Playing the Field

by Foster, Zoe

Col walked over to the door, wearing only a singlet and knickers. Gross. They’d been sexing. Hope she wore protection. Who knows what that filthy man had been up to.

  ‘Um, I just got home, and I was —’

  ‘You were listening to us, weren’t you, you little shit.’

  Her voice wasn’t angry; more defeatist. The elephant in the corner stamped its foot in celebration.

  Eric, who looked like he’d been working out recently, and possibly taken some kind of sojourn to Barbados, looked to Colette for help. She offered none.

  ‘Go, just go,’ she said with a wave of her hand, walking past me to the bathroom, where she slammed the door.

  Eric picked up his jumper and shoes and walked into the living room, where his keys and wallet sat on the dining table. I stood in the hallway just outside, arms folded, waiting to give him some fierce stink-eye before he left. He put on his shoes, shirt and watch, and picked up his keys, finally raising his head to meet my steely gaze.

  ‘Jean —’

  ‘Yes?’ I cut him off with my pert response. Yes, I wanted to say. How may I help you and your wandering penis?

  ‘I’m so sorry for all the hurt I’ve caused your sister and your family.’

  With that he turned, opened the front door and walked out.

  Oooh, dramatic. Cue ‘To Be Continued’ across the bottom of the screen. I heard the bathroom door open and Colette emitting a sad little sigh.

  ‘Thought you’d stay at boofhead’s tonight.’

  ‘No, he has an early start, and I needed to wash my hair …’

  ‘Of course. The new flaxen locks must be pristine at all times.’

  I chose not to bite. She was like a baby’s teething toy, ready for a nibble 24/7.

  ‘So, um, wanna talk about the guy that just left?’

  She sighed again and shook her head, walking out to the living room, collapsing onto the sofa in a cross-legged position as she grabbed a pillow and jammed it in her lap.

  ‘There’s a lot about this situation you’re not going to understand, or like. But if you can be an adult, and deal with that, and not lose your shit at me, or judge me, then sure. Let’s talk.’

  ‘Col, I’m not judging you. I’m just protective of you. Surely you can see that? To me, Eric symbol—’

  ‘I know all of that, Jay. I do. And that’s exactly what I don’t want to hear.’

  ‘Truth hurts.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll change that to: exactly what I don’t need to hear.’

  I sat down on Ken the Irregular Armchair and sighed too.

  ‘Okay. Go. I’m an open vein to your verbal insulin.’

  ‘First of all, I’m not back with Eric.’

  ‘You’re just sleeping with him? Even better.’

  ‘Can you relax? Fuck, Jay – this isn’t easy, you know.’

  Finally, a crack in her feisty veneer. Her eyes showed both hurt and sincerity. I decided to shut up and let her speak.

  ‘Okay, okay, no more from me. Go.’

  ‘A while back, ’bout the time you met Josh, Eric started emailing me, explaining things – but this time without all the insincerity and bullshit. He’d been seeing a counsellor, and had started meditating. And he’d moved out of his mum’s, who, as we all know, thinks I’m not good enough for her precious fucking son, and apart from having a moustache and the breath of a rotting carcass, is a brainwashing bitch. Anyway, he sounded like he actually understood why he did what he did.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘Well – and this won’t come as a surprise to you – he cheated on me with Lily for lots of reasons, but the main one was because I was … well, I was emasculating him. I was too bossy and too assertive and too masculine. A ball-breaker. Squared.’

  She stopped, waiting for me to laugh, or guffaw, or hold up a sign saying ‘Bingo!’ But I didn’t. So she went on.

  ‘You know, I took total charge of the wedding, and I was earning more than him because he got dropped to part-time, and I was always tired and exhausted and yelling at him, and refusing his help whenever he offered it because I thought I could do it better. And, well, I guess instead of talking to me about it, ’cos he was scared of me, he ran into Lily’s arms, because she’s a wimpy little pixie who would never strip him of feeling like the man in the relationship.’

  It took everything in me not to blurt out: Didn’t mean he had to fuck her!

