Striking a Balance

by Curtis, Norma

  ‘Can we throw them in too?’

  ‘No! Just the clothes. Don’t mix them up. Clothes in the washing machine, dishes in the dishy. Then we’ll go to the zoo.’

  As he threw newspapers and clothes Larry wondered if he could write a book on Making Housework Fun. Women, made too much of things, they really did. A bit of untidiness made a house into a home; he didn’t know why Megan couldn’t see that. He wished she would lighten up. Women liked to pretend cleaning was some big deal, like religion.

  With his method, it was soon done.

  He gave Bill a drink and patted him on the head. ‘Can you remember how to put your shoes on? The one with the spot of paint goes on the leg with the scab on the knee. Good lad.’

  It was another sunny day and the air was so warm that it was like getting into a bath. The pavements shimmered in the heat. Larry could feel the sun on his skin as they walked down the steps to the still, green canal. Bill skipped alongside him for a couple of strides before losing the rhythm. Then he began to sing tonelessly. Easy to see when he was happy, Larry thought, taking his hand.

  A few yards ahead of them was a shady tunnel where the Camden Road crossed the canal and Bill ran straight for it, disappearing into the shadows, his feet echoing under the bridge. ‘Ha!’ Larry heard him shout, and his amplified voice echoed close behind. Larry could see him now. He watched him jump up and down on the spot, feet together, and he watched him look up as the slap of his shoes on the path smacked above him. Something had caught his eye and when Larry got to him he was still staring at the underneath of the bridge.

  ‘Look, Larry,’ he said, his voice hushed as though noise would alarm the phenomenon, ‘the water’s making patterns on the roof.’

  Larry looked up. ‘Pretty, isn’t it.’ Dabs of light and shade interchanged with each other. He leaned against the railings that separated the towpath from the water and Bill climbed up beside him and looked down into the water.

  ‘There’s a fish,’ Bill said.

  Larry turned to look. Floating on its side in the still green water was a polystyrene cup. ‘The canal is the polystyrene cup’s natural habitat,’ Larry said seriously and Bill laughed and swung on the railings, knowing from his father’s solemn voice that it was a joke. ‘Watch yourself,’ Larry said. ‘Don’t want you falling in.’ He held his arms out and Bill jumped into them. ‘Oof,’he said and his voice echoed back and they walked hand-in-hand into the sunshine.

  At Hampstead Road lock they lingered to watch the miracle of the gates holding back the wall of water. Nestled far down below them was a shoal of polystyrene cups, bobbing in the breeze. ‘More fish,’ Bill said.

  ‘Tickle, for that,’ Larry said, scooping him up in his arms. Bill giggled. They walked beneath an archway beyond which a narrowboat sat low in the water. ‘That’s the boat for the zoo,’ Larry told him as they walked round to where it was moored.

  As they got to it Bill crouched down to look through the windows. ‘There are children in it,’ he said.

  ‘They’re going to the zoo as well,’ Larry said, helping him down the wooden steps into the boat and to a seat near an open window.

  ‘Keep your arms inside,’ the ticket collector said and shortly afterwards the boat pulled away, vibrating steadily as the engine laboured. Bill stared out of the window, kneeling on his seat and laughing to himself.

  Larry suddenly felt a weight lift from him. They were enjoying themselves...it seemed to have crept up on them unexpectedly, a by-product of their decision to go to the zoo. They’d been left to their own devices and they were having fun. Bill laughed again and Larry looked through the window to see ducks paddling determinedly away from the boat. He found himself smiling too. He was enjoying the sun and the open air. He was having fun. But the biggest triumph of all so far was that he hadn’t mentioned Zoofie once.

  *

  ‘Look at the people in their cages,’ Bill said as they queued for a ticket.

  Larry had never appreciated before just how convenient the zoo was for a child. No dog excrement, no traffic. He gave Bill his freedom as he would let a dog off a leash but Bill stayed close to him.

  ‘Anything you particularly want to see?’

  Bill shook his head.

  ‘Okay. The lions are always good, and the monkeys.’

  Bill looked up at his father with the expression of humouring him.

