Mad About the Boy

by Maggie Alderson

  Unusually, after listening to Percy, I didn’t believe a word of it.

  20

  Life carried on – although I didn’t particularly feel like living it. I thought Percy’s advice to go back and get James was probably good, I just wasn’t ready to activate it yet. I didn’t feel strong enough for another knockback, so I decided to bide my time – using the new zen patience I had learned from him – and to devote my energy to the other important things in my life, like my son and my shop.

  When I got to Anteeks one morning a few days after my breakfast with Percy, Dee disappeared into the kitchen and re-emerged with an enormous bunch of flowers, which she said had arrived for me moments after she’d opened the door. They were gorgeous – all different colours of roses from yellow, through mauve to dark pink.

  I tore the envelope open. They were from Hugo.

  ‘I’m a beast. Please have coffee with me this morning. Your deservedly soon-to-be ex-husband, Hugo the Horrible.’

  As I stuffed them carelessly into the nearest vase, it occurred to me that the witty charm that had once delighted me so much in Hugo now jarred like the sound of a stuck CD. What was the point of being so adorable afterwards, if you couldn’t control your mood when it really mattered?

  I decided to let him stew, but shortly afterwards he rang. Unfortunately it was me who picked up the phone.

  ‘Ants pants?’ he said in what he thought was his most appealing little voice. Once it would have melted my heart, but not this time. ‘Do you really hate me?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘More than you can possibly imagine.’

  ‘Oh Antsy,’ he went on, making me feel more steely with every whining wheedling word. ‘Please don’t be cross. I’m so sorry, I was just a stupid jealous old Hector. I would have rung you sooner, but I’ve been in Melbourne all week. Come and have coffee with me and I’ll make it better. I’ll buy you some orange cake.’

  ‘Why don’t you buy me a balloon as well, Hugo?’ I said. All my anger and frustration with him from the last eleven years, for all the times when he had let his spoiled, nasty, snobbish, self-centred side win over, boiled up inside me.

  ‘If only you could make it all better with cake,’ I hissed at him. ‘Maybe if you’d done all this straight after the dinner, it would be different, but it’s too little, too late. And they do have telephones in Melbourne, I believe.’

  He tried to butt in, but I carried on talking over him.

  ‘You were so rude and hideous that night, Hugo, I couldn’t believe it. It would have been bad enough in any circumstance, but when you consider what I have put up with from you since you walked out and the efforts I have made to be nice to your new friend, I think you could have been a little nicer to mine.’

  There was a very loud silence from his end.

  ‘Well, if you can’t accept an apology, that’s up to you,’ said Hugo, now sounding as cold and huffy as I had sounded angry.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ I said. ‘Fuck off.’

  And I put the phone down.

  Dee was making a sympathetic face. I had to tell her something. An explanation that did not involve details of my ‘friend’.

  ‘Problems with my future ex,’ I said. ‘I wish he already was my bloody ex. The sooner we actually get the divorce, the better, although of course, that might mean Hugo having to tell the truth to his parents. The family solicitor will have to be involved, you see. All our assets are tied up with the family money somehow. I’ve never really understood it. But I know it will be quite complicated with trusts for Tom and all that. That’s why Hugo hasn’t hurried the process through. His father won’t care, but his mother will have a blue hairy fit – there’s never been a divorce in her family, let alone an out homosexual – and you should see her when she gets going.’

  I rolled my eyes.

  ‘That does sound messy,’ said Dee. ‘But then I suppose divorce always is.’ She paused and laughed bitterly. ‘Or anything involving men for that matter.’

  I was beginning to agree with her.

  After lunch she disappeared off to one of her endless round of beauty appointments – she was having her eyebrows shaped with lasers or some such nonsense – and I had some welcome time alone. It was a quiet afternoon and I picked up my needlepoint.

  At the height of my crazed sexathon I had come up with some saucy new cushions, the best selling of which was: ‘A hard man is good to find.’ I’d actually given one of those to James. God only knows what he would have done with it. I couldn’t really imagine him living in a needlepoint-friendly environment. He wasn’t the chintzy kind.

