by J. M. Monaco
There was a girlfriend he had been living with, I was told later. She had a young child, a daughter. Then there was another girlfriend, a hairdresser. Did he take them to meet the family? Before the liar disappeared from the printing company for good, I had the chance to confront him on the phone. I tried to remain rational and sane. ‘Why? That’s all I ask. Why did you do it?’
His voice sounded calm, revealing no signs of emotion, and he said very little, which made me think he certainly had the potential to make it big in the American medical profession one day. ‘I told you what you wanted to hear,’ he said. ‘I offered myself to you as someone else, someone you wanted me to be.’
Constance came to my rescue and she was kind enough to offer me a nice discount. I was, after all, one of her most loyal customers.
I was just about hanging on with work and school, exams around the corner, but I couldn’t sleep and the nightmares I’d had as a teenager returned. I spent some time with sympathetic Beth, but she was busy working, planning her wedding, getting cosy with Paul, seeing her family. I was lined up for a bridesmaid role, but she knew I couldn’t cope even with tedious bridesmaid demands at that point and, without holding a grudge, Beth let me pull out. I breathed a weighty sigh of relief. I felt I was in her way, dragging down the mood of what was meant to be her special time. I made excuses when she phoned to invite me over. I lost my appetite, the pounds began to drop off and my energy decreased. I showed up to classes but found it impossible to concentrate.
I’d admitted to Constance I was drinking too much, spending what little money I had on a cheap bottle of wine that I would I finish in one sitting on my own. I’d soak in a hot bath full of bubbles after work, gulp my way through to the last drop, fall asleep and wake up drunk with the glass in my hand submerged in cold water, the skin on my fingers and feet shrivelled like raisins. My room-mates were either in bed or out, sleeping at their boyfriends’ places, living their lives, I imagined, while I was there, alone. Again. Did they try to warn me about the liar, tell me that things didn’t quite sound the way they should? Maybe. The shock of the fall was too unbearable. Humiliation took over any urges to retrace my steps.
I didn’t exactly fit into any simplistic alcoholic category. Downing a bottle of wine alone wasn’t common for me, only occasional when I hit a low point. Yes, I had binge nights too before that point, but didn’t everyone?
‘My drinking habits overall are considered pretty normal by others’ standards,’ I reminded Constance. ‘I’m no different from my friends and the amount they drink. And my family, well, they can drink me under the table.’
The problem was the lows were creeping up more frequently and I knew if I didn’t control myself – well, let’s just say, I didn’t trust myself anymore. Constance encouraged me to try Alcoholics Anonymous, even though I didn’t consider myself to be one.
I went along with a fair amount of scepticism, but after a couple of meetings I found I enjoyed it, maybe a bit too much. What a voyeuristic pleasure it was to hear the minutiae of others’ telltale rock-bottom stories. The stay-at-home middle-class mom with too much time on her hands for liquid lunches, facials, and hosting dinner parties. Oh, the stories she told: ‘I didn’t remember what happened after I had sex with that workman and I didn’t know if I wanted to remember.’ The ex-homeless park-bencher who never quite got the break he needed: ‘Going OK for now, but that half-way house…it ain’t so good for me. Too many others there just gonna drag me down again.’ My bath-time boozy aftermath of falling for a liar wasn’t as interesting as any of their rock-bottom stories. I worried that if I continued to attend these sessions, I might find ways to land myself into even scarier situations in my attempt to keep up with the others, to experience the severity of their agony. How could I otherwise empathise? It dawned on me in one of my sessions with Constance that maybe that was the danger I fell into as a twelve-year-old when I dared to swallow that bottle of aspirin. Was I trying to keep up with my brother?
When Constance asked, ‘Did you feel certain at the time you could have died from that overdose?’ I had to think hard about my answer. There was probably something at the back of my young mind telling me I wouldn’t die, I admitted, although I had no way of knowing for sure. I thought longer and revisited the question at our following session.
