Ordinary People

by Diana Evans

  Melissa shrugged. ‘That’s just who you are.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s so frightening.’

  ‘Hm, and there’s that question, as well, of what happens afterwards, when they’re fully grown, taking up space in the world, when they really don’t need you, hardly ever.’

  There was something about Stephanie’s singular commitment to the work of motherhood that nevertheless troubled Melissa, even as she admired its focus, its confidence. It seemed to point to an inadequacy within herself, a possibility that she was suppressing in herself. A part of her wanted to kill this thing in Stephanie. She wanted to smash her house to pieces, to break it open and force her out of it so that everything entrenched would be thrown into the air and land differently, making new ways of living, new ways of growing. ‘What will you be then,’ she asked her, ‘when all your work of raising is finally done? Will you remember yourself, how to get back to yourself? How much of yourself do you get to keep?’

  Stephanie now studied Melissa, the way a grandmother might look at a child, wishing her a greater wisdom, further away in time, an ability to let go of something inside held far too tightly. Yet wondering also at her own self that she had let go, and how far back that was, trying to trace it, knowing it was impossible, unnecessary. ‘Who knows about all that?’ she said. ‘I’ll just find something else to be.’ She laughed again. ‘You do think I’m a dinosaur.’

  ‘Actually, in a way I envy you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you’re patient with your life. You’re not trying to be everything at once.’

  ‘I’ve got to be someone’s wife as well, though.’

  Melissa lifted her cup, waited before drinking. This is what she had wanted to tell Damian but the words came out by themselves. As soon as she’d said them she regretted it.

  ‘Michael wants to get married.’

  ‘Oh?’ Stephanie smiled. ‘Did he ask you?’

  ‘We’ve been talking about it. He says it’s time. He said last night that we’ve reached the point where we either get married or split.’

  ‘Hm. I understand.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘You’re asking me?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  And Stephanie, in turn, wanted to kill this thing in Melissa, the thing that clung to the opaque, the intangible, to mere possibility. Be a solid person, a whole woman halved. Be firm and tethered and tied to something solid.

  ‘Well, do it,’ she said. ‘Make the commitment. Accept this for all that it is, warts and all. Then you can just be happy, instead of fighting and questioning all the time. Go on, put him out of his misery.’

  For the next two days it rained. It rained almost continually, between bouts of weak sunshine not strong enough to conjure rainbows, a gliding gentle drizzle that made a shushing sound in the air, a susurrus rising up from the ground. The beach was damp and deserted and the buoys were lonely. The pool seemed wetter, colder, though its surface was broken occasionally by the boldest of the children, Ria and Jerry, who could not see how rain could be a determent, it falling all around you as you were submerged, making water complete. On the third day a rainbow did emerge, spectacularly, on the wings of a new blast of sun, and not just one but two, a double arch of multicolour road against the background blue, the sun itself a neat apricot glow, like a great lost earring, risen from the gloom. The children ran outside to receive it. Slowly the heat sucked the water from the grass, the yellowed cotton of the Heineken parasol dried, and the barbecue was dragged out from its sheltering bush, ready for the final Friday-night fiesta.

  For this highlight of the holiday they bought stacks of meat, kebab sticks, corn cobs. Potatoes and leaves for other salads. Burger buns and hotdog buns, and drinks, of course more drinks. The supplies had been drained in the rainy nights over long games of blackjack and another game called ‘pile of shit’. Michael and Pete had stayed up all night yesterday and slept in until lunch, emerging loose-faced and delicate. More beer, more rum, more whiskey, more chasers. ‘How much drink do we need?’ Stephanie exclaimed. ‘Don’t worry, it will all find an orifice,’ Hazel said, unpacking in the kitchen, finding fridge space and temporary freezer space to get it cold faster. They started drinking early, as drumsticks flamed on the grill, the coals working hard, as streaks of belly pork seeped their salty juices, as fish congealed and warmed in its foil. Towards evening the sun walked away across the grass in a dark-green cloak, leaving it crunchy again. Michael and Pete nursed their hangovers with Red Stripe, Pete at the barbecue, head chef, Michael his sidekick, both of them collusive, boyish, constantly joking. Damian felt left out, forgotten. Was his aptitude for humour inadequate? Was he less of a pal to Michael than he had thought? All the more reason why the sight of Melissa coming down the stairs as he was again slipping away for a slice of Tolstoy seemed an easier and lovely thing. She was wearing a yellow polka-dot dress with a white collar. Her hair was loose, no earrings.

