‘Chad is seriously busy.’ Rosie had begun to squirm. Michelle jiggled her on her hip to temporarily distract her. ‘The new job is very demanding.’ She did not add: ‘And I’m going out of my mind with loneliness and boredom.’ Michelle knew that Virginia had spent her entire life doing her duty to her own parents, her husband and society. The idea that she might have forged an identity or life of her own was inconceivable. If Michelle was bored and lonely, it was because she was putting her own needs first, which Virginia would no more consider than she would expose her midriff in public or wear white shoes after Labour Day.
‘His father’s birthday is in just three weeks’ time,’ said Virginia. ‘I have as yet received absolutely no confirmation of whether you will be returning home for the celebrations. I simply cannot keep the caterers waiting much longer.’
Michelle felt a surge of irritation, not at Virginia but at Chad. The invitation, gilt-edged and embossed, was in plain sight on the kitchen table, propped up against the fruit bowl. Chad had seen it there every morning for a week. Michelle knew full well that they would not be attending Lowell Lawrence’s seventieth birthday party, but it was not her job to say so. It was his father, goddamnit! It was his responsibility. She refused to do his dirty work for him.
Rosie gave a piercing, eldritch screech right in Michelle’s ear. It was her usual opening gambit to command attention. It would shortly be followed by her next move, which involved grabbing bits of Michelle’s face with her sharp-nailed and surprisingly vice-like little fingers.
‘OK, OK!’ Michelle hissed at her daughter, jiggling her again to buy time. ‘Virginia, I have to go. As you can hear, Rosie’s about to detonate.’
‘Very well,’ said her mother-in-law reluctantly. ‘But I must insist that Chad calls me today.’
You can insist all you like, thought Michelle as she put down the phone. It will make sod-all difference.
She jerked her chin to avoid Rosie’s lightning-fast lunge for the soft flesh of her cheek and grabbed hold of her daughter’s small fists to prevent any further assaults. Thwarted, Rosie gave another furious screech.
Michelle stared down into her daughter’s smudgy dark blue eyes. Her own eyes. Chad’s were like Harry’s — a speckled gold-brown, such an attractive contrast to their blond hair. Harry’s and Chad’s eyes were softly lit. Hers and Rosie’s flashed like stormy skies.
‘You,’ she told her daughter, ‘are a menace.’
Before Rosie could shriek again, Michelle swung around on her heels, whirling them both in a giddy circle. Harry despised any movement that was fast or that put him off balance. He hated swings, barely tolerated seesaws, and on his first — and last — ride on a merry-go-round, Chad had been forced to step up and lift him off halfway through. Harry liked sandpits, train sets and the television. They stayed put.
But Rosie, as Michelle knew she would, cackled with glee as she spun.
‘Come on,’ Michelle brought the spinning to a halt. ‘Let’s go and see if Harry has woken up from his nap. If he has, we’ll go to the playground.’
And with luck, Michelle thought, it will fill the afternoon gap until their dinner at five-thirty and another long, dull day will be that much closer to the end.
Michelle tried very hard not to look at the illuminated digital face of the clock next to her bed. She had waited until ten-thirty to give up watching television and trudge to the bedroom. Before children, she would have considered this early. Now, if she wanted to see the end of any programme that went past nine, she had to record it. Until they’d invested in a DVR this had meant a stack of videos, mainly containing the last hour of British whodunnits. After an ugly day when Michelle sat down to find out who indeed had murdered Roger Ackroyd and instead saw Eli Manning completing a forty-five yard pass to the Giants’ rookie tight end, these videos were clearly labelled with magic marker — and Chad was forced to buy the boxed set of Inspector Morse and sit with her through all thirty-three episodes.
