The Week I Ruined My Life

by Caroline Grace-Cassidy

  ‘It’s after ten, feck it, pour me another, I’m getting a cab. Is he why you are, well …’ she pauses, ‘seemingly, lately, for want of a better turn of phrase, looking for a way out?’

  Her voice is soft, but I know it’s not exactly sympathetic.

  ‘I’m not looking for a way out, Corina, you have no idea what it’s like lately.’

  ‘OK, so we have all the time in the world, tell me … tell me just how bad your relationship really is, Ali. I want it all: warts, farts, slaps … whatever it may be, I want to know the whole lot.’ She sits bolt upright.

  ‘Oh, it’s not slaps, Corina, I promise you that. Colin has never raised a hand to me.’ I watch her shut her eyes and blow her cheeks out wide in relief.

  ‘Jesus, thank God.’ She blesses herself and raises her eyes to heaven.

  I feel trivial in my want of her attention now. I go on because I have to; I’ve dragged her to this place with me. She only wanted to share a bottle of wine, munch on a few crisps and watch Gogglebox. Now here she is bolt upright on the couch in therapy with me again. I am such a shite friend. So self-absorbed right now and that’s just not Ali Devlin.

  ‘It’s … it’s … just I don’t think I’m in love with Colin any more.’ I can’t help myself. I plunge her in deeper. Ducking her head below my rising marriage tide. Submerging her in my problems.

  She raises her left hand.

  ‘OK, so tell me stuff. Tell me scenarios. Give me specifics of how bad things are in the marriage. Give me actual examples.’ She never takes her eyes off me.

  ‘Terrible …’ I whimper at her.

  ‘More. Give me proper examples, Ali,’ she demands. ‘I want to try and help.’

  ‘OK, well, we just can’t get along, and I’m desperately unhappy that the kids are hearing us fighting all the time and I have zero attraction physically to Colin any more … I told you that, but what I couldn’t tell you is that I can’t stand it when he touches me. I freeze. How my skin crawls when he wants to make love to me, how I want to scream and run when we are intimate—’ My bottom lip is quivering.

  ‘Ali, it’s OK … it’s OK … OK … it’s OK, I get it, love,’ she interrupts. Her tone is soft. ‘You have no sex drive … no desire in you …’ She takes a long pause here. ‘But you desperately fancy Owen the artist, yeah?’ She is pointing out my problem, I see this.

  ‘Yeah,’ I admit.

  ‘You wouldn’t mind Owen having a grab of your tits now, would you?’

  As coarse as this conversation is, it actually feels really good to get this off my chest. Yes, I am mortified, but maybe confessing it will make it go away. Burst its bubble.

  ‘No … I wouldn’t.’

  ‘What else is wrong with Colin apart from you not wanting to ride him at the moment?’ she asks, before adding, ‘I’m just trying to get the full picture here, Ali, I’m not trying to do anything else. I’m no Dr Phil’s wife.’

  ‘He’s just suffocating. I can’t make any decisions – he picks me up on every tiny little thing I do wrong. I’m changing, Corina, and he isn’t. Sometimes, a lot of the time, if I’m honest lately, I just don’t like him at all.’

  ‘What kind of decisions?’ she probes.

  ‘Oh, Corina! I dunno! I mean … I wanna shop in Lidl, he wants to shop in Aldi … I wanna go to IKEA and buy new cutlery – I hate our cutlery – he won’t let me, he hates IKEA. It’s not green enough and he says I’m wasting money, that our cutlery is fine … I wanna go on a sun holiday and lie on my back for a week reading Fifty Shades of Tom Hardy, he hates sun holidays and Tom Hardy. He wants to go on an adventure … outdoor sports. I hate adventures and I hate outdoor sports … I want to tell him that his fascination, no addiction, to Manchester United makes me cringe, and … and … and every single day he makes me feel like I’m a really terrible mother …’ I swallow a mouthful of saliva. ‘That is what’s so wrong with our marriage, Corina.’

  My last words get through to her, I sense that immediately.

  Her eyes dip to the floor for a brief moment and when she looks back up she says slowly, ‘Can’t you talk to him about this?’

  ‘No, because every time we try to have a conversation we fight and then he always blames me and accuses me of not being able to hold an adult conversation. That makes me feel even more like a shit mother. Then I back off because I don’t want the kids to hear us fighting all the time. That somehow makes me feel like a better mother. Plus, Jade is totally on his side, for some reason, and Mark just gets a tummy ache when we row and then I hate myself even more.’

