by Marian Keyes
“Did you?” asked James, trying to appear unflustered. But a spasm of something—fear maybe? or could it be annoyance?—passed over his face.
“Hmmm,” I said, inspecting my fingernails, “yes, I did actually.” There was a pause. James stood watching me, the way a mouse watches a cat.
“Yes,” I continued in a very casual tone, “and he gave me a very different version of events concerning you and me.”
“Oh,” said James, and swallowed heavily.
“Apparently you’ve always loved me,” I said. “And appar- ently the only problem you’ve had with me was that you were afraid that I’d leave you.”
James was silent and sullen.
“Is that right, James?” I asked sharply.
“You wouldn’t want to take any notice of George,” he said, recovering his aplomb somewhat.
“I know that, James,” I replied smoothly, “so that’s why I rang Judy.
And, guess what, she told me exactly the same thing.”
More silence.
“James,” I sighed, “it’s about time you started to tell me what’s going on.”
“I have,” he muttered.
“No, you haven’t,” I corrected him loudly. “You had an affair with another woman, you left me the day I gave birth to your child, then you decided that you wanted me back. But instead of telling me that, you had to manufacture a whole pack of lies and malign me and call me selfish and childish and inconsiderate and stupid.” (Voice going up several decibels here.) “And instead of apologizing for the lousy way you treated me, you made out that it was all my fault.” (Voice continuing to rise.) “And you decided that you’d browbeat me into being something other than what I am. Some meek little woman who wouldn’t answer you back. And wouldn’t over-shadow you. And wouldn’t make you feel insecure!”
“It wasn’t like that,” he protested feebly.
“It was exactly like that,” I shouted. “I just can’t believe that I was fool enough to believe your ridiculous story!”
“Claire, you’ve got to listen to me,” he said, sounding bad-tempered and irritated.
“Oh, no, I do not,” I corrected him angrily. “Why do I have to listen to you? Are you going to try and tell me a whole lot more lies?
“Well, are you?” I shouted when he didn’t answer.
I sat and looked at him, willing him to speak, willing him to make everything all right.
“Convince me,” I begged silently. “I want to be wrong. Tell me I’m wrong.
Please explain it to me. I’ll even settle for an apology. Just an apology will do.”
He slowly sat down on the couch with his face in his hands.
And, even though I was expecting some kind of reaction, it still gave me a little jump to realize that he was crying.
Jesus! What was I supposed to say to him?
I hate to see a grown man cry.
Actually, that’s not true at all.
Usually, there’s nothing I enjoy more than seeing a grown man cry. Especially if I’m the one who made him cry. That feeling of power! You just can’t beat it.
If he was crying it must mean that he was really sorry that he’d been so horrible to me and that everything was going to be fine.
He was going to apologize.
He was going to admit that he was completely in the wrong.
My heart started to soften.
But then he looked up at me and I couldn’t believe the expression on his face. He looked so angry! “That’s just typical of you,” he shouted.
“What?” I asked faintly.
“You’re so bloody selfish,” he yelled, all traces of the tearful man magically vanished.
“Why?” I asked, baffled.
“Everything was fine!” he shouted. “Everything was all worked out and we were going to start again and you were going to try and be mature and a bit more considerate. But you just couldn’t let it lie, could you?”
“But what was I supposed to do?” I asked meekly. “George tells me one thing and you tell me something completely different. George’s story is a lot more believable than yours. Especially when Judy confirmed it.”
I was trying very, very hard to be reasonable. I could see how angry James was and it was frightening, but at the same time, I was trying to stand my ground. Please God, I prayed, give me the strength to stand up to him. Don’t let me end up taking the blame for everything again. You know, just for once, it would be nice not to be a wimp.
“Well, of course you’d believe George and Judy,” he said nastily. “Of course you want to believe nice things about yourself. You just couldn’t take the truth from me, could you?”
“James,” I said, struggling to stay calm, “I just want to get to the bottom of things. I just want to know why you told George that you really loved me and that you were afraid that you’d lose me, and why you told me that you could barely tolerate me. It just doesn’t add up!”
“I told you the truth,” he said sulkily.
“So what was it you told George?” I asked.
“George got it wrong,” he said shortly.
“And did Judy get it wrong also?” I asked coldly.
“I suppose,” he said offhandedly.
“And Aisling and Brian and Matthew got it wrong too?”
“They must have,” he said carelessly.
“Look, James,” I said earnestly, “be reasonable. They can’t all be wrong, can they?”
“They can,” he said abruptly. “They are.”
“James, please, you’re a logical man,” I said, starting to feel desperate.
“Can’t you see that someone isn’t telling the truth? And didn’t you think that sooner or later the different stories would get back to me? Don’t you know that my friends and I discuss everything?”
He said nothing. He sat on the couch with his arms folded and looked at me defiantly.
Jesus! It was like pulling teeth.
