“Donna, dear,” I ask, finally, “what kind of man you looking for?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“I do, my dear.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
Donna puts down her knife and fork, picks up her knapsack, which is on an adjacent chair, opens a purple leather purse, and takes out a well-thumbed piece of paper. “I wrote this four years ago as a way to clarify my aims and objectives. If you write your goals down, it helps you to achieve them. I read this when I need to feel hopeful and inspired. This is the very least I’m looking for in a man.”
This goin’ better than expected.
She proceeds to read from it, quite solemnly, like it’s a mantra.
—My husband will be Caribbean or of Caribbean descent.
—My husband will be a very successful and solvent professional.
—My husband will be aged between thirty-five and forty-nine.
—My husband will have no children from previous relationships.
—My husband will be very intelligent and educated to at least degree level.
—My husband will be taller than me, ideally six-foot-plus, of muscular build and without a pot belly.
—My husband will be handsome but not so handsome other women chase him.
—My husband will not have a hairy chest, back, hands, nose, ears, or ingrowing hairs that he expects me to pick out with tweezers.
—My husband will be . . . (Dad, this is the bit you don’t need to hear.)
—My husband will love cooking for me, unlike Frankie, who never so much as boiled an egg.
—My husband will never lie, cheat, or ogle other women.
—My husband will be sweet and kind but still very masculine.
—My husband will be a great listener.
—My husband will accept me completely for who I am with no criticisms.
—My husband will not snore.
—My husband will want to hold my hand in public.
—My husband will adore me even when I am old and wrinkled.
—My husband will love Daniel.
—And Daniel will adore him too.
“That’s it,” she says, gloomily laying her precious document down on the table.
“Donna,” I venture softly, trying not to insert no judgmental inflection into my voice, “have you thought you might be being a bit too fussy?”
Wrong move, Barrington.
“Too fussy?” she roars. “I wasn’t fussy enough with Frankie, was I? I was taken for a right mug, because I had low self-esteem. I’ve done enough self-empowerment courses since to know that I’m worth more. Now look what you’ve gone and done, put me right off my food.”
She takes up her plate, slouches over to the bin, and shovels in the remains.
“I can’t believe I confided in you for the first time ever and you ruined it. You just don’t get it, do you?”
“Get what, dear?” I reply, trying on Morris’s tone when faced with prickly contenders.
She’s looming over me again. “That you’re to blame for my man problems. I don’t trust men, because you caused Mum pain all her married life. I’ve done enough therapy to know that subconsciously I don’t expect to end up in a happy partnership because of you.”
Lordy, lordy, if my middle-aged daughter wants to blame me for her inability to catch man, nothing I can do about it. I ain’t had no power of attorney over her reasoning since she became a pig-headed teenager.
“I couldn’t say anything before because . . . well . . . you’ve paid for Daniel’s education and . . . my house and everything, and, while I appreciate it, of course I really appreciate it, it’s also made me . . . well, I might as well say it, beholden to you.”
At this point in the proceedings our relationship looks like it’s toppling over the precipice into the Valley of Death. “Anything else you want to get off your chest?” I ask, just to help it along on its way.
“You terrified me when I was little, when you came home drunk and started picking fights with Mum. I’d be wetting myself in bed, literally. Home is supposed to be a sanctuary for children. In any case, I rarely saw you, because you were out all the time. Then Princess Maxine came along and you spoiled her rotten, and it’s been that way ever since. She got the father I never had.”
I stand up, and she’d better move out of my way or I will have to shove past her and then she will add GBH to my list of war crimes.
She steps backward, arms bolted straight at the elbows, like she’s struggling not to deck me.
I start packing away the Chinese. Yes, it will suffice for the next few days. I take my time, stack the boxes neatly in the fridge. I start to walk down the hallway in slippers made of lead.
Except Donna ain’t done yet. I sense she has moved to the doorway, watching me.
“I saw you,” she says in a tone that makes me feel an axe is about to be lodged in my back. She leaning against the doorframe, arms folded. “April 1977. I was on my way to a party, and Mum said you’d just popped out to the office to get a bottle of whiskey, but you’d been awhile and to look out for you. I reached the bottom of the road and there you were, sneaking out of that outdoor brothel known as a cemetery, looking so shifty . . . with a woman dressed like a prossie right behind you.”
Nothing to salvage.
Nothing to deny.
Nothing to declare.
“A few nights later we were all watching the telly, and as soon as it got dark you said you were off to have a drink at the pub. I tailed you and you went straight into the cemetery again, like the rest of the dirty old men. About twenty minutes later you came out and headed off to the pub. That whole summer you were at it. Then you got beaten up by some pimp or whoever, and I just thought, serves the bastard right.”
Where is Morris? I want my Morris.
“I could never tell Mum because it would have devastated her. She was, and still is, too innocent and fragile. And I couldn’t destroy Max’s fantasy about what a great father you are, in spite of how you treat Mum. I’ve kept it in for thirty-three years. Protecting you. Protecting Mum. Protecting Maxine.”