  In a particularly soppy moment I’d come up with a popular tennis themed one, with a crossed-rackets motif that said ‘Love All’, and the rather lame ‘All things come to those who (lift) weights’, which hadn’t gone down in a big way in Woollahra. Maybe I should give them all to Spider for his bouncer friends, I thought.

  That particular afternoon I didn’t feel like doing any of those and doodled around with new ideas on the theme of heartbreak, loss and disappointment. I was well into stitching the words ‘One swallow does not a summer make’ and was in that familiar brain-in-neutral state, when the bell over the door tinkled.

  It was James. James holding a bunch of red roses, interspersed with white gypsophila. I was so surprised, for a moment I just sat there. He stopped in the doorway and I threw the needlepoint down and ran over to him. He wrapped his arms round me and picked me up off the floor.

  ‘You win,’ he said. ‘I had to see you.’

  He put me down and held my chin in his free hand, looking at me intently.

  ‘Do you know, you’re the only thing in my whole life I haven’t been able to give up?’ he said.

  As usual, Percy had been absolutely right. And Spider, come to that.

  James handed me the flowers and I saw him notice Hugo’s much larger bunch on the dresser by the till.

  ‘A pathetic peace offering from Hugo,’ I said, grabbing them and dumping them into the bin. Then I took the cellophane from James’s flowers and arranged them in the vase with the utmost care. I hated baby’s breath and wasn’t overly keen on red roses – too obvious, I normally would have said – but these were the most beautiful flowers I had ever been given.

  ‘I take it Dee’s away for a while,’ he said, as we stood and hugged in the middle of the shop. ‘I saw her in Double Bay again, just now. That’s how I knew it was OK to come.’

  ‘She’ll be under her facialist all afternoon,’ I said.

  ‘I wish you could be under me,’ said James, biting my ear. ‘But I’d better not hang around here too long. Too many windows.’

  I dragged him into the stock room, in the hope of recommencing our sex life as soon as possible, but the shop bell rang and I had to leave him there while I served a customer, who was quickly followed by another. When they’d gone I locked the door and turned the sign to ‘closed’.

  Making whoopee on a pile of old blankets in the Anteeks stock room wasn’t much more comfortable than Muscle City’s various venues, but while it was still thrillingly naughty, it all felt noticeably different. The passion was still there, but it was much more tender and loving. When we finished, I found I had tears rolling down my cheeks. James kissed them away.

  ‘You are such a sook,’ he said, smiling sweetly. ‘I wonder what it would be like to make love to you in a bed.’

  I smiled back at him. I had been wondering the same thing for so long.

  ‘Would you like to find out?’ he asked me. I nodded vigorously. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘A friend of mine has a place up at Byron we can go to. Would you like to go up this weekend?’

  ‘I’d love to,’ I said, with Tom-like enthusiasm and fervently hoping Percy would be able to look after him, so I could go.

  ‘Well, that’s a relief,’ said James. ‘Because I’ve already bought the air tickets.’

  Those five days in Byron were probably the best I had ever known. James’s friend’s house was a v
ery simple structure right by a long deserted beach, with hardly any furniture and a big outside deck. We couldn’t see the ocean because of a large sand dune, but we could hear it, and best of all, no one could see us.

  We spent the first twenty-four hours in bed, getting up only for the occasional swim and to make cups of tea and plates of fruit. We slept all wrapped up in each other and waking up with him, that first morning, to see his eyes already open and gazing into mine, was as perfect as I had always dreamed it would be. It turned out he spent a lot of the night downstairs reading – unable to sleep – but he always made sure he was back in bed with me when I woke up.

  After that we settled down like any loved-up couple on holiday – going for walks, swimming, reading, listening to music, going into town for fish and chips and just sitting together on the deck as darkness fell. On our second night, we saw a shooting star.

  On the third day it poured with rain and we spent the entire afternoon in a funky old pub called The Railway, drinking beer and watching dog racing on the television. We got really pissed.

