The Confusion of Karen Carpenter

by Jonathan Harvey

  ‘Why was that typical?’

  ‘Oh, it’s just a feeling I often had, that he would talk to other people about . . . stuff, but not me.’

  ‘What sort of stuff?’

  ‘Erm . . . his feelings, I guess.’

  ‘Did you ever see him dead?’

  It takes all my will not to start crying again. I shake my head. ‘I didn’t want to. Rita said there was a mark round his neck. She said the funeral parlour had put loads of make-up over it so you couldn’t see, but I couldn’t look. I’ve not told anyone this before. I knew everyone’d kick off if I didn’t go and see him in his coffin, so I went on my own. I sat in the room with him on my own, but I didn’t actually look into the coffin. I wanted to remember him how he was.’

  She nods. She nods well. It’s a brisk, efficient nod. I may try and ape it later in front of a mirror.

  ‘Tell me about a time when you were happy with Michael, a recent time. Have a little think.’ Again she brushes down her slacks.

  Slacks. I’m turning into my mother. I’ll be shoving my hand up a glove puppet soon and invading my local primary schools.

  I think.

  And I think some more.

  And then I remember.

  We’d gone to the Thames Barrier Park. Michael loved it there. He also loved the fact that someone from his work, some gay fella called Jayson (who they called Gay Jayson, inventively and not in the slightest bit reductively), had gone to Sitgesfor ten days and left his Staffordshire bull terrier, Mama Cass, with Michael (and, as a result, me too) in his absence. I ambled along, dragging my heels on the gravel path, enjoying the sensation and noise, like a big kid with autumn leaves, as I watched Michael sprinting round the park with a big stick in his hand, Mama Cass following, barking, loving the game. Michael threw the stick. I saw it sailing through the air. Cass stopped barking and chased it, grabbing it up from the grass and then whooshing away, wanting Michael to chase her, which he did. I half expected him to start barking then. The pair of them disappeared round the other side of the ornamental hedges, clipped into the shape of waves, that dissected the centre of the park and I smiled to myself. For once I allowed myself to feel content. We felt like a normal couple on days like this. I wanted to say ‘normal family’ – me, Michael and Mama Cass – but she was only on loan. That’s how Evie had felt, actually. Like she’d been on loan to me. Like something or someone more important than me – God perhaps, although believe me, I was never a God-botherer – had preordained that she’d just live in my womb before going somewhere else. Somewhere fabulous. Somewhere like this park, perhaps, which had higher levels of fabulosity than most of the places round here. I looked ahead of me, at the silver armadillos of the flood barrier in the Thames glinting in the sun as if encrusted with diamonds. I breathed in the fresh, crisp air of the dry autumn day and for the first time in ages felt . . .

  D’you know what? Life is pretty good.

  I hated thinking like that. It usually signalled things were going to get much, much worse. But the big black shadow over our lives, Michael’s depression, had seemed to fade to grey a bit lately. He’d been on some new pills for the last few months and – touch wood – they seemed to be helping. The doctor said he had something called reactive depression, in as much as he’d reacted to Evie’s death in this way.

  I heard Mama Cass barking, so knew that Michael must have had control of the stick again. He ran out in front of me, the dog bouncing after him. He swivelled round and threw the stick towards the river. It spun through the air, only Michael’s throw must have been stronger than he’d bargained on, because it flew over the fence and into the river with a satisfying splash. Cass ran towards the railings and for a horrible moment I thought she was going to jump over into the water.

  ‘Cass! No!’ shouted Michael, running towards her.

  Mama wasn’t stupid, though. She just stood in front of the railing, staring at the river, emitting little whines of frustration, her eyes focused on the exact spot where the stick broke the water, no doubt.

  I caught them up. Michael looked round and smiled. ‘She knows where it is, but she can’t get it, bless her. I know how she feels.’

  And he threw his arm round me and drew me in for a hug.

  An act of physical affection. So few and far between these days. I savoured it as we both looked out over the river.

  ‘Why d’you like it here so much?’I asked.

  He sighed. ‘I like the drama of it.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘I like the idea that the barrier’s there to hold back a flood, stop us all from drowning. Every time I look at it, I see it in action. Some massive biblical flood, and the gates shutting, and I don’t know if I’m dead or alive.’