  ‘You look nice,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘That dress suits you.’

  ‘Thanks!’

  He couldn’t seem to stop the flow of his thoughts to his mouth. Perhaps it was Pete’s punch, which he had been sipping since three. It was such a punch that it tasted like strong raspberry squash with a splash of petrol thrown in. Now in its rich, fruity haze, Damian no longer considered his feelings for Melissa as a crush. No, it was more than that. All the times at the beach he had been trying not to compare her to Stephanie, the springy physicality of her, the pretty feet, the yoga tone, the way she ate a doughnut, as if she were not eating a doughnut, whereas when Stephanie ate a doughnut she looked as if she was eating a doughnut. All week lying across the hall from her had made a new dimension of her in his mind. The sound of the shower water had a Melissa sound. There were Melissa footsteps on the stairs, her shapes were in the shadows, her voice was in the atmosphere, like a softly singing breeze.

  ‘I feel a bit strange,’ she said. ‘I hardly ever wear dresses. I thought I’d make an effort for our last night.’ She touched her naked earlobe, a sea of silver bracelets around the raised wrist. ‘Blake’s down, thank god, so I can party in peace. The plan is to get them all down as soon as possible so we’re free for debauchery. You ready?’

  ‘I’m just going to change my shirt.’

  ‘OK, but if you’re planning on reading I don’t think Hazel’s going to put up with any of that tonight. Tolstoy et al. are not invited.’

  She tapped him fondly on the head and swept past him with a hint of body mist, into the clamour of Nirvana, which was playing from Michael’s iPod. There was already a small disco taking place by a pillar. Summer was teaching Hazel and Avril (who was happier now, she had come round to the Baetic) a hip hop dance routine, interspersed with them taking it in turns to do moves that the others copied. Chicken bones were scattered on random plates. The grill was still going, the embers mellow. ‘I want to stay up all night!’ Ria said. ‘Can we?’ ‘You cannot,’ Stephanie confirmed. But only close to eleven did the children finally retreat from the upper stair, at last bored with the meandering talk of drunken adults rising up through the villa, their pontifications on ways of disciplining children, their gossiping on uninteresting media personalities and house prices, their earnest critical appraisals and recollections of movies they hadn’t seen. Exhausted, they fell into their beds, dreaming of air flight, England-bound, their own beds empty, silent, waiting for them when the plane emerged downwards from the clouds, heading for home.

  ‘Know what I feel like doing?’ Hazel said. ‘I feel like going for a swim.’

  ‘You? You can’t swim,’ said Melissa.

  ‘I can just dip. Come with me, go on.’

  ‘No,’ she shrugged her off, ‘I don’t feel like swimming at this moment. I feel like sitting right here in this warm, dry chair and being comfortable.’

  ‘Don’t let her swim, she’s drunk. She might drown.’ Stephanie was also beyond her usual limit. She felt like dancing. M
ichael Jackson came on and she did, bopping behind the sofa, holding her wine. The two big black and white table lamps on the sideboard were switched on, giving a copper hue. The door to the garden was open beyond the arch. In the bounce of P.Y.T. the conversation moved on to Michael Jackson himself, the fifty-date tour he had coming up.

  ‘He’s not gonna do all those shows,’ Hazel said, ‘no way. He can’t even sing any more, I heard. How’s he gonna do fifty dates?’

  ‘He might,’ said Pete. ‘He must need the money.’

  Michael said, ‘It’s a publicity ploy to get him back into the spotlight. It doesn’t even matter if he can’t sing. People just want to see him, because he’s him.’

  Hazel said, topping up her drink, ‘Well, I heard he’s loco anyway. My friend works for his management. She said she went to his house once and he answered the door with lipstick smeared all over his face.’

  ‘What, Neverland?’ said Damian.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Your friend went to Neverland?’

  ‘Apparently, yeah.’

  ‘Wow. What was that like?’

