Playing Away

by Adele Parks

  adele parka

  don't look at Luke but instead stare at the faxes, intently wishing them away. They don't go away. They get bigger. Finally I drag my eyes to Luke. He is leaning, propped up against the doorframe, naked. Normally so tall and strong, he is slight and wounded. He looks isolated, betrayed. I can't say I am sorry. Not that I'm not sorry. I am. I mean, I physically can't say I am sorry, my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth like church bread. My brain is giving no direction whatsoever. It appears to have abandoned ship.

  "I'd better go and pack," says Luke. I am incapable of stopping him.

  I run round the house looking for some cigarettes. I search through Luke's desk drawer, as I know he keeps some spares for guests. I frantically scrabble through keys, paper clips, pens, erasers, elastic bands and calculators. Eventually I find them and light one immediately; without pausing I run to the wine rack, pull out a bottle of red wine, open it and glug it back straight from the bottle. Then I look for a glass. I have a momentary twinge as I consider which of Luke's wines I am drinking. He has some bottles worth a couple of hundred quid and I live in perpetual fear that one drunken girls' night, we'll drink one of those by mistake. Then I think that the question is rather academic—sheep, lamb and hanging comes to mind. I run back to the sitting room and find my Filofax. I urgently flick through the pages. Momentarily, my mind has gone blank and I can't remember Lucy's telephone number.

  All this unstructured activity is in sharp contrast to the past two hours. I have been a known adulteress and a deserted wife for 120 minutes. In those 7200 seconds Luke has packed a large overnight case and left. There were no histrionics, no bitter recriminations, no furious demands for an explanation, no chance of repentance. He hurriedly but methodically packed his bag; first laying out the things he needed on the bed, then

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  reassessing his selection and then putting his choice in his bag. He'd packed as though he was going on holiday. I remained seated in the study but I tracked his actions by his movements overhead. He walks to the window and the floorboard near the radiator creaks; he is checking the weather; he walks back to his wardrobe; he is pulling out his brown Nigel Hall trousers and three white T-shirts; I hear him walk toward the chest of drawers, on the other side of the room. He opens the second drawer down, it is stiff so you have to jolt it about a bit to open it. He takes out his boxers and socks. I track his movements between the bathroom, the spare room and the laundry room in the basement. I can detail the contents of his bag, but not his heart, and I've made the mistake of thinking this is knowing him.

  Lucy comes round immediately; well, almost immediately, she has to get dressed and apply her makeup. This is probably the only time in Lucy's life that she's ever seen the light of day this early on a Sunday morning. Used to being at her desk by 7 A.M. every weekday, she ferociously protects her rights to extensive amounts of slumber on the weekend. We never, ever suggest an arrangement which requires Lucy surfacing before 11 a.m. on a weekend. My SOS has registered. Heard loud and clear.

  I open the door. She looks stunning. She looks exactly as she always does, which momentarily takes my breath away. Isn't it strange? Shouldn't she look altered now that everything is so different? I hug her.

  "Thank you for coming round." I automatically add, "You look great."

  She slides her sunglasses onto the back of her head.

  "You look like shit. Poor baby."

  She is probably right. I've been drinking solidly for three hours. Lucy follows me into the kitchen and while I am keen to open another bottle of wine, she insists on making coffee.

  Another first.

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  "So?"

  So I tell Lucy the facts and show her the faxes.

  "A song. He tried to seduce you with some hackneyed bloody pop song?" she asks, outraged. "I can't believe he'd do that. It's not even a good song."

  I rather think she is missing the point.

  "Will you just forget the song. This is serious. He's left me. I want him back."

  "Can I clarify, which one?"

  Bitch. I don't think I've ever liked Lucy less. I stare at her hoping that she will frizzle up like frying bacon and disappear, vanish or evaporate, or dissolve or something.

  "To think I wanted you to come round to comfort me," I snap.

