The Playground

by Julia Kelly

  ‘Well if it did, I didn’t notice. Don’t worry about it, OK?’ One down, excellent.

  ‘And, well, I’ve been meaning to tell you. God, I really hope you won’t be annoyed about this but I’ve taken on a lodger. Is that OK?’

  ‘Thought I’d seen a strange woman coming and going, right enough.’

  ‘She’s a bit of a hippy but a very clean and tidy one. She’s American, loves the flat and keeps it beautifully, and—’

  ‘Relax. It’s not a problem, OK?’ he said, leaning over and giving my arm a quick rub. He seemed so laidback, so agreeable, so unlike Joe. ‘God, the poor woman sleeping on that old mattress though. I’ll try and sort something more comfortable.’

  ‘Well that would be brilliant, but she hasn’t complained. She’s glass half full about most things.’

  ‘No problem at all, leave it with me.’

  I was smiling too much. How many bets I’d find a nice black thing at the top of my front tooth when I got home. I wished I wasn’t looking so tired, I felt cross-eyed, grotty. I knew I was talking too fast. I could smell cigarettes on his breath. Whatever mood I was in that night I found it sensual, rather than disgusting.

  ‘You can have some of them if you want?’ he said, seeing me look at the timber. ‘They’re no good to me. I’ll drop some round during the week.’

  ‘Really? That would be brilliant! Thank you,’ I said and went over on my heel like a fat slag as I walked down the gravel path.

  *

  The sitting room was empty, the fire guard in place, the embers dying in the grate, Joy’s patchouli oil lingering in the air. Alfie looked up, ears alert, his tail bashing against the side of the armchair, but he was too comfortable to move. I sat on the sofa and felt that disconcerting feeling you get when you sit on a seat still warm from someone else’s bottom. I got up again, dragged Alfie’s collar over his head, listened to the silence and went to check on my daughter.

  I tried to open the bedroom door but something was impeding my entrance. I pushed against it and peered round the frame, praying the noise hadn’t disturbed her. ‘Shush,’ I heard a cross voice say.

  There, lit up by the night light, sitting forward on the nursing chair – the one that my mother gave me when I was first breast-feeding – frowning with concentration in her horn-rimmed glasses was Joy.

  ‘Isn’t she a serious beauty?’ she whispered, not looking up at me. ‘You almost woke her, oh but she’s a tired little angel. Still in dreamland,’ she said, smudging pencil marks with her thumb, eyebrows arched with intent.

  ‘Don’t let me disturb you,’ I wanted to say back, but I was too stunned. She was sketching my child as she slept.

  ‘She’s a bit wheezy, isn’t she? Listen,’ she said then, holding her hand in the air to command silence. ‘Maybe you should try a few drops of Olbas Oil in a bowl? I have some in my fanny pack, if you want to go get it?’

  ‘All right,’ I said, wincing at the expression.

  ‘How do you think it’s coming on?’ she asked, following me out to the landing and holding it under the light. It was irritatingly detailed and accurate – she must have spent several nights watching my child as she slept. ‘I’m so happy you like it. It’s a gift for you, dear heart.’

  Chapter Eleven

  Ruth was standing so close to me by the wash handbasin, I could hear little stomach pips and churns. I knew what she was waiting for, but I kept my head down and held my hands under the running water for far longer than I needed to. I didn’t want to do this today. I didn’t want to stand cheek by cheek so that she could compare our two faces in their reflection to see whose foundation was more dewy, whose jawline firmer, who had fewer wrinkles on their forehead.

  I rooted through my grubby bag, holding it close to me, trying to conceal its torn, make-up-stained lining. I pulled out a half-eaten lollipop, coated with hair and fluff, a chewed nail-whitening pencil and some baby wipes, located my lipstick, smeared it on, applied some concealer under my eyes, fiddled with my hair, smiled, frowned, gave up.

  ‘So you don’t like my new top then?’ Ruth asked, turning away from the mirror to face me, straightening her taupe-coloured, Margaret Thatcher style blouse over her stomach. She was the sort of person who wore strange and unflattering clothes which told you she was at the cutting edge of fashion.

