by Sue Margolis
It turned out Shelley had been born in Upminster.
“So we’re both Essex girls, then,” Shelley said.
“Yeah, but don’t forget,” Rachel said, “when we were growing up, the place still had a definite air of gentility about it. Back then, Essex Girls was a hockey team, not an insult.”
Shelley’s face broke into a broad grin. Rachel had a sense she was cheering her up.
“Don’t know about you,” Shelley said after they’d filled two cupboards, “but I could murder a drink.”
Assuming she meant of an alcoholic variety, Rachel nodded enthusiastically. Shelley opened the fridge and took out a carton of organic cranberry juice.
“Wonderful for cystitis,” she declared, holding up the carton. “Totally detoxes your water works . . . Oh, and I think I’ve got a packet of sunflower and pumpkin seeds somewhere.”
She began rummaging through the piles of packets.
“Tell you what,” Rachel said, doing her best to sound tactful, “you still look a bit down. How’s about we spike it with some vodka? I’ve got an unopened bottle upstairs.”
“No, I mustn’t,” Shelley said uneasily. “You see, I’m pregnant.”
At this point she burst into tears again.
“Look,” Rachel said, “I don’t want to pry, but if it would help I’d be happy to listen.”
Ten minutes later they were sitting on the living room floor (the junk shop man wasn’t delivering the sofas until Monday), drinking cranberry juice. Although in Rachel’s case it was more like cranberry-laced vodka juice.
Shelley took another glug of her drink and started telling Rachel how she was three months pregnant and that Ted, her thirty-eight-year-old boyfriend, had reacted to the news by ending their relationship and asking her to move out because he said he didn’t feel ready for marriage or fatherhood.
“And what does the hypocritical bastard go and do? I’ll tell you what he does. He shacks up with a seventeen-year-old who’s still wearing a retainer and has a Saturday job frying burgers. . . Still, at least he’s agreed to support the baby. I suppose I should be grateful.”
Rachel, who by now had forgiven Shelley her health food fanaticism on the grounds that she was funny, open and warm, shuffled across the floor and put an arm round her.
“God, I’m really sorry. What a tosser. Going off with a McSchoolgirl when he could’ve had you and the baby. I dunno why we bother to have men in our lives,” she went on, knocking back more of her drink.
“I do,” Shelley said, smiling. “It’s because a vibrator can’t mow the grass.”
The pair of them burst out laughing.
A minute later Rachel was telling Shelley how Joe, her ex, a sports reporter on The Vanguard, had left her for a cosmetics demonstrator who worked on the Estée Lauder counter at Dickins & Jones.
“Total bimbo, I take it,” Shelley said, hiccuping. “Don’t tell me—forty-inch bust and so thick she can’t remember the recipe for ice cubes.”
“Not exactly,” Rachel said. “You see, it was a cosmetics demonstrator by the name of . . . Greg. More of a himbo really.”
“Blimey. So your ex—he’s . . .”
“Gay? Oh yes, he’s gay all right. In fact, he’s utterly euphoric these days.”
“Oh my Gawd.”
“I mean,” Rachel continued, “even though I’ve met somebody else now who really loves me and wants us to get married, it still hurts when I think about how Joe left me for somebody with hairy knuckles and a thirty-four-inch waist. Doesn’t do much for the old self-esteem. Eight years we’d been married. Of course, I missed all the signs. I mean, you would, wouldn’t you, in a bloke who was six three and a former rugby wing forward. First the sex trailed off. But I thought that was normal when you had a small child. We were both so exhausted.”
She took a couple more sips of her vodka.
“Then there was the way he used to look through FHM and all those other men’s mags with a high nipple count. He’d stare at a picture of some half-naked bird and go ‘Christ, look at the upholstery on that one’—only he didn’t mean the woman, he meant the Conran sofa she was lying on. Even when I came home late one night and found him sitting up in bed poring over the Color Me Beautiful book with a Bioré patch on his nose, the penny still didn’t drop.”
“Oh God. Poor you,” Shelley said.
