by Claire Allan
“No,” he replies, equally as curtly and Daisy throws me a confused look as she walks into the kitchen.
“What’s up with your little ray of sunshine this morning?” she whispers, tipping the orange-juice carton to her head and heading straight for my medicine cabinet for two paracetamol.
“Dunno,” I say. “I suppose he must have had a bad night last night.”
But I’m having flashbacks. That little look he gave me as Daisy and I stumbled giggling out of Jackson’s, the fact that he didn’t put his arm around me when he came to bed – the fact that he is being, to coin his own phrase, an unbearable feckwit now. And I start to feel a little uneasy.
“Are you going to hurl?” Daisy asks, seeing my whiter- than-white pallor.
“Not sure,” I reply. “Would you mind sticking that bacon on? I’m going to find out exactly what’s wrong with Himself.”
“No probs, boss lady,” she replies, saluting me and switching the hob on.
I walk into the living-room, closing the door behind me and sit down on the footstool which is lying directly opposite to King Grumpy Drawers.
“What’s the matter, Aidan? Don’t try to tell me there isn’t anything wrong because A) you have just turned down a bacon bap and B) you look like someone has just asked you to donate your testicles to medical science in return for a can of Tesco Value Cola.”
He looks at me, shakes his head in what I can only read as disgust and turns the TV up a bit.
“Aidan,” I repeat, “what? Did I do something wrong? Did I forget to pay you for a drink? Or did I snore all night or something? Because I’m baffled here, Aidan, really I am.”
“You’re pathetic!” he snarls, looking at me like I’m worthless and I’m left almost breathless by his words.
I’m trying to defend myself but I don’t know how I can because I honestly don’t know what I’ve done to defend myself for. I look at him, stunned into silence, my face awash with confusion and he looks back at me, sighs and looks resigned.
“You say you want to change, Grace. You say you are going to change and I put my faith in you, but you can’t last four days.”
Is this because I had a drink? Is this because I broke the Weightloss Wonders rules? Is this what merits this outburst? This proclamation that I am pathetic?
“Because I had a drink?” I mutter, shocked.
“You had seven, Grace, and then you came home and ate nearly every slice of bread in the house and now you are making bacon baps and you don’t seem to care about your promise to lose weight and get better.”
“I never promised to lose weight,” I say, tears springing in my eyes because Aidan has never commented on my weight before. From a Size 12 to a Size 20 he has maintained he is happy with me and yet now he is disappointed, bitterly disappointed, that I’ve had a couple of drinks with a friend.
I realise he must have been ashamed of me last night – watching his fat wife in her fat clothes getting fat on drink and, in those immortal words of Lizzie O’Dowd, ‘making a show of herself’. I wipe the tears from my eyes, get up and walk out of the room and suddenly I don’t want my bacon bap any more and the good mood I was in evaporates, replaced by feelings of disappointment in myself and in Aidan. He believes in me, but only as long as I don’t step out of line. I take the locket off, sit it on the side table and paint on a fake smile.
“This isn’t enough,” I grin to Daisy. “Get dressed. We are going to Kernan’s for breakfast.”
“Sounds like a plan, lovely lady,” she says and makes her way upstairs to get dressed.
I walk into the bathroom, run the shower and cry a torrent of tears. Scrubbing my fat, useless body, wishing I could wash away the pounds, the shame, the sense of being useless – of being Grazing Grace. But I can’t, so I dry myself off, dry my tears and get dressed. Breakfast is waiting.
“Are you sure you’re safe to drive?” Daisy asks as she straps on her seatbelt and takes a slug of water from her newly refilled designer water-bottle.
“I’m fine,” I say. “Besides, the fresh air might just clear my head.”
We set off and drive towards Letterkenny in search of the wee diner with the best breakfasts in the North West bar none.
“You’re very quiet,” Daisy says.
And I’m a little surprised because it feels like I haven’t shut up. It feels like I’ve been chatting nineteen to the dozen with myself trying to erase the hurt of this morning, trying to rationalise Aidan’s cruel words, trying to remind myself just how good and how supportive he has been over the last few weeks.
