by Marian Keyes
I wanted to go home. I was so hurt and embarrassed by the way Troy had rejected me that I wanted to put as many miles as possible between me and him. For a while, the dazzling Californian sunshine had bleached out the sharp contours of my pain, but my eyes had adjusted until my anguish was just as severe here as it had been in Ireland. Like a painkiller that becomes less and less effective the more it’s used, Los Angeles had stopped working for me. I’d always suspected this would happen, but I didn’t expect it to be so soon. I’d only been here two weeks and my initial plan had been to stay for about a month. Ah, well…
I was acutely aware of how much I didn’t belong here. Mind you, where did I belong? ‘Home’ didn’t really exist any longer. But there was so much music to be faced in Ireland that sooner or later I was going to have to bite the bullet and return – and in the wake of my humiliation at the hands of Troy, I wanted to leave for the airport immediately. I looked for my suitcase; I still hadn’t fully unpacked, mostly because I had no closet-space – it wouldn’t take me ten minutes to gather up my stuff and ship out of here. The image of me getting on a plane was as comforting as a padded plaster on a blister.
But what about Emily? How selfish would it be to leave her at this nerve-wracking time? Reluctantly, I concluded that I should wait until we heard from Larry Savage. Either he’d buy her script and she’d be fine, or he’d pass and her adventures in Lala land would also come to an end. Whichever happened, we’d know very soon.
That decision made, I rang my parents to tell them I was homeward bound: the mere act made me feel like I was already on my way.
Dad answered, with his customary terror. ‘Which one of you is that? Oh, Margaret.’ I waited for him to be overcome with the noxious gas given off by the phone, but to my surprise he stayed talking. ‘Have you been to Disneyland yet?’
I hadn’t.
‘You should go, it’s marvellous! And they’ve other ones too. Some Six Flags place. They say it has the world’s highest rollercoaster.’
‘Think of your neck,’ I said firmly. ‘Anyway, how do you know about the Six Flags place?’
‘Read about it on the Net.’ ‘What net?’ ‘The Internet Net.’
‘What are you doing on the Internet Net?’ I couldn’t hide my surprise. Surprise which bordered on indignation.
‘Helen set it up.’
‘He’s never off it,’ Mum’s voice cut in, on the extension. ‘Cruising on the Net, looking at pornography.’
‘I do not look at pornography!’
‘There’s no need to shout. And I know all about what goes on on that Net.’
‘I’m not shouting, I only sound loud because you’re just upstairs from me. And there’s other things go on on the Net besides pornography.’
‘Like what?’
‘Holidays.’
A pause, then a suspicious, ‘Flights?’
‘Yes, flights.’
‘To sunny places?’
I had a clear and unpleasant insight into where all this was heading, and decided to nip it in the bud. ‘I’m coming home soon. In the next few days.’
‘Are you?’ High-pitched and irritated and perfectly in unison.
Just as I’d suspected. Well, hopefully that had knocked that on the head.
But later I spoke to Emily about it. ‘I’ve a bad feeling Mum and Dad might be planning a visit here.’ ‘Don’t be silly,’
Emily said. ‘No, I’m serious.’
‘So’m I. They couldn’t come here because they haven’t had it booked since last November. They’re not exactly spontaneous, are they? I mean, their idea of being mad-cap and spur-of-the-moment would be to plan a weekend break for next spring.’
Thus comforted, I put my fears from my mind.
*
But I hadn’t reckoned on Helen and her surfermania and it all came to a dreadful head three short hours later.
‘… booked the flights on the Internet Net,’ Mum was saying. ‘No need to bother with travel agents, you just type in your details and they give you all these choices. This Net is a great invention!’
‘But I want to go home.’
‘Well you can’t,’ she said pleasantly. ‘We’ll need you to show us the sights. Sure, what difference can a few more days make, anyway?’
For God’s sake. I had to bite my knuckle to stifle a scream of frustration.
‘Where will you stay?’ Then I added very quickly, ‘There’s no room here.’
