I remain alone, debating whether I have single-handedly changed Susan’s views on childraising. It seems unlikely. She just wants to avoid conflict by allowing me to make the rules in my own domain. But is there a whiff of tyranny? Am I oppressing the other occupants in the domain? Surely not. It is reasonable to prevent the ruination of a decent couch.
Despite everybody’s best efforts, it is difficult to double the occupants of a living space meant for two, so the third weekend I surprise Jenny by booking us into the Prince George Hotel downtown. It is a grand hotel — after all, I saved two weeks of travelling money in England — and it is glorious to be alone with Jenny. I strut about the substantial room without any clothes on, sampling its wonders one by one. I pull open the drawers, confiscating the envelopes and writing paper. I test the hair dryer and the automatic shaver.
“Look, there’s champagne in the wine box. Let’s have champagne and nuts, Jenny!”
“It’s twice as expensive as in the restaurant.”
“Yes, but we’re celebrating.” We lie on the massive king-sized bed, sipping champagne while I flip through all the channels, relishing the excess because we don’t have cable at home.
After watching Seinfeld (I could watch one Seinfeld after another on different channels all night) we move into the two-person Jacuzzi with the remainder of our champagne. I can see that Jenny feels relaxed and happy. We twist our bodies over the nozzles spouting water, in order to massage various nooks and crannies. Jenny, giggling madly until she closes her eyes and shuts me out, maneuvers her vagina over a nozzle and enjoys several orgasms. She swims over to me and kisses me experimentally.
“Let’s wait till we get out. Hot water depletes my energy.”
“Well, at least turn around and let me have a go at your blackheads. I haven’t done them in ages.”
I groan, and she pushes me over. “Come on, all your pores are nice and open from the heat.”
She goes to work with great intensity, passing her hand around the front of my face to exhibit impressive yields.
“How can you enjoy these macabre physical deeds?”
“Because I love you.”
“Oh rubbish, you do it for the pleasure of extracting the blackhead from its nesting place. The more dramatic the exodus, the happier you are.”
“But I only get pleasure from your back, nobody else’s. One time I persuaded a friend to let me have a go at a huge blackhead on his neck. As soon as I touched him I felt sick. I had to keep going, so he wouldn’t know, but it grossed me out. So you see, I have to love the person to enjoy it.”
I turn around and start to kiss her, and we end up in bed. How glorious to wander from bath to bed without even drying off, because the sheets are sparkling clean and why preserve them?
Later, at dinner, we indulge in an amusement called ‘bite for bite,’ which entails sharing bites of our portions so we can taste everything. Jenny doesn’t like to have large amounts of any one thing, even if it’s delicious, so she orders two or three hors d’oeuvres. I order one appetizer and a main course, so between us we manage to sample a decent chunk of the menu. We spend ages poring over our options, sipping our cocktails — another luxury too infrequently indulged in.
“What about Digby scallops, mussels and a salad to share for starters? That combines quality seafood, quantity seafood, and for variety a salad. At least, I hope they’ll give us a good quantity of mussels, for that price.”
“The potato skins sound good,” I say.
“You don’t eat potato skins in a place like this. You eat fancy food.”
“But listen to the description…‘smothered in bacon and cheese…’”
“Everything has mouth-watering descriptions. It’s that type of restaurant. You can have potato skins in any nasty old pub. Let’s have something nice.”
“You can have mussels in any old pub. Let’s limit it to one fishy thing, a salad and something else. What about lamb brochettes?”
“Escargots?”
“Gross.”
“All right, brochettes.”
I order beef stroganoff for my main course, and pile a little bit of everything on Jenny’s plate, watching with concealed greed to ensure Jenny is equally generous. Then we rate the dishes, scattering merits and demerits. I love this type of conversation. I love the comfort of familiarity, which allows me to close my eyes for as long as I want, in order to savour the taste of a new dish.
“This is the best thing about our relationship, Jenny.”
