Playing Her Cards Right

by Rosa Temple

  ‘I’d said, Madge. I didn’t.’

  ‘I know you didn’t.’ I’d raised my voice. I checked myself and continued. ‘But I did.’

  ‘You vonted me to keep the baby?’ She looked puzzled.

  ‘No, well yes but I didn’t mean you, I meant me.’

  ‘You vonted my baby?’

  ‘That’s not what I mean. I mean I was pregnant, Anya. I had a miscarriage. It happened not long before you told me you were having an abortion.’

  Anya sat up straight, eyes not moving from mine. For a moment she was speechless, her lips in a tight line. Finally, she reached across the table and took my hand. She shook her head, hand over her mouth.

  Just then her toast arrived. The waitress placed it in front of her and worked around our hands across the table so that she could place the butter and various jams.

  ‘Madge, vye didn’t you tell me?’ she said as soon as the waitress had gone.

  ‘I don’t know, I really don’t. Up until that evening, the evening you told me about … the time never seemed to be right. I’d planned to tell you that night. I would have done except … except –’

  ‘Except I marched into your house and declared myself a killer of babies.’

  I laughed, not a proper laugh. Just a nervous one, more of an expression of relief for having told my best friend the reason I treated her so badly, finally having admitted it to myself.

  ‘I get it, Madge. You vere hurting. You must still be hurting. Is that vye Anthony is not here? The miscarriage made you grow apart?’

  ‘I always admired your powers of deduction.’ I laughed. A real one this time. ‘I really needed you when Anthony and I began to drift. That’s what happened to us after that. I thought one day we’d drift back together again but the complete opposite happened. I’ve been a complete bitch to you and I’ve messed everything up between me and Anthony.’

  ‘Look, Madge, I completely understand about us but listen, you and Anthony? You can’t take all the blame for a break-up. It takes two, right? And vot a break-up. I thought only dynamite could part the two of you.’

  ‘Evidently not. All it took was one little embryo and a very full bladder.’

  ‘Vot?’

  ‘It’s a long story. But you, how have you been? I see you have a new dog.’

  ‘Me? A dog?’ Anya grew paler than normal until a moment of realization spread across her face. ‘Oh you mean that photo, the one outside the café. Ignore that. I’d only just sat at that table to say hello ven I heard the cameras. It vosn’t my dog or my bag. Michael Kors? Magenta! Please.’ She was genuinely hurt by the suggestion. ‘And anyvay, vot about that scene you made at that bar I saw you at? Are you seriously friends vith those Stepford Vitches? I thought ve hated vimin like that.’

  ‘I know. We do. But I was lonely.’

  ‘Lonely or desperate? It’s a good thing I’m back in your life. Who knows vere you’d end up.’

  We laughed for ages, talking and catching up on the wasted weeks of what was ordinarily an amazing and valued friendship. I wasn’t aware of time going by. Anya and I had lots to catch up on.

  ‘Fancy a walk on the beach?’ I asked her. ‘My flight isn’t until much later.’

  ‘Mine is tomorrow,’ said Anya. ‘Let’s go.’

  It wasn’t until a few metres from the hotel that I remembered I’d seen Anya eating toast.

  ‘Did you forget yourself, Anya? You were eating breakfast. Must be the heat making you do crazy things.’ I linked her arm.

  ‘No it’s the baby. I’m eating for a human as vell as an anorexic model.’

  I stopped in my tracks.

  ‘Whoa, wait a minute. Baby? But I thought …’

  ‘You thought wrong,’ she said, meeting my gaze. ‘I decided to keep it.’

  ‘But … really?’ I gasped. ‘I’m really, really happy for you. I mean I’m assuming that you’re happy about it, too?’

  She nodded. ‘Hard to believe isn’t it? But I really am … now.’

  ‘I’m confused, though,’ I said. ‘You were drinking cocktails yesterday.’

  ‘Non-alcoholic ones, yes.’ Anya suddenly looked sheepish. ‘I hope because I’m keeping it, that it’ll be okay. You know? Since you lost yours and everything.’

  I threw my arms around Anya to show her how happy I was for her.