Rachel shrugged. “Then a few weeks later,” she went on, “he just comes out with it. Says he’s been living a lie since he was a kid, that the time has come for him to face up to his sexuality and he has to leave. Of course I’m hysterical with shock, but he just carries on packing his bags. All the time he keeps going on and on about how he wished to God he’d been born black and not gay. When I ask him why he says, ‘Why do you think? At least then I wouldn’t have to tell my mother.’ Eight years we’d been married and the only person he was truly scared of telling was his mad Jewish mother.”
She knocked back the last of her drink.
They spent the rest of the evening fantasizing about a world without men.
“No more wars,” Shelley said dreamily. “Just millions of happy hairy-legged women getting fat on . . . ooh, what do you reckon—avocado?”
“Nah, I’d rather ’avo box of Ferrero Rocher,’ ” Rachel giggled.
A moment later their schoolgirl giggles had turned to hoots. As they neared the knicker-wetting stage, they clung to each other for dear life, like mates who’d been friends forever—which they both felt they had.
* * * * *
Rachel carried on playing with the Marilyn statue and as usual couldn’t resist pressing the button on her back. There was always the hope that this time, Marilyn’s skirt would fly up and her head would stay on. But as usual her head shot off onto the floor. Rachel had just retrieved it from under the sofa, clipped it into place and managed to return Marilyn to the mantelpiece, when Shelley came bounding into the room.
“Yesss,” she squealed, punching the air. “I got it. I only blinkin’ got it. Me and the fetus get to eat for a couple more weeks. That was my agent. Said she’d just come off the phone from the woman from the ST company, who apparently not only adored my hands but thought I sounded good too. Upshot is they’ve given me a line to say. As I pour the blue dye out of the test tube, you’ll hear me in voice-over purring”—she paused for effect—” ‘Flowtex Super Menstrual Mats—don’t get caught by a downpour.’ ”
“That’s wonderful,” Rachel said, going over to her and giving her a huge hug. “I’m really, really pleased.” She paused and looked at her watch. “Look, I hate to walk out just as you’ve had such fantastic news, but I really should be getting back to Sam. Why don’t you come up later after he’s in bed?”
“No, I can’t. I really must wax my bush tonight. It’s so overgrown that if I leave it any longer I’ll have to take a hedge trimmer to it.”
Rachel snickered. “You know,” she said, “my mother’s suddenly started waxing her bikini line.”
“So?”
“Well, don’t you find it a bit odd that she’s started waxing now? At her age?”
“What makes you think she’s only just started? She’s probably always done it. She’s just never discussed it with you, that’s all. I mean, for women of our mothers’ generation, depilation is a very intimate, private affair.”
“Not for my mother,” Rachel said, as she headed toward the door. “Words like intimate and private have never figured in her vocabulary. Believe me, a woman who has always been perfectly at ease discussing optimum turd texture over the breakfast table cannot possibly have a fear of pubic speaking. Doesn’t make sense. No, there’s something going on. I just know it.”
“Maybe she’s going on holiday and she’s treated herself to a skimpy bikini.”
“No, she’d have said something if she were going away.”
“OK. OK. I’ve got it,” Shelley said, starting to laugh. “Perhaps she’s found herself a boy toy.”
“As if,” Rachel said with a chu
ckle.
* * * * *
Even from the bottom of the stairs, Rachel could hear Sam’s execrable singing. The atonal racket could curdle milk, she thought, grimacing. She opened the front door, came in and dropped her keys into her bag, which was on the hall table. Then she walked toward Sam’s bedroom and peeked through a crack in the door. He was sitting on the floor in his blue school sweatshirt and gray trousers surrounded by tapes and CDs. The headphones he was wearing were plugged into the ghetto blaster Rachel had bought him for his birthday and he was singing along to the music with all the gusto of a well-oiled Japanese salaryman in a karaoke club. She shook her head. Like most of his mates, Sam had just started getting into music. But whereas his friends were all wearing their parents down by playing the latest chart-topping crap at full volume from the moment they got home from school, Sam was wearing Rachel down by playing Barbra Streisand.
