by Chris Watt
“But we didn’t get together until a good few years later. It was different.”
“It was fate,” said Rob, triumphantly.
“It was a two for one night at an all you can eat, is what it was. Then a movie. A quick kiss before bedtime and twenty-five years later, here we are.”
This floored Rob. He had never heard his father talk about his relationship with his mother like this before. Desperate, he tried to appeal to his father’s surely deep hidden romantic edge.
“You make it sound so un-remarkable.”
Alas, such edge had no place in George Peer’s heart.
“It was. You have too much of your mother’s romantic nature in you.”
Rob shrugged,
“You say it like it’s a bad thing.”
George suddenly stood up and confronted his son in as paternal a tone as he could muster.
“Just tell me you’re using protection.”
Rob was mortified.
“Dad!”
“What? Come on, I might be old, but even I’m not dumb enough to keep the gun loaded.”
Rob shook his head, gesturing with his arms, waving it off.
“It’s not like that, Dad.”
George almost laughed to himself, eyebrows raised as he replied,
“Oh really?”
Rob nodded, almost angry,
“Really.”
“Well, how is it so different?”
And then Rob said it. The answer that had been inside for the last few weeks and that had taken this dream to pull out.
“I’m in love with her.”
George suddenly stood up and walked straight out of the room, slamming the door as he went.
It was jarring, surreal and weird. But then, it was a dream.
Rob turned and looked up at his poster filled wall. He almost hadn’t noticed that any and every female that was stuck up there had Katy’s face or Katy’s body.
And then he woke up, that last statement still ringing in his ears,
“I’m in love with her....I’m in love with her...”
FORTY-ONE
“You’re in love with him?”
Katy had been at work for only twenty minutes when the subject of her love life had come up. This time it was Glenda, who sat at the desk opposite and who had been with her the night Rob had first met Katy, so would often quiz Katy on how things were going with her new man. And while Katy was often reluctant to discuss her personal life at work, a product of having her moron manager Ted listening to every word and usually chipping in with his twenty pence worth of opinion, on this particular morning she was more than willing to spill the beans.
“I am.”
“Have you told him that?”
Katy just looked at her friend for a minute.
“I know what you’re going to say,” she replied, with a resigned tilt of the head, “but you’re wrong, it’s different.”
“It’s great,” was Glenda’s response, which took Katy a little by surprise, as she knew Glenda to be more of a pessimist than most.
“Really?”
“Of course it is. All you’ve talked about for the last few weeks is how much you like this guy, but you never brought up the ‘L’ word. If I’m honest, I’m relieved.”
“Relieved? Why?”
“I’ve been rooting for you,” she shrugged, “what do you want me to say?”
This made Katy blush a little, but in a good way. Indeed, this was the most positive thing she’d heard come out of a colleague’s mouth in months. Usually it was work related bilge like,
“Have you seen that memo?”
“Why won’t the copier do multiples?”
Or her personal favorite,
“Okay, who stole the hole puncher?”
“Thanks,” she replied, before turning back to her monitor and going over some statistics.
She didn’t get too far, however, as she suddenly felt a pair of eyes drilling into the side of her head and turned to her right to see that Glenda had wheeled herself over on her office chair, intent on finding out more, asking:
“So how is it?”
Katy smiled and sat back to indulge her friend.
“When we’re together? It’s amazing. He’s funny and kind and all that other crap you read about. And when we’re not together, I’m thinking about him all the time.”
Glenda’s face screwed up a little as though she was embarrassed to have heard such sentimental nonsense.
“What?” Katy asked.
“I meant in bed, but if you want to go with how you feel then that’s fine.”
“You know me; I’m not going to talk about that. No details.”
“Fine, Spoil sport.”
Glenda wheeled herself back over to her desk. Katy watched her go and a smile came across her face.
“I can tell you one thing, though.”
Glenda’s ears pricked up, as did Ted’s who was standing over by the water cooler getting a drink and not so subtly eavesdropping.
“Ooh, do tell,” Glenda replied, wheeling herself back over to Katy’s desk at record speed.
“He told me he was in love with me.”
Glenda’s jaw dropped a little and she leaned forward a little closer.
“He did?”
Katy nodded.
“In fact, he said it first.”
“When?”
“In his sleep.”
Glenda looked confused.
“In his sleep?”
“At least I think he was talking about me, he was dreaming.”
Glenda rolled her eyes and gave Katy a condescending nudge on the shoulder.
“Katy, you know what guys are like, he could have been dreaming about Angelina Jolie or something.”
“Or Kate Winslet!” came Ted’s voice from across the room. Katy and Glenda both looked at each other, perplexed, before turning towards Ted, who was standing awkwardly with a cup of water in his hand.
“Y’know, ‘cause your names are...um, the same,” he stuttered, before turning his attention back to the water cooler, trying to figure out how he could drown himself out of this moment he had created.
Glenda shook her head and turned her attention back to Katy.
“Sleep aside, how do you know?”