  ‘You are a terrible influence on me,’ said James, weaving back with our fifth round of drinks and giving me a beery kiss.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said happily, holding up my glass to clink with his.

  ‘The terrible thing is,’ he said, ‘I love being corrupted.’

  ‘Cheers,’ I said.

  ‘Up yer bum,’ said James.

  The next day we both felt a little fragile and James announced that he was going to make a ‘healing meal’, as he called it. He disappeared off to town and I curled up with my needlepoint anticipating a large plate of bacon and eggs, washed down with Coca Cola. But he came back with bags of ingredients I had never ever seen before, all from the wholefood store.

  It was macrobiotic food, he explained as he put it on the table and I was distressed to see that, despite promising smells while he’d been cooking, there wasn’t a fried ingredient among it. There was steamed brown rice, grated mooli radish, weird yellow pickles, steamed greens with toasted sesame seeds and steamed tofu in a light soya sauce, with grated ginger, and bowls of strange brown miso soup on the side. When I looked down at my soup it seemed to be moving on its own. Weird stuff.

  I’d never eaten anything like it before – I’d never really got to grips with sushi even – but apart from some really revolting things called umeboshi plums, which were salted, it was delicious. I was amazed.

  The only problem was that he had laid the table with chopsticks and I was hopeless with them. I watched him pick a tiny piece of spring onion from the top of his rice and put it into his mouth in one delicate gesture. It was all I could do to balance a piece of tofu on my sticks and lift it gingerly to my mouth, while he seemed to be able to pick up separate rice grains. Mine just fell all over my lap.

  I saw him notice and his eyes crinkled up with amusement. Without saying anything, he got up and came back with a fork.

  ‘Go on,’ he said, handing it to me. ‘Shovel.’

  I cried when he dropped me off at home – or rather, the usual four doors away – on the Tuesday afternoon. Our time together had been so blissful, I couldn’t bear the thought of going back to what I was beginning to think of as ‘Sydney rules’.

  ‘I’m going to have to get a new washer for your tap,’ he said, wiping my tears away. ‘It’s always dripping.’

  ‘But I’m going to miss you so much,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll miss you too,’ he said. ‘My bed’s going to feel so big and empty, but you know that’s the way it is. I can’t stay with you and you can’t stay with me.’

  ‘Why not?’ I asked like a petulant child.

  ‘You know why not,’ he said. I wasn’t sure I did any more, but he had his no-arguing voice on and I didn’t want to end our beautiful trip on a sour note.

  ‘I’ll tell you what though,’ he said. ‘There’s a pen in the glove box, can you hand it to me?’

  He scribbled something on the back of a petrol receipt.

  ‘Here’s my mobile number,’ he said, handing it to me. ‘So you’ll always be able to find me. It’s the only phone I have, apart from at the gym, of course, and I’ll be back there tomorrow, so you know where to come.’

  ‘And where to work-out,’ I said, determined to keep it sweet, and kissed him goodbye.

  After that we settled back into our bizarre routine, seeing each other four or so times a week at the gym, having sex where and when we could and chatting away behind the desk, but after spending some ‘normal’ time together I didn’t find it enough.

  And it seemed James felt the same way, because a couple of weeks after the Byron trip I arrived to pick Tom up from school and found James already there, talking to him at the gate.

  ‘Mummy,’ said Tom, excitedly, ‘James the kung fu man is here, he’s come to see me.’

  ‘Isn’t that nice?’ I said. ‘Hello, James. How lovely to see you.’ I pecked his cheek and he grinned sheepishly at me.

  ‘Thought I’d come and see how Tom’s kung fu moves are developing,’ he said.

  ‘Mummy,’ said Tom impatiently, clearly convinced that James was his special friend, ‘James says he’ll teach me how to catch a Frisbee. Do you want to come with us?’

  ‘Well, I’d love to come, if James doesn’t mind,’ I said.

  ‘That would be great,’ said James, winking at me. ‘She would be very welcome, wouldn’t she, Tom?’

  But Tom had completely lost interest in me.

