by Mike Gayle
The kitchen was spotless – just the way I’d left it when I’d cleaned it nine hours earlier before I went to work – and there was no sign of any culinary activity in progress. It wasn’t as if I expected Elaine to cook dinner for us because she was a woman (she’d long forced me to give up that idea), no, I expected her to cook dinner for us because it was her turn today. She’d pulled a sickie from work after oversleeping that morning and she’d promised me she was going to do the weekly shop and I hoped – rather optimistically, it seemed – that she might have got in ‘something nice’.
In search of evidence of shopping endeavours, I checked all the kitchen cupboards. There was nothing that could be construed as ‘something nice’, save a bag of pasta twirls, a jar of Marmite my mum had posted to me and two slices of bread so stale that when I accidentally dropped them on the kitchen counter they snapped into pieces. Even a cup of tea was out of the question because the PG Tips tea-bags Mum had also sent (along with the Marmite and a video-tape of two weeks’ worth of EastEnders) had run out and I absolutely refused to drink any other brand.
Ravenous beyond belief, I returned to the living room chewing a pasta twirl and lodged myself beside my girlfriend once more. She immediately picked up the remote control, pressed the on button and pointed her deftly manicured finger in the TV’s direction as if to say, ‘Look, pretty lights!’ or, more accurately, ‘I’ll be off the phone in an hour, amuse yourself.’ I ignored her suggestion and bounced up and down on the sofa to annoy her: I didn’t want the TV – I wanted her attention and some food. She wasn’t having any of it, of course, and did her best to ignore me. So I stood up, as if heading towards the window that overlooked our street and pretended to faint before I got there. Lying still on the carpet, barely breathing, I waited patiently for her to respond to her dutiful boyfriend’s lack of consciousness. After what felt like several minutes, in which she’d failed to pause for breath let alone end the conversation, I carefully opened an eye but she spotted me immediately and laughed.
‘Who is it?’ I mouthed silently, from my position on the floor.
‘Your mom,’ she mouthed back. ‘Are you in?’
I shook my head violently mouthing, ‘Not in,’ repeatedly. It wasn’t that I didn’t like my mum. I liked her a lot. I loved her even. But with her these days, with me so far from home, there really was no such thing as a quick chat and as I’d already called her this morning at work I reasoned I’d paid my dues. Anyway, I really was hungry now so I mouthed at Elaine, ‘Where’s my dinner?’
She raised her left eyebrow suggestively, as if to say, ‘Ask me for dinner, will you? We’ll see about that!’ and then she narrowed her eyes like some sort of mischievous imp and said down the line, ‘I think I hear Matt coming in, Cynthia,’ then paused, waiting for my response, which was to hand her both the menu for the nearest takeaway pizzeria and my credit card.
‘No, it wasn’t Matt after all,’ said Elaine sweetly, into the phone, while miming the swiping of my credit card through an imaginary card reader. ‘I must be hearing things. Well, I must be going, Cynthia. I think I hear the door buzzer. ‘Bye.’ She moved to put the phone down but was forced to stop half-way as my mother was still talking. ‘No, I don’t think it’ll be Matt, Cynthia,’ she said patiently. ‘He’s been such a good boy recently that I actually let him have his own keys.’ With that she hung up.
‘You’re such a baby, Matt,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘I don’t know why you couldn’t have suggested getting a takeaway in the first place.’
‘It was your turn to cook,’ I protested. ‘You do know what “your turn” means, don’t you?’
‘Yes, well . . .’ she began, but her retort faded away as she picked up the delivery menu and scanned through it. ‘It looks like it’s going to be my turn to call the pizza place, doesn’t it?’ She continued to scan the menu, and every now and again she mouthed the name of a pizza as if rolling the word around her tongue was an experience similar to eating it.
‘I’m sure your mom knew I was lying,’ she said, her finger hovering above a Hawaiian Meat Feast. ‘The last thing in the world I need is for her to not like me. You know how important it is that everyone likes me. I can’t sleep if I know there’s someone thinking bad thoughts about me – even in England.’ She flopped back against the sofa then swivelled round to lay her head on my lap. ‘That has got to be the last time I ever lie to Mrs B.’