‘Maybe it was the thrill of the risk-taking, getting so close to the danger zone that must have attracted me. Maybe I wanted to know what it would feel like,’ I told Constance.
‘And what did it feel like?’
‘Scary. Thrilling, maybe. Like I was in suspense, wondering what was going to happen next. But when nothing much happened except for feeling really sick I was just disappointed. And lonely again.’
I stopped drinking for a while, replacing alcohol with smoking and excessive coffee drinking. After much weight loss and a continual lack of sleep, Constance said, ‘Jo, I’m worried now. In my opinion you’ve become clinically depressed and I’m thinking you need something more than just talking. What do you think about trying antidepressants?’ She advised me to look into getting approval for extensions on my upcoming exams and essays for medical reasons. I lived in hope the pills would fix me.
My mother stepped in fast. ‘You just come right over and I’ll take care of you, Jo. I don’t want you worrying about anything, do you hear me? Nothing.’ She offered to do my laundry and feed me. She had never cared much for wasting her time in the kitchen preparing home-cooked food, but she made a sincere effort by serving me endless cups of instant coffee and tea, eggs on toast, tuna or egg salad sandwiches, spaghetti with a lovingly opened jar of ragu sauce. Cigarettes on demand. She braced herself for the times when I broke down, held me close with firm, decisive arms, told me she loved me. If she could, she said, she would never let anything bad ever happen to me again. I fell into her, felt her soul, forgave her for past wrongs, and wanted to believe that she could protect me.
Nonna visited one afternoon bringing with her a box of Italian cannoli from her local bakery, which I tried to eat but couldn’t manage. Months later, when I returned to the routines of life that irritate and at the same time make us feel grateful, she said, ‘Jo, I knew things must have been bad when you couldn’t eat that cannoli. Very bad.’
On that ‘bad’ afternoon when we sat together on the old, worn couch, I let my emotions loose. Nonna held my hand and said, ‘Oh, Jo. I know you’re going to meet a nice, honest fellow one day. I know you will. You just got to make sure of one thing.’
‘What’s that, Nonna?’
‘Just make sure he ain’t a drinker.’
Sixteen
I reassembled most of the scattered bits that were left of me after Doug and filled the gaps in-between – well, the pieces didn’t fit back together exactly as before – with the bonding power of some newly acquired wisdom. I completed my exams and essays after a short, helpful extension and was preparing for two summer classes, feeling worn, but compelling myself to continue. It seemed I had developed an unexpected talent for producing strong work when under pressure. I was surprised I reached an impressive 3.8 grade point average at that stage, higher than the 3.5 needed for the study abroad programme. The dean who first interviewed me and who continued to look after us – us older students who still felt the urge to hang on and suckle until forced to release our airtight grip – held a meeting about late applications as there were still spaces in London in their autumn term. I didn’t say much, didn’t ask any questions. Up until the moment when the dean pulled me aside, I hadn’t even considered applying. My mind was preoccupied with more practical things. There was summer school, more paid-work hours to schedule. Life’s bills to pay.
‘You know, Jo,’ the nice dean said. This time she wasn’t smiling. The look in her eyes was resolute and in that flash of a second or two I knew she wasn’t playing around. ‘You might be apprehensive, but if you don’t do something like this now while you’re not tied down with family and all that…well, you could really regret it
later on. And I bet you’d love all those great museums.’
On my way into work that evening and later that night in bed I thought about the dean’s approach. She had been quick with her advice and gave the impression she wasn’t going to waste her breath trying to convince me. I remembered Constance’s earlier warnings about regrets, thought about how sick they could make you feel, how they could fester and escalate, eventually erupting into something dangerous. I didn’t want to live with that hovering over me. But I knew I had my future work cut out.
It was during the third year of my four-year degree when the university awarded me with extra living expenses money on top of my full-tuition scholarship. I was over the moon; things were looking up for me. I scrambled around in a manic mess studying and working that summer, moving things out of my apartment to my old bedroom and my parents’ damp-cellar storage area before my London departure. The hardest thing, when the time came near to leave, was saying goodbye to Constance.
