The Confusion of Karen Carpenter

by Jonathan Harvey

  I’m far too big for it, and I wonder briefly if a scary man will come and tell me off – someone from the local council, the swing park’s caretaker – but then I also realize that actually that wouldn’t be the end of the world. I cling on to the chains either side of me that the seat hangs from to stop myself from falling off. Which is when I see a man coming in through the gate. He’s wearing a coat I don’t recognize, and his hair is different, but it’s him It’s Michael He’s run after me He’s followed me here His face is weary, though he hasn’t broken a sweat. He stands in the gateway and doesn’t move forward, probably feeling like I do – that now he’s here, he’s not sure what he should do, not sure why he’s followed me, just like I’m not sure why I ran away. He is waiting for me to speak and I can tell he’s scared. Good. He’s scared of what I’m going to say. He is fearful I’m going to run over and hit him or something, which is why he’s not stepping any further into the swing park.

  But I don’t want to hit him.

  I don’t want to kiss him either.

  I want to run away again, but I can’t, not without pushing past him.

  I don’t even know why I want to run.

  I feel like electric shocks are pulsing through my body. It must be the adrenaline from the run, or the shock of seeing him. I start shaking. It’s probably not too evident to other people, but enough for me to try and calm myself with deep breaths.

  It’s just so strange to see him again. He looks smaller somehow, younger almost, and he’s had his hair done like Paul Weller again, which was a mistake all those years ago and is hardly a triumph now. The coat looks like something a Nazi would have worn on a chilly night at Colditz. He has the collar turned up, which lends him an air of severity that doesn’t suit him. I look beyond the collar to his face.

  Oh God, he looks scared of me.

  I don’t want him to be scared of me.

  Or do I?

  No. I don’t think I do.

  Actually, I’m the one who should be scared of him. Has he been living in my loft? Spying on me? What kind of a freak does that? I should say that. I should be horrible, nasty. I should be a bitch. Call him Anne Frank, the lad from Flowers in the Attic, but I doubt he’d get it. I should say something, so I do.

  ‘You’ve done your hair like Paul Weller again,’ I say.

  He nods, and then he speaks. It’s so lovely hearing him speak, but it troubles me too. I’d almost forgotten how his voice lilts. I’d almost forgotten the gentleness of his tone, the humility of his attitude, the reassurance of his timbre.

  Get me, timbre.

  ‘I always liked it like this, but you didn’t. So I’ve started doing it like this again.’

  And it stings, actually.

  ‘I never made you get your hair cut any particular way, Michael,’ I say, indignation rising in my voice. ‘I never went to the barber’s with you and stood over you and said, “Don’t make him look like the fella out of The Jam,” did I?’

  He shakes his head. ‘No, but you didn’t like it.’

  I shrug. It makes the swing shake. ‘I still don’t.’

  Why? Why are we talking about his hair? Why are we talking about something so unimportant when there is so much else to say?

  ‘I like it,’ he reiterates, and, possibly sensing I’m not going to hit him, and realizing this might not get as ugly as he’d thought it might, he comes and sits on the swing next to me.

  We sit, in silence again. There is so much to say, yet we say nothing. A breeze gets up and a chip paper flutters past us. It’s now I realize I am cold. The adrenaline must have been keeping me warm, but that’s subsiding and I realize I’m sitting outside in January without so much as a cardy.

  ‘Remember that picnic we had by the swings in Greenbank Park? Back home?’

  I don’t know why he has to tell me Greenbank Park is back home, but I nod. Now’s not the time to be picky.

  ‘And then we lay on the roundabout, pissed, and giggled. Staring at the clouds,’ he adds.

  Again I nod. Of course I remember. I remember so much. I look at him.

  ‘Did you not go, then? Were you living in the loft all this time?’

  He shakes his head.

  ‘Where did you go? Where are you living?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  I kick my feet against the ground, swinging for a bit, less worried about breaking the structure now. Does it matter? I suppose it matters if he is coming back, if this is the first step on the road to a reunion. And then he says it. The two words I’ve been longing to hear.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  I look at him and immediately tears prick my eyes. They’re hot. They make me blink. It’s not a full-on sob, but I feel a lump in my throat and am determined I am not going to let him see me cry.

  ‘Why did you go?’

