by S D Monaghan
* * *
Tara leaned against one of the Romanesque pillars. She was grounded with a stage performer’s calm. ‘Really: how do you know?’
‘Skipped going for pints after training because I wanted to come here and soak it all up before the big move. And when I parked outside… Well, there you were, saying goodbye to Ryan in your special way, in our house.’
‘I swear, last night was the only time I was with Ryan. And I don’t intend to be with him again.’
‘You don’t intend to be? Really? Let me clarify the situation, Tara. You will never be with that prick again.’ David took refuge in a cigarette. He withdrew a crumpled packet from his jacket and patted about for a lighter.
Tara’s stomach sank at the thought of her husband smoking again. He was forty. Ten years older than she was. And she wanted him around forever. She watched as he lit up. He did it in the way he’d always done – as if he were in a storm rather than a highly insulated kitchen; hands cupped around the flame, eyes squinting. Dragging the smoke deep into his lungs, he absorbed the kick before evenly releasing it out into the room.
David asked, ‘Why were you with him?’
‘I don’t know. Jesus.’
‘Why Ryan?’
‘What do you want me to say?’
‘I want you to give me precise answers to my questions. If I’m asking, I want to know. Am I being clear enough?’ David gestured at her as if she was driving too slowly in the car in front of him. ‘Did you actually think he would be a... a what? A better man than me? Ryan? Are you really that stupid?’
‘No. You’re the best. The best at everything. It’s just… You turned forty. I’m thirty. We got married six months ago. We built this place. We’re probably going to die here. Don’t you see, David? This is the second half of my life. It began when I walked through that door this morning. I’ve been feeling it for months. And then I get pregnant and—’
‘Yes, Tara. Pregnant! With my child. Jesus – it is my child?’
‘For fuck’s sake, David.’
‘Oh, you’re surprised I ask? Answer the question – like I told you to.’ David stared at her, saying nothing, waiting for her to answer. When still no reply was forthcoming, he warned, ‘Don’t test my boundaries. It may surprise you, but they do exist.’
Tara needed to turn away and escape his gaze. They’d never had a fight like this before. David was suddenly a stranger to her. The David that she knew would try to understand; he wanted to be friends; he hated when she sulked; he avoided saying anything that might hurt her feelings, and on the rare occasions that he had accidentally done so, would drop the argument, as if it was no longer important. And so her gut instinct was to resent David’s behaviour now, even though she knew that she deserved to be on the receiving end of it.
‘I haven’t been sleeping around. It was a one-off. You actually want a fucking paternity test? Really? Because that isn’t a problem if that’s the level we’ve sunk to.’
‘It’s not “we”. Just you. It’s the level you’ve sunk to.’
‘If you want the test, then of course I’ll do it.’
He shrugged, but shook his head. No. Or not yet.
‘I’m sorry, David. I’m sorry. I needed to... I needed to…’
‘Have sex with your builder?’
‘I needed to do something. It could’ve been a stupid, expensive pair of new shoes that hurt my feet and I’d never wear and would just keep at the bottom of my wardrobe and look at every few years. It could’ve been a chocolate cake. But it wasn’t any of that stuff. Instead I was with my old boyfriend.’
‘“Fucked”. You fucked your old boyfriend.’ David rarely cursed, so when he did, it had the effect of a slap. ‘You weren’t with him. You’re with me. Now. Here. In this room. Use English properly.’ The way he said it, so carefully, with cruelty in it – and pity at the same time.
‘I didn’t even want to. I’ve never wanted to. Not with him or anyone else. But suddenly it seemed like the right thing to do. It just seemed like a kiss-off to my past. It was a full-stop.’ Tara felt like talking and talking because she was afraid of what might be in the silences. ‘It was as if I was too happy. Jesus, that sounds mental. But I needed the experience. I needed to do the one thing that was absolutely wrong, unnecessary, contrary to everything I have and need. I was pretending that there was something else I wanted. I had to invent a hole. I wish I could explain, but it’s not that simple.’
