What Now?

by Shari Low

  He playfully dropped his arm around my shoulders. ‘I’ve only been obsessed by one woman,’ he said playfully, tickling me, to the horror of a couple of camera-clad tourists who had to walk round us. ‘She’s a bit of a handful though.’

  ‘Is that a fat joke because I didn’t pack my magic pants?’ I shot back, making him buckle with laughter.

  Oh God, this felt good. And normal. And… and… did I mention good?

  A couple of streets back from the park, we popped into a cycle-hire shop and picked up bikes. It was the best way to cover the square miles of greenery, but my thighs were trembling at the prospect.

  ‘Right, you lot, I want you to know that if this kills me, I love you very much and there’s a hundred quid hidden behind the toilet rolls in the bathroom cupboard for emergencies. I knew you’d never find it there.’

  It was a standing joke that that they could wipe out galaxies on the Xbox, code a program on a computer, but taking a cardboard roll off a toilet roll holder and replacing it with a new one was absolutely beyond their capabilities.

  We cycled for an hour or so, stopping off whenever we wanted to check something out, before arriving at the basketball courts at the Great Meadow. Mac had his ball out of his backpack and was on the court before Benny even took his cycle helmet off. Mark and I found a shady spot under a nearby tree. I took a blanket out of my backpack and spread it on the ground, then reapplied some factor 50.

  Mark pulled off his baseball cap and stretched out against the tree.

  ‘You look good, Cooper,’ he said, and I tried not to notice that the cycling had pumped up the muscles on his thighs even more than usual. Bloody hell, what was happening to me? I hadn’t given his thighs a second glance in years. I wasn’t sure when we stopped noticing each other. Probably around the last time he told me I looked good. I think I was in my thirties at the time.

  ‘It’s the tan. Underneath this I’m still a haggard specimen of a woman.’

  ‘Why do you do that?’ His gaze bore right into my soul and I felt myself flinch. He hadn’t looked at me like that for a long time.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The self-deprecating stuff.’

  Oh, too many things to unpack there. I went for the most obvious. ‘It’s the Gods Of Menopause. They make you feel shit about yourself and then apparently they kick in some good stuff at the end of it that makes it all worthwhile. I haven’t got to that bit yet. When I dig out the G-string bikini and shave my legs, you’ll know I’m there.’

  He rolled over, his head dangerously close to my lap. I had a ridiculous urge to run my fingers through his hair, but gave myself a metaphorical slap. This wasn’t the right time, the right place, or the right marriage. ‘I was worried about you when I heard you were here. I know there are too many memories. Things seemed good with Hannah though.’

  ‘They are. Do you want to hear about it, or do you want to have a sleep while the boys are busy?’ I knew he’d choose sleep. Listening to me talk about emotional stuff was on his list of least favourite things, in between athlete’s foot and the congestion charge.

  ‘I want to hear about it.’

  Well, bugger me and call me interesting. Who was this guy? Actually, I already knew the answer. This was Mark Barwick 1999. Maybe even Mark Barwick 2008. But he bore no resemblance at all to Mark Barwick 2010 – 2017 – that guy would have stopped twice on the way here to call the office, and right now he’d either be sleeping or taking notes for a Skype meeting he was planning for later. He certainly wouldn’t be asking his wife about the emotional ups and downs of her week.

  Yet, Mark Barwick 1999 and 2019 was interested, so Carly Cooper 2019 told him all about it. The bigger shock was that he listened. Asked questions. Engaged.

  When I began to tell him about our toasts at the bridge, he even leaned over and wiped away tears that came out of nowhere and dripped down my cheek, then he took my hands in his and held them softly.

  ‘It’s not sad tears,’ I told him, thinking how good his touch felt.

  ‘I know that,’ he replied. ‘In all our lives together, you’ve cried more when you’re happy.’

  He was right. When I was sad, I was more likely to hold it in, to swallow back the pain. For a lot of years with Mark, there were buckets of happy tears. When we met again, when we married, when we bought our house, when we had our boys. We’d had a lifetime together and much of it had been incredible. Over the last few years, I think I’d forgotten that.