  ‘I do. Why would you say that? I was just going to ask you where you got it,’ I said, irritated with myself for sounding a little scared.

  ‘Nah, it’s OK. You didn’t mention it. I probably can’t get away with it any more,’ she said, studying herself again in the mirror, this time adopting her special mirror face.

  ‘Don’t be silly, you’re waif-like.’ I said, thinking that she’d put on a few pounds round her middle since the last time I’d seen her.

  We left the Ladies and made our way to the bar while we waited for our table.

  This dinner – no kids, just the two of us, at an expensive city centre Italian – had been anticipated and talked about for so long it couldn’t hope to live up to expectations. All our breathless plans for summer: the picnics; the barbeques; the few days away; the tennis lessons; camping with the kids, had somehow never materialised and this evening was the first time we had seen each other in over three months.

  Our conversations were always so frenetic and relentless that we would afterwards joke about being dizzy and hoarse. Tonight, we were out of kilter. Ruth had been expecting me to be as lost and miserable as I’d been for the last seven months so that she could spend the evening continuing to cheer me up and go to bed feeling happily reassured about her own intact relationship and life. But I was in irritatingly buoyant humour and this made our friendship less straightforward. The ticket collector at Tara Street station said I was the best-looking girl he’d seen all day and that that was saying something because he’d been on his shift since seven a.m. And I’d got the part-time job in the library. I was also quite excited about the Wednesday evening games – the inaugural one was the following night. We were finally starting to settle into our new neighbourhood.

  As we were led to our table we went through the usual two second rigmarole of offering and declining the more comfortable, better-vantage-point-for-people-watching bench seat by the wall, though we both knew that it would, in the end, be Ruth’s backside lowering itself onto its cool, expanding leather, reaffirming the status quo of our relationship.

  Despite her fragile state, Ruth was looking well. Sexy, in a tired way: her eyes were hooded and had the look of last night’s make-up; her mouth seemed swollen from lipstick and drink and her voice, already husky, sounded deeper than ever, her laugh a little dirty. She’d scooped her hair into a messy up-do and she was wearing a colourful, tribal-style necklace I hadn’t seen before and liked, but the waitress had already asked her about her earrings and I didn’t want to compliment her further – why on earth not? What was wrong with me? With us?

  Our conversation had got off to a bad start; I’d given her the news that a mutual friend of ours had decided to get a puppy. This was irritating to Ruth on two counts, one, that I’d been in contact with Caroline, who was in fact her friend, and two, that yet another of her friends was getting a dog.

  We both put our heads down and read the menus in silence, aside from the occasional ‘mm’ sound, playing with our hair the way women do.

  ‘I mean, I just think it’s ridiculous,’ Ruth said after ordering seafood linguini, sinking her teeth into some buttered brown bread. ‘I’m the biggest dog lover of all of you, even bigger than you to be honest, but all of you have dogs and I don’t.’

  ‘Ridiculous. I think it’s really for Jules.’

  ‘Jules?’ Ruth said, irked further by this intimate abbreviation of her friend’s little boy.

  ‘I mean Julian,’ I said, my voice sounding a little high in my throat. ‘It’s just easier for Addie to say. Caroline says he’s been asking and asking.’

  Ruth was shifting in her seat and not enjoying herself. ‘Aren’t
you going to have any bread?’ she asked, passing me the basket when she noticed I hadn’t taken some. Translated, this meant don’t tell me you’re on a diet again and I really think you have some sort of eating disorder.

  ‘So, what was I saying?’ Both of us did this more often since kids, lost our train of thought several times in an evening. Some of these thoughts came back after prompting or remembering, others were recalled only on the journey home, some were unuttered, lost forever in the mush of our middle-aged minds.

  It was raining that night and a leak had developed in the ceiling just above where Ruth was sitting; drops began hitting her cheek. We both stood and lifted the table along a few inches; Ruth moved her bag to the other side of her, but still the drips came, now splashing onto the red leatherette seat. The waitress was concerned and apologetic but explained that the restaurant was fully booked that evening and there were no other tables available.

  ‘So, any news?’ We both knew what she was referring to.