She waiting for me to say something.
I mount the stairs, one foot at a time.
When I reach my bedroom, I heave up the window and put my head through for some air. As much as Donna might like me to, I do not throw myself out of it.
I undress and climb into my nice clean bed, made up with the fresh sheets Maxine must have found in their secret hiding place.
A few minutes later I hear the front door slam.
13
Song of Power
2000
Hackney Council should train their housing teams in detective skills, what with all of the nonsense you have to put up with from existing and prospective tenants
which is what you tell the new housing assistants when you’re inducting them, the fresh-faced know-it-alls straight out-a university with no experience of life but a whole lot of attitude
that you knock out of them, because after over twenty years in the job, and as a senior housing manager, you is now a boss lady with power, responsibility, and experience
Look here, you tell them, you’ve got to have your wits about you in this line of work, because it’s tough out there on the mean streets of Hackney. Just imagine you’re in the LAPD working South Central LA . . . but worse
which always raises a nervous laugh
you warn them about the lengths people will go to jump the queue on the coveted housing waiting list, which might otherwise take twenty-five slow years to climb, if at all
how to detect the shit in the bullshit, although you don’t use those words exactly, such as
teenage girls with cushions stuffed beneath jumpers, like you an idiot born yesterday
chancers claiming to be sleeping on park benches for months, but they can’t explain how come their shoes is so polished, their clothes so clean and smart
the forged document
s and false Hackney addresses
the tenants who sublet their homes, who terrorize estates, build extensions, and knock through walls like they own the joint, thereby contravening the tenancy agreement they signed on the dotted line, which you’ve been known to thrust into a face or two as proof (you even got a black eye for your efforts once)
tenants who keep donkeys, goats, pigs, chickens, sheep, raccoons, and monkeys in their back gardens, even a fully grown bull that was brought in as a calf for a child’s birthday, which you had to arrange to be craned out over the roof
the rehousing and maintenance you got to authorize, especially after gas leaks and explosions, arson attacks, negligence, front doors battered down by raging beasts or police raids
families who outgrow their allocation of bedrooms
families on the Social Services register who are usually a multigenerational headache
the crazies, overcrowders, jailbirds, probationers, noise polluters, rat infesters, domestic-violence perpetrators, nonpayers, whorehouses, squatters, and crack-house proprietors up for eviction, and the heavies you got to send in when they don’t go quietly
you and Reuben used to engage in friendly banter about these issues, but he always sided with the dregs of society, blaming capitalism and the Milk Snatcher for everything (privatization, monetarism, the miners’ strike, poll tax, right-to-buy, police brutality, rich people, poor people, racism, colonialism, famine, natural disasters)
while you always sided with the philosophy of hard work and self-betterment
ten years later you still miss hearing his entertaining politico rants
while you was both cuddled up on his lumpy bed under the patchwork quilt made by his great-grandmother back in Hungary (which you made him take to the dry cleaner’s for the first wash of its life, probably)
you still miss making love on the nice clean-smelling floral linen you bought and ordered him to put on fresh any time you was goin’ visit, otherwise you wasn’t returning again to his archetypal bachelor pad to sleep on gray sheets that was once white
you still miss your games too, especially after you eventually allowed him to buy you sexy lingerie from a shop on Wardour Street, which gradually opened up a whole new vista neither of you could get enough of
silk scarves, cuffs, candle wax, latex, a paddle
boy, you was one sizzling hot mama, up for things you’d never even imagined
after a lifetime of restraint, you was up for everything . . .
boss lady at work and in the bed, which was how he liked it
Carmel, you was shocking . . .
. . . really
slipping down the steps to his side-entrance flat Friday nights and staying late under the pretext of goin’ out with the girls, which they was all in cahoots about
not that Barry ever doubted your lies; in fact he encouraged you to enjoy yourself, to go to the pub or see some blockbuster movie
you still miss being cocooned in Reuben’s functional one-bedroomed basement flat on Rushmore Road that you’d made as homely as you could, in spite of the rough planks of wood piled onto bricks that served as bookshelves, the crude political posters instead of framed, pretty pictures on the walls, a kitchen without a toaster or an electric kettle, and a garden with a wooden table with two bench seats attached that he’d stolen from a pub and wouldn’t return, no matter how many times you told him it was criminal
so you made the flat less functional with dried flowers in vases, potpourri in bowls, purple floral throws and cushion covers, a swirly pink-and-purple shag-pile rug, floral towels, flannels, soaps, scented candles, room deodorizers, a whole new set of cutlery, floral crockery, glassware, tea towels, toaster, microwave, electric kettle to replace his antiquated gas whistler
he let you do your thing, bemused, saying he didn’t notice decor
that the most important thing in his life was you
and with him you became a bigger, nicer version of yourself, one who didn’t snarl and squabble, who didn’t feel hard done by
he even loved the things you hated about yourself, like the mampie rolls on your stomach you couldn’t shift and your ugly feet with childhood scars and bunions that he massaged and even kissed
to think a fella would love you so much he’d want to kiss your trotters?