  ‘I hear it’ll change your life,’ I said to her. ‘You and Henry will be so happy.’

  ‘Oh that,’ she said. ‘Vell, I took your advice and talked to Henry about the baby.’

  ‘Was he the one who talked you into keeping it?’

  ‘No, he was all for the abortion.’ Anya continued to walk along the beach. I caught her up.

  ‘But he had a change of heart?’ I asked.

  ‘Not really,’ said Anya. ‘Seems Henry was more convinced than I vos that he didn’t vont to parent a child. Vell not for the fifth time and not at his age, apparently. Honestly, you’d think I vos trying to trap him the vay he vos going on. In the end I’d had enough. I told him to fuck off and I’d do it on my own.’

  ‘What?’ I pulled her to a stop. ‘But your career, Anya. Aren’t you worried?’

  ‘I’ll still have my career, for as long as I’m vonted anyvay. Ve all know a model’s career can be as short-lived as the next new face that comes along. Soon no one vill be booking me, no matter how much I starve myself. And I can’t exactly starve myself now, can I?’

  ‘No. No, you can’t.’

  We carried on walking for ages, holding hands most of the time and saying very little. It went without saying that we’d both missed the other and that if Henry wasn’t going to be there for Anya, I certainly would.

  I sensed a deep feeling of joy having Anya back in my life. It was so easy to turn things around with her. She was as desperate to have her BFF back as I was.

  In a while we headed back to the hotel. At the restaurant I noticed Amber and her family having breakfast. Tallulah rushed towards me, the front of her dress covered in crumbs, and she had a milk moustache. She ran into my legs forcing me to swing her upwards.

  ‘Uncle Anthony is here.’ She grinned and gave me a sticky, milk kiss.

  ‘No, Uncle Anthony couldn’t come to the wedding, darling,’ I said.

  She wriggled in my arms and pointed to the restaurant. As she did so, I saw him. Anthony was at a table just inside the restaurant. He was looking straight at me and slowly rose to his feet.

  I took Tallulah back to her table.

  ‘You wait here for me, Tallulah. I’m just going to speak to Uncle Anthony.’ I turned to Anya. ‘Do you mind?’

  ‘You don’t need to ask. Go for it.’

  Anya sat with Amber and her family and I could feel all of their eyes boring into my back as I walked over to Anthony. He’d begun to walk towards me, too. We stopped, awkwardly, in front of each other.

  ‘Can we talk?’ he said.

  I nodded. He followed me to my hotel room.

  Chapter 30

  The Talk

  ‘When did you get here?’ I asked as Anthony and I made our way onto the balcony. The cleaning staff had closed the large umbrella but it was late morning and too hot to sit outside without it.

  ‘Here, let me,’ said Anthony, taking over from me trying to undo the fastening strip, which was either tangled or broken or just too hard to manipulate when your hands were shaking. ‘Last night,’ he said opening up the umbrella over the table with ease.

  ‘What?’ I said, still nervous.

  ‘I got here last night. Your sisters didn’t know where you were but you hadn’t checked out so they assumed you hadn’t gone far. When it got late …’

  ‘Ebony called me,’ I said. ‘I thought her call was a bit cryptic. She wanted to check up on me, she said. She didn’t tell me you were here.’

  ‘No. Well no one was expecting me. Seems there were lots of theories about why I wasn’t at the wedding.’

  ‘
Did you set them straight?’

  ‘Actually, I think they’d already put two and two together. Amber asked if I was here to win you back.’

  ‘Win me back? That’s a bit of an old-fashioned term and not altogether fair.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning, I might have been a bit hasty,’ I said. ‘And are you really the one who has to do the winning back?’

  We stared at each other across the table on the balcony, slowly sitting as if in mirror image in the reclining chairs either side of the table.

  ‘I’ve been feeling that I lost you, that I’d been unfair. But when I try to analyse it all, I really don’t know how I feel,’ I said.

  Although we were in reclining chairs there was nothing relaxed or composed about our postures. We both sat sideways onto the chairs, our hands on the table as if we were in negotiation.

