Man or Mango?

by Lucy Ellmann

  I try to forget the bad things about the marriage, like my wife’s Ten Commandments (pinned to the fridge by a heart-shaped magnet until I fell irretrievably from grace). I can only remember six of them now:

  1 Fidelity (oh, God)

  2 Tidiness

  3 Romantic presents of flowers and candy

  4 Share housework

  5 Have children when SHE says so

  6 Renew marriage vows once a year …

  She’s doing better than I am these days. Even her exaggerated DULLNESS seems essentially a good sign (of tranquillity, I guess). She’s turned the bakery into a Down-Home-Spankin’-New-Eatin’-Tavern (actually I think she just calls it ‘Lulu’s’), all kitted out with red-and-white checked tablecloths, rag rugs, weird salads and low-priced watercolors by local artists. She makes her superb pecan pie along with two disgusting soups each day: Curried Clam Chowder (yeccch!), Haddock Pineapple ’n’ Lima Beans, Lobster ’n’ Ginger, Shrimp ‘n’ Apple Dumpling, Lettuce … When I expressed some disbelief that lettuce soup actually EXISTS, she sent me the recipe:

  Fry one onion until soft

  Add FOUR WHOLE LETTUCES (washed)

  1 quart water

  Boil, puree, then add stock.

  Me, PURÉE? Ten whole YEARS I spent with that woman! Ten whole lettuces.

  She’s now manifesting a mania for exercise, as jilted women so often do though, come to think of it, she was always good at purposeless expenditures of energy. She doesn’t seem to understand that joggers are the LIVING DEAD, loping their way straight toward a CORONARY. Who do they think they’re kidding?

  Now she’s worried I’m going to pot because there’s no ice hockey over here, only pinball. She holds up her friend Marge as an example of healthy living. ‘Marge swam every day …’ Marge worked herself up into a terrifying peak of fitness, then swallowed a load of pills! MARGE KILLED HERSELF. Is this what she wants me to do? Jeez, why must I hear about Marge?

  But at least she’s TALKING to me these days. Not like near the end, when we seemed to sit on that bed for weeks silently surveying the ruins of our alliance. Now she’s talking to EVERYONE and having a ‘very stimulating year’: goes to a printmakers’ co-op, Spanish conversation class, walking club, quilting bee, reading group, drama group … Might as well have GROUP SEX while she’s at it (probably does). Her and her stimulating year.

  For a while I worried that SHE might commit suicide, didn’t know WHAT she might do. My guilt was acute. But it turns out our divorce wasn’t an event of cataclysmic proportions for her. I was just one among many men she might have married (might yet marry). Nothing special, plenty of fish in the sea. And yet I still feel guilty. Done that woman wrong … Even Henry VIII must sometimes have barreled down those castle corridors shouting ‘WHAT HAVE I DONE?’

  Broodin on the Boston Bruins

  (Brave old team, now in ruins),

  How they BUTCHERED their opponents

  While in the stands the fans had punch-ups!

  All a crime, a violation.

  Not, as I thought, my salvation.

  Not a metaphor for life, just

  Strife.

  Anger, coldness, hate and sorrow:

  These men from each other borrow.

  WOMEN’s wishes, wombs and wisdom –

  Wasted on wretches craving more

  Familiar foes.

  Lying on my English sofa, so

  FAR from those old scenes of battle,

  Rubbing the hockey stick we’re born with.

  All I know is that I loved her.

  That I loved her, loved and left her.

  Eloïse

  Dear Sir or Madam,

  I am writing to you because I am very concerned about my cats’ present aversion to Whiskas cat food. I have had cats for over twenty-two years, and have been feeding them Whiskas cat food for at least eighteen of those years. Recently, however, they have become more and more choosy. They will now only accept the Select Cuts variety (and that not always), and reliably eat only the Select Menus which come in the half-size tins and are much more expensive when one has three cats.

  Of the original type of Whiskas, they used to eat Lamb, Liver or Turkey flavours (after starting to refuse the Chicken, Rabbit and Beef). But now, even the stray cats outside won’t eat the Turkey or Lamb recipes (which I left out for them when my own cats disdained them).