and even though you knew God was watching, you couldn’t help yourself
even though you still went church (on an increasingly irregular basis) you reasoned you was no more a hypocrite than everyone else, like that bastard Pastor George, who was a secret homosicksical
and, as much as you sweated over committing the sin of adultery, you couldn’t give Reuben up, and even ten years after the last time you saw him, you still miss being wrapped up inside him and rummaging through his thick curly hair, which had gone from Cairo to Barcelona to Budapest to Barnet to Hackney to you, Carmie
he was your Sephardic Shepherd—come and gone
O, how you bathed in his warmth, lady
so that when you left his flat you was glowing all the way home and had to tone it down when you walked in the door and Barry was around
and you never once talked to Reuben about your marriage, so you wasn’t disloyal in that way
never told him you’d leave Barry, because for all the hell he put you through, no way was you goin’ back on your marriage vows, because marriage is a gift from God, Jesus sacrificed Himself for humankind, same way you got to sacrifice yourself for your marriage
no two ways about it
even though by now Maxine had left home and was at art school, wearing nose rings and playing around with papier-mâché, milk cartons, and bricks like she was on Blue Peter
bragging how she was goin’ be the most famous artist the world has ever known (even more full of herself than ever)
which changed once she’d left college and become a fashion stylist, whatever that is, and finally realized she was no more special than anybody else
(at least she took your advice to get a proper job rather than live on the dole, hoping that someday somebody would discover her)
then, in 1993, Donna had Daniel, and you was glad your family hadn’t broken up but expanded
as it should—you and your Antiguan husband, your children, your first grandchild
as God ordained it
it was meant to be
unlike you and Reuben, who was a perfect match in the bedroom, but a perfect mismatch outside it
you would never have fitted into his culture of Socialist rallies and people with no dress sense, futons, films with subtitles, riding bicycles, and reading boring books that wasn’t page-turners like the Jackie Collins novels that was now your favorites
nor would you want to
and he certainly wouldn’t fit into your world
except he started saying how lonely he was without you
how lonely he was without a partner and the children he desired
how he’d got a job in town planning at Lambeth Council
bought a flat in Stockwell and said he had to break off all contact
and you had to let him go, because you had no right to try to keep him
you had him for five years and for that you give thanks
even though you stood outside his flat a few times in the dark of night
looking through his curtainless window at white walls, Che Guevara poster, bookshelves
thinking if you was there you’d have put up proper nets, at least
not daring to ring the bell
catching the last tube home
and then
coincidentally
a few months later Barry asked for a divorce
and you made sure he knew better than to ever ask again
after that, you spent the 1990s goin’ church more than ever before
Mrs. Walker, Miss Merty, and Miss Asseleitha became the stalwarts of the Church of the Living Saints
Wednesday evenings, Friday nights, Saturday afternoons, Sunday all d
ay
you been begging the Good Lord for forgiveness ever since
but the problem is—those five years was the best of your life
truth is, you begging without regretting
so you damned, girl, you damned
14
The Art of Being So-Called
Saturday, May 22, 2010
I standing outside Morris’s block of flats, prepared to beg forgiveness. His hump has lasted longer than I can endure.
In a minute I go ring the bell and be buzzed up to his bolt-hole. If I ring the bell and he don’t answer, I know he really is planning on winning the Hump Olympics. I know this because the intercom system comes with a camera. I also know this because it is seven a.m. and unless he changed a habit of a lifetime, that man will have roused himself an hour ago.
And I feeling nervous, is true.
C’mon, you got to let me in, Morris. But what if he don’t?
En route to here, I marveled at the World Outside, the spring blossoms, the clattering milk carts, even the rush-hour traffic, as if I’d been incarcerated more than just the past few days of my life. I felt like a veritable Persephone, skipping through the meadows after a terrible winter spent in the underworld with that filthy dog Hades.
Even though, even though, I still feeling the weight of Donna’s revelations off-loaded onto me. It’s one thing sensing your child loathes you, but it is quite another hearing it straight out of her mouth.
Was I a terrible father, an evil ogre? And, if I was, what can I do about it now?
It seems to me that Donna would’ve preferred it if I’d gone for good. I can’t believe that for over thirty years Donna’s been going around with the secret knowledge, in her mind, that her daddy visits prostitutes. No wonder she been so vexed with me. What if she knew the truth?
Maxine phoned last night, asking how I was feeling, to which I replied, “Cool,” saying what she wanted to hear. I don’t blame her. She don’t need to carry my heavy load.
“Maxine,” I told her, “I’m going to see Morris first thing on the morrow, and should he be agreeable, I want us to meet these bezzies of yours. So, my dear, how about you take me and Morris to a bar in Soho tomorrow night?”
Mr. Loverman Page 20