The Post-Birthday World

by Lionel Shriver

“I don’t know why you’re studying the menu. You always get the same thing.”

  “Lamb-stuffed vine leaves!” Lawrence had blind faith in the merits of repetition, and may never have reflected on its insidiously erosive effects. Little by little, the appeal of those vine leaves would abate. But Lawrence did not live in a world of subtleties or shades, and was certain to experience being sick of this order on a single evening all at once. He did not keep track of gradual disintegrations. For Lawrence, a leftover in the fridge was either fine or it was spoiled, while Irina could detect the incremental waning of flavor and the first faint whiff of corruption without having to meet a forest of mold to throw it out. In relation to food his black-and-white vision had negligible repercussions, but in relation to Irina his color-blindness was potentially perilous. He wasn’t vigilant.

  As Irina soaked a square of spongy sesame bread in tahini dressing, she paused to consider the rashness of her sudden impulse this evening. It was true that Tas wasn’t romantic, but when you did seek to arrange romance by design it was most apt to elude you. If nothing else, the quality of spontaneity could not be planned.

  Meantime, Lawrence remarked, “I hope you don’t mind, but I took a look at the drawings you’re doing for Puffin. They look really—professional.”

  Irina sighed. “They’re merely competent. Even Ramsey hinted that Jude might have had a point when she called my later work ‘flat.’”

  “Flat my butt. It’s beautiful.”

  “It’s not beautiful, it’s pretty. I’m doing illustrations, but, sorry to be pretentious—not art.”

  “Why do you have to be so hard on yourself? I think everything you do is great!”

  They weren’t communicating. Lawrence tossed the human spirit into the same mythical grab-bag as elves and fairies.

  Over salad, Irina mentioned, “You know, this Asian financial crisis may be bad for our investments, but it might have one upside. The baht is in freefall. Taking a holiday in Thailand in the next few months could be fantastically cheap.”

  “Why would we want to go to Thailand?”

  “Why not? We’ve never been there. The beaches are supposed to be gorgeous.”

  “I hate beaches. And if I’m going to go abroad, I’d rather go somewhere that can double for research. Frankly, I’ve thought about taking a trip to Algeria.”

  “You are not going to Algeria!” Irina exclaimed.

  “Why not?” His innocence was feigned.

  “It’s only one of the most dangerous countries in the world at the moment.”

  “According to whom?”

  “According to you. I read that Foreign Policy article of yours.”

  “Oh, yeah?” he asked bashfully.

  “You left it out.”

  “Took it from my briefcase is all.”

  “I thought you wanted me to read it.”

  “Okay.” He smiled. “Maybe.”

  “So you can forget Algeria. I’ll handcuff you to the bedstead first.”

  “Sounds fun.”

  If only he were serious. “As for Thailand…” Irina took the plunge. “I thought it might be a good place for a honeymoon.”

  “Whose?” he asked, in earnest.

  Irina simply stared at him.

  “Oh,” said Lawrence.

  “That’s it? Oh?”

  “I guess a ‘honeymoon’ would entail getting married first.”

  “That is generally a prerequisite.” This wasn’t going well.

  Lawrence shrugged, expressing the same scale of emotion she might have raised had she successfully cajoled him into ordering something new off the menu. Not only the same scale, but the same emotions: skepticism, wariness, and dread.

  “I guess so,” he said. “If you want.”

  “If I want. Wouldn’t we have to want?”

  “It is your idea.”

  “We’ve lived together for over nine years. You couldn’t call the notion bizarre.”

  “I didn’t say it was bizarre. I’m just not especially bothered either way.”

  “Not bothered.”

  “You’re repeating what I say a lot.”

  “Maybe I’m wishing you’d say something else.”

  “Look. You know I can’t stand ceremonies.”

  “Like beaches. And other people.”

  “Are we talking a white dress and reception? Because I’ve been to loads of weddings, and I’ve had it. Friends resent the plane tickets and hotel bills; the happy couple resents the catering. Both parties think they’re doing the other a huge favor. The hoo-ha is over before you know it, and all anyone’s got to show for it is a hangover. Weddings are a racket, and the only people who profit are florists and bartenders.”

