A Novel Pregnant with Meaning
To: lit400-s1@*****.ac.ukCc: V.Abendstern@*****.ac.ukSubject: 3PM Discussion Group CANCELLED!!!Kellie retched towards the pail beside her bed. Did this email even need a body? “See subject.” Or simply, “Subject.” Today’s date wasn’t specified though… What about a body saying: “See everyone next week!” Sans the exclamation point.
Kellie retched again. As she rolled back over to her blanket, a different email drafted itself on her ceiling.
To: dining@*****.ac.ukSubject: Wednesday's Mussel RavioliThe cancellations were becoming too frequent, Doctor Abendstern warned last week. At least this morning the pattern made itself crystal clear: shellfish sensitivity. Clam pies from an off-campus establishment incapacitated her last time. Would it be unfair to complain about last night’s dodgy cafeteria fare if her own temperamental stomach bore some blame? Certainly not if she learned of any other students throwing up. The thought of vom compelled her to lean over the side of her bed again, this time too far. Kellie fell, hitting her face on the rubbish bin, which spilled its contents into her hair.
Shampooing twice, conditioning twice, the smell of sick faded in the shower vapor. Rinsing brought the realization that the cancellation email she just sent to her discussion group may not of been totally required.
Most mornings, the empty playground between Kellie’s flat and campus blurred into the landscape of laundromats and greengrocers. She usually left too early to hear the howling monkey-bars or the chattering prams. The nausea that had called in sick to her library job today had also receded with a dose of breakfast muffin. She would make use of the day’s remainder to work on her research, though not in the library. Kellie hotly anticipated the prying questions her supervisor would toss her way on her abdominal health. Today, Kellie would eschew the 9th floor library desk reserved in her name. Instead, she took her books to the engineering building, where no one ever knew her. A sign on the door of an empty lecture hall listed a 3:00 PM lecture, and she would be gone by then.
Her thesis research concerned the extent to which the first world war’s influence could be discerned in the themes of modernist British literature. No title was decided yet, but her monograph would explore through literature the consequences of Britain’s decision to take up arms against neighbors who had been economic partners only weeks before the war’s outbreak. Surely, the shadow of that hasty betrayal of peace could be caught peeping through the portholes in the genre of science fiction.
Open now at her folding desk was A Voyage to Arcturus, the novel David Lindsay wrote less than two years out from the Armistice of Compiègne. As presented on the fictional planet of Tormance, the Other, in this novel, appeared thoroughly alien in mind and in body, but thoroughly comprehensible, even sympathetic, in dialogue. In each of this novel’s episodes, the protagonist would come fully to understand the position of the character with whom he conversed, yet still he slaughtered each of these alien characters, one by one. Kellie’s contention was that the Scottish author David Lindsay recorded through speculative fiction the comportment of the Scottish infantryman toward the German, the Austro-Hungarian, and the Ottoman— fellow Europeans with their own unique cultures, who, nevertheless demanded bodily destruction with grenades— and not for any profound explicability, nor for any fault of their own, only for their Otherness.
What had been David Lindsay’s occupation before the war? Had he served as a soldier, or worked otherwise to further Britain’s war effort? Had he lost any close relatives in the fighting? The answers to these questions could lend support to a reading of A Voyage to Arcturus as an anti-war allegory.
Puppies. Rather than seek immediate answers to these questions on the life of the author, Kellie observed a Pomodoro-technique respite from these mysteries by soothing herself with puppy pictures, courtesy of a Google Image search. Five minutes of pacifying her restless academic determination with these baby beagle photos would reset her focus for a refreshed return to the biographical secondary source material on Mr. Lindsay. Though today, not even a white stripe down the center of the newborn dog’s snout on her screen could ease her. Instead, it brought back memories of pitiful looks exchanged with the silent animals in a pet store window near her childhood flat. Her mother never allowed the family to take on pet ownership. Though Kellie had long accepted this decision, remembering the look of that poor doggie in the window made her furious now. The apartment complex where Kellie lived at present also forbade pets, but when her lease finished, she would move someplace they were permitted. Staring at these photos of baby dogs barely old enough to open their furry eyes made her upset, nearly to the point of tears. She would have a dog, yes, and it was her mother’s fault that she wanted a pet this hard. It was unfair of her to withhold that perfectly normal childhood experience. Kellie understood how warped was the torment her mother’s negligence had transmitted down to her. She would get a puppy just to prove to her mother how responsible she was. To prove her mother unreasonable.
“I don’t understand something about Peter Walsh.” One of the undergraduates from the cancelled discussion group stood before Kellie in this otherwise empty engineering-building lecture hall. The week’s assigned text for Professor Abendstern’s class on literary stream of consciousness had been the Virginia Woolf novel Mrs. Dalloway.
“Peter tells Clarissa he’s fallen in love with the woman he plans to marry. But he’s not really telling this love story for the honor his supposed fiancée.”
