by Tamar Cohen
Completely calm, I sit down on the edge of the bed, immovable, inscrutable, sphinx-like. A woman in control. Moments later I’m surprised by a commotion at the bedroom door. Josh bursts in, and it’s a shock to see his normally unruffled, practically catatonic expression replaced by wide-eyed panic.
“What?” he yells, and his seventeen-year-old voice breaks, exposing the child’s squawk hiding underneath like new skin. His big boy-man’s hands are on my shoulders, and he’s shaking me, quite roughly. “Mum! What? What?”
I haven’t seen him like this for an awfully long time. Nakedly afraid. Not for years, I suppose. It’s quite awkward, really. He’ll be embarrassed afterward, I’m sure. Poor Josh.
I summon my maternal impulses and try to formulate some kind of verbal reassurance, more from habit than anything else. There is a sudden and terrible silence.
That’s when I realize I’ve been screaming—an awful, high-pitched, reedy wail that, now that I’ve stopped, is noticeable only by its absence.
2
LOTTIE
My head is wedged into a stranger’s armpit, I swear to God. It’s my own fault for squeezing on to this crowded Tube instead of waiting for the next one like I’d normally do. After two years back in London you’d think I’d have learned by now. The armpit in question belongs to a man in a gray shiny suit with gelled, short black hair, who is listening to his iPod on full blast. The bass tones shudder right through me, though he obviously believes himself to be in his own hermetically sealed little world. Silly, to be in such a rush just because Simon’s coming home. I ought to be a bit more blasé about it by now.
Already, the thought of Simon is making me forget about work and about the lovely but inept temporary receptionist head office lumbered me with all day. She’s hardly older than Sadie, no joke, and has clearly never come across the concept of Value Added Tax before. Still, I must try to put all that out of my mind. I’ll try to concentrate on my happy place. That’s better. Dappled sunlight, cool water.
My sister Jules reckons it’s because of the constant separations that I still get a thrill from seeing Simon, even after all these years. “Your relationship is nothing but partings and reunions. It’s bound to be passionate,” she says. Of course, she’s exaggerating. And of course, she’s jealous, seeing as she’s been single for two years now and claims the hole has closed right over like an ear piercing.
“It’d take a fucking pneumatic drill to get through that,” she says. She can be so disgusting sometimes. Simon claims that’s why she’s into all this New Agey stuff. “Wise move on her part. Focus on the mind and soul, give up on the body,” he said, even though there’s nothing wrong with Jules’s body. She just has her own style. We had a big row after he said that. I hate anyone criticizing either of my sisters. I know I do it all the time, but that’s different. The way I see it, when you love someone, you can say pretty much anything. I think so anyway. Love excuses a lot.
I suppose Jules is right in a way, about the separations. It must be the same with soldiers and their wives. But she’s wrong about it being the partings and reunions that are the main thing.
Since we’ve moved back to the UK, and I’ve begun to feel more settled, it’s the bit in between, the anticipation, that’s the best. Still, even after all this time, I love the buildup to seeing him again. Occasionally—and I don’t like to admit this—the reality can be a bit of an anticlimax. Sadie and I are such a tight little unit when he’s away. We fight like cat and dog, but we function together. All that changes when Simon is home. After he’s been back awhile, there’s usually a bit of a dip while we readjust to the reality of each other—the bristles left in the sink after he’s shaved, the pressure of proper mealtimes again, when Sadie and I are happy with a sandwich and a yogurt in front of the TV, the guilt that I’m spending time with him instead of working on my illustrations, or vice versa. But the anticipation of him being back? Now that is something else.
Crowded on the 106 from Finsbury Park station, I glare at a woman at the back of the bus who has spread her stuff over two seats. Some days that kind of thing makes me want to scream, but today I try to let it wash over me and focus instead on the letter G. I’ve been stuck on G for days. It’s such a funny shape—a sweeping curve with a little straight bit on the end, like it doesn’t really have the confidence to be completely one thing or the other. I’ve got to get past it, though—Mari’s already extended our deadline until the middle of October.