Tonight, Michelle had decided to stay up because it had occurred to her that she had no idea what time Chad was coming home. It could be, she realised, any time between nine-thirty in the evening, when she usually fell asleep, and six in the morning when Chad got up to catch the bus into the city. Michelle could not get to grips with Chad choosing to commute by bus. He’d always taken his car when they lived in Charlotte and that was only a ten-minute drive. Now, he had a forty-minute trip courtesy of Golden Gate Transit. In the morning anyway — God knows how he got home.
‘Why not drive?’ she’d asked.
‘I like the bus,’ Chad had replied. ‘I can work on it.’
‘Don’t your colleagues give you shit for catching the Loser Cruiser?’
But Chad had only shrugged.
Michelle gave in and glanced at the clock. Eleven fifty-three. She felt her stomach churn with a toxic mix of anxiety, resentment and outright fury. What the hell is he thinking? she fumed. How does he expect to function on this little sleep? What’s he eating? I made a point of not cooking dinner for him during this last week, and the bastard hasn’t even said anything. And is he usually this late? What if he’s not, and something’s happened? How would I know — he never tells me when he expects to be home. How dare he put me through this!
She knew the simplest solution was to call his mobile, but pride reared up and trampled the idea into the dust. I’m not calling him, goddamnit, Michelle decided. It’s up to him to call me. Yes, even at — what is it now? — eleven fifty-goddamn-five.
Then she heard the click-thump of the front door being unlocked, and for a moment didn’t know whether she wanted to rush down and hug him or deliver a right hook to his jaw. She decided instead to wait and see what he did. If he came up to bed promptly, she might feel more lenient …
Ten minutes later, the muted babble of television voices lifted into the bedroom. Right, fumed Michelle. That is it!
‘What the bloody hell are you doing?’ she demanded as she rounded into the living room.
Chad was laying full length on the couch. His tie and jacket had been thrown over the back of a chair. His shoes were still on, propped up on the arm of the couch. He had the television remote in one hand and a can in the other.
‘What the hell is that?’ Michelle pointed at the can. ‘Is that beer?’
Chad looked up at her finger and back down at the can. ‘Seems so.’
Michelle had never given the phrase ‘hopping mad’ much thought, but she realised that was exactly what she was doing now — bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet as if galvanised electrically by rage. There were so many phrases battling for supremacy in her head that all that came out of her mouth was a small, inarticulate squawk.
‘Don’t,’ said Chad.
He aimed the remote and the television fizzed to black. Slowly, he swung his feet off the couch and stood up. At just five foot five inches, Michelle found herself staring at his chest.
‘Don’t,’ he said as she opened her mouth again. ‘Not now.’
His voice was quiet and neutral, and his face as he stared down at her was equally expressionless. He upended the can and took a swig. Then he left her and walked off towards the kitchen.
Michelle found her rage stopped in its tracks. Her brain was telling her that he had every right to ask her to leave it alone and that she might be grateful that he’d been so polite about it. But her gut was swilling with fear. His response had shocked her. There’d been no connection there at all. Chad had always tolerated her remonstrations, even when, she had to admit, she had less justification for being angry with him than she did now. He’d always listened to her, if not with pleasure than at least with patience. That’s because, Michelle realised with a start, what upset her, no matter what it was, how big or how trivial, had always been important to him. It had always been important to him to make her happy …
She could hear Chad in the kitchen, opening the refrigerator. There was the rustle of a plastic bag — the bread, she guessed — a
nd the soft thunk of the door closing. A cupboard was opened and shut. Peanut butter? Michelle wondered. Harry and Chad both adored peanut better. She remembered a small rant when a new child joined Harry’s playgroup and the mother had announced that due to her son’s nut allergy, all peanut products and any other food items manufactured within at least fifty-five miles of peanuts were henceforth forbidden. ‘At least he wasn’t gluten free as well,’ Michelle had muttered to Chad. ‘I would have had to suffocate him in the ball pit.’
Chad and Harry used to make peanut butter sandwiches together …
To her horror, Michelle felt her breath quicken and tears began to well. Don’t be ridiculous, she scolded herself. Don’t be such a baby. You’re a grown-up. Chad’s a grown-up. Go and sort this out now.
