The Last Laugh

by Tracy Bloom

  My rhythm is on hyper-speed now. I’m breathing heavily and looking warily around as if trying to spot where the next blow will come from. I mount the pavement and park on the verge outside Mum’s perfectly neat, four-bedroom house in the deepest darkest depths of suburbia. She’ll have a go at me about that later. Apparently the gardener complains about the ruts my tyres cause. I suspect he doesn’t complain at all. I suspect she’d prefer it if I parked on the drive so the neighbours are less likely to spot what she believes to be a ramshackle excuse for a car that her excuse for a daughter drives.

  I don’t pause. I’m straight out of that car and heading for the front door, my brain no longer capable of preparation of any kind. I’m living in the moment, literally. I’m totally incapable of seeing, thinking or planning what might happen next. Stuff is just going to happen whatever I do. That’s what I’ve learnt today. Stuff is happening to me and I have no control over it. So I give up trying to plan or organise anything in my head because there is no point.

  The front door is open even before I reach it.

  ‘I thought you weren’t coming,’ announces my mother from the hall, pulling leather gloves on in the manner of someone preparing to strangle me. ‘You will not believe the day I’ve had,’ she continues, casting her eyes around for her bag and never once looking at me.

  ‘Your dad’s not had a good day. I left him alone for five minutes whilst I put the smoked salmon on the blinis for tonight’s game and he was gone. Looked for him everywhere. Rang Roy, he wasn’t there. Rang your Auntie Pauline, he wasn’t there. Do you know where he was?’ She finally looks at me as she picks her keys off the hall table.

  I shake my head.

  ‘In the utility room!’ she exclaims. ‘I didn’t even realise he knew we had one. He certainly never went in there when he was working. Never. He once asked me where the shoe polish was and I told him it was in the cupboard next to the washing machine. I watched him go all round the kitchen opening every cupboard door looking for the washing machine. Can you believe it? That’s what my generation has had to put up with. Men who didn’t even know where the washing machine was. You don’t know you’re born, young lady. Really. I bet Mark knows where the washing machine is, doesn’t he? And I bet he even knows how to use it.’

  She says this in a way that makes me feel it’s my fault that Mark can work a washing machine and it’s something I should feel guilty about.

  ‘And I’ve seen him load the dishwasher,’ she says, prodding a finger accusingly in my chest. ‘Your dad’s had his tea. He’s just watching Tom and Jerry. His tablets are on the chopping board in the kitchen. If you put him to bed around nine thirty, he’ll be okay then. I’ll be back by ten anyway. No need for you to hang around.’

  She brushes past me and bangs the door behind her. I can hear her heels tapping up the path at speed. I breathe out. I realise I have been holding my breath the whole time. Poised to speak. Poised to get some horrible truth out in the open in the hope that my mother will listen. At least listen.

  I push open the door into the living room. I’m about to walk in but stop myself at the sight of the pristine light cream carpet. I slump down on a chair and kick off my shoes. Entering the living room in outdoor shoes leads to a fate worse than death in this house.

  I pad into the room feeling my feet sink into the sumptuous pile. Dad is staring at the TV, the light from the screen reflecting off his glasses. I can just about make out Jerry hitting Tom over the head with a mallet. Dad is smiling and it makes me smile.

  ‘Hi Dad,’ I say, my smile out of nowhere becoming a weak watery one. I can feel myself sinking, as though the carpet is swallowing me up. He looks up at me and smiles back.

  ‘Jenny,’ he says.

  He said my name. He recognises me. Today of all days. For once he said my name.

  I can’t help it. I fall into his arms and he holds me like he used to when I was a child. His arms are around my back and his cheek rests on the top of my head. I bet he hasn’t held me like that in over thirty years. I bet I wouldn’t let him. Oh, how I wish I had. How many moments like this have I missed being embraced by my father’s love?

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I hear him say into my hair. ‘Did they push you over in the playground again?’

  I raise my head to see the look of concern in my father’s eyes.

