by Pat Rosier
“Yay!” was Evelyn's response. “Money, no ties, go anywhere, do anything. You go, girl.”
Ann tries to be excited, but really, she feels bereft, floating too loose, crossing a swing bridge without a rail. She doesn't feel adventurous, she feels lost, like James James Morrison Morrison’s mother.
“What would you do? Where would you go?” Ann badly wants to know.
Evelyn shrugs. “Chance would be a fine thing,” is all she will say.
Chapter 5
On the train to Washington DC, Ann hides behind a copy of the New York Times and weeps for her lost life. Rain blurs the factories and back yards rushing past, as well as the waters of Chesapeake Bay, where Evelyn had told her to look out for egrets. Stations flash past too quickly to reveal their names. Ann takes no notice of the other travelers.
Life as she knew it has vanished behind her at the speed of this train, although the train has what she lacks—a destination. The timetable of her life fades out at nowhere. Being healthy, affluent and (probably) employable, unlike the majority of single women in the world, makes for more guilt than consolation.
She might have made more of her life if she had followed her interest into art history, or taken up a more modern era of English literature than her Romantics, or become a curator, or a writer, maybe a poet. No, not a poet. She could have lived overseas, had another sort of life altogether. Or had children. But when Ex had raised the idea of them having a child together she’d refused to even consider it. “There are enough children in the world,” she remembers saying.
She can barely picture Ex, barely remember loving her. She’s angry, humiliated, resentful, not grief-stricken. How would she have felt if Ex had died? Silly thought, Ex hasn’t died. Where has she gone, though? Where in Ann’s mind, feelings, thoughts is she now, that woman who was the centre of her life for all those years? Is this what betrayal does, expunge someone from your whole being? The tears flow. Ann wallows. Will she live with her parents, care for them as they age, like a good daughter, become a teacher of English to immigrants and refugees? Her gut clenches at the thought of it. Boring, says a voice inside, deadening, domestic, that's why you wouldn't take Ex seriously when she wanted to have a baby. Omigod, what if Ex and Julie have a baby? Julie is probably still young enough. At this moment Ann doesn't care. What if they have a baby and bring it up in her house? She still won't care. The house has gone, the house she always said was her ideal home, the one she'd be carried out of in a box. Her dream house gone and she doesn't care. Mary Shelley wrote it:
While on past joys I vainly brood
And shrink in tears from coming years.
She wakes with a jolt as the train pulls into Union Station. Making her way along the platform, looking for signs to an information desk, she sees a large woman approaching another female passenger on her own, saying, “Are you from New Zealand? Ann Williams?” Ann waves and points to herself.
“I’m Diana,” she shakes Ann’s hand vigorously. Brushing off Ann’s thanks for being met, she leads the way to her car, which is in the largest car park Ann has ever encountered. Her job, she says, involves assessing corporate claims for an insurance company. “Liars, all liars”, she adds, and hoots with laughter. She also seems to believe she is indispensable to the company. The self-belief appeals to Ann.
Her father's cousin Diana is warm in a “have a nice day” American way, but not particularly interested in Ann, or in hearing about her cousin, whom she remembers as a gawky pre-teen with spots, the year Diana and her family left New Zealand. No, she has never been back, and jettisons the country in four words: “Too far, too small.” Ann feels personally dismissed and surprisingly defensive of the home she criticises more often than not.
Diana lives in Bethesda, and doesn’t know about the fountain of the same name in New York’s Central Park; she hates New York, never goes there. Her husband, Daniel, is away moving and shaking for an oil company in Brazil. He is away a lot. Diana likes to sleep in her own bed and never goes with him these days. Ann must make herself at home. Stay as long as she likes. No, don't be ridiculous, she doesn’t need any money from her. It’s a brisk 15 minute walk to the Metro, which is generally clean and safe, and more or less reliable. There’s a bus, but Diana has forgotten to find out about that, it will be on the internet.