  ‘You know why I went.’

  ‘What did I do wrong?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I must have or you would have stayed.’

  ‘I’ve been depressed, Karen.’

  ‘I know.’

  I do know. I’ve always known. And the terrible thing about living with someone with depression is you’re so disabled. There is nothing you can do to help them, or that’s how it’s always felt to me. Or maybe it is just me. Maybe I’m just rubbish at all that. Maybe if I’d been better, if I’d sought more help than I did, then things would have been different. I picture him now, in the midst of the really bad onset, lying on the living-room floor, curled up like a shrimp, sobbing his heart out, his body jerking, and me dancing round him silently trying to work out what to do. If I tried to touch him, he just kicked me away. Swore at me. And there was only so much of that I could take.

  That sounds terrible now. It does, doesn’t it? It sounds so awful.

  I look at him again, and I take a deep breath. ‘Are you with Asmaa now?’

  He shakes his head. ‘I’ve seen her, but I didn’t leave you to be with her. Me leaving bears no reflection on you. You have to believe that, Karen.’

  I nod and feel the lump in my throat again. Don’t cry. Don’t let him see you cry. But the problem is, I’m not sure I believe him.

  ‘Karen?’

  I look at him.

  ‘Will you give my mum a ring? She’s worried about you. That’s all.’

  I nod, ashamed that I haven’t already. I think he’s going to have a go at me about it, but he doesn’t.

  ‘So why were you in the loft today?’

  It’s his turn to shrug. ‘It’s the warmest room in the house.’

  I roll my eyes. This is getting ridiculous now.

  ‘But you don’t come back after all this time and go and hide in the loft. Well, you did, but it doesn’t make sense. Have you been before? Mum said she heard scratching up there.’

  ‘Oh, what, so I sit up there and scratch, do I?’

  ‘No, but . . .’

  ‘I just wanted to see how you were. I miss you.’

  ‘Well, if you were going to miss me, you shouldn’t have gone.’

  ‘We all make mistakes.’

  And that hits me. It winds me. I feel I need to bend over again, like when I was trying to get my breath back, but I don’t. I stomp my feet on the ground to stop the swinging.

  ‘But I went and that’s that. Done now.’

  ‘Are you coming back? Is this some sort of reconciliation?’

  ‘How would that work?’

  ‘I dunno.’

  ‘Would you have me back?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I think you’d be a fool to have me back.’

  ‘I know.’

  And it sort of feels like that’s that.

  ‘You got my card, then?’

  He nods. ‘I saw it, and I know you want an explanation, but I think you already have it, babe.’

  Another hit. I’ll be bloody bruised at this rate.

  ‘Please.’ I look at him. ‘Don’t call me that.’

  He nods, like I’ve m
ade a fair point, and then he stands. He puts his hands in his pockets.

  ‘Are you going?’

  He can hear the anxiety in my voice. He nods. I shouldn’t sound so needy, but my head is spinning. Why did he come? Why did he come to see me? Why did he hide in the loft? Why does he want to see me if he doesn’t want to get back with me?

  ‘I don’t want you to go.’

  ‘I’ve got to.’

  ‘Will I see you again?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Now, that is just plain weird. As if he’s stating the obvious. How many times? None of this is obvious.

  ‘But just as friends.’

  I nod. OK. I can deal with that. I think.

  ‘Is there anyone else?’ I ask, and he smiles and shakes his head.

  ‘D’you seriously think anyone’d have me?’

  And I chuckle, though I’m a bit hurt, because that makes me sound like the idiot who put up with him. Which actually I suppose I was.

  ‘What about you?’

  I give a sarcastic gurn, as if to say, ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘I’da thought they’d be queuing round the block for you, babe,’ and then he adds quickly, ‘Sorry.’

  I can’t tell him about Kevin. Or Meredith. Or Mungo, for that matter. It would feel disloyal. Even though he’s the one who left me. Up shit creek without a paddle or emotional sat nav.

  ‘I bet there is,’ he says cheekily.

  ‘And is it any of your business if there is?’

  He smirks and shakes his head. ‘I’ll be offski,’ he says. He’s said it to me a million times before, but it never sounded quite so sad then.

  I stand. I feel light-headed. I step forward.