  ‘Something like that,’ I reply, trying to stop the tears, realising the pointlessness of attempting to explain any different to his dementia-addled brain.

  ‘Well, you just stay here,’ he says. ‘You’re safe here. No one can get you here.’

  ‘Thanks, Dad,’ I say, leaning into him again, closing my eyes and pretending that he’s right. I’m safe here.

  Eleven

  I don’t feel myself when I wake up the next morning. I have longer than the usual momentary confusion about what day of the week it is and how I feel about that. Is it a work day? Have I prepared everything? What are Ellie and George doing today? Has Mark already gone to work? Can I hear the kids moving about? Do I need to go and shout at them? Why is it so quiet? Is it the middle of the night? Why do I feel like shit? Shit, I have cancer. Shit, my husband is cheating on me. I feel like shit because I have cancer and my husband is an adulterous shit-bag and possibly because I took two sleeping tablets last night.

  I try and lift my head off the pillow but it is as if some hideous bully has his steel-toecapped boots resting on it. Is this how my dad feels every morning, I wonder. I hope not. I’ve never been a fan of my mother giving Dad sleeping tablets so that she gets a good night’s sleep. He takes enough medication as it is and who knows what hidden side-effects they have that he isn’t able to articulate to us. Typical of Mum, however. If there was a tablet that kept him semi-conscious at all times I think she would give it to him. She has a somewhat Edward Rochester approach to his care, keeping him imprisoned behind net curtains away from human eyes and avoiding all discussion of him outside the home. He may as well be dead.

  I hope he had a lively night without the suppressants my mother feeds him and he led her a merry dance. No doubt I will hear all about it later and it will all be my fault. Which it is, of course, as I slipped his sleeping pills into my bag rather than into him. Serves her right for not taking just one moment to ask how her daughter was. To ask how her day had been.

  I inch my way around until my feet are on the floor. I blink rapidly, hoping the fog will clear. Hoping I am waking up from some hideous long nightmare, meaning yesterday never happened.

  But the clock by my bed says 9.34am, which means yesterday must have been real. I would never sleep that late unless I had sleeping tablets and I would only do such a thing if something terrible was preying on my mind and actually something, no, two terrible things, are. So the fact I am waking up at 9.34am confirms that yesterday did actually happen.

  I trudge slowly downstairs in a stupor. I go straight to my mobile in a trance, just like I always do. Every morning. As though all my non-existent friends on the West Coast of the States will have been messaging me overnight with urgent news. I look at the screen.

  On my way home.

  That came in from Mark late last night. I don’t even warrant an explanation. Or even an enquiry as to why I rang him five times yesterday. How long will it be before all communication ceases?

  I scroll down to see a predictable flurry of communication from my mother.

  7.15am – Had a terrible night with your father. Did you let him finish those Maltesers? Will you come this morning so I can go shopping – 9.30?

  * * *

  9.01am – Are you ignoring me? I know you are not at work until this afternoon. I really need a new outfit for when I go to Antony’s. See you at 9.30.

  * * *

  9.09am – Missed Call

  * * *

  9.31am – Roy said he will come and sit with your dad which is really inconvenient for him. I feel terrible. You must give him your apologies next time you see him

  I can’t hel
p it, I press delete. My mother is so off-radar today. I refuse to communicate at all.

  One last message came in a few minutes ago.

  9.34am – Don’t forget Nourish at 10. Looking forward to celebrating your birthday – Zoe xx

  Oh shit! I stare at the text. That’s a depressing text if ever I saw one. It makes my eyes heavy with the gloom of it.

  For a start, Nourish? WTF!

  Since when has Victoria sponge with a two-inch wedge of butter icing in the middle been nourishing? It may as well be called Fatten, or Eat More Lard. Just because you put a cream scone on an earthenware plate and provide a plethora of distressed mismatched chairs to sit on doesn’t make everything that passes your lips healthy, including saturated fats. Believe me, I know. I have tried all approaches to eating saturated fats without gaining weight and eating it in healthy hippy-style coffee shops does not work. Nourish is a bog-standard café trying to be cool but it doesn’t fool me. My friends, however, clearly yes, since they have deemed it the ideal location to party on down for my forty-fifth birthday.