  “Are you quite finished? Because I never said anything about a reception. A registry office and private toast with Korbel is fine by me.”

  “We could at least spring for Veuve Clicquot,” said Lawrence, who had his standards. “But what’s got into you? Sure, we could do it, but we could also skip it, right? Why not keep on the way we’ve been doing?”

  “Why not order the lamb-stuffed vine leaves one more night?”

  Lawrence looked baffled. Irina hadn’t the energy to explain, since she shouldn’t have to. Why get married? Because it would be fun. Because it was the very folks who claimed that they “couldn’t stand ceremonies” who needed them, who without the barreling intrusion of occasion would, metaphorically, order the lamb-stuffed vine leaves for eternity. Because—how could she say this, when it was Lawrence’s place to say this to her?—he wanted to spend the rest of his life with the lovely, the nonpareil Irina McGovern.

  “Never mind,” she said wearily.

  “What did you mean, about the vine leaves? They’re great, as usual. Want one?”

  “I’ve had them before, bolshoye spasibo.” Some instinct dictated that she use the rather formal form of thank you.

  THEY GOT BACK HOME in plenty of time for the Grand Prix replays at eleven-thirty, and Irina made popcorn. She’d gone quiet, though Lawrence didn’t seem to notice.

  Having not laid eyes on Ramsey since that haunting birthday night, she was curious how she’d react to his face. When he entered the arena, she had to remind herself that she knew him. Ramsey looked older than she remembered, almost haggard. That night in July his face had been animated with adolescent mischief, especially when he’d spoken of Denise, his faithful girlfriend at sixteen whom he’d walk home from his Clapham snooker club, and they’d kiss on the Common. He’d once mentioned that Denise was the name of his cue, a fact that now left a peculiar residue of jealousy, though only a trace.

  Surely it was a relief that her flush of forbidden passion did not return. She should be grateful to feel little more than vague good wishes for his performance. The fact that Ramsey Acton was an attractive man had been safely restored to the abstract. In tandem, she was plagued by an enigmatic sense of loss. Usually one rues the fact that a desire has gone ungratified. Yet maybe the commodity more precious than its fulfillment was the desire itself. This kind of thinking was subversively un-American; the Western economy thrived off of the insistent, serial satisfaction of cravings. Still, perhaps the whole tumbling cycle of wanting and getting was wrongheaded. Desire was its own reward, and a rarer luxury than you’d think. You could sometimes buy what you wanted; you could never buy wanting it. While it might be possible to squelch a desire, to turn from it, the process didn’t seem to work in reverse; that is, you couldn’t make yourself yearn for something when you plain didn’t. It was the wanting that Irina wanted. She longed to long; she pined to pine.

  His manner curiously leaden, Ramsey built his break with the dispirited lethargy of an underpaid laborer sandbagging a seawall. You’d never guess that this was a sport he’d hungered to play professionally since he was seven years old. Moreover, here was a player renowned for audacity, yet who dawdled through several visits playing safeties, demurring from the very long pots for which he was famous. Although commentators con
ventionally commended discretion, the voice-overs were tinged with disappointment.

  “That shot was well prudent, Clive,” Dennis Taylor observed. “Still, the Ramsey Acton of the 1980s would never have been able to resist that far red to the corner pocket.”

  “What’s wrong with Ramsey?” said Irina. “He seems so phlegmatic, so—apathetic. Do you think he’s depressed?”

  Lawrence grunted.

  “… What’s a ‘plant’?”

  “Hitting another ball to hit the object ball,” Lawrence said tersely.

  “… How do they decide who breaks first?”

  “I think it’s a coin toss.”

  “Is winning the break-off considered an advantage in snooker?”

  “Irina, could you please keep it down, so I can follow this!”

  “Well, how am I ever going to care about snooker if I don’t understand it?”

  “The best way to learn about snooker is to PAY ATTENTION TO THE FRAME!”

  His abrasive tone jarred her from a larger complacency. Hitherto, it had not come home to her what, exactly, had happened this evening. She marched to the set and switched it off.

  “Hey, I’m sorry I raised my voice, but why does that mean we have to stop watching the match, huh? Don’t be a baby.”

