by Marian Keyes
“You’re right,” he said wearily. “You’re right, you’re right, you’re right!”
“I am,” I reassured him. “And if it makes you feel any better, you can have all the saucepans.”
“Thanks,” he said quietly.
“And don’t worry,” I told him, all fake bonhomie and back-slapping jocularity, “one day I’m sure we’ll look back and laugh at all of this.”
Naturally enough, I was sure of nothing of the sort. I was dimly aware that there was something deeply, deeply wrong with my having to comfort him, with my having to make light of things and encourage him to be strong.
James suddenly got to his feet. He just stood there for a few moments looking lost. He was obviously planning how to get the mortgage documents and all that stuff sent over from London, I thought. He must be mortified that he’d been so inefficient.
“I’d better go,” he said.
“Right,” I said. “Fine. Why don’t you go back to your hotel [hotel! what a joke!] and organize the deeds of the apartment to be sent over? And then we can meet up later.”
“Fine,” he said, still being very quiet.
I couldn’t wait for him to leave.
This was too much.
It was finally happening.
It really was really, really over.
We’d dealt with it like civilized human beings. Too civilized, in my opinion. The whole thing had a dreamlike quality, and it was horrible.
“I’ll call you this afternoon,” he said.
He said good-bye to Kate, and although he looked as if he was explaining her child support entitlements to her, at least he seemed to be making an effort to bond with her.
Finally I managed to get him to leave.
He looked as exhausted as I felt.
twenty-seven
I barely managed to close the door behind him before I started to cry.
As though they instinctively knew that he had left—hey, what am I talking about, because they had been lying on the floor in the bedroom above the dining room with their ears pressed to a glass trying to hear everything that was being said—Anna, Helen and Mum magically emerged from the woodwork, wearing their Concerned Expressions.
I was distraught.
As though she sensed my grief, Kate started to bawl.
Or maybe it was just because she was hungry.
Either way it was a bit of a cacophony.
“The bastard,” I managed to say between sobs, tears stinging my face.
“How can it be so easy for him? He’s like a fucking machine, with no feelings at all.”
“Wasn’t he upset, even slightly?” asked Mum anxiously.
“The one thing, the only thing, the fucker is worried about is how sordid it’s going to be when we have to split up our possessions.”
“But that’s not so bad,” said Helen soothingly. “Maybe then he’ll just leave everything to you. And you’ll get everything.”
Nice try, Helen.
Not quite what I needed to hear though.
“So there was no mention of a reconciliation?” asked Mum, her face white, her eyes worried.
“None!” I burst out, prompting a fresh bout of wailing from Kate, who was being held by a miserable-looking Anna.
“Reconciliation!” screeched Helen. “But you wouldn’t take him back, would you? Not after the way he’s treated you.”
“But that’s not the point,” I sobbed. “At least I wanted the choice. I wanted the chance to tell him to fuck off and that I wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole. And the bastard didn’t even have the decency to do that.”
The three of them nodded in sympathy.
“And he was so smug!” I burst out. “I remembered how he likes his bloody coffee!”
There was a sharp intake of breath from all three of them. They stood shaking their heads sadly at my foolishness. “That’s bad,” said Anna. “Now he’ll know that you still care.”
“But I don’t,” I protested violently. “I hate his guts, his uptight, unfaithful, accountant’s guts!
“And the bloody nerve of him!” I continued, tears pouring down my blotchy face.
“What?” asked the three, moving forward slightly to hear yet another of James’s misdeeds.
“He was upset about the dividing of our things and I, I, me! was the one who ended up trying to make him feel better about it. Imagine it! Me comforting him. After all that’s happened.”
“Men,” said Anna, shaking her head in weary disbelief. “Can’t live with them, can’t live with them.”
“Can’t live with them,” continued Mum, “can’t shoot them.”
There was a pause. Then Helen spoke.
“Says who?”
“So what’s the outcome?” asked Mum.
“None yet,” I said. “He’s calling this afternoon.”
“What are you going to do until then?” Mum asked, her anxious glance straying inadvertently in the direction of the liquor cabinet, even though it had stood empty for many’s the long year, but old habits die hard. It might have been more appropriate if her glance had strayed inadvertently out into the garden and under the oil tank, but never mind.
“Nothing,” I said. “I’m so tired.”
“Why don’t you go to bed?” she said hastily. “It’s been an ordeal for you.
We’ll take care of Kate.”
Helen looked as if she was about to protest. She opened her mouth mutinously. But then she shut it again.
Nothing short of miraculous, I must say.
“Okay,” I said. I dragged myself up the stairs and got into bed still wearing the lovely clothes that I had been decked out in that morning.
There was no trace of the smiling, well-made-up, attractive woman I had been then. Only a red-faced, puffy-eyed, blotchy-skinned wreck.
Mid-afternoon, Mum woke me by gently shaking me by the shoulder, whispering “James is on the phone for you. Will you talk to him?”
“Yes,” I said. I stumbled from the bed, clothes all crumpled, half-blinded from sleep in my eyes, drooling like a lunatic.