  And as for the ten o’clock meeting time? So insulting. Ten o’clock is the ‘I haven’t really got the time to spare you despite the fact it’s your birthday’ slot. I’ll fit you in for a quick forty-five-minute flat-white then I can pat myself on the back for being a good friend and go on my merry way to my essential Pilates class, which I’m more than willing to give a good hour of my valuable time to.

  Jesus, this really has to be the shittiest birthday of all time. The best they can come up with is to ‘celebrate’ my birthday with a coffee in a crap café. Who are these people?

  Oh yeah, they are my friends. Well, the friends thrust upon me by my children by mere virtue of being the mothers of their misguided friendship choices at the age of four. The random group of women I happen to have first experienced being a school mum with. Somehow our joint experience of managing children of the same age has glued us together into an awkward, slightly dysfunctional group that never quite gels into the easy banter of a crowd that have come together through sheer affection rather than convenience. I remember going through a phase of dreaming that Ellie had been born a year earlier. From the looks of Facebook, the mums of that year had much more fun together with their sneaky lunches out and joint birthday parties and girly weekends away in someone’s aunt’s cousin’s cottage in Padstow. If only Ellie had been born in 1998, then I too could have paraded my awesome social life with my friends on social media. But instead I’m in the ‘hot chocolate at Nourish’ crowd and hell will freeze over before I post that on Facebook.

  ‘Happy birthday,’ announces Lisa, when I walk in, her eyes flicking up from her laptop opened up on a rickety ‘vintage’ table that no doubt has a ‘vintage’ wobble as well.

  She is dressed as usual in head-to-toe designer Lycra that matches. Yes, matches! It’s very different to the stuff I throw on for my once-a-year amble into physical exercise, which usually consists of black leggings with holes at the knees and a faded fun run T-shirt from five years ago. When Lisa’s not buying Lycra or talking about entering a marathon without ever actually entering one she’s running a huge corporate empire from her spare bedroom. Actually she trades on eBay but you’d think she was doing a daily audition for The Apprentice the way she goes on about it.

  ‘Happy birthday,’ echoes Zoe, pulling out a chair next to her. ‘I got you a hot chocolate with cream, as it’s your birthday. I assumed organic?’

  See what I mean? This place is seriously screwed up. They load a hot chocolate with cream and then ask if you’d like an organic healthy twist on that. Wrong, all wrong.

  ‘So, have you had breakfast in bed this morning?’ Zoe asks, looking me up and down as if to say, it looks like you’ve come here straight from bed. I’ve pulled my brown suede skirt on again but my top lay crumpled on the floor all night and there was nothing else half-decent ironed so I’ve come crumpled. Zoe has the uncanny knack of making every pleasantry feel like you’ve failed in some way.

  I’m about to say no, and point out that actually it was my birthday two days ago so today would not warrant a breakfast in bed anyway, before I remember that we are only here today because Zoe had a prior engagement on my actual birthday. She claimed she had a meeting with her accountant but we all know she was having another colonic irrigation session because Lisa’s sister works at the clinic. I look into Zoe’s eyes to see if they are bloodshot, something Lisa reckons is a sure sign of recent colonic treatment. But then again, Lisa is the person who claims that she once slept with Jason Donovan backstage whilst he was in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. You do have to take what Lisa says with a pinch of salt sometimes.

  ‘Has Mark treated you then?’ continues Zoe.

  I look at her. This could be a classic leading question from Zoe. A question designed not to praise my husband’s gift-buying powers but as an opportunity to reassure herself that the presents she receives from her own husband are way better. Oh yes, I want to reply. He treated me to a view of his bare backside yesterday, humping some blonde. Oh, and by the way, I have cancer.

  ‘I keep dropping hints about my birthday to Geoff,’ Zoe shares with everyone when I don’t answer. ‘I left a Sunday supplement open on a page listing the most romantic hotels in the Cotswolds.’

