by Lucy Vine
4
12.34 p.m. Saturday, 22 February
Location: On a bench in Warner’s Park, which is a huge expanse of green, with a feeble set of swings and a roundabout that no one ever uses. We’re surrounded by pigeons and pigeon faecal matter – because there is an idiot around here who feeds them, even though there are signs all over the place saying please don’t. Ugh, people.
There is a bird actually standing on my foot. He does not care, he totally does not care that I am a human who is bigger and more violent than him and I could crush him with my angry human fist.
I don’t do that – I squeal and run in a circle.
Dad laughs and shoos the bird away. This happens every time we come here and I complain every time, but we continue to come pretty much every week. Dad loves this place. He brings his Yorkshire terrier, Lily, most days, and they sit among the shitting pigeons and chat to his fellow retiree passers-by. All the locals love Warner’s Park, and every year or so, the neighbours gather together to launch a campaign to save it. They get really into it, start a petition, hand out leaflets at the local train station and have a protest, chanting ‘Save our local park’ outside the council office. The campaign is always an enormous success, and the council make some kind of official announcement that they have ‘decided to support the community by protecting Warner’s Park’ – because they never had any interest in destroying it anyway and the mayor likes having his picture in the local paper. Either way, the neighbourhood ends up having a big celebratory party round Psychic Sharon’s house and Psychic Sharon ends up drunkenly pointing at couples and predicting their divorce. And then those couples get divorced because everyone’s too scared to cross Psychic Sharon.
Actually, I have my own fond memories of this place. Most of which I haven’t shared with Dad. He doesn’t know, for example, that this is the park I vommed in at least once a week from the ages of thirteen to seventeen. And he doesn’t know that over there is the ditch that eight of us from year ten all hid in that one time, frantically trying to dispose of off-brand cider after we became convinced that ‘the pigs’ and/or ‘the fuzz’ were coming to arrest us and throw us all in jail. Dad doesn’t know those are the swings where Danny Arringford tried to finger me and I told him I couldn’t because I didn’t have a vagina – because I genuinely didn’t think I did. Our sex ed lessons at school were so explicit and detailed that I’d decided, staring up at that horrifying white board, that there was no way I had all that stuff up in me. And then when Danny was really nice about it and said he wouldn’t tell anyone about my lack of vagina, I went round telling everyone he was frigid with a tiny cock. I think Danny’s homeless now.
It’s changed a lot over the years. Not in terms of how it looks – actually it’s literally the same, down to each blade of grass, thanks to the overbearing micro-management of self-appointed ‘head landscaper’ Psychic Sharon – but it’s changed for me. It stopped being the fun, silly destination of a not-particularly-misspent youth and started being a place to escape the difficulties of adulthood. This is where I came to think and reflect about my stupid life. Where I sought out solitude after fights with Jen. It’s where I came to escape from Dad’s well-intentioned but overbearing questions after I split up from Tim. It’s where I came to sit and cry about my mum.
I love this park, but they’re not all fond memories.
Dad’s talking.
‘I’m very proud of you Lenny.’
Oh my God, he’s so proud of me. He’s constantly telling me and Jen this, ever since he started therapy, where he learned to speak Spiritual Dickhead, a language which includes phrases like ‘high nurture intentional parenting’ that helps ‘foster feelings of safety and connectedness’. He now starts and ends every sentence explaining how proud he is of me, even though there is so very little to be proud of. I’m his single almost thirty-year-old daughter, with a job she barely tolerates, renting a room in The Shithole across the hall from a boy she has to try every day not to drop her (greying) knickers for.
He’s probably not aware of that last part, but still.
‘I’m proud of you too, Dad,’ I say, patting his gloved hand. It’s just something to say, isn’t it?
‘I was hoping to talk to you about something, if it’s OK?’
I pause. When people ask in advance if they can say something, my usual policy is to say no. It’s always something you don’t want to hear and the fact that they’re asking you permission means it’s your fault if you don’t like it. But short of getting up and leaving, there’s not much else I can do here. I reply carefully. ‘It’s hard to answer that without knowing what you want to talk to me about. I mean, I do have some things I would rather not talk about with you.’
