a
soap or a sitcom. I'll become a celebrity and I'll entertain millions.
And I'll be happy and fulfilled - new husband, wonderful baby, thrilling
project.
Pretty soon I'm back at nursery, holiday over. And that's hard. Mummy
leaves me there, and it's full of people I don't know, but they all know
me, and they crowd around me, wanting me to play with them. I just have
to try and be friendly to everyone and concentrate very hard to get
people's names. And sometimes I make mistakes - "Donnie? I'm Ronnie.
Miss, Amy called me Donnie!" And there's so much screaming and rushing
around. And I feel a bit out of it, I stand on the sidelines, not quite
knowing what to do with myself here. And that's not how the other kids
expect me to be. The Amy they know is as boisterous and energetic and
unselfconscious as they are. They want me to be involved in everything,
like Amy was. "Amy, come and play in the sand." "Amy, do you want to see
my new dolly?" "Come along children, let's sing a song. Amy, would you
choose a song for us to sing?" The nursery teacher says to Mummy that I'm
quieter than usual, quite subdued even. And Mummy agrees, says I've been
like that for a few days now. She hopes it's just a phase and the teacher
says it probably is.
Quiet, subdued. That's nothing to do with being in a new situation,
that's just how I am. That's me, not Amy. I am a quiet, shy person and it
is very hard to pretend to be different. But it doesn't seem to matter.
The other kids get used to my new mood almost immediately and accept me
as I am. And they seem to like me so much. They all want to play with me
and share their sweeties with me and sing and dance with me.
I'm gonna, I'm gonna be popular. I'm never gonna be short of friends. I
will always be invited to parties and I will have big parties myself for
all my many friends. And I will never need to be alone, never go to the
cinema on my own or to bars on my own or on holiday on my own. And the
boys'll love me. If I grow up like Mummy I'm gonna be a real cracker and
the boys'll chase me. Or I'll chase them first. After all, I already know
about the birds and the bees. I've got a head start. Girls mature faster
than boys, they say. Well I'll mature so fast I'll knock their socks off.
I'll give them what they want before they even know they want it. The
instant I hit puberty I'll grab me all the love I can get and I won't let
go. I'll make up for, for before. I'll have all the boys, maybe some of
the teachers, if there are any young, handsome ones. Maybe some of the
other girls as well. I'll seduce my girlfriends. We'll pretend to be
practising for our boyfriends. "Here, Mary, pretend I'm a boy and kiss
me." But in fact we'll share our passionate urges with each other more
deeply than we could with any boy. God, I'm gonna be the school bicycle,
everyone gets a go with Amy. Or maybe, maybe I'll be selective. To most
people I'll be proper and decent. But a lucky few will feel my passionate
fire. I'll pick on the shy boys, like I used to be. I will pick the
quietest, geekiest, most sensitive boy and make him happy like he never
could be otherwise. He won't brag about me to his mates because he won't
have any mates. He will only have me and he will be devoted to me and he
will adore me like a goddess.
Meanwhile, day after day, I throw myself into nursery activities as best
I can, building sandcastles, playing ball, drawing and painting. Luckily
I was never any good at art before, so I don't have to pretend to be
childishly bad at it now. My daubs in crayons and water-colours are no
more recognisable as trees or doggies or mummies than those of any of my
classmates. There are lots of posters and stuff with writing stuck up on
the walls and there are also blocks with letters on them. But I'm too
young to read them so I don't have to pretend to struggle with them. I
can just ignore them. But school's gonna be a problem though, when I get
there. How will I manage? Can I pretend to learn things I already know
perfectly well, reading, writing, arithmetic? If I grip my pencil very
hard and try to make big, clumsy movements will I be able to make those
big, spidery letters junior school kids make when just learning to write.
If I try and phonetically spell out every word ("guh, uh, er, luh,
girl,") can I sound just like the other kids learning to read? Can I work
out what sort of realistic mistakes I should make in my sums, so nobody
realises I can do it already? And, most important, can I keep it up, day
after day, week after week? Can I be consistent, not be too smart one
day, and go back to making mistakes again the next?
If I slip up, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be some kind of infant prodigy if I
don't watch out, a freak. I'll have the authorities on to me in no time
and they'll be testing me and wanting me to go to a school for gifted
children. But maybe, maybe that won't be so bad. I could relax a bit. I
wouldn't have to work quite so hard pretending to be an ordinary little
girl. I wouldn't get bullied for being a swot. I'd get to study
interesting stuff more quickly than I would normally. I always liked
science and maths and I was good at it. I didn't drop out of college from
stupidity. Maybe this time I can make a go of it, become a great
scientist or something, discover new drugs, new stars, new theorems, or
something. Or not. I'll be, like, advanced for my age, until I get to
first year at college. Then I'll have, like, caught up to my previous
self. And I'll be no brighter than anyone else, not a prodigy any more,
just an average college kid. They'll say I'd burned out. Hey, I'd be
normal for my age then. Nothing wrong with that. I'll not have to pretend
any more. And maybe, maybe I wouldn't be normal even then. I mean, if I
start out from where I am now, a four year old girl who can not only
spell 'differential calculus', but also knows what it means, then who
knows where I can get to if I work at it. Maybe, maybe I'm gonna be a
real genius, someone important, Nobel-prize winning, doing cure-for-
cancer or solving-the-energy-crisis kind of stuff. Maybe I'll do some
great service to humanity. Maybe... Oh, who knows? I don't know.
I don't know. I think I'll just take it one day at a time for now, just
enjoy my finger-painting and sandcastle building while I can.
Daddy came home today. Back home from a six week contract, fresh pay
packet in his pocket and many beers in his belly, he swept in all at
once, pinned Mummy to the wall, squeezed her breast and plastered a
drunken kiss on her lips. Then he swept me off the floor and kissed me as
well, boozy breath in my face, unshaven cheek on my lips.
