And the little one said “Roll over, roll over!”
The simple things are what I miss most from my previous life, the last one. Bedtime stories. Sometimes I'd try to skip a sentence, maybe accidentally turn two pages instead of one, mainly because I was tired, but it was a pointless exercise, for Emma always noticed. She knew the words of the stories better than I did, knew them off by heart.
And so, despite my better judgement, I’ve followed Richard’s advice, although it might be more accurate to say I've done so in spite of Richard. His words have played on my mind more than any others. They can't possibly make sense, can they? They're a paradox. The truth is that I'm not fighting because of Richard. I'm just tired of running. Better he comes to me rather than anybody else, maybe one of my family.
I'm not one for half-measures. Not only am I back at the boat, but I'm literally a sitting target, bare-chested on the striped deckchair, pink shoulders melting like an ice cream in the sun, feet dangling just inches from the discoloured canal water. He doesn't need to stab me. If he really wanted to then he could sneak up behind me, pick up the chair legs and topple me into the water. I dare you. Go for it.
Feet graze the tips of the overgrown grass behind me. The movements are subtle. Gentle. Familiar. I yearn to crick my neck. My eyes stay fixed on the water, on the delicate ripples, but my fists clench and my arms go rigid. I glance to the ground to my right. I can't resist. There is a shadow, the outline of a body. It is moving. Becoming larger. Getting closer.
“Finally caught up with you then...”
I swivel around; turn my pink shoulders to the water. “I made it easy for you,” I say. “I'm not exactly hiding, am I?”
I stand up, holding out my hands, feet pressed into the hard ground.
“No need to stand up on my behalf...”
Jenny kisses my cheek. Her face is reddened and shiny. She pulls the other chair from the side of the boat and carries it in her outstretched arm. Brushing aside the cobwebs, she sinks into the chair alongside me. The sun has lightened her hair, dark only at the roots, just as it does every summer. A light sprinkling of freckles on her chest have returned to enjoy the heat, to say hello. She stretches out her legs and she catches me looking.
“To what do I owe the honour of a personal visit, then?”
Jenny narrows her eyes, smiling. There really should be more creases to the sides of her mouth. “Well, I know you aren’t too fond of talking on those phones now are you?”
“I’ve been using my phone much more recently, I’ll have you know.”
I leave it there. I don’t tell her why, and she doesn’t ask.
“The truth is, Marcus, I’ve been worried about you. I know you went back to Wales last week. That call the other day really freaked me out.”
Was that really the other day? Ken was alive the first time I called her, just after I spoke to Dad. Ken was dead when I called her the second time, just to check she was safe, only a couple of hours later.
“I’m sorry about that, honest to God I am. I overreacted. It turned out to be something about nothing. Just me panicking. Hope it didn't worry Emma, too?”
I detest the thought of worrying Emma. It eats me up inside whenever she is even remotely hurt. I rubbed the grazes on her knees when she was a kid, just from playing in the garden, asked her again and again if she was okay. Still, now I crave reassurance. I want Jenny to tell me just how much my little girl loves her daddy.
“Didn’t tell her. What was the point? She knew something was up, though. You know what she is like. Has a sixth sense. I half expect her to tell me she can see dead people. I managed to make up some ridiculous lie. She didn't believe me, of course, but it was enough to reassure her that everything was alright.”
“Thank you.”
“So, are you okay? Really? You weren't okay at the Bowlplex, that's for sure. You saw something. Looked like you'd seen a ghost.”
There is no point lying. Jenny will see through it. The best option is to be diplomatic with the truth and then just hope for the best.
“Well, I can't deny I’m going through a shit time right now. You know, with things from my past. You know all about my past. But I’m working on it. Don't want you to worry about it. Think I can beat it.”
I expect her to tell me I’m talking bullshit, curse me for trying to pull the wool over her eyes, but instead she leans forward and rubs my hand. Her eyes say everything. She doesn’t believe me, but she is willing to let it pass just because she doesn't want to make things even more difficult for me.