  ‘You’re weird.’

  ‘Yeah, but I’m on tablets.’

  And we laughed.

  ‘Put your hands in my pockets.’

  I looked at him, confused.

  ‘Put your hands in my pockets.’

  So I did as I was told. He was wearing his big green mod parka thing. He liked to think he looked like something off the poster for Quadrophenia, bless him. He used to call it the Weller. Now he’d rechristened it his Dogwalking Coat. This was so that when Mama Cass returned to Gay Jayson, he could go all mopey around the house and be placated only by a visit to Battersea Dogs Home, where we would not be allowed to return empty-handed.

  He placed his hands on his head. We would have looked a bit odd if there’d been anyone else in the park, but it was always quiet here, him with his hands on his head, me up close and personal with my hands in his pockets. I could feel his cock getting hard through the denim of his jeans as he pushed himself into me.

  ‘Dirty bastard,’ I said with a wink.

  He giggled in a really filthy way.

  I liked it.

  ‘What’s in my pockets?’ he whispered mysteriously.

  ‘A gun?’ I joked. ‘Or are you just pleased to see me?’

  ‘Feel.’

  ‘What?’

  Was he initiating sex in a public place?

  ‘In my pockets, you dirty cow.’

  I felt around. I felt a piece of paper in the left pocket. It felt like a receipt. He arched his eyebrows like a two-faced Roger Moore, and I pulled out the paper.

  It was small. The size of a receipt. But I saw now it was a purple Post-it note folded up. He loved Post-it notes. Whenever he thought of a job that needed doing, like replacing a light bulb, he’d make a note of it on a Post-it and stick it on the fridge.

  On the front of the note he’d written, ‘Karen.’

  ‘It’s a question,’ he explained.

  I knew what it was going to say once I unfolded it. He would have written, ‘Can we get a dog?’

  I rolled my eyes. He may have been winning me over.

  ‘Read it,’ he encouraged.

  I opened it. And got the shock of my life. Two words and a question mark: ‘MARRY ME?’

  I burst out laughing. And so did he.

  ‘Where did that come from?’ I have to say I was astonished.

  ‘Ryman’s.’ He winked.

  I poked him playfully on his chest.

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  He had never expressed much of an interest in the institution of marriage, usually quoting the Groucho Marx quip about who wants to live in an institution . . .

  ‘Think about it,’ he said, and I couldn’t say fairer than that. ‘Come on, Cass.’

  He turned and walked back onto the grass, heading for the wavey hedges. Cass followed him obediently, no doubt hoping for another game of fetch the stick.

  I watched him go, then looked back at the note. I cleared my throat and called after him, ‘Yes!’

  He turned back, burst out laughing, then carried on walking.

  I followed him. It wasn’t the most romantic of moments, really. I felt like one of those women in Muslim countries who has to walk a few steps behind her husband. Was I doing the right thing? Did I rea
lly want to be married to him? Was I really that happy? For now I didn’t care. For now my feelings on the matter were unimportant. What was promising was that he was thinking of something in the future, something positive. Finally I thought he must be turning a corner. This Post-it proposal meant that he was getting better.

  Roberta looks soothed, like my little story was a nice relaxing bath with some Jo Malones burning on the side. She even sighs in a post-coital way, but then notices I look less happy.

  ‘How does that memory make you feel?’

  I shrug. ‘OK, but . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It was the calm before the storm, because that night something dreadful happened.’

  She doesn’t ask anything. I assume she is waiting for me to explain.

  ‘It was about a woman called Asmaa.’

  She takes this in, nods, waits, but I say nothing. I feel hot tears pricking my eyes and try to fight them back. She’s still waiting.

  So I tell her about Asmaa.

  TWENTY-TWO

  I am feeling brave when I return home, so I bypass Mum, who’s incinerating some chicken kievs in the kitchen, and head up to my room. I can hear Dad in the bathroom having a bath, the water swishing, and him humming ‘Is This the Way to Amarillo?’ in fits and starts. I’ll worry about their bizarre marriage in a moment, but first I shut the bedroom door and sit on the bed, facing the wardrobe. I take a deep breath, then kneel on the floor and open the left-hand door. Michael’s side. His shoes and trainers stand in neat piles on the floor, and beneath a pair of slippers is a fading yellow folder. I pull it out, dislodging the slippers. I quickly return them to their OCD-ish neatness, then sit back on the bed. I open the folder and pull out the sheets of paper inside.