"Hey baby, sweetie, how are my two favourite girls eh? How've you been
with daddy away, eh? Get me a whisky would you babe? Hey, little Amy,
look what I got you?" It was a big teddy bear, really too large for me to
cuddle properly, though I give it a dutiful squeeze and tried to look
happy with it.
It was late in the day and I was sent to bed after that, but I couldn't
sleep. Life with Mummy was just so perfect I could hardly bear to think
of this alien presence coming between us. I'd sort of known he existed.
There were a few photos. And Mummy mentioned him occasionally, but kind
of distantly. I'd never thought of him as someone who might actually turn
up some day. But now here he was.
I must have dozed for a few hours because then I was awake again and
hearing Daddy clomping up the stairs to bed. I couldn't hear what he was
saying, but he was clearly in a jolly mood. He clattered into Mummy's
room and I could hear his drunken chatter and Mummy asking him to shush,
don't wake Amy. And then their bed was banging against the wall for a few
minutes. And then there was quiet and I was asleep again.
The next morning Mummy seemed kind of quiet and distracted. She bustled
around the kitchen while Daddy had breakfast and read his paper. Then he
went out. Mummy swept around doing housework all day and told me to stay
out of her way, so I sat in my room. It was a Saturday, so no nursery.
And that's how it was then. When Daddy was here he sat watching telly,
sports mostly, and Mummy sat next to him or got him drinks when he asked.
When Daddy was out at the pub Mummy was busy, too busy for me.
Sometimes I joined them on the sofa, Daddy's arm round me. But it was
boring just watching the football. Daddy didn't want to play with me, but
he wanted me there. He called it "being a family," the three of us
sitting there watching his programmes. He was frequently affectionate.
He ruffled my hair or squeezed my shoulders. But he was easily irritated.
If I showed my boredom he could turn on me.
"Don't you want to sit with Daddy? Well bugger off then. Nobody's forcing
you to sit there. Go on, get lost."
And I would be glad to get away. He made me jumpy. And late at night,
when Daddy came home drunk, he was always noisy, in the kitchen, on the
stairs, in Mummy's room, with loud footsteps, banging, sometimes singing.
One night I heard shouting, a slap, then the bed banging against the
wall. Next morning Mummy was very quiet and her eyes were red. I wanted
to comfort her, somehow, but she pushed me away, she wouldn't look at me.
"Go to your room. Can't you see Mummy's busy?"
One night I woke to the sound of Daddy banging the door and clomping up
the stairs. Then he came into my room.
"Hey, Amy, how's my little baby doll, eh? How's daddy's little girl?"
For some reason I was suddenly struck rigid with terror. I couldn't move
a muscle. Daddy ruffled my hair, slobbered over me with beery kisses and
tried to tickle me on the chest.
"Hey, hey, Mummy's sleeping, shush, shush, let's not wake Mummy, just us
two, eh, eh?"
And then he pulled down my pyjama bottoms, spat on his hand and started
rubbing me between my legs. What the fuck? What the fuck did he think he
was doing, foreplay? Did he think he was getting me hot? I was four, for
Christ's sake, I wasn't hot. I was sore. Daddy was hurting me.
"MUMMY MUMMY MUMMY MUMMY MUMMY MUMMY!"
"What the...!" He couldn't believe it. "Shush! Shut up! What are you
doing?"
"MUMMY MUMMY MUMMY!"
"I said Shut! The Fuck! Up!" And he raised his hand and - Bang - he
slapped me across the face.
"WAAAAAAAAAAA!"
"Shut up I said!" And he stuffed his hand against my mouth, desperate to
silence me any way he could.
And then suddenly Mummy, may God bless her soul forever, is there, in
nothing but her panties and her righteous wrath. And she takes one look
at me, wailing my eyes out, with my jammies round my ankles, and one look
at him, backing off, hands raised defensively, and she starts trying to
lay into him, beating her fists off his chest. And he has to physically
push her off him, throw her against the wall, while simultaneously trying
to get his excuses in.
"Calm down, you stupid bitch! It's not what you think."
And then the police are around to speak to Daddy.
"This really isn't necessary. My wife just panicked a bit. Nothing
happened."
"Well, ok sir, but we still have to investigate any complaint, so if
you'll just open the door sir..."
And Mummy has to confess that she didn't actually see anything happen, as
such. And I'm crying too much to give a coherent story. And Daddy is
contrite and cooperative.
"Ok, I was drunk, I blundered into the wrong room. I obviously frightened
her.... Her pyjamas? It's warm; she must have pulled them off herself...
Yes, I did hit her, just a tap really. I panicked. I thought she was
going to wake the whole street up... No, no, I don't believe in it
normally. No, we never smack Amy... probably the shock as much anything,
she got a bit of a fright from her stupid old dad, she'll get over it...
I feel so stupid... never happened before."
A nice policewoman interviews me. "Amy, can you tell me, has this ever
happened before?"
And I cannot tell a lie. "I don't know. I don't know." But really, I do
know. That can't have been the first time. It's just that Amy never cried
out before. She suffered in silence.
And then the police are away again. "Call us again, Madam, any time you
need to. And there'll be a social worker round tomorrow, just to check
up, ok?"
And a medical exam shows no sign I've been interfered with and there's
not really enough evidence for further action. And Daddy wonders if maybe
he can put this all behind him, get on with life, back to normal. But
the look in Mummy's eyes tells him he can't. Nothing she's put up with
from him before compares to this. No matter how often she's given in to
him before, she will not give in again.
Two days later Mummy and me have moved out of our house into a tiny flat
in the city. Mummy has to work in a supermarket and I hardly get to see
her. When I'm not at nursery I stay with an old lady down the corridor.
