Coming Clean

by Sue Margolis

  Gail was always quick to point out that the raffle tickets cost fifty quid each and that over the years she must have sold hundreds if not thousands. “That’s my contribution to the care of the elderly in this country. What’s yours?”

  • • •

  “Anyway,” Gail was saying now, “I have a problem far worse than Annie’s.”

  “Don’t tell me. Harrods Food Hall has run out of wild Baltic salmon.”

  “Hey, will you play nice? This is serious.”

  “OK, sorry. Go on.”

  “I can’t come.”

  “Where?”

  “What?”

  “Where can’t you come?”

  “No. I can’t come.”

  “Oh! … Right. Gotcha.”

  “Murray went down on me the other day—God, that man is still such an amazing lover …”

  It was hard to imagine Murray, with his now even more considerable paunch and nose hair, being an amazing lover, but who was I to argue?

  “… and nothing happened. I couldn’t do it.”

  “Maybe you were tired or feeling a bit tense.”

  “No, it wasn’t that. The thing is—my clitoris has gone numb.”

  “Stop it. They can’t go numb.”

  First Nancy, now my sister. How many more women were going to regale me with tales of their genitals?

  “That’s what Murray said. He’s like, ‘Don’t be daft. It’d be like Barcelona suddenly losing the ability to score goals. It’s impossible.’” Then he starts mulling and he decides that my clitoris is getting on a bit and that it could be clapped out.”

  “That must have made you feel so much better.”

  “Absolutely. I said to him, ‘What are you suggesting we do? Book it into a retirement home?’”

  I laughed. Unlike most of her princess friends, my sister didn’t lack a sense of humor.

  “Murray is so useless when it comes to this sort of stuff. He thought perimenopause was one of those sixties American crooners.” She paused. “Anyway, then—and I kid you not—he gets out his calculator and starts tapping away. Typical accountant. He multiplies the time it takes me to come—roughly twenty minutes—with the number of times we have sex each week—four or five—”

  “Hang on—you and Murray have sex four or five times … a week? That’s more than Greg and I managed in a month. And that’s when we were vaguely getting along.”

  “That’s because you were both exhausted. I’ve told you—the two of you needed a housekeeper … Anyway, Murray decides that over thirty years I’ve experienced four thousand five hundred hours of bean twiddling. He seems to think it makes perfect sense that my clitoris has karked it.”

  “That’s ridiculous. They’re designed to be twiddled. Four thousand hours or so is nothing more than normal wear and tear.”

  “Shame it’s not under warranty,” Gail said with a cackle. “I could have brought a case against the manufacturer … So, anyway, I Googled ‘numb clitoris’ and it turns out it’s another menopause symptom. Soph, I feel like I’m falling apart. It’s like I’m over the hill and heading down into Crone City.”

  “Oh, hon … I’m sorry this is happening, but how many more times do I have to tell you? You are still a beautiful woman. You are not about to turn into a crone.”

  “I never thought I’d get old. And now that it’s happening I’m starting to panic. I’ve suddenly realized that beauty isn’t a passport like I thought. It’s a visa. And mine’s run out.”

  “Gail, you’ve got to stop this.”

  “I know. Murray’s getting really fed up with me going on. I just wish he’d let me get a bit of Botox.”

  “You don’t need it. He can see how great you look. Fifty-one is not old. And I’m sure the clitoris thing can be helped with hormones. You have to go to your doctor.”

  “Easy for you to tell me I need hormones, but they can give you breast cancer. I don’t want to become a statistic—one of the women for whom the risks outweighed the benefits.”

  I said I hadn’t meant to be flippant. “I still think you need to see your doctor, though.”

  “I know. Murray said the same.”

  “It’ll be all right. You have to stop fretting. You’ll get it sorted. Let me know what the doctor says.”

  “’K.”

  The conversation was winding down when Gail said, “Ooh—I nearly forgot why I called. I wanted to check you’re still on for Friday night dinner next week. I’ve invited this amazing guy. I can’t wait for you to meet him.”