  ‘Monkeys,’ Larry repeated. ‘Yeah, come on, we’ll do that.’ They stood at the chimpanzees’ enclosure. One of the chimps was throwing mud at the onlookers — Larry hoped it was mud. The adults stepped back in alarm while the children made vomiting noises of delight.

  Larry felt a certain amount of solidarity.

  One of the females clambered round with a baby clutching her from underneath. Bonding.

  The males swaggered and occasionally, violently, flung themselves at a branch.

  Larry became aware that a man had come to stand next to him. He had a child, younger than Bill, by the looks of her, and the child was sitting on her father’s shoulders. The man looked over his daughter’s leg at Larry, and then from Larry to the chimps. Larry watched him out of the corner of his eye. The man looked from the chimps to Larry and back several times, as if comparing them. Then he seemed to come to a decision and started talking to his daughter, who was now resting her chin on his head. Larry tried to examine him on the periphery of his vision. He could see a tan suede jacket over his arm, and a denim shirt and denim jeans. The little girl was wearing denim too, and a tan jacket, similar to her father’s, but not suede. To Larry it looked like some sort of thick cotton. Larry wondered why the man had chosen to dress his daughter in clothes so similar to his own. Perhaps it was for identification. The man looked his way again, as though he had suddenly been made aware of his gaze.

  ‘Got custody?’ he asked, but without a lift in his voice, as though the answer was a foregone conclusion.

  For a moment Larry associated custody with the cages — some sort of imprisonment, and he didn’t reply.

  ‘I got custody,’ the man said. ‘Bummer, sometimes.’

  Larry felt Bill twist around to look at the man; he was deeply interested in any words that could be classed by grown-ups as rude.

  The man winked at Bill and looked at Larry again. ‘What’s your wife do?’ he asked comfortably, as though this was a question he could predict the answer to.

  ‘Er, executive search,’ Larry said reluctantly.

  ‘Thought so,’ the man replied. ‘Career woman. Climbing up the ladder to success. Too busy finding herself to find time for home. I didn’t say that, the judge did,’ he added. ‘I was a painter and decorator myself. My ex-wife’s a hypnotherapist.’

  ‘Really,’ Larry replied. ‘A hypnotherapist. Well.’

  ‘You’re lucky you’ve got a little lad. Know what the worst thing about having a girl is? Toilets. I have to take her into the gents with me. Still, I’m glad I’ve got her.’

  He jiggled her on his shoulders and one small, black patent shoe slipped off and he caught it deftly at waist level in a practised move. ‘Probably see you around,’ he said, pushing it back on her foot. ‘We’re off to Burger King.’

  ‘See you around,’ Larry said, turning to watch him go; a damp patch was darkening the denim between the man’s shoulderblades as he walked off, clearly too hot in his long-sleeved shirt in the hot sun.

  Larry was surprised to find he belonged to a club. He wasn’t sure if he liked it. Got custody?

  He looked at Bill. ‘Where next?’

  ‘Lions.’

  They turned out to be a bit of a disappointment to Bill as they blinked and stretched in the sun as if they had nothing to be violent about. The tiger, however, came right up to the glass and watched them restlessly. Larry found himself staring into the tiger’s eye, but the tiger merely looked back indifferently.

  Bill began to get tired and restless, lagging behind Larry’s legs with little interest in the animals. Generally he seemed miles away, yea
rning for something. Larry was not about to ask him what, he knew only too well what Bill was yearning for; he was yearning for the familiar, in the shape of Ruth.

  They stopped by the fountains and Larry bought a coffee for himself and an ice-cream for Bill and they watched the plumes of water shiver like mirages in the sunlight.

  ‘Shall we go to the playgroup now?’ Bill asked him.

  ‘If that’s what you want,’ Larry said. Resigned, he had agreed in a slightly martyrish way but when Bill’s face lit up he put aside the games. I want what’s best for him.

  27

  It was early evening and the office was quiet, so quiet that Megan turned suddenly from her computer to check whether Lisa was still there.

  Catching the movement, Lisa looked from her VDU to Megan, her eyes blank for a moment. Then her expression changed and she smiled slowly, linking her fingers and stretching out her arms in front of her, her eyes half closed.