“Hello,” I mumbled.
“Claire,” he said crisply, all authority and efficiency. “I’ve tried to get our deeds faxed over to me but there’s no fax shop in this bloody city.”
Instantly I felt guilty. He made me feel as if it was all my fault. As though I had personally gone around and shut every fax shop in Dublin just to spite him.
“Oh sorry, James,” I stuttered. “If you’d mentioned it I would have suggested that they could have been faxed to Dad’s office.”
“Well, never mind.” He sighed, sounding irritable and exasperated and conveying that, if he wanted something done, he was better off doing it himself and not involving me or any members of my immediate family.
“Anyway it’s too late now. They’re being mailed and should arrive in the morning.”
You’ll be lucky, I thought, thinking of the relaxed attitude of the Irish postal system, compared to the English one. But I said nothing. Doubtless when the time came and the documents didn’t, I would somehow be made to feel that that was my fault also.
“But I do think that we should meet this evening anyway,” he continued efficiently, ever the professional. Time is money, isn’t that right, James! But in fairness he did have a point. We had to meet anyway. We had so much to talk about. It made sense. I obviously wanted everything sorted out as quickly as possible so that I could get on with my new life.
I didn’t have any other motive, did I?
I wasn’t pathetic enough to think that, if he saw enough of me, he might realize that he still loved me?
Maybe I just enjoyed his company.
Maybe hell!
But I had to admit that I was fascinated by the fact that he no longer loved me. You know, in the same sort of way that people always look at the blood on the road and the mangled vehicles being towed away after a car crash. I know that it’s horri
ble but at the same time I’m so drawn to it.
I know that I’ll be upset afterward but I still can’t stop myself.
Or maybe I just wanted the chance to beat the shit out of him. Who knows?
“Well, what should we do?” he asked. “I would come out to your house but I’m not sure I’m particularly welcome.”
I could hardly believe my ears.
How dare he!
He had no right to feel welcome, but at the same time, I had treated him with the utmost good manners.
Which is more than the way he could be said to have treated me.
Hadn’t I made him coffee?
Hadn’t I not set the dogs on him?
Not that we had any dogs, but that wasn’t the point.
Worse still, I could have set Helen on him.
Just what had he been expecting?
The roads from Dublin Airport to be lined with cheering natives, waving Union Jacks? Brass bands and red carpets? A national holiday to be declared? Me greeting him at my front door, wearing a sexy negligee, smiling and saying huskily “Welcome back, darling”?
Frankly, I was baffled.
I wasn’t sure what I should say.
Sorry sir, but we’re fresh out of fatted calves.
He sounded as if he was sulking. As if he wanted me to say something like, “Oh, don’t be so silly, James. Of course you’re welcome.” But James didn’t sulk. He was far too grown up for that. And no man in his right mind could have expected me to welcome him back with open arms.
But what was I going to say?
“I’m sorry you feel that way, James,” I managed to say humbly. “If my family or I have behaved in any kind of inhospitable fashion, then I can only offer my apologies.”
Of course, I didn’t mean a word of it.
If my family had offended him in any way—if, for example, Helen had attracted his attention when he left the house by making horrible faces or gestures at him from an upstairs window or mooning him or something even worse—then I would personally offer rewards.
But I had to humor James.
Although I was gagging on my polite words, I always had Kate in the forefront of my mind. Nothing would have given me greater pleasure than to tell James just how unwelcome he was, but that would be cutting off my nose to spite my face. I didn’t want Kate to grow up without a father, so telling James that he wasn’t un welcome (I’m afraid that that was as far as I was prepared to go) was the price I had to pay.
“Well, should I come over then?” he asked grudgingly.
What was wrong with him?
He was behaving like a manipulative child.
“Oh, James,” I said kindly, “I wouldn’t want you to come over here if you’re not feeling particularly welcome. We both want to be relaxed. Perhaps we should meet in town instead.”
There was a long pause while James digested this.
“Fine,” he said coldly. “We could go for dinner.”
“That sounds nice,” I said, thinking, that does sound nice.
“Well, I’ve got to eat something,” he said ungraciously. “So you might as well come along.”
“You always were a silver-tongued devil,” I said, forcing a smile into my voice. But I felt suddenly so sad.
We arranged to meet at a downtown restaurant at seven-thirty.
And the preparations were, if anything, even more elaborate than the ones that morning.
I wanted, naturally, to look beautiful.
But I decided that I wanted to look sexy also.
James had always loved my legs and loved it when I wore high heels, even if they made me nearly as tall as he was.
So I wore my highest pair, with my shortest dress, black, of course and the sheerest pair of stockings I could find.
As luck would have it, hadn’t I shaved my legs only the previous evening? When I was preparing to have sex with Adam, actually. But let’s not talk about that right now.
I put on piles of makeup.
“More mascara,” urged Helen from the sidelines. “More foundation.”
The subtle approach had been, shall we say, less than successful this morning. So now we were going for overkill.
