Life Without Me

by Anna Legat

  Paula, my whorish little sister, knelt by my sleeping husband and slid her claws up his hairy legs towards those Tasmanian Devil boxers. Her fingers disappeared briefly under the fabric. Rob groaned and turned on the sofa. I could see he was grinning stupidly in his no doubt wet dream.

  Paula drew her fingertips across his flabby stomach, leant over him, and licked – yes! LICKED! – his earlobe. She whispered, ‘Robby, darling, come upstairs …’

  It was the first time in my life that I was grateful to Rob for farting. He passed wind, rather loudly. It was a jolly small explosion. Wine never did any good to his stomach. He smiled beatifically and the magic was gone.

  Paula scowled and scampered back to the bedroom. I swore revenge.

  No one apart from Emma bothered to get out of bed in the morning. The place stank of alcohol and weed. Two empty wine bottles lay on the floor. One was dripping red wine, which was soaking into my carpet. I would never get it out.

  I had to get out of there to keep my sanity intact. I followed Emma to school.

  Well, I thought she was going to school, but I was wrong. She took a bus to Gaolers Road. She strolled by Becky’s house as if she’d never heard of her and headed directly for number 18.

  Jason Mahon’s den.

  So there I was, following my child into the jaws of depravity and danger, unable to stop her. Voyeurism had never been my way of dealing with life, but what choice did I have other than to watch?

  The front door wasn’t locked: clearly, there was nothing worth stealing inside. Emma pushed it open. It was an old house from the turn of the last century, with now-stylish bay windows on the outside and rot on the inside. The wallpaper on the walls used to be a stripy green but it had faded to a faint vomit-coloured stain. Someone had taken with their nails to stripping it off, but he or she gave up halfway through the exercise. Raised voices travelled from the direction of the kitchen.

  ‘Shit! Shit! Shit!’

  ‘Why did you do it? What the fuck did you think would happen?’

  ‘You told me –’ Sobs drowned the rest of the words.

  ‘I told you? You’ve got the nerve! You fucking arsehole!’

  ‘You told me to see things through to the end, yeah! “ Don’t give up, Jason. Follow your dreams, Jason. Go and get it, Jason. The world is your bloody oyster!” Look where you got me! Fuck you!’

  ‘Well, fuck you! I was helping you get your priorities straight, man! I was helping you get out of a hole, you fuckwit! And you go and get yourself into a deeper one!’

  ‘Shit, what do I do?’

  ‘Now? What can you do now? It’s too late. You can’t undo it. Pray.’

  ‘You not fucking serious! I know her, fuck! She knows me! What if she –’

  ‘All right?’ Emma was standing in the door.

  Jason Weasel Face Mahon pushed by her and charged out of the room with a parting, ‘Fuck!’

  ‘Em!’ The young man from Emma’s mobile phone, the one with the lean torso and erect penis, smiled at her and came up to kiss her. His blond Jamie Oliver tresses were longer and greasier than in the photo.

  ‘What’s wrong with Jason?’

  ‘Got a girl into trouble, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I don’t think he’d like it if I talked about it. It’s a bit of a fuck-up. Anyway, let’s not waste time on Jason and his girlies. You don’t want to be one of them?’

  ‘God no!’ Emma laughed.

  ‘Good.’ They kissed. A long, wet, tonsil-probing kiss. On me, it had the effect of sharp nails scratching glass. Thankfully, Emma pulled away and collapsed on a dirty settee, next to a gaping hole with a broken spring and a selection of empty chocolate and crisps wrappers. I half expected to find used condoms and discarded syringes in there too so I averted my eyes.

  ‘Drink?’ asked the poster boy and headed for the fridge. I feared I would see a bottle of super-strong cider emerging from there, but to my relief I discovered neatly labelled shelves, each with the name of its resident owner, laden with such wholesome goodness as celery sticks, cheese, and skimmed milk. I saw five shelves with five different labels – at least five different tenants shared this establishment. Hopefully, a decent proportion of them were not car thieves.

  The poster boy passed a glass of milk to my offspring. ‘So what’s with school today?’

  ‘Didn’t feel like it.’

  ‘I don’t like it, Em.’