‘Make it that simple.’ David flicked the angry red glow of his cigarette into the sink.
Tara felt nauseous. She hated fighting with David so much that on the rare occasions it’d happened in the past, she’d felt like vomiting. The prospect of a fight grew more terrible to her with each month that passed without one. It had always been such a shock: the fact that they didn’t agree on everything, that even they could have separate, different and incompatible wants.
‘I knew that I was going to live happily ever after. So to emphasise it, I decided to be the old me. The one I was before you came into my life and made everything so fucking perfect.’
‘So it’s my fault now?’ David smiled, almost admiring the dodge. ‘You know something, Tara, I can’t understand a word you’re saying. Know why? Because I don’t speak victim. That’s why.’
There was no escaping the catastrophe she’d caused. Everything is over. But then she blinked the thought away. She wouldn’t allow her life to be so easily destroyed. This would be a good time to cry. However, her tears were reserved for films and books. They would not pour for something real like this. ‘You didn’t come into it. That... That probably sounds worse, but I’m trying to be one hundred per cent honest with you.’
David’s indignation shot two clouds of crimson to his cheeks.
‘Look, even though I made that decision – and at the time I thought it was the correct thing to do – I now know it wasn’t.’
‘Only because you’ve been caught.’
‘If I hadn’t been caught then it just would’ve been the stupid thing it was supposed to be. A quick, nothing fling, to be forgotten. And life would go on as if it had never happened.’
Tara waited for something in David’s expression that showed his pain, his jealousy, his anger. But it was like staring into the face of an automaton.
David turned away and rolled aside the huge kitchen slider, opening the house to twilight and the expanse of spotlighted lawn. The warm night air spilled inside, bringing a few white moths on the currents. He kept going, outside to the edge of the patio, where moonbeams plunged down through the dirty-milkshake clouds. From inside, Tara scanned the depths of their garden. The distant house at the end was only partly obscured by leaves. She saw its frosted window go black as someone left the bathroom. Next door, behind the hedge, sounded the grudging scrape of a chair on Shay’s wooden decking, followed by footsteps.
Tara watched as David crouched at the edge of the patio, his fingers digging between the travertine slabs into the still-setting grout, burrowing deep, as if trying to get down into the earth, beneath the cornucopia of what they’d wanted and what they’d got and what they intended to keep for the rest of their lives. She wanted to ask him what he was doing. She wanted to know why he was doing it.
Suddenly, Dora appeared on the lawn. She was supposed to have been kept indoors for a week before being unleashed onto the neighbourhood. But she’d snuck out and had gone hunting. Dora dropped the first kill of her new territory at David’s feet: the remainder of a robin, a small detonation of matter and bloody feathers.
David bent to pet the cat, and Tara wished she could feel whatever emotion it was that he bore. There was too much kindness in him for it to be just anger. There had always been a gentleness about David that she loved. Very few men had it. But his hurt would be kept inside. That was just the way it was for men like him. Showing the pain would hurt him more than the pain itself. But there was something else there, too. She hoped it wasn’t some type of regret – regret that
he’d ever fallen in love with her.
I risked all this for Ryan. I could lose everything I’d ever wanted. Ryan is such a... is such a... It’s all my fault!
For a while, in Tara’s early twenties and for a few moments during the build, Ryan had been the epitome of erotic perfection to her – ideal body, a mind that was a confliction of filthiness and sensuality. When she’d first moved to the city, her friends had belonged the moment they’d learned how to look like they had somewhere to go, and fast. But Tara had needed something more… of the flesh – to make her feel rooted and at home. When she’d met Ryan – also a small-town boy – there had been a way that he would look at her; as if by holding her gaze for more than two seconds, he had the ability to make the earth, moon and stars revolve around her. Ryan had seemed to crave every inch of Tara, feed on every word and consume even her half-formed thoughts. It had taken a while for her to realise that a ladies’ man does not just look at you that way – he looks at all women that way.
