‘Cos I might get everything done on Saturday, mightn’t I?’ Lisa looked at her mother, head cocked to one side, smiling wickedly.
Moods like the weather, Rose thought. As changeable as an Irish summer. ‘Here, sign it,’ she said, handing her daughter the rather dog-eared journal.
Lisa sighed. A very eloquent sigh, Rose thought, indicative of her daughter’s great disappointment at having a mother who neither understood her nor trusted her.
Lisa signed her name with a parliamentary flourish. ‘Satisfied?’
‘Don’t be cheeky. Give it here to me, please. There – I’ve signed it, too. That means it’s a deal, okay? And deals thus agreed cannot be broken. Right?’
Lisa rolled her eyes. ‘Yes, mother. You’re always right.’
Rose grinned at her. ‘You’d better believe it. Now give me a kiss. Back home at nine, okay?’
Lisa almost strangled Rose in a bear hug. ‘Ten.’
It was a well-worn routine. They both knew the drill.
‘It’s a school night. Half nine.’
‘Okay.’ Chirpy again.
‘What about dinner?’
‘Can I have it later? I’m not hungry.’
‘Fine. In that case, definitely home by half nine – not a minute later.’
Lisa blew her a kiss from the doorway. ‘Admit it: you’re thrilled to be rid of me for a few hours. You’ll snooze on that sofa there all evening.’ Lisa suddenly struck a dramatic pose, threw her head back, placed the back of her hand on her forehead. It was perfect silent-movie-speak for female distress. ‘Then you’ll tell me: “I never slept a wink.” ’
Rose threw the tea-towel at her. Lisa ducked, catching it easily, and flung it back at her mother, who missed. Shrieks of laughter as the cloth landed on Rose’s head and draped itself over her eyes.
‘Nice burka, Mum!’ And she was gone.
‘Don’t you be late!’
The front door slammed.
Rose put Lisa’s journal away safely and left her schoolbag in the hall. She picked up the plastic swimming bag, full of damp towels, and thought about loading the washing machine. Then she hesitated, changed her mind. She kicked off her shoes, loosened her skirt and sank gratefully onto the soft cushions of the old, familiar sofa.
She decided to close her eyes and rest, just for a few moments.
The tapping was insistent, coming from somewhere very far away.
Rose jerked awake, her heart pounding for no good reason. She felt dislocated, groggy. She must have slept for far longer than she’d intended. The tapping started again, more insistent this time. Then she realized: there was someone at the front door. Whoever it was had no intention of going away. Rose scrambled off the sofa, her knees obeying her with difficulty. As soon as she put her foot to the floor she could feel the numb, warm tingling of pins and needles.
Crossly, she made her way down the hallway, ready to shout at Lisa for forgetting her key. As she approached the door, something about the silhouette of the figure on the step made her pause, made her heart speed up. Only then did she realize that she was clutching the bag of towels close to her chest, holding onto it as if there was no tomorrow.
It couldn’t be.
It was the milkman – someone collecting for charity – a political canvasser. Rose reached out slowly, cautiously, as though something was about to explode in her hands. She saw his face through the glass a split second before he saw hers. From nowhere, the most tremendous feeling of calm descended upon her.
Ben. It was Ben.
In slow motion, she dropped the towels into the corner, until later. Everything around her seemed to have liquefied; it was like running under deep water. All she could think of was putting down the towels. She couldn’t handle this and dirty laundry at the same time. Something had to give.
She noticed her hand shook as she reached up to open the door.
She was conscious of nothing else but him and her, standing there, each facing the other in a perfectly ordinary way on a perfectly ordinary evening. Time was full of the present moment; there was no room for anything else. No past, no future, no anger. Not yet.
No recriminations, no distress.
All she knew was, he was back.
Some part of Rose had been waiting for his return, had prepared for it, for eight long years now. Seeing him there on her doorstep was a shock, but she couldn’t say it was in any sense a surprise.
‘Hello, Rose,’ he said.
