Tangents, vol 1

by Rae Agatha

  Dan was becoming more and more successful at work. He was one of the most popular agents in his field - financial risks. He was also becoming popular among his friends from work, who were regularly inviting him for club parties at the end of the week, something that Dan would firmly say no to, as he wanted to get home to help Kate take care of Johnny. He was a family man. He liked it.

  His salary and bonuses were sufficient and Kate decided to stay home on an unpaid extended post-maternity leave. Dan agreed with the idea. When Johnny was two years old, William had a stroke and was unable to walk afterwards. A few months after it had happened, Kate’s parents brought up an idea to exchange their living conditions. They didn’t want to sell the house; they wanted to give it to Dan and Kate in exchange for their small apartment. With William stuck to a wheelchair, it was practically impossible for them to use the second floor in their house anyway, and they said they didn’t need that much space for two of them, elderly and sick people. Not to mention there was an elevator in Kate and Dan’s building, an invaluable asset in their situation. TheSalingers were thinking of buying a house, as it was very difficult for three of them to live in the tiny apartment, so the idea seemed perfect. They only needed to get a small loan to renovate the house. About four months later, they were living in Kate’s parents’ house and Janet and Will comfortably settled down in Dan’s old apartment.

  The idyll lasted four years. A week after Jonny’s fourth birthday, Kate and Dan took their son to their friend’s birthday party. The modest party with coffee, tea and some cake was taking place at Chris’ house.Once they got there, Dan sat by the table with Johnny on his lap, Kate went to the kitchen to help Chris’ wife cut the ice-cream cake. Chris poured Dan some coffee and while Salinger was busy talking to people sitting next to him, Johnny got interested in the mug on the table. Dan saw it and leaned further on the sofa so that his son couldn’t reach the hot beverage, but he failed to notice that Johnny caught the tablecloth and pulled the mug down. In a matter of seconds; Johnny’s ear-piercing scream, Dan’s terror, Kate running out of the kitchen, horrified, reaching out for her son.

  His legs were soaked with hot coffee. Kate took Johnny, ran to the bathroom, took his pants down and immediately saw that the boy’s legs were all red and swollen, badly burned. Dan got to the bathroom as Kate held her son’s legs under the cold water tap of the bathtub. Kate said they needed to get to the emergency room immediately. Johnny was terrified, he was crying so much he couldn’t catch his breath. Kate took him in her arms, helplessly trying to calm him down, but the effects of the cold water quickly wore off and she was a bundle of nerves herself, so trying to convince her poor baby boy that everything was fine was more or less pointless. Dan, horrified, ran for the car and was waiting for them as Chris and others helped Kate get in the car. Dan was trying to pull his thoughts together and focus on the road to hospital. Kate and Johnny were with him in a matter of seconds and about fifteen minutes later they arrived at the emergency room, calling out for doctors for help.

  The next ten days were a horror for all three of them. Johnny had to undergo delicate surgery, even though most of his injuries were healing, some areas had to have skin-grafts as they were badly burned. Kate and Dan were taking turns in hospital; when one of them was looking after their boy during the day, the other one would stay for the night. The IV was the worst; Johnny had no idea why he had to lay or sit still for so long, he was getting impatient, constantly tried to remove the splint and needle from his arm and it took massive reserves of creativity and patience to draw his attention to other things.

  Nearly two weeks after the accident, all three were home, but something about Dan was different. He felt guilty; although Kate kept on telling him it was all right, that it could have happened to her as well. She knew that Dan was a great father; loving, caring, engaged fully with his son, so it was very difficult for her to see him losing his self-confidence in that field. He felt he had failed and due to his lack of attention, his son spent almost two weeks in hospital and would carry scars for the rest of his life.

  One of the things that made their lives even more worrying at the time was dealing with Social Service. Dan and Kate had been told in the hospital it was standard procedure to report any case in which a child was a victim of any brutal act, or accident. Social Services was responsible for checking the conditions the child was living in.

  For Dan and Kate, who were doing their best and were taking care of their baby boy as best as they could, it was a truly devastating experience. There were so many cases in the news of parents neglecting their children, hurting them, beating them, killing them, and most of them focused on how the social system failed. Failure to prevent or save the young victims and how some obvious symptoms were ignored and not checked. It was very difficult for The Salingers to come to terms with the fact that they were now under the microscope lumped-in with child-abusers or pathological drinkers.

  Johnny was a happy, smiling child, curious of the world, who was never hungry, who had clean clothes, and who loved going to the park with his parents. Laughing at the top of his lungs as they chased each other around the sandbox or when they were swinging him on the playground. Even worse, was that Kate and Dan’s neighbors and family members were questioned about what kind of parents they were. Johnny’s room was thoroughly checked and the Salingers were asked a series of unpleasant and unfair questions. It all lasted about a week and some days later, they received a report stating their effort in raising a child was given a positive opinion. They were relieved to know they were to be left alone.

