State of the Union

by Nick Hornby

  “We’re not actually going to the cinema,” says Louise.

  “No. We’re not,” says Tom.

  There’s an awkward silence.

  “Oh,” says Giles. “How have you been, anyway?”

  “Fine. Look, we’ve got an appointment,” says Tom.

  “We’d love to see you. Would you come round for supper? Or we could meet up for dinner halfway?” Anna says.

  “Lovely,” says Louise.

  “There’s lots to catch up on,” says Anna.

  “Great,” says Louise.

  She starts to push past them and into the street.

  “I can see you’re in a hurry, so . . .” Giles shrugs.

  “We must seem very rude,” Louise says. “There’s a good reason for it.”

  “Marital therapy,” Tom says. “You know what therapists are like if you’re late.”

  “Oh, no!” says Anna, and she makes a sympathetic face. Tom tries to make the same face back.

  “Afraid so,” he says. “Spot of infidelity. Not me. Anyway.”

  He nods and goes out into the street. Louise, still inside the pub, stares at him as he walks past her.

  Outside the pub, Louise is furious.

  “What the HELL were you thinking of?”

  “I’m sorry. I panicked. Didn’t know how to break off the conversation.”

  “I cannot believe you just did that.”

  “No. Me neither.”

  “And throw that stupid bloody cast away.”

  Louise crosses the road without waiting for him. As Tom begins to follow her, he notices a rubbish bin. He stops, takes his plaster cast off, and puts it in the bin. He hovers for a moment, wondering whether he’s done the right thing, and then scurries after her.

  week five

  NORMAL SLOPE

  Tom and Louise are sitting opposite each other in the pub, at their usual table, with their usual drinks. Louise looks at Tom searchingly.

  “How are you?” she says.

  Tom shrugs.

  “Yes, okay. Did you remember my stuff?”

  “Oh. Yes.”

  She reaches under the table and pulls garments out of her workbag. She puts a little pile on the table.

  “Two pairs of socks, two pairs of pants, two T-shirts.”

  Tom looks at her aghast, and then glances around the pub.

  “You didn’t bring a bag?” he says.

  “No. I was in a hurry. You called at eight-twenty this morning, which, as you may remember from when you were a part of the family, is quite a busy time. I ran to your drawers and shoved everything in my workbag.”

  “Now what do I do?”

  “I’ll put them back in my bag, and afterward we’ll find a carrier bag.”

  She removes the pile and puts them back in her bag.

  “Your top drawer, by the way, is pitiful,” she says.

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “When was the last time you bought a pair of boxers?”

  “I don’t wear boxers.”

  Louise rolls her eyes.

  “Or any underwear?” she says.

  “I haven’t worked for a year.”

  “So, thirteen months ago?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “And you know you have access to a joint account. If I saw a payment to Marks and Spencer’s for fifty quid, I’m not going to hit the roof.”

  “Fifty quid! Is that how much pants cost now?”

  Louise sighs.

  “No. I’m suggesting you buy several pairs.”

  “Can we change the subject? What have you said to the kids about me moving out?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Not . . . as such,” Louise says, choosing her words carefully.

  “So what have they said to you?”

  Louise shakes her head.

  “It just hasn’t been mentioned? I’m not there, and they haven’t noticed?”

  “If they ask, I just tell them you’re somewhere else in the house. In bed. Listening to music in the spare room. In the pub.”

  “The pub? I never go to the pub.”

  “No, I know,” says Louise. “But I think they like it. The dadness of it.”

  “Jesus. Wow.”

  “How long do you intend to be gone for?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t have to do this. Nobody asked you to leave.”

  “We had a pretty terrible few days.”

  “And it all started with that stupid plaster cast.”

  “Well. I thought last week when you told her about throwing the cast away, you crossed a line.”

  “It was funny. She laughed.”

  “Yes,” says Tom. “She laughed, you laughed. I was very hurt. I was making a gesture! Throwing the cast away was the first step on a very long road toward marital harmony!”

  “Throwing a cast away when there’s nothing wrong with your arm just takes us back to where you were. You’re still a man with severe marital difficulties and two good arms.”

  “I wanted to show that I valued the truth.”

  “Is that why you told Giles and Anna there’d been a ‘spot of infidelity’ when we’d bumped into them over there?”

  She nods toward the doorway.

  “Yes. A spot. I was minimizing it. Another gesture,” he says. “I admit I went over the top afterward, and then it all got a bit out of control.”

  “I’m sorry for some of the things I said.”

  “There were some low blows in there.”

  “Inevitable, I’d have thought,” Louise says. “It’s not your face I want to punch.”

  “I’d have thought you might want to encourage all body parts below the belt, not render them unusable.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry. But we should remember we’re talking metaphorically. I didn’t actually do anything to them.”