“You'll need boots, it's going to be cold and wet but probably too early for snow.” Diana admires Ann's lined rain jacket from Kathmandu, “It could be a foot or two longer for Washington, but it's only November so you should be fine.” She speaks differently from Evelyn, with a marked American accent but longer vowels, softer timbre. Ann is used to it already. Her firm, Diana says, has been in a state of flux since Obama was elected, even though that was a year ago. It’s impossible to tell from her tone whether she supports Obama or not, and Ann doesn’t ask.
Having relayed instructions on how to use the phone, get onto the internet and use various pieces of domestic equipment such as the washing machine and the coffee maker, Diana goes off to her office somewhere in the house, will be going out to an appointment in an hour or so, and is sure Ann will manage just fine. So is Ann. The style of the house is familiar; a large bungalow on its own section, similar to others in the quiet street. It is, though, bigger in every way than houses at home, as if someone has breathed a lot of expanding air into it.
She doesn't go out at all the next day, washing and drying a load of clothes, sorting her travel papers, checking out Washington Online for what's on at the galleries, planning days at the Smithsonian, watching some CNN news and worrying about climate change. Putting aside her mother’s anxious enquiries about how she is, she emails back her impressions of Diana and the huge amount of food there is in the pantry and the freezer.
Walking the multi-laned streets of this city with a wide river running through it, is like being in a whole other country than New York. Ann rides the bus tour that takes in the White House and Arlington Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial, and all the other iconic places, then works her way along the Mall, in and out of museums and galleries. She barely sees Diana. The house phone never rings in this age of mobiles.
Casually checking her email on her third evening, Ann spots a message in her inbox from Ex. “How are you?” it says in the subject line. She deletes it. Then moves it back to the inbox. Then sits the cursor ready to click it open. Then deletes it again and empties her mail trash and sighs with relief.
After a wallow in the huge bath she lies in the soft guest-room bed, covered with the plumpest duvet she's ever seen—she’s getting used to everything in this house being super-sized—and tries to imagine Ex and Julie in bed together. But Ex bought the house on her own. Still, that doesn't mean …. All she can see is herself and Ex, both naked, in the bed in their house—but it’s vague, amorphous, emotionally vacuous, as though passion, that most un-drifty of states, has drifted off, floated away to engulf someone else. Ann knows they were passionate, can remember the idea of it, could say out loud when and where, but the feeling of it is quite gone. She tosses. And turns. Throws the duvet off, pulls it back over her. Hugs herself. All with the same feeling of impatience. “Go away,” she says out loud, but she doesn't know who she is saying it to.
There is, of course, a television in her room. Health care legislation passed the House that day, by a small margin and compromised by changes made to get it through, says a commentator. Rampant socialism, says a Republican congressman who voted against it. Apparently a Republican voted in favour. It still has to get through the Senate. Ann is thinking how politics at home is simpler than this, when Diana's head appears around the door.
“Come on in, I'm not really watching anything.” There’s a moment's darkness as Ann turns off the television and Diana turns on the light, then sits on the side of the bed. She looks tired, maybe even upset.
“Daniel,” she says, “is in Brazil with his assistant. The one he's sleeping with. Oh, they're there on business, all right, but he called today and he—tha
t means they—are staying on for four days to ‘tie up some loose ends.’ What would you do? My friend Jeannie says I should hop on a plane and surprise him.”
“I ran away,” says Ann. “Well, I did lose my job at the same time, and I ran away, and here I am.”
“Oh. I'm sorry for—should I be sorry?”
Ann shrugs. “I can't even decide if I am. About either. My Dad has sold my share of the house to her, and the rest of my life is an empty slate.”
“Oh. I don't think I can run away. He'll say I should have traveled with him more, but that would have been at the cost of my career, never mind unfamiliar beds. And I like my career.”
“Don't lots of people just put up with it?” Especially here in the US, Ann stops herself from saying, at least in the television shows we see. “You know, have parallel lives, keep up appearances, that sort of thing.” Not that she has ever considered that as an option for herself.