  "Honey ..." She hands me a tissue. I'm crying? When did I start to cry? "I don't, as you well know, do sympathy. I don't do it. I don't expect it and I don't even believe in it. If it's sympathy you want, give Sam a call or Daisy. I do survival. To help you survive I need to know what's going on in that mixed-up head of yours."

  "I don't know what's going on," I howl. Then I cry. I cry for hours. I cry my way through forty pots of tea and two man-sized boxes of Kleenex. I cry my way through three boxes of cigarettes, more than my combined total consumed in my lifetime thus far. I cry while Lucy goes to the shops and buys two slabs of Galaxy. But she can't tempt me to eat—I'd have to stop crying and I can't. I cry while the morning light turns to afternoon light and I do not come up for air. When it is physically impossible for me to cry any harder, longer, more, I fall asleep. Lucy wraps a duvet around me and strokes my hair.

  "Poor baby," she mutters.

  "Don't leave me." I'm alarmed. I can't bear the idea that I am going to wake up but even in my drunken, sodden, dis-

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  traught state I figure that I will. Waking up will be bad, waking up alone will be terrible.

  "I'm not going anywhere."

  I don't think I've ever loved Lucy more.

  I wake up with a jerk. I leap from the settee where I collapsed. When? Yesterday? Why? Not properly conscious, I cry, "Want me, want me." I run to the window expecting to see snow on the ground. The room seems so white. White duvet, white space, white except for my skin. The whiteness makes my skin appear gray. And my mind? My mind is black, a dirty, truthless fog. I feel a thick stench of shame and grief all about me. As I identify this stench, I realize why I am on the settee.

  Luke has left me.

  When Luke left the house this morning (is it only this morning?) my heart lurched. My heart heaved. It jumped and escaped, it was severed from me. But now it has returned. I know it has come back because it is hurting so much. A terrible pain, like drilling on a gum or repeatedly banging your funny bone. I feel someone is squeezing the life out of me by clasping my heart so tightly. The grip is agony. Lucy comes into the room.

  "You're awake," she observes and passes me a vodka that she's obviously poured for herself. Very good of her. Very self-sacrificing.

  "Have I been here all day?"

  "Yup, it's quarter past eleven."

  "At night?"

  She nods. I take the vodka. "Thanks." I am just human enough to be grateful. "Has he rung?" Hope rushes into me, nearly knocking me completely over.

  "Who?"

  "Will you stop doing that! Obviously, I mean Luke."

  "Well, it's not so obvious from where I'm standing," snaps Lucy. She is always terrible if she doesn't get enough

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  sleep. "It is only a couple of months ago that you were crying for John."

  "I didn't cry," I point out. She knows me too well. She raises her eyebrows. I'm forced to add, "Much."

  "No, but you swore and shouted, ranted and rowed. I'm just not sure if you know what you want."

  Fuck off, Lucy.

  "Well?" she persists. "Do you know? What do you want, Connie? Which of them is real?"

  "Fuck off, Lucy."

  So she does. She says that she hasn't sat around all day waiting for me to wake up to be insulted. No doubt Lucy has been expecting me to wake up, put on my spangly boob tube and get down to a club to find myself a brand-new husband. That is Lucy's idea of getting over it. Getting on. You get knocked down and you get up again. Higher up the second time, so that no one can reach you to knock you down again. That is her theory. But she has never been deserted by a husband, well, at leas
t, not her own. Doesn't she understand that my husband has just left me? My husband! I am alone! She tells me to have a long hard think, and that I know where to find her when I want to be constructive. Constructive! Well, that call will be a long time coming. Lucy might not be very familiar with the concept of waiting by a phone that doesn't ring. But I might be about to introduce her to that experience. I think about that. Yes, it will be a service to the community. Thousands of men throughout the metropolis will be grateful to me for wreaking revenge.

  I open another bottle of wine and another packet of cigarettes.

  I hear the doorbell ring but don't move. I am in bed. It's Tuesday, I've been in bed since Sunday. I can't imagine moving ever again. Except for more wine, cigarettes or the occasional

  trip to pee. The bell rings again, and again. Silence, and then it rings again.