She's quite nice and gives me sweeties, but her flat smells funny and I
feel lonely. I go to a different nursery now and because I'm new nobody's
surprised that I'm a bit quiet and shy. I think they must know something
about me because they all seem really careful to be nice to me. And when
Mummy's home she won't let me out of her sight. She hugs me so tight I
can hardly breathe sometimes. She won't let go of me. She looks at me
sometimes with fear in her eyes and I can hardly bear it. I feel I would
do anything, absolutely anything, to make her happy again.
I'm gonna, I'm gonna be a policewoman, or a social worker, or a doctor or
a nurse, or something, something to help people in desperate need, people
like Mummy, like Mummy helped me. I'm gonna, I'm gonna do whatever it
takes to make Mummy proud of me, for all the love she gives me. I'm
gonna, I'm gonna... Oh, God, who am I kidding? I don't know what I'm
gonna do. I might do anything, or nothing. I'm gonna, I'm gonna...
WHO AM I?
"Who Am I?" is, I think, a rubbish title for an essay. But there it is,
this is what I've got to do. I guess the teacher wants us to think about
what makes us the kind of people we are, personality, social background,
all that stuff. So here I am trying to dictate some notes. If I burble
away enough maybe I'll get some ideas. But what can I say? I'm an
ordinary girl. I'm Amy Gardner, I'm sixteen, my likes are...my dislikes
are...blah, blah, blah. I live with my mum, just the two of us since Dad
died. I mean my stepdad, not my real dad. Daddy Bastard's still around
somewhere, probably. We haven't heard from him in ages. Not that we want
to.
And I really can't concentrate on this because Aunt Lucy is moving into a
nursing home and I'm worried about her. It's not, like, really, really
serious yet, but she can't really look after herself any more and it's so
sad. She's not really my aunt, but she helped look after me when I was a
kid, when we moved out after...after my dad did what he did to me. She
was like a granny, always giving me sweets and things, and I could go
round any time, whenever I didn't feel like being at home. She was always
there and now I won't see her so much. But I'm going to visit her this
afternoon. So maybe I'd be better doing this later.
***
So Aunt Lucy doesn't think she's ever going to come out of the home. She
needs to sell her flat to pay for it and she's getting rid of most of her
things and she says she wants to give me a whole bunch of stuff. There's
her clock and a whole bunch of ornaments and she's got some old jewellery
she wants me to have as well, and it's too much, and Mum says we can't
afford to insure it. So I think we've persuaded her to hang onto it for
just now. But I've got a big old cardboard box she insisted I have. She
was like, "I really haven't any room for it, you know, and I'd hate to
throw it away. When you come to visit maybe you'll bring it round again
and I can remember all the times we had."
So what it is is, oh blimey! I think it's everything I ever gave her.
There's a complete collection of Christmas and birthday cards here,
everything I ever made for her at school, a whole bunch of other stuff as
well. It looks like my whole life's here.
There's an old report card here. What's that doing there? I guess I must
have handed it to Lucy instead of Mum that day. Results: A, A, A, A.
Comments: "Amy is extremely [underlined] bright, but she will not work
[more underlining]." Heh, heh! That is what it was like actually. It was
all, "Amy gets good marks, but if she is to continue doing well she must
learn to start working," and "Amy must realise that good marks are not
everything. She must do the work as well." Also I was a "disruptive
influence" with the other kids. I was distracted and bored, particularly
in primary school, always messing about.
I just found it so easy it was boring. I was reading and writing almost
as soon as I got to school and arithmetic was a doddle. I always read a
lot and I must have picked up a lot of stuff because I never seemed to
need to actually learn anything. It was almost as if it was all there
already and I just had to remember it. My teachers always worried that
the stuff I was reading was "too advanced" for my age and that I would,
like, get ahead of myself, but I never did. I think they just didn't like
it that I never paid any attention to them.
Even now I think I know a whole lot about all sorts of stuff that nobody
else at school does. I help Greg with his homework and I know way more
physics than he does and I'm not even doing that subject any more. Mum
keeps on worrying about that. She's always asking me, "But why did you
give up science when you were so good at it?" But I don't think I was
good at it, not really. It just always felt like I knew it already.
Maths, physics, chemistry just always seemed obvious and easy. Like, I
know all that so what's the point? So I've switched to doing modern
languages and literature and history and stuff. And I don't know what the
difference is but that stuff is actually hard. It doesn't feel like it's
there already. I do actually have to work to get it. I don't get only
'A's any more and that's, well, that's all right. I don't feel like such
a swot all the time.
There's a lot of old pictures of me here. Here's one of me before a
school dance, all dressed up, too much make-up. I never manage that
right. I never think about it usually and then it's a special occasion
and I just slap it on.
Greg's with me, so I must be almost fourteen. He looks dazed. I look a
bit bored. I want to get going. I think I enjoyed it. I danced with every
boy I knew. I even danced with Greg a couple of times. He was totally
nervous. He seemed too scared to touch me, except round my shoulders or
holding my hand. It seemed funny. He must have been virtually the only
boy there who hadn't felt me up behind the bike sheds. When he asked me
it seemed like such a joke. He was the quiet one in the corner who nobody
noticed. I couldn't believe it when he came up to me and started
stammering at me, "A-Amy. W-would you do me the honour...?"
I was like, what the fuck? The honour? Who is this guy? And I thought
it'd be a bit of a laugh. I'd be all dressed up, all sexy (too much make-
up, like I said) and he'd be trailing after me like a dog. I wouldn't
have to stick with him when we got there. I could leave him and have my
own fun. But, also, I hadn't actually been asked by anyone else up to
that point. One of the guys would've asked me eventually, I think. But
maybe they all thought I was going with one of the others. Or maybe they
weren't that bothered, seeing I was giving it away at school most days.
