State We're In

by Parks, Adele

  It is a good thing I’ve learnt that raw sexual attraction is never, ever linked to something more meaningful. I’ve accepted that fancying someone is virtually inversely proportional to being happy with them. Martin is my best chance. That said, when my phone beeps, my first thought is that I hope it is Dean texting. This is stupid on a number of counts, not least the fact that we didn’t do anything conventional like swap numbers. I pick up the phone and see from caller ID that it’s my sister; the disappointment that it’s not Dean is as unaccountable as it is overwhelming. I apathetically let it go through to voicemail.

  OK, I’m all ready. One last check in the mirror. Pretty good, even if I say so myself, and I have to say so myself because – as ever – there’s no one else here to say it.

  30

  Eddie

  She stayed all afternoon. I didn’t expect that. In my experience, lovers expect too much of one another and it’s a trap I’ve always tried to avoid. Only falling into it once. With her, of course. Just the once. Fact is, I thought she was in the bag. Back then. All that time ago. I thought she would leave her husband for me; I never doubted it. Yesterday when I said as much, she asked about the kids.

  ‘But Eddie, what about the children? How could you have expected me to leave my children?’

  ‘I never thought about it, Clara.’ I had to be honest. With her, like my son; there was no point in starting to lie to them now. She sighed, disappointed. I find it boring when people try to express their disappointment in me. I see it as their fault, not mine, and I think they are hopeless not to know as much. She wouldn’t be disappointed in me if she didn’t expect things of me. Expect better. Why would she do that? I never was better. Never pretended to be.

  ‘Shall we do the crossword now?’ she asked, as she always had when she wanted to change the subject. She bent forward to reach into her handbag that lay on the floor and unintentionally treated me to a view of her cleavage. The cleavage hasn’t weathered as well as her face – she’s spent too much time in the sun; plenty of foreign holidays no doubt – and the curve of her tits put me in mind of prunes rather than peaches now. Still, her collar bone made me gasp; it was still as beautiful. For a moment I forgot the pain in my body and I just felt pleasure. It was a treat after the hospital sheets, bed baths, needle pricks, blood transfusions, chemo and stuff to just feel something that men are supposed to feel.

  Most of our past was secret moments and snatched minutes, glued together to add up to a something that might have passed as a relationship, but if we ever had time to languish we would smoke a cigarette together and complete the broadsheet crossword. She was very good at the anagrams and fair at the cryptic clues. I was better at both.

  Yesterday, I noticed her paper was the freebie given away at tube stations; I loathe that sort of paper. Hold it responsible for the demise of proper journalism and the decline in book reading. Told her so. She said it was chatty and distracting, although she complained that the crossword was facile. Was it? I found it hard. It is getting more and more difficult to stay focused, to concentrate. Practically impossible. Still, she patiently read each clue, two or three times if necessary, and guided me to the answers, pretended I was doing better than I was, then leant over the bed so that I could watch her carefully fill in the letters. I remembered her handwriting. I didn’t expect that. Wouldn’t have thought I’d ever known it, but I did. I recognised it. Goes to show, you can still be surprised.

  I wonder who will come today. The lad? Any of my other kids? It isn’t such a remote possibility. This dying business is turning out to be more interesting than I imagined. I should have done it sooner. Ha ha. It’s good that I can still make myself laugh. Through it all. They’ve upped my painkiller dosage. Not enough. It still hurts. My bones ache; it feels like they’re being squeezed into too tight places, crushed. My muscles ache. They’re being chewed, consumed. My back, head, jaw ache. It all hurts like hell. How much more does the body have to endure?

  Will she come back? That’s what I’d like most. Her. I suppose it has always been her. If it was anyone. I’m not sure it was, honestly. Anyone other than me. But if it was someone, then that someone was her.

  31

  Dean

  Unlike Jo, Dean had not slept well. He’d lain awake most of the night and considered whether he should call Zoe. She would be pleased to hear he had left Eddie Taylor dying; she’d been furious with him for responding to Eddie’s plea in the first place. She’d thought he was a fool and she’d been right. He was a fool. Eddie had never even asked him to rush to his bedside. Even when he was dying, Dean had not mattered to Eddie Taylor. The thought was sickening.