  After all these years of depending on Whiskas to provide healthy and appetizing food, I am now having to explore other brands to try to find one my cats will tolerate. Have you done something to your recipes, your tins, or to my cats? I really cannot understand this radical change in their dietary preferences, and it is a great worry and inconvenience …

  Eloïse had reduced her contact with the outside world primarily to disputes with impersonal bodies. In the last year she had been in written communication with:

  Whiskas

  The Queen

  Germaine Greer

  Her old headmaster

  John Lewis’s

  Oliver E. Prŷs-Jones

  The DVLC

  The RAF

  The BBC

  The police

  MeIvyn Bragg

  Malcolm Rifkind

  Two different accountants

  Sainsbury’s

  Hoover plc

  A tampon company

  The Royal Mail

  Two plumbers

  Angus Deayton

  A swimming pool

  Her ex-flatmate, Howard

  The doctor who killed her parents

  A company that makes loo-roll holders

  Margaret Thatcher

  A cemetery

  Carnation Evaporated Milk

  The county council

  Slumberland

  She wrote to the Queen, Angus Deayton, Margaret Thatcher, Melvyn Bragg and Germaine Greer about their hatred of women. You can tell the Queen hates women by the way she greets the wives of foreign dignitaries. She simply isn’t interested in them. She assumes they don’t matter. Just because they’re women, she assumes they have no power. ‘This is not how bee societies work,’ wrote Eloïse to the Queen. ‘Not only do bees create an entire civilization from scratch every year, in which females are awarded due significance and respect, but they even have built-in carrier bags (pollen baskets) on their back legs.’

  She asked Angus Deayton why there are so few women on his TV news quiz, and Melvyn Bragg why he always interrupts or ignores the women on his Monday-morning radio programme. To Germaine Greer she wrote, ‘All you do these days is giggle and flirt. Your tautness has all unravelled (but perhaps we all come to that in the end)…’

  Eloïse wrote to the council to claim her Single Person’s rebate. She contacted the cemetery superintendent to inform him that someone had swiped a large rectangle of turf from her parents’ joint grave (he had probably done it himself but she was trying to be tactful). She wrote to Slumberland to find out if they still made a particular type of mattress in a single-bed size (they didn’t). She wrote to the BBC berating them for moving Woman’s Hour from the morning to the afternoon or vice versa (whatever). She wrote to a tampon company about the way their boxes shower tampons all over the customer’s knees when you open them. She wrote to one accountant for a breakdown of his £3,000 bill, and to another to engage his services because she was not going to pay the £3,000 bill. She wrote to the RAF about Chinook helicopters flying within an inch of her roof on a daily basis, scaring her cats. She wrote to Malcolm Rifkind asking why he was doing nothing for the Bosnian Muslims. She wrote to the Minister for Roads about the foolishness of allowing men to drive cars. She wrote to the GP who killed her parents, accusing him of malicious conduct (her mother died from the strain of being given too many tests, her father killed himself because no one was effectively controlling his pain): ‘He died without even saving goodbye. I have to live with this.’ She wrote to her old headmaster, who had taught dancing: ‘All the girls had to wait for a partner while the boys were allowed
to dance together if they wanted to. The girls just had to sit there. If a boy was finally forced to dance with one of the girls, he’d pull his shirt cuffs down so our hands wouldn’t touch, or just hold his hands up in the air out of reach.’ She wrote to the judge who declared a raped eight-year-old girl ‘no angel’. She wrote to the author of a book on bumblebees (Oliver E. Prŷs-Jones) about his instructions for amateur bee enthusiasts on how to kill bees. And she wrote to the local swimming pool: ‘I was shocked and alarmed to find a large human turd floating in the water.’ No reply.

  Dear Sir or Madam,

  If I’d wanted to live in Piccadilly Circus I could have stayed in London. I moved to the country for some peace and quiet. I had no idea that my house was on some daily helicopter flight-path.

  Is it absolutely necessary for them to fly so close? I often think they are actually going to crash into the house. This is terrifying, both for myself and my cats …

  In reply to an impertinent form-letter asking if she’d like to subscribe to some boring business magazine, Eloïse wrote:

  You assume a lot about someone you’ve never even met. What makes you so sure I need to improve my leadership qualities?