“What, eating?”
“No, the physical comfort. The ability just to be oneself without any effort. It takes so fucking long to get to that stage with other human beings, if ever. It’s wondrously relaxing to be with you. And I think our physical relationship is special as well. I’m sure other couples don’t lie around for ages picking each other’s blackheads.”
“You said it was macabre.”
“It is, but it still demonstrates the realness of our relationship.”
To prove my point, we spend much of the next day in bed, just lounging in comfort and happiness, with no reason to get up.
As check out time draws nearer I visualize the return home, donning masks for the benefit of Susan. Since she has always disliked me, it seems incredible that she should allow herself to stay in my house for weeks on end. Surely in our present mood of bonhomie, I can risk a comment without fear of destroying our mood?
“Jenny, my sweet, I cannot spend hundreds of dollars every time I want to enjoy the privilege of being alone with my partner. Susan has outstayed her welcome, and she isn’t solving her problems with hubby at our house. She can go back to him, or leave him and get a place of her own, or let your doting parents have a turn putting her up. Either way, don’t you think it’s reasonable to demand an end to this?”
“I appreciate the fact that you haven’t said too much to her. I will get a time line on her stay.”
“Please, not a time line of any length. I think she should be gone by next weekend.”
“I can’t just kick her out.”
“Put the blame on me. Tell her that I need my space and I’m coming to the end of my tether. It’s cheek that she dares to stay in my house for so long. She’s never been pleasant with me on her own territory.” I feel depressed. It’s my fault that Susan has intruded on the spiritual tranquility inspired by this weekend. “She’s got to leave already, Jenny. If you can’t tell her, I will.”
Jenny doesn’t reply.
On Thursday I get home late from work, bearing bags of Chinese take-out because it is my turn to cook.
“Sorry, but I have to continue working after dinner. There’s a deadline tomorrow and as usual the media guys have given me half the visuals at the last moment.”
“No problem. Susan and I will have to watch Pride and Prejudice without you.”
“With Colin Firth? How many times have you seen that thing?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” says Susan.
If Jenny had said it, I would have laughed. But since we came back from the hotel I’ve glimpsed the cat’s claws several times. Is this because Jenny has told her she’ll have to move on next weekend? If so, I can understand her feeling pissed with me and forgive a few scratches. Or is it because she has been here long enough to feel comfortable, and the early restraint is wearing thin?
My scream brings them both running to the study. All the drawers have been emptied on the floor, scrambled with the papers on the desk. The contents of the ashtray have been scattered over the keyboard, and the printer has been drinking coffee.
We look at the mess in silence.
“How the hell did April get in here? And how could she do so much damage without someone stopping her?”
“Gabriel, let’s not get angry. Let’s just try to fix it. I’ll get some paper towel and cleaning stuff. You’ll have to sor
t the papers.”
“I’m not getting angry, Jenny. But this mess must have taken a while. I don’t understand where everybody was while she was doing this.”
By everybody I mean Susan, since Jenny has been at work all day.
“I don’t know.” Jenny looks at Susan, but she says nothing.
Jenny goes out to get the cleaning stuff. I resolve not to speak to Susan, but a low titter spins me around as though I am attached to a thread. She is sitting on the arm of my chair and laughing.
“You think this is funny?”
“I think April is one amazing little girl. She must have snuck in here, quietly, and had a ball.” Uproarious laughter.
I’m not a calm man. I never have been. At this moment I feel such rage I could have kicked her teeth in. But it’s one thing to feel these things, another to do them.
“Get out of this room.”
“Oh lighten up, Gabriel. We’ll clean it up in two shakes. Besides, I’ve noticed you’re not the cleanest person in the world. A little coffee stain on your printer should make you feel right at home.”
There are pinpricks behind my fucking eyes. I am going to do something emotional, like cry for God’s sakes. Better to yell.
“I have a deadline tomorrow, and all my papers are in a mess, you fucking bitch. Since you’re staying in my goddamn home, you might pretend to have some sympathy!”
