I figured he might have a point. Whatever had gone wrong with me and Lex, I didn’t want to make things difficult between me and the kids.
So I didn’t make any kind of scene when on the weekend Lexie, Joe and Polly and the British guy headed to Duluth to stay in a log cabin – or I should say a north-shore-timber-home-with-stone-tiled-bathrooms-panelled-den-and-luxury-wood-burning-stoves. Lexie kindly emailed me the link – on Lake Superior. They were going fishing, swimming, hunting, biking, rafting, hiking and a bunch of other outdoor stuff all in two days. The forecast was still set to heatwave. So I hoped they packed the Factor 50 or whatever, otherwise the kids were set to fry.
When they left, Joe was beyond excited and Lexie said this was because it would be such a novelty for him to go do boy stuff with a guy who actually liked kids, not one who merely tolerated them.
I hoped the Limey bastard couldn’t swim. But I guessed the chances were he’d swim as good as any catfish, any mucus-covered bottom-feeder. He was surely bound to do so, coming from a country that’s surrounded by the ocean and is full of lakes and rivers, as I seem to remember from studying the geography of Europe while I was in high school. All British people probably had fins.
After Lexie, Joe and Poll were gone, I walked round the apartment. It was far too quiet, like somebody was sick.
I went into our bedroom. It was a shit-awful mess – drawers pulled open, clothes thrown everywhere as Lexie packed her things. I put some of the stuff back in the closets and straightened up the bed.
Then I went into the children’s rooms.
Polly’s was a riot of pink – pink drapes, pink comforter, pink rug and pink stuffed toys with big sad eyes. It smelled of baby girl. A mix of powder, wipes and something sweet like cotton candy.
Baby girl – I still thought of Polly as a baby, even though she would be three next birthday and was walking, talking, eating anything and everything except the additive-free toddler dinners Lexie bought at great expense from some weird organic-vegan-wholefood store downtown. I held her pillow to my chest, inhaling her sweet scent and almost able to believe it was my Polly in my arms, her little roly-poly body squirming as she struggled to get down to crayon on the walls or go annoy the hamster.
That reminded me – I better not forget to feed Joe’s hamster. My son would kill me slowly if The Terminator died. But I was sure the rodent would remind me when it was time to make with the banana and zucchini. Come sundown, I would hear it running on its little wheel and fussing in its cage.
Joe’s room smelled of popcorn, schoolbooks, sneakers and it was a shrine to Angry Birds. There was a red backpack, ditto lunch box, ditto flip-flops and a new black hoodie which made him look like some teen hoodlum’s behaviourally-challenged little brother. A dedicated follower of fashion – that was Joe. I gave his Red Bird squeeze pillow a hug and felt myself well up.
Where was his red messenger bag we bought last Saturday while we were at the mall? He must have it with him. So it was on the lake shore now with Mr Wonderful. Joe and Mr Wonderful were filling it with rocks and sticks and ring-pulls and a ton of other treasure/trash.
I shut my eyes. I wished my wife and kids were home. I wished it was a lazy Sunday morning when nobody was rushing to get up, head out to work or go to school. I wished Lex and I were still in bed with both the kids rampaging round the room, Polly trailing her wet diaper, Joe on Lexie’s phone shooting at pigs and shouting out his score – and with me not yelling go away! What does a person have to do to get some sleep round here?
I offered God a deal.
If he would let me keep my kids, I’d be a better father.
I realised I’d messed up with Joe and Polly. I’d assumed it was enough I’d never been like Dad, who’d used me as punchbag, beat up on me, broken my bones and put me in the hospital. Who’d been too fond of bourbon and had cheated on my mother with a score of trashy blondes, leaving us when I was twelve to go down south, where in due course he ended up in jail where he belonged.
Then Mom worked at half a dozen different jobs so I could go to college, even though I told her I didn’t want or need to go to college. I would be a construction worker – plaster walls, pour concrete, mix cement. I would service trucks in a garage. But she was so determined I would make professor in some university that my choice was be a college student or break my mother’s heart.