Was his tone gentler than she remembered? There was a lightness around the corners of his mouth. Not quite a smile, but something that could perhaps become one in time. He looked smoother than he used to: his thinning hair sleeker, darker than she would have expected. Rose thought of the shiny-headed seals she had recently seen on a nature programme. She had a brief, blinding vision of her husband standing on that step, just as he was now, more than eight years ago. Then, his face had been brick-red with astonishment and disbelief that his wife had, finally, locked her door against him.
‘Hello, Ben,’ she said now, quite coolly.
There didn’t seem to be anything else to say. She looked at him with mild detachment. She had been married to this man. She had loved him and minded him and relied on him, once upon a time. She had had her children with him, and now he seemed to her like someone she had once met long ago, briefly, in another, previous life.
She kept probing to see if she felt anything, any emotion at all. Like a tongue worrying a sore tooth, she would have been reassured to feel the pain of its presence. Instead, all feeling seemed to have been extracted, just yanked out of the way, leaving not even the smallest gap as a reminder of its previous troubled existence.
What do I do now?
The question was suddenly clear in Rose’s mind, as though some inner voice had just articulated it rather sharply, prodding at her, impatient at her lack of action.
‘May I come in?’ he said. ‘Or perhaps . . . we could . . . go out . . . somewhere for a drink?’
She stood back, opening the door wider, aware of some absurd emotion just beginning to stir deep inside her chest. It was like the hopeful, frantic flapping of a caged bird. ‘Please, come in.’
He followed her down the hallway into the kitchen. Rose indicated the sofa, hoping that her voice had acquired confidence, the easy authority of ownership.
‘Take a seat.’
She watched him carefully before he sat, as he smoothed out the warm wrinkles on the cotton throw. He kept pulling and straightening until the whole surface was bland and featureless, all traces of warmth and familiarity disappeared. By the time he sat, his face was almost as smooth, but disapproval lingered where the contours of a smile had, almost, recently been.
He can’t help himself, she thought abruptly. The shard of realization sliced through her resentment like a scalpel through flesh. He hasn’t changed a bit. He still thinks I’m nothing but wife and housekeeper – keeper of his house, wife to some long-ago, ever-present Ben: discarded, unwanted, but still, somehow, irrevocably his.
Stop it, she told herself severely. You don’t know what he’s thinking.
Nevertheless, the small voice that sometimes refused to be silenced, whose presence had grown more and more insistent over the years, now whispered sadly to the inside of her head: Oh, but you do, you do.
Ben handed her a bottle of wine. The movement was an abrupt one, coming out of nowhere, like a conjurer’s trick. She almost expected to see a bunch of fake flowers blossom suddenly in his outstretched hand, or a startled, pink-eyed rabbit, suspended by long white ears. Slowly, she took the bottle from him. She hadn’t noticed it in his hands while he stood at the doorway.
‘I’ll get the opener.’ Rose walked over towards the cupboards, glad of the opportunity to turn her back on her husband. She felt cold all over. Memories crowded all around her, their clarity splintering like ice. When Ben spoke again, his voice was quiet, almost hesitant.
‘How are the kids? How’s Damien?’
Rose opened the drawer, rummaged noisily for the bottle opener. ‘Damien doesn’t live here any more.’
What else could she say?
It was a bottle of good red wine, but the cork was plastic, she noticed. That was more and more common these days. Something to do with contamination, she’d heard . . . Stop it, she told herself. Get a grip.
‘He’s had a place of his own for the past year or so. He’s sharing with a couple of friends.’ Let Damien tell his father, if he wanted to. She wasn’t going to fill in all the years for him.
‘Really?’ Ben looked surprised.
Rose began to pour. The glass shuddered for a moment, and she steadied its base with her free hand. The fingers were trembling slightly, she noticed. She considered the information in a detached way, as though the hand belonged to someone else.
‘He’s twenty-four years of age, Ben.’
‘Of course, of course.’
