by Matt Wilven
“I’m sorry,” I start. “I should have handled things better.”
“Please, don’t launch into a big thing.”
“But we need to talk.”
“Shall I sum up what you’re about to say and save us both a couple of hours?” she says. I shrug, half prompting her. “Okay. It goes like this – I was wrong. But I was also right. I’m sorry I was right. But I was right. I’m really sorry being right upset you. You were right too. And no less right than me. In some ways, everybody’s always right. Isn’t life confusing? Have you forgiven me yet?”
“Be fair.”
“That’s your standard apology.”
“I hate it when you do that.”
“What?”
“Mock me for trying to be honest.”
“You always want to talk but it doesn’t change anything.”
“I think it helps, even if you just sit there parodying me. It’s getting something out there.”
“It doesn’t help me.”
“We’ve barely spoken for months.”
“We didn’t need to. We needed time… You know, I thought we might be able to have one drink where we weren’t weighed down by things we need to get through. You know? Something light.”
“I’m sorry. I want that too.”
She looks away from me, out the window.
“Too late,” she says.
“I guess…”
“I don’t think we can be good parents. We’re too messed up, too self-involved.”
“So? I hate good parents. Good parents make me want to kick children in the face.”
She smirks.
“I think we might function better apart.”
“No.”
“I’m afraid that I might not love you anymore.”
She looks at me for a moment, and then down at the table. Her hand passes over her stomach and she frowns.
“When it kicks it always feels so far away.”
“Come home with me, Lyd.”
“I’m not coming home.”
“We can make it right together.”
“No. We can’t.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t pull that face. I’m just being honest.”
“At least come back to the house. I can sleep on the couch, stay at Jamal’s; whatever you need. Surely your parents give you less space than I could?”
“I still need time away from the house.”
She puts both hands on her stomach now. There is a note of melancholy in her eyes, as though her hands are ears that hear nothing.
“If you need time, you need time,” I say.
“I do.”
“What are we facing here? Do you think we’ll ever be together again?”
“I’m sorry, Vince. I can’t answer that.”
“Why not?”
“Because the answer is no…”
She looks at me apologetically.
“I’m hoping the answer is going to change,” she says.
“But I’m out of the woods. I’m better. I’ve been working, focused. My book’s finished…”
At the mention of my writing Lyd looks at her watch.
“I better get back. Peter’s coming to pick me up.”
“No. Wait. Can we talk more? I want to spend time with you. We can make it light.”
“No, we can’t, Vince. That’s the problem… I’ve got to go.”
“Why is Peter picking you up?”
“He’s going to take me back to Mum and Dad’s, have a meal with us. I got the train this morning.”
“Let me walk you to the car.”
“No. You don’t have to. You’re closer to home here.”
“I want to.”
“Fine. You can walk me to my brother’s car.”
We leave the coffee shop.
Lyd wraps her elbow around mine, cautiously, as though testing for feelings. At one point she rests her temple on my shoulder and grabs my arm with her other hand – still placid, still wondering. My left side fizzes with nervous pleasure. My manner becomes more stiff and cautious because I’m trying to avoid the inevitable moment when I say the wrong thing or act the wrong way and lose her fragile affections. This anxiety is immediately intuited by Lyd and she lets go, walking with her eyes fixedly ahead. The last thirty metres was a tactile indulgence that we are now supposed to pretend didn’t happen.
Peter is already waiting in the antenatal centre’s small car park, sitting in his two-seater Audi. He gets out of his car when he sees us.
“They all came out five minutes ago.”
“Sorry,” says Lyd.
“Hi, Peter.”
He nods at me, half able to reveal his contempt for my existence now that he thinks his sister might be leaving me.
“Where’ve you been?” he asks.
“We went for a hot drink,” says Lyd. “It was horrible in there.”
“We should get going or we’ll hit the traffic on the way out.”
“I forgot to book my appointment with the midwife. Sorry. I won’t be a minute.”
Lyd walks back towards the entrance. I’m left standing with Peter. He sniffs every couple of seconds. The comedowns from the cocaine and benzodiazepines are beginning to make his eyes sink and withdraw. He’s not too far away from the point where I’ll have to object to Lyd getting in a car with him. For now he’s a highly functioning addict but he’s definitely treading the border between overconfidence and self-annihilation.
“What happened with you and Gloria in the end?” I ask him.
(I know that it didn’t work out but I can’t help myself.)
“Gloria?” he says, mockingly. “I haven’t thought about her in months.”
“No?”
“On to pastures new.”
“You seemed pretty set on her last time I saw you.”
A flicker of hatred crosses his eyes. He wants to destroy me for having seen him in a state of weakness. He needs everybody to believe that he is strong.
“I should have known better than to get involved with any of your people,” he says.
“My people?”
“She’d rather scream at a gambling addict than have something good in her life.”
“I hear coke-heads make much better partners.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know adultery isn’t the best foundation for a relationship,” I say, “especially with your sister’s friend… I’m sorry you got hurt though.”