Her lips quiver, and I know what that means. She's gearing up to ask a question, but she isn’t sure whether she should. Turns out that she goes for it.
“So have you told Erica about your past life yet?”
I decide to act dumb (which isn’t too difficult) just to play for time.
“About you and me? The responsible, civilised life I lived before I met her? Of course. She thought it was hilarious. She doesn't exactly play by the rules, you know. You’ve met her, remember?”
Jenny pulls her head back and laughs. I glance at the crease between her chest. “Not about us. About your real past life, before we met.”
I’m sure she knows the answer, which is probably why she asks the question.
“Not yet,” I say, shaking my head. “I found it quite difficult to raise when we first met. We all have skeletons in the closet, but I nearly became a skeleton, didn’t I? What was I supposed to say? ‘Oh by the way, dear, I was almost killed by a serial killer? Oh and another thing, Marcus isn’t my real name. To be totally honest, I’m not actually who you think I am at all...’”
Slapping my wrist with her hand, Jenny laughs louder now. “Jesus, Marcus, your girlfriend doesn't even know your real name, doesn't know that you used to be somebody else. Don't you think that's slightly fucked up?”
“Don't you think that I'm generally slightly fucked up?”
“Good point.”
Looking up at the cloudless, impeccable blue sky, Jenny thinks about this for a few moments. “I understand why you didn't tell her when you first met. Didn't want to scare her off. But that was then. You’ve been with her years, though. Why don’t you tell her now?”
“That is the point. I’ve been with her years. Too many days have passed. How can I suddenly drop that bombshell? There just doesn’t seem much point. Don't want to needlessly fuck up any more of my life...”
Jenny holds my look. Her eyes are watering. She is trying to suppress something. She gives up. Jenny bursts into hysterics.
“It really is fucked up when you think about it, isn’t it?”
I feel like slapping her wrist now, but instead I just start laughing, too. “I’ve never pretended that it was anything other, dear.”
I have an urge to hold her in my arms, to feel the warmth of her body close to me, just like I would spontaneously – absolutely without thinking – when we were Mr and Mrs Clancy. But instead, I just tap my fingers on the side of the deckchair, and think back to when we were married. Bad decision. The red mist within me stirs.
“Why do you think he asked you to tell me about your affair, Jenny? I mean, he clearly had no intention of making a life with you? What was the point?”
Jenny’s face crumbles. She leans back in her chair, makes an effort to move away from me. I know what she is thinking: why did I have to ruin it?
“Very fucking subtle, Marcus,” she says.
That evening is crystal clear in my mind. We’d had a stretch of hot days, just like now, and then suddenly, late afternoon, the unblemished skies were invaded by dark, threatening clouds. The heavens opened. My shell of a one-bed flat rattled and shook, like a cardboard box blowing in the wind. Pellets bounced from the windows.
The doorbell rang. My first reaction: did they have the wrong house? Was some poor soul trying to sell me something in this weather? Who had I actually given my address to? Who cared enough to pay me a visit? The doorbell rang again. Maybe somebody was pl
aying a prank? The doorbell kept ringing until I was hit by the thought that something wasn’t right. It had rung for minutes and I'd stayed glued to the spot, staring into space, doing absolutely nothing about it. Now I ran down the stairs two steps at a time, desperate to get to the door before whoever it was gave up the ghost and left.
They were still there. Jenny was still there. She looked like a more diminutive version of the Jenny I remembered, like she'd shrunk and withered in the rain. Her face was coated in water and her body shivered. My wife looked so fragile and vulnerable, and yet so exquisitely beautiful. Right then the urge to take her in my arms was stronger than it had ever been; I wanted to comfort and protect her because it was my duty and honour to do so as her loyal and loving husband. Only I wasn’t, was I? Not really. Now I was only her husband in name; the sheet of paper declaring us to be husband and wife had been stripped of any meaning.