  Despite her tiredness, Megan found herself smiling back.

  Lisa sat back in her chair and glanced at her screen. ‘Look at the time,’ she said, still smiling. ‘Haven’t you got a home to go to?’

  ‘Sometimes work seems more like home than home does,’ Megan said. She immediately wished she hadn’t. Played back, it sounded disloyal as well as unfair to Larry. She waited for Lisa to pounce on the statement as Zelda would have, but Lisa merely carried on watching her with the trace of a smile on her lips. It was a gentler smile now, less self-satisfied. ‘It’s not Larry’s fault,’ Megan added, ‘it’s just that when I’m feeling buzzy there’s no one to buzz with any more. If I talk to Larry about work, it’s like rubbing it in that he’s jobless.’

  ‘No one to buzz with. I like that,’ Lisa said.

  ‘Yeah?’ Megan was smiling.

  ‘Yeah. That’s my problem, too. That’s what I miss. No one to buzz with.’

  They fell silent. The computers’ fans hummed. Megan propped her elbow on the desk and rested her face against her hand. She could hear her watch tick. She was aware of the fact that she was waiting for Lisa to say something more, to add something, to consolidate this moment of intimacy between them.

  ‘He may not be jobless for long,’ Lisa said.

  It was so different from her own train of thought that Megan felt momentarily disappointed. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Hopefully not.’

  ‘And then things will be back to normal,’ Lisa added, keeping her voice light.

  Megan had the impression she was being patted on the head. ‘Just like that,’ she said. She knew she sounded petulant and she laughed suddenly. ‘Do you know what the problem is? It’s that my husband doesn’t understand me.’

  Lisa’s eyes seemed to sparkle for a moment as though they had filled with tears. ‘That’s what they all say.’

  Megan laughed and, reaching for her mouse, she closed her document and switched off her computer. She glanced at her watch although she knew perfectly well what the time was. ‘I’ve had it for today. Can you manage a drink?’

  Lisa gave her a ‘you have to ask?’ look. ‘Still buzzing, huh? Well, She-Man can always manage a drink.’

  Megan got to her feet and picked her pen up off the desk.

  Lisa was sitting motionless, her face speculative as she kept her eyes on Megan and Megan looked back, her eyes questioning.

  ‘Do you want him employed at any price?’ Lisa asked.

  Megan was tempted to play for time by asking: ‘Who?’, but the knowledge that Lisa didn’t suffer fools gladly stopped her. She put her jacket on. ‘It’s not that bad yet. Let’s see what Triton thinks about him and then I’ll let you know.’

  Lisa shut down her computer. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  And they did.

  *

  It was dark by the time she reached the house.

  She held her handbag tightly beneath her arm but as she tip-toed along the path a light strand of a spider’s web caught across her face and she dashed her hand at it, shuddering as she felt it on her fingers. She wiped it on her dress and reached into her jacket pocket for her keys, clutching them to keep them from jangling. Her fingers found the one she wanted and gently she took the bunch out of her pocket, slipping the smallest key into the lock. Holding her breath she turned the key, pushing the door gently with one foot. It opened into the kitchen and she closed the door behind her and stood in the dark.

  She could hear the television and from the inane brightness and high pitch of the voices she knew it was a children’s programme. A single stray laugh came and went.

  She walked over to the fridge and paused with her hand on the door. Inside the fridge was an unfinished bottle of red wine, left over from the night before. Dropping her hand, she went to the sink where a glass tumbler rested upside-down on the draining board. She picked it up and took it back to the fridge and opened the door. The fridge light illuminated the kitchen and she snatched up the bottle rather too quickly because it rang against the orange juice jar and the door closed with a pneumatic puff. She poured some wine into the tumbler in the dark and leaned against the work-top to drink it.

  It tasted slightly bitter but she felt herself relax for the first time that day. It was lovely to stand in the kitchen in the dark. It felt peaceful; even the jabber of the children’s programme wasn’t disturbing her. It was someone else’s jabber, not hers.