“She did me a favour.”
“Why’s that?”
“She reminded me how duplicitous women truly are.”
I turn away from him with a smile of disbelief.
“You should be grateful you felt something,” I say. “I didn’t even know you had feelings.”
“You talk like a teenage girl. It annoys me that you can even annoy me. If it wasn’t for…”
“What?”
He squares up to me and glances at the entrance to the building.
“You know, don’t you? That you don’t deserve Lydia?”
He takes a breath, leaning back, and claps his hands in front of my face. I try but don’t wholly manage to restrain a flinch.
“She always went for the fuck-ups,” he continues, pivoting away from me. “You just happened to be the fuck-up who got her pregnant.”
“You have no idea what me and Lyd have been through,” I say, my spine trembling slightly, my bladder tightening.
He steps back towards me.
“We’re not talking about Charlie here, Vince. Don’t hide behind that. We’re talking about you being a waste of space. Why don’t you just piss off out of that house and leave her to get on with her life?”
His expression is desolate. My heart is beating fast. There are no words in my head. I feel inferior, undeserving of his sister’s love.
Lyd reappears in the doorway.
Peter finds instant resolve and smiles for her. I take a deep breath. For the first tim
e, I see a kind of moral strength and integrity in Peter. He might be a sociopath, but he also loves his sister.
“You two look very serious,” she says.
“We’ve just been having a chat,” says Peter.
“I hope it wasn’t about me?”
“It wasn’t about you,” I say.
“We were talking about his future.”
Lyd shrugs her shoulders.
“I think you two are really starting to get to grips with each other, aren’t you?”
I smile at her.
“Come on,” says Peter. “Let’s beat that traffic.”
THREE
People used to believe that the gateway to the Otherworld opened for a short while at the end of the harvest season, allowing all the dead souls to pass through. Places were set at tables and food was offered to dead ancestors out of respect and remembrance. Fare was also left outside to keep darker spirits’ mischief and trickery at bay. These ritual offerings gradually became the sweets and chocolates that home owners gave to wandering children dressed as the dead, who, on their reception, announced the option, ‘Trick or treat?’ By this point in time the gateway to the Otherworld had been long presumed closed. Darkness was just empty space. The dead were just dead.
I had to do a lot of preparation to end up looking like Frankenstein’s monster. I have bolts stuck on my neck, grey-green skin, a tattered black jumper and overcoat, black trousers and big black boots. The real work went into adding the latex cap that adds two inches to my forehead and gives me that deformed, receding monster look.
I already had this outfit. Lyd has the Bride of Frankenstein wig with the two white zigzag stripes up the sides. She wears it with a long white nightgown, white face make-up, dark eyes and bandages all up her arms. We’ve been to three Halloween parties together dressed this way and it always seems clear, even when we’re standing apart, that we’re together. Lyd won’t be wearing her Bride of Frankenstein outfit tonight. It’s still in the box at home.
Gloria and Sergio’s house is decorated with fake spiderwebs, expertly cut pumpkins and plastic insects and ghouls. The lights are low. In the front room there’s a projection of a ghost that loiters on the living room wall. Every five minutes or so, it turns into a giant skull with a wide open jaw and a loud scream rips through the room. All the songs are themed. So far we’ve had “Monster Mash”, “I Was a Teenage Werewolf” and “Ghostbusters”. The house is full of people in fancy dress. I don’t know any of them.
Sergio’s friends are all corporate lawyers and efficiency experts, and other jobs that require a psychopathic streak (or, like Sergio, a series of mini – and early – midlife crises). They have mostly come as famous murderers. There’s a lazy guy who’s just hung a plastic chainsaw around his neck and put it over the top of his work suit – a Patrick Bateman cop out (yet uncomfortably convincing). Freddy Krueger, Myra Hindley, Leatherface and a man in a miscellaneous orange jumpsuit are all seemingly talking about their favourite kill and laughing.
Despite Gloria’s profession being similar her friends are a broader mix of people: some university friends, people from an old workplace, others from leisure activities and a few select people from her current job. There’s a tendency toward the sexy in the women – cats, witches and rabbits in tiny skirts and fishnets – and lots of zombies and a couple of vampires amongst the men.
The only two I can’t work out are a couple who have come as Magenta and Riff Raff from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Sexy and psycho, they must be mutual friends of them both.
I can’t see Lyd anywhere.
I’m on my second pumpkin punch (which is surprisingly good – I get the feeling professionals might have done the decorating and put on the spread). It’s served in a white plastic cup in the shape of a skull. Sergio, dressed as Gomez Addams, sees me standing alone and heads towards me. Gloria is dressed as Morticia. They are extremely well-suited to their roles, which are extremely well-suited to hosting a Halloween party at home, so they are both fairly proud of how they look.
“I hate your friends,” I say.
“Me too. Me too,” says Sergio, looking around.
“Who are they?”
“They’re not all completely evil,” he says. “I met Freddy Krueger over there at my gambling group. He’s a sweet, sweet man. He’s been through hell.”