Chad was leaning against the kitchen bench, chewing slowly on a sandwich. As Michelle entered, his focus slid to her. Usually, on the rare occasions he’d made a small stand, there had been in his expression a wary plea for Michelle not to come down too hard on him. There was none of that present now. If not openly hostile, Chad’s face was certainly not conciliatory. Michelle had been thinking about going up to him and giving him a hug. She decided instead to keep her distance.
‘I won’t say anything now,’ she told him, ‘but we have to talk. So — when?’
‘I can’t help the hours, Mitch,’ he said. ‘It’s just how it’s going to be.’
Michelle counted to ten. ‘Well then, if we want to continue being husband and wife, and you want to continue being a father, we need a plan. You need to schedule in time with Harry and Rosie, and we need to find time for us, too.’ Her voice rose, she couldn’t help it. ‘I mean, Jesus! We haven’t had sex for freaking weeks!’
Chad finished a bite of sandwich. ‘You’re always asleep.’
‘That’s because you’re always home at bloody midnight!’ Michelle sucked in a calming breath. ‘I’m not asleep in the morning. I wake up when you do. On weekdays and Saturdays at least. On Sunday mornings, may I remind you, it’s you who’s dead to the world. We’ll have time,’ she went on. ‘Harry and Rosie usually last till seven.’
‘I can’t miss the bus,’ he said after a pause.
‘I’m not asking for ten hours of tantric bloody pleasuring! Set the alarm for fifteen minutes earlier. Surely that’s not too much to ask.’
The last piece of sandwich went into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed. ‘Every morning?’
‘No! Pick a morning. You choose.’
Chad stared at her. ‘Scheduled sex,’ he said.
‘Currently, we have no sex,’ Michelle said. ‘Or is that what you’d prefer?’
Her husband didn’t reply. He moved over to the sink and began to wash his hands. Michelle felt the tears again threaten to emerge. She swallowed hard to prevent them.
Chad had taken a dishtowel from the rack and was wiping his hands. His mother would not approve, thought Michelle. She would not approve of any of this.
Michelle had not moved further than the kitchen doorway. Chad had replaced the dishtowel and was heading her way. He could not go past without touching her. For that brief moment she felt the warmth from his body and his familiar smell, and she had a sudden urge to grab him and cling to him and bury her face in his chest.
As it was, Chad was the one who paused. His expression as he stared down at Michelle seemed to her to be one of academic puzzlement, detached curiosity. With a sudden, jerky movement, he bent and kissed her. The kiss was almost too hard, bordering on aggressive. He tasted of peanut butter and beer. He pressed up against her, and Michelle could feel him becoming aroused. She’d always loved that moment, when she knew he wanted her. She had always enjoyed working Chad up to a fever pitch of lust. Trouble was, she couldn’t exactly recall how it had felt the last time she’d done that. She wasn’t sure it had felt like this.
He broke the kiss and moved his lips to her ear. ‘Come on,’ he murmured, and led her by the hand.
In bed, he spent more than fifteen minutes, but when it was over, he stroked her hair and kissed her gently, then rolled on his back and went straight to sleep.
Michelle did not. She lay there, eyes open, staring at the dark.
I got what I wanted, she told herself. So why do I feel as though I lost?
6
I don’t know how to talk to him any more. All I do is yell at him. I no longer know how to connect with my son.
It was the first time Aishe had admitted this to herself but she didn’t feel like awarding herself points for honesty. Instead she felt a brief surge of panic, a sensation she knew quickly led to another emotion: anger. When she was angry, she wanted to take it out on someone. But — again, no points for honesty, she decided — isn’t that how this started?
