by Marian Keyes
“If only you hadn’t been thoughtless when it really mattered,” he mused.
“Because the problems in our marriage weren’t just about you not pulling your weight. It was about the way you made me feel.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. I braced myself for another round of accusations. Accusations that I didn’t want to hear. But ones that I had to listen to if I wanted to make sense of why he left me.
“Well, it was always about you, wasn’t it?” he said.
“How? In what way?” I asked, bewildered.
“I’d come home from work, after having had a terrible day. And you wouldn’t talk to me about it. You’d just go on about your day, telling me stories and expecting me to laugh at them.”
“But I would ask,” I protested. “And you always told me it was too boring to explain. I only told you funny stories because I knew you’d had a horrible day and I wanted to cheer you up.”
“Don’t try to justify yourself,” he said forcefully. “It was so obvious that you never wanted to hear anything unpleasant. All you wanted were good times. You had no interest at all in hearing about anything unpleasant.”
“James…” I said feebly.
What could I say?
His mind was so made up.
And I swear to you, this was all news to me. I had never suspected that he had felt this way. And I had no idea that I had behaved in such an insuf-ferable way. James wouldn’t by any chance be interested in absolving himself of all guilt in this sorry fiasco, would he? James wouldn’t, by some freak chance, be manipulating me in any way?
I had to find out.
“James,” I said in a little voice, “I’m sorry to ask this, but you wouldn’t be trying to avoid the blame for leaving me? You know, by blaming me and making it all my fault.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” snorted James. “That’s exactly the kind of childish, selfish response I should have expected from you.”
“Sorry,” I whispered. “I shouldn’t even have asked.”
Another silence.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I burst out. “We were so close. It was so beautiful.”
“We weren’t so close and it wasn’t so beautiful,” he said bluntly.
“It was. We were,” I protested.
He’s taken enough away from me, I thought. He’s not going to take my memories.
“Claire, if it was that beautiful, why did I leave you?” he asked quietly.
And, really, what could I say? He was so right.
But, hold on. He was off again. More accusations. His grievance was an unstoppable force.
“Claire, you were absolutely impossible. I had to keep so much from you. I had to carry so much worry on my own because I felt that you couldn’t cope.”
“Why didn’t you try me?” I asked sadly.
He didn’t even bother to answer.
“You were such a bloody handful. I’d come home from work, exhausted, and you’d have decided on the spur of the moment to have a dinner party for eight people and I’d have to run around like a crazy person, buying beer and uncorking wine and whipping cream.”
“James, that only happened once. And it was for six people, not eight.
And it was for your friends who came down from Aberdeen. It was supposed to be a surprise for you. I was the one who whipped the cream.”
“Look, I’m not going to get into specifics,” he said testily. “Doubtless you can try to justify anything I say to you, but you were still in the wrong.”
“I can try to justify anything I did because I feel that the things I did were right,” I thought confusedly to myself. But I didn’t say anything.
“I thought you liked me being spontaneous,” I said timidly. “I thought you even encouraged it.”
“Well, that’s the way you would see it,” he said sneeringly. “I suppose that’s the way you want to see it,” he said a bit more kindly.
A smiling waiter approached our table with a lively gait. But froze in his tracks and then made a sharp right turn to another table when he noticed the glower that James gave him.
“So you thought you’d help me to grow up. You thought that if you left me that it might shock me into it,” I said, realization dawning gradually and unevenly. “What a pity you had to use such extreme measures.”
“Oh, that wasn’t why I left you,” he said. “It wasn’t done to make you grow up. Frankly, I didn’t think that was possible. But I wanted to be with someone who cared about me. Someone who would take care of me. And Denise did.”
I swallowed back the hurt.
“I cared for you. I loved you.” I had to make him believe me. “You never gave me the chance to help you. You never gave me the opportunity to be strong. I am strong now. I could have taken care of you.”
He looked at me. He was wearing his fatherly, indulgent face.
“Maybe you could have,” he said, quite kindly. “Maybe you could have.”
“And now we’ll never know,” I thought out loud, my heart almost breaking with a sense of loss, missed opportunities, of being misunderstood.
There was a bit of an odd pause. Then he spoke.
“Um, uh, I suppose not,” he said hurriedly.
So now what?
I felt sick, sad, sorry.
Sad for both of us.
Sad for James, who had carried so much worry on his own.
Sad for me for being so misunderstood.
Or was it sad for me for being so misunderstanding?
Sad for Kate, the innocent victim.
“You must have thought I’d go to pieces completely without you,” I asked him. I felt hot, angry with shame and mortification.
“Yes, I suppose I did,” he admitted. “Well, you can hardly blame me, can you?”
“No,” I said, hanging my head.
“But I didn’t, did I?” I said. Tears poured down my face. “I coped without you. And I’ll manage fine in the future without you.”