  No. Please. Not another one of my sister’s “amazing guys.” The second Gail got wind that my depression had lifted, she started trying to fix me up. To give my sister her due, the potential suitors she invited to Friday night dinner—so far there had been three, or maybe four; I was losing track—were all good looking and, more to the point, comfortable.

  “You think I’d fix you up with a nebbish? As if.”

  What Gail failed to appreciate was that while I wasn’t one to turn my nose up at “good looking” and “comfortable,” these attributes didn’t automatically equal “amazing” in my book.

  More to the point, even though I’d cheered up, I wasn’t ready to start dating. Gail didn’t understand that it took time to get over a marriage breakup, even one that had been fairly amicable. I must have explained this to her a dozen times, but she refused to take it on board. In the end I realized that the only way to stop her nagging was to turn up.

  The first chap she tried to set me up with was named Sammy. Or it might have been Lenny. He was in his early forties, divorced and recently installed as chief accountant at the City branch of M. Green and Co.

  Sammy/Lenny gave me the impression that he’d been on a How to Make Conversation with the Opposite Sex course. He’d clearly taken on board that it was important to show an interest in the other person. What he failed to appreciate was that showing an interest was different from interrogation.

  For an hour or more, Sammy/Lenny ignored everybody else at the table and set about grilling me. What did I do for a living? How long had I been doing it? Did I enjoy my job? How did I manage my work-life balance? How old were my children? What school did they go to? Did I think the state system was stretching them sufficiently? It felt as if he was scoring me points out of ten for each answer. The final question I remember him asking was: “So, Sophie, what’s your favorite radio program?”

  “It has to be Coffee Break, but then I’m biased.”

  I realized that I had to get this man off my back and start asking him some questions. The problem was I felt so discombobulated that my mind had gone blank. What did you ask an accountant?

  “So, Sammy,” I said, or it might have been Lenny, “what’s your favorite number?”

  After Sammy/Lenny there was Clive, Gail’s children’s orthodontist. While we were having drinks in the living room, waiting for him to arrive, Murray insisted I shouldn’t go out with him.

  “Why on earth not?” Gail broke in.

  “They’re rubbish at sex.” According to Murray, an orthodontist’s idea of foreplay was … wait for it … “Brace yourself.”

  Gail rolled her eyes and went to check on the chicken.

  No sooner had Clive and I been introduced than he observed that I had a couple of ever so slightly wonky lower teeth—always a good chat-up line. He made up for it by offering me a twenty percent discount on tooth straightening.

  After dinner, a slightly tipsy Murray began working through his list of dentist jokes. “OK, why did the Buddhist refuse Novocain? … Because he wanted to avoid trans-en-dental medication.” Murray hooted. Everybody else groaned. Clive grimaced and started offering around dental floss.

  • • •

  “You know what?” I said to Gail now, re Friday night. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll give it a miss. Things are really busy at work, and what with the kids, by the end of the week I’m really exhausted.”

  “Oh, come on. You’re just making excuses. Loo
k, I admit the last few guys have been yutzes and I take full responsibility, but you have to believe me—this one is amazing. Bernice met him at her tai chi class.”

  Bernice was Murray’s sixty-something divorcée sister. “Bernice? Since when did you start taking Bernice’s opinion seriously?” Murray’s sister had this habit of “tabloiding” everybody she met. They were either a “nightmare” or “amazing.” The “amazing” ones tended to be people who were prepared to listen for hours on end while she went on about her successful kids and her failing pelvic floor. The “nightmares” were the people who made their excuses and went to find somebody interesting to talk to.

  “Stop it. She means well. You know, she has quite a soft spot for you.”

  “Only because I let her talk at me. I don’t think the woman has ever been known to ask anybody a question about themselves.”

  “That’s not fair.” Gail had started laughing. “There was that time in 1987 … Anyway, you won’t believe what this guy—Mike, his name is—does for a living.”