  I carried on, managing not to crumble when I told him about Hannah’s final words.

  To Living Our Best Lives.

  ‘Fuck,’ was his final verdict, and I could see that had hit him somewhere deep in the chest.

  ‘Really? You’re a lawyer who makes cohesive arguments for a living and that’s all you’ve got?’ I asked, amused.

  ‘Sorry. It’s just that…’ He stopped.

  ‘Go on,’ I prompted, but he shook his head.

  ‘No. This isn’t the right time or place.’

  ‘Don’t start with that, Mark. Say what you feel. I’m done with robot Mark. I want to see the real guy again.’

  ‘Okay, fine,’ he said. ‘I just think… what a waste it’s all been.’

  ‘What’s been a waste?’

  ‘Hating yourself. Blaming yourself. Stopping yourself from being happy.’

  Had I done that? The first two, yes, but the last one?

  ‘Carly, I know that I’ve been a pretty shit husband for the last few years…’

  I didn’t argue.

  ‘But the truth is that I could have been perfect and I honestly think we’d still have split. You’ve been so unhappy, so consumed by misery, that even if we did have a shot at making us work, I don’t think you could have taken it.’

  ‘So it’s my fault?’ I snapped, irritation rising. Was he gaslighting me here?

  ‘No!’ he countered urgently. ‘Shit, I’m making such an arse of this. Carly, there’s no excuse for how crap I’ve been, and I take all the responsibility for that. I swear. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about when we got home. Since I moved out, I’ve… Christ, I’m a cliché. I’ve realised what I was missing. I’ve realised where I went wrong. I lost myself somewhere and I lost sight of what mattered. Then I lost you. God, I’d do it all so differently if I could go back. The whole balance of my life was fucked, and I was so consumed by making my career work that I didn’t have the sense to see my mistakes at home, or to change them. That’s why, I’ve realised that…’ He stopped, as if he was weighing up whether or not he should say something. ‘I want to fix it. That’s what I was going to tell you when we got back home. I knew I’d fucked up before I came here and being with the boys has just reinforced that. It’s been so good to be with them and I know I’m running out of time to be that dad that I want to be to them, the one who is there in the mornings, and who hangs out with them after school. The one who is part of their lives every day. This has been two of the best weeks of my life and I feel like they’ve given me another chance. I just hope you can too. I want to try again, Carly. With you. Us.’

  Silence. Crickets. Nothing. The shock had paralysed me. For years, I’d been desperate for him to say those things and to really mean them, not just spout off empty promises. Now, I could feel that he’d had some kind of real change, that he was absolutely serious about being the husband and dad I’d begged him to be.

  ‘Carly, you’re not speaking. Babe? Are you okay?’

  I was definitely not okay. And I definitely, for once in my life, could not speak because I absolutely didn’t know what to say. He wanted to try again? That sentence ricocheted around my skull. Try again.

  Two weeks ago, if someone had told me this would happen, I’d have thought they were insane. We could barely spend time in the same room.

  But now?

  He wanted to try again.

  I couldn’t stop hearing it.

  ‘Hey, what you two looking so serious about?’ Mac plumped down on the grass, his ha
ir soaked with sweat, his T-shirt off, his cheeks red with healthy exertion. His interruption killed our conversation. I decided to up his monthly allowance.

  ‘Oh, you know, usual stuff… how we’re not letting either of you go to Magaluf or Zante until you’re in your forties.’

  His low, throaty laugh made a couple of teenage girls lying on the grass a few metres away turn to look with curious smiles. A thought struck me. When I was that age, I was already writing Mark’s name on my jotters at school and lurking at the sports pitches to watch him play football. I was already convinced that – unless George Michael did a detour to the council estate I lived on, spotted me hanging out at the bus stop, and whisked me off to a life of fame and fortune – I was going to marry Mark. It took me a while to get there, but I did. And for a long time it was wonderful. Was I wasting over thirty years of my life by throwing away the last chapter, the one where we had finally got past all the pressures of bringing up children, building careers, trying to pay mortgages and juggle a hundred other things? We were, hopefully, coming into a new, easier time in our lives. Were we supposed to be together so that we could enjoy the payoff of a more contented, carefree future?