  ‘I think I’m entitled, you know! Mum’s accident … Then, yesterday, Dad brings home this woman, says she’s my aunt. They get drunk. Dad never drinks.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Em.’

  He sat next to her and put his arm around her. She rested her head on his shoulder, closed her eyes. ‘What’s going on, Brandon? It’s like a bad dream. I’m hoping to wake up from it, and I can’t!’

  ‘It’ll pass. Accidents happen. Shit happens. People get over it.’

  Words of wisdom ! My shock and my anger were wearing off. At least Emma had someone to lean on, I thought. He wouldn’t be my first choice of a shoulder to cry on, but he was there for her. A palaeontologist trying his hand at cooking, I mused, sounded respectable enough. It sounded much better than an unemployed bum. But what was his association with Jason Mahon?

  ‘I was going to see the Lord of the Rings marathon. It’s starting in the Watershed in about half an hour. Want to come?’

  Lord of the Rings? I pricked up my ears. Was Brandon – the poster-boy sex god – a closet hobbit? I was beginning to see him in a different light. I could almost spot the luxuriant hairs sprouting over his feet. Those feet were large enough. And the content of his fridge spoke volumes of his natural partiality to good wholesome food. Right, I concluded, this here hobbit posed no real danger to my daughter. I was leaning towards humouring him for the time being.

  I left Emma and Brandon in a half-empty cinema, sharing a bag of popcorn in seats F7 and F8. I chose to overlook the fact that his hand was on my daughter’s knee. Considering the fact that she was wearing tight jeans it would be a tall order for him to get into her knickers on this occasion. Anyway, I rested assured they were planning the Big Bang on her sixteenth birthday, by which time I was hoping to be back on my feet to put a stop to it.

  Meantime, I had a horny witch on the loose in my house, hovering dangerously close to my hapless husband. I had to keep an eye on her. I expected the worst. I could only expect the worst from Paula. Any minute now she would spread her wings – or her legs. She could only tease with subtle innuendos for a short while. After that she would let it rip: full-blown and unprotected revelations. She and Rob … What hold did she have over him? What was there between them? I still hoped it was all only in her dirty mind, but for how long would it stay there, and there alone?

  And that was the problem – Paula lived for the moment. She was bound to put her theories to the test, and she would persevere on her seduction trail until Rob finally capitulated. She would devour him if he wasn’t careful. I had no illusions about her. I knew her like I knew myself. I had to count on Rob, but right now I didn’t fancy my chances.

  I found her leaving my house in a strop. Rob had already disappeared with his tail between his legs. He probably had a serious hangover, and a few doubts about a wet patch inside his boxers. He left no forwarding address for Paula, no note inviting her to make herself at home. It had been a silent retreat.

  Paula wouldn’t be seen dead taking a bus. Public transport didn’t go with red lingerie and ten-inch heels. Neither did walking. She helped herself to Rob’s Mini. It stalled twice before it started and then it went huffing, puffing, stuttering, and screeching while Paula man-handled the gear stick and cursed like a trooper. She was only forty-two but her eyes were bloodshot and underlined with black rings and running mascara. Her skin was crumpled. She looked old, which provided me with some consolation.

  I was curious to explore her life ‘between relationships’, but to my surprise she drove to see Mother. The carers had never seen her
before in the Home and didn’t believe her when she said she was the daughter. They knew my mother’s daughter – they knew me. Paula couldn’t have come from the same mother’s womb. Still, she bulldozed her way in and accosted Mother in the same place and position I had left her the day before. The Rich Tea biscuit was untouched; the milky tea corpse-cold.

  ‘Now, now, Mummy, don’t tell me you don’t remember me!’ Paula peered into Mother’s vacant eyes. There was nothing in them, let alone joy. Indifference wasn’t something Paula could live with. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t visit earlier. So busy!’ And then came the punch line: ‘I had a breakdown. You didn’t know, did you? Didn’t make an effort to find out, did you? I lost a baby. Funny thing is I didn’t want it in the first place. Babies have this knack of ruining one’s body … I don’t think it had anything to do with the baby – the breakdown. It sounded good. It helped people understand why. I didn’t know why. End of the line, burnout. I spent three months in a psychiatric unit. You have no idea what it does for one’s career! Your shares go up. You’re mad, deliciously mad. People love it! Are you comfortable, Mummy? Do they look after you?’

