Marry Him

by Marina Ford

  Siobhan and Ollie look at us from the other side of the table, eyes wide. I share their apprehension, but Harry apparently notices nothing.

  “What is it?” Bonnie asks, and a plump, moist mushroom falls back into the soup from her spoon, splashing droplets of it on her hand.

  “As a matter of fact,” Harry says, “Joe and I are getting married.”

  My heart breaks a little. His face is so hopeful, and he is so geared up and excited, and the reaction around the table is as though someone had frozen time. Ollie and Siobhan wait for the outburst. Bonnie is speechless. Mr. Byrne’s jaw clenches and then he exhales a deep, shuddering breath.

  “Oh!” Bonnie says, after what seems like a decade. “Oh! Why that’s— How lovely! How fabulous . . . Is . . . is that legal?”

  “Yes,” I say, quickly. “It’s legal, and it’s going to be a lot of fun. We’re going to have a reception, and I was looking into bands, and it’s going to be a brilliant party, with all our friends, and . . .” I try to talk so that Harry doesn’t hear how heavily his father is breathing. I do hope he’s not going to have a heart attack.

  But Harry notices nothing. He interrupts me, “And it’s in five months. For our anniversary I gave Joe a trip to Jamaica, and he gave me this.” He shows off the bracelet. “He designed it himself. Isn’t it nice? It’s to celebrate the engagement.”

  Bonnie blinks at the bracelet.

  “Oh yes, that is pretty!” she says, smiling, then asks me, “How did you do that?”

  I tell her, and then Harry says, “We thought it would be sweet if we got married before the trip, so that we could make it into our honeymoon. Joe’s always wanted to go to Jamaica to learn more about his background. The trip’s in September, and they’re supposed to have good weather there all year around, from what I’m told.”

  Bonnie, I notice, starts blinking more rapidly. Oh no. I thought she of all people wouldn’t take it badly. Siobhan stands up and gets a box of tissues. Ollie now chimes in.

  “Beautiful place. I went there for a diving holiday in my gap year.”

  “Not the time to brag,” I tease him, and he laughs. Bonnie dabs at her eyes.

  “Oh,” she says, “well that’s a— It’s such a surprise! I don’t even know what to say! What does one say? Oh!” Suddenly she bounces up. “A cake! I’m going to make a cake!”

  “What, now?” Siobhan startles.

  “No, silly! For the wedding!” her mother chides.

  Oh God.

  Harry turns to his father, who’s conspicuously quiet.

  “Dad?” Harry says. “Are you all right?”

  Mr. Byrne eyes him reproachfully, and then me.

  “And which one of you is wearing the white dress? Him?” Here he tosses his head at me. I have a sinking feeling in my stomach.

  Harry laughs. “Neither of us is wearing a dress. You know that.”

  “Well?” the old man says. “Do I? Which one of you is the wife, then? That’s what marriage does, doesn’t it? It makes two people”—here he points at Ollie and Siobhan—“husband and wife. At least tell me you’re the husband.”

  Harry’s laugh turns uneasy. He’s taken aback. “We’re both going to be husbands.”

  Silence falls. I wish I were Aladdin and could lift us out of the room on a magic carpet, and then maybe hypnotise Harry so he remembers none of this. Instead, I’m powerless and have to wait for this to develop. But it doesn’t. Mr. Byrne just snorts, shakes his head, and says, “Dinner’s getting cold.”

  Bonnie licks her lips, her eyes darting around the room, before saying, “So, er, when’s the date? You picked one already have you?”

  “Twenty-eighth of August,” I say. “We picked a hotel in Chelsea; it’s licensed for weddings, so we can have the ceremony right there. It’s really nice; you’ll love it.”

  “That sounds charming. Do they have a planner to help you out?”

  “They do,” I say. “But we’re doing most of the planning ourselves.”

  The conversation descends into the nitty-gritty of wedding planning, which is the subject I’m hoping will hold Harry’s attention. But he’s quiet now, as is his father.