Rose saw his face tighten. Watching the expression she knew so well, it seemed clear to her that she had a choice: she could kill him now, either with the corkscrew, or arsenic in his wine. Or she could instead pretend to be calm, blasé, woman-of-the-world. It wouldn’t be too difficult. She already had the impression of watching herself from a frozen distance, waiting while her emotions skulked somewhere in the wings. She took a long sip of her wine, tried harder for chattiness.
‘And Brian is quite the academic star. He’s just finishing first year at college – computers and languages. He’s hoping for a first. He’ll be working with IBM in Paris for the summer.’
Ben looked gratified. Rose understood that look. My son, it seemed to say. My favourite child. Of course he’d do well. Didn’t he have me for a father? Rose felt rage flare suddenly, a bright coil of it, spooling upwards from the depths she’d kept so carefully covered for eight long years.
‘And Lisa?’
Did he really find it all perfectly normal, to learn like this about his children’s lives, strangers’ lives, in a polite but cursory telegrammese that acknowledged no absence, no sense of anything at all missing on his part?
Rose’s smile was bright and brittle. ‘Quite the young lady. Fourteen going on forty. Thinks the world was created for her entertainment. She’s fine – as self-centred and moody as the next fourteen-year-old.’
‘I’m looking forward to seeing them.’
Rose thought there was a question in there somewhere. She decided not to acknowledge it.
‘More wine?’
She poured recklessly, wishing he would go, wishing he had never come back, wishing she had never known him, that her children had somehow been transported to her through the medium of the spirit world. She could feel her thoughts becoming wilder. Her fear of what her husband’s return must mean grew and grew beyond her control. The frozen air she’d wondered at earlier had now begun to thaw. It felt like a hole in the permafrost, a hole in the ozone layer – an unwelcome, almost toxic return of sensation that brought her dangerously close to tears.
‘Why have you come back, Ben?’ The directness of her question surprised even her. Something – perhaps the wine – had given her false courage.
He placed his glass carefully on the coffee table, even more carefully not looking at her. ‘Things have changed for me, as I’m sure they have for you.’ He ran his finger reflectively around the rim of his wine glass, making it sing.
The sound was somehow inappropriate, Rose thought: this was not a night for musical accompaniment. This was all harsh lights, hard words, harder feelings.
‘I’d like to move back to Dublin. There are some . . . opportunities . . . here I’d like to pursue. Celtic Tiger, and all that.’
His smile was ghastly, Rose thought, like a death’s head. He had paused slightly before and after the word ‘opportunities’ too, as though giving the word a capital letter, allowing it to occupy a larger, more significant space than usual.
He needs money, she thought suddenly, shocked by the brutal clarity of her realization. That’s why he’s back. He wants me to sell the house.
‘Opportunities.’ She nodded, seeming to consider this. ‘I see.’ She said nothing more, comfortably allowing the silence to grow between them. It could grow for as long as it wished, now that she knew.
He shifted a little on the sofa. When he spoke again, his voice was softer. He’s been practising this, she thought. Someone has schooled him in how to get what he wants. By negotiation, this time.
‘I believe . . . I feel that it’s time we . . . regularized our position – financially . . . and . . . with regard to the children, the house – everything, in fact.’
These were not his words. They did not fit comfortably inside his mouth. They tumbled out as soon as he spoke, recklessly, glad to escape. He must have held them prisoner ever since he first came across them, planning to use them as hostages in getting what he wanted: what he believed to be his, felt was his due. Rose could imagine him leafing through some awful American self-help manual, perhaps with a title like Divorce: Negotiating So Everyone Wins. Except that everyone couldn’t win. Everyone hadn’t won. She’d already lost more, far more, than anyone could ever give her back. Particularly Ben.
‘Really? And what “position” might we be in need of regularizing?’
Careful now; careful. Don’t blow it. Keep your temper.
The corners of his mouth drooped. His shoulders hunched a little as he leaned forward, literally on the edge of his seat. He examined the dregs of his wine, his eyes fastening the rich, red liquid as it swirled its way around his glass.
‘I didn’t behave well, Rose. I know that. But I felt backed into a corner. I felt that I had no choice.’
He looked at her directly now, his eyes not flinching from hers.