Danny Arringford.
Dad nods, looking worried. I don’t think this is about Danny Arringford.
‘Go on, Dad, tell me. It’ll be OK,’ I say resigned. Surely it can’t be any worse than 75 Hues of Tony – reading your dad’s thinly veiled attempt at Fifty Shades of Grey is one of the most uncomfortable experiences I’ve had. This week, at least. He turns to me on the bench, sinking his leg into a fresh blob of pigeon poo. Bugger. I’d been so carefully avoiding it and it’s all over his trousers now. They’re his ‘good’ trousers too, poor Dad. Shall I tell him? He looks so earnest, I decide not to.
He clears his throat. ‘Lenny, you know I’ve been lonely since your mum . . . er, since your mum . . . ’
(Mum left us.)
(OK, to be fair to her, she’s dead.)
‘. . . since your mum passed away.’ He looks at me anxiously and I stare blankly at the ground. He goes on. ‘And I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what my future might hold. Jacquetta –’ (his therapist) ‘– suggested I speak to you about the possibility, about the possibility of me maybe starting to, to date again.’ He suddenly picks up speed; ‘I just thought, maybe I could try it. Try meeting someone. Try dating. Obviously I’m not looking to replace your mum, and you wouldn’t have to call her Mum or Mummy. I mean, unless you wanted to . . . ’
WHAT THE FUCK. Ohhhhh. Shit, I wasn’t expecting this.
He’s still racing through his speech. ‘I had Candice and Peter over for dinner the other night – they’re so lovely, he’s so affectionate with her – and Candice kept saying “Alan, you need to get back out there!”’
He looks pensive for a moment. ‘I think I need to get back out there, Lenny.’
Get back out there? Out where? The furthest he goes is to the Waitrose on Station Road for his weekly ‘big shop’. What the fuck does out there mean and who are these people telling him that? I don’t know Candice and Peter at all. They only moved in next door last year, just after Mum died, and I’ve only ever heard about them through Dad and the many terrible cakes I find haunting Dad’s kitchen. There is some mouldy-looking banana and courgette bread waiting for us back home right now. I don’t even know these people and here they are, pushing themselves into our lives. Telling my dad to ‘get back out there’, like he is a character in a stupid fucking book. I feel like storming round there right now and confronting Candice. Who is she to say that to my dad? Telling him to get back out there. Dad doesn’t need anyone else. I look after him, don’t I? I’m here for him. I listen to his complaints about the plants not growing how they should. I call him every day, see him every week. I give him everything he could need. Except the obvious – don’t be revolting. But surely he doesn’t need sex because that’s disgusting. Jesus, if I still have to be having sex when I’m sixty, I will kill myself. No wonder Mum chose death if Dad kept insisting on having sex with her.
I don’t say any of this, obviously. I just nod slowly.
He’s looking at me, wounded puppy dog face waiting for me to say something.
‘OK, I get it,’ I say even though I don’t get it and I will never get it.
He goes on. ‘Candice said maybe I could try joining a dating website, or maybe going along to a singles’ club. What do you think, Lenny? It’s b
een thirty-five years since I was single. I don’t have any idea how it works any more.’
Neither do I.
‘Will you help me, Lenny?’ He looks so pained and shy.
I sigh. ‘Of course I will, Dad. But maybe a singles’ club is a bit premature?’
He looks relieved. ‘Yes, yes, I thought probably not that. But how do you actually meet people these days? Your grandma set me up with your mum, because she was “respectable”, and that was the only criteria.’
Mum wasn’t respectable, that is nonsense.
Hmm. How do I break it to my dad that people no longer interact in real life – and that no one is respectable any more? That even meeting on a dating website seems somehow nostalgic these days? I’m definitely not putting Dad on a dating app . . .
He’s looking at me expectantly.
‘Well . . .’ I start. ‘It used to be that you’d just go to a bar and have conversations with people, but that’s practically a museum move now.’
Dad sits up straighter.