  ‘Nothing. Not a word.’

  ‘God,’ she said, but I knew she wasn’t one bit surprised. She’d known Joe was gone for good before me, everyone had really. For a long time I hadn’t realised that it hadn’t worked out between us, I thought he was a little down, that he just needed a break from us, or rather a break from me, from my bossiness and whining. I’d waited two days for him to arrive back, pour himself a large whiskey and say sorry for calling us cunts. When this didn’t happen I’d spent three weeks phoning everyone: his family, his friends, his old agency. And then he’d phoned me one day and agreed to meet up – in the car park of Killiney Hill – but he’d been like a stranger, utterly detached, staring ahead at the woods. He’d had a gift for Addie; a little book on wild birds still with its price on it. ‘She doesn’t need me,’ he’d said. ‘She only ever wants you, to help her with her clothes, to change channels on TV.’ He said he was of no more use to her, that he wasn’t cut out for parenthood and that he was of no more use to me. I hated when he spoke this way – that was a big part of the problem, all his navel-gazing and self-pity and yet I knew what he was saying was true. And that was pretty much that. I knew once he’d made up his mind about something there was no way to persuade him otherwise.

  ‘Bastard,’ Ruth said.

  ‘I know,’ I agreed.

  ‘Unbelievable.’

  ‘So, anyway.’

  ‘So.’

  ‘So. How’s Addie?’

  ‘Great. Adorable.’

  ‘How are your two?’

  ‘Fine. Sasha’s amazing. I’m not boasting or anything,’ Ruth said. I braced myself, looked down at my dinner, ‘but I started toilet training her three days ago and she hasn’t had one single accident. Not one. Isn’t that incredible?’

  ‘That is incredible. But would it be something to do with leaving it quite late?’ I asked. Sasha had just celebrated her third birthday.

  ‘And Steve is in love with Ruby. I mean, he’s actually in love with her. The other day he spent four hours doing a diorama with her. I know, I didn’t know what a diorama was either,’ she said, seeing me look confused, ‘but he did this brilliant ocean scene with octopuses, sharks, seaweed, all suspended from the top of an old shoe box. It was amazing. He is so brilliant with her. You should see them together.’

  It felt somewhat disloyal to be so unreservedly complimentary about her partner, not just because I didn’t have one anymore, but even before Joe left we would only say positive things about our other halves to compensate for having just been cruel about them.

  I sometimes made up faults or exaggerated my irritation with Joe just to make Ruth feel better about some shortcoming of Steve’s. And if I went too far in agreeing with her that it really was appalling to switch off your phone when your wife was trying to contact you because you were in the pub and wanted to stay there for the evening, she would start defending him and I would back down. It was a tricky balance but a rhythm we both understood.

  ‘They are amazing though, aren’t they? You won’t believe what Addie said the other night.’ She interrupted my flow by running her finger across her top teeth to indicate that there was lipstick on mine. ‘I was reading her a bedtime story when she took the book and said she wanted to read to me instead. And this is how she started: “Once upon a time there was a little story that lived in a book.”’

  ‘Wow. That’s so cute,’ Ruth said, but her eyes were glazing over; she dug a spoon deep into the sugar bowl.

  She also didn’t believe me. Addie was often so quiet in her girls’ company. Sometimes she said nothing at all, just ran after them and copied them in awe.

  So I didn’t tell her my bigger boast about Addie being able to stand on one leg for fifteen seconds without holding onto furniture. She was bored of listening to me go on about my child, when she knew her children were so much better. And she knew she couldn’t push any further about Joe. Her own relationship was steady and loyal and I envied it. ‘We’re really growing into each other, like a comfortable pair of slippers,’ she’d said of him last time we met.

  She was great after Joe left. Practical, on my side. Helping me move things, enduring long evenings of tears and analysis over one, sometimes two, bottles of red wine. There had been no pity, no fawning, no slipping of particular books about break-ups, no emphasis on the ‘are’ in ‘how are you?’ And that was a relief compared to most other women who would tilt their heads to the side when they saw me and say things like, ‘You’re still one of us you know, don’t worry, we still love you.’