  ‘I don’t know, I’ll ask her if you like.’ Hazel said this with an element of sarcasm. She didn’t like Damian much. He was too intense and a bit weird.

  Meanwhile Michael Jackson shrieked in the speakers. He said ‘shamone’ and ‘woo-hoo’. It was Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’, the opening song of Thriller. Heads were nodding, shoulders moving. ‘Is anyone going? How much are tickets?’

  ‘A one-a, a two-a maybe. Pete’s taking me.’

  ‘A friend of mine sorted me out.’

  ‘Lucky cow!’

  Stephanie sat down on the sofa arm, at the opposite end to Damian, throwing back her wine. Since the episode with Avril they had been civil with one another, avoiding any more embarrassing confrontations that might upset her again. They were like two acquaintances at a party. ‘The poor man,’ she said. ‘I feel sorry for him. Do you think he did it, molested those children?’

  ‘There’s no smoke without fire,’ Hazel said, as Jackson sighed and cooed and gasped, as he screeched and whooped and heeheed and audibly skipped. ‘Ow!’ he went. Melissa said, ‘Listen to him, man. There’s just no one like him. No one shrieks like that.’ She got up to dance. ‘I love this song.’ She was clapping, making slidey steps with her feet. ‘What exactly is he saying here? Is he saying “you’re a vegetable”? I’ve always wondered about that …’

  Damian watched her secretly, the copper lit pool of her throat and her whirling polka-dot waist. He had put on a good shirt, short sleeves, patterned, hopefully highlighting the work he had been doing this week on his musculature. He got to his feet as well and bent his legs in time with the music, bringing his hips into it. The music was a drug, Jackson dancing with them in his shiny white suit. Shamone! Ow! He was in the room, the lightening of his legs, the moon in his feet and the one white bright hand. It was a unique, cinematic music, a seething energy and electricity, a voice they all knew, from a time they all knew.

  ‘One thing about Michael Jackson, though,’ Michael said, ‘he always seemed happy with his teeth. It’s the one thing he didn’t seem to want to change about himself.’

  ‘How do you know he didn’t change them?’ Hazel shouted over the noise. ‘He must have changed them. He’s American. All Americans get their teeth done. Especially if they’re famous.’

  ‘Why are you talking about him in the past tense?’ Damian said, followed by Melissa, drunkenness consuming her, oh this most joyous of drugs, ‘It’s kind of fitting, in a way. He is past tense, of himself, I mean. He’s a different person to the one he was born as.’

  Stephanie, who was practical about matters of the soul, said, ‘We all are, aren’t we? We’re all different from who we started as. I would hope so anyway.’ She believed in maturity, in the concept of the grown-up, not the inner child. But Melissa disagreed.

  ‘Or are we just the same? I always think of myself as fifteen. When I was fifteen I decided I didn’t want to get any older than that so I didn’t. I think we’re static inside. It’s deviation from this static state that causes pain and friction …’

  ‘Everyone has to grow up some time,’ Michael said, which grated on her, as if he were talking specifically about her, which he was.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Pete, ‘in your teens you get chirpsed, in your twenties you get laid, in your thirties you get married, in your forties you get –’

  ‘Me, I’m never getting married,’ Melissa said, ‘I don’t want to be anyone’s wife. What a horrible word that is anyway. Don’t you think husband is a so much nicer word than wife?’

  ‘What happens in your forties?’ Hazel said. ‘Lis, you talk such rubbish sometimes. Ignore her, Michael.’ He had shot Melissa a quick, dark look, a wince in the eyes, then it was gone. He swigged on his drink. He’d meant it, about this being the time to do it or split. She could make light of it, but he’d meant it.

  ‘In your forties you get old, innit. Then the whole thing starts all over again –’

  ‘… after you get divorced,’ Michael finished for Pete.