  ***

  When Johnny was five years old and went to school, Kate decided she wanted to go back to work. She returned to her old job, being an accountant in the dairy company, and her mother was helping her and Dan with daycare of Johnny. More or less around the same time, Dan started feeling he was missing something in his life. He was getting mind-numbingly fed up with his job, which at this point he was finding tedious, monotonous and dull, he started seriously thinking he needed, no deserved something else, something more, that he was, in fact, trapped.

  He was thirty-two and he kept on receiving wedding invitations from his friends at work. During one year only, Kate and Dan partied at five or six receptions, he couldn’t even remember well, and it struck him that while those people were beginning their married lives, were looking forward to starting a family, all those things were already passed him. Dan started reflecting on his life and the balance was not very favorable.

  He married Kate when he was twenty-six years old. Of course, he wasn’t nineteen, that was not the problem, but it kept on pricking him that it was all forced, that he somehow missed the chance of making that decision being fully aware he had met the woman who he wanted consciously to be with.

  He’d been twenty-seven when Johnny was born, a boy he was willing to jump into fire for. On one hand, he hadn’t really lost anything, he had a good job, perhaps slightly boring, perhaps not exactly creative, perhaps not entirely what he’d hoped for in the past, but it was all right.He had a nice family, again maybe not everything went as he’d expected it to, but he kept on telling himself, convincing himself, that hardly anyone gets what they want or plan. And yet, he felt he was getting bored with all that. Deep in his heart he felt he was beginning to suffocate, the routine was slowly eating him alive.

  He would wake up in the morning, take his son to school (Kate would pick him up home later on), go to the office, eat breakfast along the way, spend about nine hours at Mayflower and Sons, usually working with the computer or on the phone, and then he would come back home, about 6:00 p.m., eat dinner with Kate and Johnny, play with him, talk toKate, watch TV and go to sleep. More and more often, he had a feeling he settled down too fast, too early, that there was still a part of him that wanted to live the fun life. That he missed the pubs, his friends, and the buzz.

  Dan realized at some point, that going back home, was one of the more depressing thoughts during the day. He beg
an feeling that he had sacrificed something in his life for the well-being of others. When he was a teenager, he couldn’t continue his education because his parents had other expectations. He’d made an even bigger sacrifice by marrying a woman he liked, but not loved, only for the sake of her and her parents. And what about him? What about Dan?

  VII

  The very first time he went out with the boys from work he felt like a fish out of water. First of all, he told Kate he was going, she was fine with it, so, he didn’t have to lie, didn’t have to look for an excuse, like most of his colleagues. It seemed pathetic; grown-up men too afraid to tell their wives they were going out to have a beer. Or two. Maybe five. But still. Dan thought he was lucky having a wife that didn’t make a fuss about it.

  As it turned out, the place where the boys from work would hang out was not a pub with some beer, Premier League and pool as Dan had thought, but rather a ‘gentlemen’s’ club with private rooms, booze from all over the world and women stripping and doing lap dances. He was shocked at first and the boys, seeing his reaction, started laughing at him. Apparently good old Dan either had never had fun in life, or he hadn’t had it for so long, he forgot what it felt like. The problem was, Dan thought, he had never had a chance to experience that kind of entertainment. He started working when he was nineteen, he was focused on his education, he started a relationship with Meg and then spent two years in the Norwegian shipyard, situated in a really small town, where he worked hard and had no time, nor energy to look for fun in clubs. Provided there even were any in Mandal; he never checked.He did have some fun, true, but it was never as wild as this, and quite soon he met Kate and became a responsible family man. Now, he was surrounded by boys in their twenties who eagerly waited all week just to finally begin living on Friday evening.

  At first, Dan felt insecure, shy, perhaps even a bit embarrassed. Then he drank some booze, looked at the boys, who were visibly having a great time, and thought that why the hell should he limit himself? They all paid for two girls to dance for them only, then some of the boys went with them to private rooms. Dan was fascinated. Was this the way they would spend all of their weekends? Had it been like that all the time when he kept on declining their invitations and was going back home to make sure Johnny would brush his teeth and hear Kate complaining again that he forgot to repair a kitchen cabinet door? Wake up and smell the coffee, Dan, he thought. You’ve let the life pass you by.

  ***

  Dan was regularly partying with the boys. Kate, obviously, wasn’t very happy about the fact he would disappear every Friday night and reemerge home on Saturday at dawn, drunk and wasted.

  Every time she tried to talk to him about it, asked what was happening, he would shut her down. She was afraid that he wasn’t handling some kind of a problem at work and worse, if it was going to affect their family in some way. This new way of spending free time might be a way for him to forget about something, of what she hadn’t a clue. (Was he trying to forget about her and his own loser’s life as she sometimes heard him describing it while talking to himself?) He ignored her worries, patronized her anxiety, and told her she was making too much out of nothing and to just drop it.