‘We wouldn’t dream of imposing,’ Mum said graciously. ‘I spoke to Mrs Emily and she gave me the name of the hotel that she stayed in when she came over. Only down the road from Emily’s and very friendly, she says, and the breakfast is nice and you get little yokes…’
‘What little yokes?’ I asked wearily.
‘Shower caps, sewing kits, the lend of an umbrella. Not that I’d be needing an umbrella,’ she sounded suddenly fearful, ‘because I’m coming to get away from the rain. If it starts raining in Los Angeles, I’m just booking myself into the mental hospital and let that be an end to it.’
‘Well, you know what they say?’
A mistrustful pause. ‘That you shouldn’t put butter on a burn?’
‘They say, it never rains in California.’ ‘Good,’ she said firmly. ‘It pours!’
But even that wasn’t enough to deter her.
‘They arrive on Tuesday,’ I reported to an appalled Emily.
‘Oh, good Christ.’
29
I clung grimly to sleep as though to the side of a cliff. Reluctantly I rose towards consciousness until I was covered only by a thin veil of sleep, but still I refused to surface. It was the sound of the ringing phone that finally made me give in and face the day.
God, was I sorry that I had. My first thought was of Troy and his horrible, humiliating rejection of me. The second was that, with my family coming to visit, I was trapped in Los Angeles.
Unless… unless they’d messed up their Internet reservations. The more I thought about it, the more I saw that the chances of them either a) getting seats on a flight that actually existed or b) booking themselves on a flight to Los Angeles instead of say, Phnom Penh or Tierra Del Fuego were very slim indeed.
I began to cheer up, and when Emily tapped quietly on my door I was able to smile at her. Until she handed me the phone and whispered, ‘Mammy Walsh.’
Within seconds, my worst fears were confirmed. It was a perfectly straightforward American Airways flight from Dublin to LAX – and they were definitely booked on it. ‘I rang this morning and got confirmation,’ Mum said cheerily. She even had a flight number. In fact, she’d even reserved their seats and a vegetarian meal for Anna! Which was the first I’d heard of Anna coming.
‘How long will you be staying?’
‘Helen’s got to be back to do Marie Fitzsimon’s wedding –seven bridesmaids, three flower girls, the bride, the mother of the bride and the mother of the groom – so we won’t get the full two weeks –’
‘Two weeks!’ I’d have to stay here and face Troy for another two weeks! For the love of Christ!
‘– so twelve days is how long we’re coming for. Now have a word with your father, he wants to know should he bring his shorts.’
As soon as I was off the phone, things got worse; Emily wanted to have a little ‘chat’ with me. ‘As you know,’ she began awkwardly, ‘I still haven’t heard from Larry Savage and I’m not holding out much hope. Lara made a suggestion the other evening–’
I already knew what was coming.
‘– about me looking for other work doing script polishes.’
I couldn’t bear it any longer. ‘Ring him,’ I said.
‘She suggested several people, one of them being… Oh! Do you mean it? Shay Delaney – you wouldn’t mind if I rang him?’
‘Why would I mind?’ Like, what grounds did I have? ‘Maggie, please be honest with me. Just say the word and I won’t go near him.’
‘Go for it.’
Anxiously she asked
, ‘Are you sure?’
‘Completely.’
‘Thanks, thank you. I’m just so desperate for work and I know it was a long time ago, you and him, but first cut is the deepest, as they say. So I was afraid you might be cross with me, and–’
‘It’s fine,’ I interrupted, a little too brusquely. ‘Just fine.’
Quickly, she said, ‘I won’t ring him. I’m sorry I even asked you, it was wrong of me.’
‘Ring him, I don’t MIND!’ The yell hung in the air, shocking us both, then I took a breath and forced a more reasonable tone. ‘I don’t mind, I promise. Just don’t make me keep saying it.’
Bu–’
‘Nnnneh!’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK’.
I was hoping that she’d take days to get round to it, but she rang him immediately – so I went to my room, where I could listen avidly without being observed. She didn’t get to talk to him, but when she said, ‘So he is in town right now?’ I watched my fingers begin to tremble, although nothing like as badly as the day I’d met him and I hadn’t been able to undo the zip on Dad’s anorak afterwards. Emily spelt out her name for whoever she was talking to, ‘O’Keeffe. O-K-E-E-F-F-E, yeah, O’Keeffe. It’s Irish. No, Irish. So if you could have him call me, that would be great. Bye.’