  "It's me," yells Sam through the letterbox. I still don't move. "Lucy called me. She's worried about you."

  "Is she?" A seven-year-old says in her sulkiest voice, "Funny way of showing it."

  "Are you going to let me in?" asks Sam.

  "I just want to be alone," says Greta Garbo.

  "Look, I understand you don't want to come to work but it might help to talk," tempts Sam.

  "Nothing to say," says the Wicked Witch of the West.

  Where are my clothes? Where am I? Where is my head? I move. Ouch! That is where my head is. I slide back the sheets, stale sweat out, cold air in. I inch downstairs acting out the scene from Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video, but not the twirling agile break-dancing bit, the bit where the zombies are awoken from the dead. I open the door.

  "Poor love. You look like shit." What is it with my friends? I glance in the hall mirror. But Sam is right, I'm not at my best. She fights her way through the bottle bank that I have accumulated.

  "Is this all you've done since Sunday?" She gestures toward the empty vineyard. I nod. It is amazing how much time you have to drink, as soon as you stop wasting time on things like eating, washing, dressing, speaking.

  "Has Luke called?"

  I shake my head.

  "Have you called him?"

  Odd question. I shake my head again. This is too much.

  "I'm going to be sick."

  I am, very.

  I vomit for England, which is quite a relief. I figure that I bring up about half the alcohol that I've consumed. I'm surprised that there aren't butt ends swimming around in my

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  puke. Sam holds my hair and mops my head. When I finally stop turning myself inside out, she runs me a bath and puts me in it. This isn't so much an act of kindness, more to do with the fact that I smell vile. I have green teeth and a sweaty body; she can't stand being with me. Half an hour later I emerge from the bathroom wrapped in a large toweling dressing gown, with a towel round my head.

  "Good girl," says Sam encouragingly, as though she is congratulating a seven-year-old for washing her hands before lunch. I go into the dining room, see a steaming bowl of tomato soup. Invalid food.

  "So?"

  So I tell it all again. Sam nods and only interrupts with "uh-huh," "uh-huh," "thought so."

  "Has he called?"

  "No, I told you he hadn't."

  "I don't mean Luke, I mean John."

  I'm confused. "John? Why would John call?"

  She reads from the fax. "Because he has to have you now. Because he wants you, he wants you in every sense, blar blar because he wants to rub you up and down until you say stop. Blar blar can't forget the curves of your body and it makes him feel blar blar."

  "That was the other night," I explain patiently. "He'll have been drunk. He doesn't really want me." Why is Sam wasting my time talking about John? I try to explain it to her, without offending. "It was another one of his games. He never has really wanted me. At least not for a very, very long time. More importantly I don't want him. I don't want him to call"—I pause—"which is lucky because he won't. He'll be scared of Luke. John is history."

  "Christ, Con. You're in a mess."

  I don't think Sam deserves a medal for her perception.

  "Have you told Luke that it is over, that John is history?"

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  "No. I hardly think that is his point. I didn't tell him anything. He didn't give me a chance."

  Sam sighs, "Connie, he gave you the biggest chance of your lifetime. It's you who's been tight-arsed with the chances." I glare at her, oblivious. She continues, "People always say that you don't know what you have until you've lost it."

  Yes. Thank you, Sam. Thank you for that.

  "That is such a cliche," I yell.

  "Well, cliches only become cliches because there's some truth in them, and they are oft repeated and proven correct. Imagine how many people have loved and lusted before you."

  I can't see her point and if I do, and I've got it right, I don't like it.

  I've lost him?

  "Call him. Say you're sorry. Try to explain. Oh, Connie, at least think about what you've done. Think about it."

  I am grateful for the interruption of Daisy arriving. Daisy hugs me tightly for about an hour.

  "You poor, poor thing," she sighs as she shakes her head. "How awful. How dreadful."