“Sorry,” I say. “I’m still tired, I guess.”
“Well, you better snap out of it, missy, because you have some amount of eating to do and then we have to go and pick up the terrible twosome from Mammy’s and I don’t think your beloved son is going to accept the excuse of you being tired.”
She laughs and I start to laugh too, and then, to my eternal embarrassment, I start to cry – big ugly explosive snottery tears.
“Jesus, Gracie, what the hell is wrong with you?”
I try to answer, but all comes out is a random sequence of squeaks and howls and splutters and all the while I’m trying to drive because I know Daisy wants a sausage bap. “Pull the car over,” Daisy says calmly, and I’m aware I’m shaking my head and muttering about sausages and mushrooms. “Now,” she says, less calmly – her voice raised in a mixture of concern and pure unadulterated fear.
I respond, pulling into the lay-by, and I take huge gulping breaths trying to regain my composure.
“Listen to me, Grace,” Daisy says, turning my face towards hers. “I want you to imagine yourself sitting on the bench in the garden of your soul. Now, along with me, sing ‘If You Are Happy and You Know It’ . . .”
❃ ❃ ❃
Daisy had ushered me into the passenger seat, handed me a box of tissues, phoned Mammy, told her we would be late and driven towards Glenveagh National Park – my ultimate sanctuary.
She didn’t say much on the drive, just soothed and hushed and promised it would be okay. “You don’t have to talk about it now, doll. Just whenever you are ready.”
Occasionally I tried to speak, to explain my hurt, but it wouldn’t come out because I felt ashamed – like a big, fat freak. Could my husband really be so shallow as to be annoyed about a couple of slices of toast and a few Bacardi Breezers? I would laugh about it, if I wasn’t so angry and hurt.
Now we were sitting on a bench in the gardens, overlooking the lough and breathing in the fresh country air – the August sunshine warming us. Daisy had purchased a few sandwiches from the small tea room and we were eating our make-shift picnic, supping Diet Coke and making small talk.
“Do you want to tell me what that was about, Gracie?” Daisy asks, through a mouthful of ham-and-tomato sandwich.
I stare out to the lough, take a deep breath and say, “Aidan is ashamed of me.”
“What?” she asks, incredulously. “He has been a wee dream!”
I start to cry again and I’m annoyed at myself for showing my weakness like this – when I’m supposed to be on the road to recovery. “He is annoyed that I drank and ate last night and didn’t stick to my diet. He says I’m ‘pathetic’ and that I don’t really want to change. But I do want to change,” I say petulantly. “It’s just so hard.”
“Jesus, Grace,” Daisy says, anger building in her voice, “is he serious? You had a drink and he goes off on one?
Fecker, how dare he? My God, you have turned yourself inside out over the last two weeks and you have one slip- up, one night off and he makes you feel like this. Bastard!” Daisy’s accent always gets stronger when she is angry. She becomes a feisty wee Scottish fighting machine and her face screws up in anger. She looks both terribly frightening and exceptionally cute when she is like this – the cute factor coming from just how much she reminds me of Lily – all bluster and drama.
“He’s right though, Daisy,” I sigh. “Four days of a determined effort to
lose this weight and I’m off the wagon. And you know what? I didn’t even think about it. I didn’t feel guilty. I enjoyed every second – more than I’ve enjoyed myself in a long, long time.”
“You have to live your life, petal,” Daisy soothes, “and that feckwit has to realise that. Do you want me to slap him round the head for you? Or maybe give him a good steever up the arse, because I’ll do it – say the words and any act of violence you choose can be enacted on him.”
I laugh, even though the tears are still falling, and then I say, almost in a whisper: “If he is disappointed in me, that is nothing compared to how disappointed I am in him. I thought he was behind me on this, Dais, but he’s only happy to support me as long as it’s all going great guns. I can’t live my life waiting for him to point out my faults, waiting for him to upcast at me every time I step out of line. I can’t deal with this right now.”
“What are you saying, Gracie?” Daisy asks.