  Dean felt a wave of bleakness raging through his body. A dead feeling, a hunger. It surged with a renewed and long-forgotten ferocity. The exhausting craving wasn’t at all new; it was always there and he’d become used to it, almost accepted it as part of his being. As an adult, he’d largely been able to manage the hunger; it could be contained to a throb or a pulse, a dreary, austere lacking. As a teenager, the ravenous loss would not be controlled. It pelted its way around his mind and body, eating up his confidence and trust, shredding and destroying conviction, poise and any hope he had at future intimacy. He had never given a name to the anguish. Identifying it would have imbued it with more power than he was ever prepared to allow. Better to leave it as a wordless curse. But Jo had spoken so freely about it. She suffered from a different mutation, perhaps, but still the same root.

  He’d been so lonely for so long.

  Abandoned by his father, neglected by his mother. He’d made his way, what choice was there? He’d had to. He’d owed as much to Zoe. He didn’t like to dwell. What was the point of regurgitating all the old crap, all the old pain? He’d done OK. Better than OK. He and Zoe. He’d held them together and they’d risen above it all. He was fine. Just fine.

  His only mistake was going back. Peeking behind the curtain. Looking at where the dust mites crawled in their millions. Now, when he thought of his father, he didn’t think of the raven-haired bastard who had walked out on them for some bit of skirt. He thought of the rasping chest, the cracked lips, the filmy eyes. He still thought he was a bastard, though. His father had managed to humiliate him, reject him, day after day. Year after year. And then right at the end. It was almost too much to comprehend. He’d nearly cried in front of the fucker. The thought made him leap up from his chair and punch the sitting room wall.

  Shit, shit, shit, that hurt! Jesus. Jesus. He rushed through to the dark grey clinically trendy kitchen, flung open the door of his (empty) oversized fridge-freezer and plunged his hand in the ice box. He used to punch things and people all the time. When he was a kid. When it was needed. To protect Zoe, to take away the pain, to let some of it out. But it had been a while. He’d become civilised. He’d forgotten how much it fucking hurt to punch a wall.

  His father had said he was ‘surprisingly pleased’ that Dean had pitched up. But what was that? What did that mean? Whatever it meant, it wasn’t enough. Eddie Taylor hadn’t called. It was some agency nurse. Some stranger. Some do-gooder. Some fuckwit who had taken it upon herself. She’d got involved and made the call; made Dean think he was wanted. The agony being that the call, on some level – a deep and well-buried level, admittedly, but on some level – had made Dean think that he was wanted, that he was loved.

  But he wasn’t.

  Eddie still hadn’t wanted him. Never had. Never would. The thought pierced. It actually stabbed Dean. A thought caused physical pain; how was that possible? How was he going to get through the weekend? Through the next week? The rest of his life? For a moment he was blind with fury and literally couldn’t see a way. Blackness engulfed him; his heartbeat quickened, his chest tightened. Was it panic? My God, he couldn’t breathe. His chest stung, compressed and deflated. He could not find the air he needed. Suddenly Jo’s face slipped into his consciousness. She was grinning. She had a slight gap between her teeth. People said that was lucky. It was certainl
y attractive. She had this funny way of crumpling up her face when she was concentrating. It wasn’t cute or sexy but it was memorable. It was endearing. And a bit cute, a bit sexy; he supposed he could admit that to himself. His chest began to expand again, just a fraction. He found the oxygen in the air.

  He scraped the ice from the box into a tea towel and then, in a ham-fisted manner, wrapped the towel around his injured hand. It was times like this that he understood why people drank. Instead he hunted around the back of the cupboards and found a Hershey bar. He bit into it, not allowing the chocolate to melt on his tongue but chewing swiftly and swallowing hard. It was OK, but nothing topped UK chocolate. He should have loaded up before he left the airport, then at least some tiny good would have come from his trip, but the thought hadn’t crossed his mind when he’d been boarding. He hardly understood why he was thinking about chocolate now. It was ludicrous. He wasn’t thinking straight. He was trying not to think at all.