As I applied the stinging stuff that I put on my lips to keep my lipstick in place, it struck me how terrible this all was. So awful. I used to apply my makeup with that kind of care when I was going out with James first.
And now here I was dolling myself up, trying my damnedest to look beautiful for the Grand Finale of our relationship.
It was all such a waste.
Failed relationships can be described as so much wasted makeup.
Forget the laughs, forget the fights, forget the sex, forget the jealousy.
But take off your hat and observe a moment’s silence for the legions of unknown tubes of foundation, mascara, eyeliner, blusher and lipstick who died that it might all have been possible. But who died in vain.
I looked at myself in the mirror and, I had to admit it, I looked good. Tall and slim and nearly elegant. Not a watermelon in sight.
“Jesus,” said Helen, shaking her head in undisguised admiration. “Look at you. And it’s such a short time since you were a fat old bitch.”
Praise indeed.
“Put your hair up,” suggested Helen.
“I can’t, it’s too short,” I protested.
“No, it’s not,” she said, and came over to me and swept it up onto the top of my head.
Goddammit, she was right. It must have grown a bit while I completely neglected it over the previous two months.
“Oh,” I said, delighted. “I haven’t had long hair since I was sixteen.”
Helen busied herself with slides and clips while I grinned like a lunatic at my reflection in the mirror. “James will be sickened,” I said. “He’ll be so sorry that he can’t have a beautiful babe like me. I’ll have him on his knees begging me to take him back as soon as I walk in the door.”
My beautiful fantasy of a drooling and contrite James was interrupted by Helen saying loudly, “What have you done to your ears?”
“What’s wrong with them?”
“They’re kind of purple.”
“Oh, that’s just the hair color. I suppose we’d better take my hair back down to cover them,” I said sorrowfully. I had very quickly grown attached to this sophisticated look.
“No, no, we’ll think of something,” said Helen with a bit of a gleam in her eye. “Stay there.” And off she went.
She arrived back with Anna, who whistled when she saw me, and a couple of cloths and a bottle of turpentine.
“You do that ear,” instructed Helen. “And I’ll do this one.”
I went to meet James with ears that were red, raw and almost bleeding, instead of a rich, glossy, chestnut color.
But my hair remained up.
twenty-eight
I have to say that walking into that restaurant was one of the most grati-fying experiences I’d ever had. James looked up from whatever he was reading and he literally, literally, did a double take.
“Er, Claire,” he said, all of a fluster, “um, you’re looking wonderful.”
I smiled in what I hoped was a mysterious, enigmatic, sophisticated way.
“Thank you,” I purred.
That’ll teach you to leave me, you bastard, I thought as I swung into my seat, giving him an eyeful of my thighs in my sheer, shimmering stockings and my short tight black dress.
He couldn’t take his eyes off me.
It was wonderful.
I had got a few funny looks as I had walked from where I had parked the car to the restaurant. I suppose I was a bit overdressed for a bright Monday evening in April, but who cared.
The waiter, a youth in an ill-fitting dinner suit—an alleged Italian, but with a Dublin accent—came rushing over and spent an unnecessary amount of time patting my napkin onto my crotch.
“Um, thank you,” I said w
hen I felt that it had gone on far too long.
“You’re welcome,” he drawled, as Italian as bacon and cabbage. He winked at me over James’s head.
Honestly!
And then I got really paranoid.
Maybe he thought I was a hooker.
Did I look like a prostitute?
I knew my dress was too short.
Oh what the hell, I decided.
James smiled at me. A beautiful, warm, admiring, approving smile. And for a moment I saw the man I’d married.
Then he noticed the young waiter bending down so he could get a better look at my legs under the table and the smile vanished, leaving me feeling bereft.
“Claire.” He frowned like a Victorian patriarch. “Cover yourself. Look at the way the waiter is looking at you!”
I reddened.
I felt foolish and embarrassed now in my short dress, instead of sexy and sassy. Fuck James for making me feel like this! Behaving like a bloody Amish person.
He hadn’t always been like that, you know. I could remember a time when the shorter my dress was, the better he liked it. Well, times, as they say, had changed.
I put my head down and spitefully looked for the most expensive thing on the menu.
“I suppose we should talk about money,” I said after the waiter had gone away.
“It’s all right,” he said. “I’ll pay. I’ll put it on the card.”
“No, James,” I said, wondering if he was being deliberately obtuse. “I mean, we have to talk about our money. You know, yours and mine, our financial situation.”
I spoke slowly and deliberately, as if I was talking to a child.
“Oh, I see.” He nodded.
“So, do we have any?” I asked anxiously.
“Money? Of course we do,” he said, annoyed. I’d hit him where it hurt.
Casting aspersions on his ability to provide for his wife and family. Or should I say his wife and families.
“Why wouldn’t we have any money?” he asked.
“Well, because of my not working and only getting maternity pay and with you paying the mortgage and then the rent on another apartment and…”
“What do you mean, paying the rent on another apartment?” he said in loud and annoyed tones.
“You know, the apartment that you and…and…Denise live in,” I said.