Furniture

by Emilia Ong.

He liked to show me things and he liked me because I behaved like I liked to be shown things. Because I behaved like I liked to be shown things he showed me more things, he showed me the town and he showed me the coast and he showed me the cycle route worth cycling. And then he told me about the tides and the wind and I said Ugh the wind and he said That’s how it is and I said: Yeah. Later on he showed me his house and he showed me what he’d done to his house and while he was showing me his house he told me how he’d acquired the house and how he’d worked on it and how in working on it he’d saved it, yes he’d saved his house, did he want to do the same to me. I don’t mean to give the impression that this was a thought I had at the time, it was not a thought I had at the time and in fact it did not occur to me until I started wanting to smash things after seeing him. In his house there were many things to show me, that was the way. By the way that was always the way. So he’d had a life, of course he had: here were the things to prove it. He told me about that life and about its sorrows, for in that life he’d had sorrows, of course he had. He said that the sorrows had been caused by terrible personages and I said Oh no, terrible personages! And I said I felt sad to think about him with all those terrible personages and I said that nobody should ever have to suffer terrible personages, and he told me more about them. There’d been the wife who didn’t listen and the father who did who knows what, it must have been bad, he couldn’t wear the colour brown because his father liked brown, that was how bad it was. Hmm yeah me too, I said, I didn’t like blue because my father liked blue, and for a while we sat there and thought about fathers. After thinking about fathers he showed me his Creative Output, he had a lot of Creative Output, the Creative Output spilled from boxes and hung on hooks and racks and even from a lone decapitated mannequin. He took the Creative Output out of the boxes and off the racks just to show me. Wow, I said. And I said Wow. Which must have sealed the deal because after that he really did want to see more of me.

And when he saw more of you because of course he did see more of you—after all you are not the sort of person to say no, not the type to withhold your person, no, you are always proffering your person, in fact proffering your person could be said to be your MO, your USP, though later you will say it is your Achilles Heel, your fatal flaw, but what to do, there is nothing you can do about the way you’ve been coded—he started to bring you things, and he started to leave you things, and he’d leave the things in your house and you’d let him leave them. Letting him leave the things was also a part of the proffering of your person. But when eventually he departed there you would then find yourself, standing in the middle of the room, in the middle of the suddenly small room, and your arms would tingle and your palms would ache, and your heart would thump and your throat would feel, well, all sort of twisted. And then all you could think about was smashing furniture. Really, there is a lot that I have not told you.

Much later we sat on a low wall and looked out at the sea. It looked back impassively. You’re not a very joyful person are you, he said, I didn’t say anything, he said that the more life went on he was coming to think that joy was everything, all that mattered, every day he made sure to find moments of joy, he took care to identify them, he waited for me to say something, after a pause I said What gives you joy, for god’s sake, why was I always giving gifts to him. He told me it could be small things or big things and made a point of talking about the small things, there was pride in his voice as he did so, there was triumph, he was a subtle and sensitive person, that was what he wanted me to know. Yes what he wanted me to know was that I was not a joyful person and that this was because my mind was crude and clumsy compared to his, the small things fell through the hands of my mind as if I had only stumps at the ends of its arms not fingers. I wondered then whether he was going to tell me to use the Headspace app, he was always telling me to use the fucking Headspace app, what he loved most about the app was being able to tell people he used it. And connection, he said then, yes he tossed in that little bomb, there was joy to be found in connection. Connecting with people was so important, he said, it was transformative, he said, these days he made sure to put more effort into connecting with people, it was fantastic to connect with people! I had to agree, how could you not agree, I agreed. Joy, he interrupted, that’s what matters, that’s all that matters, he was repeating himself, a tight little ball rose up in my throat and lodged there. I said that I was not not joyful, that I was not without joy and that I was not averse to it, I had joy and I was not devoid of joy. He didn’t ask what gave me joy though, the conversation moved on, he started talking about experiences. It was important to have experiences, he said, every day he had experiences, I needed to leave the house more often. My problem, he said, looking at me, was that I’d always been so limp, I moved limply through life, the ball became an urchin with spikes on. I said that I had no interest in having experiences, what I meant was that I was tired of certain types of experiences having me. He did not look put out, he looked like this was entirely what he’d expected me to say, he never gave me any gifts at all. I have no interest in experiences, I said again, more loudly, I paused for a beat and then said that everything was too fast, life was too fast, time was too fast, things were always racing along and I never had a clue what had happened! That was why I didn’t want experiences, I said, they didn’t give me joy, they stressed me out, the only thing that gave me joy was understanding what had happened, parsing it, doing this was exhausting, I was always playing catch-up! I grew excited, I’d finally put a finger on the point of my life or maybe on its problem. His eyes went blank and he went back to talking about small things, Tell me, he said, some of the small things you appreciated today. He reeled off a long list of the things he had appreciated, of course they were all subtle and slight things, he was such a sensitive person. The sea was thrashing about in front of us now, my hair was like an octopus, I stood up, he remained sitting, I sat down again. Some time passed.

You go about like you think you’re capable of transcending the physical plane, he said then. Yes, that’s what he said, and he looked me in the eyes, and I closed them, he always did end up giving me something to think about, that was how he kept me locked in.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Emilia Ong is a British-Chinese Malaysian writer living in Margate. Scholarship recipient at the Faber Academy, she has published work in Ambit Magazine, Hoax, and Litro. In 2021 her current novel-in-progress was shortlisted for the Morley Prize, and in 2022 she was commended for the Laura Kinsella Prize. She is currently working on her first novel.