  He glanced at the clock. What would Jo be doing? Getting dressed probably. She’d be slipping on her red dress and those sexy shoes they’d picked out together. She might be hailing a cab, unless she had come to her senses, which seemed unlikely. It would be a bloodbath. That was the problem with people. They fucked each other up. Loving hurt.

  But what could he do about it? It was what it was.

  32

  Jo

  The polite and eager concierge informs me that the Luxar is within walking distance, but when I tell him that it is my ex’s wedding and show him the height of my heels, he suggests that I take a cab.

  ‘They might drive you round the block a couple of times to get something worthwhile on the clock, though,’ he warns.

  ‘Is that legal?’

  ‘No, ma’am, but it’s reasonable. Everyone has to make a living.’ I don’t want to admit that I can’t afford to be exploited; I am pleased that he thinks I can. It means that I look the part, at least.

  The cab driver sails past numerous hip bars and restaurants and I feel a surge of pleasure that I recognise some of the high-end shopping malls on the Magnificent Mile, even though Dean and I didn’t linger there yesterday. I nervously finger the hem of my dress as the cab passes by the Museum of Contemporary Art and I remember Dean’s advice that I should spend my time there, instead of going to the wedding. Crazy; for one thing, it is already closed.

  We venture past well-preserved nineteenth-century townhouses and other grand buildings that line the tree-shaded sidewalks of this affluent neighbourhood, and then the taxi pulls up in front of a magnificent French-inspired hotel. My parents’ passion for architecture and design has given me a clear sense of what is in good taste and what isn’t. There is no doubt that the mansard roofs, buff-coloured limestone walls and enormous slate-grey window frames are the epitome of good taste. Stepping out of the cab feels just like stepping on to the boulevard in Paris. I admit with a heavy heart that Martin’s fiancée has chosen well; I’d rather hoped that she’d have terrible taste and that she’d have plumped for something tacky and obvious; a vampire-themed wedding or one officiated by an Elvis impersonator would somehow be easier to stop than a thoughtful, elegant ceremony. But I have no reason to assume Martin’s fiancée has poor taste; after all, she’s chosen Martin.

  Martin and his groomsmen are not languishing by the hotel entrance as I imagined, which is a spanner in the works as far as my plan goes. I pictured myself drawing him aside and having a quick chat; the idea of hunting him down in a hotel is more daunting. I walk through the elegant foyer, hoping to spot him attending to some last-minute wedding stuff, but he is nowhere to be seen. I suppose, thinking about it, this shouldn’t be a big surprise; last-minute wedding adjustments tend to be the domain of the bride or the mother of the bride. Martin is more likely to be hanging out in a bar with his groomsmen, soaking up the attention and final moments of singledom. I begin to feel mildly panicked. What if he is late and I don’t have time to talk to him before the ceremony begins? I won’t have the courage to actually stop the wedding once it is under way. Irrationally, I start to panic that I am in the wrong place or it’s the wrong day. I frantically dig into my handbag and retrieve the invite to check; a passing bellboy notices me and stops.

  ‘You here for the Kenwood–Paige wedding?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘You’re a little early, but that just means you’ll get a good seat, right? It’s that way. They have two rooms. The stateroom, where the ceremony will take place, is past the stairs and through the arch, and the reception is going to be in the ballroom. On the right.’

  Because I am planning on the wedding not getting as far as the ballroom, I think I’ll stop by, just out of curiosity, and see how the reception room is dressed. I’ve worked on a wedding magazine for years; of course I need to know whether she’s picked white table linen or a colour.

