Sally Rooney & our grown up siblings
"We're doing The Darjeeling Limited!"
I’m hesitant to devote space to reflecting on the newest Sally Rooney novel, Intermezzo, for reasons that, if you follow literary discourse, will not surprise you. Commenting on Sally Rooney, in the writing world, is like sharing your opinions about a superhero franchise. It’s like having an opinion on Coca Cola. Having an opinion on Tom Brady. An opinion on coffee. Perfectly fine and within your rights, but probably also irrelevant and, even more, probably boring.
Instead, let’s paint a picture: It is two days before Christmas in New York. Sunset. Cold. It has snowed recently but not today. Hands on ten and two, I am ferrying my two younger brothers to JFK. The traffic: horrendous, even by New York standards. We failed to book long-term parking in advance and, after panic-navigating at the last minute, were turned away from the first lot we pulled into. The lot next door also tells us they are full but, perhaps persuaded by the fear in my eyes and my demonstrable willingness to pay any sum for someone to please, for the love of god, take my Kia Soul away from me so I can make this flight, they find space.
Transitioning into the part of travel wherein you are blissfully, terrifyingly in someone else’s hands, we breathe a sigh of relief. We are going, to celebrate our third brother’s marriage, to Kolkata.
This is a trip of many firsts. My first international trip since Covid, my youngest brother’s (19) first flight ever, my middle brother (26) (twin of the groom)’s first trip abroad. It’s also, most importantly, I think, our first time traveling together as adults.
And then, there is me (32), the worst flyer on earth, needing every ounce of stimulation available to numb my senses and distract from the reality that I am in an airplane at all, cracking open the spine of Intermezzo, which I’d set aside for the 17-hour flight to Dehli. (I won’t be coy, here. Instead, let’s just disclose: I am a Rooney fan. I’m not a cool critic; I enjoy her work and look forward to its release.)
Intermezzo tells the story of two adult brothers, Ivan (22) and Peter (32), grieving their father’s death, navigating unconventional romantic relationships, and attempting to justify why, frankly, they simply cannot stand each other. For much of the novel, they aren’t even on speaking terms. This goes on for over 400 pages. It is, frankly, a lot. It’s also, in Rooney fashion, emotionally intense and reliant on unharbored millennials (and Gen Z-ers) listing about Ireland and dissecting their feelings with surgical precision.
The hook and momentum of her previous novels is replaced with inter-character tension dialed up to the tenth degree. It was, maybe, not exactly the airplane novel I’d been expecting, but then again, let’s set another scene: Nighttime in Kolkata, almost midnight. Rooftop lounge of a banquet hall glowing under fairy lights. It is the evening of the sangeet, a pre-wedding event centered around a series of dances performed by the bride and groom, their family, their friends. The visiting Americans had spent two days in a crash dance course, huddling around phone-recorded videos and coached by actual choreographers to learn a series of routines which were performed, if not with exactitude, then certainly with enthusiasm, for my sister-in-law’s family. Decompressing, a view of the city, catered snacks that appear with astonishing rapidity, I am blubbering, suddenly, to my brothers who are not the groom, as well as to the rest of the American bridal party contingent, who stare back at me, concern palpable. Days of choked back tears pushing their way through. I fumble to explain: I am so happy for my brother. He deserves this. We all deserve this. To have a family. Seeing him so cared for, I say, helplessly… I am mourning, someone kindly points out, that it had taken this long.
After this, I cry only one more time: when my younger twin brothers sign their names in the book at the church, before family and friends and faith; one the groom, the other the witness. We had been through so much. They had been through so much. And yet, there they were, resilient. Bonded through blood, yes, and also shared childhoods, shared pains, and the shared determination to keep going. I thought: Look at them now. I thought: Look at us now.
In Intermezzo, Peter and Ivan see their childhoods both similarly and very differently. Peter, who feels responsible for his younger brother’s well-being in the face of their parents’ divorce, is for a time bullish about encouraging Ivan to pursue his passion and talent for chess. At the same time, Peter gets himself through school, starts a career, steps into a new life separate and distant from Ivan’s, one that Ivan, because of his age, cannot access, left to live with his step-siblings. This distance, this sense of outsized responsibility on behalf of Peter, becomes something Ivan resents. Ivan sees his older brother’s self-absorption and bossiness as arrogance and judgment. The separation becomes engulfing. Stop me, older siblings, if you think that you’ve heard this one before.
When I say this was the first time my brothers and I have traveled together as adults, what I’m saying is this was the first time I was able to see my brothers as not just my siblings, but as the grown men they’ve become, and to glimpse, for the first time, what our adult lives could look like together. Something age gaps and broken parental relationships have thus far rendered impossible. Something Rooney dwells deeply and intently on in Intermezzo.