  ‘Shit.’ Corina scratches her head.

  ‘Shit is right.’ I scratch mine.

  ‘But you do know, Ali, that this Owen guy isn’t the answer to all your prayers. He’s not going to fix you.’

  ‘I know that, Corina. I wish to God he wasn’t in the picture and that I didn’t fantasise about him, but you asked so I’m telling you,’ I pant.

  ‘He knew Colin was away tonight, right?’ Her HDs rise again.

  ‘I think I told him over a shared lentil soup at lunch.’

  ‘A shared lentil soup?’ Her eyes pop out of her head. ‘Like off the same spoon? In your place of work! What are yee, Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger?’

  ‘No! Well, yeah, we shared a spoon, but I bought it. He just tasted it.’

  ‘Oh, for feck’s sake.’ She stands. ‘He’s dangerous, Ali. He shouldn’t be coming here at night like that with the children asleep upstairs. He should be staying far, far away from you. I’m guessing he knows all you just told me about Colin though, right?’

  I nod. ‘Most of it, yeah.’

  ‘And I’m guessing he’s totally single, free-as-a-bird available?’

  Again I nod.

  Corina sits back down now on the couch and lifts her glass from the table. She swirls the dark red liquid as she stares into Colin’s huge bubble wine glass.

  ‘Like I said, I can’t tell you what to do. But I wouldn’t throw all this away without trying to fight for it. And I especially wouldn’t have an affair, Ali. Shitty people have affairs, horrible people. That is not you.’

  The Gogglebox credits roll and we look each other in the eye.

  ‘I better Hailo. I’ve to be in the convention centre at seven thirty.’ She rummages in her bag for her phone.

  ‘I feel like a total tit,’ I whisper the words hard at her.

  She doesn’t look up for a minute and then she does.

  ‘Love is blind, lust is fleeting. The Owen thing … it will pass.’ She stands again. ‘Four minutes, gotta love the Hailo app.’ She stuffs her scarf into her bag.

  I stand and walk over to where she’s pulling on her dark brown ankle Uggs by the door.

  ‘Thanks for listening.’ I hug her tightly.

  ‘I love you, Ali. God, I only want for you to be happy. If he was hitting you, then that would have been a totally different situation. I’d have you and those kids in my house by now and the guards up Colin’s arse. But this is different … and look, if things can’t work with Colin, then so be it, but you owe it to those two beautiful little people upstairs to at the very least give it a try. Couples’ counselling, yeah?’ she advises again in as many days. She winks at me.

  I nod my head and for the first time I feel maybe there is a chance for Colin and me. Maybe just maybe therapy can help us. You always hear the cases, don’t you? Of marriages that survived a crisis and became stronger than ever.

  ‘You’re right, thanks. What would I do without you?’

  ‘Well, ye’d have a clean liver for one.’ She winks at me again.

  Her phone rings.

  She slides across the answer button.

  ‘Thanks, Rajah, I will be right out.’

  We walk to the door and as I open the front door I hold it ajar for a second.

  ‘I never heard properly about Trevor, he sounds great.’ I scratch my head again; my anxiety is through the roof.

  ‘Next time.’ She seems suddenly tired no
w as she kisses me on the cheek. I look down; the headlights from the taxi cab illuminate my driveway and her ankle Ugg boots.

  I watch her slide into the back seat and I make a mental note of the driver and the registration plate as we always do. Closing the hall door quietly, I make my way through the living room and the kitchen tidying up as I go. The family computer is purring at me so I sit and I log out of Corina’s Facebook account and enter my own details. My messenger pops on my screen four new messages, all from Owen O’Neill.

  I just presumed you were alone

  Sorry

  Did I make things awkward for you?

  Incredible mime my friend!

  I laugh out loud. I can see he’s currently on Facebook via the chats so I type back.

  Why didn’t U call? Send.

  Nah Corina’s totally fine, she knows the shit I’m goin through with Colin. Send.

  He’s typing back.

  I just called in on a whim

  ‘Backfired’

  I type:

  No was delighted 2 see U … It’s fine. Send.

  I’ll miss U 2morro. Send.

  I sit and wait. He is still active.