  “Go on.”

  She lowered her voice. “He works for MI5.”

  “You mean MI5 as in the government security service?”

  “The very same.”

  “So you’re saying he’s a secret agent.”

  “I am. How sexy is that?”

  “But what’s a secret agent doing at Bernice’s tai chi class?”

  “I don’t know. I guess spies are entitled to a private life. Or maybe he was on a mission.”

  I laughed. “At Bernice’s tai chi class in Golders Green. Yeah, that’ll be it.”

  “Well, apparently the instructor is Chinese …”

  “Oh, well, say no more. That totally clinches it.”

  “Look, I don’t know what he was doing there. All I know is that he and Bernice got chatting. I think for a moment she might have had her eye on him for herself, but she realized he was way too young for her. I don’t think he’s even forty. So she thought of you. Apparently she spent ages singing your praises and finally she convinced him to come along on Friday night. The woman’s gone to so much effort. Please say you’ll come.”

  “Well, I have to admit I’m intrigued.”

  “So you’ll come?”

  “How can I refuse?”

  “I should tell you he’s not Jewish.”

  “Since when was that a problem?”

  “Fine. I thought I should let you know, that’s all … Just think—I’ve got a real, live spy coming for Friday night dinner. I hope he likes chopped liver.”

  • • •

  As usual, Gail was expecting a houseful of people. Since Friday was Violetta’s night off, I arrived early to give her a hand.

  She opened the door holding an exquisite table centerpiece made up of calla lilies and artfully arranged greenery.

  “You just missed Lola, my florist.”

  I noted the word “my.” The woman was North West London’s answer to Marie Antoinette.

  We exchanged kisses and I oohed and aahed over the flowers.

  “No Amy and Ben?” Gail said.

  As I took off my coat, I explained that they were spending the weekend with Greg and the Frizzy-Haired Feminist.

  “What’s on the agenda?” she said. “An intimate chat with Amy about sexual harassment in the workplace?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past her.”

  Gail took my coat and hung it on the hallstand. “God, what does Greg see in this woman?”

  Just then the kitchen door opened and Murray appeared. He was in his bathrobe and eating a banana. “Hi, Soph,” he said, breaking off from the banana to give me a great big smacker on the cheek. He turned to his wife. “Nice flowers. What did they cost me?”

  Gail ignored the question. “Murray, why haven’t you got changed yet? More to the point, why are you noshing bananas? You’ll ruin your appetite.”

  “I’ve barely eaten all day. All I had for lunch was a few dim sum.”

  “Dim sum. And he wonders why he can’t lose the paunch.”

  “I love it when you scold,” Murray said, grabbing his wife around the waist and giving her a speedy but firm kiss on the lips. “It’s so sexy. Grrr.”

  “Get off—I’ll drop the centerpiece,” Gail said, unable to prevent her face from breaking into a smile. “Uch, you taste of banana.”

  Murray turned to me. “So, you excited about meeting our man from MI5?”

  I had to admit that I was rather.

  • • •

  In Gail’s limed oak and granite kitchen, I sprinkled chopped hard-boiled egg on top of patties of chopped liver and asked after her clitoris.

  “No change. The doctor’s referred me to a hormone specialist. I’m still waiting for an appointment.”

  In the TV room, Gail’s children—Alexa (fifteen) and Spencer (almost thirteen)—had started yelling at each other. “Not again,” Gail muttered. She abandoned the fruit platter she was arranging, wiped her hands on her REMEMBER: WINE COUNTS AS ONE OF YOUR FIVE A DAY apron and went back into the hall.

  “Spencer! How many more times? Give the remote back to your sister!”

  “But she took it from me!”

  “Alexa! Give the remote back to your brother!”

  “No! I don’t want to watch soccer!”

  “It’s the Sabbath, for Chrissake! You shouldn’t be watching anything! Murray, get down here and sort out your children! Tell them to shut up! I’ve got a chicken in the oven!”