  ‘Magenta if at any time you were planning on trying to win me back, then you’ve done it. You’ve won. All you have to do is say the word and we’ll go home, together.’

  ‘But it’s not as easy as that is it? It’s not a game of win or lose. I was unhappy, Anthony.’

  ‘I know, but …’ He looked down. ‘So was I.’

  ‘Is that how Inez comes into the picture? You needed someone to talk to because you couldn’t talk to me and tell me you were unhappy?’

  ‘Look, forget Inez. I told you what happened about her. I didn’t invite her to the gallery; she just showed up. She had no idea I’d be there. She just wanted to see the paintings again as she was in town.’

  ‘You said.’

  ‘And it’s true.’

  I remembered what my parents said about trust. Did I trust Anthony? I looked at his face. He was staring straight at me. He looked tired, a little on the rugged side: a crumpled shirt, shoulder-length hair unkempt. He pushed his glasses up his nose, the closer proximity of the lenses to his face seemed to magnify his large eyes and the dark lashes around them.

  Father had said to fight to get him back if I needed to. But I didn’t have to fight. Anthony had flown to Guadeloupe and more or less told me that it was all right to have accused him of having an affair; it was all right to have kicked him out of our home and to have told him I never wanted to see him again. He’d forgive all that and fly home with me, no questions asked. But for me, I knew inside, it wasn’t enough. There had been something eating at me for months and it was the root of my unhappiness and the thing that stopped me jumping at what looked like a one-time, exclusive offer to win back the man of my dreams.

  ‘It hasn’t been easy for me,’ he said. ‘I felt you slipping away and I didn’t know what I did wrong.’

  ‘Did you ever think to ask?’

  ‘I thought I had,’ said Anthony. ‘Several times.’

  ‘No, you didn’t,’ I said. ‘To me it seemed as if you went out of your way to avoid me. You started going out with people you called friends but you’d only really just met. All those arty people – I didn’t even think they were your type. You went out with them and you didn’t ask me along.’

  ‘I’m sorry. But you’ve got Anya.’

  ‘No I didn’t.’

  ‘I know she’s away a lot but –’

  ‘It’s not that, Anthony.’ I got up and went inside. I was becoming too hot and I was feeling light-headed on the balcony. It was cooler in the room. I sat on the armchair and Anthony sat on the end of the bed.

  ‘Well what is it then?’ he said after several seconds of me not continuing.

  ‘You don’t remember do you? The night Anya came over to our place? You were out; you came home drunk.’

  ‘Oh God, what did I do?’ he asked, eyes opening wide.

  ‘It’s what you said, Anthony. I was a mess. I’d just been a complete bitch to my best friend. I needed you to tell me that I wasn’t a bitch, that the way I treated her was justified. But you didn’t.’

  ‘What did you do to Anya?’ he asked.

  ‘Well I didn’t speak to her for weeks, Anthony. As in not friends any more. We’d broken up. So you see, I didn’t have Anya. I didn’t have anyone. Not even you.’

  ‘The way you were acting, I didn’t think you needed me.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ I said.

  ‘So why were you not friends with Anya?’

  ‘I told you at the time but you don’t remember. She said she was having an abortion … It wasn’t long enough after the miscarriage for me to cope with it. I was hurt and upset because she was being so casual when she told me. That’s why we fell out.’

  ‘She knew about the miscarriage?’

  ‘Not at the time.’

  ‘Well wouldn’t that explain her attitude? You know what she’s like.’

  ‘I’ve already beat myself up about what I did to her. We’re going to be all right me and her. But us …’

  ‘At least there is an “us”?’

  ‘I don’t know, Anthony. The night I told you about Anya getting rid of the baby, you were so blasé about the miscarriage – again – that I …’

  Anthony stood and came to kneel in front of me.

  ‘What do you mean, “again”?’ he asked.

  I stared down into his eyes. ‘Anthony, I’ve been so angry with you. That’s why I really wanted you gone.’

  He looked confused and just like that – it hit me. The reason I had been frustrated, angry, and exhausted since the miscarriage. At first I didn’t understand what it was I was feeling. The sadness of the miscarriage clouded everything. All I could feel was pain. But there had always been something else.