I find myself imagining (again!) how much more I’d be able to get done if I didn’t have the day job at the hotel and could spend all day instead in the newly installed studio-come-office-come-jumped-up-shed in the garden at home. Incredible now to think of all those years living in the sunshine with nothing more pressing to do than read the next chapter of my book and track down the latest new restaurant; all those years I could have spent drawing, but hardly ever did. What did I do with all that time? Did the sun just burn it all away? No point regretting it now, I suppose. Who knows, maybe this book—an alphabetized fantasy story and my third collaboration with Mari—will be the one that actually makes us some money! Everyone knows it’s easier and less painful to get rich from selling a kidney than illustrating children’s books, but you have to dream, don’t you?
I dive into the corner shop near the bus stop for some eggs for Sadie’s dinner and a celebratory bottle of wine. As usual, I dither for a while in the wine aisle. Lucky Simon isn’t here. My inability to make even the smallest decision unaided drives him up the wall. “Next you’ll be asking me whether or not you want to go to the loo,” he said the other week when we went to a party and I made him decide which shoes I should wear. Most of the time I think he quite likes being needed, but sometimes I suspect it gets on his nerves. I suppose when you spend your working life making decisions, you must long for the occasional break. I went to see a counselor about it once, my indecisiveness. At thirty-eight it’s embarrassing. She said, “Ask yourself what’s the worst that could happen if you make the wrong choice.” I try it now. What’s the worst thing that can happen if I choose a crap bottle of wine? But I don’t really see the point in that approach. It’s so negative. Why would you want to go through life focusing on the worst things that might happen?
In the end I splash out on a pricey bottle—the most expensive in the shop. I have a pang of guilt at the counter when I think about the unpaid TV bill but hey, you only live once. (Unless, like Jules, you believe we live an infinite number of times, but not necessarily in the same bodily form. Good. Maybe I’ll be taller next time. With boobs!) “Simon’s on his way,” I tell Mr. Patel at the checkout, who goes through the usual pantomime of being heartbroken that I’m married while Mrs. Patel rolls her eyes and does her Sudoku.
On the short walk home, I juggle my shopping bags so that I can try Simon’s number again. Still switched off! It’s quite often off or out of signal in the Middle East, but it ought to be back on again now, surely?
If you’d told me when I first started art school that I’d end up with someone who works as a property developer, even an “international” property developer (how amusing my sisters always found that phrase—my brother-in-law, the international property developer), I’d never have believed it. Painter, singer—that’s the kind of person I thought I’d be with. Not that it’s what Simon imagined for himself, either. You don’t do a history of art degree thinking, “Oh, I think one day I’ll go and build some hotels in the desert.” The way I see it, most of us fall into things, don’t we? Simon “fell into” what he does after getting a job on a property magazine. It sounded exciting, I suppose—travel, money, sunshine.
Then I fell into Simon.
“Completely crazy,” was my parents’ verdict when I said I was flying halfway across the world to live with a man I’d only known a few weeks. I didn’t dare tell them I was already pregnant by that time.
Looking
around now at the gray London street, it seems weird to think that other world still exists, that even now there are people lounging on luxurious cream-cushioned beds on white-sand beaches being waited on by men in spotless white uniforms, or walking barefoot through marble-lobbied apartments, relishing the feeling of cool stone against the soles of their feet. Funny how it’s always those things you remember, and not the gridlocked cars or the stink of the drains in the summertime. Memory is a slut, as my other sister, Emma, is fond of saying.
I can still remember flying into Dubai for the first time all those years ago. (How brave that younger me was—I wonder where all that courage went? Now I can’t even buy a bottle of wine on my own!) A few weeks, that’s what I told myself on the plane over. Just a few weeks to make up my mind about Simon and about the baby. I had no intention of staying. Whenever I’d dreamed of foreign travel it was of the tropical jungles of South America, Africa, Southeast Asia. I’d never pictured deserts where the only things growing were gold-plated hotels. But the lifestyle was so seductive, and love can be a jungle of its own. Weeks turned into months, and months into years, time trickling through my fingers like water in a palm-shaped swimming pool, no joke.