David, still with his back to her, and still crouched with Dora, asked, ‘What do you think happened to Ryan?’
Tara did her best to sound casual. ‘He’s probably on a session with a buddy who got into town late last night. It’s just the type of stupid, irresponsible thing he’d do – messing his work colleagues around, and his... his wife. He’ll be back tomorrow.’
‘The detective called him a “person of interest”.’
‘Maybe Ryan was selling leftover building materials on the black market or something. But I’d say it’s just that he has a few buddies on the force and his wife got them involved. Nothing more than that.’ Tara didn’t want to talk about Ryan. What had happened between them was supposed to have been a bookend to her youth, her freedom, her irresponsibility. But Ryan wasn’t a bookend; he was a virus, infecting the exciting possibilities of the future and withering them into failure. While David was cerebral, Ryan was all show. David planned ahead and strategised, while Ryan was so impulsive it was as if he constantly believed that tomorrow might not come. David had read GQ for as long as she’d known him and would always hold up a top against his jacket to ponder its suitability, while Ryan was habitually dishevelled: half-moons of dirt under his fingernails, plaid shirt untucked and jeans speckled with paint. Ryan was a Scorpio, David a Virgo.
Tara suddenly remembered that Ryan’s wife was calling in to see her tomorrow. Should she say anything about it to David? No – she’d put this day to rest first. She stepped out onto the patio and whispered down to the back of his head, ‘Are we OK? Is everything going to be normal again?’
‘I don’t know what normal is any more.’
‘I’m sorry. Forgive me. I want my husband back.’
He stood and faced her. ‘Don’t be childish.’
‘Is it childish to know what you want?’
‘You wanted Ryan.’
‘Just once. A stupid once. You’re my husband. We’re married. We’re in this together. Forever. Like we agreed.’
‘Marriage isn’t mystical. It’s a form you fill out. Sometimes it works. Mostly it doesn’t.’
‘Please, David. Don’t say things like that. This is not you.’
‘Just go, Tara. Go to bed. I can’t even look at you right now.’
As Tara retreated back into the house towards the stairs, she knew that even if David had said, ‘Yes, we are OK’, what he really would have meant was that he wished they were OK and that he wished things were going to be normal again. Tara knew that the sacred balance of their relationship had been disturbed. No matter what she said or did, even if David could finally forgive her, the spirit-level of their relationship now showed an askew horizon.
* * *
Hours later, David stepped onto the landing. He paused, as if facing a fork in the road. Before him, the staircase wrapped around the central concrete pillar and continued down to the hallway gallery and up to his unfurnished office. On the wall, halfway to the attic, was the stain. It almost seemed to throb, its darkened contours bulging out from the wall as if it had been stencilled there. Perhaps because the house had been showered in only high-end finishes, this one flaw leapt out. But something else told him that it was the type of stain that just wouldn’t go away; that it was the type of stain that would make a man renovate the entire stairwell just to get rid of it.
As he undressed on the landing, he replayed the argument he’d had with Tara. How much of his anger was an attempt to blame his wife for the fact that it was he who had punched Ryan out the window? How would I have reacted if Ryan was alive and well? Would I have found it easier to forgive her? Am I being unfair? He pictured Tara’s face, her eyes glazed with hurt. Instinctively he just wanted to take that pain away. But then there was that voice again, loud in his head: She started this. She let you down. She pulled the pin.
Quietly, he entered the bedroom to join his wife. In the darkness they lay side by side, Tara’s eyes closed, arms folded across her breasts like a pair of bat’s wings. There was a ceiling fan above them – another extravagance – that David had clicked onto its lowest setting just so as to use it. The blades rotated slowly: wuh-wuh-wuh.
While lying there, hoping for slumber to come and restrain the nightmare, David still tried to uncover the secret way out. He now had only one day left to decide what to do. His brain churned, struggling to make sense of it all, but its only conclusion was that if he paid off Gordon then Tara would leave him, hate him, wish that he was dead. Of course she would. He would’ve taken her future, and that of her child’s, away. There was a limit to everything – even love.