  I’ll miss you more

  My breath escapes in a burst of excitement. I can’t say anything else. I mustn’t. I hover the cursor in the shape of a little white arrow now over the X in the red box at the top of my screen. Then I click it and the page closes down. I go to bed.

  6

  Tuesday evening. The dinner table. At home.

  ‘Where are my two chocolate eggs?’ The hall door slams with a thud and both Jade and Mark jump up from the dinner table.

  ‘Daddddddyyyy!’ Mark squeals as he runs down the hall.

  ‘Dad! Oh, Dad, I’ve missed you soooo much!’ Jade squeals higher. He’s only been gone a night.

  ‘My chocolate eggs!’ Colin shouts and rattles his car keys down hard on the glass hall table. Leaping up, I turn off the heating. I have literally just put the dinner on the table. Half an hour before work this morning I spent prepping the beef stew, peeling carrots, parsnips, potatoes, onions, stripping thyme from its stems (if Jade sees a stem, she freaks) and slow-cooking it this evening, and they have just deserted it.

  I won’t say a word.

  I push back my chair and stand at the kitchen door looking down the hall at this wonderful family tableau.

  ‘Hi, Colin.’ I lean against the kitchen door and smile at my husband. He looks up at me for the briefest of seconds before turning his attention back to the children and saying, ‘Now which chocolate egg wants their chocolate egg first?’ He reaches into his long dark work coat pocket and pulls out two cream eggs.

  ‘Me … me … meeeeee!’ They yell in unison.

  ‘They are just about to eat their dinner,’ I say. I hate myself already but what choice do I have?

  ‘Mummy, I will still eat it all up … please can I eat the egg, please?’ Mark waves his hands around frantically in the air.

  ‘No Mark, eat your dinner first and then you can have the egg.’ I stand firm. He needs to eat better. He needs building up. I know he won’t touch the stew if he eats all that; he’s a pigeon appetite as it is.

  Colin slowly rises from his haunches and starts to unbutton his coat.

  ‘Mummy’s right, Mark: dinner first, egg after.’

  Colin eases the heavy coat off and finds a spare coat hook on the wall by the hall door for it.

  ‘Ahh, please, Dad!!’ Mark pulls at his legs.

  ‘’Fraid not, little buddy.’ Colin ruffles his hair.

  ‘Please, Mummy … please … I swear I will eat all the chew!’

  ‘After dinner, Mark, all right!’ I raise my voice slightly to show him I mean it. I really want him to eat meat and vegetables. He’s so thin and small.

  ‘OK, calm down, Ali, he’s only a kid.’ Colin sweeps him up.

  I want to say, Oi Devlin! I thought you didn’t agree with us picking up Mark? But I don’t, I let it go, I want to avoid a disagreement so instead I say, ‘I know … I’m saying yes after dinner.’ I can feel the anger ripple up my legs into my stomach. I swallow it back down. Squeeze my toes tight together.

  Jade sits down again and actually gives me a sympathetic look. She helped me cook this evening; she crumbled the Oxo in and stirred the pot brown, so maybe that’s why. She dips her spoon in and tastes.

  ‘It’s awesome, Mom, reallllly gud … reaalllyyy reallllllllllllllly gud,’ she drawls. It takes every ounce of strength for me not to correct her American accent.

  Colin pops Mark onto his chair.

  ‘Eat up there now … I suppose a dinner for me is out of the question?’ He does a double-take at his place at the table where he seems to expect a plate of dinner to be. His attitude towards me was hostile as soon as he walked through that door. He barely looked at me when I said hi. I am just about to sit but I push my chair back in. Deep breath. In through the nose, and out through the mouth.

  ‘Of course there is. I wasn’t made aware of your estimated time of arrival home, so I didn’t plate you up a dinner, but there is plenty in the pot.’ I force a half-smile as I move over to the stovetop. He follows me and stands at my shoulders. I lift the lid and retrieve the black plastic ladle still in there. Colin stares in, and then he takes a step back.

  ‘Ah, yer OK, I’ll just grab a sandwich,’ he says, his teeth clamped together. No tone to his voice, he just says it. But I know he doesn’t like the look of my stew. He doesn’t like my cooking.

  ‘I helped, Daddy,’ Jade leaps in. Colin immediately softens.

  ‘Did you now? Well, I can’t say no to that.’ He grimaces at me and I grab a plate and start serving. I bite down on my lip and throw the ladle into the sink when I’m finished.