Anyway, I actually stayed friends with Greg after that. We'd hang out
after school, walk around a bit, talk about stuff. I slowly realised what
a nice guy he was. I still hung around with all the other guys as well,
though.
See, I was a total tomboy when I was little, playing football, running
around in the mud, climbing trees, all that. But when I started growing
up it wasn't exactly the same any more. I still hung out with the boys,
but they were interested in different things then. They'd be telling
stupid sex jokes, talking about snogging, trying to shock me I think,
maybe trying to shock each other too. But I just played along. I was
like, "Hey, look what I've got. Wanna touch them?"
I went through a phase of, "It doesn't matter. They're only boobs. Who
cares if some guy wants to play with them?" I thought they were jerks, a
bit. They didn't want to play football with me any more, but they wanted
to look at my chest. But I didn't care. We hung out. Some guy or other
always had a bottle of something or some ciggies he'd nicked off his
parents and we fooled around and had a lot of laughs. At parties I was
always outrageous, stripping off and dancing around. And we sort of egged
each other on. They knew I'd do almost anything if they dared me. One of
them, maybe Rob, had some magazines he'd got from his brother. They were
just soft-core really, but we'd read the letters out in silly voices and
I'd be like, "Oh yeah, I know all about that." We'd get drunk and fool
around. I used my hands and my mouth on them and, you know, it seemed
quite normal.
And when I was fifteen, that'd be a year and a half ago now, I got into
school and found someone had written "SLUT" on my locker door in big
black marker pen and I felt like I'd been slapped. And it really wasn't
fair. It wasn't like I'd actually slept with anyone. I just... I thought
people liked me and then I felt like I'd turned inside out. I saw myself
in a window. I had felt sexy when I got up and then I felt like a tart.
The janitor came and scrubbed it off and he was like, "Don't worry. If I
catch the little bastard that did this they'll know what for." But I
couldn't look at him. Something shrivelled up inside me and I felt sick
the rest of the day.
And Greg was like totally oblivious, like nothing happened.
"Oh yeah, I heard about that, some little shite messing about. I get that
all the time - 'loser', 'wanker' - it doesn't mean anything."
Or maybe he wasn't oblivious. Maybe he knew exactly what I'd been doing
but he wasn't bothered. Or maybe he just didn't want me to think he was
bothered. God bless him. I do not understand that boy in any way, but I
think I love him.
God, what's this? Old pictures in crayon - me and Mummy, Aunt Lucy, Mummy
and Daddy (that's my stepdad). This one's a bit savage, all spiky, red,
orange, black. Oh, God! I think it's a car crash. There's a weird looking
car. There's a boy or a man lying in front of it with his arms and legs
sticking out and there's a girl standing watching. I've written "ME"
directly underneath in huge letters. Actually, I've written it under the
man, but I guess I'm supposed to be the girl watching. This is really
quite creepy because I don't actually remember seeing anything like this.
I do remember I used to think about crashes quite a lot. I just don't
know why. I remember the psychologist who saw me telling Mum it was a
"recurring motif". I was quite frightened of cars for a while. I was
totally scared of crossing the road and I guess this picture comes from
that time.
That was about the time that... Well, I don't remember it myself but Mum
says she came in one night and found Dad fiddling with me. So we left.
Mum says I had a total personality change then. All of a sudden I was
really moody. I just moped around all the time not really doing anything.
And I seemed to forget about people and places I should have known. Mum
says I had been very friendly and then suddenly I was very shy and
clingy. I do kind of remember that. I really hated it when she wasn't
there. This is all why I was seeing the psychologist. And of course when
my stepdad got run over, when I was ten, I totally freaked out all over
again. I felt like my nightmares were coming true and I went totally
hysterical at the funeral, shrieking and sobbing like crazy. But why I
got obsessed with car crashes in the first place I cannot remember. Maybe
that's not so weird. I was only four. But still, I feel like there's some
black hole in my life, right there, like something terrible, not just my
dad, happened that might, I don't know, explain everything. God, listen
to me. I sound like a nutter. Nothing makes sense, right, unless you find
the secret. And then everything's clear. Yeah, right!
***
I've just had a very strange dream. It started off like some of my old
nightmares used to. I'm a wee girl again, in bed, and Daddy Bastard is
looming over me, like a pantomime villain with his evil eyes and his big
evil laugh, "HA HA HA!" And I know he's going to do something unspeakably
horrible to me, but I'm stuck, frozen, and I can't do anything about it.
I used to wake up in a sick fear, screaming until Mum came to comfort me.
But this time it's different. I look down and I suddenly notice I have...
Ok, this is weird shit. I notice I have an enormous cock sticking out
between my legs. Look, it's a dream, Ok? Ok. So, anyway, Daddy Bastard
takes one look at my big cock and he jumps back, all scared. And then
Mum's with me, shaking her fist at him, and he just seems to turn round
and run away, a pathetic little coward. And then Mum...this is the weird
shit again...she takes my cock in her hand and, gently, gently, she tugs
at it until it sort of slides out and my little puss is back to normal
again. It seems to shrivel up in her hand, like a dried up worm, and she
throws it away. It's like, we don't need that any more. And then she
smiles at me and hugs me and I wake up feeling so warm and happy I feel
like everything's going to be all right.
Greg's parents are out late tonight so I'm going round to watch a video
with him. Maybe afterwards we'll... Well, let's wait and see.
FLOWERS
Amy walked down the street with her menfolk. Little Tommy sat astride
her shoulders, holding on to her forehead, little lord of all he
surveyed. He was still a constant delight to her, even after three years
of being a mum. He was a paradox, clumsy, helpless and dependent and yet
also supremely confident, as if everything was there for him and nothing
could possibly go wrong. Oh, he cried sometimes, when something startled
him or when he hurt himself. But he could forget it in an instant and go
right back to rushing around as if nothing had happened. And he could be
a terror. He could go into monstrous rages sometimes, when he didn't get
what he wanted. Even when he was happy he could be difficult to control.
