Shared Values

by Natalya Edwards

I chose to come back to myself on Thursdays because who the hell would choose to live their life only in the first half of the week? All that expectation, Monday morning dread, realising you’ve got a whole week ahead of you of zero lie-ins and a to-do list as long as your arm. I didn’t think they’d be able to find anyone willing, let alone desiring, to live their life that way. But then they found the Other. For the Other, Mondays filled her with optimism; it was the weekend that filled the Other with dread.

Every Thursday Lunchtime we have our debrief. I slink down from the bedroom and curl myself up on the living room sofa. My skin is already beginning to harden. It’s painless. I run my fingers across my arms and the sensation is like stroking a callus.

The Other is cooking lunch. Neither of us is a particularly great cook. She boils pasta, stirs in some pesto, cheese and pasta water and sits down to eat. Halfway through eating, she hands the bowl to me. Every week I reach to take it thinking the bowl will slip out of my hands and smash onto the floor. Each week, I am surprised by its warmth and the sudden hunger that overcomes me. The hunger that comes with every other emotion. The painkiller of my half-existence wears away. I don’t notice it immediately, but then I feel the weight of everything that was previously lifted. Before I was a straight line, observing and objective, dull and lifeless – now I am throbbing in all the ways I forgot I used to.

Did we start our period?

The Other nods. We’re on Day 3.

She got the worst of it. Thank god.

The Other is fading now so she quickly briefs me in. Four deadlines by EOD Friday. You need to email several people. I’ve booked us in for a hair appointment at the end of the month. The bedsheets need changing, I’ve washed the spare ones. Your Dad called.

My Dad? My Dad never calls.

The Other doesn’t say anything but she clearly has something she needs to say.

Go on.

He asked for you to call him back. Not me. He was adamant.

I can hear him saying exactly what she said to her. We don’t share memories, but I am familiar with my Dad’s tone and viewpoint on most subjects.

I see. Thanks.

About a minute later, the Other eases into being. Well, mostly. If you walked into the room right now you wouldn’t notice her, but if you knew, if you were looking for her, if you stared at the right spot on the sofa you would see the edges of her person and then two glassy eyes with dilated pupils staring back at you behind a translucent veil.

After about five minutes, when I’ve finished our lunch, she slinks off. We both go to bed once we are no longer occupying. She goes to rest until Monday morning when she’ll be refreshed and able to occupy once again.

I have about twenty minutes left of my lunchtime. I take it slowly. It takes a while to get used to having senses once again. The sensation of the hardwood floors against my feet, the white noise in the room. I do the dishes and let the tap run very lightly before I put it on full blast. Water makes such a harsh sound, but I begin to enjoy it after a while.

I think about when best to call my Dad for the rest of the day. Maybe later in the week would be best or in the evening, when he’s probably feeling a bit looser after dinner and a beer. I was hesitant to even tell him when I was signing up for this lifestyle change but the doctors insisted. They felt it was important to let all your close family and friends know.

***

I decide to call him that evening after eight.

“I knew straight away it wasn’t you. She has a lisp.”

I roll my eyes. The Other doesn’t have a lisp. Well, I don’t think she does.

“How have you been?”

He tells me about how he’d been up and down the vets with the cat. How he hates his job and can’t wait to retire next year. He’s booked a holiday to Mexico next month.

“Mexico? By yourself?”

“Yeah. Why not? I’ve never been abroad by myself that wasn’t for work.”

Trying to move the conversation away from myself and the other only works for a few minutes – suddenly he’s asking questions about us again.

“I just don’t know how you do it. Let someone else fiddle about in your body.” He scoffs down the line. “What does she get up to that first half of the week? Surely there’s some drug you could have taken instead.”

“I tried.” I did. I tried everything.

“Just a bit fucking weird if you ask me, letting someone else knock about in there.”