  Mother’s bottom lip was trembling, no more than usual, but Paula found it off-putting.

  ‘Must dash! See you soon, promise … now that Georgiana can’t. Drink your tea.’ She put her arms around Mother. It looked comical: Mother’s osteoporosis-crunched torso, with her head protruding like a snail peering out of the shell, and Paula’s artificial breasts in a push-up bra pushed into Mother’s face, ready to asphyxiate her.

  The breasts gave Mother a panic attack. She whimpered and tried to push Paula away. The image of female breasts was repugnant to her.

  ‘You never really loved me, did you, Mummy?’ Paula looked hurt. She was having to put up with her second rejection in one day. She blinked rapidly, warding off tears, and left. Her high heels drummed the floor like claps of thunder.

  Mother didn’t notice. She was looking at herself in a mirror. She was twelve, maybe thirteen. No longer the daring tomboy climbing trees and diving head-on into shallow brooks … From her frown I could tell she didn’t like what she saw, particularly her breasts. They were the sort of boobs Paula would kill for, or at the very least she would pay good money to have them installed upon her chest, but Mother hated them. Two foreign growths had invaded her body and restrained her freedom. She could not pass for a boy with hooters like that!

  She was holding a roll of white elasticated bandage. She started under her left armpit and unfolded the roll across her chest, brutally squeezing her perky boobs. She went in circles, round and round her ribcage, and fastened the end with a safety pin.

  Paula’s flat was a shrine, mainly to herself. Her whole life (from the day she was born and carried home in a basket to a fairly recent photo of her under the arm of a man wearing a crown and stage make-up) was mapped out on the walls. There were framed pictures of Paula in her school plays, where she had appeared as anything from a sheep to Mary, the Mother of God. There was Paula in various stages of undress and body mass: receiving flowers, holding a knife to her chest over a stage lover’s body; kissing somebody’s cheek. There were a few autographed photographs of semi-famous actors: To Paula xxx (signature illegible). They were all men. Not one single famous actress. There was one thing Paula had in common with Mother: the man fetish. If in a slightly different way.

  Despite the exuberance with which Paula hung herself out for public view all over her flat, there was hardly anything else personal about her place. No pictures of life outside the theatre. No family photos. No weddings. No dogs. No holiday snapshots. No life. The only wedding photographs I saw, strewn on the floor, were mine!

  Paula crossed the room, stabbing her high heels into those photographs. They were the ones I had sent to my nearest and dearest as a memento. My set was lovingly placed inside a white leather wedding album that nobody had opened in years. Paula’s set was scattered on the floor, except for two: one was of Paula with Dad; the other one of Paula with Rob. Those two had made it to a table.

  I was naturally outraged, but there was also something sinister about the way she had kept my wedding memories. There was something bordering on blasphemy. For the millionth time since my accident I wished I could do something. This time it was to sweep my photographs from the floor and take them home with me. Paula didn’t deserve to have them.

  She kicked off her high heels and shed layers of clothes as she walked to the bathroom. Her blood red lingerie had joined a heap of clothing on the floor. Her nakedness was frightening: skeletal and bruised. It had a wasted potential: a body of perfect female proportions which had been gutted and drained of blood, then pinned to the wall like one of Paula’s impersonal pictures.

  Paula did not share my opinion of her body. She ogled it lovingly in the mirror. The tips of her clawed fingers traversed lovingly from her neck and towards her artificially pumped-up boobs. Those were eerily rounded, like two tennis balls – clearly not the way Mother Nature intended them to be. Two incongruent attachments contrasting sadly with the rest of the matrix which was Paula’s emaciated frame. As much as I found them travesties of nature, Paula found them endearing. She flicked and nudged them about playfully. ‘Hello there, little soldiers!’ she addressed them out loud, a glint of motherly pride in her eye. God! She must have been mad – talking to her own body parts! Her face dropped slightly when she focused her gaze on the nipples – they were crumpled and lifeless, little bits of Blu-Tac squashed out of shape. Expertly, Paula squeezed them between her fingers and twisted them back to life. They responded well to torture. Paula appeared pleased. She produced a wild shimmy which sent her tennis balls into a volley. ‘Oh yes, come to Mama … grrr!’