When he got too excited it could be impossible to calm him down without
risking grumpiness and tears. People said he was a typical boy, but
Amy's mum said Tommy took after her, that she too had been a boisterous
child when she was very young, before she turned shy and moody. Tommy
liked to be the centre of everything and it could be very tiring being in
his orbit. And yet he was, of course, utterly adorable also. Sometimes
when Amy felt things getting on top of her all it took was Tommy's sweet
smile to cheer her up again.
Greg walked beside her, holding her hand. He still sometimes seemed
nervous about touching her, as if he was only visiting and didn't want to
outstay his welcome. As if he hadn't fully realised she was his to keep
now. He'd been an absolute rock at school, always dependable, decent,
kind, sensitive. It used to annoy her that people hadn't realised what
he was like. He was so quiet that people called him a nerd or a geek,
but he really wasn't like that. Amy knew that if you just talked to him
he opened up and she had found she could talk to him about anything,
almost. When she went to university they'd drifted apart. She'd hooked
up with several different guys, but none had lasted. And when she came
home there he still was, same old Greg. She had decided not to let him
go again.
They'd gone to a registry office, nothing fancy, just family really. And
so she was Mrs Amy Mackenzie now. That was strange. It made her feel
she should be skipping through the heather and hiding handsome Jacobites
from villainous Redcoats. Greg said she didn't have to wear tartan if
she didn't want to and, sure enough, when they visited his grandparents
in Edinburgh there wasn't a kilt to be seen, except on the piper dolls in
the tourist shops.
"It's off-peak," said Greg. "There's plenty of real ones if you come in
the summer."
He was a carpenter in the construction industry and she taught English,
part-time until Tommy started school. It was like a model of normal life
that Amy felt she needed to hold on to tightly. She never felt
particularly attached to life and sometimes she was afraid she might just
float off somewhere if Greg and Tommy didn't anchor her down. Being a
housewife and a teacher, having responsibilities and duties, she felt she
needed these to keep her together. But she also missed some of the
wildness and freedom she'd had at university. Greg was tender and
considerate, but she wished he'd realise that being married meant he
didn't have to ask all the time. It was nice that he didn't take her for
granted, but she liked to be surprised sometimes, she liked to be taken
by a man who knew what she wanted without having to ask.
She thought about the other men in her life. There was Dad, a good,
strong, gentle, kind man. She'd been pretty horrible to him to start off
with. Maybe she hadn't wanted to share her mother. And maybe she had
had good reason to be nervous of men. Whichever it was, she'd played up
terribly. She'd thrown tantrums when he came round and refused to let
them alone. She remembered pretending to be sick one night when he'd
stayed over, trying to keep them up all night, maybe trying to scare him
away. Then she'd tried to suck up to him. It was embarrassing to
remember. She'd tried to be cute and coy, and sit on his lap and cuddle
him, and plead for favours, things her mother wouldn't let her have,
tried to play them against each other. But he had been sternly
unbending. "Ask your mother," he always said. "Do what your mother
tells you," had been his only rule. He had refused to be a father to
Amy, refused to have anything to do with bringing her up, except in so
far as he supported her mother in every decision she made. Instead he
became a confidant, a teacher and a friend. When he had died she had
felt torn apart. She had felt guilty for not having appreciated every
second she'd known him.
She didn't really remember her real father. All that was left of him was
the faintest feeling of dread, a sickness in the stomach when she thought
of him and an occasional shadow cast over her dreams.
And then there was Him. She knew nothing about him, not a name or
anything. She just knew he was there, somehow, deep down in the pit of
her soul. He wasn't like an imaginary friend. He never appeared to her
or spoke to her. But occasionally, in certain situations, it seemed he
was there. At school, in maths tests, or when she was in trouble with a
teacher or got into a fight, it seemed he was there and she knew what to
do or say. It was possible that once, a long time ago, he had woken up
in her bed, when her father was there, and screamed and screamed until
Mum had come to rescue her. Sometimes, when she was still a child, she
had dreamed of a little boy. He was always very sad though she couldn't
say how she knew this because she never saw his face; he was always
looking away from her. But you could also say that they were both
looking in the same direction. Sometimes, in these dreams, he was a
little girl. Or maybe the girl was really her. But that, it seemed,
meant that she was him. Or maybe it didn't. Thinking of these dreams it
occurred to her that the face you never normally see is your own.
In therapy, when Amy was at university, she had recovered a memory of
something she had witnessed when she was very small, a road accident.
Her therapist had thought this very significant, that this, along with
the other thing, could explain everything. Amy felt then that she could,
if she wanted to, tell herself a romantic story about a guardian angel, a
spirit that watched over her. But she couldn't believe it resolved
anything. She still felt she was left with more questions than answers
about what, if anything, had happened to her.
She had gone a bit wild at uni, let herself go. She felt quite awkward
at first, with people she didn't know, but when a guy persisted, if he
was a nice guy, she could just relax and go with it. Then, for all she
was never much of a girly girl, she was glad she wasn't a boy. She
couldn't imagine being the one to make the moves, having to ask, facing
rejection. All she had to do was drag herself out to a bar and wait for
some action. There was always a steady supply of smiling eyes, warm lips
and strong arms.
But sometimes she suffered strange anxieties. There were times when she
felt not quite identical to herself, as if there were two Amys, almost,
but not quite, exactly the same. She couldn't tell which was the real
one. One time she was at a party. She was very drunk and a joint had
been passed around. She felt really out of it, kind of drifting. Jakey
had his arms round her, stroking her breast and nuzzling her neck.