  “Metaphors in the nuts can hurt just as much as kicks.”

  “Is that really true?”

  Tom shrugs, as if to say they’ll have to agree to differ. They take sips of their drinks.

  “It’s a slippery slope, moving out,” Louise says, “and it can be hard to climb back up it.”

  “I’d have thought that’s the definition of a slippery slope.”

  “So you’re saying you might not be able to get back up? You may have moved out for good?”

  “Am I?”

  “If you can’t climb back up a slippery slope.”

  “I was merely pointing out a linguistic redundancy, not announcing the end of the marriage.”

  “So no slippery slope?”

  “No,” says Tom. “It’s a normal slope, and I can wander up and down it at will. No slippage. Just exertion.”

  “To take account of the slope.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that’s another thing. You’re not as nimble as you once were.”

  “I just need a few days to think,” Tom says.

  “Where do you live, actually?”

  “Why do you need to know?”

  “I don’t. Knowing where one’s husband lives is just one of the useful pieces of information a wife may need.”

  “My mobile is on at all hours, in case of emergency.”

  “I’m not actually worried about how to get hold of you. I’m worried about what sort of state you’re in.”

  “I’m perfectly comfortable.”

  “Please don’t tell me you’re at your mother’s.”

  “No.”

  “Phew.”

  “That didn’t work out.”

  “Oh, bloody hell, Tom.”

  “It was a bad idea.”

  “Who could have predicted that? So w
here are you?”

  “I have a bed and access to a kettle, and that’s all you need to know.”

  “Why won’t you tell me?”

  “Maybe there’s not enough mystery in our relationship. That’s what the advice columns are always going on about, isn’t it?”

  “I think they’re talking about closing the door when you’re peeing, not refusing to tell your long-term partner where you live.”

  “What are we going to tell Kenyon?”

  “I’m surprised you want to tell her anything.”

  Tom looks relieved.

  “Oh, thank you,” he says. “I didn’t think that would be an option. I owe you one.”

  “I was being sarcastic. Of course we’re going to tell her that you’ve moved out of the family home since the last session. Bloody hell, Tom.”

  “Can we keep nothing private from that bloody woman? Do we have to do all our dirty washing in her launderette? Anyway, I don’t want her to think she’s not getting anywhere. It seems needlessly cruel.”

  “She’ll live, I’m sure.”

  Louise takes a sip of wine.

  “What do you need to think about?”

  Tom looks baffled.

  “How do you mean?”

  “You said you needed a few days to think.”

  “Oh. Yeah.”

  “So tell me.”

  “Well. Everything, really.”

  “What is ‘everything’?”

  “The marriage,” says Tom vaguely. “The, the . . .”

  “So what have you thought in the two days you’ve had so far?”

  “You’re just putting me on the spot. What have you been thinking about?”

  “I was asking you.”

  “I’m just pointing out that it’s not that easy to come up with a list.”

  “I’m not the one who’s gone off to think.”

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about your friend Matthew.”

  “Oh,” says Louise cautiously. “What do you think about him?”

  “Just that he’s a bastard and I want to kill him. I think that, over and over again.”

  “And is that constructive?”

  “Works for me. I googled him.”

  “How do you know his surname?”

  “I saw an email.”

  “Oh.”

  “And then I googled and then I went on his Facebook page. He likes his beer, doesn’t he?”

  “No.”

  “His pies, then. I was surprised. He doesn’t seem like your type. That England shirt he was wearing in his profile picture . . . looked like he had a football up it.”

  “Well . . . he isn’t fat,” she says. “And he wouldn’t wear an England shirt. I think you may have the wrong person. Matthew is actually quite serious-minded. I can’t imagine him having a Facebook page, let alone an England shirt.”

  “Sounds like a lot of fun. Why did you stop? With him?”

  “Because it was a terrible thing to do and it made me unhappy.”

  “And what if I don’t move back in? Would it start up again?”

  “I shouldn’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “This is a pointless line of questioning.”

  “Why?”

  “Because . . . What are you asking me?” she says. “Really? What do you actually want to know?”

  Tom thinks.

  “I want to know if you’d start up with Matthew again. In the event of us splitting up.”

  “Yes, I know that. But what’s the real question?”

  Tom thinks, for even longer this time.

  “Just . . . whether you’d see Matthew again. If we . . . stop being married.”

  “You’re just saying the same thing over and over again.”

  “Because that’s what I really want to know. Why wouldn’t I want to know that?”

  “All you need to know is that I’m not going to see Matthew again if we don’t.”

  “God, you’re brutal.”

  “Why is that brutal? I thought it might be consoling.”

  “Consoling? You’re running off with Matthew the moment I’m out of the door and that’s consoling?”

  “Why would you care, if you’re gone?”