So the alternative was to go to jail for murder. Can I do time? Images rolled across David’s brain – homosexual rape; prison yard beatings ending with eyes hanging from stalks; an exploding cell light showering molten liquid onto his orange uniform. His brain – how he’d like to take it out and run it under a cold tap – could only come up with a singular brutal truth: before you have your world blown to pieces, you first have to endure the struggle and toil of creating a world that was worth losing.
And then there was Tara’s betrayal – he was trying hard to put it behind him, to let it go. It was just the once, she’d claimed, and he believed her. Even Tara’s not that good a liar. He tried to see what life would’ve been like if he hadn’t confronted Ryan, if he’d just waited out on the street and then followed her home. They’d have had the same conversation they’d had downstairs this evening about her betrayal. How would it have ended? Would we have just moved into the house today as planned? Surely I would’ve wanted to punish her somehow? But by punishing Tara, he would’ve been punishing himself – denying them their house, ruining all their plans.
But the image of her with Ryan returned again and again. The prick deserves to be dead. But no one throws a single punch with the intention of killing. That objective requires a knife, a gun, a rock – or at least a carefully aimed kick to the skull. But it was just a punch. Only a thump. However, something inside David refused to accept that point. The fact was that he’d imagined killing Ryan. The image of his hands on the builder’s throat had warmed him. Feelings become thoughts and thoughts become words and words become deeds. David hadn’t felt so stuck in a mind loop of self-condemnation since his father had passed away twenty years ago. It’s never going to be the same again. You’ve run out of luck. From here on in, it’s all compromise.
David looked at his watch to see how many minutes had dripped by. He sat up naked on the side of the bed. As the cool night air on his skin infused his bones with cold, he thought, I’m the worst father in the world. His child wasn’t even born, wasn’t demanding anything from him and all he had to do at this point was provide a safe foundation for its arrival. Even the most primitive beasts could do that. His child. Tara had shown him the printout from the hospital. It was like a bad photocopy of a photograph depicting a grainy creature swimming at the bottom of a murky underground lake. My child. It was less than two months ago that the idea of a baby had suggested itsel
f, yet remembering that time was like stealing someone else’s memories. David no longer recognised himself from that time; the him who could dare to look into the future and imagine a world of happy ever after.
* * *
Just six weeks ago, David had been standing at a long bar in a members-only nightclub, on the phone to Pete, Tara’s New York art dealer. The whole area was chintzy in a Victorian way. Dark wood panelling was everywhere, the walls covered with oil paintings and hunting trophies: deer heads, a huge pike, a sow. All that was missing were cobwebs. In the middle of the hunting lodge vibe was a so-tacky-it’s-chic glass dance floor with 1970s disco lights that clashed with the contemporary dance hits.
David, totally at ease with his surroundings, had tried to catch sight of Tara on the dance floor. She liked him to watch her. Despite himself, he’d grown to like private members’ clubs. Even this place, where, on the ground floor, there was a Bollie’s – a Michelin-starred restaurant where one k was just dinner for four with wine. The fact was, private clubs were the only slices of nightlife remaining that no longer made him feel past it. In fact, most of the men in these places were older than him, and the few that were his age looked worse than he – and that was reassuring. David also liked the glasses in which they served his drinks. It was a psychological fact that food and beverages tasted better when served with heavy, expensive cutlery and tumblers. But most of all, private members’ clubs were the only territories possessed by the rich in which the rich didn’t aggravate him. Despite the clienteles’ effort towards a laissez-faire demeanour, their unobtrusiveness projected disquiet. It was as if they felt that while money was enough to feel relaxed in an expensive restaurant, here you also had to do something or be somebody interesting. It was as if, despite having growing up with all this splendour and exclusivity, they’d remained as awkward with their surroundings as he was. Therefore, this territory was somehow neutral.