Right! I’d try again. No matter what happened I would stay calm. I would try not to kill him. I would try not to be angry. I would try not to hurt him the way that I wanted to. I would swallow my pride one more time. I would make it clear that I would forgive him for the affair. This was not easy, let me tell you.
Especially when, at the same time, I was trying to stand my ground and not be completely bullied by him.
I was trying to bear in mind that there was a fine line between being understanding and being a doormat, between standing up for oneself and being a crazed ax-woman.
“James,” I said, miraculously managing to sound calm, “we really have to try and straighten this out. If I ask you questions, will you just answer me yes or no?”
“What kind of questions?” he asked suspiciously.
“Well, like did you lie to me when you told me that it was my fault that you left me?”
“You mean that you want to sit here and interrogate me?” he said, outraged. “You must be joking! Who the hell do you think you are? You’re trying to make me out to be some kind of criminal!”
“James,” I said. I was on the verge of tears of frustration. “I’m not! Really, I’m not. I’m just trying to get you to talk to me, to tell me what you really feel, what’s really going on. I want you to be honest with me. Otherwise we won’t have a future.”
“I see,” he said nastily, “so you want me to say something like ‘You’re a wonderful person, Claire, and I don’t know why I had an affair because you’re so great.’ Is that what you want to hear?”
“Yes,” I thought.
“No…” I said weakly. “It’s just—”
“You want me to take all the blame, is that it?” he said, raising his voice.
“You want me to be the bad guy, the ‘man you and all your friends love to hate,’ is that it? After all I’ve done for you? Is that what you want?” he ended on a shout, his face close to mine.
“But you are the bad guy,” I said
, bewildered. “You were the one who had the affair, not me.”
“Oh Jesus!” he shouted, really shouted, this time. “You’ll never stop harping about that, will you? Trying to make me feel guilty about it. Well, I don’t feel guilty, right? I’ve been so good to you always. Everyone knows that. I am not the bad person here. You are!”
Silence followed. The room reverberated with it.
I sat very still. Feeling shell-shocked.
James exhaled hard, angrily, and started pacing the room. He didn’t look at me.
I realized that I was shaking.
Am I a bad person? I asked myself.
Am I really?
A little voice in my head told me not to be ridiculous. This had gone far enough. I had to hold on to what I knew to be the truth. James was the one who had had an affair. Not me. I didn’t force James to have an affair. He chose to do it. James told me that I was almost impossible to love, but he told everyone else that he loved me very much.
James wanted me to take the blame for his affair.
As I sat there trembling, my head swimming, something became very clear to me. Something that I hadn’t seen before now. James did not want to admit, would not admit, that he was in the wrong. He could not accept that he had had an affair. Well, obviously, he knew he’d had one—I’d say the memory of Denise wasn’t that easy to erase—but he didn’t want it to be his fault.
A little time passed. Tension hung heavy in the air.
From James’s reaction I realized that he was not going to admit, not in a million years, that he had lied to me and told the truth to George.
And I happened to believe George. I was sure he wasn’t making anything up—quite apart from anything else, he was too stupid! And I was sure that James didn’t think for one moment that what he said to George would get back to me. He thought he was perfectly safe in telling George that he loved me very much while telling me that it was hard for him to love someone as difficult and selfish as me. I knew James hated to feel insecure about anything. He hated to be vulnerable, even about his work, not to have total control. And he wanted to feel secure around me.
I still intended to get to the bottom of the great George/Claire contradict-ory stories controversy but this time I decided to try a different approach.
On the one hand I felt like telling James to fuck off, that he was an irresponsible, immature, emotional cripple and that a child could see that he was trying to manipulate me. But on the other hand, it was obvious that he was afraid. Or confused.
Maybe he needed someone to voice his fears, because he was too frightened to do it himself, and then I could try to put his mind at rest.
This was worth one more try.
“James,” I said gently, “there’s no shame in loving me, you know. It’s not a sign of weakness to love someone and sometimes feel insecure. It’s human. There’s nothing wrong with it. And if you told George that you loved me very much, there’s no need to lie to me about it. I’m not going to use it as a weapon against you. And when you came to Dublin there was no need to pretend that you barely loved me. No one’s going to condemn you for loving your wife, for God’s sake. And as for the affair, you made a mistake. [This was extremely hard to say, believe me, but I said it.] No one is perfect,” I continued. “We all make mistakes.
You can be honest with me, you know. You don’t have to play games to protect yourself. We can work all this out and have a real marriage.”
I finished speaking. I was exhausted.
There was a pause. I hardly dared to breathe. James sat silently, looking at the floor. Everything hinged on this.
“Claire,” he finally said.
“Yes,” I said, tense, terrified.
“I don’t know what kind of psycho-babble crap you’re talking but it makes no sense to me,” he said.
So that was it.
I had lost.
“I can’t see what the problem is,” he continued. “I never said I didn’t love you. I just said that you’d have to change for us to go on living together.
I said that you’d have to grow up. I said that you were so inconsiderate—”
“I know what you said, James,” I interrupted. I decided to stop him before he delivered the entire speech again. He sounded as if he was reading from a script. Or as if he was a robot programmed to say these things—press a button and he was off.