“It’s not you I have to thank for that, is it? You’d love to see me gone, but you don’t have a choice, do you?”
At that moment Jenny comes in, and Susan puts her arm around her and smiles. I swear I hear the yowl of a cat.
I charge out of the room, but some instinct makes me creep back and stand to one side of the open door, listening.
“Really, Jenny. I don’t want to pry or anything, but you’ve dumped better boyfriends than that one. What on earth do you see in him?”
“Gabriel is a very real person. Straightforward, honest, not a shred of deceit in him. I’m sorry he’s making your stay here difficult, but at least he’s not scheming behind your back. You know exactly what he thinks of you.”
“I’d rather not know, frankly. And who cares about honesty when he’s a smoking gun, all ready to blow up? Personally, I think he’s dangerous. Like father like son.”
I stiffen. How could Jenny tell her awful sister about my father? How could she?
“But not like Madelyn, like Jenny. I won’t put up with any crap. Besides, I prefer our battles to the way that you and Dave interact, tip-toeing around in circles without ever meeting head-on. Avoiding conflict like the plague while you brim with resentment. I prefer Gabriel’s here-I-am-take-me-or-leave-me approach.”
“Until you end up in hospital.”
“Oh don’t be ridiculous, Susan.”
Next Weekend, I think. Next weekend, next weekend next weekend nextweekend nextweekend nextweekend nextweekend nextweekend nextweekend …
Susan and her small House Wrecker are still entrenched the following Saturday. I lie in bed alone and work myself up into a fury. This is my fucking house. It is inexcusable to impose upon me in this way. Jenny is behaving in a weak and pathetic fashion. If we are to have a long-lasting relationship she has to get her priorities right.
She pops in, smiling, with my breakfast on a tray.
“Have you talked to your sister yet?”
The smile wavers. “She’s so depressed, Gabriel. She’s lost her bearings, and it’s hard because she’s always been so sure of herself. She understands it’s a terrible imposition, but she asks for another couple of weeks.”
“No way, no fucking way. Did you see what happened to my office?”
“Stop swearing all the time…”
“Since when have you given a fuck about my swearing…”
“We cleaned your office up.”
“We agreed that she’d be gone by this weekend.”
“I didn’t agree. I said I’d talk to her.”
I stare at Jenny, wondering what she would say if I told her how unpleasant Susan had always been to me. She would doubt me, wondering why I’d never mentioned it before. Or she’d think I was being paranoid, since I’d apparently acquired that label. It would sound so childish: “Susan doesn’t like me. Susan isn’t nice to me.”
“I need a date, an exact departure date, Jenny.”
“Look Gabriel, it’s not like I’m fighting with you and laughing with Susan. I have the same unpleasant conversations with her. I’m the one caught in the middle. Of course I want an exact date too. What do you think, that I like all of us squished in this tiny house with you being so aggressive all the time?”
“I’m being aggressive? When have I been aggressive, for fuck’s sake?”
“You don’t even know you’re being aggressive. That sentence you just said was aggressive.”
“I sprinkle fucks on my language like you sprinkle salt on your potatoes, and it’s never bothered you. It’s Susan telling you I’m aggressive.”
“Now you’re being paranoid. Eat your breakfast before it gets cold.”
I’m not hungry. What a shit feeling. Which is worse, April and her spoiled destructiveness or her feline mother? I can hear April’s yodelling and exclaiming and yapping and crying every second of the day. I encounter wet patches all over the house, and when I don’t encounter them I imagine them. The thick yellow mucus-train chugging out of April’s nostrils is everywhere, underfoot, on the couches, smeared under tabletops.
I cannot wander around my own house freely. The difference between having guests and being alone with Jenny was emphasized at the hotel. Enough is enough. I will speak to Susan myself.