‘You’ve come such a long way, Jo, all through your very hard work. You should be proud,’ she said, all the time her smile warming the room with its honey-like luminosity. I appreciated her gesture, but knew very well that without her I would have been nothing. I wouldn’t have been flying off thousands of miles away for a year, that much was certain. I knew also, in spite of what might have been suggested by my marks, that I still had a long way to go before I would evolve into a more concrete something on my own. I thanked her for everything and sobbed on her shoulder when we hugged at her front door. I started to move away but her hand remained on my arm for a few seconds. I took her hand and we stood there for a moment, both of us wet-eyed, until we embraced again and said our goodbyes.
Alice, an art history student from Somerset, introduced me to Jon in the latter part of that first term. Alice loved wearing wide-leg pants, along with floppy velvet hats and neck-chokers. Her accent sounded a bit like Princess Diana’s, but then so did many others there, I thought. She was less pretty than the princess but she had a flawless, milky complexion and carried her petite figure with a chest that seemed too large for her frame, with catwalk conviction. She made it her mission to take me to expensive London restaurants with grand chandeliers that served traditional afternoon teas, complete with odd, tasteless cucumber and butter sandwiches, scones and miniature cakes. I was shocked to discover these arrangements were so expensive, but Alice insisted it was all worth it and wouldn’t say no to paying after I said I couldn’t afford it.
‘No, no, no, my love, you can’t come to London and not have tea. I won’t have it. It’s my treat and I won’t take no for an answer.’
It was Alice who showed me how to prepare and drink tea, and for this I am forever grateful. I can’t imagine how ignorant I must have appeared before knowing all the ins and outs of it.
‘The proper way is to pour the milk first then add the tea from the pot after it’s had plenty of time to brew. Always, always, make your tea in a pot. And always hold the saucer with your cup as you are drinking. Like this,’ she said, demonstrating in her princess-like way, sipping, pinky-finger extended.
Alice was a bit of an enigma. Well-mannered and polite, always careful with her words, she wasn’t an emotive type, but after she had a few drinks she didn’t hesitate to show her other side.
She became one of my closest, most loyal friends for many years before she headed out of the city, had three children, and adopted a more restrained existence along the London commuter belt. But that’s another story. She was always willing to lend a padded shoulder for me to cry on when I needed it and for that too I’ll always be indebted. Her past was undramatic, her life secure with a good stock of that old family money that would make her life easier until the day she died, but none of that stopped her from working hard, seeing the world through the eyes of others and treating her new poor American friend to generous meals out.
Jon was a grad student studying for a master’s degree in Social Science Research Methods when I met him that night in the student bar. He was sitting at a table with a small group of other guys including Alice’s cousin Owen who played guitar in the student jazz band in which Jon was the keyboard player. The five of them looked as if they were in deep debate when Alice waved to Owen from the entrance. While the others appeared conservative to some degree with their tidy, short haircuts and Oxford-style shirts, it was Jon who stood out with his Mediterranean looks and wavy jet-black hair, long enough to be tied back into a ponytail. Hmm, rebel type, I thought, with a twinge of excitement.
Jon emanated a kind of cool, the authentic kind that some people are fortunate enough to acquire without effort. But that easy cool also intimidated me. My instinct was to turn away when I saw his eyes looking in my direction, so I turned to Owen when he initiated a conversation. I noticed soon enough though, after Owen smiled a bit, that he had a set of obviously discoloured and crooked teeth, the kind my American friends joked about when they criticised the diabolical state of British dental care. Later that night I saw Owen sucking on sugar-cubes when we were all having coffee.
In the end I was subjected to Jon’s cool gravitational force, good teeth a bonus, and I allowed myself to talk to him. It turned out his surname was Weinstein. Throughout the night Jon’s hair kept slipping out of its band and after a while he gave up and left it down and unkempt, which I preferred. This revealed a funny habit of his, one he still keeps to this day, of twisting the front wavy ends with his index finger when in serious thought or discussion about something. It was endearing.