  The simple truth was that buried inside me was the feeling that Anthony wasn’t sad enough about the miscarriage. It was a deep-rooted feeling I’d had but just couldn’t quite explain to myself or express in words.

  After it happened, Anthony seemed to have coped. He got on with his life. As for me, I felt forced to move on, and I did. For months, I worked, made deadlines but although I smiled and I got things done, it was all with a feeling I was carrying a ton weight on my shoulders and missing a vital beat to my heart. I felt the loss more than he did and that’s what cut me up the most.

  Anthony had flown all the way out here and he deserved to know what I was feeling but, just as I’d done when we were home, I skirted around my true feelings, just hoping that Anthony would somehow get it. Understand the root of my feelings. Of course, he couldn’t and so we did what we’d always done: we went around and around in circles about the things that niggled us about the other. Anthony and I had managed to master the art of being vague and having meaningless tiffs.

  As we continued like that, I was beginning to feel angry again because it frustrated me that Anthony couldn’t just understand my feelings – tap into my thoughts. He’d never understand what had been eating away at me since the miscarriage.

  We talked on, endlessly. More empty talk. Eventually I lost all concept of time. Anthony and I were flagging from our hours of intense talking and getting nowhere.

  ‘What time is your flight?’ I asked him.

  Before he could answer there was a knock on the door. I went to answer it. It was Amber.

  ‘Hey, M,’ she said. ‘You left your bag in the restaurant.’ She handed it to me and looked over at Anthony who raised his glasses to rub his eyes. Amber mouthed the words: “Everything okay?”

  I nodded.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said putting the bag down by the door.

  ‘It’s just that …’ Amber was still looking at Anthony. ‘Our flight is soon. I’ve got taxis downstairs waiting to take us to the airport. Um, you ready?’

  I looked up to the ceiling and sighed.

  ‘Is it that time already?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘What’re you going to do?’

  I looked back over my shoulder at Anthony. He was standing, his hands jammed into the pockets of his trousers, staring at us at the door.

  ‘I’m going to have to get a later flight,’ I s
aid.

  ‘We’re on the last one today,’ said Amber.

  ‘Shit. Okay. You’ll just have to take off without me. Call me when you land.’

  ‘Tallulah will be devastated.’

  ‘I’ll make it up to her.’ I looked again, briefly, at Anthony. ‘If anything changes I might still make that flight, otherwise …’

  ‘I understand.’ Amber kissed my cheek.

  ‘Bye, Anthony,’ she called and left for the airport.

  ‘My flight is in the morning,’ said Anthony. ‘Thank you for not walking out on me.’

  It was my turn then to rub my eyes. I was feeling weak. I hadn’t eaten since early morning and it was almost three in the afternoon.

  ‘You okay?’ Anthony asked.

  ‘No. I’m not. Not really. I’m tired of going around in circles with you.’

  ‘You think I’m not?’

  I swung around to face him. ‘You hurt me,’ I said.

  ‘Because of Inez?’

  ‘Forget her.’ My voice had risen and I could feel a pounding in my head and in my heart. ‘It was the miscarriage. On the day we found out I was pregnant, you remember what you said to me?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not word for word. But I was happy about it.’

  ‘Then why did you tell me not to say anything to anyone? Were you contemplating my doing what Anya planned to do? Get rid of it?’

  ‘Of course not – no. Why would you even think that?’

  ‘It was the way you were after it happened. I just thought … I just felt that you weren’t sad enough. Like life just went on for you and you didn’t cry or seem upset or … anything.’ There, I’d said it. Finally. My shoulders, which had been up to my ears, lowered, gradually, as I anticipated his response.

  Anthony took his glasses off. He tossed them on the bed.

  ‘God, Magenta, you don’t know how wrong you are.’ He paced a little before turning back to face me. ‘How could I cry? How could I crawl into bed for days and fall to pieces? That’s what you were doing. If I did that then how was I going to be strong for you?’

  ‘Being strong for me? Is that what you called it?’

  ‘Yes.’ His voice was so loud it made me jump.