He knew all her songs by heart. He spent all his pocket money on Barbra CDs, old records and videos of her concerts. He could imitate her gestures and facial expressions, and did his excruciating utmost to reach for those top notes and hold them just like Barbra did. His room was plastered with Barbra posters. Until a few weeks ago, Rachel had thought his mania was nothing more than an irritating, but amusing—if slightly eccentric—stage her son was going through. It was Faye who had arrived to baby-sit, walked into Rachel’s kitchen, come to the end of her usual “This place is so filthy it should come with a tetanus jab” speech and then segued straight into how in her opinion Joe and Greg were turning Sam gay.
“Mum,” Rachel had laughed, “Joe rented him a video of Hello, Dolly! one afternoon, that’s all, and Sam fell in love with Streisand’s voice. Joe thinks the whole thing’s as funny as I do.”
“Really,” Faye sniffed. “And what about Adam? Does he think it’s funny too?”
Rachel said nothing as she remembered the faintly concerned Rachel-this-just-isn’t-normal looks Adam gave her whenever Sam disappeared to play his Barbra CDs.
“He’s fine with it,” Rachel said a tad defensively. “Just like me.”
Faye merely arched her eyebrows.
“Look,” Rachel said, “Joe may have his faults, but he would never try to brainwash his own son. For a start, Joe’s been a West Ham supporter all his life, and yet Sam’s turned out to be fanatical about Tottenham. And anyway you can’t turn a person gay. They’re born that way.”
Faye had shrugged one of her you-may-think-you-know-best-but-I’m warning-you shrugs and hadn’t mentioned it since. But the damage had been done. Into Rachel’s otherwise liberal, logical and intelligent brain, Faye (not to mention Adam) had sewn the seeds of doubt. It wasn’t that Rachel had suddenly become homophobic. She hadn’t. Even her ongoing hurt about the way Joe had allowed their marriage to carry on under false pretenses for so long before upping and leaving her hadn’t affected her openhanded, prejudice-free position on gays. If Sam grew up to be gay she knew it would take her time to get used to the idea, but she didn’t doubt she would be there to love and support him. But what, she found herself thinking from time to time, if she was wrong and her mother was right? Maybe people—particularly vulnerable, impressionable children—could be “turned” gay. What if Joe and Greg were encouraging Sam to “develop his gay side”?
So ashamed was she of what she considered to be her newfound bigotry that she hadn’t dared voice her thoughts, even to Shelley.
Now she came into the room and stood in front of her son. “So, Sam, what do you fancy for supper?” she said.
He lifted one headphone off his ear and looked up at her. “What did you say?” he said.
“Supper. What would you like?”
“Dunno,” he said, shrugging.
“Come on, you must feel like something. What about sausages and chips, or I could grill you a burger.”
“Yeah, OK.”
“Which?”
“The sausages. By the way”—he pulled the headphones down so that they hung round his neck—“Greg cooked these brilliant herby sausages on the weekend and then afterward we had all these different cheeses from France and Italy with this sweet jelly stuff you put on top. The cheese was all runny and smelled gross, but I still tried it ’cause Greg said it was time I started to educate my palate. He said that meant getting your taste buds used to posh food. The cheese was OK, but the jelly stuff was dead nice.”
“So what was it called, this jelly stuff?”
“Dunno. Can’t remember. Kwi . . . something, I think he called it.”
“What, you mean quince? . . . Quince jam?”
“Yeah, that’s it, quince jam.”
“Quince,” she muttered. “He’s got you eating French cheese and quince jam.”
“Yeah. What’s wrong with that?”
“No, no, nothing,” Rachel said through a forced smile. “Really. It’s fine. Couldn’t be finer, in fact.”
Sam shot her a puzzled look. Then he turned on his ghetto blaster, put his headphones back on and broke into “Second Hand Rose.”