  "Yes, isn't it?" I mumble, grateful for her uncomplicated sympathy. She blows it by adding, "Still, if I'd been Luke I'd have left you, too. Well, I'm sure that you can sort this out." Daisy looks at Sam, expecting a chorus of affirmation. I wait patiently as well. None comes.

  "Err, Daisy, you were pissed off when you found out Con was having an affair and you're not her husband. I very much doubt that Luke sees this as an easy fix."

  "But the point is, she's not having the affair anymore and she's sorry," says Daisy reasonably, "aren't you?"

  "Very," I nod vigorously.

  "Oh well, that's all right then," comments Sam.

  "You know what your situation reminds me of?" Daisy

  obviously thinks Sam is being unnecessarily mean so she valiantly tries to cheer me up, single-handedly.

  "What?"

  "Tess of the D'Urbervilles." She's lost me. "Where Tess is seduced by the D'Urberville cad but then later realizes that Angel is the love of her life."

  "Tess ends up dead," points out Sam with unnecessary frankness. Daisy blushes.

  "Yes, that's not a good example. It's more like Anna Karenina. "

  "Leaves her husband and then dies."

  Daisy is struggling. "I know, I know. It's like that film where that couple are really meant for each other, but she has a fling with the neighbor. But it's OK because he forgives her, and they sort it all out, and they get back together and have twins."

  "Who's in that film?" I ask, suspicious that she's making it up.

  "Errr, Helena Bonham Carter, Ralph Fiennes, Robert De Niro, Cameron Diaz, and errr, Rock Hudson, I think."

  They leave! Why are people always leaving me? First Luke, then Lucy, now Sam and Daisy. Admittedly, they stayed for five hours but then Sam said she has some work to do and they left. What is going on here? Isn't the story supposed to begin with a sad, lonely, mixed-up thing, who has no friends, drinks and smokes too much and then isn't it supposed to end with a party? Isn't it? Aren't I supposed to be in the arms of a tall, blond, handsome sex lord right about now? Hello, God, calling in law and natural order. Are you out there? Are you listening? What's going on here? Stop the world I want to get off. Where's the crazy, funny, babe? Where are the laughs? I'm more than shortchanged, I'm carrying Ethiopia's national debt.

  I sit in a tight ball of despair.

  Sam is right, of course, I should call Luke. If only to find

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  out where he is staying. I pick up the phone and then immediately put it down again as if it has scalded me. What should I say? What can I say? I could go for the brutal, brazening-it-out approach, "Hi, Luke, it's me, Connie. That's as in con artist rather than constancy. Yes, about that fidel
ity thing, well, you were laboring under a misconception. Much better that the truth is out. Wouldn't you agree?"

  No, I don't think so.

  I could try the "I'm really, really sorry" approach. After all, I am. But suddenly "sorry" seems such an inadequate word. I'm all out of ideas. I pick up the phone and practice speaking to it. "Hi, Luke." Hi? Hi? Hi hardly seems appropriate under the circumstances—far too flip. "Hello," "Good day," "Watcha." I began to ring his mobile. My fingers are shaking as I press the numbers. Such a simple process that I am used to doing two or three times every day has suddenly become overwhelming. I listen to my heart, boom titty boom. Boom titty boom, thumping inside my tight chest. I can almost see it pounding.

  "Hello." It is him. I hear his voice and it stabs me.

  "Luke? It's me."

  Silence. No "Hi, me," which is what he's said every time we've spoken on the phone for over half a decade. All he says is "Yes?" This is excruciating.

  "I just wanted to call."

  "For a chat?" Sarcasm doesn't suit him. I feel I don't know him. He is cool and calm. He tells me he is staying at Simon's. He tells me that he wants to come and pick up some more clothes. I ask him if we can talk and he says that he doesn't think I can have anything to say that he wants to hear.

  "I want to explain," I wail.

  "Can you, Connie? Well that should be interesting. I'm waiting."

  Suddenly thrust to center stage, I forget my lines. How am I going to explain? I can't explain it to myself.

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  "I'm waiting, Connie." I think he's enjoying this. The barbarian.