I dress and go downstairs. It is pissing rain, as usual. Our dining room table has been converted into an art studio, draped with a plastic tablecloth and newspapers. April sits at one end, naked, dipping her brush into different colours and smearing them hither and thither. Ten minutes to set up, twenty minutes to clean up, five minutes (max) occupation for two-year-old.
“Hello!” I cry in my falsely jovial fashion. I am determined to be reasonable, cool. Lay out the facts. Enough is enough.
I go to the mantelpiece and grope for my cigarettes. An indispensable aid in keeping cool.
Susan turns to me with a bright smile, even falser than mine. “Do you think we could reserve one room for smoking? Perhaps that small room off the hallway. I’ve been meaning to say something for ages, Gabriel. It’s such a disgusting habit, and it’s so bad for April’s little lungs. I hope you don’t mind?”
I am flummoxed, frozen in mid-thought. Even Susan couldn’t be so stupid as to … unless she’s trying to antagonize me. If so she is succeeding.
“Actually I do mind, Susan. This is my home, and I think I should be allowed to smoke wherever I please, especially since I only smoke about three or four a day. I don’t appreciate being told that a most pleasurable luxury is ‘disgusting,’ and I don’t give a fuck about April’s little lungs. Do we understand each other?”
“Jenny hates you smoking too, or is this just your house, you selfish bully? And you’ll be glad to know that April used the f-word the other day, loudly, in the grocery store.” And with that she pounces on April, who is descending from her chair anyway, decked in all the colours of the rainbow. “Cleanup time!” she chirps cheerily, returning to the ongoing saga of life-is-wonderful-all-adults-are happy, even while she bolts from her husband and threatens her sister’s boyfriend with wrathful heart attacks.
“I have something important to say to you!” my voice pings off the retreating wall of her back. There is nothing so infuriating as reasonable plans thwarted.
I stomp up and down the room in anger, blowing my cigarette smoke vengefully. Jenny makes the huge mistake of presenting me with a cup of tea.
“Did you tell your sister that you dislike my smoking?” I snap, pushing the
tea away. It spills over my hand.
She sets it down. “Calm down Gabriel, before you do something you’ll regret.”
“You tell that fucking bitch to get out of our house before you regret it,” I bawl at her.
“I have talked to her, and I told you that she asked for another couple of weeks. Okay?” Jenny’s voice remains calm. This puts my emotion irrevocably in the wrong, even if I am right. If she experienced the same feelings as me, and yet controlled them, then she might have the right to smirk at my lack of control. But why should a cold fish smirk at a tiger? There is no merit in her frigid restraint.
Still, I struggle to achieve coolness in my voice, even while the blood beats against my eyes.
“No, it’s not okay, Jenny. She has just told me I can’t smoke in my own home and that fucking bale of straw just broke the camel’s back. She has got to leave now.”
“Don’t be ridiculous — one little ‘misdemeanor’ after weeks of exemplary behaviour and you want to crack the whip? Don’t you realize how much she’s tried to accommodate you, creeping around hiding April as much as possible? Remember, this is my house too. I’m sure you’ll survive another couple of weeks.”
“How dare you portray Susan as the accommodating martyr in the ogre’s house! It is I who have been accommodating, allowing a narrow-minded, limited fool to inhabit my house for weeks. I insist you tell her to leave right now, or I will.”
“Don’t push me around, Gabriel. I’m not asking her to leave after you’ve just had an unpleasantness, and neither are you. You won’t even see her for the rest of the day. I’m sure she’ll stay out of your way.”
“She’s taking advantage of us, and I’m supposed to be grateful for her disappearing acts, and the fact she cleans up the outrageous messes of her own kid? I want her out of my house now. Do you understand that?”
“Keep your voice down, she’ll hear you. You’re just being a bully.”
My voice ricochets off the ceiling. “I don’t give a fuck whether she hears me or not!”
As I deteriorate into a bubbling cauldron, Jenny metamorphoses into a prim, self-righteous school marm. “It’s so stupid and immature to use that language…”
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