‘And what do you think it was like for me, Ben?’ Rose kept her voice even. ‘A rather crowded corner with three children in it, don’t you think? No support – financial or otherwise – and the need to keep a roof over all of our heads? How do you think that felt for the past eight years? And you have the gall to talk to me about choice!’
She couldn’t stop herself. She hurled her final words across the table at him, filled suddenly with enraged astonishment at all the assumptions, all the expectations that had had to underpin his return.
He stood up abruptly, his hands raised as if to ward her off, to push back the force of her fury. ‘I didn’t come here to fight. I know things were tough for you, and I’m sorry the way it all worked out, sorrier than you can imagine, but—’
‘You know nothing about my life, nothing at all.’
Rose cut across him, already moving towards the kitchen door. She’d have to negotiate with him sooner or later, she knew that. She’d always been aware that this day would come, that part of this house was his, whether she liked it or not. She’d often fantasized about leaving it all behind, moving on somewhere else, closing the door on memory, on failure, on the precarious notion of ‘family home’ – whatever either of those words meant now, or had ever meant.
‘Financially, I’ve survived.’ She put her hand firmly on the handle, opening the door into the hallway. ‘The children have survived. This house, as you like to call it, is our home. Not some property portfolio, some kind of spoils to be divided once the dust has settled. I seem to remember making this point to you before, when you walked out on us, but you chose not to listen.’
Boiling water, sharp scissors, carving knives . . . She had never been angrier in her life.
‘Calm down, Rose. This is my house too, you know.’
‘It may be your house, but it’s my home. Now, get out of it.’
She paused for a moment. The force of sudden memory made her slow down, draw one quiet breath. She was surprised at how calm she became. Her voice, when she heard it again, sounded brisk, almost businesslike.
‘And what you call my “position” is quite “regular”, thank you. Yours is your own business. Now leave.’
I’m getting good at this, she thou
ght. Throwing people out. It gets easier the more you do it.
He hesitated, as though he was about to try again.
‘Don’t, Ben,’ she said quietly. ‘Don’t say another word.’
‘We have to talk.’
The world collapses, years spiral into turmoil, lives are shattered. Rose knows now that all these disasters were once heralded by that phrase. We have to talk.
She opened the front door.
‘I seem to remember the last time you said that, too. You’ve made me wait for eight years. Now you can wait a little longer.’ She opened the door wider. ‘Go.’
He looked at her helplessly. ‘I . . . we . . . can’t we just—?’
‘We’ll do nothing until I’m good and ready.’
In a strange replay of the day her world had changed for ever, Rose ushers her husband out of the house and locks the door firmly behind him. For several moments, she is unable to move. She watches the stiff, angry set of his shoulders as he makes his way down the driveway without once looking back.
Behind her closed door, the house reeks of silence. Bright shards of a shared past cut through the empty stillness. Christmases, birthdays, anniversaries. Twenty years of her life, her children’s lives, telescoped into Kodak moments – all mocked by the astonishing return of one man in a suit.
Rose stoops to pick up the bag of damp towels in the hallway and makes her way back into the kitchen. She opens the washing machine, piles in the towels, adds the soap tablets and slams the porthole closed. She pushes the sixty-degrees button, sits down on the rumpled sofa and waits for her heart to stop pounding. She feels it pulsing painfully against her ribs.
It had to come to this; she’d always known that. And now that it was here, she longed suddenly, violently, for closure. Divorce, freedom, drawing a line in the sand. She would do it; she was ready.
But one thing was sure: she would do it on her terms.
Rose sat at the kitchen table, occasionally topping up her wine glass. She was fascinated by the dislocated, alien image of herself that she could see there, all moon-like cheeks and forehead; small, wavering eyes; sharply pointed chin. She remembered how she had caught sight of herself earlier, too: once in the smoky depths of a fish kettle, and again in the watery sunshine of Pembroke Road. Had both of those moments been sly reflections of a rapidly approaching future? Were they sudden premonitions that her life, once more, was about to become unrecognizable?
Something Like Love Page 3