by Carmen Reid
He didn’t believe there was anyone he could turn to for help, because he didn’t think this could be fixed. His long, pointless life just stretched out before him and he had no idea what he wanted to do with it. He knew he was supposed to earn money and have a good job and he’d been on track to do that. But everything about that job had been so boring and meaningless that he’d found himself staring out of the office window during meetings, and all he could think was: is this it? Is this what I studied so hard for? Is this why I have a degree? Is this why I read a whole bookshelf of economic theory? Surely this can’t be it? He’d shadowed several more senior people during his early weeks in the office and what they did all day hadn’t looked any more interesting. They were in charge of more… more money, more people, more projects, but their meetings and routines looked just as boring as Alex’s.
And then came the fateful day when he was given a whole pile of photocopying to do, so he’d just slipped out at lunchtime and never gone back. All phone calls from his previous office had been ignored. Even the plaintive emails asking him if he was terminating his employment contract and could he get in touch to arrange a formal end… he’d deleted them.
Fuck off. Leave me alone. That was all he wanted to say to the world. Fuck off!!
He picked up his stupid phone. He despised it, even though he already knew he would spend most of today searching desperately online via this idiotic little machine for anything to distract him, entertain him, amuse him, inform him. Anything… anything to take away the bored loneliness of being in this room. He was too exhausted to go out, and too cynical to want to do anything else. He was too snarled up and fragile to even want to tell his own mum and dad, who he knew loved him very much, about how it really was for him.
He looked at all the messages his mother had sent. She’d most likely be asleep now.
I’m fine, Mum, don’t worry about me. Speak soon xx
* * *
I’m fine, Dad, don’t worry about me. Speak soon xx
* * *
I’m fine, Natalie, don’t worry about me. Speak soon xx
There, that was done. That would get everyone off his case for at least a day or two.
Now, somehow, he had to manage to live through the rest of this day. Somehow, he had to fill the one hour that came after the other. Why was it all so hard? When had it last felt good to wake up and have a whole day ahead of him? He couldn’t remember.
It had begun to occur to him that maybe it would just be so much easier if he didn’t have to wake up, didn’t have to face each and every day ever again.
28
Maybe the pink and blonde curls had made her braver, but soon after the haircut, Tess got in touch with Larry and said she wanted a second dance lesson.
‘No, no, we’ll redo the first one,’ Larry insisted. ‘I think we just did a bit too much too soon. I’ll go easy with you and you will be fine.’
So now she was back at his apartment and once her new hair had been properly admired, the lesson began.
‘Okay, lady,’ he said, walking her over to the barre area, ‘let’s keep at the front of our minds that there is no one in the world who doesn’t want to know how to dance better.’
First of all, they stretched and warmed up, with Tess following Larry’s moves. It was sunny and warmer than she remembered in the room because he wanted her muscles to loosen and become more pliable.
‘I want you to bend and sweat, honey,’ he told her, ‘bend and sweat. Right, we’re just going to do arms and shoulders today,’ he assured her, ‘nothing scary… just going to learn how to be loose, how to move and flow.’
The music was different this time too, slower and more soulful but still pop music: still music that reminded her of good times, good moods, good vibes. So she found herself smiling as she raised her arms up and then let them flow downwards again.
‘Oh, those desk shoulders!’ Larry complained. He took hold of her hands and shook her arms gently. He took hold of her shoulders and then her neck and tried to help lengthen, loosen and stretch. One shoulder in each hand, he moved them from side to side, one forward, one back.
‘That’s it, go with it, loosen, relax, shake it out… I’m finding it hard to believe that you are only forty-nine.’
Larry no doubt thought he was being playful and jokey, but once again, he’d pushed Tess too far. She saw herself in the mirror, and the hair was good, no doubt about that. But below the hair, there was still a stiff and somewhat lumpy middle-aged lady trying to dance. Her arms moved awkwardly, her legs just did not do what she wanted them to do and once again, it was too much. She felt utterly humiliated all over again and once again felt like she might cry.
‘Oh, woah, not again,’ Larry said, very gently. ‘I am such a clown, Tess. I’m so sorry; I did not mean to hurt your feelings. Woah, let me get you a Kleenex and then we are going to pull up a chair, right over here, at my kitchen counter and I’m going to make you a tea. We need a break anyway. We definitely need a break.’
And so Tess blew her nose, dried her eyes and sat down at the chair offered to her. Meanwhile, Larry put the kettle on and busied himself warming a dark and quirky looking teapot with a woven handle.
‘I like to make jasmine tea,’ he said, ‘is that okay with you?’
‘That sounds lovely,’ she said, ‘and I’m sorry. I feel like I’m being such a drama queen.’
This made him laugh: ‘Oh no, definitely not. A little fragile maybe, but nothing like a drama queen. Believe me, I know a drama queen when I see one.’
The dark, metal teapot was warmed before Larry carefully spooned in green jasmine tea and then poured in boiling water from a height.
‘It’s about adding oxygen,’ he explained as she looked on curiously. He then set two handmade, pottery cups without handles on the counter for them.