  ‘Which is your car?’ he asked, tugging on James’s sleeve, and insisting on riding with him up to Centennial Park. I followed behind, feeling quite misty seeing their two heads – or what I could see of Tom’s – together. I wondered what they were talking about. When we stopped at a red light, I could clearly see James’s smiling profile, as he turned to listen to something Tom was saying and then I saw him throw back his head and laugh.

  We had great fun in the park – Tom even allowed me to join in sometimes – and similar impromptu outdoor outings became a new feature of our lives, as spring moved on towards summer. Although, of course, with James being the man of mystery he was, impromptu was the word – he’d never say when he was going to be there, he’d just turn up at the school gate.

  His justification was that by the very nature of his work he never knew where he was going to be on any particular day and it was better just to turn up, than to make promises and disappoint a child. I couldn’t argue with it, but in between his appearances, Tom drove me – and Percy – insane, asking when James was coming again.

  ‘Between the two of you,’ said Percy, one night, when Tom had been particularly insistent with his enquiries, ‘I am beginning to wish I had never heard the name James. It’s James this, James that, James thinks, James says, James does, James eats, James poops. I’d say you both had a bad case of mentionitis.’

  It must have been the success of the Tom outings that inspired it, because one night at the gym James amazed me by asking if I would like to go out with him and some of his friends one evening. I was gobsmacked. Two major revelations at once – going out and meeting friends.

  ‘What brought this attack of normality on?’ I asked him.

  He shrugged.

  ‘We had such a good time up at Byron and I really enjoy hanging out with you and Tom, so I just thought we should give life outside Muscle City another go. It didn’t work at your place, but maybe it will work in my world.’

  Being a very stupid girl, once again my first reaction was to obsess about what to wear. I had no idea where we were going and didn’t know whether to wear jeans or a cocktail dress. In the end I rang his mobile from the shop, while Dee was out getting us some sandwiches.

  ‘James,’ I said, nervously.

  ‘That’s me.’

  ‘You know tonight?’

  ‘Would that be tonight when I am picking you up from home at 7.30 and we’re going out to play some pool?’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. So that’s what we were doing. I sti
ll didn’t have a clue what to wear. I’d never played pool in my life. All I knew about it was from Paul Newman in The Hustler.

  ‘What about it?’ said James, sounding amused.

  ‘Oh nothing, I just wondered what we were doing …’

  ‘Were you wondering what to wear by any chance?’

  ‘No,’ I said, feeling stupid. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Wear anything, we’re only going to a bar. You won’t need your tiara.’

  As I rang off, I wondered whether he knew I actually had one.

  Endeavouring to get into the laid-back cool scene I imagined we were going into – and with Percy’s encouragement – I wore a low slung jeans skirt and a T-shirt Percy had given me as a jokey apology present for the disastrous family supper. It had ‘Rich Bitch’ written on it in rhinestones.

  As part of his ongoing efforts to make me dress in a more up to date ‘edgy urban’ way – in other words, the way he dressed now – Percy insisted on ‘customizing’ my outfit. This consisted of cutting the sleeves off the T-shirt and hacking about six inches off the bottom of it, trimming the hem of the skirt and pulling the loose threads, so it went all frayed.

  He said he was ‘styling’ me.

  I was lying in the bath while he was busying around with my sewing basket and I could hear him humming happily to the song he had put on the stereo. The unmistakable strains of ‘Mad About the Boy’ came floating in to me. I sang along too.

  Also on Percy’s instructions I put some kind of gunk in my hair while it was still wet, to make it go all tousled and rough-looking. It worked, but I hardly recognized myself – it made my hair look almost black. The savagely-cropped T-shirt kept riding up to show my tummy and I felt really self-conscious about the whole rig-out, but Percy was delighted with the effect.

  ‘Ooh, marvellous,’ he said, when I came downstairs, tugging at the bottom of the T-shirt. ‘You should get that tummy button of yours pierced, you know. Draw attention to your abdomen, now it’s lovely and flat. You could have a tattoo round your ankle too.’