  ‘And so, you know, I started to think about my behaviour, and how I act in relationships, and’ – a lone tear had snuck out of her left eye and she wiped it away – ‘I saw that he was right. That I wasn’t being a good partner, that I had become a bitch who had it her way or no way. And, you know, in the bedroom … well, there were big issues there, because, I mean, we weren’t really having sex, and I would get insecure thinking it was because he wasn’t attracted to me, when really it was because I was so masculine to him.’ She sniffed and wiped some more escaped tears. ‘The last thing he wanted to do was make love to a woman who made him feel like he was worthless.’

  ‘Col —’

  ‘And, you know, I just think that maybe if I hadn’t of acted like that, or he had told me what I was doing, and I had changed, none of this would’ve ever happened. And things would be how they were, and I’d be getting married in a couple of months, you know? I’d still be getting married …’

  She started to sob openly, wiping her eyes and pushing her curls behind her ears and shaking her head, and I watched her and my heart broke for her.

  I got up and moved over to sit beside my sister. My poor sister, who had been through so much heartbreak over the past six months, and who was now blaming it all on herself. I put both arms around her small, jerking frame and cuddled her.

  ‘Oh, Col, you can’t blame yourself. Col, I’m so sorry …’

  She finally let her head rest on my shoulder and returned the cuddle, and we sat there, me crying silently for her hurt, her sobbing and sniffing and not saying anything for a few minutes, until she moved forwards, sniffing loudly, conclusively, and gathered her hair up into a bun using a band from her wrist. I sat back against the sofa and waited for her to collect herself, not wanting to say anything, but finally – finally – to just listen to her, which I now realised I hadn’t been doing at a time when she needed me to do it the most.

  She sniffed and wiped the mascara from under her eyes.

  ‘He’s still a fucking fuckface for cheating.’

  I burst into laughter.

  ‘Men, huh? They cheat if you’re too clingy, and they cheat if you’re too independent. How the fuck are we meant to get it right?’

  I couldn’t help pondering what she’d said, and wondering where I sat on the clingy–independent scale with Josh. I hoped it was somewhere in the middle.

  ‘So, what’s happening with you two now, then? I mean, after those emails, and him explaining everything, all his reasons for doing —’

  ‘Well, when I realised he actually had some valid points, and that I couldn’t go on putting all of the blame for what happened onto him, I started writing back. And it was so cathartic, to finally speak to him – well, on email – and to explain everything that made me that way back then – how I felt I should just do everything because it was easier, and that it irritated me that the Incredible Bearded Mother still had so much sway over him, and that he listened to her more than his wife-to-be … And, Jay, I can’t quite explain it, but after writing back and forth for weeks – and I’m talking deep, heavy, three-page emails – we started to realise that we still loved each other.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me any of this?’

  She turned her head to look at me, her eyes big and sad and red.

  ‘After all the “If I ever see him again I will cut off his balls and use them as a yoyo” talk? I was embarrassed, Jay! It feels like I’m betraying myself, and the goddamn sisterhood, to fall back in love with a cheat. I knew you would lecture me, and Mum too, and I just didn’t want to deal with that. Plus, like I said, we’
re not back together, we’re still working things out, so why bother getting everyone frothing for no reason, you know?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry … I’ve been so caught up with Josh and my own life that I didn’t even consider how hard this must be for you. What was the fight about just before? Is everything okay?’

  She sighed before standing up and walking towards the kitchen.

  ‘We’ve got a lot of creases to iron out – put it that way. ’Cos even if I was a bitch, he still fucked another woman, and that’s not easy to live with.’

  ROUND 34

  Trouser Snakes vs Jewellery-making

  ‘Ball-breaker. Absolute ball-breaker.’

  As we sat around a balcony table at the pub where Paola liked to eat before matches, she and Lou were commenting on Melinda’s more elegant personality traits. Steph and I listened with amusement.

  ‘And I’m sorry, but if you gonna wear some tiny leetle skirts to the futball in the winter, don’t sit outside and say, “Iss cooold, iss so cooold.” ’

  ‘I know! Oh, and did you hear her giving it to Morgan last week? Told her to go back and sit in her original seat because the boys were losing and it was bad luck for her to keep moving around!’

  ‘True?’ I asked in disbelief, and then surprise at the fact I had just replaced ‘really?’ with ‘true?’, which was one of Lou’s favourites and, to my mind, had always been slightly bogan.