  From the upstairs landing: “All of a sudden they’re my kids! … Alexa! Spencer! Knock it off! Your mother’s got a chicken in the oven.”

  Gail returned to the kitchen and dabbed at her brow with her apron. “Whenever I get agitated the hot flashes start.” She fell onto a bar stool. “Teenagers,” she said. “You’ve got it all to come.”

  Just then her cell beeped the arrival of a text message. She reached across the counter and picked it up. “It’s Bernice to say she’s in bed with a migraine, but Mike is still coming.”

  “Doesn’t that seem a bit weird to you, him coming on his own? I mean, he’s not going to know a soul.”

  “All I can say is that he must be really eager to meet you.”

  I could feel myself turning red, so I decided to change the subject. “So, apart from the fighting, how are the kids doing?”

  “Well, the latest headline is that Alexa has decided she wants to leave school and go to some performing arts academy.”

  Alexa had a beautiful singing voice and always took the lead in school musicals. She had singing lessons after school and on the weekends and her teacher was convinced she had a future in musical theater.

  “Alexa is very talented,” I ventured. “And she loves acting. Maybe she could do with being at stage school.”

  “Over my dead body. They practically ignore academic subjects at these places. She’s a bright kid. I’ve told her she goes to university and gets her degree. Then, if she’s still keen on singing and acting, she can take a performing arts course or apply to drama school. But I won’t have her abandoning her studies.”

  “Like you did.”

  “Exactly. I was an idiot. I’m not about to have her repeating my mistake. She needs something to fall back on. Alexa is going to university and that’s that.”

  “And what does Murray say?”

  “It doesn’t matter what Murray says.”

  By that she meant that Murray was on Alexa’s side.

  • • •

  Gail’s guests—couples they’d known for years, or people they’d become friendly with through Gail’s charity work—brought competitive orchid plants and bottles of wine that had just been reviewed in the Sunday magazines. The women, all in their late forties and fifties and all skinny and “extended” like Gail, clucked over each other’s outfits: “It’s an investment …” “You can’t go wrong …” “They say dry-clean only, but it’s only to cover themselves.”

  I was told that I “looked well,” which I knew to be princess c
ode for “you’ve put on weight.” I felt as if they were all looking at me and thinking that I was one family-sized KFC bucket away from throwing the earth off its axis.

  One couple, Sharon and Russell Shapiro, had brought their two teenage children with them. Josh and Hannah were close friends with Gail’s kids and went to the same school. After everybody had remarked on how tall they were getting and assured Josh, much to his embarrassment, that he wouldn’t need the braces for long and they were sure to be off well before his bar mitzvah and the results would be well worth it, the kids disappeared into the TV room, where Spencer and Alexa—having called a truce—were playing on the Xbox.

  At one point during predinner drinks and what Murray always referred to as “suburban snacks,” Sharon stopped sipping her caffeine-free Diet Coke and turned to Gail. “You know, I really worry about what these computer games do to children’s minds. Unless they’re educational, they’re banned in our house. Gail, please tell me the kids aren’t playing war games in there.”

  “Don’t worry. We’re really strict about computer games, too.” She called out to Murray, who was in the middle of a conversation on the other side of the living room. “Hey, hon, do you know what game Alexa and Spencer are playing?”

  “I dunno … it might be that new one Spencer just got … Something like Flesh-Eating Zombie Ninjas Take Over the World.”

  Sharon was horror-stricken. “Omigod. Murray, are you serious?”

  “Of course he’s not serious,” Gail said, glaring across the room at her husband. “Murray, tell Sharon you’re joking.”

  Murray had just finished placating Sharon when the doorbell buzzed. “Ooh, that’ll be him,” Gail whispered, digging me in the ribs. She got up and went to answer the door. “Hello, you must be Mike,” she boomed from the hall. “I’m Gail. Welcome to our home …”