“I mean that’s not exactly how it works…”

Dad continues. He’s set himself off now. I put the phone on speaker, turn down the volume, and start to tidy my bedroom. There’s always a pile of clothes that stack up against my chair. I fold them up and wait for him to finish. I’ve heard everything he’s said before. Not just from him. From everyone.

Eventually, the phone conversation ends without much solution. I’ve made my bed, and I’ve been sleeping in it half the week for the past six months without much issue. In fact, it’s working really well. This time away from the creaks of my body and its constant throbbing has served me well. I’m more present when I am here – more productive. The Other is too. In giving away half my life I have gained half of it back. But Dad won’t understand this. It’s a decision he’s never had to make.

I carry on tidying the room. It’s not the most organised of bedrooms. I sit and untangle my jewellery, hanging them up nicely on each hook on my jewellery holder. I roll up all my trousers into neat little sausages and line them up inside my drawers.

Dad had some fair points about the Other. I don’t know absolutely everything she gets to do during her side of our week. Both of us focus on the highlights, the stuff the Other needs to know in order to continue. When I think about it too closely I begin to feel a little funny. This body has done things I cannot recall. I think about the Other going about her day. All the things she could have touched or interacted with.

I feel myself begin to panic and sit down on the bed. I close my eyes and breathe a little. I remember the positives of this lifestyle. I don’t have to live my Mondays anymore, the Other took them on, she took them on for me, but I don’t know what she does with them, and maybe that’s fine, that’s the price I paid for not living my Mondays. Maybe it would feel easier if I knew it wasn’t my body she was living them through. My body has lived every Monday, and continues to, I just have no idea what happens to it.

Bit fucking weird if you ask me.

Bit fucking weird if you ask-

I press my feet against the floor to ground myself but I hit a little too harshly and smash my heel against something wooden underneath the bed. My foot stings in pain. I pull it towards my stomach to comfort it, my hands stroking and holding it carefully.

As the pain subsides I push myself onto the floor to work out what it was I hit. I pull out an intricately carved wooden box.

I got it from this vintage fair we went to. The price said £25 underneath but when I asked the seller said “for you £10” and how could I say no. I loved the strange little locks around it, the red velvet inside. They don’t make anything like that anymore, not for that price.

I don’t know how to open this thing, but my body does. Muscle memory. My hands pop the locks, they know to carefully ease the top by wiggling it slightly so the wood releases smoothly.

Inside are photographs, stuffed tightly, they don’t quite fit and each one has bent in the corners. I pull them out and see underneath is a notebook. I’m not sure why, but I open the notebook first.

The handwriting is mine and fills every page, corner to corner, with barely any space for the words to breathe. The only white space is the dash after the heading which details the date and the day.

Monday – I don’t know what to do with myself; it always feels like this at the beginning of a week. So much time and yet none at all.

Tuesday – Saw this really fucking sad film, like so sad. Just sad for sad’s sake I think. It was like the director just wanted to make people cry and say: “ha! I’ve elicited an emotional reaction out of you because you cried!”. Well, I did, congrats dude, mainly because I’m a human being and grief is sad not because you had anything really meaningful to say about it. Gave it three stars.

Thursday – Feeling aimless today. Sucks ass.

Wednesday – I feel like I shouldn’t have agreed to this lifestyle. What is a Friday? I don’t know, I never see it. Maybe I’d like it more in this body.

Thursday – Tired. Glad to go away soon. Sooooooo achy and tired.

I skip forward a few weeks and it is similar. Ebbs and flows of happiness and sadness, enjoying this life and not, she talks about it often, I skip on further.

Wednesday – God. The sex! It’s so good. It’s redicu-

I slam the notebook shut. I’ve gone too far. This is invasive, but also not really. This means my body has had sex recently. In a way, I’ve had sex recently. I was touched by another person, and I enjoyed it, my body enjoyed it and I had absolutely no idea.