Twenty minutes ago, Aishe had come home after the morning waitressing shift she did four days a week at the Country Kitchen truck-stop café, which was two towns up the line. It wasn’t a job she particularly liked, and it paid a pittance. But it did pay, and Aishe liked having even that little bit of extra money. Without it, there would be no tacos, no DVDs and no coffee from her local café. There would only be enough for Benedict.
I’m sorry, Frank, she thought, I should have been smarter with the money you left me. And I should never have yelled at Gulliver. But knowing that this tiny bit of leeway in my finances depends on me being able to smile and pour coffee for chauvinist arseholes never fails to make me furious. If it didn’t, perhaps I’d have been able to overlook the goddamn plate.
The plate in question had been perched on the back of the couch. Aishe had spotted it the instant she stepped through the door. Aishe’s house had once been a woodcutter’s cabin, and although it had been modernised some years back, it was still tiny. The front door opened onto a small square of stone tiles. To the left, against the wall, were the stairs that led up to two bedrooms and a bathroom. Straight ahead was the living room, big enough to hold only a two-seater couch, a bookshelf and a low table for the television. Beyond the living room was the kitchen. That had been extended, which meant that unlike every other room in the house it was big enough for more than two people.
Because the house was so small, Aishe had strict rules about clutter. There was to be none. Gulliver could do what he liked in his bedroom; she’d long since decided that battle wasn’t worth fighting. But downstairs, he had to keep things tidy. No sports bags dumped by the front door. No sweatshirts draped over the furniture. No dishes in the living room …
She placed her car keys in the bowl on the end of the bookshelf and listened. There was no sound from upstairs, which only increased her annoyance. Gulliver and Benedict were probably surfing the internet, looking at the sites which seemed to be the basis of all their in-jokes. Aishe was too proud to ask to see these sites, but she burned every time they slowly intoned ‘Forever alone’ or referenced someone called Rage Guy.
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ she’d been irritated enough to ask once.
‘Memes,’ Gulliver had replied. Aishe was none the wiser.
‘Rage Guy,’ she’d muttered as she’d climbed the stairs, ‘has nothing on Rage Mother.’
A little voice had whispered that what she was about to do was possibly not all that wise. She’d ignored it, thrown open Gulliver’s bedroom door and yelled at him to shift the bloody plate from the couch.
Usually, an instruction so voiced got him up and moving. Resentfully, grudgingly, but he would always move. This time, what he did was yell back.
‘You’re a mental case!’ he’d shouted. ‘A fucking mental case! I mean, what the fuck! It’s a plate, not a loaded Uzi.’ He’d snatched his sweatshirt from a pile of clothes on his bed and shoved past her. ‘Fuck it. I’m outta here.’
Aishe had been so taken aback by the yelling and the swearing — Gulliver hardly ever swore; she was the only one who cussed up a storm — that she’d watched in silence as he’d run down the stairs, wrenched open the front door and slammed it hard behind him.
Behind her, in the bedroom, she heard someone blow out a breath. Oh great, she thought as she turned around. I’m about to get a patronising sermon from a pale-faced posh git. What a treat.
Benedict was sitting on Gulliver’s bed. He had a textbook in his hand. Algebra. They had been working, Aishe realised. At least it couldn’t possibly make her feel any worse.
‘Would you like to go and get a cup of coffee?’ he said.
Aishe wasn’t sure she heard right. ‘What?’
‘Coffee? Java? Cup of joe?’
‘You’re offering to buy me coffee?’
‘Well, maybe not buy, exactly. But I’m more than happy to go Dutch.’
‘You do realise I’ve spent all morning pouring the goddamn stuff into mugs for fat men who think it’s OK to ogle my tits and call me Honey?’
Poker-faced, Benedict said, ‘That is a terrible thing to be called.’
Aishe eyed him suspiciously. Then her shoulders slumped and she leaned her forehead against the door frame.
‘I fucked up,’ she said. ‘I’ve been doing it a lot lately.’
The Not So Perfect Life of Mo Lawrence Page 5