‘Can we go to a bar?’ he asks excitedly, his voice quivering. ‘Can we go to a cocktail bar?’ he whispers urgently.
A picture of my fully round father trying to climb up on a stool flashes through my mind.
No way.
‘Oh. Um . . . ’
‘Please, Lenny? Please, please can we go to a cocktail bar? I’ve never been to one in my life, but sometimes they talk about it on Neighbours and it sounds like so much fun. Please? Could we go for my birthday?’
No. Way.
It’s Dad’s sixtieth birthday in a couple of weeks and I’ve planned nothing. I keep asking Jen if she’s coming home from LA for it and she keeps telling me to get a life.
Dad’s looking at me again; he’s practically shaking with excitement.
Right. I make a decision.
‘Yes. Of course we can, Dad!’ I stand up, finger in the air and kicking at the scattering pigeons that squawk in protest. ‘Of course we can go to a cocktail bar, and I’ll help you find a girlfriend and I will be fine with all of this. Did I mention I am fine because I really am fine with all of this. Fine.’
He stands up too, mirroring my triumphant pose. ‘Oh, thank you, Lenny! I’m thrilled! Now, let’s go home and watch one of my soaps. Don’t worry, I’ve got them on record.’
He sits back down and reaches for his bag. ‘Hold on, I just have to feed the pigeons first.’
Back at Dad’s house, we FaceTime Jen from the sofa. This is Dad’s favourite bit of my visits. He loves Jen and his granddaughter Milly so much, but it’s not really that part that gets him excited. It’s FaceTiming. He is delighted by the novelty. He cannot get over the joy of seeing a person’s tiny face on that tiny screen. He will talk about the experience and how clever it is for a whole hour after this call. The phone rings, and Milly’s little face answers. She screams in terror at the sight of Grandpa’s face, way too close, his nose hair almost brushing my screen. Must remember to clean it later.
Milly is six (nearly seven, she keeps telling me) (in six months), and, if Sophie’s daughter, Ciara, is the best child in the world, Milly is the worst. She’s only in the second grade but she’s already in constant trouble at school. She’s incredibly argumentative and throws temper tantrums everywhere she goes. Her favourite place for a screaming fit, she says, is a Whole Foods because the aisles are wide enough to really stretch out her fists, and the acoustics are good for all the shrieking. You need to be able to hear her from the vegetable aisle all the way over at the alcohol or the tantrum is a failure.
She’s awful, but she’s also the funniest, smartest kid I’ve ever met. In fact, she’s in my top five humans on the planet (Dolly Parton is number four) (Dad will overtake her the day he writes a song as good as ‘Jolene’).
Dad backs up from the phone a little bit and smiles widely at his granddaughter. She ignores him.
‘Ellie!’ she exclaims happily, pawing at the screen. Milly thinks I’m super cool. When she was younger, and couldn’t pronounce words properly, she thought we had the same name, and regularly informed me that we were twins. When I pointed out that I am a grown-up, she would laugh gently, pat me like I’m an idiot, and explain in a kindly voice that of course I’m not. Which is probably about right.
‘Hello!’ Dad and I shout awkwardly at the same time. ‘How are you, little one?’ he adds. She ignores him again.
‘Ellie, I need to talk to you,’ she says precociously, pointedly staring her grandpa out until he heaves himself up off the sofa making loud, old-people-getting-up noises.
‘I’ll go make a cup of tea,’ he says mildly.
When he’s gone, I turn back to her. ‘Are you all right? What’s going on?’ I’m only vaguely concerned – Milly often has big important crises that she likes to discuss with me in detail. The last one was about learning to swim and the likelihood of a crocodile appearing in her school’s pool.
She flicks her long blonde hair over her shoulder, exactly like a teenager. ‘I need to ask you about periods,’ she stage whispers the last word.
‘Oh?’ I say, trying not to react.
OK, this is worse than I thought. First Dad wants to start dating, and now my six-year-old niece wants to discuss womanhood. Today is turning out to be totally excellent and I am still really fine with my life.
Milly glances furtively over her shoulder. No sign of her mum.