“How come all your buddies came as serial killers?”
“It’s Halloween.”
“I’ve been psychoanalysing the costumes.”
“I’m sure you have. Me too actually. Don’t you think zombies are very working man? You know, powerless sheep stumbling through life until the next payday.”
“The zombies are the only ones I want to talk to.”
“That’s because you’re attracted to depression.”
“You talk such rubbish. Did you invite Jamal?”
“Every year.”
“Has he ever come?”
“Nope.”
“Any sign of Lyd?”
“About that,” he says. “I wanted to tell you in person… I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when—”
“We’ve been through this.”
“I know but I feel like—”
“I told you not to worry about it. You had your own thing going on.”
“I know but… anyway… I don’t think she’s here yet.”
“How are things on the home front?”
“Are you asking or are you being polite?”
“I’m asking.”
“Fucking tough. I messed up big this time.”
“She messed up too though.”
“You only know half of it.”
“Do I want to know?”
“Let’s just say the roulette wheel took a couple of Porsches out the bank on either side of Mitsu. And staying in hotels for three months wasn’t cheap either.”
“Shit.”
“She screwed around. I screwed around. Lust is a tricky bastard. Everyone knows that. When things get rough it’s easy to mess things up that way. The gambling though. That’s separate. I promised her I’d never do that to us again. The trust is gone.”
“Totally gone?”
“Not like when I lost the house, but bad.”
“What happened to Mitsu?”
“The less you know about Mitsu the better.”
“Fair enough. Does Lyd know that it was Peter yet?”
Sergio grimaces.
“Yeah. She’s had it out with Gloria already. You wouldn’t know to look at them. Hey, hey, hey, look who it is.”
I turn my head. Gloria is walking Lyd through to the kitchen. Lyd is wearing a nineteenth-century gothic black dress with test tubes in a utility belt. It has long sleeves and a high neck. Her bump looks huge in it. Leatherface and Patrick Bateman leer over Gloria’s cleavage as they pass.
“I shouldn’t have come as Frankenstein’s monster,” I say. “I should have come as Venkman or something. I don’t want her to see me like this.”
“Frankenstein’s your thing,” says Sergio. “It’s literary.”
“No. It’s our thing. She’s supposed to be the Bride, remember? It’s cinematic. Halloweeny. I’m going to have to change. Have you got a white sheet or something?”
“Vince, take a breath. She wouldn’t have come if she didn’t want to talk to you. I thought things were getting better? You were making progress?”
“What does she expect me to say? Last time I saw her she said all this weird stuff about us being better off alone. Since then we’ve just been talking rubbish on the phone, trying to prove I can make things feel light again.”
“As far as I’m concerned, her coming all this way can only be a good sign. This could be the first night you get to take her home again.”
“You think?”
“Definitely. Why else would she travel fifty odd miles or whatever it is to come to some lame Halloween party? You think she wants to stay in Peckham with her sister when yours is just down the road?”
<
br /> “I’m so embarrassed. I should have got a new costume.”
He takes me by the shoulders.
“Vince. Forget about the costume. She doesn’t care about the costume. She’s pregnant with your child.”
“You’re right. You’re right.”
“Take a deep breath and down the rest of that punch.”
I do what he says.
“Now, go get her.”
“If this goes wrong I’m going to be Cousin It next year, living in your basement.”
“That’s it. Summon up some of that famous Watergate positivity.”
He slaps me on the back as I walk towards the kitchen. Seeing me approach, Gloria stops talking and fixes her eyes on me until Lyd turns her head. They stare at me with bad smells in their noses.
When I get to where they’re standing, before I speak, Gloria rests her hand on Lyd’s shoulder sympathetically. Lyd turns to her, forces a smile and nods. Gloria gives her shoulder a little squeeze and walks by me with a blank face.
“Who are you?” I ask. “I mean, what’s your costume?”
“Marie Curie,” she says.
I shrug.
“The first woman to win a Nobel prize?”
“Sorry,” I say, apologising for my ignorance.
I look at her large bump sticking out, our child.
“I see you’re the monster again…”
I smile awkwardly. Lyd replies with a twitch of her right cheek. It’s supposed to be a polite flash of a smile but it doesn’t make an impression on her lips.
“So,” she says, almost a question.
“Lame party.”
“Yep.”
Riff Raff and Magenta have come into the kitchen and are showing off their creepy sibling lovers’ handshake to a pirate and a vampire. I watch them and wonder what to say. Lyd runs her right hand across her stomach. Magenta is beginning to perform the opening dialogue to the “Time Warp”. Riff Raff joins in. I have to look away.
“How’s work?” I ask.
“There’s never a dull moment below the Planck length.”
“The plank what?”
“Never mind.”
My mobile phone vibrates in my pocket. Quickly glancing at the screen I see that it’s my mum calling. I think about all the possible inanities that I could ignore but none of them cover this time on Halloween night. I walk a couple of steps away and answer.