‘Sure,’ I responded. ‘Just as long as you remember your words of wisdom next time Mama and Papa Thomas ring and you want me to pretend you’re in the shower.’
‘Well said, my good man,’ said Elaine, adopting a pitiful English accent. ‘I’ll lie for you and you lie for me, that’s the deal. But remember, if we get struck down by lightning for lying to our parents in years to come, we’ll only have ourselves to blame.’
‘How long were you on the phone to her anyway?’
‘She was only going to talk for about five minutes because of the cost. So I called her back,’ she thought for a moment, ‘so all in all that would be about half an hour.’
‘To England?’
She rolled her eyes again.
‘Do you know how much that’ll cost?’
‘It’s only money, Matt. You’re meant to spend it. If you didn’t spend it, it wouldn’t be money. It would be just pieces of paper that you never did anything with.’
‘You really believe that, don’t you?’
‘Every word,’ she said, and smiled angelically.
There was no point in arguing with Elaine on this one. At the best of times she had only the most tenuous grasp of the principle of not spending every single dollar she earned, and even then she ignored it.
‘What were you two talking about?’ I asked.
‘Girl stuff.’
‘What kind of girl stuff? She wasn’t asking you when we’re having kids again, was she?’ My mum had really been trying to bond with Elaine because she’d made up her mind that she might be the one to give her grandchildren. ‘Tell me she wasn’t.’
Elaine laughed. ‘Nothing so sinister. She just wanted to ask me what you were doing for your thirtieth. And if you’re going to spend it in the UK.’
‘It’s not until the end of March!’
‘We girls like to prepare.’
‘So what did you say?’
‘I said you didn’t know.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She said you should give it some thought.’
‘What did you say about my coming home?’
‘I said I’d talk you into it because I’d like to see the place you call home for myself. See where you grew up, meet your old school friends, it’d be fun.’
‘Hmm,’ I said dismissively, even though I quite liked the idea of visiting home for a while. ‘What did she say?’
‘She said that we can come any time. Oh, and that I should get you to call back.’
‘How did she sound?’
Elaine lost patience with me and threw a cushion at my head. ‘If you were that interested why didn’t you just speak to her?’ She took the cushion back, put it underneath her head, picked up the phone and ordered some random takeaway food. This kind of banter was typical of Elaine’s and my everyday interaction. It was tiring but always entertaining, although sometimes I felt like we were trapped inside sitcom world – sometimes I wondered why we never had proper conversations like normal couples did.
‘I’m going to pick it up,’ she said. ‘They said it’d be ready in twenty minutes but I figure if I go pick it up myself it’ll make them speed up – I’m ravenous.’ She went to the bedroom to get her coat. As she checked her pockets to make sure she had enough money she opened the front door then picked up her bag from the table. Suddenly she stopped.
‘What’s up?’ I asked, looking over at her. ‘Forget something?’
Leaving the door half open, she walked across the room and sat on the sofa at the opposite end to me. ‘I’m sorry, babe,’ she said gentl
y, ‘I can’t not say this any more.’
I didn’t understand. ‘You can’t not say what any more?’
‘This,’ she said flatly. ‘You. Me. Us. I . . . I . . . don’t think I love you any more. There I’ve said it. You can go ahead and hate me now.’ Much to Elaine’s consternation an uncontrollable urge to laugh came over me and I let it out. ‘Are you laughing at me or with me?’ she said, staring hard at me.
‘I know you’re going to think I’m just saying this to get even,’ I said, holding her gaze, ‘but the truth is, I feel exactly the same way.’
Then eerily, in that couple symmetry that often develops when you spend so much time with someone that you feel you must be them, we both burst into another fit of laughter then simultaneously whispered, ‘What a relief.’
three
‘So that’s that, then?’ I said blankly.
It was two in the morning and Elaine and I had been talking about splitting up from seven o’clock the previous evening. There were no tears, no histrionics, just a lot of long silences followed by a few words of bewilderment, followed by some more long silences.