Then she came looking for me. ‘Maggie? He wasn’t there.’
‘Wasn’t he?’ I said neutrally, like I hadn’t been standing behind the door, holding my breath in order to overhear and slowly turning purple.
‘No. No, he wasn’t. So what would you like to do today?’ she asked solicitously. ‘We could go to the beach or for a drive – or how about we go out for lunch?’
‘You’ve work to do.’
‘I can skip it.’
I couldn’t help laughing. ‘I’m O-K!’
‘Bu–’
‘Nnnneh!’
She was clearly reluctant to let it go, but at least she didn’t start disagreeing with me again. ‘Do some work,’ I urged.
‘All right.’ She switched on her laptop and disappeared into her writing. I switched on the telly, hoping for a similar type of escape, and so began another day without someone buying Emily’s script: I had a sudden surreal flash that I was in some sort of Beckettian play, and that the rest of my life was going to be spent stuck in this house with Emily, waiting for good news that never came.
After thirty minutes of unproductive channel-hopping, my nerves couldn’t take any more so I decided we needed food, and set off for the supermarket.
The raggedy shouting man was there, like he always was, this time roaring about police shoot-outs and heroes taking a bullet. I must have been giving off kick-me-when-I’m-down signals, because as soon as I got out of the car he lit up, sprinted straight across the parking lot at me and yelled ‘Zoom!’ right into my face.
My heart pounded with shock. Though Emily had said he meant no harm, he seemed out-of-control crazy. Skirting around him and his manic eyes and his bad smell, I hurried across the tarmac, trying to avoid the indignity of full-blown running. I was close to tears by the time I reached the air-conditioned haven of the supermarket.
Then there was the worry of how to get back to the car without being accosted by him, so when I had finished shopping, half-ashamed of my wussiness, I asked one of the bag-packing boys to escort me. Just as well I did, because as soon as we appeared through the sliding doors, the raggedy man yelled angrily at me, ‘You’re supposed to be ALONE!’
‘He’s kinda harmless really,’ the boy tried to reassure me, as we put our heads down and rattled the trolley at high speed across the parking lot.
‘Mmmm.’ But I was no longer that concerned for my physical safety. It was what the nutter had said: ‘You’re supposed to be alone.’ It sounded almost prophetic and I was indescribably depressed by it.
‘We’ve a visitor,’ Emily said as I staggered into the house with the shopping bags. I assumed it was Ethan. Since the night he’d slept on the couch, he was a regular guest, under some illusion that he was welcome. He kept showing up to hang out and watch television.
But it wasn’t Ethan, it was Mike, armed with his smudge stick and lepping about good-oh.
‘Hey, Maggie,’ he grinned. ‘Just clearing a little more of the toxic energy in here.’
‘Good man,’ Emily urged.’ Get rid of it all, so I’ll get good news from the studio.’
‘That’s not how it works.’ Mike gasped a little from his exertions. ‘What it means is the right thing will happen.’
‘And the right thing is that they’ll buy it for a million dollars.’
‘I keep telling you, be careful what you wish for,’ Mike grinned.
When he was taking a breather from the dancing, he turned his attention to me. ‘And how about you, Maggie?’ ‘I’m OK,’ I said unenthusiastically. ‘Yeah?’ ‘Mmmm.’
He beamed at me, a full-on, beardy beam and said, ‘When you re in a dark place, you know what you gotta do?’ I shrugged. ‘What?’ ‘Hold your face up to the light.’
I hadn’t a clue what he meant, I don’t really get that woolly, mystical talk, but for the second time that day I was a little tearful.
‘Be kind to yourself,’ he said.
‘How?’
‘Nurture yourself. Take time out to smell the flowers or listen to the ocean.’
‘Urn–’
‘You’ll know what’s right for you. Maybe do a little meditation and listen to your own stillness?’ ‘Ah, OK.’
‘Hey, if you girls aren’t doing anything tonight, why don’t you come by ours? We’re having one of our fable-telling evenings.’