It’s different, time here and time there. Here you’re always aware of how little time there is, how much there is to do in it. There you never noticed time—until it was gone.
I try Simon’s phone again, even though I know I’ll get the same “switched off” message. I ought to be used to it now, but it still frustrates me, that sense of Simon being out of reach, even after all these years of separations. It was the separations that finally forced the move back here. Dubai can be fun, but not for a woman on her own with a child, as I was for half the time.
Every Christmas when Sadie and I used to come back to Derbyshire to stay with Emma and her kids (so weird leaving Simon behind to work, even though Christmas is pretty much nonexistent there, and he always said it was a load of commercialist crap anyway), I’d wonder why I stayed out there. I’d all but stopped doing anything creative. That heat—like spending your life inside a hair dryer—saps your motivation. Simon seemed to be spending half his life back in London anyway, so why not base ourselves back here? At least I’d be able to work again, and Sadie would get a different perspective, away from that crappy little international school. Ironic to think now I actually believed the change might make her less difficult (not difficult, challenging—Jules says I must change my mind-set), although I try not to complain too much to Simon about that. He was so set against us moving back here. We knew the cost would be crippling—keeping up the rent on his apartment in Dubai as well as buying a flat in London was never going to be easy, and of course, the property market going tits up over there hasn’t exactly helped. I don’t want to risk an “I told you so” by moaning about Sadie’s moods.
Now we’ve been back nearly two years, it’s as if those fourteen years abroad never happened, like new skin forming over a cut so you can’t tell it was ever there. Even Sadie, who lived there all her life, is struggling to believe it was anything but a dream. It’s amazing how quickly she’s adapted to being in London—the clothes, the way she speaks. Such chameleons, children. The only thing I miss about Dubai is the money. It’s hard to get used to worrying about finances after years of it all coming so easily. Even with my job at the hotel, we’re still struggling. It doesn’t help that neither Simon nor I have the saving gene. As soon as we get money, we spend it. There was that blowout party for Simon’s fiftieth back in Dubai. And the flat here cost a lot more than we’d planned to spend, but as soon as I saw the height of the rooms and the cornicing on the living-room ceiling, I fell in love with it. And then there was the outside studio...
No. I’m not going to think about money now. “Whenever a negative thought occurs, you have to pluck it out of your head, like plucking an eyebrow,” Jules told me the other week. Blimey, I’d have no eyebrows left! I’d be like Anya at work and have to paint them on.
Ours is one of those schizophrenic London streets where big old Victorian villas that have been carved up into flats butt up against low-rise blocks and boxy, sixties-built houses with mean little windows and concreted front yards. Sometimes when I turn on to the wide path that leads to our front door (still boarded up, even though the burglary was months ago now. We must call the freeholders again to complain. A job for Simon), I imagine how it would be to own the whole house instead of just the ground floor. A century or so ago, the whole thing would have belonged to just one family. The top-floor flat, where that new young couple has just moved in, would have once been the servants’ quarters. Strange to think of all that history, literally sitting on your shoulders. That’s something you don’t get in Dubai amid the soaring steel towers and the bland apartment complexes.
Still, no time for all that today. The communal hall is scruffy and littered with flyers for fast-food outlets and Indian takeaways. There’s a pile of mail on the bottom step of the carpeted staircase that leads to the upper three stories, but I don’t bother going through it. The only things we ever get through the post are bills, and I can do without any more of those tonight. Anything to do with money sends me into a spin, always has done.
Before I met Simon, when I was still in art college, I managed to get into so much trouble my bank manager made me cut up my credit cards in front of him. I remember struggling to keep a straight face. It was just like being back at school and being hauled in front of the headmaster. That was in the days when bank managers were real people, not computers, or underpaid minions in a call center in Glasgow or Delhi or somewhere.