People tend to freeze in our memories, don’t they? Isn’t that partly why we joke about reverting to our teenage selves when we visit family — because we view a certain space/person as a space/person to behave a certain way? We go to grandma’s house to eat grandma’s food, our hometown friend’s house to yap in their kitchen with their parents, etc. But eventually, those relationships have to change, whether because new people are added (hard to lay on the couch and watch movies at your in-laws’ when you’re chasing toddlers around!) or because we change so much that time, inevitably, forces the motion.
Peter feels, in Intermezzo, like he’s had to parent his brother — watch out for his interests, make sure he’s being valued and respected — and when the time comes when they are both the adults in the room, he struggles to adapt. The roles have shifted because, inevitably, they had to. This is one of his key struggles, and one of the deciding factors of whether Peter and Ivan will be able to be anything other than familial enemies for the rest of their lives. A struggle at once so niche yet so mundane. A struggle for older siblings everywhere, I think.
At the wedding reception, I was called up to give an impromptu speech — just what everyone wants an hour after they proclaim, “That’s it, tonight I’m drinking.” Unlike at sangeet, I mostly pulled it together, as I slowly (in my head, not in real life) explained that I had grown up helping to care for my siblings, feeling immense responsibility for them, and that, at times, it was this very thing — this responsibility both implicit and explicit — that had caused conflict between and among us.
But now, I said, that time had long passed. Because I was very much not my brother’s mother; I was — and am — his friend. Intermezzo.
xoxo,
Monica
By Heather D Haigh
Dabbing her eyes with the same kerchief at every funeral, the old fraud. Dressed in a fur-trimmed coat and gloves to match her name, to match her heart, some would say—depending how well they know her. She puts on a civilised front. Course, I have to do the same. How low will I go?
Way down. Like Mr Rawson, just lowered into the frozen sod.
Doctor Moray gives Mrs Black an arm to lean on. With his ratty little face—all points, whiskers, and beady eyes—he consults his prayer book like he gives a toss about God or the poor bastard they’re burying.
I’m no better. They bought my soul when they gave me a way to keep a roof over my head. I wait on them and their so-called friends. Tend to their needs, like she taught me.
It was me that served tea in a gilt-trimmed china cup to Rawson. Me that slipped in the crystals. Me that stood witness while he keeled over, and the doctor called the undertaker and signed it all off as natural.
Not that Rawson was any great loss—with his gaze that oggled where it shouldn’t and his hands that grabbed where they hadn’t been invited. Still, I never planned on being party to doing the old goat in. It had something to do with the papers Mrs Black got him to sign, but I asked no questions.
Like I ask nothing about the strange plants Mrs Black grows in her garden, nor about the cherry pips she gets me to dry in the cooling oven then grind in a pestle and mortar, nor about the white powder she tells me to put down for the rats—and keep some aside.
Like I never ask about the visitors who waste away before my eyes while she comforts them with another brew, and the doctor prescribes another tonic. Nor about the ones who become right agitated, pacing the floor, eyes glassy, arms and legs stiff as wooden Bobbies. Not my job. Doctor Moray’s on hand, after all.
You’d think I’d hate the pair of them. But I can’t bring myself to. Not since they gave me extra hours. Lord knows, I need the money, and the work’s a change. Not just up at the big house anymore, but in a long low brick building, marred with soot—tucked away down Little Lane. Behind the knacker’s yard and The One-Eyed Mare – old coaching inn that’s more of a sawdust and gin place now. Sells a good pumped ginger beer, too.
I’d never seen so many brats. Didn’t know there were that many orphans in England. The place stinks of boiled cabbage, custard and disinfectant. Disinfectant especially in the hospital wing. Full of white-faced, pencil-thin, clammy little kids coughing up their guts.
Doctor Moray says they’re lucky to have lasted this long. Thanks in part to Mr Rawson’s recent donation. They engraved his name on a plaque that’s going up on the wall along with the all other benefactors that Mrs Black’s charmed along the way.
There’s a wee ginger-mopped lad, goes by the name of Tommy. He’s strong enough to go back to the main huts now and he’s to play out with the other bairns. Doctor says he needs to work on running about and filling his lungs. Tommy’s right glad to be leaving that hospital wing on his own two legs, even if they are a bit wobbly.
Mrs Black’s getting tired now. Slips off the mourning veil, revealing the bloodless crepe of her face, runs trembling fingers through the smoky wisps on her head—shorn after an outbreak of lice. Gives me a self-conscious half-smile, ‘Never could stand vermin.’
She drops the scrap of black lace into my waiting hand.
END
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Heather D Haigh is a sight-impaired spoonie and working-class writer from Yorkshire, published by Oxford Flash Fiction, Fictive Dream, The Phare, Timberline Review, and others. When not writing or napping she can be found waving her camera around or making messes she optimistically calls arty.