  What do you do with your ex? Shake hands? Hug? Kiss? He answers it for me. He takes his hands out of his pockets and opens them out. I step forward and he engulfs me in them. I savour the feel of him again. It’s nice, nice to be held, but I don’t feel any reassurance like I once did. I inhale to smell him, but it must be the coat or something as he doesn’t smell how he used to. He smells musty. Yes, it must be the coat. As I pull away, the collar of his coat flops down and I see his neck. There is a fat purple bruise on it. It’s too much like a line to be a love bite. Maybe he’s been in a fight. He sees me clock it and hastily adjusts his collar so it’s hidden again.

  ‘Your coat’s vile,’ I say, to divert attention from it. Yes, he must have been in a fight.

  ‘I didn’t choose this coat,’ he says. ‘This coat chose me.’

  I have absolutely no idea what that means, but it makes me laugh. He’s sneezing suddenly. He pulls out a dusky-pink silky handkerchief with white polka dots on it. Very girly, and so not him. He blows his nose loudly, then returns the hankie to his pocket.

  ‘Real hankies, eh? Very poshe!’

  He smiles. ‘I’ll be in touch, yeah?’

  I nod. He’s turning to go I know that hankie from somewhere Why do I know that hankie? That hankie is important to me, but for now I can’t for the life of me think why.

  ‘How?’ I gasp. A bit too desperately, actually. Rein that in, Karen! He looks back. ‘How will I get in touch? What’s your number?’

  ‘I haven’t got a mobile now. You know I always hated those things. They give you cancer of the brain.’ He winks and heads off.

  I watch him go. Maybe I should run after him, beg him to come back for his tea. Or follow him, see where he lives. But I don’t feel the compulsion. For some strange reason I’m happy to let him go, drifting off into the rush-hour traffic, the people hurrying home. I feel very calm, God knows why. Somehow, deep down, I know this won’t be the last I see of him.

  I’d come into Newham General because I was twelve days overdue and was pretty much sure they were going to induce me. I’d had a rough night’s sleep and was slightly alarmed by some sharp stabbing pains in my stomach, but as Michael had said, it was probably just ‘pre-match nerves’. We were going to have a little girl and we were going to call her Evie. We thought Evie was pretty cool, and it was derived from Eve, who was the first woman to walk the planet – if you believed the Bible. If you believed One Million Years BC, it was Raquel Welch.

  They were doing some last-minute checks in a tiny consultation room, and I knew immediately that something was wrong from the pained expression on the midwife’s face. She excused herself and said she wouldn’t be a moment. She exited briskly and I felt Michael squeeze my hand, but I couldn’t look at him. I looked down at my swollen stomach, willing Evie to be OK.

  ‘Has she kicked today?’ Michael asked in a whisper.

  I didn’t reply, just stared at my belly, wet with jelly, praying to see some movement. The fact I didn’t answer told Michael everything he needed to know, and his hand squeezed mine tighter. My jitters and nerves now quickly turned to panic.

  Still without looking at Michael, I said, ‘They can’t find a heartbeat, can they? I think that’s why she’s gone to get someone else.’

  ‘Maybe she’s just a really shit nurse.’

  ‘Yeah.’ I jumped on this hypothesis like a drowning man clinging to a lifebuoy.

  Yes. Hoorah. We had worked it out. Trust us to get the completely shit midwife. Oh, how we’d laugh about this one day. When Evie was grown up. At her wedding, her eighteenth or something.

  ‘Yeah, and we got the really shit midwife who couldn’t find your heartbeat! God, we panicked, but thank God you were OK in the end.’

  And Evie, who I’d decided was going to have lovely red hair and freckles and start a trend for every woman in the country wanting auburn hair, would giggle and clasp the hand of her fiancé and go, ‘Wow!’

  But when the midwife returned with three other midwives, it turned out that they were just as shit. Not a single one of them could find Evie’s heartbeat.

  ‘It’s there,’ I insisted. ‘You’re just not doing it right.’

  ‘God, you’s’re all shit at your jobs,’ said Michael, desperately wanting it to be true.

  ‘It’s there.’ I was repeating myself. I knew from my job that if you wanted something to sink in, you often had to say it more than once. ‘Keep on looking. You’ll find it.’