  ‘I’m hungry.’ It was Benny who interrupted the heavy stuff this time. He’d be getting his allowance raised too.

  ‘You’ve been hungry since you were six. I think it’s a boy thing,’ I told him, ruffling his hair and watching him squirm at the public display of affection. ‘If you go more than half an hour without eating, your body goes into panic mode and screams for Wotsits.’

  ‘I think you might be on to something there,’ he replied with mock sincerity.

  ‘Okay,’ I surrendered, grateful for the distraction and desperate for an excuse to delay answering the question that was still written all over Mark’s face. ‘Let’s go and eat before you faint. I couldn’t afford the hospital bills here.’

  If anyone was watching us, they’d think we were such a bonded, happy family. Maybe we could be again.

  We ate in one of our favourite New York restaurants, an Italian pizzeria across from the east side of the park, with our bikes chained up outside. Afterwards, we cycled some more, played baseball in the park’s North Meadow, ate ice cream for the second time and lay around on the grass, talking, laughing, being a family. I couldn’t remember a more perfect day.

  By the time we got back to Sarah’s home… would I always call it that? I think I would. Anyway, by the time we got back, all we had the energy to do was crash out on the sofa and watch an old Fast & Furious movie. It wasn’t the one with Charlize Theron, so I didn’t feel the pressure of hair comparisons.

  Hannah joined us when she got back late from work. I wondered if she wanted to talk more, but she flopped next to Benny on the couch, opened a bucket of popcorn and told us that her favourite thing in the world was to chill and watch Vin Diesel and the late great Paul Walker. She immediately went to the top of the boys’ ‘favourite cousin’ list.

  It didn’t even occur to me to change the sleeping arrangements we’d always had in this house. At least, not until we all trudged upstairs, exhausted but as happy as I could remember. Benny crashed out instantly the moment he sat on the bed, flopping onto the pillow, sound asleep in seconds. I’ve always been so jealous of his ability to do that.

  Mac was in the bathroom, as Mark pulled off his T-shirt. He’d already changed into the fleecy shorts he wore in bed.

  He glanced at Benny, making sure he was asleep, before picking up the conversation from earlier. ‘Listen, what we were talking about in the park… will you think about it? I really hope you’ll give it a chance. I want to make you happy.’

  ‘I will. I just need some time…’

  ‘I get it. I’ll wait,’ he said, grinning at me with the kind of tender love that used to make me melt to mush.

  The moment was broken, though, when his eyes suddenly went from bed to bed, as if he was only just registering that this might be an awkward moment. Every time we’d stayed here, Mac and Benny would top and tail in one double bed (‘Muuuuuuuum, he’s got his foot in my face again’) and Mark and I would take the other.

  Mark gestured to our usual bed. ‘Are you going to…?’

  Another feeling from the past made an appearance, when I felt a physical yearning for his arms to wrap around me, to cuddle in and spoon until morning. But…

  ‘No,’ I answered, and I knew he would sense my regret. ‘I don’t want to give mixed signals to the boys. Not yet…’

  He got it. I knew he would.

  I kissed a sleeping Benny on the head, hugged Mac when he came out of the bathroom, and said goodnight to Mark, before climbing under the lightweight blanket on the chaise under the window.

  This was Sarah’s bed when the girls were all here, and I knew it was crazy, but I felt her here, sensed her breathing.

  Sarah had always been the one with smart, rational advice in every situation.

  I just wish she could tell me what I should do now.

  25

  New York, The Next Morning

  Baby Can I Hold You – Tracy Chapman

  ‘Okay, so what are the rules for the rest of the week?’ I asked my sons over brunch. We’d slept late, all of us too tired to spring into action, and too content to care that we weren’t up and about.

  ‘Nothing that can break bones or put our internal organs in a different place,’ Benny recited, word for word, the order I’d given earlier.

  ‘Correct. I’m putting you in charge, Benny.’

  Benny punched his brother’s arm in triumph, evoking protests from Mac.

  ‘Ow! Why does he get to be in charge?’