  ‘You know, he really shat on you from a great height,’ she said, blinking her eyes rapidly, waiting for me to open up. I’d heard her say this before. She seemed to think it was a good expression, but to me it sounded repulsive. I know she thought there was someone else – I’m sure everyone did – but it wasn’t what I wanted to think about or hear. So back to the kids I went.

  ‘It’s so sweet that Ruby and Addie will be starting school the same week, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is Addie really starting this year?’

  ‘You know she is. Her Montessori teachers said that she’s ready.’

  ‘It’s just that Ruby seems so much older than her, doesn’t she? I mean she’s just so much more articulate and mature. I’m worried that she’ll be bored. She knows all her letters and numbers.’

  ‘She’s already reading, that’s great.’

  ‘No, of course she can’t read. I suppose Addie can read, can she?’

  ‘Well, no. I’m not saying that—’

  My face was hot with irritation and hurt but I didn’t have the stamina for a row. I felt flabby and spotty by the time our main courses were cleared. She had triumphed, she was king of the castle. I was lost. My one attempt at a big word – discombobulated – was seized upon, challenged, laughed at and finally spat out, like the one odd-tasting mussel that was discarded and put her off the rest of her linguini. And then there she was, standing up at her chair at school, pointing at me and roaring with laughter, toffee from break time still coating her train tracks, because I couldn’t spell the word ‘because’.

  And then neither of us could think of a thing to say. For five deeply uncomfortable minutes the only sounds coming from our table were the clink of cutlery and quiet mastication. This had never happened before and made both of us uneasy.

  We were also being made to feel sober and dull by the girls on the table beside ours: shiny, bleached-blonde women, glistening lipstick, Brown Thomas bags wedged between their legs, who were either leaning in towards each other whispering, or sitting back on their seats, mouths thrown open, teeth bared, howling at some outrageous revelation.

  All evening I’d wanted to tell her the compliment the ticket collector had given me, but I knew it was a blatant boast and that it would bug the hell out of her.

  I stuttered it out at a time that seemed natural – we were talking about getting our first grey hairs and how often to dye them. I said it as if I’d just thought of it. And why shouldn’t I? She
’d been releasing little boasts, like odourless flatulence, all evening. ‘Yeah, right!’ she said. ‘As if.’ She slapped her hand on the table, then looked at me earnestly for a second, ‘Sorry, of course, maybe you were the best looking. God, what a compliment. Must have made your day.’ I was embarrassed by my boast, by my one-upmanship and ready to pay her a compliment to regain equilibrium.

  ‘Your hair looks really good,’ I said, wiping a bit of sweat from my upper lip. She saw straight through it. ‘What do you mean?’ she said, grabbing a bit of it. ‘It’s a mess. I’m getting it done this Friday.’

  I excused myself and went to the Ladies. When I returned it was with a sense of purpose, beginning my sentence before I was back in my seat to make up for the awkward moments of getting reacquainted – best thoughts always come when you’re on the toilet. I confided in her, having decided on the train in that I would not. I only did it to improve our evening, to give us some sort of connection, a reason to lean in towards each other. I told her about Joy sketching Addie in the dark. I didn’t want to make a thing of this incident because I knew as soon as I did that Joy would become another problem that I would then need to sort out.

  ‘And she keeps telling me Addie has asthma. It’s so irritating. I mean I think I’d know if my own child were sick. I even Googled Munchausen by Proxy; imagine if she were making Addie ill?’

  Ruth looked underwhelmed. She took out her lipstick and reapplied it without needing a mirror. I felt dirty, it seemed gratuitous. At the end of the revelation her eyes were still wide with expectancy, but I had no more to say. ‘I think that’s very creepy,’ was all she said, and then, that she was ‘bursting’.

  I had a need for closeness, for some sort of statement of friendship, for sympathy, for help, for some warmth that just wasn’t there that night. I felt a soreness at the back of my throat.

  After coffee I saw it in her face. The exhaustion, the pursed lips, sentences hanging with a vacant ‘so, anyway’. No more questions, no more anecdotes. Then she took out all her irritation with me, with our night, on the drip that was still coming from the ceiling.