I reach over to the photographs, they are face down, but I turn them over. They’re taken on film, you can tell. Some are blurry, some off-centre, the imperfect nature of a temperamental cheap film camera. There are photos of trees, nature, and candids of people I don’t recognise and I don’t think the Other knows. It’s like she went on a walk and just took these. I skim through. There is one of a man, taken indoors, sitting on a sofa looking sheepishly at the camera. I don’t know him, but I do. Muscle memory.

***

I’m waiting on the doorstep for a tediously long time before he answers. When he opens he welcomes me in like he knows me because he does, and immediately I feel at ease. I don’t have to introduce him to myself in the way you would do on a first date. That effort has been done for me.

“I’ve made some soup if you’d like any?”

I nod. “Sure.”

He tells me it’s lasagne soup, and I look at him blankly before asking him to explain what that is. Apparently, it’s essentially a bolognese sauce but with cracked pieces of thin lasagne sheets stirred in. He hasn’t done the lasagne sheets yet and asks if I’d like to put in a few. I snap one and small shards of pasta go flying across the room. I apologise profusely and fall to the floor picking them all up, even the tiniest flakes.

The man laughs and falls to his knees a few moments later with a dustpan in hand. As he picks up the pieces he kisses my forehead and jokingly tells me I’m an idiot. I freeze and try my best not to give a strange reaction. For him, this is a normal interaction with the version of me he knows, an understood level of intimacy. Perhaps they’re closer than I thought. Perhaps she’s told him about me, about our lifestyle. But he hasn’t mentioned any of it, he hasn’t given any indication that he knows I’m not her, or that I even exist. Then again, I’ve only been here about twenty minutes.

I met him online. He works for a tech company. Nice guy. He likes the girlfriend experience though. We meet a few times a month and hang out and it’s as though we’re in love, but we’re not. He likes his alone time, goes climbing on the weekends, and has a few friends but I guess he misses the intimacy of knowing another person on that level. So, we pretend to have it for a bit, and it’s fun; it works. To be honest, I really like him. We get along, he’s attentive – when he wants to be — and the sex is so bloody good.

When we’re in the middle of eating I realise this man is quite attractive. He’s wedging his hunk of fresh bread slathered in butter into his soup. He gets a blob of the sauce on his chin and doesn’t notice. He looks pretty stupid. That’s when I see him as a person. I point out the mess he’s made and he takes a look in the camera of my phone and laughs rather than hiding away in shame. I see his character flesh out around the corners from the Other’s description. I understand why the Other spends time with him. This is fun. He is fun.

Afterwards, we watch a film. It is foreign. His Dad is Japanese so raised him on a lot of Japanese comedy. I tell him how I’ve only seen Takeshi’s Castle and he explains to me how the attitude towards being on reality TV shows there is different. Over there you do things for the fun of it. Takeshi’s Castle never needed to have a monetary prize. People go on just for the experience.

The film is a satire of Kung Fu and very heavy in slapstick. I enjoy it, surprisingly. I’m not really into absurd silly sort of humour, generally preferring dry, sarky comments but maybe that’s just what I’m more used to seeing – I would never have picked it if he hadn’t pointed it out.

It makes me realise how much of a bubble I’ve been in. My half of the week is very much just a fight to get through it. I sometimes see friends, if I can manage, but I am so tired and drained afterwards that I can never find myself mustering enough strength to organise the plans half of the time. This in comparison is exciting, and new, and fresh. My pain is still there; it’s always there, but this is distracting.

I find myself engaged, asking him lots of questions, smiling when he laughs. I can’t tell what I am enjoying more, the film or watching him watch it.

At some point he begins holding my hand, and then at a later point, I lean my head against his shoulder. Me and the Other never discussed boundaries. I think both of us consciously decided to not bring it up. I don’t believe she wouldn’t have thought about it. Maybe I should have brought it up, I don’t want to hurt her, but I’m also not convinced this will really hurt.

The man notices me looking at him and turns his head. We watch each other. I’m thinking about who he is, what they act like together, whether he can tell I am not quite her, are their conversations similar, do they talk in similar ways, about similar things, could he not tell us apart because we are so fundamentally alike or because we represent the same thing. Someone he can desire, introduce new concepts to, and showcase his knowledge and his care. Feel meaningful. Good.