“I can see that.” He nodded and looked with mild amusement at my wet, tear-streaked face. “Oh, you silly thing, come here.” He kind of pulled me awkwardly across the table, pushing the flower vase and the salt and pepper shakers aside, and patted my head onto his shoulder in a supposedly comforting manner.
I left my head there for a moment. I felt a bit uncomfortable and foolish.
I sat up straight again. It would hardly do my cause any good if I continued to behave like a child needing comfort.
But that didn’t seem to please him either.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, sounding a bit annoyed.
“What do you mean?” I asked, wondering what I’d done now.
“Why are you pulling away from me? I may have left you for another woman, but do I have rabies or what?” He gave a small smirk at his little joke. Which I weakly tried to return.
“Um, no,” I said, totally confused. What did he want from me? I couldn’t please him whatever way I behaved.
I was exhausted.
Things were much more straightforward when he was a faithless, phil-andering bastard. I knew where I was then. I’d understood that situation.
But he must be right. I must have enjoyed being irresponsible. Otherwise why couldn’t I accept blame for my part in the marriage breakup?
But it was hard to accept that it was all my fault. He was the one who left me. He was the one who broke my heart.
Nothing that I had expected to happen had happened. I’d thought that he might ask if I would come back to him. Either that or for him to continue behaving like a total bastard. I certainly hadn’t expected to end up apologizing for causing this situation all by myself.
Things had been black and white. He had been the darkness and I was the light. He was the wrongdoer and I was the victim.
Now it was all mixed up.
I was the wrongdoer and he was the victim.
It didn’t feel right.
That was hard for me, but I was prepared to give it a chance.
“Look, James,” I said, swallowing back tears, “this is all a bit of a shock.
I need to think about what you’ve said. I’m going now. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
And with that I hopped up and made for the door, leaving James, sitting at the table, mouthing silently like an agitated goldfish.
“Good for you, love,” said one of the waiters to me as I swept past. “He’s not your type, at all at all.”
I drove home at high speed, jumping red lights and risking the life and limb of pedestrians and other motorists alike.
twenty-nine
I put my key in the door and, with a marvelous display of their psychic abilities, the kitchen door opened and Anna, Helen and Mum rushed out into the hall to greet me. Either that or they heard me parking the car.
“How did you get on?” asked Mum.
Obviously they were all at a very loose end at the moment. My real-life soap opera wouldn’t have been afforded so much interest if they’d had anything better to do.
“What happened?” shouted Helen.
“Oh, marvelous news,” I yelled tearfully as I started up the stairs to see Kate.
“Oh good.” Mum beamed.
“Well, you know the way James left me and went off and lived with someone else and didn’t even know Kate’s name. Well, it’s all okay now.
Because it was my fault. I was asking for it. Apparently I was begging for it. Down on my knees begging for it!”
I swung into my room, leaving three astonished faces at the bottom of the stairs, their mouths three ohs of surprise.
Kate started bawling when she saw me. And just for the hell of it, I decided to join in. I was not finding this blame-acceptance thing easy, as you may have gathered.
But I took my frustration with the situation out on Helen, Anna and Mum, when I should have voiced it to James. And that wasn’t fair to the girls and Mum. A little voice reminded me that I had tried to tell James about it and he’d said it was further proof of my childishness. Well, he was probably right. He usually was.
What a pain in the ass, I thought rebelliously.
And now I had to stop being resentful and rebellious. I was no longer a twenty-nine-year-old adolescent. If I was going to be a sensitive, considerate, caring adult then I might as well start now.
I could begin by being responsive to Kate’s needs.
“What can I get you, my darling?” I asked. I wondered if that would be mature enough for James. I must stop!
He was right, I was wrong.
I tried to calm the crying child in my arms.
“Clean diaper, perchance? Or can I interest you in a bottle? And we have a wonderful selection of attention and affection. All are available. You only have to ask.”
But no, I was even doing that wrong. According to James, people shouldn’t even have to ask me for what they wanted. If I was really selfless I should know.
Just to be on the safe side I gave her all of the above. I changed her diaper, fed her and told her she was more beautiful than Claudia Schiffer.
Mum, Anna and Helen materialized in the room. They crept in cautiously, wondering how crazy I had gone.
“Oh, hi,” I said when I saw the first tentative head appearing around the door. “Come in, come in. Sorry about that little display in the hall. I was upset. I had no right to take it out on you three.”
“Oh, that’s fine then,” said Helen. The three of them marched in and took up residence on the bed while I tended to Kate and told them the story of my evening.
“So, in a funny way, knowing how difficult I was makes the fact that he left me a bit easier,” I told them. “You know, at least it makes sense.”
“Claire,” said Mum slowly, “I’m sure that you couldn’t have been as bad as he makes out.”
“I know, I don’t understand that either,” I admitted. “But when I told him that, he said that was exactly the way he would have expected me to react.”
There really wasn’t anything anyone else could say.
James had me boxed in good and neatly.