Placing my arm around her shoulder, I shut the door and ushered her inside without asking why she was here. It wasn’t until Jenny had stripped off her soaked clothes, showered and dressed again that we sat down in the living room and talked. Jenny sat on the floor with her legs crossed, still tiny in my outsized grey tracksuit bottoms. She took the piping hot mug of coffee I passed her like it was a pot of gold. As I sat down on the sofa a good six feet from her, I noticed that her eyes were still red; her vulnerability reminded me of an albino gerbil. It occurred to me that her face had been wet not just from the rain.
“He doesn’t want me,” she said.
I looked down at her from the sofa. “Who?”
She scowled at me like a cat warning a dog to stay away. I pressed my outstretched fingertips together. “Why?”
It was a genuine question. I was genuinely perplexed. Why would anybody not want this beautiful, divine woman?
Jenny shook her head and took a long slurp of her drink. She’d clearly been asking herself the same question. Jenny shrugged her shoulders. “I met him in his car, like some sort of secret meeting. Yet, we're not having an affair any more, are we? I told him it had been weeks since I told you about our affair, that you’d moved out, and so wasn’t it time we started talking about what happened next? He asked what I meant. I said, you know, with us. He again said he didn’t know what I meant. Felt like I was talking a different fucking language. He said there had never been an ‘us’. Hadn't they just had a fling? Wasn't that why it had been so exciting? He’d never said it was anything else, anything more serious.”
The mug in Jenny's hand shook and I remember thinking – despite myself, because I really didn’t want to think it, not at that precise moment – that she might spill coffee over the pristine carpet.
“You know what the worst part was?” she asked, continuing to glance around the room. I think she was asking herself the question as much as me. “We just sat in his car in silence. The rain was bouncing off his windscreen. He just kept looking at me. He didn’t say anything, but he knew what he was thinking: what you still doing here? I opened the door and got out of the car without even saying goodbye.”
I hated this man – this doctor – right then infinitely more than when Jenny had told me about their affair. Sure, he had destroyed our life together, but what had he done it for? For nothing. And he had abused my dear, wonderful wife. Not physically. No, this was much worse. It would have been more bearable had he dislocated her collar bone or blackened her eyes. He had destroyed her emotionally.
“Where does he live?” I asked, jumping up from the seat.
This was not mere bravado or pumped-up male pride; right at that moment I genuinely wanted to find this man and I wanted to kill him. It had been a long time since I had felt this way about anybody. Since him.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
The words were coming from her mouth, but it was like her soul was someplace else. “I don’t know,” she repeated. “I never went there. He never offered, and I never asked. We always met in different places. There was no routine. He was always mysterious. It was one of the things I liked. Made it exciting.”
“Exciting?”
I paced up and down the room. Felt like punching my fist through the wall. Felt like saying a whole number of things to Jenny, none of them good. But I didn’t. Instead, I let the tension cool down. I made Jenny another drink, and then another. Jenny was drained of energy and I offered her my bed. Not with me in it. I slept on the sofa. In the morning, she left.
We don't tend to talk about the reason our marriage fell apart. It isn't exactly going to end well, is it? We only do so when I can no longer stop the resentment that simmers inside me from boiling over. Only occasionally does it erupt.
“You know I don’t know why, Marcus,” Jenny replies now. “I'd tell you if I knew. You know I ask myself that question every single fucking day when I wake up on my own, without my husband next to me. I ask myself what possessed me to destroy the idyllic life we had together. And I've never - ever - found a satisfactory answer.”
I know she doesn’t know. The girl who sat cross-legged on the floor of my flat that night was bewildered and broken. Now, I squeeze her hand. She smiles. I’m sorry I said anything. As far as I’m aware the matter is closed.
“I guess his mind worked in a different way from me,” Jenny says. I didn’t expect her to keep the subject open, to pursue it any further. “It felt like he looked at the world in a different way, through different eyes. I’ve wondered whether it has anything to do with his education and training. You know; as a psychiatrist I imagine you view the world differently...”
I think I misheard her for a moment. “A psychiatrist?”
“Yes,” Jenny says. “You know. He was a psychiatrist.”
“You said he was a doctor.”
“He is a doctor.”
“You never said he was a psychiatrist...”
Jenny looks at me nonplussed. “I didn’t?” she says. “I assumed I did. To be fair, it isn’t something we talk about much, is it, Marcus?”