And then, maybe because the tea was beautifully made and soothing, maybe because the sun was shining into the apartment, touching the plants, the bookcase, the paintings on the wall… maybe because Larry sat at the end of the counter, not opposite her, and maybe because she felt in need of a new friend and Larry seemed like such a wise and sympathetic soul, she found herself unburdening a little.
‘I’m so out of my comfort zone in a dance lesson,’ she said.
Larry nodded, but told her not to worry. ‘Every minute that you’re dancing, you’re improving. I give you my word.’
She liked his deep voice. You could trust a voice like that; really believe in it.
‘I’m out of my comfort zone everywhere I turn over here,’ she added. ‘I’m on my own, without my family and they’ve been around me all day, every day for… over twenty years. I’ve been away from the world of work, a world that I understand pretty well, for weeks… and I’m supposed to come back with some sort of new action plan… and I’ve no idea what that is going to be yet.
‘And I’m going to turn fifty later this year,’ Tess went on. ‘And I just hate the thought of that. I mean fifty… does anyone enjoy that? Does anyone ever image themselves reaching that age?’
‘I’m fifty-four,’ Larry told her, ‘it’s not so bad. Better than not reaching fifty-four. That’s what I tell myself.’
‘And my kids have left home,’ she said, and looked up at him. She hoped she didn’t have to explain this any further. She hoped he could just understand how much her world had shifted and how everything was different now and she didn’t really know what the new way ahead was going to be like… or what she even wanted it to be like.
‘That must feel like the end of an era…’ he said. And she was glad that he didn’t follow it up with talk of new beginnings, or chapters or even eras. Because really, she was only just starting to get used to the end bit.
‘And I’m here in LA on my own, because I just don’t know if I want to be married to my husband any more,’ she blurted out, surprising herself, because she certainly hadn’t planned to say this. She’d never even shared anything like this with any good friends.
‘I just don’t know if we love each other enough to keep it going for the years and years ahead,’ she added.
Larry gave a gentle nod, which encouraged Tess to add, ‘But, I just don’t know. I mean, I love him and the four of us are a family… but… we’ve let so many things build up and… there’s not much spark left between us. I thought that if I spent time with myself, time doing new things, getting back in touch with myself… that maybe I’d be able to work out what I want. When I’m at home, rushing about and doing all the everyday things, it’s very hard to put my head up over the parapet and try to work out what I want.’
She didn’t really expect Larry to say anything to this. In fact, she was about to apologise for this great big, uncharacteristic overshare, but then Larry gave a deep and sonorous ‘Hmmmmmmmm,’ which was very reassuring.
‘Dance lessons are going to help,’ he said finally.
This wasn’t the comment she’d expected, but she managed: ‘Do you think so?’ in response.
‘Yes, because… and I’ve seen it before… when you dance, you’re out of your comfort zone, physically,’ Larry said, ‘and that mirrors being out of your comfort zone, mentally. So you start to get comfortable with your dance moves, then you grow confident in your new abilities, and then maybe you’ll start to grow your mental confidence too. You’ll grow more confident about making those big decisions. Instead of not knowing what you want, or worrying that you’re not sure if you know, you’ll trust yourself.’ With a shrug, he added: ‘You’ll say, “Well, I’m going to try this” and you’ll feel fine about trying it. Instead of chewing everything over one hundred times and not knowing which way to turn.’
Tess took a sip of her tea, considered his words, and then asked: ‘Do you think you should make small changes, step by step? Or do you think you should jump right into a big change?’
‘Hmmmmm…’ Larry was giving this some thought before answering. Tess moved her forearm into the patch of sunlight on the countertop and felt its warmth. She wondered if she would like to live in a place where it was hot and sunny almost all of the time. Or would she miss all the changes that the seasons brought? Autumn leaves, soft greys and rain, and the anticipation of spring after a dark and everlasting winter.
‘It depends,’ Larry said finally. ‘I suppose if you’re making a change like getting in shape, you’re going to make small changes every day until you get there. But if you were leaving a relationship, I guess you’d be best packing up and getting on with the move.’
But then he seemed to be thinking it through some more, just as she was.
‘But if you really want to get in shape,’ he began, ‘you could start working out for hours every day. That would get you there real quick. Because telling yourself you’ll do thirty minutes every second day, well, you might forget, you might be too tired… so the change might never happen.
‘And just say you wanted to fall back in love with your husband again…’ he went on, ‘that’s not going to happen overnight. You’re going to have to start doing nice things together, saying good words to one another, talking through the previous hurts and working them out, and finding a way to put that spark, that joy back in. So maybe it’s not that straightforward,’ he said, topping up their cups of tea. ‘But maybe you have to do both – you have to make a big change, a big decision about the direction you’re going to go in and then you have to make all the little changes to sustain it.
‘But I do know, when people have got into a bad situation, it can take a long time to get out. Longer than anyone expects… but you’re making me think now… maybe there’s always a way to give it a jumpstart.’