Suddenly, she felt a weird feeling of oppressive closeness. She felt
hyper-aware of everything around her, as if everything was pressing
against her at once. There was Jake's hands all over her body, his
breath in her nostrils, his face right in hers. A panic rose up in her
and suddenly she had to get away.
"Oh stop it! Get off me!" she mumbled, drunkenly, and pushed him feebly
away. She got up, staggered towards the door and tripped over someone's
legs. She crawled the rest of the way out of the room, picked herself up
and staggered off, into the night.
The feeling of hyper-awareness stayed with her, not oppressive any more,
but strangely exhilarating. There was the cool night breeze, the glow of
the street lights against the black of the sky, people passing, laughing
and shouting. She suddenly felt aware of her own body as if it was
something new and strange, as if noticing it for the first time - the way
her skirt felt on her thighs, the way the wind tickled her calves, her
breasts moving under her top, her hair brushing her shoulders, the taste
of her lipstick. When she got back to her room she stripped off and
examined herself in the mirror and she felt an aching mixture of longing
and regret, as if for an unobtainable dream man, as if for a brother who
was too close and too far away. She lay on her bed and masturbated for
twenty minutes or more and had wild, shuddering orgasms, as if just being
who she was, where she was, was the most exciting thing imaginable.
She had had to work hard to make things up with Jake. Poor Jakey, his
pride had been hurt, in front of his mates. Just apologising wasn't
enough. There had to be a lot of public kissing and hand-holding and so
on, to make sure everyone knew that, no, there was nothing wrong with
Jakey. It had just been Amy having a funny turn. It didn't last. They
split up soon after.
Amy had wondered if she could maybe do without men altogether. They
could be so frustrating, demanding, proud, even arrogant. She wondered
what it would be like if she weren't such a sucker for, well, for
anything in trousers sometimes. Late night in the student bar a classmate
of hers, Sarah, had confessed to being bisexual. Sarah was tall, with a
lean, athletic build. Amy could suddenly see herself falling for this
rangy, intense woman. She put a hand on Sarah's knee and Sarah looked
into her eyes, leaned over and kissed her on the lips. Sarah took her
hand and led her back to her bedroom. A few minutes drunken fumbling
revealed that Sarah was, in fact, no more bisexual than Amy, which was
not at all.
"Sarah, haven't you done this before?"
"Um, no, not really. I've kissed a girl a couple of times, but... I
thought you..."
"What? God no! For Christ's sake Sarah, this is ridiculous."
They had to laugh about it then, but it was embarrassing in the morning
and they drifted apart. Sarah had different classes the next term and
Amy never saw her again.
After that Amy sort of got back to normal. - Oh look, there's a hunky guy
with a wallet. He wants to buy me a drink. Isn't he a nice man. Ooh
yes, I would like to see your CD collection. I'm sure it's very
interesting. - Same old nonsense.
"What are you thinking?" Greg said.
"Oh, nothing really. The shop's just here. I'll get the flowers and you
watch Tommy, ok?"
"Ok."
Greg watched her go. She was magnificent. He knew now she was no
catwalk model or Miss World. She was more beautiful than that. There
was a quite unselfconscious sensuality in the way she moved, so
powerfully sexy it made him shiver. At school he had thought her
angelic, an unapproachable image of female perfection. He had thought
that if he could pluck up the courage to ask Amy to the school dance he
need never feel nervous about asking any girl anything. It hadn't
occurred to him that she might say yes. After getting to know her as a
person rather than as a fantasy he had fallen in love with her and that
he was now married to her was something he still found difficult to fully
believe.
She had a strong, generous, wise personality and it had always been a
privilege to know her. Though he had never been part of the in-crowd at
school, he had been vaguely aware that she had some kind of reputation,
but he had had no trouble ignoring that completely and when he found out
about some of her background his admiration for her only increased.
This obsession of hers was a bit funny though. She scoffed at ghosts or
reincarnation and yet still seemed to think that a stranger dying twenty
years ago had had some incredible effect on her life. The latest thing
was that she thought she remembered the exact details of the accident and
wanted to lay a wreath, or something. He struggled to imagine what she
thought she could get out of this.
"Is this some sort of exorcism?"
"No, nothing like that. Look, it doesn't matter if anything happened.
It's just...I might be the only person that actually remembers him at
all.
I just want to do something in commemoration, ok? Will you come with
me?"
"Of course I will."
Amy emerged from the shop with a small bouquet of roses, lilies and
carnations, all of them white or cream, that had a ghostly beauty in the
morning sun. Flanked by Greg and Tommy she walked to the end of the
road, turned the corner to the right and paused.
"Is this the place?" Greg asked.
She looked around.
"I think so. I've hardly been out here since we moved away when I was
little, but it looks vaguely familiar. I think there used to be a
shopping centre down the street and I guess that's where we were going
when it happened."
"You saw a guy get run over."
"Yeah."
"And he's, what, haunted you ever since?"
"I guess. Something like that."
He reached out to her, held her arm. "You mean, in your head?"
She responded, rested her hand against his body. "Not really. Not like
another person, in there with me. Not voices or anything. Not in my
head, no. In me. In my arms and legs. In my hands. In my breast, in
my heart."
"I don't understand that."
"Neither do I."
He stood back. "So, what do you want to do? Where do you want to put
them?"
She looked around again. "I'm not sure. I haven't thought about it.
Maybe in the railings."
"Go on then."
Tommy held onto Amy's arm and Greg held her shoulders as she pushed the
bouquet between two of the railings by the side of the road and at that
very moment she was suddenly unsure whether the flowers were really for
Him or for herself or for both of them or for neither.