So from this moment on, I told myself, I’d play with Joe and Polly. I’d take them to the park and to the diner and to the museum for children in downtown Saint Paul. I’d push Polly in her bright pink stroller, even though I know she’s far too big to have a stroller and she ought to take more exercise. Otherwise she’ll end up looking like Miss Piggy’s child.
So now and then I would forget the stroller. Polly has to realise she can walk and then she has to do it because it’s not an option. She can’t be the only kid in high school still demanding to be carried everywhere. I’d take my baby girl to baby gym. I’d get her pumping iron.
As for Joe – I’d answer all his everlasting questions. I’d tell him why the sky is blue, why mommy hens lay eggs, why bugs have great big eyes, why red-brown cows don’t give us red-brown milk. I’d play Angry Birds with him and always let him win.
I’d never, ever yell at them again.
I would have a heart-to-heart with Lexie. We would buy a house, a big old house out on the prairie with some land, and she could have her garden, and if she wanted we would have more kids. We’d even have some horses.
How would we afford it?
We’d get by.
Then my cell was ringing and I thought my prayer was answered – blame a Catholic childhood – but it wasn’t Joe. It wasn’t Lexie saying she was sorry, she had got it wrong, that she’d dumped Mr Wonderful and they were homeward bound.
It was Ben and he was asking me to join him and the British bride and bride’s best friend for dinner. I didn’t want anything to do with anybody British. ‘I’m busy,’ I replied.
‘Yeah, sure you’re busy – watching some hot movie? Or reading Lexie’s Fifty Shades and picking up some pointers for when she’s home again?’
‘I’m finishing my grading.’
‘No kidding, buddy boy. You’re always grading. You’re so conscientious with your students it makes me want to piss into your shoes. But listen, did you eat yet? If you didn’t, you could come eat here. Let me tell you, something smells delicious.’
‘Why, what are you cooking?’
‘I’m not cooking anything, Professor. I have Tess and Rosie – she’s the girlfriend – waiting on me hand and foot. So right now everything’s as nice as ninepence.’
‘Pardon me?’
‘It’s a charming Old World saying dating back to when our British cousins hadn’t figured out the use of decimals, when they still had a mediaeval form of currency. Last time I passed the kitchen, T and R were fixing meatloaf, sweet potatoes, collard greens, and I believe there’s home-made New York cheesecake for dessert.’
‘Your foreign wife, she knows to fix all that?’
‘She learns very fast, mate – that’s another Britishism – in all sorts of interesting ways. So we’ll see you in twenty?’
I realised I was very hungry. I hadn’t eaten since the morning and now it was past seven. ‘Okay, if you insist.’
‘I do, and by the way, Professor, you should do some work on your neuroses. If ever any guy was an obsessive and compulsive grader – man, that guy is you.’
ROSIE
I’d heard all about Ben’s book, of course. I’d even bought a copy of it when it was on special offer in my local bookshop back in the UK. But I hadn’t read it.
Since Charlie’s death I’d not read anything except my emails and of course the fashion and the other women’s magazines. I had to stay on top of bags and boots and frocks and shoes because it was my job to keep my fingers firmly on the pulse of fashion and to be aware of what was trending.
But now I’d met the author I decided I ought to read his
work. I should try to get a handle on this guy who’d married Tess, a girl who probably hadn’t read a novel since she was sixteen and still at school, and had been forced to do so then.
There was a bookcase in the living room containing half a dozen copies of Ben’s first collection of short stories which had won some prizes and made him a slight literary sensation on both sides of the Atlantic, but had bombed commercially. There were also three whole shelves of various editions of his über-super-duper-worldwide-knockout bestseller Missouri Crossing in two dozen languages or more. So, if I had wanted, I could have had a go at learning Portuguese, Swahili or Malay.
I’d read it first in English, I decided. I’d find out if it was as wonderful as everybody – publishers, reviewers and ordinary readers – seemed to think. A man might be a fashion tragedy, but this didn’t have to mean he couldn’t write a novel.
‘You didn’t waste a lot of time,’ I said, as I made – I had to learn to say I fixed – some coffee for us both in Tess’s huge and gorgeous kitchen which was lit by three big chandeliers and even had a wine room leading off it – temperature-controlled, naturally.
