Watermelon

by Marian Keyes

  You’ll just have to use your own imagination to figure out that I wrapped my legs around his back to pull him deeper inside me and I thought I would die if he stopped and would die if he didn’t.

  And you really don’t need me to tell you that when he, er…when it was finished, we were both panting and gasping and slippery with sweat and that he looked down at me and grinned and gave a little laugh and said admiringly, “Jesus, you’re some woman.”

  I’ll have to resort to using a euphemism to describe the scenario.

  How about, “One day my prince will come.”

  Well, I’m happy to report that he already had.

  And, so, for the record, had I.

  And there’s just one other thing.

  Before I had Kate I had heard rumors, nothing more than vague unsub-stantiated reports, that after having a child sex is usually, well, a lot better.

  Because of the various commotions, upheavals and traumas in one’s, um, birth canal, including the dreaded stitches, certain changes have come about. These changes resulting in, um, greater sensitivity and a greater awareness of one’s erogenous zones, if you see what I mean.

  And generally, all around, more exciting an enjoyable sex.

  And I’m happy to be able to report that it was actually true. Sex with Adam was different, very different from the way I remembered it with James. Once I got over the initial uncomfortable feeling, it was really wonderful—actually better—than I remembered it being with James. So this is one side effect of giving birth that doesn’t get the good press that it deserves.

  Although of course, there’s a good chance that I’m talking a load of nonsense.

  And that the alleged better sex had nothing to do with anything other than the fact that Adam had a larger TM than James. (I never bought into that “size isn’t everything” crap.)

  Later, when it was all over, over for the third time, that is, we just lay in bed chatting and laughing.

  “D’you remember the day in the gym?” asked Adam.

  “Mmmmmmm,” I said, barely able to speak, I was so relaxed and contented.

  “That was awful,” he said.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because I liked you so much.”

  “Really?” I asked, surprised and delighted.

  “Yes, really.”

  “No, did you really?” I asked, like a true neurotic.

  “Yes!” he insisted. “I couldn’t even look at you in case I jumped you.”

  “But you were all serious and grim and just doing your weights,” I reminded him. “You completely ignored me.”

  “Yes,” he said dryly, “and I nearly pulled every muscle in my body. I couldn’t concentrate on anything except you. You looked so cute in your gym clothes.”

  “Oh,” I said, thrilled, snuggling up closer to him.

  At about half past one I said, “I’d better go home.”

  “Oh no,” he said, wrapping his arms and legs tightly around me. “I won’t let you. I’m going to keep you chained in here. You’re going to be my sex slave.”

  “Adam,” I said, sighing, “you say the nicest things.”

  After a little while longer, I said, reluctantly, “I’d really better go.”

  “If you really have to,” he said.

  “You know I do.”

  “Would you stay if it wasn’t for Kate?”

  “Yes.”

  He sat up in bed and watched me as I got dressed.

  I looked up from doing up the buttons on my dress to find him smiling at me, but smiling in a sad kind of way.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked.

  “You’re always running away from me,” he said.

  “Adam, I’m not,” I said indignantly. “I have to go.”

  “Sorry,” he said, giving me a real smile this time.

  He hopped out of bed and said, “I’ll come down to the door with you.”

  “Not without any clothes, you won’t,” I said. “What if passersby see?”

  There was no doubt.

  I was my mother’s daughter.

  He kissed me lingeringly at the front door.

  And it was quite an achievement that I left at all.

  “Stay,” he murmured against my hair.

  “I can’t,” I told him sternly, although I felt like going straight back up the stairs and getting back into bed with him.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said.

  “Bye.”

  Another kiss.

  Further persuasion.

  Stalwart resistance from me.

  Reluctant letting go.

  I finally made it to the car.

  No mean achievement.

  I drove home.

  The streets were dark and empty.

  I felt very happy.

  I didn’t even feel guilty about leaving Kate for so long.

  Well, not very guilty.

  twenty-three

  I parked the car and I put my key in the front door. There was a light on in the front room. That’s funny, I thought, everyone’s usually fast asleep by this hour. Please God, don’t let it be Helen. Please don’t let her have realized where I was and what I was up to. I was sure that my recent activities were written all over my face.

  Maybe it was Anna who was up. Sacrificing a goat in the kitchen, or something like that. You know, dancing around the garden wrapped in blood-soaked sheets, chanting at the moon, biting the heads off live bats, that kind of thing.

  I walked into the hall. The front room door opened and Mum appeared, with Dad standing behind her. They were both in their nightclothes. Mum was wearing her pink quilted dressing gown and had a few orange curlers stuck in the front of her hair.

  They both looked white and shocked, as if something terrible had happened.

  Which indeed it had, I suppose, if you want to regard my little indiscretion with Adam in that way.

  “Claire!” said Mum. “Thank God you’re home!”

  “What?” I said, frightened. “What’s happened?”

  “Claire, come in and sit down,” said Dad, taking charge.

  My stomach lurched.