“They surely do. I've had one, you know, an affair that is. Well, two really, but one was only for a week. Pots and kettles and all that. But Daniel's assistant—Jodi—is fifteen years younger than me. And thin, very, very thin.” Diana looks down at her own substantial body. “It's the humiliation I mind. Or the threat of humiliation, if he decides to leave me and have a baby with her. Oh god! Just the thought of it brings me out in goosebumps.”
Ann has no idea what to say. Diana looks at her watch, lies back on an elbow and says, “What's it like in far away Noo Zealand, anyway.” Eleven o'clock must be early for her.
“Kind of the same and also very different.” Ann describes Wellington, its harbour and hills, its variable weather and winds, the way the Beehive (she has to explain that) that houses parliament is practically in one of the main shopping streets and elected members of parliament are expected to live modestly. She talks about a country being small and far away having to box above its weight to make any impression at all and how New Zealanders tend to be proud of doing that. And about how she thinks people in general expect to be able to influence things, have a voice, although the power of multinational business is changing that. And how, to American eyes, New Zealand would seem like a socialist country, but the current government is working to destroy what remains of that. Except for the already-wealthy.
“I'm sending you to sleep.” Diana's struggle to keep her eyes open is obvious.
“Excuse me, it's been a long, hard day.” Diana moves to get up, then plops back down onto the bed.
“Do you understand why Jodi is a humiliation?”
“Oh yes, I understand that. One of the things I ran away from was the humiliation of my friends, and my parents, being so concerned for me, so careful, so fucking supportive!” Ann has surprised herself. “I might even stay away for ever.” Even as she says this she knows it isn't true. “Or not.”
Diana laughs. And laughs. She has a loud laugh. Then she says, “’No-one can make you feel inferior without your consent.’ Eleanor Roosevelt said that.” This time she does get up. “It's been very good talking to you Ann,” she says. “I think I will run away. To right here.” She jabs her finger at the floor, and goes out laughing.
*
Ann is looking at Degas' bronze sculpture of a fourteen-year-old ballet dancer with a faded net skirt. She remembers one just like it from years ago, in London perhaps. Gradually, her shoulders move back, her chest juts forward, her hands clasp behind her, while her chin moves up. Her right leg inches forward, toes pointing out to the side. Young, that’s it, she’s feeling young, ready, ready for the next movement, the dance of the rest of her life.
“Isn't she lovely?” The question, and the nudge on her arm that goes with it, startle her back into herself.
“Yes, yes, she is,” Ann mutters in reply and hurries off without looking at the woman who spoke to her, unaccountably distressed, feeling cheated.
When she gets back to the house there's a man in the kitchen, cooking. He’s tall, thin, balding and wearing a bright blue apron over jeans and a t-shirt. He introduces himself as Daniel and explains himself as home early from a business trip. And Jodi? Of course she doesn't ask. Diana will be home soon, he hopes Ann will join them for drinks and then dinner, he’s cooking his famous risotto. He hopes she eats prawns.
“Oh, I wouldn't want to intrude,” Ann demurs, “you've just got back.”
“I promise you won't be intruding,” he says. “Thirty years married, and we like company.” He’s speaking for Diana and he is jovial. It doesn't look as though he is about to go off and have a baby with thin, young Jodi. Ann can see Diana's car pulling up in the driveway.
“I'll go and freshen up,” she says, “is half an hour all right?”
“Half an hour is just dandy.” He sounds different again from Diana. Californian, she discovers over dinner. The prawn risotto is excellent. Daniel explains, at length, how cooking is his way of relaxing after a stressful trip away and this Brazil sortie had been particularly difficult, not helped by his assistant resigning suddenly. At this, Ann looks at Diana, who raises an eyebrow, just slightly.
The day Ann is leaving Washington both Daniel and Diana have to leave early for work, and in Washington early means before 6am, so they say their goodbyes the night before. Ann gives them two bottles of expensive New Zealand wine she found in a supermarket. They are warm in their farewells and have probably forgotten her as soon as they are out the door. She doesn't mind.