That night was terrible. As bad as the early days when James had first left me. When the others finally left, having given up trying to reassure me that I couldn’t be that bad, I couldn’t sleep. I lay flat on my back, staring into the darkness. Questions buzzed around in my head.
This had all come as a terrible shock. I’d never known that I was so selfish and immature. No one else ever complained before. Granted, I was high-spirited. And maybe a bit noisy and lively. But I honestly thought I was considerate of other people’s feelings.
The thought crossed my mind that maybe, just maybe, James was perhaps exaggerating how bad I had been. Was even making it up. I dismissed that idea again almost as quickly. That was just me trying to escape the blame.
Why would James do something like that if it wasn’t true? As he’d said himself—and his words kept going around and around in my head—“If I had been happy, why would I have left?”
I admit that I absolutely hated being wrong. I was really bad at graciously admitting that I was in error. I felt burning, raw, exposed, mortified. I had been so smug. I’d thought that I had right on my side. It was very humbling to find that I hadn’t.
Even when I was a little girl and didn’t get all my spelling words right at school, I found it very hard to bow my head and swallow and say, “You are right and I am wrong.”
Well, practice makes perfect.
I finally slept.
thirty
Dad woke me the following morning by thrusting a huge manila envelope under my nose. “Here,” he said ill-temperedly. “Take this. I’m late for work.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I said sleepily, dragging myself up in the bed as I pushed my hair out of my eyes.
I looked at the letter. It had a London postmark. With a little cold thrill, I realized it was the deed to the apartment and all the other documents that James had asked to be sent over.
I toyed with the idea of ringing the Vatican to report a miracle. Surely nothing had ever arrived from London to Dublin that quickly ever before?
I toyed with the idea of calling James instead.
It might be better if I called James.
Though I’d probably get a better reception at the Vatican.
I found the number of the LiffeySide in the phone book. Some woman answered. I asked to speak to James.
She told me to hold on a moment while she went to get him. While I was waiting I could hear noises in the background that sounded like machine gun fire. Now, granted, it might only have been the washing machine, but if you knew the LiffeySide and the street it was on, you’d be more inclined to put your money on it being machine gun fire.
“Hello,” said James. He sounded all officious and important.
“James, it’s me,” I told him.
“Claire,” he said attempting to sound friendly. “I was just about to call you.”
“Were you?” I asked politely, wondering why that was. Had he just remembered some other awful way I used to treat him? Had he omitted some important criticism about my behavior in public that he had meant to tell me last night?
Now, now, I warned myself. Be selfless and adult about this.
“Would you believe it?” he asked disbelievingly. “Not one newspaper shop in this city opens before nine o’clock. I’ve been trying to get the FT
since I got up, not a chance.”
“Well, well, would you believe that?” I said, feeling a surge of irritation.
But I tried to hide it. I had to bear in mind that although the Financial Times wasn’t important to me, it was important to another human being, namely James, so, as an altruistic, caring, empathetic person, I should care.
“Was that why were you just about to ring me?” I asked. “To tell me that?”
“No, no, no. Why was it? Oh yes,” he said, re
membering. “I wanted to see if you were feeling all right after last night. I realize that I may have been a little bit…well… hard on you. I can see now that you had no idea that you were behaving so selfishly and thoughtlessly. The truth may have come as a bit of a shock to you.”
“Well, a bit,” I admitted. The confusion started up again. I felt like a suspect being interrogated by two policemen, one nice one and one nasty one. Just when I’d gotten used to one of them being nasty to me, the other starts by being extra nice and making me want to cry and hug him. Except there was only one James. But the effect was the same. Now that he was being nice to me I wanted to, yes, you guessed it, cry and hug him.
“You weren’t deliberately awful,” he went on. “You just weren’t aware.”
“No,” I sniffed. “I wasn’t.”
I was so glad that he was being nice to me at last. I could have cried with relief.
“Must try harder,” he said with a little laugh. “Isn’t that right?”
“Um, yes, I suppose so. Good news, James,” I said, getting to the point of my phone call.
“What’s that?” he asked. He sounded pleased and indulgent.
“The documents have arrived!” I said triumphantly. “I could hardly believe it. It must be a first for the Irish postal system.”
“So?” he asked sharply.
Oh God, I thought, I’ve annoyed him again. I see what he means. I seem to do it without even realizing it.
“So, it’s good…” I said limply. “We needn’t waste any more time. We can start sorting things out immediately.”
“Oh.” He sounded a bit dazed. A bit stupid.
“Oh,” he said again. “Right. Fine.”
“Why don’t you come over here?” I suggested. “No boiling oil, I promise you.”
I forced myself to laugh in a gently humoring way.
As though the very suggestion that he might suffer any kind of injury at my hands or at the hands of my family was ludicrous.
“Fine,” he said shortly. “I’ll be with you in an hour.”
And he hung up! Just like that.
A brief thought flickered across my brain.
Was James schizophrenic?
Or was there any history of madness in his family?