Tommy jumped up, wanting to be held. Mummy leaned over and hoisted him
up - whee! - through the air, as if he was flying, onto Mummy's breast.
He wrapped his arms round Mummy's neck and held on tight and he wouldn't
let go until they got home.
Author's Note
"I'm Gonna, I'm Gonna" was the first piece of fiction I completed since
school and I was very gratified by the positive reviews I got for it
here. I guess I was one of those people who thought they had a bunch of
ideas, but who never got to the hard work of developing them. (Mostly I
still am.) I had been working on what became "The Orphan of Silverwood
Farm" for a long time and had had some other ideas that never got further
than a paragraph or two, but when I thought of "I'm Gonna, I'm Gonna" the
words just came straight out and I wrote it very quickly.
I think it's a story about what I see as the basic elements in the
fantasy of regressing back to childhood. There is the pleasure of being
helplessly dependent on Mummy again, of not being obliged to do anything
difficult or make any difficult decisions. And there is the chance to
start over and make a new life, perhaps better than what has gone before.
And what better way of making something new than changing gender?
The man at the beginning (for my purposes here I will call him Mike,
though that's not his name) is clearly quite passive and depressive. He
has given up, or wants to give up. So he makes his wish and most of the
middle of the story is a contrast between wishful fantasy of being
someday successful, clever and popular and the humdrum daily reality of
life as a toddler. A couple of reviewers thought I should have said more
about Mike, made him more sympathetic, but I really wasn't interested in
developing him that much. I didn't think there was anything interesting
to say about him until he became Amy. And I wanted to launch straight in
to the transformation, right at the beginning, and not waste time on any
build-up. I think the result is a lightly sketched, quite fast-paced
story without too much extraneous detail, an impressionistic portrait of
Mike/Amy's thoughts and feelings.
The abuse motif, like the rest of the story, is just something that came
out without me thinking about it. I was aware that the story was turning
out mostly light and happy and lovey-dovey (though, looking back I see it
is quite dark at the beginning), so I wanted some more darkness to
contrast with the light and I thought maybe that would be the father. I
got to a point when I realised I had got quite far in and hadn't
mentioned Amy's father at all though she presumably had one. There was
such a close relationship between Amy and her mother that I didn't want
any man intruding on it so I think it just seemed natural to make him a
bad father, to contrast with the perfect mother. His personality and
behaviour just came straight out without me having to think hard about
it, though I have to say I have never had any personal experience of
anyone like that. I think now that maybe I went too far. I think the
abuse comes to dominate the story and unbalance it. It was supposed to
be a balance of light and dark, but it became mostly dark, though, I
hope, slightly upbeat again right at the end. But a lot of the reviewers
seem to find it emotionally moving, which of course is very nice to hear.
I was quite pleased with the climax of the story, when I got to show the
mother as a real hero, standing up for her daughter and finding the
courage to leave her husband for her and her daughter's sake. And
Mike/Amy makes a change as well. She doesn't give up fantasising, but
her new fantasies at the end are at least less self-involved and more
realistic. And she ends up with a rueful understanding; perhaps that she
may find it just as hard to make anything of her new life as he did of
his old, and perhaps that in a random world anything can happen no matter
what your fantasies.
I do feel slightly uncomfortable having written this because I can't help
feeling that something as serious as child abuse should really only be
written about with care and thought and ideally from some knowledge of
the subject. I don't know anything about it and I just put it in at
random. So I feel a little guilty that I might have trivialised the
issue by putting it into what is basically a bit of self-indulgent,
navel-gazing fluff. But nonetheless, I wrote it. It just came out of my
head, so I don't feel I can change it now.
But over all I like this story. I like Amy and her mother a lot and I
like the dreamy, impressionistic style I think I managed, in which
reality and fantasy blur into one.
I have now revised the story very slightly. Initially the story was set
in a nowhere-in-particular everytown so I found myself writing in a
slightly transatlantic mix of British and American idiom. However, in
the later stories Amy became in my mind definitely English (and of
course Greg is Scottish), so I have now gone back and changed "mall" to
"shopping centre" and, more importantly, "Mommy" to "Mummy". I had to
think about that for a bit because for some reason I think "Mummy" looks
a bit weird written down. In Britain when the word is used by an adult
person it is seen as an upper-class affectation, but it is still also a
standard word to address Mother for all very young kids. So it went in
here. And now I've done it and it looks ok and I think I've got used to
it. I've made a handful of other changes as well, in all three stories.
There's still plenty that I'm not particularly happy about, language that
seems clumsy or inappropriate, but I can't think of how to improve it,
and maybe it is appropriate for Mike, trying to express quite raw
feelings, but not really sure how to do so.
The moment I finished "I'm Gonna, I'm Gonna" I wanted to write a follow-
up. I liked Amy so much I wanted to stick with her a bit longer. It
seemed immediately clear that she would forget what had happened to her,
for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it seems to me really difficult, if
not impossible, to seriously imagine an adult convincingly playing the
role of a toddler. I don't just mean things like constantly remembering
not to be able to read, and so on. I mean that everything about the way
little kids walk, move and think is too different from adults to be able
to imitate successfully. Sometimes adult actors play child characters,
Freaky Friday style, but that depends on certain actorly conventions and
a lot of suspension of disbelief and it's never really convincing. And
it's just for a little while; it's not 24-7 for month after month. I
really think no-one could actually pull it off without constantly
slipping up or going mad. Maybe that's why stories with characters
regressing to childhood or babyhood so often involve so-called "identity
death". It's just too difficult to imagine an adult keeping their
identity in that situation. I tried to explore all this a bit in the
first story, but I didn't really deal with it (though I liked the idea I
came up with that Amy/Mike would be physically clumsy, but so full of
energy that she would just naturally rush around hyperactively all the
time). So we come to realise that some time after the events of the
first story Amy/Mike forgot that she was ever anything other than just
Amy.