  I raise my eyebrows at Emma as I always do whenever Zoe ever mentions Geoff in a romantic context. I actually like Emma, I really do, and feel we could actually have a laugh if she just let herself go a bit, but in the main she’s… what is she? Well, she’s a worrier. She worries about everyone and everything and one day she will have a nervous breakdown if she doesn’t just learn to chill out a bit.

  ‘Oh, wouldn’t that be lovely?’ replies Emma, nervously fingering the mini-shortbread on her saucer as she glances round the rest of the table to see if anyone else has eaten the free scrap of biscuit provided with all hot drinks. When she concludes that all her companions have shown restraint, she withdraws her hand sharply as though someone has tapped her on the wrist and told her not to be so greedy. ‘Did Mark take you out, Jenny?’ she asks to deflect the attention away from her hungry fingers.

  ‘We went to the new Mexican in the Intu Centre.’ I cough. My voice sounds strange. As though I am listening to someone else. Is that me talking normally as though the two landmines that have detonated in my life haven’t happened?

  ‘Oh, how lovely,’ nods Zoe. ‘It looks so much fun,’ she adds, by which she means if you’re six years old and like being distracted by primary colours.

  ‘I like the cactus lights,’ I shrug defiantly. ‘And the nachos were the best I’ve ever eaten around here.’

  ‘I can get you cactus lights,’ interrupts Lisa before anyone has the chance to be in awe of my achievement of finding the best nachos in town. ‘Give me one second and I’ll get you a price. They’d look great in your kitchen, seriously.’

  We all stare at each other whilst Lisa strokes her mouse pad trying to track down light-up plastic plants.

  ‘How’s Ellie getting on with Mr Partridge?’ asks Heather, who unsurprisingly is trying to move us away from the cactus lights.

  I turn to look at her and find myself sitting up straight in my chair. All conversations with Heather have a Mastermind-like quality to them, with Heather playing the role of merciless question master whilst you quake in your boots, praying you might get at least one answer right. The specialist subject is always the same: our children’s education. I think she is actually incapable of having a conversation outside of this subject area. I know she is a very intelligent woman. She has a PhD in something or other but she must be too clever to earn a living, and definitely too clever to be a housewife, so she’s left with the ongoing analysis and monitoring of her children’s schooling so that they can end up too clever for anything as well. Unfortunately her attentiveness and inside-out knowledge in this area leaves me feeling like a complete failure when it comes to my own children’s education.

  ‘Who’s M
r Partridge?’ I ask before I swallow, my eyes wide. I know I’m feeding her obsession but I cannot help it, I have no idea who she is talking about. She looks at me like I don’t know my own children’s birthdays.

  ‘He’s standing in for Miss Ryan whilst she goes on maternity leave,’ she says, firmly awarding me a U in her mind for my parenting skills.

  ‘Oh,’ I say.

  ‘You know Miss Ryan who’s taking them for English Lit?’ she adds.

  ‘Ah ha,’ I cry. Yes, I actually say, ‘Ah ha,’ such is my pride in my revelation. ‘Ellie isn’t doing English Lit,’ I announce, looking around triumphantly. ‘She nearly did but decided on History instead.’

  ‘Oh,’ replies Heather. ‘Megan said that Ellie swapped to English Lit. Apparently she wasn’t enjoying Russia in the Age of Absolutism and Enlightenment 1682–1796. She told Megan it was boring and she would prefer to be reading Feminine Gospels by Carol Ann Duffy. Which I think I would if I had the choice. The study of feminism is so much more relevant and enlightening than eighteenth-century Russia to a young girl, don’t you think?’

  The table is silently waiting for my response.

  Nothing is relevant, I think, any more.

  ‘There you go, look,’ says Lisa, turning her screen round to show me a picture of plastic cactus lights twinkling merrily at me. ‘Do you want some? Why not two strands, they’re only five pounds ninety-nine? Shall I order you some? When we lived in the States I had two enormous light-up palm trees on my deck. They were amazing.’