And Tess was thinking along these lines too. Small habit changes were boring… whereas one trip to LA, one adventurous haircut and one completely out-of-the-comfort-zone dance lesson… these things were moving her on dramatically. It did feel as if her thinking could shift. New ideas were popping into her head about all kinds of things. She knew she couldn’t go back from this holiday to life as it was before. Big changes had to happen. Some sort of radical open-heart surgery had to be done to her marriage, or it had to come to a dignified close. And her work… Alex… and the other things she was worried about. She had to make fresh approaches. She didn’t know what these were yet, but she was going to start working on it all.
‘Thanks for listening to me,’ she told Larry.
‘No problem,’ he said with a smile.
‘What about you?’ she asked. ‘Everyone has comfort zones. Where are you out of yours?’
Larry put both hands protectively around his teacup and gave a gentle laugh. ‘Well, I am deeply single. So that should tell you something. I have a fifteen-year-old son, who I think I should see more of, but whenever we get together, we seem to get into those nagging kind of fights I remember having with my dad. And it’s so painful for both of us that… I’m not in a rush to do it again.’
Tess could only sympathise: ‘Ah, fifteen-year-olds… they can be difficult… just wait until they’re sixteen… seventeen… and beyond.’
‘Yes, I truly cannot wait for that…’ Larry said grimly.
‘When we were going through the teenage years… I did loads of things wrong,’ Tess admitted. ‘I should have just tried to enjoy my time with my children, and encourage them in whatever they were into, but instead, I was literally obsessed about what university they were going to go to and what they were going to study. It honestly seemed like the most important thing in the world. As if somehow, if I could get a child into Cambridge or Durham University that would be mission accomplished – I would have done a great job and their lives would be completely sorted.’
Tess had a lump in her throat just thinking about it: ‘I must have completely stressed them out and put so much pressure on them to study and do well in their exams. I think I made them feel that not achieving this supposed pinnacle was going to be a total failure. And what happened? Alex had a terrible last year at school and only scraped the results he needed. And even though I had so much sympathy for him and only wanted to help him sort things out… and make it all better… I was also kind of embarrassed. I didn’t want to talk to anyone about it.’
And now Tess was thinking about that painful year… nagging and arguing with Alex to study, being blindsided by his terrible prelim results and then scrambling to get him three different tutors to help repair the damage in time.
If she had to point to the times in their marriage when she and Dave had disagreed and not been able to reconcile their differences, then Alex’s final year at school and his final year at uni were both big examples. Getting tutors and hovering over Alex to help him through was a waste of time, money and effort as far as Dave was concerned. If Alex wasn’t ready to take these things on himself, then he wasn’t ready and they couldn’t force him. Plus, she remembered bitterly, Dave had thrown in some choice examples of students of his who’d been helped at every step only to fail when they were finally left to do things by themselves.
Dave had thought Alex should somehow be left to pick himself up and make up his own mind about whether he wanted to study or not. Tess had thought a confused eighteen-year-old was in no position to make serious decisions about his future. And if a stressed-out twenty-one-year old needed help to get through his finals, then she was going to give it to him.
‘He needs good grades,’ Tess had shouted at her husband, ‘if he has the grades, he’ll be able to do whatever he wants. And he deserves good grades,’ she’d also argued, ‘he’s really bright.’
Unresolved arguments are the drip, drip, drip of corrosive acid on a relationship. And they’d had many unresolved arguments over the years, certainly not just about Alex. Dave had always hoped they would move back to London, whereas Tess was happy in Leamington. Maybe Dave also thought he would become an artist again, whereas Tess was sure he would not. And Dave didn’t take her career nearly as seriously as she did. He couldn’t understand why she would want to move up from where sh
e was. Plus, he didn’t like her parents much – that was another thing – whereas she had loved his, especially his mum, dearly. Natalie… Tess thought now… they hardly ever disagreed about Natalie. They often disagreed with Natalie, but their sunny daughter, who managed to be equally close to both parents, was a strong element of family bonding.
‘I can’t give any advice about parenting or marriages,’ Larry said, interrupting her thoughts, ‘I’m not good at either of them. But I guess it’s like cars…’
‘Cars?!’ she exclaimed.
‘Yeah, you’ve got to be doing that repair and maintenance stuff all the time: changing the oil, topping up the screen wash, getting new tyres, replacing the brakes, all the time… or else you’re going to hear a little squeak or a rattle and then the next thing, there’s bumping and scraping you just can’t ignore and you are either headed for a serious repair or you are going to break down and be sitting on the roadside.’
‘Or thinking about trading in for a newer model,’ Tess said.
‘Exactly!’ Larry laughed. ‘But just like with cars, we never take the little things seriously enough, we leave it till it’s too late and then the whole goddam engine explodes on you. Which is how I would describe my case, by the way. She was throwing my stuff out of the window into the street by the end. It wasn’t pretty. No wonder I live by myself. No one would want to go through something like that more than once.’
Tess tried to imagine it. She tried to think of Larry’s wife throwing his classic dance shoes out as he hopped about on the pavement, dodging cars, to pick them up. But instead, she saw herself throwing Dave’s collection of very shabby old t-shirts out of the bedroom window and onto the lawn, while he stood in the garden in his pyjamas and told her: ‘For goodness’ sake, Tess, this is a bit of an over-reaction, isn’t it?’