‘Connie says I’m going to have periods when I’m older and it’s going to be totally disgusting and being a girl is the worst.’
‘Who’s Connie?’
She looks impatient. ‘My best friend. She’s in the third grade. She says girls have periods and boys have tractors.’
‘That’s sexist,’ I say automatically, but I don’t know if it is. If in doubt, get angry and shout, that’s my motto.
She ignores my comment because we’ve talked about sexism before. She says she finds the subject ‘tedious’ because all the boys in her class are ‘morons’ and there’s ‘no way they would get picked to be an astronaut over her’.
‘So?’ She is irritated. ‘What are periods? Tell me and you better not lie to me, Ellie, because I’ll know.’
I think for a second. How best to answer this? I should just be honest, shouldn’t I? De-mystify it? Because periods happen to all of us and we shouldn’t be grossed out or frightened by them. Except I am nearly thirty and I am still a bit grossed out and frightened by them. Sexism, see? (Wait, is it?)
‘OK, Milly, it’s not something that will happen to you for a long time,’ I start cautiously, praying Jen will turn up and save me before I have to get to womb shedding. ‘But when you’re becoming a woman –’ (shoot me in the face, this very second please please, please) ‘– part of that means once a month, you will have a, uh, menstrual cycle.’
‘Ermmmmm,’ she interrupts, indignant. ‘Excuse me, if it only happens to girls, why is it a ‘‘mens’’- trilicle?’
‘Menstrual cycle,’ I correct her. ‘But still, that’s a good question. And well done on the early years feminist indignation.’
She nods, pleased with herself, and waits for me to continue.
‘Um. So your menstrual cycle means that you . . . uh, bleed a bit from your woowoo every month.’
I shouldn’t have said that last bit. I should’ve left it vague. She looks horrified.
‘But I hate blood!’ she says, her lip trembling. ‘I don’t want that to happen. And why would it come out of that bit? That’s where I wee! I don’t want blood to wee out.’
‘I know,’ I say soothingly. ‘It’s pretty shi— annoying. But it’s not so bad once you get used to—’
She interrupts me again. ‘Wait, every month? Every single month? Even during the summer holidays? Even if you’re at Disney World? What if I meet Mickey Mouse and my wee starts bleeding on him? Every month?’
‘Well yes,’ I say, trying to picture Mickey’s outfit – I think he wears red shorts anyway. ‘But some women take the pill –’ (nope, don
’t say this, why would you be saying this) ‘– to stop their periods for a holiday, or for a wedding when a friend is making you wear a clingy cream bridesmaid dress even though you can’t find a single person who thinks it looks nice.’
She looks relieved. ‘Oh, that’s fine then. Easy. I’ll just take that pill and stop periods ever arriving.’
Of course, this is when Jen walks into the living-room and spots us. Milly turns round and shrieks, ‘Mommy, I need you to put me on the pill.’
Oh fuck.
Jen looks appalled.
‘FOR GOD’S SAKE,’ she shouts. ‘Don’t call me “Mommy” – you’re British. I don’t know what to do with you. We’ve only been here a year and your accent is already going to hell. Next you’ll be telling me you don’t like queuing any more.’
They glare at each other for a moment and then Milly dumps the phone and wanders off. I stare at their ornate living-room ceiling for thirty seconds before Jen’s face looms in. She looks me over, coolly.
‘She asked you about periods then? I am going to murder that little bitch Connie.’
From the kitchen, Dad’s voice wobbles; ‘Have you finished your chat?’ He pops his head in and the rest of him follows. He’s holding a Custard Cream and looking a bit traumatised.
‘You heard?’ I say sympathetically and he nods sadly, sitting back down. I hand him the phone and he leans right into the camera so only his eye is visible to Jen.
‘Hi, Jenny, you look very well,’ he says.
‘I know,’ Jen nods smugly. ‘I’ve been ill for a week so I’ve lost four pounds. I look amazing.’
‘Oh, er, all right then. I’m glad you’re better now,’ says Dad, unsure of himself.
‘I look thin, don’t I?’ She’s asking me, and I nod enthusiastically.