‘I guess so,’ said Elaine. She accompanied her words with a shrug, an odd sort of stretch and a peculiarly feline yawn. I’d always thought there was something quite cat-like about her, and more so than ever now: she reminded me of a Persian desperate for its belly to be stroked.
‘Wasn’t this all . . .’ I searched around my vocabulary ‘ . . . a bit too easy? A bit too . . . you know?’ I finally stumbled across the right word. ‘Civilised?’
Elaine tilted her head upwards. ‘Yeah, you’re right,’ she said. ‘I guess you’re right.’
I looked at her encouragingly because I wanted her to say something, anything, really, because I knew this was wrong – not us splitting up, that was definitely right, but the lack of drama. On the form of previous break-ups I expected a good deal more grieving, if for no other reason than politeness. Our calm and collected so-long-and-thanks-for-the-nice-time attitude troubled me. I wondered whether this was one of the curious by-products of the turning-thirty process. I’d been twenty-nine for just over six months and had long been expecting some sort of change to come upon me now that thirty was just around the corner – the ability to grow a full beard without bald patches, my elusive wine rack, a partner for life, even – but nothing had happened. Maybe this is it, I told myself. This is my thirty-power: the ability to take the end of a relationship on the chin, like a real man.
When I was twenty-seven this sort of thing would have upset me (see Monica Aspel). When I was twenty-two this would have had me scurrying to bed with heart failure (see Jane Anderson and Chantelle Stephens). But this numbness . . . this ridiculous passivity was new. But at least, if it was the gift of turning thirty, I had an excuse. Elaine, on the other hand, was still only twenty-two.
‘Shouldn’t there be more . . . wailing and gnashing of teeth?’ I said, after a few moments. I passed her the cup of coffee I’d made for her earlier. ‘Shouldn’t one of us be begging the other to continue the relationship?’
She handed her coffee back to me and got down on her knees. ‘Stay with me, Matt! We can’t split up! How will I ever live without you?’ She attempted to stand up again but was barely able to for laughing. ‘You’re right. It does feel kinda lame for me to go, “I think we should break up,” and for you to go, “Okay.”’ She laughed gently. ‘It’s not like I don’t love you,’ she said, looking at me with a mixture of earnestness and irony. ‘I do. You know I do. I can’t have been with you, made a home with you this last year and a half without loving you – that’s just . . . stupid. It’s just that, well, you must’ve felt it like I did these last six months. The passion has gone. We’ve been more like . . . I don’t know . . . brother and sister, really.’
‘Peter and Jane,’ I suggested.
‘Hansel and Gretel,’ she retorted.
‘Donny and Marie,’ I countered.
‘Exactly,’ she said, taking back her coffee. She took a moment to sip it. ‘Recently when I’ve looked at you I don’t so much want to tear your clothes off as give them a good ironing.’
‘You’re right,’ I replied. ‘I mean, I love you too, but I have to admit I’m not in love with you. It’s like I’d see you first thing in the morning getting ready for work, there you’d be, searching desperately through the closet for something to wear and I’d find myself mentally dressing you with my eyes. By the time you’ve decided what to wear I have you sporting a chunky-knit polo-neck jumper, a knee-length overcoat and a scarf.’
‘What do you think this all means?’ she asked, as if she genuinely wanted an answer. ‘Do you think it’s normal to be so civilised?’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t think so. I mean, every time a relationship finishes for one of my friends at work and I ask both sides what happened they’re always like “It was mutual”, as if it’ll earn them some sort of Brownie points. But I think this is a first – the first mutual break-up in the history of the world.’
‘This is spooky,’ said Elaine. ‘Where did we get this power and why didn’t I have it when I really needed it, like when I was fourteen?’ She stood up and disappeared into the kitchen to return with a packet of Oreos, which she consumed one after the other. When she was half-way through her fourth she suddenly shouted, ‘I’ve got it!’ and waved a partly consumed biscuit and its attendant crumbs over the coffee table.
‘You’ve got what exactly?’
‘The answer,’ she replied. ‘It’s biology. Even at a cellular level we’re programmed to perpetuate the species, right?’
I nodded.
‘And despite your mom’s encouragement we have no urge whatsoever to perpetuate with each other, right?’
I nodded again.