  The first is a letter from his union explaining that they will accompany him to the coroner’s court when he is giving evidence at the inquest. I put it to one side. The next sheet is a print-off from the Internet, a piece from an online newspaper that is local to East Ham. The headline reads, ‘Woman Under Tube Was Outpatient.’ Hardly the catchiest one ever. Beneath the caption there’s a photograph of a woman in her mid-twenties. It’s her. It’s Asmaa. I read on about how she was originally a medical student till she was blighted by depression and had to be sectioned; how she got better, but the depression came and went. When leaving an appointment at the local mental health clinic, she had headed straight for the Tube and thrown herself under the next train. The piece says both the driver and the Underground workers who helped the police retrieve her had been offered counselling. I wish there was a photograph of Michael. Not because I particularly want to see his face, but because that would have meant that readers of the article would have known she wasn’t the only victim of her depression.

  I remember so vividly how he came home early that night and lay on the bed, still in his uniform. He never came home in his uniform. Although he explained in short bursts about the ‘one under’, he hadn’t gone into too much detail, and I hadn’t wanted to push him.

  And that was it. Asmaa was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Down he sank yet again into another depressive episode. I couldn’t reach him. He was given a month off work because he was having trouble sleeping. He spent his nights in the spare room and was hollow-eyed each morning and looked like it was him who was dead and not her. He became slightly obsessed with her. He found an ‘RIP, Asmaa’ page on Facebook and would scour it regularly to see what her friends had posted. He found out where she lived and would go on pilgrimages to her block of flats and leave flowers outside. He wrote to her parents expressing his sorrow. They replied and he met them for coffee. God knows what they talked about – he wouldn’t tell me. As I say, he reverted to being distant. He had been so crushed by our baby dying all those years before and now he felt like he had actively killed someone. He never returned to work. Beneath the print-off from the Internet, I find the letter her parents wrote to him, apologizing for what their daughter had put him through.

  I place the papers back in the folder. I go to return it to the wardrobe, but I don’t know whether I should. What do I do? What do I do with all his things? What do I do with his Asmaa folder? It’s of no use to anyone else. I decide to place it on the dressing table and the move feels bold, brave. Like I’m changing something, altering the status quo. As if I am admitting he is no longer here so has no say over where things live. This is my space now, and if I wish to keep the folder there, I will. If I wish to throw it in the bin, I will. I won’t, though. It’s such a vital part of who Michael was, towards the end anyway.

  Mum calls up the stairs, ‘Karen? Tea’ll be five minutes, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ I call back, and feel thirteen again.

  Mum and Dad sit in terse silence over tea. Dad’s in Michael’s old dressing gown. Mum has her coat on the back of the chair, as if to say, ‘As soon as this bloody meal is over, I’m getting out of here and running into the arms of Jorgen Borgen.’

  So, what’s going on with them?

  I ask them. ‘What’s going on with you two?’

  Mum slices into some boiled (yes, boiled) parsnips and looks confused, as if it’s perfectly normal for them to be sat here chewing the (boiled) cud when we all know really she’d rather be with Wallander on the other side of town.

  ‘We’re helping you get through a difficult time,’ Dad says. ‘As a family.’

  Mum nods and pops some parsnip into her mouth. Even she must think it’s hideous.

  ‘But . . . what about Jorgen?’ I ask.

  ‘What’s important, Karen . . .’ Mum insists, slicing into her Kiev. Garlicky gunk pops out of it like a squeezed spot ‘. . . is making sure you’re OK. OK?’

  ‘OK,’ I say, with a heavy heart.

  Mum looks to Dad. ‘OK?’

  He nods. ‘OK.’

  And then, after a bit, he adds, ‘These parsnips are minging, Val.’

