by Tamar Cohen
Of course, the Ideal Frock kept changing. One day it’d be a narrow shift in some kind of ivory color, as a nod to traditionalism, and the next it would be a wildly unconventional ruffled Spanish flamenco-style number. I’d imagine your face as you watched me approaching, suitably awestruck and misty-eyed, with that “what a lucky man I am” smile. I’d imagine the oohs and aahs of the assembled guests (although not the children, I could never imagine either set of children there, and certainly not oohing and aahing). Can you believe I used to do that? It seems so unreal now, but that’s how secure I felt. Silleeeee Salleeeee.
And now it’s Susan who’s buying the frock (“it cost nearly five hundred pounds. Don’t tell Clive, will you?” Isn’t that sweeeeet?). And it’ll be Susan walking toward you in fuchsia pink (I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade, but I do hope she’s thought that one through. Fuchsia is so unforgiving, don’t you think?). And when your eyes mist up, it’ll be for Susan, and when you smile the “lucky man” smile, it will be because of Susan, and your children will sit in the front row and alternately laugh and cry, and everyone will agree that it’s incredible that you’ve been married for over a quarter of a century, and what a fucking inspiration you are to the rest of us.
And I will be nowhere.
Nothing.
Niente.
Void.
* * *
Sorry, I’m digressing. As I said, I thought Susan was rather tense when we met up. Do you think it could be the dieting? I worry that she might be overdoing it.
It’s funny but when she walked through the Starbucks door, I actually thought for a mad moment that you might be behind her, strolling out to get a break from your box room study. But then I remembered about the email, and the despising yourself bit, and the middle-of-the-night keening, and the fact that I was blocked from your life.
I remembered that you weren’t about to come loping through the Starbucks door, trailing behind Susan, with an apologetic smile on your face. I remembered that you don’t love me anymore.
As Susan made her way across to me, I had a sudden wild impulse to tell her everything. I could picture it so clearly, her saying, “What’s been happening since I last saw you?” and me replying, “Well, apart from fucking your husband, not a lot.” Not that I’d have taken any pleasure in hurting her, I can assure you. I just wanted her to feel some of what I was feeling. It might be a bonding thing, I thought, our shared misery might bring us closer together.
Look at it from my point of view. Here is someone whose life is going absolutely to plan. Long, healthy marriage, impressive healthy children, grandchild on the way, house, career, money, friends, travel. What could someone like that ever find in common with someone like me? And yet, I badly wanted me and Susan to be friends. I like Susan, I always have. For once I wanted it to be her weeping into her skinny latte (oh, that miserable diet) and me commiserating with her, the same way she so often commiserates with me. I wanted us to be able to support each other. I wanted her to know her life wasn’t really so perfect and that she and I shared more than she could possibly know. I wanted her to come to me for comfort. I wanted to be part of her life. I wanted to help.
Oh, don’t worry, Clive. I can just picture your face. Do you know that when you frown, the bottom half of your face goes slack and you look every one of your forty-nine years? You’ve got to stop doing that. Lighten up a little.
Of course I didn’t really say anything of the sort. Even I could see how self-destructive that would be. I’d be cast out into the cold, no prospect of ever creeping back into your affections, or even of getting the crumbs from your family table. No chance of being the ghost at your banquet, the gatecrasher at your feasts. No chats with the Sacred Vessel, no banter with Liam. Outcast. Uninvited. Banished.
Blocked.
Instead, we sat and chatted about the big party (Susan tells me she’s making all the canapés herself! She is a marvel, isn’t she? So capable. So creative. You must be so proud). We talked a little bit about Emily, although Susan didn’t seem to want to be drawn out very much. I do hope everything is all right between those two. A girl needs her mother at a time like this. And of course, we talked a little bit about you.
“Clive has been quite stressed recently,” she told me. “He’s been terribly quiet, for him.”
Then she told me something quite interesting. She said there had been an occasion, the week before last, when you were supposedly working at home and had locked yourself away in the box room all day. She’d had a day off and had spent most of it pottering around the garden, enjoying the watery early-summer sun (oh, how I love these snapshots of domestic life. I feel like I’m almost there with both of you, do you know what I mean?). Looking up, she’d been able to see you through the window of your study, and she’d watched you sitting in your chair staring through the glass without moving. “Every time I looked up, he was in the same position,” she told me. She said you’d still been there when she looked in on you to say good night, but she’d woken up just after midnight when you finally came to bed. You’d come around to her side of that big old bed, and you’d crouched down so that your face was practically level with hers. “I don’t deserve you,” you’d told her. “I’m a stupid old fool and I don’t deserve you.”
Of course when Susan was telling the story it was loads funnier than that. I can’t remember the exact phrasing she used, but you know Susan, every story has to have a comic element. Does that ever get on your nerves, by the way? Her insistence on always playing for laughs? Not that it bothers me. Not at all. I need all the laughs I can get, to be honest. It’s just that I wondered whether it might start to grate if you had to live with it all the time.
Even so, I could tell that she was quite touched by that bit when you were crouching by the bed. She said she didn’t think she’d ever seen you look quite so sincere.