Simon’s not much better than I am at the money side of things, but at least he takes care of the joint account, as well as his own. I only have to manage mine, but even that seems to be beyond me sometimes. Usually we muddle along, but every now and then Simon will say “Time to tighten your belt.” (I hate it when he uses that expression—it makes him sound so ancient!) At the moment we’re in a “tighten your belt” phase. I’m useless at tightening my belt. We both are, really.
The door to our flat is at the back of the communal entrance, to the left of the staircase. Inside, the narrow hallway is in darkness, which means Sadie isn’t home yet, which makes me both anxious and relieved. Anxious because it’s six-thirty, and she bloody well ought to be home, or at least have let me know where she is (she’s only sixteen—not twenty-six as she’d like to think). But also relieved I’m spared having to tiptoe around her moods. Hopefully, by the time she gets back, Simon will be here. She never acts up in quite the same way when he’s around. There’s something about mothers and daughters, isn’t there? Sadie is a daddy’s girl, through and through.
When I switch on the light, there’s a sudden explosion of color, like fireworks, not just because of the burnt-orange-painted walls, but also the mishmash of paintings, a few by me but most of them done by Sadie as she was growing up, and the photos and silly postcards from traveling friends and from exhibitions we’ve seen over the years. The floor is bare wooden boards, but there’s a long, thin, rather threadbare rug on the floor in multicolored stripes. “Your hall is the color of happy,” Emma’s youngest once said when she came to visit. I’ve never forgotten that. The color of happy.
I drop the shopping and rush through to the bathroom at the back of the flat, intending to have a quick shower, but of course, I stay in there way longer than I should, slathering myself in gorgeous-smelling bath stuff, which reminds me again of my sister Emma, whose bathroom shelves are crammed with expensive, unopened bath oils and body lotions she’s been given for Christmas and birthdays but is waiting for an “occasion” to use. She also has a set of “best” cutlery, for Christ’s sake. “What if you get run over by a bus tomorrow?” I ask her. “Before you get a chance to use all your stuff.” She doesn’t get it, though. She just says, “If I got run over by a bus, it’d be just my luck.” I love Emma dearly, but I hope to God I never end up li
ke her. Three gorgeous kids and an adoring if not wildly exciting husband, and yet she still won’t allow herself to be happy—always holding back on the things that give her pleasure, always looking for downsides.
When Simon’s away I never think about my body, but now I stroke it all over as if I’m rediscovering it all over again. Hello, little pot belly! Hello, newly shaved legs! Always the thrill of imagining my hands are his hands, feeling what he will be feeling. Such a shock to remember I’m a physical presence, after two weeks of living solely inside my own head.
When the water starts running lukewarm, I wrap myself up in a towel and dart into our bedroom, hoping no one is watching. Our bedroom looks out across our section of the back garden, now dominated by our all-singing, all-dancing outside studio. In the summer it’s fine because the trees planted against the fence at the end shield us from the row of houses behind, but it’s September, and the leaves are starting to thin out, and I’m suddenly a bit paranoid, us being on the ground floor and everything. The room has a massively high ceiling, which is what I love about our flat, but it isn’t huge, and the king-size bed takes up most of the floor space. I finally got round to changing the sheets last night, which has to be my least favorite job. Try wrestling a cover onto a king-size duvet when you’re only five foot one! Now, flinging myself back against the newly laundered pillowcases, I’m glad I made the effort. There’s something so restorative about clean sheets. And these are my favorites—bright fuchsia with yellow block-printed flowers. It’s like sleeping in a Warhol print. From here I get a perfect view of the painting on the far wall—a nude of me done by an art-school friend, which Simon insisted on bringing back from Dubai. Sadie used to love that painting—“Mummy being rude,” she used to say. Now, of course, she just thinks it’s tacky.