  She bit her upper lip and wondered what it would be like not to work. What it would be like, in fact, to live with this sort of peace so that it became commonplace instead of something she had to steal. She rolled the glass between her palms to warm up the wine, although it would be drunk before she managed it, and thought of herself as a thief. A thief of time, stealing her son’s time with her for herself. But she was human. She gulped down the glass, rinsed it at the sink, still in the dark, and opened the back door, slamming it hard and switching the light on. She was now officially home.

  The scene in the sitting room was such a homely one that when she stepped into it she wondered why she’d bothered hiding at all.

  Larry was lying on the sofa, talking on the phone. They looked at her, Larry smiling, Bill beckoning in his green pyjamas, reaching for the television remote control to turn the sound down. The small gold table lamps gleamed pools of light and Bill climbed off Larry’s knee and onto hers and looked at her face.

  ‘Hey, you’re up late,’ she said.

  Then he whispered something. Bill, she noticed, had not got the hang of whispering at all; it was either too quiet to hear or too breathy to understand. ‘What did you say?’

  Bill put his face nearer hers and tried again. This time she caught it, and looked into Bill’s blue eyes to repeat it. ‘Daddy’s done something terrible?’ she asked, feeling her skin prickle tightly. She glanced over at Larry, who was nodding encouragingly at the unseeable caller. He caught her eye and winked.

  Bill was trying to kneel on her lap and she winced as his heels struck her muscles. She held out her hands and he leaned on them with his palms down, pressed on hers. She tried to imagine that she found it impossible to believe Larry would do anything terrible. Wasn’t that what loving wives thought? ‘What did he do?’ she asked, trying to make light of it.

  Bill’s face fell and huge, viscous tears filled his eyes and rolled over his lower lashes. ‘Daddy put me in the bath with my slippers on.’

  The impulse to laugh with relief was enormous but she hugged him hard, burying her face in the clean, newly ironed smell of his pyjamas. ‘Oh, Bill, I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘didn’t you realise?’

  Bill’s mouth puckered again.

  ‘We can dry them,’ she said, ‘they’ll be back to normal by the morning.’

  He looked at her, unconvinced, and she stood up, holding his warm body to her, her hands clasped under his bottom. ‘Shall I take him up?’ she mouthed to Larry, and he looked up and nodded, making winding-up motions at the phone.

  The light was already on in Bill’s room. His Thomas the Tank Engine
covers were smooth and unwrinkled and she pulled them back and Bill climbed in and looked at her unwaveringly.

  ‘What’s up?’ she asked him.

  ‘You’re the mummy and Daddy’s the daddy,’ Bill said carefully, watching her reaction.

  ‘Mmm,’Megan said, pulling up a red wooden stool so that she could sit next to him.

  ‘So, why doesn’t Daddy go to work and you stay at home?’

  ‘Oh. Some mummies like to work, if they’re good at it.’

  ‘In work you’re a daddy and at home you’re a mummy,’

  Bill suggested.

  Megan stared at him and saw him not as her son but as a four-year-old boy trying to make sense of things that made no sense at all. ‘I’m always your mother and Daddy’s always your father,’ she said, feeling as though she were about to tread in quicksand. ‘That doesn’t change. But some mothers work and some fathers stay at home. Sometimes both of them stay at home.’ She saw a glimmer of hope in her son’s eye and added swiftly, ‘And sometimes neither of them does. Usually someone in the family needs to work to earn money to spend.’

  Bill rubbed his eyes with his fists as though to clear them. ‘I want you to stay at home and Daddy to go to work,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’ Megan nodded slowly, not taking her eyes off his face. ‘I can see that.’

  ‘Daddy put me in the bath with my slippers on,’ he said, in a final effort to explain.

  ‘I know. I’ll dry them for you,’ she said gently. ‘Do you want a story?’

  He nodded and closed his eyes. As she reached for a book from the shelf he opened them again sharply and seeing she was ready to settle down, he let his eyelids close once more.

  ‘Once upon a time,’ Megan began. Once upon a time, she thought, things were simple. Men were men and their wives and children were their possessions. Men would work away from the home and women would look after the children. The men’s friends were the men they worked with and the women’s friends were their neighbours. Why did Bill, who’d never known her not to work, have the idea that it was the woman who should stay at home?