The other reason for having Amy forget was that I thought it could make
for a dramatic story. I was going to have Amy investigate her past,
uncover the mystery of what had happened to her. She would find out
about the car crash and maybe track down Mike's parents. There was going
to be a dream at the beginning, which would prompt Amy to start her
investigation. But the more I thought about this idea the less
interesting it sounded. I thought it would be a waste of time to have
Amy go around finding out things the reader already knew. So in my mind
the story got shorter and simpler until "Who Am I?" became no more than a
series of anecdotes. The device of the essay and the stuff from Aunt
Lucy meant I could have Amy reflect on her life in a way that commented
upon some of the fantasies of the first story. So we discover that Amy
is not going to be a scientific genius, despite some prompting from Mike,
because she's decided to switch to the arts. Also, she is quite
promiscuous, but not in the active, empowered way that Mike fantasised
about. We also learn some of the effects the events of the previous
story have unconsciously had on Amy, as in her obsession with car
crashes, and the dream. I find it a satisfying irony that the reader
understands Amy's thoughts and feelings better than she does herself and
I think that's the most successful thing about this story.
The dream recapitulates the two main events of "I'm Gonna, I'm Gonna",
the abuse and the whatever-it-was between Mike and Amy, but from Amy's
point of view rather than Mike's. To her it seems that Mike, symbolised
by an erection, pops up out of nowhere, scares off Daddy Bastard and then
withers away and disappears, mysteriously helped by Mummy. Or maybe the
erection is just Mike's masculinity and after that goes he's a little
girl from then on. I tried to make the ambiguity of Mike/Amy's situation
a main theme of the second and third stories. Is Amy now really Mike who
replaced the real Amy but only occasionally, vaguely remembers himself?
Or was Mike's possession only temporary? Did he take over for a little
while, long enough to see off Daddy, and then fade away, allowing the
real Amy to come back, occasionally haunted by whatever vague feelings
and thoughts remain from Mike? I don't think any particular story about
what exactly can have happened can really make sense, even if you believe
in a soul or anything like that. But I hoped to create an interesting
ambiguity about who Amy really is.
I think the introduction of Amy's stepdad doesn't really work. I think
that bit really shows up a conflict in my feelings about Amy and her
story. On the one hand I wanted to give her a good experience with a
father figure to contrast with the example of her real dad (and give her
mother a nice man to be with as well). But on the other hand I couldn't
help feeling, again, that I really wanted it to be just Amy and her
mother together, with no-one else in the way. So, as a sort of
compromise I gave Amy a new dad, and then took him away again. It seems
strange to me now, that I really do like Amy, and yet I've made all these
awful things happen to her! It seems too extreme, now. It's a good
thing she's got Greg to look after her.
It was only after I finished "Who Am I?" that I realised that Amy Gardner
shared her name with a character from "The West Wing". But I don't think
that's a problem and I'm sure Amy is really happy to have an intelligent,
sexy, politically active woman as a namesake.
"Flowers" was by far the hardest of the stories to write. I struggled
with it and it never really flowed, as the other two had. Perhaps it
didn't really need to be written. But a comment in one of the reviews
for "Who Am I" made me want to give Amy a happy ending and I felt I could
still develop more variations on the theme.
Because "I'm Gonna, I'm Gonna" and "Who Am I?" were written from the
first-person points of view of Mike and Amy respectively I decided to
write "Flowers" in the third person, though still focused on thoughts and
feelings. I had wanted to open it up to some of the other characters.
But, like "Who Am I", this story also shrank in the telling and
eventually I focused back in on Amy again, although we hear a little bit
from Greg as well. Nonetheless, even though the story is mostly just yet
more about Amy, I think the third-person style does add something. I
don't quite understand how, but it seemed to help me develop Amy's
character a bit more fully. I think she feels more like an actual person
here than she did even in "Who Am I?" Maybe this is because I can more
objectively describe how she relates to people around her. I'm pleased
with the way I developed her relationships with Greg and with her
stepdad.
Mike is obviously still around, in some sense. But he's such an empty
character that he seems almost totally submerged. Amy has a vague
feeling there's more than one of her, but she can't identify anything
that feels like it's part of someone else. She obviously has a little
more insight into herself than in the last story, but she doesn't really
grasp, except possibly right at the end, that Mike isn't so much a
separate person, as an aspect of herself. Only very occasionally can
Mike come out as something like himself. When Amy is particularly drunk
he's ready to pop up, repelled by Amy's boyfriend, but excited by her
image in the mirror. And Amy gets a confused, gender-reversed version of
his thoughts. She thinks she's yearning for him even as he, impossibly,
yearns for her. And of course this is part of the gender transformation
fantasy, the idea that you could look in the mirror and be turned on by
what you see there.
What I struggled with most in this story was the climactic line, the one
about Amy not being sure who the flowers are really for. I worry that
it's not really clear what I'm trying to get at. What I wanted was to
finish with the ambiguity of identity which has been part of all three
stories. There were two people and then there was one. That seems clear
enough. But what can be said about the person who remains is not at all
clear and Amy, at the end, is suddenly not sure who she is and who really
died. But hopefully she can come to feel it doesn't really matter.
There is a sense in which both Mike and Amy of the first story are long
gone. Surely for all of us our four-year-old self is dead to our twenty-
four-year-old self and can't really be recovered except in whatever
contribution she or he has made to our adult personalities. And Amy is
no different. Amy, like all of us, is made up of all the things she has
done and that have happened to her and all she can do is not worry too
much about metaphysics, but try to find some contentment however she can.
I think she can succeed. There is a hint that Amy and Greg's
relationship is by no means perfect, but if they work at it I think they
can both be happy and I really hope they manage.