You’ll probably think I’m being paranoid, but there was something in the way she told me that story that made me wonder whether she was saying it because it was an interesting story, or for some other, less fathomable reason. I suddenly remembered telling her about the Affair Diary piece. Not that she’d ever have recognized either of us from that, of course, but might she have felt that I was trying to imply something, I wonder? Might she, by relating this rather intimate moment, be mounting some sort of a defense?
I tried to push her a bit more by making a joke about how the hysterical bonding must be doing a lot to help her diet. I have to admit, it was hard to bring myself to say that. It’s not something I like to dwell too much on, particularly since our recent night in the hotel. Do you remember how you’d always insist that you and Susan never had sex anymore? I’d say, “Oh, all married men say that. It’s in the Married Man’s Affair Handbook, didn’t you know?”
“Yes, but in this case it happens to be true,” you’d say, giving your famous wry smile. “Believe me, I’d far rather be the ‘having my cake and eating it too’ variety of cheating husband, but I’m stupidly old-fashioned. I’m so much in love with you, I can’t even contemplate making love to Susan. It wouldn’t be fair to any of us.”
“Have you and Clive always had an active sex life?” I asked Susan now, pushing an intimacy that, to be honest, hadn’t yet been much in evidence as we sat in the leather Starbucks sofa.
“Oh God yes.” She was almost dismissive about it, and for a moment I wanted to lean across and grab one of her stupid white wisps of hair and wrap it around my hand and yank as hard as I could, pulling out clumps and clumps of it, until they lay on the floor like Singapore noodles.
“Even during that really awful patch when I’d convinced myself there was someone else, the one thing that stopped me making a complete twat out of myself by accusing him of all sorts of groundless stuff was the knowledge that the sex part of things was actually the least of our worries.”
You know, just when I think I can’t be shocked anymore, something comes along and knocks the breath clean out of me.
Why
should I have been surprised? You lied about everything else, why shouldn’t you lie about that too? And yet I didn’t want to believe it, couldn’t believe it.
“You’re not looking so hot,” Susan told me. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
I told her I’d been getting headaches from the Citalopram withdrawal. And nausea, and dizziness.
“You need to look after yourself a little more.” Susan was all concern now, safely into her comfort zone. “We’re all a bit worried about you.”
I didn’t ask her about that “we.” The word hung in the air like a corpulent fly.
“Don’t be silly.” I told her. “I’m absolutely fine. In fact I was going to see if you and Emily and Clive wanted to come over for dinner.”
Until the words were out of my mouth I’d had no idea I was actually going to say them. But once I had, I cheered right up. I imagined Susan would probably force you to come, so you’d have to do some major wheeling and dealing to get out of it. You might have to fake a working trip abroad. It would seriously put you out. The thought gave me a sudden stab of intense pleasure.
Susan, however, seemed less than enthusiastic.
“The thing is,” she started (you always know, don’t you, that when someone starts a reply with “the thing is,” you’re not going to like what they say. Jamie has already started doing it—“the thing is... you’re wrong” is what he invariably means), “it’s so near to the vows day, that I’m flat out busy. There are all the flowers to sort out and all sorts of great-aunts and distant cousins once removed to deal with. I don’t think we’re going to really have time. Also...”
Susan trailed into a slight pause after she said that word “also,” and she looked at me as though weighing something up, before carrying on... “please don’t take this the wrong way, Sally, but I can’t help feeling you’re getting a little bit, well, involved in my family.”
She glanced away quickly when she said that, not really as if she was embarrassed but more like she was giving me a moment’s privacy to digest what she’d said. She’s very good like that, isn’t she? Very diplomatic.
“I can’t help feeling,” continued Susan, “that you’re so worried about your own family’s stability that you’re sort of taking refuge in mine. Do you know what I mean?”
I must have given her the impression that indeed I didn’t know what she meant, because she went on hastily. “Please don’t think I’m bothered about it from my point of view, although I have to say I think Clive was a bit freaked out when Liam mentioned you’d been in to see him. It’s just that I feel you ought to be directing your energies at your own family. You have such great children—I’m sure they’d love to have a bit more of your time.”
Do you know, now I’ve written that down, I can see it’s what psychologists call a “good news sandwich.” Daniel learned about it in his teacher-training course. When you have any kind of criticism to deliver, you sandwich it in between two positive comments, so that the person hardly has time to register it before getting hit with the sweetener afterward. It’s very clever, isn’t it? Has Susan ever had any kind of psychological training, I wonder. She’d make a wonderful counselor, although perhaps her rather grating Aussie voice might put a few people off. And sometimes that famous bluntness can on occasion seem a little bit well, insensitive. Not to me, of course. I really appreciate Susan’s honesty. It’s a marvelous quality. It’s just that not everyone I’ve spoken to feels quite the same way.
To be honest, I didn’t really know what to say once Susan had said that. You’re going to think I’m paranoid, but it almost sounded as if Susan was warning me off. Yes, I know I’m overreacting but I was just a little bit hurt.
“I just thought we were friends, that’s all,” I said.
Susan’s blue eyes looked a little stricken when I said that.