Jon happened to be the quieter one out of the gang, not exactly shy, but more contemplative. But once he started on a topic that interested him he had no problem keeping the conversation lively. Politics and social justice were his passions as well as music and the arts.
‘Art history?’ he said, his dark eyes widening, leaning forward to listen. ‘What aspects are you interested in? Tell me more.’
It wasn’t long after I mentioned Frida Kahlo when I saw I had hit the jackpot. Jon took the cue and showed off his knowledge of her communist history, about Trotsky, their affair and much of what was happening in the political context at that time.
‘And I love her painting with the feet in the bath. All those pieces of her world surrounding them. Beautiful.’ He paused, his eyebrows turned up slightly as if asking me to offer him a sign, something to let him know he was on the right track.
‘I love that painting too. I love Frida Kahlo. I just love her so much,’ I said, with excitement. ‘Where did you say you were from in the States?’ he said.
Other female students that night, friends of Alice and the others, came and went. Some were much prettier and sounded a lot smarter, but Jon stuck it out with me – yes, me – the whole night. All of us moved on to a wine bar where we listened to live modern jazz for free, where we stayed on later drinking coffee, laughing our silly young hearts out and watched Owen sucking happily, like a baby with a pacifier, on those sugar-cubes.
Afterwards Jon pulled his bike along as he walked me to the nearest underground station. ‘Have you been to The Photographer’s Gallery yet?’ he asked. ‘They’ve got great exhibitions and there are some nice little places to eat around there. I could give you a tour. How about tomorrow?’
We tried a first nervous peck of a kiss on the cheek, our lips just brushing past each other. When our skin touched I felt a light buzzing sensation pass through me. We said an awkward goodbye. As I sat on the tube I noticed a couple of other passengers looking at me then realised, when I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the glass opposite, that I couldn’t stop myself from beaming. It’s these fragments of memory – the musicians in the wine bar, those laughing faces, the sugar-cubes, his kiss, my face grinning back at me – that have stayed with me.
Jon and I spent several hours together on that first date roaming through galleries, bookshops, covering the streets of Soho, drinking coffee, walking through St James’s Park, stopping for a pub drink and testing what he described as qua
lity British ale. After a cheap meal at a small, crowded falafel joint called Gaby’s, we ended up settling for the night at his place.
Jon lived in a Victorian converted two-bedroom flat in Battersea that was owned by a friend of his, a PhD student at the university. It turned out that Martin’s parents bought it so their son could rent out the second bedroom. Somehow I wasn’t too surprised. Meeting all these understated trust fund types had become the norm. I couldn’t seem to escape them. I wondered how financially solvent Jon’s family was, but it turned out he came from a humbler background.
His father was a small-business family photographer specialising in weddings and bar and bat mitzvahs, hence Jon’s interest in photography. His mother was an administrator for a solicitor’s office. He had to be careful about his spending, he said, as his grad school grant didn’t offer that much. He was using some savings from the time he’d been working at the Institute for Public Policy Research, a London think-tank where he worked first as an intern and then as a researcher before applying to do a postgraduate course. He was lucky enough to secure some paid research work when the opportunity arose.
It was then I discovered that all British undergraduate degrees and some master’s programmes were government-subsidised. My rich friend Alice and other students I met didn’t have to worry about tuition; it was all taken care of, whether they needed financial help or not. I almost cried when Jon explained this to me, but I held back as I listened to his overview of the history of British education. Looking back now it seemed it was a Golden Age, this no university fees thing and grants for those who needed them. But it was weird too, I thought, with all these posh types taking the free ride and still enjoying the good life, as Alice’s taste for extravagant high-tea outings showed. Yes, their parents paid taxes, with some of them, let’s not forget, managing their taxes, as Rob Segal had explained to me, by ‘gifting’ expensive apartments to their kids. But what about all the working-class, tax-paying folk? I noticed there weren’t so many of them at the university.