  I have tolerated Harry’s dad for years now: his little digs at my expense, his glares, his demands that I lack a “sense of humour.” For the most part, I tried to remember he’s from a different generation and his ideas are, well, old-fashioned.

  But now Harry is sitting, extinguished, at my side, and his happy glow of the past month is put out. And now I hate his father.

  After dinner, Bonnie wants to show us her wedding album, and Siobhan does her best to cheer up Harry by repeating anecdotes about her own wedding, during which almost everything went tits up.

  “The bus with the guests went to a different St. Mary’s Church—” she says, and Ollie interrupts (always in the same place): “And who gave the bus company the address?”

  “I did.” Siobhan rolls her eyes good-humouredly. “And so the guests were at one church and I was at a different church . . . and then of course the veil got stuck in the door of the car and got completely muddied—”

  “The weather was atrocious!” Ollie says.

  “—and so I had to take it off. Seven hundred quid it cost me, and I wore it for a car ride!”

  “And then little Molly cried the whole time . . . couldn’t hear a word. And poor Aunt Louisa . . . Do you know, her funeral was a better-run affair than our wedding, wasn’t it, Ollie? What? I’m just saying!”

  I don’t listen to any of it. Mr. Byrne is sitting in his armchair, glaring at the carpet, and I’m sitting in the sofa, next to Harry, glaring at the old man. Then Mr. Byrne rises abruptly and leaves the room, and Siobhan determinedly continues as though nothing happened. Harry listens to her politely, but I know his thoughts are with his dad. Bonnie laughs more than is necessary at Siobhan’s anecdotes, which everybody in the room has already heard and witnessed firsthand anyway.

  I excuse myself. The corridor next to the stairs leads into the kitchen, and from there to a utility room, which has a door that opens up onto the garden. I can see the stubborn old git standing out there, lighting a cigarette with his thick-fingered hands.

  Trying to control my temper, I open the door and step outside. A brisk wind glides over my short-cropped head. I pull the sleeves of my sweater down over my hands—a sweater Harry had picked because he wanted to make a good impression on this old bastard, I remember.

  “Hey,” I say. It doesn’t come out friendly.

  Mr. Byrne lifts his head and looks at me. He doesn’t pretend to be welcoming. “I’ll be right in.”

  “No, I wanted to talk to you outside.”

  “Not in the mood for conversation,” he mumbles.

  “Good, so you can keep your mouth shut and listen to me.”

  He raises his gaze from the flicking of his lighter, surprise and anger mingling in his hard, worn face. Harry will kill me for this. Well, fuck it.

  “I don’t know how people reacted when you told them you were getting married,” I say, “but if they were half as mean, petty, and stupid as you were being back there, I sincerely pity you. Harry’s been looking forward to telling you all month. And you couldn’t even get yourself to say a measly ‘congratulations’?”

  “What did you just say?” He steps closer menacingly.

  “Yeah, come at me, man,” I say, pushing up my sleeves. I can hear the blood roaring in my ears, and I know I shouldn’t, but just the memory of Harry’s expression, the way his smile fell and that light went out of his eyes when he saw this old prick’s reaction pushes me over the edge. I speak through my teeth, “I haven’t bare-knuckle boxed in years, but I think I remember how I won light heavyweight champion.”

  He pulls his chin back and frowns in surprise.

  “Easy,” he says, though the dry amusement in his voice makes him sound more like Harry and thus makes me want to hit him less. Not that I really intended to hit him. I didn’t. I lower my shoulders.

/>   “Look”—I try for a more measured tone—“you don’t have to like me or the fact that your son is getting married to me. But Harry is really excited about this.” I take a deep breath to steady my outrage. “You and I want the same thing—for Harry to be happy. Well, at the moment I’m doing my job, but you’re being a failure at yours.”

  He watches me the way a dog watches a cat he’s about to bare his teeth at. But he doesn’t say anything.

  Well, fuck him too, then. I turn around and go back into the house.

  Five Years Before the Big Day

  The rules of the Broken Hearts Club:

  Don’t make fun of the club’s name.