“Of course we’re friends, dear. We’ve known you and Daniel for years and the four of us have always gotten along very well, haven’t we? Clive and I can’t wait to have you over for the party. It’s only because I care that I can’t help worrying about you both, and feeling like you should be focusing a little more on your family.”
She didn’t actually add “and less on mine,” but she didn’t need to. The unspoken phrase hovered tauntingly in the air.
“Anyway,” she went on. “Clive and I are flying over to Maui for a week immediately after the ceremony, just to get a bit of down time, a sort of second honeymoon. One of our friends is lending us a ridiculously over-the-top villa there as a second wedding present. But when we get back we’ll have tons more time, and maybe we could all get together then. We don’t see enough of Daniel these days.”
Can ever a speech have been more barbed? At the mention of the second honeymoon, my guts had started doing something very unpleasant—since coming off the happy pills, they’ve been playing up rather a lot. Something ugly came up into my mouth and I swallowed it back down with a mouthful of tepid coffee.
“I’m really sorry,” I said. “I’m not feeling too well.”
Susan was immediately concerned, feeling my forehead with a motherly hand.
“I hope it isn’t because of anything I said. I’ve only got your best interests at heart.”
If it hadn’t been for the fear that if I opened my mouth, I’d vomit all over the Starbucks shabby-chic battered leather sofa, I’d have smiled at that one. Well, you couldn’t not smile, could you? You and Susan, both with my best interests at heart. I’m a lucky woman, I really am. Between the two of you, you’ve wrecked my life, pulling at it in a tug-of-war until it ripped right down the middle like a cheap, worn sheet. But you have only my best interests at heart. Forgive me if I don’t altogether believe you. Forgive me if I don’t fall on my knees in gratitude at your largesse. Forgive me if I say I want to take my best interests and cram them down your throats until you choke on them. You and Susan and Emily and Liam—the elite club I’m not allowed to join, just to watch from the outside with my nose pressed up against the glass.
You promised me something else. You promised me another life. I’m not after anything I’m not entitled to. I just want what was promised to me.
Is there something wrong with that?
So I missed the parents’ evening. I know it’s not a great thing to have done, but it happens to lots of busy parents. I don’t think there’s any need for everyone to make quite such a big thing about it.
Tilly is definitely hormonal. Everything is a crisis with her at the moment. I wonder if I should arrange for her to see Helen for some coping strategies. She might really find it useful.
It’s not as if I set out to miss the fucking parents’ evening. I was just a little bit upset about seeing Susan earlier in the day, and it went clean out of my mind. I’d been wandering around the West End, buying random things in Top Shop, even though all the clothes in there were clearly meant for people thirty years younger. To be honest, I presumed Daniel would have gone to the school anyway. I keep forgetting about this “training” which seems to absolve him of responsibility for any kind of parenting these days.
“We agreed, you’d take over that sort of stuff,” he raged at me after he’d arrived home at 7 to find a tearful Tilly, sobbing in her bedroom, writing “I hate my mum” updates on Facebook.
“It’s not like you have anything better to do, is it? When was the last time you did any paid work?”
“I’m working all the time,” I lied. “I never leave my computer.”
Daniel looked unimpressed.
“Then how come we never seem to have any money? How much is left in the joint account after you paid the mortgage this month?”
I have to confess I was a bit vague. Not because I was fudging the issue, but because it’s been so long since I actually checked the balance. And of course Daniel wouldn’t have checked it himself; he has always been more than happy to leave that side of things to me.
“If you’re so worried about money, why don’t you contribute a bit,” I threw at
him.
Daniel looked furious, and to be fair, I could see why. We did actually go through all this when he decided to retrain as a teacher; it’s just that I hadn’t really taken in all the implications then. I’d been so wrapped up in the fantasy of you and me that nothing else had actually seemed real. And in the back of my mind, I’d assumed that by the time the training was under way, I’d be gone, whisked off to my new life where paying the mortgage didn’t feature.
“I suggest you go and talk to your daughter.” He had a weird expression on his face when he said that, as if I was someone he didn’t completely recognize, but instinctively knew he didn’t like.
Tilly was unforgiving, of course, hermetically sealed off in her hormonal airtight bag. She’s going through that unfortunate phase kids reach at thirteen or fourteen where their hitherto dainty features broaden out and coarsen, noses becoming bulbous, skin spotty. She wears her slightly greasy hair across her face like a burka.
Her self-righteous fury rendered her momentarily dumb when I walked into her room. Looking around the walls at all the new posters she’d put up, it occurred to me that I hadn’t actually been in Tilly’s room for quite some time. When did she stop liking boy singers who looked like babies and start liking bands with leather jackets and scowls?
“Who’s that?” I asked her, pointing at one of the posters on the wall.
She turned the full force of her withering gaze onto me. “Like you care!” she said at last.
I told her I was sorry about the parents’ evening. I told her I had a lot of things on my mind. To be honest, I was hoping that by taking her into my confidence a bit I might get a little bit of sympathy. I’d forgotten that teenagers don’t develop the sympathy gene until much later on, if at all.