Both Emily and I froze as we frantically sought some sort of excuse.
‘Er, what goes on at this fable-telling evening?’ I asked. It was the best I could do.
‘Some beautiful people come by and we tell stories from our different cultures.’
‘When you say beautiful people,’ Emily said, ‘you’re not talking about Gucci-sunglasses-streaked-hair-and-speedboat beautiful people?’
Mike laughed. ‘I mean beautiful on the inside.’
‘I was afraid of that. Anyway, asking me to come to a fable-telling evening would be like inviting a dentist over for dinner, then getting him to do a couple of root canals between courses. I’m telling stories all day long, it’s my job.’
Mike shrugged equably. ‘I hear you.’
I shoved my feet into my mules. ‘OΚ, I’m off. ‘’Where?’
‘I’m holding my face up to the light and I’m going shopping. I don’t know how I didn’t think of it before now.’
‘Excellent!’ Emily said. ‘Good for you.’
I took myself down to Santa Monica, where I spent an unexpectedly happy afternoon wandering along Third Street Promenade in the sunshine, popping in and out of Aladdin’s Caves of fabulousness.
So much was happening that I was once again glad to be in LA: a man with a clipboard gave me two tickets for a test-screening of a new movie; I saw someone who might have been Sean Penn buying a packet of Lifesavers; a man painted from head to toe in silver, juggling silver balls, was being filmed by a small crew. All the time the sun shone and the funny-knees-denim-skirt shop gave me a sympathetic hearing. ‘Why are you returning this garment?’ the girl asked, her pen poised over the form (oh yes, you’ve to fill out a form when you return things).
‘It makes my knees look funny.’
‘Makes… knees… look… funny,’ she said as she wrote.
Then she went to her manager to see if making knees look funny was worthy of an actual refund or just a credit note. It was close, she told me, it had gone to the wire, but in the end the manager felt that as the garment couldn’t actually be regarded as defective, I was only due a credit note.
For the rest of the afternoon, I didn’t even do my usual stunt of buying too much of the wrong things. Money changed hands only once – when I bought two little T-shirts with stuff written on them.
Emily’s said ‘I want, I want, I want’ and ‘Boys are Mean’.
Feeling miles better, I arrived home, where Emily professed herself to be in love with her new T-shirt. I’ll wear it tonight. Will you come out for a drink later?’
‘And play gooseberry with you and Lou?’
‘Lou?’ she said scornfully. ‘He can get lost with his flowers and his phone calls – does he take me for a total idiot?’
‘So who’s going out tonight?’
‘Me. Troy.’
I managed a short, bitter, ‘Hah!’
‘Oh please, please don’t be like that. Troy sleeps with everyone and he stays friends with them.’
‘I’m obviously very old-fashioned, then,’ I said stiffly.
‘Please come out with us.’ She was a knot of anxiety.
‘Who’s inviting me? You? Or him? And be honest!’
‘Both of us.’
‘Did he say anything about me?’
‘Urn…’
‘Don’t lie!’
‘No, I suppose he didn’t.’
Hurt though I was, I could see some good in this; if he was planning to avoid me for the rest of my visit, it would cut down on opportunities for me to feel humiliated.
‘You go out,’ I urged. ‘Enjoy yourself, you’ve been working all day. And before you ask again, I’m FINE.’
Off she went, and though I had numerous invitations – the fable-telling evening on one side of me or watching a digitally remastered Rosemary’s Baby on the other – I parked myself in front of the telly, defiantly wearing my ‘Boys are Mean’ T-shirt. To pass the time, I planned scathing put-downs for Troy, unable to decide between maintaining a dignified silence or shrilly berating him for his alley-cat morals. It was extremely enjoyable.
At some stage the news came on, with a piece about the Irish peace process, and I got the fright of my life: for a moment I thought the colour on the telly was broken. Everything was grey, and the Irish politicians were so pallid, as if their skin had never seen sunlight. And as for their teeth…
Oh dear. I’d crossed the invisible line: now I thought glowing skin and expensive dentistry were normal. With a sigh, I resumed my imaginary conversations with Troy.