  She steels herself, pulling herself up to the fullest height she can muster in my, it has to be said, pretty low kitchen chairs, and says, ‘If you don’t enjoy my veg, Vern, feel free to cook for yourself once in a blue moon.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve been cooking for myself all right, Val.’ There is a definite hint of menace in his voice. I quite like it. It shows her behaviour means something. ‘Every day since you left me.’

  She titters. She titters badly. For some reason it puts me in mind of a French and Saunders sketch. I see them in crinolines. ‘Well, there’s a first. I’m amazed you’re still standing.’

  After a pudding of Viennetta and fresh pineapple – not the most obvious of combinations – Mum grabs her handbag and tells me she’ll see me tomorrow. Then she disappears into the night to go and see Jorgen Borgen How Often Do You Play the Mouth Organ?

  I persuade Dad to have a little drink with me. We sit in the living room with the fire on, and he has a whisky, while I have a Tia Maria with ice. We put the telly on, to give the feeling that this is a normal evening, and that one of us isn’t mortified about having a bonkers-ish reaction to her fella stringing himself up from a tree in the local park, and the other isn’t fuming that his missus of nearly forty years has run off with a younger model with a difficult-to-rhyme name. I surreptitiously glance over to Dad and see he’s circling his glass in his hand, like they do in the movies when they want to look pensive. I wonder if that’s clever acting in the films, that they’ve seen it done in life so are imitating it for art, or whether Dad has seen it happen in films and is therefore aping it now to help himself think.

  I’m working up to ask him how he is when he looks over and says, ‘How are you, love?’

  Oh. He got there first.

  ‘Bit mortified, actually,’ I admit.

  He turns his mouth upside down and wobbles his head from side to side, like he’s weighing that statement up and coming down on the side of ‘You have every right to be, fruitbat.’

  Must be the warm Tia Maria, but I find myself expanding, as if he requires an explanation, though none was requested
.

  ‘Mortified that I’ve been lying to everyone. I’m not mortified that . . . that I’ve not been coping with Michael’s death . . . but to go around lying . . . I’ll have to face everyone and tell them I was lying.’

  ‘They’ll understand, love.’

  Let’s hope so.

  Ethleen has given me a week off to sort myself out, get my head round recent events. She says I can take more if I want to. Originally I just wanted to keep it to the week, but the more I think about it, the more I’m dreading seeing everyone and having to explain that yes, Michael is really dead, and my claims that he just left me were complete balderdash.

  There’s also the small issue of facing Connor when I go back in. Two issues there, I remind myself. One: will his dad have told him that I took his mother’s place in their bed one night and spooned? And two: does he know his father has a false identity? I try to put these worries to the back of my mind, something of course I am very adept at. Instead I turn my attention back to Dad. He’s finishing off saying something. I’ve no idea what. I just hear him say, ‘And that can only be a positive thing.’

  I nod, a bit like how I remember Roberta Flack nodding. Then I say what he always taught me to say if I’d not understood what another person had said or was stuck for something to say.

  I say, ‘Watch your language!’ and then emit a hearty chuckle.

  He looks incredulous. I take another swig of my Tia Maria, and he says, ‘Karen, have you got any idea what I just said?’

  Well, it’s pointless arguing with him. He’s the inventor of Watch Your Language.

  I shake my head.

  He rolls his eyes. ‘I said, the thing about admitting Michael’s gone is that now maybe you can start visiting our Evie’s grave again, and that can only be a positive thing.’

  ‘Oh yes. Deffo,’ I say, and am then embarrassed that originally I’d said, ‘Watch your language.’

  ‘Anyway, how are you?’ I bat back.

  He shrugs.

  Part of me wants him to say nothing. That’s what dads are meant to do. They’re meant to be stoic in the face of great emotion and never crack their shells. I want him to push me away, insisting he’s ‘fine, fine. Don’t you worry about me’ type thing. I don’t know that I could cope with a touchy-feely dad. He’s never been one of those and it’d feel weird, him starting now. Like he was only doing it because I was a borderline nutter and he felt he’d created that. I sit there, partly wanting to know how it must feel to lose the love of your life after all these years (although some might say I have an inkling what that is like) and the other part’s screaming, ‘Say nothing! Bitch don’t wanna know!’