As for me, I’d had enough.
No more humiliation for me, thanks very much. No more swallowing my anger. Honestly, I couldn’t manage another mouthful. But it was delicious. Did you make it yourself?
“Fine,” I said.
“Fine?” he said quizzically.
“Yes, fine,” I agreed.
“That’s good,” he said, sounding paternal and smug, “but is it really? I don’t want you bringing this up every couple of months or so and throwing it in my face.”
“I won’t,” I said shortly.
I started to gather up my bag and newspaper with a lot more rustling and fuss than was necessary. I got to my feet and started to put on my jacket.
“What are you doing?” asked James, confusion written on his face.
I affected a startled and innocent face. “What do you think I’m doing?”
“I’m not sure,” he said.
“I’d better tell you then, hadn’t I?” I said smoothly.
“Er…well, yes,” said James. It gave me a cold thrill to hear him sounding a bit anxious.
“I’m leaving,” I said.
“Leaving?” he hooted. “What the hell are you leaving for? We’ve just worked everything out.”
Then he started to laugh in relief. “Oh God, sorry,” he said, “for a minute there…” He shook his head at his own silliness. “But of course, you’ve got to go back. You’ve got to get your things and bring back Kate. But I must admit that I was kind of hoping that you’d stay the night and we might get…um…reacquainted. Never mind. We can wait a few more days. So what time on Tuesday should I expect you?”
“Oh James,” I said with a mock-sympathetic little laugh, “you haven’t realized, have you?”
“Realized what?” he asked carefully.
“I won’t be here on Tuesday. Or any other day, for that matter,” I explained nicely.
“For God’s sake, what is it now?” he bellowed. “We’ve just worked it all out and now you—”
“No, James,” I cut in icily. “We’ve worked nothing out. Nothing at all.
You may have worked something out—your image of yourself as a nice guy is good and intact—but I’ve sorted nothing out.”
“But what have we been talking about for the past hour?” he asked belligerently.
“Exactly,” I said.
“What?” he barked, looking at me as if I’d gone a bit crazy.
“I said ‘Exactly.’ Just what the hell have we been talking about?” I asked him. “Because for all the good it’s done me, I might as well have been talking to the wall.”
“Oh, we’re back to you again, are we?” asked James nastily. “It’s all you care about, you and your feelings and—”
That was it!
“Shut up!” I commanded, my voice coming out much louder than I had expected.
James was so shocked that he actually did shut up.
“I’m not listening to any more of your crap about what a terrible person I am,” I shouted. “I didn’t fuck someone else. You did. And you’re so immature and selfish that you just can’t own up to it and take the blame.”
“I’m immature and selfish?” said James in astonishment. “Me?” he said, dramatically pointing in disbelief to his chest. “Me?” I think you’re slightly confused here.”
“No, I’m bloody well not,” I shouted. “I know I’m not perfect. But at least I can admit it.”
“So why won’t you own up to being selfish and inconsiderate in our marriage?” he asked, with an air of triumph.
“Because it’s not true!” I said. “I knew it wasn’t true, but I loved you and wanted to please you so I convinced myself that it had to be true. I thought if I could fix myself that I could fix our marriage. But there was nothing wrong with me. You were just manipulating me.”
“How dare you?” he said, his face red with rage. “After all I’ve done for you. I’ve been a perfect husband!”
“James,” I said with icy calm, “there is no doubt that you have been very good to me over the years. I think if you look back you’ll find that it was mutual. We loved each other, it was part of the deal. But you seem to have started to believe your own publicity. Having an affair with another woman is not being good to me. You cannot justify it.” There was a pause. For once James didn’t have an indignant answer ready. “But,” I continued, “you’re not the first person to behave badly, to step out of line. It’s not the end of the bloody world. We could have gotten over it. But you’re too interested in looking squeaky clean and whiter than white. That’s the choice that you’ve made.”
I started toward the door.
“I can’t understand why you’re leaving,” he said.
“I know,” I said.
“Tell me why,” he said.
“No.”
“Why the hell not?” he demanded.
“Because I’ve tried. And I’ve tried. Why should you listen now when you haven’t any of the other times? I’m not wasting any more time. I’m not trying any more.”
“I love you,” he said quietly.
The bastard.
He sounded as if he really meant it.
I bit my lip. This was not the time to weaken.
“No, you don’t,” I said firmly.
“I do,” he protested loudly.
“No, you don’t,” I told him. “If you had loved me you wouldn’t have had an affair—”
“But—” he interrupted.
“And,” I continued loudly, before he started his speech again, “if you loved me, you wouldn’t have wanted me to change into some wimpy woman who was afraid of you. If you loved me you wouldn’t have tried to manipulate me or to control me. And most of all, if you loved me, you wouldn’t be afraid to admit that you’re in the wrong. If you loved me you could rise above yourself and your ego and apologize to me.”