  ‘Will you watch it!’ He jumps back, some of the stew scattered and splashed as the ladle hit the sink and it splashes his dark navy Brown Thomas bought suit.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean—’ I grab the wet cloth from the sink and wring it out.

  He makes a massive deal about pulling off the suit jacket and laying it over the countertop. He grabs the wet cloth from my hand.

  ‘For fuu— Jaysus, I only got this from the dry cleaner’s last week.’ He rings the cloth tighter.

  ‘Finished!’ Mark jumps up. ‘Can I have the egg, Daddy, please can I, can I?’ Mark hops from one small leg to the other.

  I look at his plate and it is all but untouched.

  Colin doesn’t answer, he is deep into his scrubbing.

  ‘Go ahead, Mark.’ I move back to the table and pull my chair out, sit and choke on my own first bite, my appetite completely gone.

  ‘But that’s not fair, he barely ate a bite!’ Eleven-year-old-should-know-better-Jade says, her spoon resting on the side of her bowl.

  ‘Go ahead and have your egg, Jade.’ I wipe my mouth with my paper napkin as she eyeballs me. Blue eyes flashing.

  ‘It’s reaaalllllyy gud, Mom … I’m just, like, I’m kinda, like, full and stuuuuuff …’

  Oh God.

  ‘Go,’ I wearily tell her.

  She springs up and Wonder-Daddy takes them both into the front room with their chocolate eggs. I hear snickering and whispering and then the theme tune to Austin & Ally. Colin is slagging me off to them, I know he is – it’s nothing awful, granted, but I know in my heart of hearts he’s saying how clumsy I am and how Mummy is always messing up. Trying to do too much. Wearily I begin to clear off the full plates and scrape them into the bin. Colin immediately returns and closes the kitchen door softly behind him.

  ‘Maia and Donal split up,’ he says as he crosses me and opens the fridge his head poked right in.

  Maia Crowley, Colin’s colleague at Devlin’s Designs. The vegan woman I was telling you about earlier. He employed her about two years ago. She drives a plug-in car and only wears mineral make-up. She’s nice and all that, just very, very green.

  ‘That’s nice.’ I take my foot off the pedal on the bin and the lid clangs.

>   Colin gets a fright and bashes his head off the top of the fridge.

  ‘Fuckin’ hell, Ali, what have I told you about letting the bin lid smack closed?’ He pulls out, rubbing his head with the palm of his hand.

  ‘Calm down!’ I hiss. I move to the sink. I know I can’t put the dishwasher on now because he’s here and he will say it’s a waste of energy, think of the planet and wash the few dishes. He will want me to fill the sink slightly with lukewarm water and wash them by hand. He’s right, OK, I know. Believe it or not, I do actually care about the planet. I recycle everything I can, I get that it’s important, but these days Colin is just way OTT with his greenness. I start to wash the dishes.

  ‘Why can’t you close the lid quietly? Look, come here …’ He closes the fridge door, moves to me and takes me by the elbow. He tries to move me over to the bin. I dig my heels in.

  ‘Are you going to give me a lesson in closing a bin lid, Colin?’ My temper has materialised in a grand fashion as I yank my elbow away.

  ‘It’s not that difficult to do.’ He runs his thumb into the palm of his fist as though I’ve somehow injured him. ‘Anyway what do you mean “that’s nice”?’ he asks.

  ‘Huh?’ I flick my fingers quickly under the running tap to check the temperature.

  ‘When I came into the kitchen, after settling the kids in front of the TV, I told you Maia and Donal had split up and you said “that’s nice”.’

  He moves back to the fridge, opens it and removes some items. I watch as he peels back the plastic cheese wrapper, cuts two slices of low-fat hard white cheddar, and then he reaches up and pulls the sliced loaf from the shelf. His shirt rises up out of his suit trousers and I catch a glimpse of his stomach. Taut. The start of a six-pack. He’s been back in the gym lately.

  ‘Did you buy white bread again?’ He studies the infamously familiar blazing yellow-and-white Brennan’s packaging. The whitest of white bread Ireland has to offer.

  ‘It looks like it.’ I twist off the water supply.

  ‘God, I hate white bread.’ He removes a slice, holds it to his nose and smells it.

  ‘Urgh … have we any cracker bread?’ He rummages again before adding, ‘Anyway, what’s nice about a break-up?’