  They were looking lost, though. This was the part of their job that sucked. This was the bit of their day that they’d replay in their heads that night when they were home. They’d remember mine and Michael’s faces. For a while at least. Our hopeless expressions.

  And of course I knew that really they weren’t that shit at their jobs. I was obviously just a shit mum. And now I looked at them again, I could see that they weren’t all midwives anyway. One of them was my consultant, and another looked a bit doctory. And then they started a gentle chorus of ‘I’m so sorry, Karen.’

  ‘So sorry.’

  They didn’t actually say that Evie had died, but then again, they didn’t really need to.

  All the time Michael’s hand gripped mine. I felt his getting hotter, so it started to slide out of mine, but every time it did, he’d come back stronger and grip again.

  ‘So sorry.’

  And with those words, a million planned memories exploded like fireworks in the sky. They burned brightly but quickly. Loud, exciting, scary, but gone in the blink of an eye. No red hair. No freckles. No wedding or boyfriend or eighteenth birthday. Nothing.

  I think I went into shock then, as words were said and explanations given as to what would happen next. The general consensus was that it wasn’t going to be very nice. It was, in fact, going to be horrendous. They were going to induce me and I was going to go into labour, but I wasn’t scared. OK, it was going to be painful. OK, no one had any idea how long it would go on for, and OK, some might say it was a hideous waste of time because at the end of it my baby wouldn’t be alive.

  But it wasn’t a waste of time.

  It was worth it.

  Because at the end of it, I was going to hold Evie. She had lain there inside of me, part of me, for over nine months, and finally I was going to meet her. I was going to h
old my daughter in my arms and tell her I loved her. And then I was going to say goodbye to her.

  I have a photograph of Evie. They took quite a few, but this one is the best. She is wearing a pink knitted dress over a white babygro. She has a small white teddy bear tucked under her arm. Apart from a tiny bruise on her forehead and lips, she looks just like any other newborn baby.

  Suddenly I remember where I have seen Michael’s pink polka-dot hankie before. I had one just like it in Evie’s box. I frantically search for it. Has Michael been in and taken it? The box is at the bottom of my wardrobe. It’s a big shoebox that I covered in white paper. I pull it out and rip off the lid. Inside I decided to put anything and everything to do with Evie. Anything she came into contact with, it’s in here: cards people sent, the order of service for her funeral, the nightie I wore when giving birth, a tiny lock of her hair and the pink polka-dot hankie I used to dry my tears in the days after.

  It’s there. It’s there in the box.

  Michael must just have one similar.

  I replace the lid on the box, slip it gently back into the wardrobe, as gently as if Evie was in fact in there herself, and slowly shut the door.

  I sit and stare at the plastic sunflower by the window. It looks so forlorn, its silky petals drooping. I know how it feels.

  FIFTEEN

  I’m not meeting Kevin till three o’clock, so I have booked myself in for a Brazilian at one. It’s an unassuming little place called Shirelle’s Beauty Spa, and is just round the corner from my house on a slightly careworn parade of shops. I’m not sure why I’m doing this – it’s not like I plan to be naked in front of Kevin later – but as I’d promised myself, I feel like now is as good a time as any. I dropped by first thing this morning to see if Shirelle could do it then, but the place was locked up. I phoned the number on the front of the shop and a husky-voiced woman (whom I took to be Shirelle) told me she wouldn’t be in till one, so here I am.

  Don’t think about Michael. Don’t think about Michael.

  As I push open the door, I hear a dog yapping in a back room and the same gruff woman’s voice barking back, ‘Oh, shut up, Denzil!’ and then the beaded curtain behind the reception desk rustles and here she is. Her face is familiar, but I just put that down to her working round the corner from me. I must have seen her at the local shops or the pub or something. Maybe even at the murderous supermarket. I can tell she recognizes me because it’s like a penny drops when she sees me and she smiles broadly, revealing the whitest teeth I’ve ever seen. They make Simon Cowell’s look green. I swear on my life, if you can see the Great Wall of China from the moon, then you must be able to see this woman’s teeth as well. They’re rather at odds with the wrapover cardy and stained sweat pants she’s wearing. She also has a bit of what looks like egg mayonnaise on the belt of said cardy. I thought beauticians were meant to wear dentist-style gleaming-white smocks with matching crocs. Shirelle is wearing heeled slippers.