  The more often Dan was in the club, the bolder, more open for experiences he was. At one point he even began taking his wedding band off. He kept on telling himself it was because he didn’t want to lose it while partying and dancing, but the truth was it was just easier that way; his conscience was calmer. He started visiting the private room, out of curiosity at first, but there was just too much fun in there to visit it. The first time he cheated on Kate he felt horrible the next day. He felt ashamed, he felt terrible. The second and the third time went much smoother. Finally, he stopped caring.

  He was a different person at home and Kate saw it more and more. He was constantly tensed, had less patience for Johnny, he hardly spoke to her anymore. During the week his conscience was killing him. He wanted to justify his actions, he kept on looking for ways of explaining everything in his head – the lost youth, the marriage out of necessity not love, the pressure at work that needed to be let go, chased away. The truth was, however, that he felt bad about it all, about not being loyal to Kate, who, apart from the tough beginning of their relationship, had always been there for him, supporting him, doing her best for the past six, almost seven years, to be a good wife and a good mother, who had no idea who her husband really was. After each weekend, Dan would promise himself he would never go the club again, never cheat on Kate again, that he would be a good boy now. And he meant it. From Monday to Thursday.

  He stopped telling Kate where he was going, or what time he was going to come back. He let her know he was going out with the boys and told her not to wait up. Later on he couldn’t stand her tears, her complaints, the remorse was killing him, and so the vicious circle would make another round. Kate once asked him to agree on therapy, that they were clearly having problems they needed to settle. By that point they were no longer sleeping together, both of them were living separate lives, passing each other in the house, at times they would do something together, but it was a far cry from their previous life. Dan refused. He didn’t have a problem, he knew exactly what was going on with him and he liked his new way of living, his new style. He didn’t need help. Kate started realizing her marriage was dying.

  VIII

  “Dan, who’s Martin Mann?” Kate asked him one day when they were sitting in the kitchen eating breakfast. Dan looked at her from above his cereal, surprised.

  “Who?”

  Kate was looking at him with a mixture of disappointment and sadness. It was difficult to say which of those emotions was dominating, but it made Dan feel a bit nervous.

  “Martin Mann. He called me over a week ago, he knew exactly who I was, Dan Salinger’s wife, he wanted to meet with me, said he needed to talk to me,” she said all this while looking straight at him. Dan looked behind himself, checked if Johnny was around. He wasn’t.

  “Where’s Johnny?” He asked.

  “He went for a sleep-over last night.”

  “Where?”

  Kate smiled ironically. “To Michael’s. I am supposed to pick him up in about two hours.”

  “Who’s Michael?”

  “His new best friend at school, Dan. I’m surprised you don’t know,” she added and drank some coffee. “So, Martin Mann. Who is he?”

  “I have no idea,” he replied and resumed eating.

  “Well, I can tell you, if you want. I met him yesterday for lunch.”

  Dan stopped eating and looked at her attentively.

  “Okay,” he leaned back on the chair. “Who is he?”

  “Do you know a Julie Mann?”

  “No,” he replied and frowned his eyebrows.

  “Mhm, and how about Julie Taylor?”

  Dan looked at her and felt he was about to panic.

  ***

  About half a year after Dan started going to the club with the boys, one of them told them, during their group’s meeting, that he was HIV positive. He had no idea when he got it, from whom, but he thought he would warn them. Dan was horrified, they all were. He immediately thought of Kate, tried to recall the last time they slept together and if it was possible he might have infected her, but then he remembered they always used a condom. There were however, a few times, he did not use one when he was with the girls from the club. Dan got so nervous he thought he would puke.

  He had to get tested and waiting for the test results was like waiting for his execution. Finally, it turned out he was fine, no sign of virus in his blood. Dan promised himself he would never cheat on Kate and never take a risk like that again. The promise lasted over a year and, during that time, Dan was doing his best to be a perfect dad and husband. He thought the darker times were gone, that they ended for him.

  In 2003, Dan started a love affair with Julie Taylor. He met her at the hairdresser’s Dan had an appointment with Jeremy, who usually took care of his hair, but it turned out that Jer
emy couldn’t make it on time and so Julie ended up cutting Dan’s hair.

  They had great chemistry together; it was obvious right from the beginning. Dan was very content to realize he still had it, that it was still fairly easy for him to pick up the ladies, to charm them – some things were in the blood after all, weren’t they? After about a month of regular drinking coffees and eating lunches, they started their affair. Dan knew she was also married, but they both did not want any drama. They would just meet whenever they had time; sometimes he took her with him for conferences or training seminars he had to attend, sometimes they just met in a hotel during lunchtime. The banality of it all was actually quite charming. Neither of them wanted to end their well-organized relationships with their spouses, they both had too much to lose. Dan didn’t want to have limited custody over his son and Julie couldn’t afford to live on her own, but they both enjoyed the thrill of trysts, the joy of obligation and commitment free relationship.