Katy thought about this question for a few seconds, for the first time faced with trying to articulate how she felt about Rob by way of an example. There were many she could have gone with, but in the end:
“I can feel his eyes on me when I’m not looking at him.”
Glenda couldn’t help but snort a little.
“Oh Jesus, slush it up, why don’t you?”
Katy however, kept a straight face as she continued,
“And I’m very rarely not looking.”
The two friends looked at each other, reading each other with their eyes, before Glenda sighed a resigned sigh and said:
“You are in love, aren’t you?”
Katy didn’t answer, but reclined in her chair a little with a satisfied smile on her face.
That was when Glenda asked the inevitable ‘next’ question.
“How does Jodie feel about this?”
“Honestly?”
“Of course.”
“I don’t really know. We haven’t really talked about it. But, she hasn’t said anything to give me the impression that she’s freaked out or anything.”
“Would you have spoken to your mum about it, if it had been you?”
“Glenda, I was pregnant at fifteen.”
“Good point.”
“Besides, she has a couple more months of school left, she just has to sit her exams and then she’s off living her own life. If anything it’s perfect timing, y’know?”
“If you say so.”
Glenda slowly rolled herself back over to her own desk, leaving Katy to her work. But Katy’s mind was now elsewhere, and she found herself staring at her computer monitor for the rest of the day, only vaguely getting through her wo
rk load and often forgetting to answer her phone. She began to wonder if she had let her guard down too fast, if she had given into temptation too early and, most worryingly of all, if she had, in fact, fallen in love by accident, seduced not only by Rob’s youth and considerable charm, but by her own selfish wishes to have something to call her own, something that didn’t involve her daughter, that she could claim for herself. And while this would have made many other women in her position feel empowered, for Katy at least, it made her feel selfish.
FORTY-TWO
To begin to describe the events of the night of Jodie’s eighteenth birthday party, an event that, for all who were there, would go down in history as one of the most remarkable displays of dysfunctional interaction in recent memory, would be hard, to say the least.
Jodie never worried too much about birthdays, considering them something of an anti-climax, much like any New Year’s Eve, with the exception of her most recent one, which at least culminated in a kiss from someone she really wanted a kiss from. No, for her, it was just another day, a day that would be followed by another and then another, on and on, meaning very little to her.
“You’re only eighteen once!” was always an annoyance to hear from people. Yes, it was true, but then you’re only twelve, or ten, or even one once too. And sure, there were cards and presents and checks from distant relatives (her father excluded, of course), but she never felt any different, any older or wiser. So to call her reluctant to have a party thrown in honor of her turning eighteen would have been something of an understatement. She didn’t want it, never did. And what made it worse was that her mother insisted on it.
Katy wasn’t trying to be mean or cruel. Indeed, she felt that eighteen was something of a touchstone for her daughter. To see her grow up in to such a confident, smart woman was always a source of pride to Katy, but there was more to it than that. She wasn’t just proud, she was adamant that her daughter have everything that she had denied herself from the moment her daughter had been born. Katy never had an eighteenth birthday party, because she had to take Jodie to the doctors that night when she had a high temperature. Her life was peppered with such incidents. She often thought of the John Lennon quote:
“Life is what happens to you in the middle of making your plans.”
And it was true. There was the time she had to cancel a date because her daughter was having a tantrum, the time when she had to take her daughter to school play rehearsals, even though she was weak and sick as a dog with the flu. University, a more substantial career, all of these things and more had had to run a second to her daughter’s needs. But Katy never complained. She knew that her daughter was the best thing that had ever happened to her, even if she hadn’t been on her original agenda, or life plan. And it was because of this, above all else, that she had decided to throw her daughter a party.
That year, Jodie’s birthday landed on a Saturday. It was perfect timing really. Katy knew that the week following that, Jodie would be sitting two of her three exams and that being able to let off a little steam in advance might be good for her. She also knew that a surprise party wouldn’t be an option. Now of legal age, Katy knew that Jodie would be out on the town unless given another option. Sure, Jodie had been out on the town before and it had always been alright (a little more vomit than usual, perhaps, but never a phone call from the police at two in the morning) so it was that on the Saturday prior to her big day, that Katy posed the idea to her daughter.
“A party? Really?”
Jodie’s reaction was not exactly unexpected. Katy was sifting through her mail as she and Rob sat together on the couch, both into their second cup of coffee that morning. She rolled her eyes at her daughter:
“Don’t be so enthusiastic, please.”
“Sorry,” Jodie replied, “it’s just I thought we might go out or something?”
Katy shook her head and gave Rob a wry little smile.
“Oh no, I know how this ends. You disappear into town and I get a phone call at two am asking for a ride home, no way. Besides, I don’t want you hung over on Sunday morning.
Your Grandparents are coming over and you’ve got studying to do.”
Jodie almost instinctively shot Rob a quick look. She was half- embarrassed, half-waiting for him to step into the conversation. He merely smiled at her and shrugged, as if to say
“Hey, don’t look at me; it’s out of my hands.”