All-day access to the internet has her caught up with friends from home. Some give her news of Ex, others carefully don't. Julie has moved into the house that is now totally owned by Ex. Ann deletes two more emails from her without opening them.
The casually affluent comfort of Diane and Daniel's hospitality has been restful; she isn't even rattled by the slow, three-stage—taxi—metro—another metro—process to the airport that gets her there just in time for her flight to London.
Chapter 6
Joshua barely remembers his first father, who was killed in 1979 in a head-on collision; the driver of the other car, reported to have been drinking whisky all afternoon, died in hospital the next day. Joshua was six, deemed too young to go to the funeral. He has fleeting images of tearful women in the house—his mother, his father’s twin sister Aunty Shirley, two grandmothers—and of being hugged more than he liked. Stony-faced uncles and grandfathers patted him on the head, calling him “lad” or “boy.” Some time later Joe McInstry, took over the name “Dad”. The powers-that-be in charge of Wellington port developments had brought Joe out from Liverpool to design on-site cranes for the new container ships. This new Dad spoke strangely and was jollier than Josh was used to, but he was kind, and had Mum laughing again.
One day, his mother told him Joe’s work at the port was finished and they were all moving with him to England for a new job in Liverpool. Josh was nine. It seemed like an adventure. A kid at school said if he lived in Liverpool he’d be a “scouse” and Josh didn’t know whether to be pleased or offended.
Joe/Dad took him to football matches and he forgot about rugby, but was no better at playing the beautiful game than he had been on the rugby field. He worked on losing his New Zealand accent and followed his inclination into comics and books, barely noticing the births of his two sisters; Tracy soon after they arrived in Liverpool, and Jane a couple of years later.
At sixteen, Joshua felt apart from his very practical family; his father was designing equipment for oil rigs, his mother made and sold dolls’ clothes, his sisters were constantly cutting and pasting and making things, learning to use their mother’s second-best sewing machine. He passed his A-Levels and announced he was going to London and when he’d decided what he wanted to make a career of he’d find the right university course. His mother demurred, briefly. It was 1990. Thanks to a teacher with a librarian sister running a departmental library in the vast University College of London, he had a lowly job, sorting and shelving books in the evenings.
London fitted Joshua like a tailored coat. His family faded into th
e background, gradually becoming a distant blur emitting occasional letters from his mother, where she chatted about the girls, and complained about her health. Her death in 1995 was like the shock-wave of an earthquake happening a long way off. He went to the funeral, didn’t recognise his sisters at first, felt like an outsider, and without his mother’s letters lost touch completely.
London was the centre of the world, why would he live anywhere else? Joshua found friends, flats, a library school, jobs when he needed them, big green parks for when the sun came out, and second-hand bookshops or the National Art Gallery to browse on wet Sundays. He followed the demise of communist governments in Europe in the Guardian, and learnt where places like Cambodia were. Mad, cheap trips to Europe, expanded his language and his experience with alcohol, drugs and women. His friends were young men like him.
After a few years, with a degree in library and information studies and a job in the public library system, he was restless. He didn’t like how much he was drinking, how willing he was to injest illegal drugs, could feel himself diminishing; he needed a purpose. Looking around for chances to work overseas, he came across a Volunteer Service Abroad notice for an evening about working in Vietnam and went along. So did a woman called Chloe. They had a coffee together afterwards and exchanged phone numbers. The next day he managed to put off ringing her until the late afternoon, when he called her work and asked her to have dinner with him. She said she was expected at home, but would he like to join her? It would involve her parents, she warned, she lived with them in Kennington. He would very much like to join her—them—he said.
Chloe met him at Kennington underground station and after a few minutes' walk she stopped in the middle of a row of terraced houses, multi-storied in an older style, built in brick. A woman in a long garment made of tie-dyed muslin was watering plants in the small garden out the front. “Call me Jean,” she said, before Joshua could finish saying,