Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

All of the empty vodka bottles are in my sightline, dropped on the floor when they were finished. I ought to feel ashamed that someone will find the place in this state, but I feel nothing. Eventually my body will be removed and industrial cleaners will be dispatched, I suppose. The flat will be re-let. I hope the new tenants will be happy here, leave some traces of love in the walls and the floors and the gaps around the windows for the next inhabitants. I have left nothing. I was never here.

I don’t know how long I have been lying like this. I don’t recall how I ended up on the floor of the kitchen, or why I am naked. I reach for the bottle beside me, anxious about how much remains, instantly relieved at its heaviness. This is the last one, however. When this bottle is done, I have two choices: get off this floor, get dressed and go and buy more; or kill myself. Actually, either way, I’m going to kill myself. It’s simply a case of how much vodka I drink before I do it. I take another big mouthful and wait for the pain to be released.

When I wake up again, I am in the same place. Ten minutes have passed, or ten hours – I have no idea. I move into a foetal position. If I can’t be a corpse, then I wish that I was a baby, curled up in some other woman’s womb, pure and longed for. I move slightly, turn my face towards the floor and vomit. It is, I notice, clear and streaked yellowish-green – alcohol and bile. I haven’t eaten for some time.

There are so many liquids and substances inside me, and I try to list them all as I lie here. There is earwax. The yellow pus that festers inside spots. Blood, mucus, urine, faeces, chyme, bile, saliva, tears. I am a butcher’s shop window of organs, large and small, pink, grey, red. All of this jumbled inside bones, encased in skin, then covered with fine hair. The skin bag is flawed, speckled with moles, freckles, little broken veins. And scars, of course. I think of a pathologist examining this carcass, noting every detail, weighing each organ. Meat inspection. Fail.

It is incomprehensible to me now that I could ever have thought that anyone would love this ambulant bag of blood and bones. Beyond understanding. I think of that night – when was it, three days ago, four? – and reach for the vodka bottle. I retch again, remembering.

The day had not augured well from the start. Polly the plant had died that morning. I’m fully aware of how ridiculous that sounds. That plant, though, was the only living link with my childhood, the only constant between life before and after the fire, the only thing, apart from me, that had survived. I’d thought it was indestructible, assumed it would just go on and on, leaves falling off, new ones growing to replace them. I’d neglected my duties these last few weeks, too busy with hospitals and funerals and Facebook to water her regularly. Yet another living thing that I’d failed to look after. I wasn’t fit to care for anyone, anything. Too numb to cry, I dropped the plant into the bin, pot, soil and all, and saw that, throughout all these years, it had been clinging on to life only by the slenderest, frailest of roots.

Life was so very precarious. I already knew that, of course. No one knew it better than me. I know, I know how ridiculous this is, how pathetic, but on some days, the very darkest days, knowing that the plant would die if I didn’t water it was the only thing that forced me up out of bed.

Still, later that day, I’d come home from work, put the rubbish out, dressed up, made myself go out to the concert. I went alone. When I met the musician, I needed it to be just me and him, no distractions, no complications. I needed to make something happen, anything. I couldn’t keep passing through life, over it, under it, around it. I couldn’t go on haunting the world like a wraith. And things did happen that night. The first thing was the realization that the musician simply didn’t know I was there. Why on earth had I ever thought that he would? Stupidity, self-delusion, a feeble connection to reality? Take your pick.