“It’s just a little get together, Jodie,” Katy continued, “I was thinking us, Laura, and the Lewis gang from next door. What do you think?”
Jodie felt slightly defeated as her eyes met her mother’s and her mother then gave her that look. It was a look that Jodie knew well, that slightly hurt, slightly excited look that she herself had used when she was younger, in order to get what she wanted, and was now humiliated to have come back as a weapon in her own mother’s arsenal. In the end, Jodie could do nothing but sigh.
“You’ve got your heart set on it, haven’t you?”
“Pretty much,” Katy smiled.
Jodie turned her gaze to Rob,
“And what about you?”
Rob, who was in the midst of swallowing a mouthful of coffee, put down his cup and responded:
“What about me?”
“What do you think about it?”
Rob thought about the question. Certainly he could understand Jodie’s dis-interest in the party. He’d been through a similar situation following his graduation, when his parents had insisted on escorting him to his own graduation ball, before proceeding to drink too much themselves and embarrass the hell out of him by trying to set him up with Ellen Tobin, a family friend who was not only bored by his company, but also gay. However, he could also see that Katy had really sparked to the idea, and so tried to be diplomatic about the whole thing.
By siding with Katy, of course.
“It’s not up to me, your Mum’s been thinking about this for a while now.”
This was, in fact, a lie, but Katy appreciated it none the less, feeling that finally, she was with the right guy, someone who had her back when she was stuck in a tight corner. She placed her hand on his knee in quiet, loving solidarity.
Jodie, feeling defeated, kept her eyes on Rob and asked:
“Are you going to be there too?”
Rob, surprised by the question, looked to Katy for help, but she just gave him a sly smile.
“Do you want me to be?” Rob asked, tentatively.
Jodie tuned and looked out the living room window as she replied:
“I don’t mind.”
Katy jumped in with:
“Of course he’ll be there. So, we’re agreed then?”
Jodie turned back and looked at her mother. Then, Rob. There was an unusually long silence, before Jodie let her shoulders sag and gave a small, resigned sigh.
“I’d better go and study.”
And with that, Jodie headed up stairs to her room. Katy watched her go, before turning to Rob and tilting her head.
“Thanks for that. That’s the closest I get to a ‘yes’ from her these days.”
If only Katy had been aware that above her head, as she sat in the living room planning the party with Rob, that Jodie lay in her bedroom, staring at the letter that had been sent to her mother, the second that term and indeed, the second letter that Jodie had managed to swipe from the doormat before she or Rob had emerged from the bedroom, then maybe she would have reconsidered a small get together in the back garden. But then, Jodie had made such a good job of hiding any anxieties that she had about her future educational prospects, that nobody outside of Laura and Mr. Posner, Jodie’s Guidance Counselor, had any clue as to what was really going on. What made it worse was that Jodie herself didn’t really understand what may have been at stake for her, she was blind to many things; blind to her mother’s growing affection for him, blind to her own next door neighbor’s growing affection for her and possibly worst of all, given her past academic prowess, blind to the fact that a simple s
it down and talk with her mother could have settled everything in half an hour: school, Rob, her future, everything.
It began with a bottle of cider.
FORTY-THREE
It was Laura’s idea, of course, and by the end of the night, everybody would feel the aftershock of the three liters of cheap cider the girl’s managed to drink together that afternoon.
Each.
As far as Katy was concerned, the girls were going to go shopping, grab some lunch and maybe catch a movie, before returning that evening for the party. Jodie didn’t usually go along with Laura’s more extreme ideas, but she was in no mood that day for a party anyway, and felt that with her higher education prospects rapidly slipping away from her, not to mention any chance that she and Rob would ever get together, she felt she had little or nothing to lose, and that one last moment of madness couldn’t hurt her at this point.
Desperate times called for desperate measures, after all.
The plastic bottles hissed as the girls unscrewed the tops, sitting on a bench by the playground area. They would have looked like winos had it not been for their age, and the very short skirts they were both wearing.
Laura raised her bottle up in a toast.
“Well, here’s to you. Happy Birthday!”
Jodie raised her bottle to hers and they allowed their bottles to meet, with a dull plastic thud.
“I thank you,” she replied.
The two girls both took a series of very large gulps from their chosen poison, before placing the bottles on the ground. Jodie sniffed a little, the fizz of the cider tickling her nose, before turning to Laura and addressing what was going through her mind.
“Are you sure this is wise?”
Laura answered almost immediately,
“No, probably not,” she shrugged, “but, what the hell, right? You bought this yourself.
It’s all legal. Your first legal drink.”
Jodie looked towards the ground, feeling neither one year older nor one year wiser and replied:
“Probably my last too.”
Laura rolled her eyes. This had become something of a repetition between the two of them over the last few days; Jodie feeling sorry for herself, with Laura having to pick up the slack. Laura wouldn’t have minded so much, except that she was more used to the roles being reversed and, if she was honest, she wasn’t much good at boosting people’s confidence or relieving their tensions. That’s probably where the cider idea had come from in the first place.