  “I’m sure you’d like to forget, and however incredibly I almost did, too, but at dinner tonight I asked you to marry me.”

  Lawrence crossed his arms. “So?”

  “You neglected to say yes or no.”

  Clearly he’d say whatever would get the TV back on. “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  She plopped into her armchair. “That’s my answer then. Okay equals no.”

  “I guess you’re not too great at math. I don’t know in what calculus okay equals no.”

  “I owe you an apology,” she said. “You’re a very traditional man, and I should never have taken it upon myself to propose. I should have waited until you’re ready to get down on the floor with roses and a ring—though that would probably involve betrothal in a long-term-care home, when you’re too old to get back off your knees without the assistance of a burly nurse.”

  “I don’t get it,” he said. “I said yes. Why are you upset?”

  “I’m not upset.” Surprisingly, she wasn’t. “But you didn’t say yes, you said okay. And no self-respecting woman is going to marry a man who says okay. If the prospect of marrying me doesn’t present itself as the one thing you want to do more than anything in the world, then forget it.”

  “But it’s fine with me!”

  “Fine. See? The truth is that you couldn’t bear taking off a whole Saturday afternoon merely to get married when you could be catching up at Blue Sky. Anyway. It’s too late.”

  Lawrence may have been regretful about missing the Grand Prix, but he didn’t wish to hurt her feelings. Thus he lavished some minutes on explaining his reservations about his own parents’ marriage, his reluctance to change anything for the very fact of being so happy with Irina already, and his “willingness” to get married if that would mean something to her, totally missing the point, as ever, that the idea was for it also to mean something to him.

  Meanwhile Irina stayed with this thought that by now a wedding was too late. There may have been a time to have saluted their having found each other, maybe to have invited their friends to the occasion, at whatever expense. But had that time ever arrived, it had passed. Like those embarrassing renewals of vows in middle age, now the gesture would only read, to themselves and to others, as a desperate effort to revive something that was therefore implicitly moribund. Which it was not. It was not dead or dying. It was simply quiet.

  It was—what it was. Her relationship to Lawrence had gone the way it had gone, and there was no purpose in trying to wrench it into something else. It was contented, it was steadfast, it was companionable. She could trust him with her life; she had trusted him with her life. But tearful promises at the altar and that voracious desire to swallow a man whole that she had bumped into by sheer accident in July were not part of the package.

  She let Lawrence babble on with all his excuses and apologies until he ran out, but remained firm in taking the whole proposition back, until he was indeed asking her to marry him, comically, on bended knee, while she was the one who adamantly refused. Finally she restored him to his couch, and insisted on making a new batch of popcorn, since the half-finished bowl had gone cold. Nestling into her regular armchair once the debacle seemed officially over, she was not even tempted to cry.

  Maybe she should have been.

  8

  BY THE TIME SHE got to the corner of what was, until two minutes ago, the street on which she lived, Irina had registered that her hasty departure was not well planned. This jacket was too light for the cutting October wind; the fabric wasn’t waterproof, and it was raining. Her raincoat was still hooked on the hallway rack, snug in the possession of a man who had once held her in the highest esteem, and now had every reason to despise her. Whether he did or didn’t they would both have agonizing leisure to contemplate, unless she turned around right now, damp with remorse, to beg his forgiveness, and swear that her dalliance with the improbable—no, Lawrence’s word was “laughable”—romantic object of Ramsey Acton had been nothing short of an attack of middle-aged insanity.

  Oh, maybe she was off her nut, Irina thought morosely, standing on the corner, though the light was green. But even insanity was her insanity, and commanded an imbecilic loyalty of its own.

  The cold truth was—the light turned red again—she had no idea where she was going. Given the run of the balls in those first two frames, Hendry had doubtless defeated Ramsey, who would therefore have headed home if not last night then this morning. But she’d no notion how long a drive it was from Bournemouth to the East End. Besides, the poor man hadn’t a clue that his would-be lover was brooding over his whereabouts while standing drenched and desolate on a Borough street-corner. Ignominiously defeated in the first round, Ramsey may even have headed to some grotty pub near the venue to drown his sorrows. She resolved to rouse him on the phone, though with an undertow of pessimism, for Ramsey could rarely be bothered to keep his mobile switched on.