We sit in silence, the hot sun burning our reddened, peeling shoulders.
DAY TWENTY-SIX
26TH JUNE 2018
I’ve been fighting against routine for the last five years or so, viewed it as an enemy ever since I split with Jenny, since I began my latest life; now I hang on to it for dear life. I long for some sense of normality.
It seems bizarre to me that, what with everything going on, I should strive to make the appointment with Richard. Cross that. A week ago, it would have made perfect sense. Then I would have clung to his reassurance like a monkey to a tree, fed off his words. But that was before our last session. Last time I met with Richard he destroyed everything we'd created together over the last ten years or so. He made it all a lie, just like Jenny did with our marriage. Maybe that is why I long to see him? Perhaps I'd misunderstood what he'd said, misinterpreted the meaning? Maybe it was all a test? Part of a much bigger plan?
The door edges open and Richard's arm is outstretched for about five or so steps before he shakes my hand. Turning around, I'm tempted to wipe the dampness of his clammy hand on my trousers; right now, though, I fear that he has eyes in the back of his square head.
“How have you been, Marcus?”
“I can't complain really, not after what you told me last time I was here, Richard. What was all that about? Talk about throwing me a grenade...”
His wide, bug eyes flicker . Chunky thumbs tap against the side of the desk. It reminds me again of that exercise in my workshops where I instruct the interviewer to deliberately ignore the interviewee. All very well, only I'm paying for this horse shit. My voice slows as I start to lose confidence. Begin to feel stupid. I stop talking, mid-sentence. Deliberately. Richard looks down at his desk. A layer of perspiration seeps from his forehead, down towards his cheeks.
I glance at the clock and wonder whether the cuckoo is at home. I long to wave my hand in his face, see if anybody is there, but then, the last thing I want to do is mock the
man. I've looked up to him, secretly idolised him, all these years, through thick and thin. I grip my wrist with my hand to prevent myself from doing anything with my spare hand.
“Richard...?”
He shakes his head as though flicking water from his hair. “Sorry,” Richard says, prising heavy eyelids open. Throaty laugh. “It was a late night. I couldn’t sleep. Please don’t mind me.”
I return his smile. It crosses my mind that maybe he is just having a moment. Maybe I’ve just become embroiled in disproportionate thinking?
Richard starts talking. This is reassuring. Richard loves talking, adores the sound of his own voice. This is more like the Richard I know. “It is like I said last time. Sometimes you need to adapt to the circumstances you are in, Marcus. Sometimes you need to be courageous enough to accept that what you're doing just isn’t working. And remember, if you do the same thing again and again you are always going to get the same result. Simple logic. We both need to be strong enough to accept that what you've done has not worked, that we need to try a different approach...”
“I disagree -”
“It is the fight or flight principle, like I said. By ignoring him you have, in effect, been taking flight. I assured you he would get bored but he hasn’t. I was wrong. I offer you my sincere apologies for that. He has only got stronger. He wants to fight. You need to fight him back...”
“Richard, if I fight him then I will lose...”
“It is your only chance. You are stronger than you realise. You are the strongest person I know. I wish I was as strong as you...”
Richard keeps on talking and talking. I love hearing him talk. Now, though, I despise it. Now he is a receptionist reciting the same words to yet another faceless guest. I squint. The beads, like raindrops, trickling down his cheek are not perspiration. They are tears. His fingers are no longer tapping away; they grip the edge of his desk. The whiteness of his knuckles contrasts starkly with the darkness of his skin.
Standing up, I start walking to his side of the desk. It isn't me who needs help right now. I've never been on the other side of his desk before. There is an invisible line that normally can't be crossed. Richard gets to his feet. I think he is going to thrust out his hands, order me to get back to my side, question what the fuck I'm doing. Taking liberties. He doesn’t. His forehead sinks into my chest. My shirt drowns out his sobs, smothers them. He pulls away. Looks up at me. Both eyes are bloodshot now. His teeth glisten with spittle.
30 Days in June Page 20