“Anthony.” Kellie recognized the only freshman in her discussion group of upperclassmen and grad students.
“He speaks about this other woman, whom he avers he met in India, in order to impress Clarissa. I don’t think this woman really exists. Peter is in love, yes, but with Clarissa. He’s holding onto his hope that they might still somehow be together. Peter lies about being in love with another woman to Clarissa’s face to make Clarissa jealous. Or maybe he tells this lie so that she will consider him friend enough safely to open up. This Daisy, this woman of India— she has no depth or reality. She’s totally made-up by Peter, an Indian fairy tale.”
So, not every student was skipping the reading assignments. Kellie blinked away her preoccupations from a moment ago.
“I like to wait on Thursdays in this lecture hall until your discussion group starts, since it’s so close to the English building.”
Anthony might almost have reached Kellie’s height if not for his posture. He only ever wore knit sweaters and tattered formal slacks, clashing with the white baseball socks under his fuzzy fuchsia mule slippers.
“I don’t know if you saw my email…” Kellie began.
“Since there’s no discussion group today, I thought I might share with you my thoughts in person.”
Kellie suppressed a wee retching fit as Anthony’s unwashed body suffused the air around them both.
“It’s an interesting theory, but why didn’t you bring this up in the class forum,” Kellie asked, avoiding Anthony’s stare.
“Do you think it’s valid?” he persisted. “Or am I wrong to thing Daisy is imaginary?”
“It’s an open question, but wouldn’t you benefit from interpretations by the rest of the class?”
“I really respect your opinion though; Professor Abendstern’s lectures tend to fly over my head. Everything’s more clear when I hear your explanations in discussion group.”
Kellie’s phone buzzed then.
“If Professor Abendstern said anything unclear,” Kellie interrupted, “I would encourage you to bring it up during her office hours. I hope you’ll pardon me, I have to take this call— hullo?” Kellie slammed shut her laptop and swept her annotated edition of A Voyage to Arcturus into her tote.
“But I had another question about how the shell-shock subplot fits in with the rest of the story…” Anthony called after Kellie as she trotted out the lecture hall’s rear door.
The phone call was an invitation to a sandwich café, which Kellie gladly accepted.
“My sister sent me photos of her daughter: six months old now,” Sage said, sitting across from Kellie and April. Sage held up her phone so both of her two former roommates could see it.
“What does your sister’s husband do?” April asked.
“I really can’t say. He goes to construction sites, but he doesn’t actually do any of the labor.”
“He’s probably a contractor,” said Kellie, taking Sage’s phone to get a better look at the baby.
“Sounds about right,” Sage smiled.
“Too much cuteness,” Kellie said, handing the phone back. “What age do they begin to walk?”
“Around ten months, usually” April said.
Kellie squirmed in her seat. A bra wire pinched her. “I need to shop for a new bra tomorrow,” she mentioned. “Would either of you come with me to the mall?”
“I can’t, I’m afraid,” April said. “Dennis wants me to watch some play with him at the theatre.”
“I’ll go with you, Kellie,” Sage said. “What time can we meet?”
“One o’clock work for you?”
“Oh, definitely!”
“Kellie,” said April, “Do you want the rest of my cheese sandwich? I’m less hungry than I fancied.” Kellie looked down at her own empty plate.
“I’m famished, thanks.” April nudged her plate to Kellie, who took a bite.
“There’s something else,” April said. “I think Dennis might propose soon.”
“Really?” responded Sage. Kellie coughed.
“His sister texted me that Dennis asked for jewelry shopping advice.”
“Jewelry?” Kellie asked.
“She said he asked specifically about rings. Like engagement rings.”
“Did he say engagement ring?”
“No he didn’t say ‘engagement ring,’ he asked about ‘stores that sell jewelry, like rings.’ Those were his exact words, she told me.”
“Wasn’t he going to propose last year?” said Kellie.
“In the last month, he’s cashed out one third of his brokerage account. I’m told that’s a fact.”
The moon loomed empty that night, but Kellie lay awake in her bed. April knew luck. Dennis worked in real estate. He had broad shoulders, but he was too hairy. His chest and arms had more body hair than was normal for men his age. Kellie wondered what so much hair felt like on a man. Irritating and scratchy, most likely.
She left her bed and sat at her desk, looking through a pair of history books about Scotland’s involvement in World War One. Her desk was too messy to permit thorough concentration. She crumpled some wrappers and tossed an empty cup that had accumulated about her home workspace. The smell of the morning still lingered in her rubbish bin and the surrounding carpet. Dirty, dirty. She replaced the liner. Gaining momentum for further cleaning, she wiped down her bathroom sink as well. As she picked up loose laundry from the floor, an awful realization struck her. Kellie looked down at her own body, which shook with a single convulsion. She crumpled into a ball in her chair and clutched her shoulders and bit down on her lip. Kellie wailed.
