by R. M. Green
Question two: what has been the happiest moment of your life?
Well, that’s a no-brainer really. Gotta be the birth of our amazing kids. Both just popped out, no fuss at all! And they are the light of our lives. It is just a tragedy that we lost one in between, a daughter, when poor Den was nearly six months gone.
OK, this time we really are just about to move, so I’m gonna go and my other four questions will just have to be a surprise for dinner. When we get to Dino’s, we are going to pretend like we don’t know each other, then I will go over to her and pick her up! Cool, huh? I bet that will turn her on, having a dude just walk up to a more mature lady as if she is the hottest girl in the place. But, mister, I am telling you, she probably will be. My true, true sweetheart has still got it!
***
Denise: Still no sign of my hot date – glory be! The Wild Turkey is a dead duck and I have what they call over here, a bit of a buzz! Good. Anything that helps me make it through the evening. So, while I am waiting for Prince Charming, the love of my life (ha!) and father of my children (well one for sure!), I suppose I better go through my questions. Now where did I jot them down, somewhere in my purse… oh here they are; I scribbled the first four down on a torn outside of a carton of maxi pads. I’ve been as regular as clockwork since I was twelve and half – you can set your watch by my time of the month! That’s how I knew I was pregnant all four times within a couple of weeks. Oops! Little kitty, back in the bag! Well, Todd, you know about three of them; our living children and the one in between them, the little girl that never saw the light of day… poor mite. Accidentally falling down the stairs is never good in your second trimester, is it? I know I shouldn’t have been drinking, but I only had one glass of wine to take up to bed and keep me company while I was finishing my revision for my realtor’s exams. But it hit me like a freight train and I just couldn’t tell where the top step was and sort of guessed; I lost my balance and fell backwards all the way down. And you, dead to the world and snoring like a pig, didn’t find me until morning when I was lying in a pool of blood at the foot of the staircase. I was too ashamed to tell the doctor I had been drinking and he was too sensitive to bring it up. I still remember what you said to me when you got to the hospital after dropping Jane off at the child-minder’s: “It’s OK, Den, honey. We can try for another as soon as you are better.” And my God, how you tried starting within a week of me getting out of hospital. But three months later, my period clock told me that these ‘efforts’ had paid off and almost a year to the day after the miscarriage, our son, Steven, made you the proudest father in the world and left me so exhausted that I couldn’t feed him for three months. The hospital found us that Mexican wet nurse, Jacinta (whose own baby was stillborn), who came to live with us until I was strong enough for the baby. Such a sweet girl, only seventeen, and she was great with the children. Strange her leaving in the middle of the night like that. Her note was in Spanish and I took it to the office to get Javier, the janitor, to translate it: Jacinta had been warned by a friend that the INS were about to visit all the houses in our neighbourhood as part of a crackdown on illegal domestic staff. I was better by then, but I would have liked to say goodbye.
Yes, Toddy, I have been pregnant four times. The fourth, which was actually my first, you don’t know about. Nobody knows about it. I lost it within a few weeks and the father is long gone. Besides, he never knew. And don’t worry, I was teasing, Steven is your son, I can guarantee it. After all, once I got out of hospital, I never left the house for three months and I am sure no one else raped me within three months of miscarrying, did they?
You set the rules for our date video blog: film the before, during and after. And if nothing else, a blog should tell the truth, shouldn’t it, Todd? And in keeping with the rules, here are my questions for you and I already know how you will answer so I will film my own interview. When I have the camera on my left, like now, I am me, asking, and on the right, like so, I am you, answering.
Ahem, so, Todd, darling,
Q. What made you come up with the idea of videoing the date.?
A. “I just thought it would be a cute keepsake and something for fun for our friends to see on YouTube.”
(He will be totally sincere when he says that. It’ll make him feel safe. We are in it together and I am playing the game.)
Q. What do you all day when you are working from home?
A. “I work, make calls, do my designs. Sure, I take a break now and then and watch a little CNN.”
(He’ll tell a little white lie. He looks at porn on the internet and watches the fashion channel for the swimsuit shows I suspect. But it’s not a hanging offence.)
Q. Did you enjoy being a stay-at-home dad?
A. I loved every minute of it. I knew you were busy with your career so I figured the best way to support you was to do as much as I could with the kids.
(Yes, I only found out just how much he enjoyed it a few days ago.)