  The ballroom is exquisitely glamorous, breathtaking. Martin’s fiancée has opted for an elegant and traditional theme of gleaming white and silver. There is nothing to take exception to, only things to admire. Tasteful vases of fat roses sit on each of the countless round tables, the name plates are small white (no doubt hand-carved) wooden doves, the candles (in their gleaming candelabra) aren’t lit yet, but when they are, the light will be reflected and refracted around the room because of the generous handfuls of crystals that are scattered on the tables. The chair backs are covered in swathes of organza that coat the room with a general sense of fairy tale and romance. The walls are covered in silk, the ceilings are coffered and the crystal chandeliers are obviously hand-blown glass rather than the cheap plastic sort. They look like they are inspired by vintage jewellery, or at least they look as though that’s the story the interior designer’s publicist will spin. The floor-to-ceiling windows are framed with pale, rich drapes that only just hint that there is an intimate terrace available beyond, somewhere the bride and groom can steal a moment alone during the reception. It is simple, impactful, thoughtful. The perfect setting for the perfect day.

  For no reason I can think of, or at least no reason I want to think of, tears start to well in my eyes. Of course I always cry at weddings. Girls who have been bridesmaids nine times tend to, but usually I wait until the bride is saying her vows or at least the organ is playing before I blub. I blink furiously. I do not need smudged mascara, I really don’t. I look around. I am alone other than three or four waiters who are polishing glasses and lining up the layers of cutlery. I wonder where the wedding party is. Are the bridesmaids upstairs with the bride, sipping on champagne and choking in a fog of hairspray? I wonder whether Martin’s fiancée held her bridal shower here too. In preparation for her big day, did she retreat to the sanctuary of the spa and health club? I don’t doubt she’ll have had a skincare analysis and customised make-up session; perhaps Martin has enjoyed a hot lather shave and eucalyptus steam. I know from the invite that there are plans for a bon voyage brunch for the guests tomorrow. This event has been planned with consideration, precision and generosity.

  I pick up a menu; it is adorned with Martin and his fiancée’s names. Gloria. She is called Gloria. Of course I’ve known this from the moment that I received the invite. I’ve simply chosen not to acknowledge that this woman has a name. A face. A body. A heart. Their names are linked by a trail of symbolic intertwined silver hearts. Both names are embossed; Martin’s is in matt, Gloria’s name shines. I trace my finger across the letters and allow myself to wonder, for the first time, about the girl behind the name. Gloria. Such a big and bright and hopeful name her parents have saddled her with. She has parents and hope; the idea makes my legs shake. What does she look like? I’ve never thought it through properly. I’ve thought about Dean’s girlfriends, imagined them in high definition, but I’ve never had the same curiosity about Martin’s fiancée. Whenever I think of Martin I think of him alone. On the football pitch. Muddy, angry and desperate. Desperate for me.

  ‘Jo? Jo, is that you?’ As though I’ve conjured him, Martin is suddenly standi
ng in front of me, but he isn’t the Martin of my imaginings. He isn’t in tails as I thought he might be – as I planned him to be at our wedding – nor is he in a muddy football strip as I last saw him; he isn’t even wearing black tie as I thought possible, because they do that at American weddings. Instead he is wearing a dark grey suit, a white shirt and a pale grey tie. He looks stylish and expensive. A tiny bit more sophisticated than I’ve ever seen him look before. He’s had his hair cut and yes, he probably has benefited from a professional shave. He looks confident, happy and every inch of his impressive height. More confident, happier and taller than I’ve ever seen him before. I think I hear my heart crack. ‘Wow. So you made it after all,’ he says as he approaches me with a broad grin.

  ‘I said I would.’ I lean in and give him a double kiss. The left side doesn’t touch him at all; as I move towards his right, he seems to remember what he is supposed to do and his lips briefly land on my cheek. Dry. I wait for the spark. The jolt. The justification and authentication. Nothing.

  ‘You’re looking well,’ I comment.

  ‘Thank you. You too.’

  I beam back at him, and sway from side to side, girlishly holding my dress. It must be nerves that force me into performing this ridiculous parody of flirtation, and I hate myself for it. It’s some relief to clock that Martin isn’t actually looking at me; he’s staring at something over my shoulder (a flower arrangement, I think) and hasn’t noticed me making a fool of myself.

  ‘Those flowers are quite something, aren’t they?’ He slaps his hands together excitedly and then rubs them as though he is warming them up. It is a gesture I remember. He occasionally uses it when he is ridiculously excited about something; when his team won the championship, for example, and when he got promoted at work.