I answer, and I can hardly believe I’m saying these words. “I’m saying, I suppose, can I come and live with you for a while?”
“Oh, sweetie! You don’t mean that, do you?” I nod a tearful response.
And then I sob again while Daisy mutters “I’ll kill the fecker!” out to the lough.
❃ ❃ ❃
Dear Aidan,
I hope you understand why I have to do this. I’m taking Jack and we are going to stay with Daisy for a while. I need to sort my head out. I know you don’t believe that I’m trying, but I am – and it is hard work.
I can’t live in a situation where you are waiting to chastise me for every mistake, because this is a long road and I’m going to make quite a few mistakes before I’m done.
I still love you, and I hope you feel the same for me, but I need to sort my head out if we are to come through this.
You can see Jack whenever you want.
Grace x
I put one kiss on it. I wanted to let him know that I loved him, but I didn’t want him to read the note as some soppy love letter with Xs and Os at the bottom. Mammy and Daddy went round with the note and to pick up our things. Apparently Aidan was furious and swore at them. No one ever swears at Daddy and he was understandably taken aback. I had worried about telling my parents, but they didn’t seem shocked. Mammy calmly told me that nothing I did these days would shock them and that they understood I needed to put me first at this time.
“Marriage isn’t all plain sailing,” Daddy chimed in. “Sometimes it takes some time apart to realise what you have got.”
Yes, well, Aidan Adams would have plenty of time to realise what he had, and what he had thrown away. I’d been with him now for eight years – eight years of playing the dutiful wife, being partner, friend and confidante, trusting him and making sure he never had any reason not to trust me in return.
From that first date, that first kiss, I had been obsessed with him. He was the first thing on my mind in the morning and the last thing I thought of at night. When we finally moved in together – when I could see him first thing in the morning and last thing at night – I was as happy as I had ever been. I forgave him his foibles – his fecklessness at keeping a job, his indecision, even at the age of thirty-two, as to what he wanted his career to be. I forgave that, because I loved him, and when we said our wedding vows and I had promised ‘for better or for worse’, I meant it. Perhaps therein lies my downfall – with all that in sickness and in health shite I should have added ‘in fatness and in skinniness – and forsaking all barbed comments about the size of my arse, Amen’.
Is that what this is about though, me leaving because Aidan thinks I’m fat? (Which, for the record, I am.) No, it is because he lied to me. He promised to support me and he fell at the first hurdle. He promised that he still found me attractive, when he clearly did not. He promised that we could get through this together (I’m mentally hearing the big ‘uuuh uuuuh’ sounds from Family Fortunes here by the way). Wrong on that count too. So I can’t trust him now. I can’t trust his words, his actions, his loving support because it’s all crap.
Lugging my suitcase into Daisy’s spare room, I feel despondent. Jack is jumping around excitedly because he thinks he is on his holidays and Lily has a puzzled look on her face because she senses all is not right in her usually trouble-free world. Daisy is still swearing intermittently under her breath and I’m starting to feel dog-tired again.
“Have a lie down, Gracie,” Daisy soothes. “I’ll take the wains out to the garden to play and you have a rest. You look beat out.”
I’m too tired, physically and emotionally, and too hung- over to argue so I sink into the sumptuous king-size bed and fall asleep almost immediately. This time I dream about Dermot again, but he is wearing a tracksuit and taking on Charlotte’s role in Weightloss Wonders. “You’ve gained a stone!” he shouts at me, and the class erupt into giggles. “You needn’t think I’m taking you to the BAFTAS looking like that, missy!” he says, raising his eyebrow in an almost menacing manner. I’m almost glad when the peeping of my mobile phone wakes me up.
“I’ll be round to see Jack 2morro @ 2” it reads. No apology, no anger directed at me, just an instruction and I wonder if this is what my marriage is going to become. Sighing, I bury my head under the pillow and try and block it all out.