  She purred and adopted a sex kitten pose: one hand across her chest, allowing the tortured nipples to peer between her fingers; the other hand down into her loins, claws clutching her Brazilian tuft. She lifted her left knee and pointed her toes. ‘Come on, you know you want me!’ she told herself. The woman was bonkers!

  Her eyes abandoned her mean, lean midriff and reverted to her face. She pouted and kissed the air. Bared her teeth, ran her finger across the front row to remove a smudge of lipstick. She stuck her tongue out, and as there was little else to expose she exposed her tonsils and croaked out loud.

  ‘Aaaah.’

  She flicked her hair, extenuated her scruffy neck, and spoke in a theatrical manner, ‘Hello there, lover! Take me as I am. Take me now … show me how much you want me …’

  Brassy seduction suddenly discarded, her expression sobered up, her eyelashes flickered, and another Paula entered the stage: mild, wise, fragile Paula. She exhaled heavily, her voice softened. ‘I’ve waited too,’ she gasped. ‘You weren’t the only one. It felt like eternity, but we are together now.’ She repeated her previous lines, but with a different twist. She pleaded softly, ‘Don’t be afraid. Take me. Take me as I am. Take me now … take me out of this hellhole! Save me!’

  She caught her plaintive expression in the mirror, and laughed. Croaky, thunderous sound poured out of her throat. ‘Don’t be stupid! You couldn’t save yourself …’

  She began stuffing her lank hair into a plastic cap. A big lump of cotton wool dipped in makeup remover obliterated her face. Without accessories, for a split second the Paula I used to know made a brief appearance. She was still pretty in the sort of way that makes you think of the end of summer. She wouldn’t know that: she wasn’t looking in the mirror. Instead she twisted her body so that she could take a look at her skinny arse. She wiggled it frantically – a failed, pathetic attempt at middle-aged twerking. ‘You know you want me,’ she triumphed.

  I was beginning to worry that soon she would descend into her own rendition of the Vagina Monologues so it was a relief when she immersed up to her neck in the foaming bath. I half expected to hear the clanking of her bones against the walls and floor of the bathtub, but she lay there, stiff and immobile, and with her eyes closed.

  I waited, n
ot sure where to go next. I didn’t want to leave her on her own. She was a lonely, damaged creature. The ‘in-between relationships’ spiel was a lie. She had never had any relationships. It had for ever been Paula, and only Paula. Maybe I had failed her as a sister. I had always thought she was riding the wave of glamour and success and didn’t need the burden of family to weigh her down. But I wasn’t so sure any more. She was fragile. Very fragile. She was falling apart. As soon as I was out of hospital I would have to take her under my wing. To start with, a decent meal once a day would do wonders. I glanced at the photos of her from my wedding: fresh-faced little sister Paula. I could get her back to that point, it wasn’t too late.

  Then my eyes wandered to my own photos on the floor. And I discovered the savagery: in some of them Paula had drawn funny round glasses and moustaches on my face with a black marker; in others she had altogether obliterated my head. Mother got a pair of horns and a tail.

  Dressed to kill, Paula emerged from her flat two hours later. She packed herself into Rob’s Mini and drove to the Café Rouge. It was the same Café Rouge where I had met Tony on the day of my accident. Tony liked that place; it was within walking distance of his chambers. I liked that place too – it reminded me of Tony and his stag scent.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised to see Tony there. I shouldn’t have been surprised to see Paula glide to his table and kiss him on the lips. But I was surprised, on both accounts. Those two together … it felt a bit incestuous.

  OK, she’d said she knew him – God knows how and from where! – but knew him this well?? The kiss on the lips, her hand pawing at his neck … I am talking serious physical intimacy. It was present in their body language. Paula wasn’t putting on airs and graces, which she would be if she was chasing after a man. She knew this man. He was hers. Tony was equally relaxed: satiated. It was the sort of familiarity which would allow him to suggest a quickie in the loo in the safe knowledge that Paula would gladly oblige.