  Something terrible had happened.

  “Is it Kate?” I pleaded with Mum, clutching her arm. “Has something happened to her?”

  A thousand horrible scenarios ran through my head.

  She had been the victim of crib death.

  She had been kidnapped.

  She had choked.

  Helen had dropped her.

  Anna had put a spell on her.

  It was all my fault.

  I had left her.

  I had left her while I went off to have sex with Adam.

  How could I?

  “No, no,” said Mum soothingly. “It’s not Kate.”

  “Well who then?” I asked, the horrible scenarios starting all over again.

  Had something happened to any of my sisters?

  Had Margaret been killed by a gangster in Chicago?

  Had Rachel disappeared in Prague?

  Had Anna got a job?

  Had Helen apologized for something?

  “It’s James,” blurted out Mum.

  “James,” I said dazedly, slowly sitting down on the couch. “Oh my God, James.”

  James.

  I hadn’t even thought of him when I was convinced that something awful had happened to someone that I loved. While I’d been in bed with Adam, something had happened to my husband. What kind of woman was I?

  “What about James?” I asked them.

  They both sat there, looking at me with caring compassionate faces.

  “Oh, just tell me,” I shouted. “Please tell me!”

  I was prepared for the very worst: James had had an accident or something while I had been writhing in the throes of passion with another man.

  Of course, I realized that my life was over.

  I had no othe
r option but to embrace celibacy. Maybe I would enter a convent. It was the least I could do. This was my punishment for sleeping with someone I didn’t love. I never, ever wanted to see Adam again for as long as I lived. It was all his fault.

  If I hadn’t gone to bed with him, James would have been all right.

  “He’s here,” said Mum gently.

  “Here!” I screeched. “What do you mean—here?”

  I looked around the room frantically, as if I expected him to suddenly appear from behind a curtain or from under the couch with a smooth smile, wearing a dinner jacket and smoking a cigar to say something like “My wife, I presume.”

  “Do you mean he’s on the premises?” I asked hysterically.

  My head was spinning like a top.

  “No,” said Mum, sounding a bit annoyed. “Do you think we’d let him stay here after all that’s happened? No, he called. He’s in Dublin all right, but he’s staying in a hotel.”

  “Oh,” I said. I thought I might faint.

  “Does he want to see me?”

  “Of course he does,” said Dad. “But you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

  “Jack,” said Mum to him. “Of course she has to see him. How else are they going to work anything out? She has the child to think of, you know.”

  “Mary, all I’m saying is that if she can’t face it then we’re not going to put her under pressure. We’ll help her in every way that we can.”

  “Jack!” said Mum sharply. “She’s a grown woman and—”

  “But Mary—” interrupted Dad.

  “Stop it!” I said loudly.

  I knew that I had better nip this in the bud. This one could run and run, as they say. They both looked at me in surprise. Almost as if they had forgotten that I was there.

  “I want to see him,” I said, a bit more quietly. “You’re right, Mum, I am a grown woman. I’m the only person who can sort this out. And I do have Kate to think of. She’s the most important person in all of this.”

  “And thanks, Dad.” I nodded at him. “It’s nice to know that I can rely on you to round up a lynch mob if I need one.”

  “A lynch mob?” he spluttered. “Well, I don’t know about that. But if you think you might need one, I could ask a couple of the chaps at the golf club.

  See what they say.”

  “Oh Daddy,” I said wearily. “I’m kidding.”

  “He said that he’d call in the morning,” said Mum.

  “What time?” I asked.

  “Ten o’clock,” said Mum.

  “Okay,” I said.

  If James said that he would ring at ten o’clock in the morning, James would ring at ten o’clock in the morning. Not at eighteen seconds past ten, you understand, or at half a minute before ten.

  But at ten.

  He might have left me for another woman, but in some departments he was the most reliable man you could hope to meet.

  “And what time is it now?” I asked.

  “Twenty past three,” said Dad.

  “I suppose I’d better go to bed then,” I said. “Big day tomorrow and all that.”

  Although I knew that I wouldn’t sleep a wink.

  “We’ll all go to bed,” said Mum. “Anyway, where were you until this hour?”

  “Having sex with Adam,” I told them.

  Dad gave a loud bark of nervous laughter.

  Mum looked stricken.

  And well you might, I thought. You were the one who put the idea in my head in the first place.

  “No, I’m being serious now,” said Mum. “What were you up to?”

  “I am being serious.” I smiled. “Good night.”

  Mum looked appalled. She didn’t know whether to believe me or not, but she obviously suspected the worst. She stood there opening and closing her mouth like a goldfish as I shut the door behind me.

  I don’t think she even noticed Dad pulling at her dressing gown and hissing at her, “Which one of them is Adam?”

  twenty-four

  I went to bed and I was right.

  I didn’t sleep a wink.

  Why was James here?

  Was this going to be a reconciliation attempt?

  Or was it just to tidy up loose ends?

  Could I bear it if he just wanted to tidy up the loose ends?