  You are allowed to be miserable. No, you don’t have to get over it. You can be unhappy to the fullest extent of your abilities. Moaning and whining is encouraged.

  Insert inevitable Fight Club joke.

  I returned from Vegas a changed man.

  Throughout my visit there, I kept myself sane with the help of continuous drunkenness and junk food, but on the plane trip back, which I spent mostly being sick in the tiny, cramped toilet cabin, I decided that this was not a sustainable method of dealing with reality.

  Harry was with Kieran. For reasons beyond my control, this was the state of affairs now.

  My parents left me for adoption.

  My mother’s husband left me for his religion.

  The love of my life left me for his.

  I dragged myself through Heathrow, via Tube and bus, back to my flat with Chloe, and then locked myself in my room. Chloe asked if I was all right, and I said, “Raging hangover.”

  She chuckled. “Without one, any marriage of Frank’s would’ve been annulled, no?”

  I laughed mechanically and waited for her to walk away from my door. Collecting my thoughts required space and silence. I couldn’t ever really think unless I was making something with my hands.

  I took out a pad and began to sketch. Everything went quiet in my head when I sketched. At first I continued an old drawing I’d started for a friend who wanted something for a fantasy novel she’d written, but then I couldn’t focus on that and started something new. At first it was a salamander, then it turned into a jungle with flowers and parrots, and then it appeared, as if by itself: a hummingbird.

  Then I drew a spider—it let itself down by a long, thin thread, and had a mischievous face. I’d read a lot about Anansi when I was younger. A trickster god in Jamaican mythology. Then my hand flowed freely and with more determination.

  I was exhausted, but I couldn’t sleep. The night felt long and heavy, and the day that followed felt like an unwanted obligation.

  As I lay awake the following night, thinking of all the nights that would come—long, empty nights—I thought again about Amy and about the woman who had come looking for me once.

  Our conversations had petered out over the past couple of weeks. Her reluctance to let herself hope again had won over my desire to at least talk. But now I thought of her again. Now that Harry was gone, and I was adrift once more, that pulling sensation in my chest was near unbearable, but thoughts of Yvonne, of the possibility, sparked and glowed somewhere tender inside me.

  I sent her a picture of my drawing.

  Okay, I think we can talk. I’m sorry if I’m being a pain. I didn’t think I’d ever hear from you. A lot of feelings.

  These were Yvonne’s words after she saw my drawing. We’d been writing ever since, and, at last, we agreed a time and date. It felt like an exam. At first I was equal parts nervous and excited. Then I was just nervous. Even the prospect of hearing her voice made my heart race. Would I feel a connection? I felt plenty of connection with my mum, but I wondered if there was going to be something else with Yvonne—something deep and primal, something nobody could deny me, take away from me.

  Something nobody could choose or reject.

  When the day arrived, I bathed and combed my hair and dressed in a shirt I bought, with a collar and everything. Chloe even helped me tidy my room.

  “You look great, honestly,” she said, trying to sound light.

  “Thank you.”

  We set my laptop up on my desk, and then Chloe left me, closing the door behind herself very quietly. She left the flat shortly after.

  I paced my room. My hands were clammy, and even though I opened a window, the room felt small and too warm.

  A blip informed me there was a message. My heart in my throat, I approached the laptop. It wasn’t her. It was an email. At first I thought it was spam, because I never get contacted by serious journalists, but this was a journalist from The Guardian, and he asked if I was free to talk about my recent work with P&B Designs. Duncan Webb. I recognized the name, but couldn’t immediately place it.

  Why was the name making the little hairs at the back of my neck stand up?

  I put it down to my appointment to speak with Yvonne, and closed the email.

  She rang first. The sound of the Skype ringtone made my pulse jump, and I had to undo my collar button. It was difficult to breathe.

  I sat down. Pressed the little green button. The image popped up after one second’s delay. I forced a smile and possibly I waved—later I couldn’t really recall; it was like it all happened through a haze—and I saw her smile as well, a fond smile.

  “How are you, Joe?” she said.