Q. If we had never had children, would we still be married?
A. How can you ask that? Of course, you’re my true, true sweetheart!
He first called me his ‘true, true sweetheart’ when he raped me for the third or fourth time when I was pregnant with Jane. It was his little nickname for me, grunting out the words as he pounded into my body wherever and however he wanted. At least he didn’t tie me up, use the belt, burn me with cigars or use objects like bottles on me when I was pregnant. How was I to know? I fell pregnant the second time we went out on a date and after all that I had been through before, I couldn’t lose another baby that way, so how else could I survive? I would have been a single mother on a junior secretary’s salary with so much debt from college, even though I dropped out after two years, and of course, Sheryl had kicked me out when she found out her boyfriend of six months had knocked up her roommate. So when I knew I was pregnant, Todd, you did the ‘honourable’ thing and got down on one knee in the Seven Eleven and asked me to marry you. What choice did I have? And looking back after all these years, it has just occurred to me, talking to this JVC camcorder, that I think that’s how you hoped it would go; that you would get a desperate, sad and lonely girl so dependent on you, that you could do what you liked to her, whenever you wanted. A girl, so alone and vulnerable, with a history of promiscuity and substance abuse, that you could use her as a toy. And you did, didn’t you, Todd? And you convinced yourself that it was what I really craved, that I liked it rough and kinky that I had thrown myself at you like a damsel in distress swoons before a knight in shining armour. I honestly believe that you have repeated that myth to yourself so many times, that it is your reality. I bet you would even pass a lie detector test about it… but maybe not about Jacinta, eh Todd? And, not about Jane either.
I know how he will answer my last two questions too; the first one will be a one word answer to the longest question he has ever been asked and he won’t get a chance to answer the final question. But I am saving those until we get there!
***
Todd: Great dinner wasn’t it my true, true sweetheart? OK, here we are just enjoying a brandy after an excellent dinner and now it’s… drum roll please… question time! Ready, Den? OK, like we agreed, I go first. So if you will just look into the camera please, Miss, and answer in your own time.
Question one, for the toaster oven! Ha, ha! Just kidding! OK. Question one: do you remember how we met?
And just wait until I get you in focus, ok, go!
Denise: Yes. At a Christmas party at Eastman and Tate where Sheryl and I worked as secretaries. You were shagging her but she got wasted and passed out on the toilet floor after throwing up and you grabbed my arse and stuck your tongue down my throat and I was drunk and high enough to let you. Next question please… no comments until after my final question, remember, Todd? Your rules, hon… next question please.
Todd: Err, question two: what has been the happiest day
of your life?
Denise: What’s the matter, Todd, not enjoying your date? Listen, babe, I am playing by the rules, your rules. Err, camera on me please! The answer is today could be the start of the happiest days of my life.
Todd: Den please, quit kidding around… ok, ok don’t get up… Question er… three.
Yes, three… do you have any regrets?
Denis: Yes. I should have had the duck paté as a starter; the feta salad was too salty. Next… I said next, Todd.
Todd: Look, Den, I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately so let’s forget it and go home, ok?
Denise: Oh no, Todd, darling! I am having too much fun this was such a great idea of yours. Let’s carry on? No? Well if you have finished, I think it only fair to ask my questions. Actually upon reflection, I only have two. The first one is – look at the camera, Todd, please – the first question is in several parts and is quite long, so focus, honey, focus… my first question is:
What would you say if I told you I didn’t love you, never have and that I have had two affairs: one with my yoga instructor, Nadine, and the other with your cousin Hannah because every time you or any man touches me now, I want to die? And that I know you raped Jacinta and made her write that ridiculous runaway note and that I want a divorce and if you ever come near me, Steven or Jane, especially Jane, I will kill you? Wait, I haven’t finished, sit down!
I only figured it all out last week when you suggested date night and told me the rules and gave me the camera. Why now? I asked myself. Why after leaving me alone for the last three years? Then it hit me like a sledgehammer and after I got over being sick, I started to act. I called Jane at college and we talked for four hours on the phone. She went to the counsellor on Wednesday and they are waiting for me to get there tomorrow with Steven, who is at a motel with the Millers where they are all waiting for me. God, I am so stupid! I will never forgive myself for not knowing or suspecting and poor Jane was too scared to tell me. She didn’t want you to do to her what she heard you doing to me all those years. And you were so kind to her showering her with love and praise and support, your ‘princess’! She was too young to understand and I was too busy staying at work to keep away from you. Jane is safe from you now and I am going up to Amherst in the morning to stay with her for a few days and I am taking Steven with me. The police will hear everything about how you raped and beat me for the first fifteen years of our marriage, about how you drugged me when I was pregnant with another baby girl because you wanted a son an heir and pretended to be asleep while I lay bleeding in agony on the floor while my little girl died inside me and I will tell them why you were suddenly fine with no longer forcing yourself on me after fifteen years of abuse, because you had a new target in your sights, my daughter Jane; my beautiful, sweet, clever girl. And if you want to know why I was such a slut, why I prefer women, why I want to kill you right this second more than anything in the world? It’s because my other pregnancy, which ended in an illegal abortion and me nearly dying of septicaemia, the one you don’t know about happened, when I was twelve and the father was my own father. So you see, Todd, I know your game it has been played before but you have made your last move. So what are you going to do?
Todd: Den!
Denise: And why do you keep bloody calling me ‘Den’ after all these years when you know how much I hate it? That was my last question. Now smile for the camera and I will be on my way. Thanks for the date, Todd.
***
Denise: Well, I have got used to this video blogging now so for those of you who saw the TV reports, let me just fill you in on how we all are now, eighteen months on from the dinner date.