The sink was big enough to bath a toddler and a Labrador together. As well as ordinary mixer taps, there were special ones from which you got your water iced. Or – conversely – boiling. It took me quite a while to realise I didn’t need a kettle. This was just as well because there wasn’t one.
‘How did you know you’d be compatible?’ I added as I fiddled with the coffee-maker. This was the most complicated model I had ever seen. Ben had bought it. He was into gadgets, obviously. The place was full of them.
‘We ran some tests, of course.’ Tess was busy making dinner with the basic stuff we’d bought from Target and some speciality stores in downtown Minneapolis earlier that day. She said she had to make some effort because there could be company tonight. Ben had said he might invite a friend. So I didn’t count as company? I let it pass.
‘Compatibility,’ I prompted.
‘We did the inkblot stuff.’
‘What do you mean – the inkblot stuff?’
‘It’s sort of like the Tarot but it’s more scientific.’ Tess looked at me and frowned. ‘I thought you went to university?’
‘I read Modern Languages, not inkblotology.’
‘Okay, you have these cards with different patterns on them, like those butterfly designs we made when we were little, blobbing paint on paper and folding it in half, you know?’
‘I know.’
‘So then you look at them and tell the other person what you see. They reveal all sorts of stuff about your personality, your hopes, your fears, your dreams. I don’t remember much of what Ben said because he was distracting me. When I have some time I’ll go online and find out more. It’s probably on Wikipedia.’
She rinsed the collard greens in the enormous granite sink. ‘I’ll do it when we come back from the mall. After we get up tomorrow morning we’re going to the mall.’
‘I’ve been to malls before.’
‘You haven’t been to this one. It’s the Hollywood of the Midwest and it’s a total blast. You’ll never look at Oxford Street in the same way again. You’re going to think you’ve died and gone to heaven in a golden BMW. Or I did, anyway.’
‘I see.’
‘You don’t, at least not yet.’ Tess put down her saucepan and then she grinned at me. ‘Actually, I’d like a golden BMW. My Toyota’s – it was very nice of Ben to buy me the Toyota – my Toyota’s sweet. But if I did that dirty thing he’s always going on at me to do in bed but I don’t fancy doing, I wonder if I’d get a BMW as well?’
‘There’s only one way to find out.’ I poured the coffee. ‘You and Ben, you’re not the likeliest of couples, are you – despite the inkblot stuff?’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Well, he’s a famous novelist, but you’re—’
‘I’m stupid and he’s smart?’
‘No, don’t be so daft, you’re far from stupid, and you know it. All the same, you’re not an academic, and I would have thought perhaps …’
‘But it’s not like you think,’ said Tess. ‘We have a lot in common. He grew up in a trailer park where almost everybody was on drugs or in and out of prison all the time. I grew up in a concrete rat-hole of a council flat in Bethnal Green. Ben’s brothers are all misfits. My brothers were all born to thieve. Ben’s father was disabled in an accident at work and so was Dad when a big lorry wrecked his market stall. The family lived on welfare, just like mine.’
‘Oh, right.’
‘He’s had it hard, you know.’ Tess started peeling sweet potatoes. ‘Poor white trash, that’s what he says they called him when he went to Yale on a scholarship, and he still thinks meatloaf is the height of gracious living, even though he could afford to buy the weight of that one we’ve been making in Beluga caviar. As for me and him and our relationship – he’s experimenting, isn’t he? He’s trying something new and so am I.’
‘So you’re not in love with him?’
‘Do me a favour, mate? I like him lots. I really do. He’s clever and he’s generous and he’s fun. You’d have to walk a million miles to find a man who’s half as good at concentrating on a girl, who makes her feel like she’s the only woman in the world – well, at that moment, anyway. When we were in Las Vegas, it was beyond fantastic. But all the time he was with me, he was eyeing up the local babes. I know he has some playmates here in Minneapolis-Saint Paul. I’ve often heard him on his mobile, whispering and laughing.’
‘What if he was talking to a student or his agent?’