  I could tell. It wasn’t her voice or her face, and yet it was both. She wasn’t my mother. I could tell she knew it too, almost at once.

  “I’m good. How’s Spain?”

  “Oh lovely. Very hot today.”

  She sniffed. I wrinkled my nose. Fuck.

  She put her hand to her cheek, wiped away a tear, and then started laughing.

  “Oh, this is ridiculous,” she said. “I’m sorry. What do you want to talk about?”

  I didn’t want to talk about anything. She was obviously upset. We were staring at each other, both wanting the same thing, and unable to offer each other squat.

  The call only lasted fifteen minutes in the end, both of us too polite to quit it too abruptly. Afterwards, I couldn’t sit in one place. I texted Chloe and she came home, saw my face, and then stretched out her arms. She is not a natural hugger. Chloe hugs are rare.

  “It’s all right,” she said, rubbing my back. “It’s a journey, that’s all. You’re not at your destination yet.”

  Oddly comforted, I let her make me tea while she told me about a new project she was interested in. I wasn’t really listening, and she wasn’t really trying to get through to me, only to fill the air with words, to lift the silence.

  At some point, as she poured the hot, bubbling water into my mug, she said, “Amazing how one job put you in touch with people from so many different circles.”

  Something about her words struck a chord. It connected something in my brain: the name Duncan Webb, and where I’d heard it before. I’d been stupid to not see it at once. Maya mentioned his name to Harry once.

  My heart bumped. I pulled my shoulders together and sunk deeper into my chair. Chloe continued to talk.

  “. . . he’s thirteenth in line to the throne or something like that, and I’d told him no once, twenty years ago, so I’m not sure why he thinks I’d say yes now and— Joe? Christ, what the—”

  She came rushing from the kitchen. I’d sunk my face into my hands, and I suppose that was the first time she’d ever seen me cry.

  “Well and what’s this!” Frank cried, when he returned from his honeymoon in Mongolia. He was tanned and somehow bigger looking. Marriage became him.

  I, on the other hand, had lost weight and felt faint from not eating. My appetite had deserted me completely, and I had trouble sleeping. I asked him about Mongolia, but Frank said, “Oh bugger Mongolia, pal, you look like death! What the devil is the matter with you?”

  Of course, since he’d been busy with the wedding, I hadn’t told him about Harry and Kieran, or even about Yvonne, and when I told him now he just gaped at me in surprise.

  “Bloody hel
l!” he said. “I’m sorry, mate. This calls for drinks. Come, it’s on me.”

  I didn’t feel like drinking, but equally I had no strength to resist him, and so out we went, and I hoped that perhaps it might help a little. Frank, convinced that all I needed was a good time, swept Chloe and Gabriella along, rallying us to be cheerful. He was good at that sort of thing.

  All the parts of a good night out with my friends were there: as usual, Frank attracted a random collection of hangers-on; as usual, Chloe regaled us with anecdotes of her past encounters with surprising people and being a total legend. There was an additional surprise of hearing Gabriella kill it at karaoke.

  But the yawning emptiness inside me could not be drowned out by their laughter, their good time, the loud music, or the endless martinis they kept buying me. In fact, their laughter was jarring, the loud music oppressive, the alcohol nauseating. It accumulated with every minute that passed until I needed to get outside, into the night, where it was quiet and not so crowded. Frank and Gabriella must have seen me try to slink out unnoticed, because moments later they followed me. Gabriella was in her flimsy dress and clearly cold, and Frank was flushed and drunk.

  “Where are you going?” He laughed. “You should see how young the bloke who just hit on Chloe is. She’s a minx, for a sixty-year-old.”

  I tried for a smile. “That’s all right. I think I’ll head home now.”

  Frank’s eyebrows rose. I had never been one to leave a party early. “Are ye serious?”

  It had been raining earlier, but now it was drizzling. Cabs splashed through the streets, the beat of music came through faintly from the inside of the club. I stuck my hands in my pockets, lifted my shoulders, looked at my feet. “Yeah, sorry.”