Jane is still going to counselling but she is a strong girl, and has stuck with school and volunteers at the children’s hospital at the weekends. She is going to major in psychology and wants to work with abused children and she only has nightmares every now and then. Bryan, her boyfriend is so patient and supportive and gentle, not to mention good-looking, I think Jane is going to be alright. Steven starts here at Amherst in the fall and we live about thirty miles from the college so he and Jane see a lot of each other. He may even get a baseball scholarship. I got a transfer to Massachusetts Dream Realty and am managing three branches and am happily single and definitely not dating anyone, I am also clean and sober and have been since that night.
They arrested and arraigned Todd on multiple charges. But he got lucky. He was knifed in the neck while in custody and bled to death in about two minutes. The guard said he would have got to him sooner but he dropped his key and by the time he had retrieved it and reached Todd, it was too late.
I must dash now, I have two more meetings this afternoon then Jane and Bryan are coming over for pot roast. Toodle pip until next time!
A GOOD TEACUP
It was a bit cracked, but it was good teacup. The glaze was threaded with the spider’s web of tiny imperfections and the memories of many cups of tea. Tea and sympathy, tea and cake, high tea, a hot cuppa, tea-times uncountable from the morning brew to the late-night infusion. With milk, with lemon, with honey and even with a wee drop of something stronger – the cup had seen it all.
English Breakfast, Caravan, Earl Grey.
I looked out of the window as the winter night inexorably, inevitably slid into the grey murk of a December morning. A watched kettle never boils, so they say, but it always does. A watched dawn never breaks. That is sometimes true. December dawns do not break with that glorious brilliance of the first rays of a golden morning. Rather, they slink guiltily into the sky as if they know that they are something of a disappointment.
I glanced over at the battered stainless-steel saucepan, monitoring the boiling process as a solicitous doctor might glance at his patient’s chart. It was a simple thing that I was doing; making a cup of tea to bring to the woman who was softly sleeping in the bedroom. Thousands, maybe millions of people were doing the very same thing at the very same moment. But to me, this morning, it was significant. It was special. It was the first time she had stayed overnight. It was the first time we had fallen asleep in each other’s arms. And this, this was to be the first cup of tea that I would bring to her in bed.
Lapsang Souchong, Assam, Dimbula.
We had bought the cup the afternoon before. It was shamelessly cold, the wind enjoying itself as it bit icily into the rush of Christmas shoppers struggling with packages and parcels, bags and boxes. A woman, wrapped in so many layers of winter clothes that they limited her movement and who was additionally encumbered by six or seven plastic carrier bags in one hand while grimly clinging on to her similarly swaddled child with the other, struggled up the slope of the street, like a weary salmon against the stream of pedestrians whose only objective, so it must have seemed to her was to hinder her progress. A milky light spilled over the threshold of the little bric-a-bracerie as its door opened and a customer hurried out onto the pavement. Just to get out of the grip of the chill, albeit for but a moment, we stepped inside.
The owner of this charming jumble of a shop, which was something between an antiques’ emporium, a junk-shop, a boutique of curiosities, a flea-market, and a rather dusty Aladdin’s cave, was exactly as he should be. Not old but ageing, no longer lithe but not creaking. Rather like a favourite pair of shoes, he was worn with time but had a fair number of good solid years left yet. His face was somewhat lived-in but seemed comfortable with the passing of the years. He was outwardly a little gruff, a little rough, but his eyes were clever, bright and although you wouldn’t describe him as kind and gentle, he was, to be a little old-fashioned, a decent sort. While we chatted amiably together for a few minutes, I warmed my semi-frozen behind in front of the large electric-bar fire. She spotted the cup; large, grimy but with a pleasing shape and a nicely heavy weight. It was indeed, a little cracked. “But it’s a good teacup,” she said. We bought it, said our goodbyes and merry Christmases and plunged back into the icy current of the
sodium-lit street.
Yunnan, Keemun, Shanghai Rose.
We stumbled into the flat, numb and pink with cold, and light-headed with the intoxication of each other. Laughing and kissing we tugged and pulled, unbuttoned and unzipped, shuffled and kicked our way from the hall to the bedroom, leaving a breadcrumb-trail of our clothes, mixed and dispersed, so that we amorous Hansels and Gretels might find the way out again. We made love. Urgently, boisterously then languidly, luxuriously. Then we ate a little, then we slept.
Darjeeling, Oolong, Ceylon Orange Pekoe.
And now, the water was beginning to boil and I watched the bubbles play and slap the sides of the pan for a few moments. This was what I had been dreaming of for months. It wasn’t the holding hands, shyly at first then more boldly. Nor the thrill of the first stolen kiss, nor the rather awkward fumblings of foolish adults getting to know each other’s contours, nor even the first magical, primal, beautiful, funny, passionate, slightly self-conscious but just lovely occasion when we first made love. It was now, the morning after she had slept in my arms for the first time, bringing her a cup of tea in bed. This had been my dream. I spelt out her name in the condensation on the window as I let the tea brew, and I glanced down at the street below where the last-minute, desperate Christmas Eve shoppers were setting off for the final battle. I wished them all good luck, picked up the steaming teacup and went back to the bedroom. She was just waking up and stretching and making those little noises that accompany such an activity. She sat up and smiled at me. She was beautiful.