  Lou went on, nodding, wearing her signature ‘amazing but true’ expression: brows up, lips pursed.

  ‘I feel sorry for Ryan, the poor bastard. What about that time he passed out in the back of a cab, so the cabbie dropped him off on some random street, and he fell asleep in the grass, and she thought he deliberately didn’t answer his phone all night and was cheating on her, so she threw all his shit into their pool and then leaked it to the bloody papers!’

  No wonder Melinda and Tess got along, I thought to myself.

  ‘She makes the rest of us look like angels,’ said Paola, trying to get the attention of the waiter to order another bottle of wine.

  ‘Ahh, God bless the mad bitch,’ said Lou, shaking her head and taking a sip from her glass.

  I’d noticed the phrase ‘God bless her’ was thrown around a lot amongst the girls. It always followed a session about someone, as though it wiped clean all the gossiping that preceded it. By saying ‘God bless her’, you were absolving yourself: See? Even though I just performed verbal terrorism, I’m not a bad person.

  ‘So, Lou, those sexy knickers you buy work?’

  Lou rolled her eyes. ‘He fell asleep on the lounge.’

  ‘Kidding me!’ Paola said, outraged. ‘Everyone thinks that this boys, oh, they so fiiiit, and oh, they so seeexy and so maaaanly, but really they is just granpas!’

  Steph and I giggled. I took a sip of my white wine, which had been ordered by Paola because the other two whites available tasted like ‘the cat’s pissing’.

  ‘Although to be fair,’ Lou said to the table, ‘I’m not exactly gagging for it most of the time. Wait till you lot have kids – I’m always so buggered; last thing I want to do is shake my tits in the hope of a quickie. Nick’s never around anyway, so by the time he comes home, plays Hollywood Dad and undoes all the good work I’ve done in just twenty minutes of couch-jumping and ice-cream, I’d rather kick him in the dick than put it in my mouth.’

  We laughed, shaking out heads. Why did Steph so badly want the ring and the kids, I wondered? Didn’t sound that enticing to me. Lou seemed to be basically raising their kids alone; Nick was always away or training.

  ‘Jimmy’s lucky to make it till nine,’ said Paola. ‘And he’s tired, always so tired. Especially with his ankle. Actually, comes to think of it, during the off-season he won’t leaves me alone, but when he’s playin’, forget it.’

  ‘And of course the last thing they wanna do is make love after a day of running around and beating each other up, ’cos they don’t have the energy,’ said Lou. ‘But they gotta service their women sometimes, or we start looking to the mailman! Ain’t that right, girls?’

  Steph cleared her throat.

  ‘Actually, um, Mitch … Mitch goes okay.’

  There were 0.06 seconds of silence before Paola erupted.

  ‘Ooooh-hoo-hooo! Look at choo! All smug ’cos you gettin’ lucky!’ she teased.

  Like grenadine flowing into a tequila sunrise, a deep shade of red poured into Steph’s face. Please don’t ask me next, please don’t ask me next, I willed. I really don’t want to discuss my sex life. I don’t.

  ‘What about you, Jeanie in a bottle? How’s Foxy?’

  I couldn’t have been more uncomfortable if Paola had asked me to slip on a pair of underpants that had been smothered in a coat of honey and then dipped into a nest of small, angry fire ants.

  ‘Everything’s fine with us,’ I said, burying my face in my wine, hoping the conversation would be drowned by the liquid trickling into my mouth. But when I emerged, the three girls were staring at me with the kind of expectation that should follow a sentence like, ‘Did I ever tell you about the time I slept with David Beckham?’

  ‘Fine? Or fantastic?’ Lou said.

  ‘Come on, Jeanie. Everyone’s been dying to know how Josh goes.’

  ‘Yeah, come on, Jean.’ Even Steph was joining in now.

  ‘Guys, I’m not gonna talk about Josh like that.’

  ‘Oh, don’ be so boring,’ snorted Paola. ‘We’re all friends here. All go through same shits. It’s bonding.’ She grinned at me, raising her brows up and down quickly.

  I looked around at the girls; I guess she was right. I wanted to feel like I was one of them. And they’d all said something about their men. I looked around at each of them before speaking.

  ‘Put it this way’ – I paused – ‘I’ve trained him up nicely.’