It hasn’t rained in two weeks, so I suppose it had to happen sometime. The air had become sticky and hot – the kind of unbearable humidity where you want to take your skin off, wash it, wring it out, put it in the fridge for an hour to cool down and then put it back on again. Sitting in Daisy’s living room, a cup of tea nestled in my hands, my feet curled up under me on the big squashy cream sofa, I watch big, fat raindrops beat against the windowpane and slide down to the sill. I can hear the grandfather clock ticking from the hall and Daisy is slumped on the armchair, her feet over the arms and her hand reaching down for the plate of chocolate biscuits on the floor. Amazingly, I’ve not had one yet – I seem to have found that the breakdown of one’s marriage does wonders to curb your appetite.
For the last ten minutes I have been trying to find something to say, something to break the silence. Only one thought, that sums up how my life is panning out, keeps pounding in my head though.
“Feck this for a game of soldiers,” I say. “Indeed,” replies Daisy and the silence resumes. Fifteen minutes pass.
“You will be okay though, you and Aidan, won’t you?” Daisy asks, staring at the window, not daring to let me see her face.
I think about it. I’m not thinking divorce yet but every time my brain starts to rationalise things – to move toward being together with him again – something screams at me to stop. He doesn’t love me the way I am. My heart sinks each time I remember that silly little fact. I’m not good enough for him any more. Perhaps I never was.
“I don’t know, honey,” I say, and sip my now cold tea, watching the rain batter on the window and feeling as powerless as each drop.
The silence continues and the tiredness returns. These tablets, to be grateful for small mercies, leave me wiped out. I say goodnight and climb the stairs. Jack is asleep in his travel cot, but I lift him into bed with me. I need him beside me tonight. I need to feel his soft breath against my cheek, to look at his babyish, trusting face and to feel his pudgy arms and to be reassured that someone loves me.
I’m struck by the guilt though. The guilty realisation that I have taken my precious boy away from his daddy and he won’t understand what the hell is going on. I’m tired, but I can’t sleep. I have to cry for a couple of hours first, and then I will sleep on my sodden pillow and wonder how the hell things have gone so wrong.
❃ ❃ ❃
When Sunday dawns it is still raining. I can hear it beat off the window-panes and I feel colder than I have done in weeks. Jack is still sleeping and, even though I’m exhausted, I’m wide awake. Looking at the clock I see it is 6.45am. It’s much too early to be this awake, but I know there is little chance of me getting back to sleep now. I roll out of
the bed, leaving Jack in the centre – looking so very small – and pad downstairs to the kitchen.
Putting the kettle on, I stare out at the rain. It is dancing off the ground and the sky is dark and heavy. I notice Daisy hasn’t covered the sandpit and that upsets me. All that sand, just gone to waste. If the weather improves later the children won’t have their favourite place to play. I start to cry at the unfairness of it all and the sadness doesn’t leave me, not even when I’m sitting on the armchair half- heartedly sipping my coffee and playing yesterday’s events over and over in my head.
At around seven thirty, Lily toddles sleepily into the room, rubbing her eyes. “You look sad, Auntie Grace,” she says. “Did you and Mummy have another fight?” Her dazzling blue eyes are wide with concern.
“No, sweetie,” I reassure her. “I was just outside in the rain and my face got wet. Silly old me!”
“But your hair is dry, Auntie Grace,” she says, eyeing me up and down suspiciously.
“Must be magic,” I mutter before jumping up and setting about making her some breakfast. “I’d better go and check on Sleepyhead Jack,” I smile, ruffling her hair as she tucks into her Cheerios.
“You’d better check on Sleepyhead Mummy as well,” she says, giving me a knowing smile.
Climbing the stairs I hear Jack chattering to Daisy and walk into my room to see my friend sitting beside my boy sharing a cuddle.
“I was just getting a coffee,” I start to explain, determined to let Daisy know I wasn’t in the habit of abandoning my child in strange places.
“You look like shit,” she counters. “Did you not sleep?” “Not much. My brain wouldn’t switch off. You know how it is. I spend half my life trying to switch the damn thing on and when I want it to desist it won’t play along.” I manage a half-smile. Daisy looks concerned and I reassure her that once my happy/ sleepy/ bokey pills kick in I will flake out and promise to take a long sleep.