  Did I want a reconciliation attempt?

  Was he still with Denise?

  A thought struck me—Jesus, what if he had brought Denise with him?

  I sat bolt upright in bed. Fury surged through me.

  The rotten bastard. He wouldn’t do that, would he?

  I forced myself to calm down. I had no proof that he had done anything of the sort and there was no point getting angry over things that might not have happened.

  I had to keep Kate in the forefront of my mind. She was the most important person in all of this. I wanted things to be civil with James so that he would be in Kate’s life. Even if he never wanted to see me again, I still wanted him to be there for her.

  So I couldn’t exactly go for him with a machete when I saw him.

  I couldn’t really believe it.

  I’d be seeing him tomorrow.

  And what if the unthinkable happened and he wanted to try again with me?

  Then what?

  I didn’t know.

  And what about Adam?

  The man whose bed I’d just left.

  I can’t think about that now, I thought.

  My head was so crowded, it was standing room only. In fact, a few hardy thoughts were standing outside my head, with their drinks, in the pouring rain, where at least there was a bit of space.

  But there was no room at all for Adam.

  Forget it, I told myself, you can’t possibly think about it now. Wait till all this is over, one way or the other, and then think about him.

  And then I started to wonder. Why?

  You know, why had James left me? Why had James gone off with Denise when I had thought our relationship was so good? I hadn’t tortured myself with these thoughts in a while.

  But tomorrow I was going to at least try to get some answers to these questions.

  If I could understand what had gone wrong, or what I had done wrong, maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to live with.

  I wished there was some kind of switch on my brain. That I could turn it off in the same way that I could turn off the television. Just click it off and immediately empty my mind of all these images and worrying thoughts. And simply leave a blank screen. Or if I could just remove my head and put it on my bedside table and forget about it until morning. And then attach it again when I needed it.

  Morning finally rolled around and I was still no better off in the sleep department.

  I jumped out of bed and was vaguely aware of a slight stiffness in my inner thighs. “Why’s that?” I wondered. And then I remembered. “Oh, er, yes, that’s right.” I flushed a bit as I remembered what I had been up to the previous evening. “Adam. Sex. But I can’t think about it now.”

  Honestly, damn James!

  I was being denied the pleasure of lolling around in bed, dreamily recalling every detail of my Night of Lust with Adam.

  Instead I had to get up and run around and Prepare for His Arrival. As though he was the Pope or a visiting head of state.

  After I fed Kate her bottle, I bathed her and dressed her in her sweetest outfit. A fluffy pink one with little gray elephants all over it.

  I covered her in talcum powder and held her close and inhaled her beautiful milky baby smell.

  “You look gorgeous,” I assured her. “Any man’s fancy. And if he doesn’t realize it then he’s an even bigger fool than I already think he is.”

  I wanted her to look divine. I wanted her to look like the most beautiful baby on the planet. I wanted James to ache for her.

  To hold her, to kiss her, to feed her, to smell her.

  I wanted him to see just how m
uch he had forsaken.

  And I wanted to make him want us back.

  The whole house seemed to be up at the crack of dawn. Anna and Helen knew that James had called. Helen came into my room at about seven-thirty and ran over to Kate’s bassinet and said, “Oh good, you’ve made her look gorgeous. That’ll show him. Let’s just hope that she doesn’t puke on him or do a poo in her diaper when he’s holding her.”

  She picked up Kate and admired the outfit.

  “Do you think we could put a pink ribbon in her hair, to match?” she asked.

  “Helen, if she had more hair, I’d consider it,” I told her.

  But when Helen suggested that we put some makeup on her, I decided that that was going too far.

  “Right, we have to make you look beautiful too,” said Helen.

  I wasn’t too sure if I liked her tone.

  It sounded a bit doubtful or defeatist, somehow.

  Then Dad arrived.

  “I’m off to work now,” he said. “But remember what I said. You don’t have to go back with him just for Kate’s sake.”

  “Who says he’s going to ask her to go back with him?” asked Helen loudly.

  There really had been no need for her to say that. But she had a point.

  Then Mum arrived.

  “How are you bearing up?” she asked kindly.

  “Fine,” I said.

  “All right,” she said. “You go off and have a shower. Helen and I will keep an eye on Kate.”

  “Oh, all right.” I was a little bit taken aback at all the organizing and activity. It was nearly like the morning that I got married.

  In came Anna.

  I thought I might go downstairs and open the front door and start inviting strangers in off the street.

  Anna smiled sweetly at me and held something out to me. “Claire, take this crystal and put it in a pocket or something. It’ll bring you luck.”

  “She’s going to need more than one of your crappy old crystals,” said Helen bluntly.

  “Stop that, Helen,” said Mum sharply.

  “What!” said Helen, outraged.

  “Do you have to be so mean?” said Mum.

  “I wasn’t being mean,” Helen defended herself hotly. “But if she looks nice and acts like she’s fine he’ll want her. You don’t need a crystal to do that.”