  I do not wish to know how Ikea makes money, nor do I believe that Nike shoes are expressive of emotion. My only ‘company strategy’ is to avoid company …

  She wrote to her ex-flatmate about the couch:

  Dear Howard,

  In response to your recent letter, I have been thinking again about the couch. As I remember it, the couch was not in good condition when I first moved in. Its springs were sticking out in odd directions and it was very difficult to arrange the cushions comfortably. They never seemed to fit.

  I was not overly concerned about this at the time, and regarded its gradual decay as an inevitable consequence of use, before and after my arrival. I honestly attributed the wonky arm to normal wear and tear.

  I am also concerned that you were not satisfied with my efforts in the garden …

  She had considered writing a letter that could be sent to all her former acquaintances

  GENERAL STATEMENT FOR ALL CONCERNED: I do not wish you to be perturbed in any way by my current uncommunicative behaviour. I wish it to be known that I am not pursuing any friendships at the moment because I cannot think of anything to say and I suspect I am bad for people. I am too egotistically involved with my own decay to focus on the troubles and triumphs of others …

  — but managed to restrain herself. Instead she wrote an imaginary letter to herself from the outside world:

  Dear Madam,

  It has recently come to our attention here at the Inland Revenue that you are a bad girl, that you were bad to your parents and gradually, throughout the many years of your sorry existence, you have managed to alienate and/or injure everyone with whom you have come into contact, including animals and even inanimate objects.

  Everyone in the world is sick of your moods, your incompetence, your car zooming this way and that, your droning radio, your total lack of courage and sexual plausibility.

  Even your milkman is disgusted with you and will therefore no longer be supplying you with your daily lactose requirements. In fact he now feels such a repugnance towards you that the whole surrounding area will not be receiving milk either — for which your neighbours will no doubt blame you.

  The entire matter has caused great shock and consternation in our office. We are therefore rescinding your annuity, your British citizenship, your human rights and any remaining connection you might mistakenly believe you have to the human race. You are no better than a bug.

  She once bought four six-ounce tins of Carnation Evaporated Milk from Sainsbury’s, mainly because they were offering a free Carnation Evaporated Milk tea towel if you sent in four labels. But when she got home she noticed that the offer had ended some months before. So she immediately despatched an irate letter to Sainsbury’s and a beseeching one to Carnation Evaporated Milk, begging them to send her a free tea towel anyway. Sainsbury’s wrote back, offering her a refund if she returned all four tins (but she’d already used one). She never heard from Carnation Evaporated Milk.

  Some time later, Eloïse received a mysterious parcel. Being wary of letter bombs, which had lately been in the news (women being particularly targeted), she quickly threw it into the garden. But, contemplating the package from her kitchen window, she realized it was her civic duty not to leave letter bombs lying about the garden, so she called the police. They told her to put the suspect package in the dustbin (as long as it wasn’t a rubbish day) while they tried to trace its postmark.

  Eloïse had forgotten all about the package when a policewoman rang back late that afternoon and left a message on the answering machine, confirming that it had come from a bona fide supply depot. Eloïse went out and retrieved the package, opened it, and found: a Carnation Evaporated Milk tea towel! Success.

  Dear Sir or Madam,

  I am returning to you the loo-roll holder I recently bought, as it does not fit into the holes it is meant to fit into.

  I was very excited at first to find it, as I had been looking for one for a long time, and the only others I have seen come in a pack containing the whole apparatus (i.e. not just the plastic cylinder that goes inside the loo roll but the attachment you’re supposed to affix to the wall, which I do not need as in my loo there are already some ceramic tile supports to hold the loo-roll holder cylinder)…

  A helpful tip is not to breathe on bumblebees: cultivate the habit … of breathing from the side of your mouth when looking at them.

  George

  Position of ants in the Animal Kingdom … Mode of observation … Mode of marking ants Stages in life of ants … Length of life Structure of ants … Character of ants – Wars among ants — Modes of fighting Soldiers … Habitations of ants Communities of ants Food Enemies … Games Cleanliness … Drowned ants Buried ants Instances of kindness A crippled ant … Behaviour to intoxicated friends …

  The creative-writing racket hasn’t really hit England yet but I was able to get a writer-in-residence sinecure at London University this year, thereby enabling me to stay in the country a bit longer. All I have to do is go over there once or twice a week and encourage the poor slobs to write. Of course most of them need no encouragement they need to SLOW DOWN. I’m pretty envious of their ideas. My envy makes me irascible. In fact I’ve scared off my best student.