  ‘Woooooooo!’

  Paola whooped and hollered, Lou clapped and cheered, and Steph laughed and whistled. All three of them were looking at me with a cocktail of shock, glee and awe. I was giddy with the thrill of being accepted, of being naughty, of sharing secrets I wasn’t supposed to with a group of women who possessed a special connection.

  ‘Hombre loco, mi amor,’ Paola yelled. ‘Hazme el amor!’

  We all laughed, even though we had no idea what she was saying. It sounded funny. Anything she said did.

  ‘Can you believe that came out of her mouth?’ Lou said to Steph, pointing at me and shaking her head.

  Once they had all settled down, Paola said, ‘Ahhh, choo two are still on the funnymoon. Let’s ask her again in a year, huh, chicas?’ She had one eyebrow raised knowingly.

  Lou agreed, nodding as she took in a huge gulp of wine. ‘Zatlee. It’s always all-night marathons and “How can I please you?” in the early days.’

  ‘Well, Mitch and I have been together for two years, and we’re just fi—’

  ‘There she goes again. Would you listen to the little bragger?’ Lou shook her head disbelievingly and we all laughed again.

  Paola stood up to go the ladies’, and I took in her leather bomber jacket, intricately wrapped grey scarf and tight black jeans. She’d had her hair cut dramatically and was now the proud owner of a chin-length bob and a chunky fringe, which amplified her already incredible beauty by roughly 768 per cent. Her natural loveliness and effortless chic made me long for my brown hair and cute vintage dresses and colourful tops, which I’d somehow managed to completely phase out in favour of a wardrobe of low-cut tops and jeans.

  ‘Hey, love those earrings. Where they from?’ Steph asked me, taking one of my earrings in her fingers to examine it. They were round drop earrings with gold and white enamel, and tiny wooden beads.

  ‘These? I, um, I made them, actually.’

  ‘Noooo, get out! Really?’

  ‘What?’ piped up Lou, putting away her phone and picking up her wine again. ‘What’s she saying now? More penis stories?’

  ‘No, no. She made these earrings – can you
believe it?’

  Lou squinted in the general direction of my ears.

  ‘I’m rubbish without my glasses. Hold your hair up for a second?’

  I did, feeling silly. These were old earrings; I could do so much better now.

  ‘Whoa, they’re gorge! Actually, Jean, you always wear really glitz jewellery, doesn’t she, Steph?’

  Steph nodded, looking at her own glittering hands.

  ‘I looooove jewellery. Mitch says I spend too much money on it, but it’s my thing, y’know? I’m more a classic girl-girl, though, with diamonds and stuff. I don’t know how to wear all that trendy stuff like you wear, Jean. You always have cool bracelets and necklaces. It really suits you.’

  ‘D’you sell it?’ Lou was getting drunk; her eyes were slightly glazed and her sentences impatient and loud. Her lipstick had faded, leaving a harsh perimeter of flamingo-pink lip liner around the outer edges of her mouth.

  ‘Um, no. Well, I used to, back home. But I’ve been a bit of a slack-arse since I’ve been down here.’

  ‘What, like at markets and stuff?’

  ‘A couple of boutiques. It worked well with the kind of beachy vibe up there. Not sure how it would do down here.’

  Oh, goody: I’d just invented another excuse as to why I had stopped making any pieces. That one was a corker – right up there with it being winter, and the fact that Ingrid probably wouldn’t let me put my collection on the counter. I had become The Excusinator.

  But Steph wasn’t letting me off the hook. ‘That’s silly! Of course they’d sell here. Do you make, like, formal stuff? I’m always after nice stuff for these black-tie things that come up – stuff that can dress up a plain black dress, you know?’

  ‘Who’s dressing up?’

  Paola had arrived back from the ladies’, freshly glossed and bronzed. Now Lou stood up, noisily pushing back her chair with her legs. ‘I gotta pee.’

  ‘I was asking if Jean could make jewellery for a black dress I have. Did you know she makes jewellery? Look at those earrings – she made them!’

  ‘You shoulda seen the ones chiquita wore to the ball the other week. She’s one clever little monkey.’ Paola turned her face to mine. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask if you could make me ones like you had on that night. You know I’m good for the cash.’