  ‘Because you’re much more likely to throw yourself out of a plane.’

  He couldn’t argue.

  Mark drained his fresh orange juice. ‘Right, you two, go and grab your stuff and sling it in the van.’

  Benny snapped his fingers at his brother. ‘Come on, get to it. Let’s move it, pronto,’ he barked, before grinning mischievously at his dad and me. ‘I think I’ve gone power crazy, but I kinda like it.’

  Mac sighed and shook his head. ‘You are such a tit,’ he told his brother.

  ‘Hey!’ I interjected, outraged.

  Mac immediately looked sheepish. I was about to follow through with the bollocking, when I remembered that I wouldn’t see them for a week, and didn’t have the heart to scold him. Instead…

  ‘I said he’s in charge!’ I said firmly. ‘So that’s Sergeant Tit to you.’

  The two of them crumbled, while Mark put his head in his hands. ‘You can’t help yourself, can you?’ He was feigning exasperation, but I could see the laughter in his eyes.

  When the boys were gone, Mark raised his gaze expectantly and I knew immediately what was coming so I cut him off as gently as possible.

  ‘Don’t ask.’

  ‘What? I wasn’t going to say a thing,’ he protested with mock innocence. Patience had never been his strong point.

  ‘I need more than twenty-four hours,’ I chided him, then slipped my hand near his and rubbed his palm. It was a familiar touch, a gesture that I’d made thousands of times before, yet today it felt almost illicit. ‘It’s a lot, Mark. Give me some time. Let’s talk when we get home.’ I didn’t tell him that I’d lain awake most of the night thinking about it, wrestling with so many different feelings and questions that were impossible to answer. The one that came up again and again, was ‘did I still love Mark enough to make it work with him?’ I wasn’t sure of the answer. And goddammit, in the few moments when I did doze off, I had vivid dreams in which Sam was standing to one side, just watching, waiting, and I’d…

  ‘Carly? Are you ok?’ Shit, I must have drifted.

  ‘Sorry! Fine. Just tired,’ I blustered. And confused. Really, really confused. Why couldn’t I get Sam out of my mind?

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want to come with us? Spend the rest of the week?’

  I’d thought about that too, but…

  �
��No. The girls put so much effort into doing this and I’m so grateful. I think it’s the loveliest thing anyone has ever done for me.’ That wasn’t meant to be a dig, but he flinched and I realised how it sounded. I wasn’t going to apologise or backtrack though, because it was true. We were never going to sort things out if we couldn’t be honest. ‘Besides, if I don’t go back, Val will come and get me and she’s already marched me out of far too many places in my life.’

  That made him laugh. In his youth, he too had been marched out of the occasional pub by Val. When it came to our crowd, she’d been an equal-opportunities discipline enforcer.

  ‘Sam will be glad you’re back,’ he said, with a very subtle but unmistakable edge in his tone. ‘I bet he’s loving having you all there.’

  Something tightened in my chest. Must have been the way I was lying last night. That, or the fact that there was a definite bite to his comment. What was with the jealousy these days? It was bizarre.

  ‘Yeah, he is. Val is objectifying him on a daily basis, so that keeps him going,’ I giggled. ‘Estelle isn’t impressed. Fairly sure she’s already called Homeland Security and asked to have us deported. Of all the women on the planet, why did Sam have to pick Estelle Conran?’

  Mac gave a dramatic shake of the head as he came back into the room. ‘I still can’t believe Uncle Sam is dating Estelle Conran. Take me back with you, Mum. I beg you,’ he joked, pleading dramatically. At least, I think he was joking.

  ‘Sorry, son, I’d be doing you a disservice if I took you, on account of the fact that she’s pretty rude, pretty obnoxious, and your Aunt Val may well have drowned her with an inflatable swan by the time we get back. Don’t ask.’

  ‘My life sucks,’ he groaned. ‘But tell Uncle Sam we said congratulations and let him know I’m available for adoption.’

  It was a joke that had been made many times before, but this time I saw Mark’s jaw clench as he tried to supress his rising hackles.

  I moved the topic along. ‘Will do, son. Right, are we good to go?’