The man doesn’t see any of this in my look. He just begins to lean in.

***

Sunday evening I make her favourite. Pie and Mash. With Parsley Sauce. I bought the packet specially and spent a lifetime stirring the milk in the pan until it thickened. I don’t even begin eating, simply wait for her to reappear on the other side of the table and then pass it across.

She looks down at the untouched bowl and then winces. When her eyes look back at mine I immediately wish I could take it all back, but we both know it wouldn’t change anything.

He didn’t notice.

That we were different? I nod.

She shakes her head. Fuck. She stabs the knife into her pie, cuts herself a slice and stuffs it into her mouth. He knew as well, she says with her mouth full.

I don’t know what to say, I let her carry on eating.

You didn’t fuck him, did you?

My mouth twitches. Her mouth turns stern.

Don’t pity me.

No. Not really.

We started, and I was enjoying it, really enjoying it. I hadn’t been touched by someone else in so long – I wouldn’t even know how to measure the time apart without consulting a calendar. But then it progressed and I couldn’t get the Other off my mind. She was there. Doing this with him. Touching him where I was now, kissing his chest, perhaps in a lighter, more careful, more desirable way. That’s when I had to pull away. He looked up at me confused as I quickly re-found my clothes that had been strewn across the room. He asked me if I was alright, to talk to him, telling me to come back. Over and over. He wouldn’t stop saying words.

The Other is pissed. She rolls her eyes and looks down at the bowl, refusing to even make eyes with me. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter anyway.

When I asked the doctors how they matched us together the doctor waffled on about some very long vetting process. Honestly, it sounded like a glorified matchmaking service. I was sent a twenty-six-page-long word document to fill in. The first half I had to give paragraph-long reasons for my reasons for opting for the process. Why was I making this choice? How did I believe it would benefit my life? Did I understand the risks, and how it would change the trajectory of my life forever? What were my future plans? Did I want a family? A long-term partner? I was told other stories where this lifestyle choice worked, where people successfully body doubled within a family unit.

Then they asked about my likes, my dislikes, my values, my taste in food, how often I showered, what clothes I wore, interests, hobbies, job, and career aspirations. So much of it so incredibly specific. I asked the doctor about this. I can’t remember her response but it was something along the lines of: “We must ensure you and your double have shared values. A common ground that is invaluable when occupying the same body.”

I take myself to bed, already beginning to fade. I roll under the duvet, turn over, and the Other is there staring right back at me.

What did you answer when they asked if you would ever want to fall in love?

Her voice, almost a whisper.

I said yes but I couldn’t see it for myself. Not with it working out long-term anyway.

Yeah, same.

She reaches her hand forwards and strokes my barely there cheek. I would have done it too.

But, I didn’t.

I know. I would have been the same.

I ask her if she misses her old life. She shakes her head. I don’t know much about it except that she wanted to leave. That’s all I really needed to know.

You’re so beautiful. If he could tell us apart I don’t blame him for not saying.

We hold each other closely. I thought I didn’t know this woman living through me. But I do. I know her more intimately than I’ve ever known anyone else in my life. In our time apart I only understand her better, and in our time together I feel the parts of her no one else will ever quite get to touch.

When we wake, we realise we are not separate anymore. I pull her away from me for a moment, her eyes lock with mine and she smiles. She presses her forehead to mine, and it overlaps, her lips become my lips, her nose fades over mine, her fingers sink into my waist, and I think nobody, nobody in the world knows me better than her, who is me, and me who is her, not in this moment and every moment after. I will love her in the way she needs to be loved, and I understand her aches. I know what Monday means to her and what Monday means to me. I know waking up at 3 a.m. in a panic. I know the ache. I know the eternal tiredness that follows us wherever we go. I know how she is different, and I know the exact point where we become the same.