  By the time she spotted the phone box across Borough High Street, the light was once more red. At the risk of turning into a pillar of salt, Irina looked longingly back over her shoulder. In front of their building her eyes found no less than Lawrence himself.

  “Where are you going?” he cried. “Do you even know where he is?”

  “Don’t worry! That’s my problem!” she shouted plaintively. But having for so long considered her problems his as well, Lawrence could not stop worrying on a dime. In kind, since it was midafternoon and Lawrence had yet to eat, she had to keep herself under the circumstances—she was leaving him—from chiding on the corner, Lawrence Lawrensovich, go make yourself a sandwich! A deep-seated sense of being accountable for each other’s crude well-being seemed to survive flagrant betrayal perfectly intact.

  As if to demonstrate, Lawrence added, “You’re getting soaked! You’re not dressed for this! You’ll get cold! And you don’t even have your toothbrush!”

  “I’ll manage!” she asserted, knowing full well that Lawrence did not credit her with the wherewithal to negotiate the outside world without his help. It wasn’t only that he was condescending; he wanted to be needed.

  Short but effectively infinite, the single city block between them engendered the unbreachable quality of an airport security barrier, and recollected many a more cheerful parting when Lawrence had seen her off at Heathrow to visit family and friends in New York. He always stood on the opposite side of the metal detector, smiling and waving encouragingly until she’d retrieved her carry-on and had turned with a last returning wave to find her gate. Who was it who’d said not long ago, “Everyone wants to be taken care of”? Whatever his shortcomings, Lawrence had always taken care of her—to excess, but that could hardly
qualify as a failing. Why, how extraordinary, for such a practical man, to routinely escort her all the way to Heathrow an hour and a half on the tube, and once she was safely rested in the care of British Airways to schlep an hour and a half back by himself. Those long homeward trips could only have been boring and sorrowful. His thanks? We have to talk.

  For the second time in less than a day, Lawrence was crying. This frequency was so anomalous that it was strange she was able to tell in a downpour. But Lawrence’s face ordinarily exhibited the jagged chiaroscuro of a woodblock print, its eye sockets dark, cheekbones highlit, the cuts from the nostrils to the corners of his scowling mouth sharp and severe. Now the portrait had melted, its slashing lines gone blurry and soft, as if the black ink were running in the rain. His commonly firm, pressed lips were parted and unsteady. When he waved good-bye one last time, he could only raise his hand waist-high, as if despite daily trips to the gym he hadn’t the strength to bring it to his chest. The fingers waggled weakly, and Irina wished she were dead.

  Ramsey. It was Ramsey who’d said that everyone wants to be taken care of.

  She couldn’t remember what Ramsey looked like. Nor could she remember why she was venturing out ill-clad in miserable weather when she had a nice warm home a few steps away, installed with a nice warm fellow. Presently her not-quite-affair felt like a book she had barely begun that she was free to put down. Irina didn’t understand herself. Except that as a reader she was prone to dispatch books she’d begun. She was a thorough person. To have pursued those treacherous assignations for over three months, and to have so anguishingly revealed her errant desires to Lawrence, only to turn tail and say oh, never mind, let’s have lunch, violated her conviction that you should finish any job you start. Anyway, she thought. It’s beyond my control.

  Irina waved forlornly back. Clutching her sodden jacket, she ran across the street, desperate to take herself out of his line of vision as a kindness.

  The phone box reprieved her from the elements, but relief was short-lived. She only got Ramsey’s voice mail, and her message bordered on incoherent—something like, “Darling, I’ve done it, I’m all yours now, but I have no idea where you are…” and without a mobile herself she couldn’t leave a call-back number. Moreover, she worried that “I’m all yours now” sounded burdening. Lawrence had just this morning raised the issue of Ramsey’s reliability. It was one thing to carry on with anover bloke’s bird on the sly, quite another to accept responsibility for the woman lock-stock-and-barrel with no invigorating rivalry to keep you interested. Lawrence’s cynicism was infectious—especially once she’d rung Ramsey’s landline in Hackney. No pick-up, and no answering service.