  At first she seemed to be getting a bit of a crush on me, which I don’t LIKE but was calm about. Then she stopped coming altogether. Not only was she the brightest spark in a none-too-sparkly class, but she left all her WORK behind for me to read and I’d like to discuss it with her.

  Last time I saw her was on the street one night after she’d just missed another of my classes. She was standing around outside a pub with some dopey-looking guys. I would have ignored her, but she called out to me, started telling me about some story she claimed to be writing, wanted to tell me all about it over the noise of the traffic. She probably meant this as some sort of atonement for missing the class, but I flipped.

  ‘There you go,’ I roared at her, ‘just throwing your ideas away on some wet roadside! Either write it or shut up about it.’

  CLOSE-UP OF GIRL’S SHOCKED EXPRESSION. SHOT OF WET ROADSIDE. SHOT OF THE DOPEY GUYS DISCONSOLATELY SHUFFLING THEIR FEET.

  CLOSE-UP OF COBBLESTONES BEING SPATTERED WITH MUD AS CARS ZIP BY.

  Haven’t seen her since. What a jerk and now I’m stuck with her NOTEBOOK.

  One of her stories is about an erect penis that runs amok in a crowd of Saturday shoppers, then seeks sanctuary in a dank, dark cellar where it meets a lot of other erect penises, makes some good lifelong pals (erect penises turn out to have a much less competitive streak than you might think!), and together they set off for a faraway land where they won’t get arrested anymore and can be themselves, out in the open. They roll, bounce, limp and burrow their way to a better life.

  She was wasted on those dopey guys. />
  One of my more annoying students is pursuing me at the moment. Venetia. I’m always getting commandeered by older women, not necessarily for sex but as some kind of lapdog. Or some kind of FREAK: American poet with hang-up about ice hockey in need of?? Smothering, evidently. She’s a restaurant critic, hugely wealthy, totally talentless, but nonetheless a self-proclaimed darling of the English literary scene (bunch of snails sniffing each other’s snail trail). Writers turn her on. She’s always on her way to or from the memorial service of some supposedly noteworthy literary type. Just LOVES a good funeral.

  The rest of the time, she can be found in Ian McEwan’s favorite restaurant hoping to catch sight of him or one of his pals (she’d stalk SALMAN RUSHDIE if she could only FIND him). Failing these, she’ll settle for any sonuvabitch who can hold a pen. Hence, moi. I am her current PROJECT, God help me. She thinks I live too isolated a life, wants to introduce me to all her dull bookish friends. She does this by making us eat her FOOD.

  This isn’t ENGLISH cuisine, it’s weirder than that. She’ll go all the way over to France for the weekend just to buy BOUDIN SAUSAGES: deathly WHITE in color and tasting of urine. Or she’ll come back from Indonesia and insist on plopping a RAW EGG in your soup — in a country rife with salmonella! She once presented me with a long gray slab of HALF-COOKED WHOLEMEAL (aaagh!) PASTRY dotted with wrinkled cherry tomatoes and soiled with bits of charred oregano: ‘Pizza’. Another time, she MICROWAVED a CAKE: mixed it for 30 secs, microwaved it for 10, tested it (not done), microwaved it for another 2½ secs and SERVED it. I managed to forgo. But I’d finally figured out the mystery of all those funerals: she’s gradually poisoning the whole literary establishment!

  When not cooking she’s truffle-hunting for gossip. She LOVES my divorce. Grilled me on it with such vehemence and Vengeance one night, such relentless insensitivity (forget English tact, just FORGET it), that I don’t expect ever to forgive her. She sees my wife as some sort of long-suffering, middle-class, bottle-recycling Laura Ingalls Wilder, left behind in the doorway of a cute log cabin dripping with maple syrup … And I’m the rogue. This pleases Venetia.

  She doesn’t realize my roguish days are over. The last woman I slept with brushed her TEETH all the time. I felt I must brush mine an equivalent amount. Now I associate sex with spearmint.