  “You see, that’s the difference between us. I blame your job.”

  “What’s my job got to do with it?”

  “It’s a brutal job,” he says. “‘Oh, I’m sorry, Mrs. Thompson, but you’ve got cancer, and as you’re ninety, there’s nothing we can do for you. Goodbye.’”

  Louise looks at him incredulously.

  “You honestly think that’s what I do all day?”

  Tom shrugs.

  “You wouldn’t know because you never ask,” she says.

  “Because I don’t want to know. It’s depressing. Who wants to look at old people’s private parts all day? It’s the worst job in the world. It depresses the hell out of me.”

  “I hardly ever look at their private parts. That’s not normally what’s wrong with them.”

  Louise pauses for a moment, and continues with increased volume.

  “And anyway, they don’t have that much bloody use for them. Because that’s what happens. They shrivel up and become useless.”

  Tom looks around uncomfortably.

  “It’s happening to us now,” she says. “As we speak. You know what the irony is? I work with old people, and you’ve spent your entire professional life writing about pop music. Thinking about young people, in other words. Their gigs and their first albums and their drugs, and, I don’t know, their groupies.”

  “Groupies? Have you ever read any of my stuff?”

  “And I’m not sure what benefit it’s had. You’re shuffling around the house all day in your bathrobe. And I’m bringing you your clean pants.”

  “Make up your mind. What am I? Eight, or eighty?”

  “There’s room for confusion. But whatever it is, you’re not forty-four. You’re in the prime of your life. And what are you doing with it? You know what the real problem is with not having sex?”

  “I can see it makes you crabby,” he says.

  “It makes you reevaluate everything. You live with someone, you have sex with them, you think, Oh, I’m married to him. Actually, you don’t even think that. You don’t think anything. You just get on with it. But take the sex away, and all you’re doing is . . . sharing a house with some bloke who moans a lot and pokes fun at my bedtime reading habits. I mean, what’s he even doing in bed with me?”

  “I’m just trying to encourage you to branch out. There can’t be that many Scandinavian women left to kill, surely?”

  “Do you understand? Sex is the thing that separates you from everyone else in my life.”

  “Nearly everyone, anyway.”

  Louise stares at him coldly.

  “We should go,” she says.

  They drain their drinks and leave.

  “I’m sorry,” says Tom as they wait at the lights to cross the road.

  “Oh. Thank you. Me too.”

  “I didn’t know it was that important to you.”

  “Really?”

  “Look. How about I come back after the therapy session, and we can, you know. Have a bash, if you want.”

  The lights change. They cross the road. Louise doesn’t say anything.

  “Probably didn’t say that very well,” says Tom.

  “No. When you say, ‘Have a bash, if you want’ . . .”

  “Yes. Awful.”

  “Well, I don’t. Want.”

  “Oh. Right. So . . . Where are we?”

  “I don’t know, Tom. But unless someone makes some kind of effort . . .”

  “And by ‘someone’ you mean me, I suppose?”

&nbs
p; She rings the bell by the therapist’s door without answering his question.

  week six

  NIGEL AND NAOMI

  Louise gets to the pub first. She buys the drinks and heads to their normal table in the pub. Tom walks through the door. He’s wearing a sport jacket and a shirt. He has shaved and had a haircut. Before he notices Louise, he pats his hair nervously.

  They both sit down, and he gives her a smile.

  “Hi,” he says.

  Louise makes a little face, as if a smile and a “Hi” are weird. And she’s right—they are, in the context of the normal dynamic between them.

  “Hello,” she says.

  “How’s your day been?”

  “Oh, you know.”

  Tom leans in and makes eye contact.

  “No. Tell me.”

  Louise is perturbed.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” Tom says. “I was just waiting for an answer to my question.”

  “There’s nothing weird about me?”

  “No. You look nice.”

  “Oh, I see. Please stop now.”

  “Stop saying you look nice?”

  “All of it. The looking at me. The smiling. The . . . getup.”

  “It’s not a ‘getup.’ I’m not wearing fancy dress.”

  “The effect is somewhat similar,” she says.

  “I’m trying.”

  “I can see that. Try in a different way.”

  “Give me some tips.”

  “For example, the text you sent me this morning . . .”

  “Ah,” says Tom. “More things like that?”

  “No. Nothing like that.”

  “What was wrong with it?”

  “It was creepy.”

  “‘Looking forward to seeing you later’? That one? That’s creepy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jesus.”

  “It sounds like you’re trying.”

  “I am trying.”

  “Well . . . Don’t.”

  “I’d try if you were someone new.”

  “Of course. But I’m not. Were you actually looking forward to seeing me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t believe you,” she says.

  “Weren’t you looking forward to seeing me, then?”

  “I saw you yesterday.”

  “But that was just parenting. We haven’t had a chance to chat.”