  Thriller, the song itself, came on. Everyone was up this time except for Michael, who didn’t feel like dancing now, and Melissa danced with Damian, not quite opposite him. There was a drift of heat as they thrillered around each other. He actually danced well. He danced, in fact, better than Michael did, with her, the good, medium height of him, closer, his chunk of stomach, the hunger in his eyes, those thick hands caught in the beat. She remembered the dream of him above her, so vivid, carrying her like he’d carried Avril up the stairs, and she had a powerful longing to be engulfed by him, to be centred in his unfamiliar warmth. What would it feel like? What would those hands feel like? Hazel and Pete were also dancing together. Stephanie was swaying by the pillar like before, half holding on to it, the ceiling swinging back and forth. They all staggered, two-stepped and stamped. Hazel was laughing her head off trying to do the moves from the Thriller video.

  ‘How d’you know all the moves?’ she asked Pete.

  ‘Come on, everyone knows the moves to Thriller.’

  Forwards they stamped like the zombies. They became a mess of feet going left and arms going right, like in the video when Michael and the zombies gather into one dance routine. Hazel couldn’t take it any more and she flung herself down on to the sofa. Melissa, Damian and Pete kept going, Pete dragging Michael up, he bopped for a while, noncommittal. He had not registered the sparks of terrible yearning charging out at Melissa from Damian’s eyes just then, the loss in him, at that moment when the break came in and the pitch increased, of all scruples, all worry of propriety and consequence. The dancing got more and more wild, Pete was goggling his eyes, Melissa was shaking her head in fast motion, Damian was bouncing around her. When the song was over they fell about in their chairs, sweating, apart from Stephanie, who announced that she was going to bed.

  ‘No!’ Hazel said. ‘No one’s allowed to go to bed early!’

  ‘It’s not early, it’s almost two!’

  ‘Yes, early!

  ‘To you, maybe, Miss Drink-everyone-under-the-table, but I’m beat. Beat it – get it?’

  ‘Ha ha ha!’

  ‘Anyway, I feel sick. I think I’m going to –’ She put her hand on her mouth, and rushed upstairs to the bathroom.

  ‘Some people have no stomach,’ Hazel said.

  ‘Oh my god, I’m so drunk,’ Melissa moaned.

  ‘I know, let’s play a game!’ Hazel said.

  ‘Doesn’t she ever reach that point where you’ve just, like, had enough?’ Michael asked Pete.

  ‘What kind of game?’ Pete said.

  Hazel had poured herself more vodka. She was sitting with her legs slung over Pete’s lap. By now they had a nickname, HP Sauce. She gulped the drink straight, no chaser. ‘Let’s play that game where everyone tells a bit of a story. Remember, Lis? We used to play it when we bunked off school.’

  ‘Na, I’m rubbish at those kinds
of games,’ Michael said, his hand resting on Melissa’s thigh in a determined gesture of ownership.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, let’s just try it. I’ll start.’

  Everyone waited half-heartedly for Hazel to begin. The music was still playing but lower, the night thickset and mild around the villa. There were Cool Original Doritos on the coffee table, unanimously agreed as being a quality crisp.

  ‘OK, here goes,’ she said. ‘One day, in the forests of Papua New Guinea, a little boy tripped over a rock and hurt his foot …. Your turn, Pete.’

  ‘OK,’ Pete said, assuming a confident narrative tone. ‘“Ouch, that hurt”, he exclaimed with aplomb.’ (There was sniggering at the use of this word.) ‘The boy’s name was … Johannes, and he didn’t have any plasters on him.’

  Hazel was laughing and clutching Pete’s bicep. ‘You next, Damian.’

  ‘Erm, so, to stop the flow of blood, he ripped off a bit of his T-shirt, which pained him because it was his favourite – Ben Ten – and wrapped it around the wound.’

  ‘But alas,’ Michael said dramatically, ‘the cut was bleeding so much that the but-flimsy piece of fabric was soaked through in seconds, and Johannes realised, just before it fell off – his foot, that is – that it was more damaged than he had at first thought.’

  Everyone laughed. ‘That wasn’t bad, dude,’ said Pete. ‘That was one of those situations where you smash it because you thought you were gonna be shit so you tried harder, innit.’ Now Melissa. She continued, ‘Poor, poor Johannes was so upset having only one foot, that he threw himself down on the ground and wept … Then he heard a voice.’

  ‘“Hark”, the voice said from the foresty air,’ this was Hazel, on the tail of a huge yawn. ‘“Do not weep, for I am your insect godmother, and I have come to save you.” Go on, sweet thang.’