‘That’s why we’re not upset. Biology is telling us there’s no point in crying over spilt milk.’
four
It was eleven o’clock on the following Saturday morning, and we’d just finished breakfast. Five days had elapsed since our decision to split up and I was now sleeping on the sofa (a.k.a the Sofa from Hell), which explained why my neck was killing me. On Tuesday I’d told Paul Barron, my boss at work, that I wanted a transfer out of New York and preferably out of the USA altogether. While I’d enjoyed my time there and made a few friends, I knew I didn’t want to stay now that Elaine and I were over. A move was definitely what I needed. ‘Matt,’ began my boss, by way of an answer to my request, ‘at the kind of level you’ve attained here, as a software design team leader, the world is your oyster.’ Roughly translated, he meant that because I was good at my job, which I was, I had the choice of all of the company’s European offices: London, Paris, Milan and Barcelona. ‘Thanks, Paul,’ I’d replied. ‘That’s . . . that’s nice.’ He then asked me where I wanted to go and that was when I looked really stupid. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I just know I want to go.’ He’d smiled and told me to think about it and get back to him.
I looked at Elaine across the empty breakfast plates. I hadn’t told her that I was planning to transfer yet. I think I was waiting for the right moment, but right now I didn’t feel this was it. Elaine was wearing her slob-around-the-apartment garb: a marl grey T-shirt that she used to wear to her yoga class and a pair of brown shorts from the Gap she’d bought the year that brown was the new black. She had nothing on her feet and she was picking at the dark red polish on her toenails. No one seeing her now would’ve guessed that she worked for one of New York’s coolest public-relations companies albeit in the lower echelons. Monday to Friday she did her work uniform of fashionable-yet-stylish very well. Saturday was her day off.
‘What are you thinking?’ she asked.
I’d obviously been thinking a little too hard about my transfer. ‘What brought things to a head for you?’ I asked, as a way out of confronting the transfer. ‘I mean, was it any one thing or was it lots of things combined?’
‘I think it was that film we watched at Sara and Jimmy’s last weeken
d,’ she said, still playing with her toes.
‘The English Patient?’
She nodded. ‘It just got me thinking, you know? That poor English guy’s wife runs off with that German pilot and that was supposed to be romantic. I mean, affairs they’re so . . . sleazy, they’re so yuck. By which I suppose I mean that . . . Well, you know Emily?’ Emily was one of Elaine’s workmates. ‘You know she split up with her boyfriend, Jez, because he went all funny ’cause he didn’t think he’d done enough with his life?’
‘I think you’ll find that what Jez wanted to “do” – and, in fact, actually was “doing” – was more women.’
‘And she was having a gadzillion affairs with anything that had a hairy chest and a gym membership card.’
‘Gadzillions?’ I asked, pulling a face.
‘Millions of gadzillions,’ said Elaine. ‘Millions.’ She paused. ‘It’s just so horrible, isn’t it? They obviously just got bored of each other but were afraid to call it quits when their time was up and because of that they put themselves through months of misery dragging the whole thing out . . .’ She let her sentence hang in mid-air momentarily, then picked it up. ‘The thing is, Matt, you’ve got to have known we were at that stage.’
‘Were we?’ I tried to catch her eyes but she wouldn’t look at me. Instead she was back to playing with her toes.
‘Well, maybe not that stage exactly. But we were definitely at the stage where we’d start looking at other people – me, the cute motorcycle delivery guy with the dreadlocks who always smiles at me when we share the elevator; you, the girl in the deli with the belly-button ring, who gives you extra filling in your sandwiches because she thinks you look cute.’
‘Which deli girl?’
Elaine narrowed her eyes at me. ‘You’d better believe I made her up.’ She giggled. ‘Before either of us would realise, looking would lead to longing, which would inevitably lead to doing, and I’d hate for us to finish that way. Absolutely hate it. We’re better than that. This way we keep an element of control. We can split up with dignity.’ She went on thoughtfully, ‘You know, I never was your dream girl, was I? And you certainly weren’t my dream guy. We just sort of drifted together. And you’ve got to know that if things had stayed the same and my dream guy had turned up—’