this is her. say hi.

So to cut a long story short, when her mother checked into rehab, she checked out of her mother. It all happened so quick, she never thought to offer an explanation; only that there seemed to her to be some ignoble mistake in alteration. She'd grown accustomed to her mother - actually liked the fact that she sat in her Max Mara summer dress, nails hair and eyes done, smoking out on the lawn, the ice of her drink melting.

She cried on the flight - that's when it started - strange bodily reactions she couldn't grasp. On the pull-out tray in front of her, her fingers tapped their way through the first book of the well tempered klavier, the stewardess thought her neurotic. - can i get you a drink dear? - no thanks, just a cup full of ice will be fine. and carried on with the D major fugue.

at the beach in santa monica, she couldn't resist writing on the sand in huge letters: FU&^ YOU, which made a little girl cry. She'd used black nail polish on her fingers that morning, and felt beyond the reaches of etiquette. her apartment was a mess before she even got to it, but decided (that same yearning for the pristine states of things) to keep it as it was; just as she never threw out the picture of her dad in her cot, singing her songs, with his hairy legs sticking out all over the place. she'd brought the picture with her, used a magnet to put it up on her refrigerator, the white of which had grown yellow-tinged, like smoker's teeth. at night, not knowing anyone, she'd taken to drinking herself past the first three vestibules of loneliness and she'd practise being her mother by wearing summer dresses, and stumbling barefoot throughout the house calling her father's name ALLEN! AL-EN, fu^&ing Allen where'd you go? while giggling between shouts so that her downstairs neighbours would later swear that a nice couple lived upstairs.

after she'd spent enough lunchtimes sitting looking lost in the public library, one day she walked to the informationd desk, where a homosexual African-American man asked her why do you think you'd make a good library assistant? to which she smiled and answered fu&^ that, but i'll paint your nails a new color every week, deal? to which his stern (heavily oppressed) face cracked a well-meant smile, honey, it's clear to me you're the right lady for this job. After which she took her lunches out on the grass with a hippie, a homeless drunk, a homeless non-drunk, and an estranged husband who had committed to memory the first 50 Shakespeare sonnets.

three months in, still drinking herself to sleep, she. in a fit of (unexpected) rage, ripped a silver dress and hurled a black heeled shoe across the room screaming at the top of her lungs: i love you i love you i love you and proceeded to empty an ashtray, wash the dishes, vacuum the floor, and put away an army of clothes back into drawers and wardrobes and laundry baskets entirely in the nude, the whole time hoping whatever djinns had taken over her would find it easier to escape her that way (like she'd opened the window for the flies to get out).

once, in the street, despite the black rings of her eyes, her newly shortened hair-length, and her staring conspicuously in the other direction, a too-perfect-for-life blonde girl called after her, i thought it was you!, gosh, i haven't seen you since... since... the New York eisteford, you played the Busoni transcription of the A minor prelude and fuge right?
- hmugh. ___yah.
- i'll never forget it, it was... it was... soo good! what are you working on now?
- now?
- yeah, more Bach i bet right? you're like... Glen Gould or something!
- i'm not working on anything.
- what are you doing?
- forgetting.
- what?
- what. what. ever. forget this, i'm outta here.
- hey -

and when she was far enough that Bridget (that little bitch) couldn't see, her body began leaking again for reasons she couldn't understand, but she fantasized that the tears were a perfect rythmic representation of the opening prelude's chromatic descending subject, and then after buying a 50 cent softfrink from the 99cent store she went out back tipped over a shopping trolley and kicked it for 5 minutes straight, threw the drink at it, kicked the can away (it's black puke.blood foaming all over the place) and walked away huffing and puffing in a mad rush to get home, get drunk, get naked, and clean out her oven.

finally, one day, someone came into the library humming the rondo of Beethoven's Tempest sonata, which made her go to the bathroom (preempting any funny surpises), wait to see if she'd cry, then, coast-being-clear, walked back out, walked straight up the man, and said:

i'm the best pianist you've ever met. if you find me a piano, i'd be your friend forever and i'd play for you whenever you asked.

to which he replied:

i'm a terrible pianist. but if i had a piano, i'd be a better person.

when she went home that night, she wondered why she wasn't in love. she got drunk, picked up the phone, rang her mother's house (which was vacant, on account of her mother being in a plush spa-retreat somewhere getting sober) and shouted at the answering machine:

i. fu&^ (love) you! i. fu&^ (love) you! i. fu&^ (love) you!

only that by morning she'd forgotten having done it, and because her sister had already called that night and left a 25 minute (equally) drunken message about her own wedding preperations, no one ever heard the rhythmic syncopations of her passionate outburst.