‘I doubt if he would tell a student or his agent she’s got the cutest ass in the Twin Cities.’ Tess put down her peeler. ‘Or perhaps he might? You can’t be sure with Ben. He’s shit with boundaries. He couldn’t do political correctness if he tried.’
‘Well, there you are, then.’
‘Yes, but all the same, I know the score.’ Tess looked at me and shrugged. ‘I’m Mrs Fairfax Three – yeah, that’s what he calls me – and I bet he’ll get to Mrs Fairfax Six or maybe even Mrs Fairfax Seven before he calls time out. I’ve already stashed my diamonds in the bank against a rainy day.’
‘He’s given you some diamonds?’
‘Just a few.’
‘But they’re nice big fat ones, are they – genuine girl’s-best-friends?’
‘Yeah, I suppose.’
‘Why don’t you wear them?’
‘I couldn’t wear a great big diamond, Rosie. It wouldn’t be my style. They’re staying in the bank.’
‘How long are you thinking this will last?’
‘Maybe five, six years?’
‘What if you caught him cheating on you now?’
‘What, like in bed with someone else? I might have to take some form of action scissor-wise, make my displeasure felt, know what I mean? I don’t mind him flirting. But he’s not allowed to play away until I give him my permission, until I don’t want him any more.’
‘What about the babies?’
‘Did we mention any babies?’
‘Yes, the ones you told me you might have – eggs past their sell-by date and all that stuff?’
‘I haven’t made my mind up yet. But I don’t think he’s very keen on children, actually. They might mess with his gadgets. So—’
‘Tess, I think your meatloaf might be burning.’
‘Oh, shit – I think you’re right.’ She yanked open the door of the enormous range-style cooker and then pulled out the smoking, blackened pan which now contained a Bible-style burnt offering.
‘Well done, Rosie, just in time.’ She dumped the pan down on the kitchen counter. ‘Blast, I’ve burnt off half my thumb,’ she cried. ‘I hate this cooking lark! I’m no domestic goddess, growing my own ruddy basil, making sausages from guts and lungs. If I cut the top off this disaster, do you reckon it will do?’
‘Give me a knife and get a plaster for your thumb. Let’s see – if I just tidy th
is side here?’ I scraped away some charcoal then stood back from the blackened lump. ‘It doesn’t look too bad. Maybe I should turn it upside down? Do you think it will be enough for four? Ben’s friend, he’s definitely coming, is he?’
‘Yeah, so it would seem.’
‘You going to tell me anything about him?’
‘There’s nothing much to say. He’s called Patrick Riley and does something with computers. Ben says Pat’s a tedious number cruncher and couldn’t be more boring if he tried.’
‘What’s he like?’
‘You mean in looks or personality?’
‘I mean in both.’
‘He’s tallish, darkish, thirty-fiveish, and – like Ben says – boring. Or, if we’re being charitable, intense. He doesn’t have a lot to say to me. Apart from hi, how are you doing, I don’t think he speaks to me at all. Whenever he comes here to the apartment it’s to talk to Ben.’
‘How does he know Ben?’
‘He’s from Recovery, Missouri, too. They lived in the same neighbourhood. But Pat lived in a house, not in a trailer, so maybe he was class while Ben was trash? Anyway, they went to school together in some sagebrush swamp. After they grew up they kept in touch and now they teach at the same university.’
‘Sagebrush grows in deserts, not in swamps.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I went to Cambridge University and got a quarter blue in tiddlywinks.’
‘Of course you did. Anyway, as I was telling you, Recovery is one of those dull, nothing-ever-happens little towns where people have to drink cheap alcohol, beat up their wives or shoot each other dead for entertainment. There’s damn all else to do. So Ben says, anyway.’
‘It sounds like Royal Tunbridge Wells.’
‘Yeah, when he talks about Recovery, I am immediately reminded of Royal Tunbridge Wells.’ Tess began to fiddle with her home-made New York cheesecake which she’d knocked up from a packet mix and was trying to home-make a bit more by sticking candied lemon slices – which had never been near any lemon – all round the perimeter. ‘Did we remember to buy a can of ready-whipped?’
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