CHAPTER 5
“No, honest, Adam,” Rachel said, holding her mobile in one hand and the steering wheel in the other. “I love it. Really. It’s a sweet, sweet thought . . . and to have sent it by courier from Manchester. Heaven only knows what that must have cost.”
“A fortune. But who cares? It was for you.”
“So where did you find it?”
“I was in John Lewis in Cheadle,” he explained, “looking for a new sock net for the washing machine, when I saw it and I thought ‘that is just so Rache.’ ”
“Oh it is, it is,” she enthused diplomatically.
“It did occur to me,” Adam said, his tone a tad uneasy, “that you might have preferred flowers. . . .”
“Adam, believe me,” she said gently, “it’s great. Flowers would be dead in a week. A plastic shoe rack is something I can cherish forever.”
Naturally, she would have preferred flowers or chocolates, but she didn’t have the heart to tell him and hurt his feelings.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Adam went on, relieved. “I mean, we’re past all that sloppy romantic stuff now, aren’t we?”
“Oh God, yeah. Absolutely,” she said firmly. “Look Ad, I gotta go. I’m just pulling up outside Mum and Dad’s. I’ll ring you tonight when I get back.”
“Right. Love you.”
“Love you too.”
* * * * *
Rachel turned off the engine and picked up the wedding invitation catalog from the passenger seat. Her mother had forgotten to take it home after she and Jack stayed the night and had rung in a panic an hour ago, begging Rachel to drop it round. The printer had been on the phone, pointing out that she’d promised to return it first thing Monday morning and that it was now Thursday. If he didn’t have it back by the following morning, he said he would charge them for it.
Rachel protested that it was already past six and that she had to help Sam with his homework, get him bathed and into bed.
“I mean, why can’t Dad come and collect it?” There was no point in asking her mother to drive over. Although Faye had passed her test years ago, she’d only driven a couple of times since, on account of having developed a morbid fear of highway overpasses.
“He’s constipated.”
“Oh right. So he won’t have to stop on the way then, will he?”
“Rachel, stop being so obtuse. He’s too frightened to go far from the toilet in case the floodgates suddenly open and he gets caught short.”
In the end, Rachel caved in and Shelley agreed to keep an eye on Sam.
* * * * *
Rachel’s father opened the door, the cordless clamped to his ear.
“They’ve put me on hold,” he whispered to Rachel, giving her a peck on the cheek and motioning her to come in.
“Who has?” she asked, stepping into the hall.
“The Royal Opera House. I thought I’d take your mother this weekend. It’s a surprise. She can’t hear me. S
he’s upstairs Hoovering.”
Rachel could hear a distant hum of vacuum cleaner.
“But Dad, you hate opera.”
“Yeah, I know,” he shrugged. “But your mother loves it and she hasn’t been in ages. So I thought—” He broke off and began making stabbing motions at the phone, signaling to Rachel that the person he’d been speaking to had returned. “Oh right, you’ve got two in the dress circle for Saturday. Wonderful. Look, miss, I’m not a great opera buff. In fact, just between you and me, I think opera’s a load of high-pitched squawking. The only way I can tolerate it is if there are a few decent tunes I recognize. You know, like the ‘Cancan’ in Orpheus in the Underworld. Now then, this Götterdämmerung—I’m not familiar with it. Could you hum a few bars, maybe?”
Rachel felt herself go crimson with embarrassment.
“You can’t. OK,” Jack went on, “not to worry. Well, perhaps there’s a bit that’s been used in a TV commercial that I might recognize. You know, like that bit of Elgar they used in the Hovis ad.”
As he started to hum loudly and tunelessly into the phone, Rachel escaped to the kitchen and put the kettle on.
While she waited for it to boil and Jack continued his increasingly ridiculous conversation with the Opera House woman, she sat at the kitchen table thumbing through the wedding invitation catalog. It wasn’t the first time she’d done so in the last couple of days. There had been at least three occasions when she’d found herself opening the catalog with its padded leatherette cover, embossed with silver wedding bells, and having secret fantasies about white weddings.