by David Jester
“Apology accepted.”
“I was being sarcastic.”
“No shit.”
She sighed again. “Just keep your mouth shut for the rest of the night, okay?”
That annoyed me and pushed me over the edge. “I’ll promise to keep my mouth shut if you keep your mental fucking family away from me!”
I had done nothing wrong. Yes, I had made a mistake, but only when I felt pressured by a bunch of people I didn’t know. I had raised my voice a little louder than I should have to let her know how angry I was, and in the silence that followed, I realized that I had also let everyone in the living room—every last mental family member—know just how angry I was. The embarrassment and horror on Lizzie’s face was evident, as were the mumblings of discontent and disbelief, and the awkward look that Laura gave me when I craned my neck to see back into the room.
Shit.
Lizzie’s wide eyes, raised brow, and reddened features told me everything I needed to know. I slumped to one side as she stormed into the room, on a mission to reduce the damage that my words had caused.
After several minutes of standing around and waiting for the ground to swallow me up, which it seemed I had spent most of the night doing, someone opened the kitchen door and I heard Lizzie’s raised voice say, “No, no, he wasn’t talking about you.”
“Do you have another mental family that we should know about?” her grandfather asked.
The door shut again, the noises reduced to mumblings, and I looked up to see Laura entering the kitchen. She had a restrained grin on her face and when she opened her mouth, it was to suck in a breath through clenched teeth. “Well,” she announced. “That was awkward.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Do you need a shoulder to cry on?”
I shook my head. “I think I need to be alone.”
“I understand,” she said, sounding genuine. “It will probably be best if you lie low, but don’t let them get to you. They’ll all be drunk soon and they won’t remember a thing. Hell, some of them are drink already.”
“Thanks.”
“Speaking of being drunk, do you want me to fetch you another drink? I’m prepared to cross enemy lines if you want some whiskey or beer or …”
“I’m good. I’ve put my foot it in enough times tonight; getting drunk won’t help that.”
She nodded and gave me an awkward but pleasant smile. “For the record, if it helps: you’re right, my family is mental.”
“That does help.”
“They’re also very annoying.”
I nodded vigorously. “Definitely.”
She giggled and before I knew it, she was right next to me and we were laughing together, inches apart. I could feel the heat given off by her body; I could smell the wine on her breath. When I looked into her eyes I felt a connection. I saw her face change, and I knew what was coming next. Only then did it occur to me that I might have given her the wrong impression and I quickly jumped back, awkwardly ruining the moment but doing so with good intentions.
“This is not—”
“Oh, I know.”
“Oh, so you weren’t?”
“No, no.” She shook her head several times. “Of course not. Not here.”
Not here? What’s that supposed to mean?
There was still something on her face, a wry smile, a confident flicker. I couldn’t decipher it but it was as though what she was telling me was for the benefit of someone who wasn’t involved in the conversation. I gave her a long and hard stare, trying to figure her out. At one point, I could have sworn she was giving me the come-on, but those thoughts were tossed out when she picked up her glass from the counter and turned around slowly, looking at me over her shoulder.
“Back into the breach I go. Wish me luck.”
I didn’t wish her anything, and instead I followed her out of the kitchen, although I had no intention of going with her into the living room. When she opened the door, about to reenter, I heard that the conversation had returned to a cacophony of random chatter, dozens of voices all clamoring to be heard. I was no longer the topic of choice for any of them, but I still didn’t feel very sociable.
“You going to join me after all?” Laura said, waiting by the open door.
“Maybe later,” I told her, although there was no indecision about it. “I’m going upstairs to lie down, get some alone time.”
She smiled in reply, and I waited for her to return to the melee before I ascended the stairs. The thought that I was technically in someone else’s house and would be crossing a number of boundaries didn’t occur to me. They were throwing a party, opening their house to everyone inside it; they were begging me to dig through their medicine cabinet and bedside tables. They had also pissed me off, so I saw my rudeness as an act of defiance and vengeance.
This was the house Lizzie had grown up in, the house she had spent the majority of her teenage years inside. She had lived here when we fell in love for the second time all those years ago. As those memories swam through my mind, I felt the bitterness and resentment that typically follows any argument. I still loved her, but in those few moments, I also hated her.
Lizzie’s room was located at the back of the house and had been kept exactly the same as she had left it, complete with Take That posters and a sickly sweet pink wallpaper. There was a desk along one side of the room that had been covered in scribbles, and I was disappointed to learn that none of them mentioned me, just as disappointed as I was to learn of her infatuation with Gary Barlow. She’d certainly kept that well hidden, but I couldn’t blame her.
The bed was the only thing I imagined to be different. I pictured her as having some sort of pink duvet set, or even a Take That one, but the duvet was a bland brown and had been covered in guests’ coats. I lay on the bed, on top of the coats, and stared at the ceiling as I listened to the mumbling from the living room, directly underneath me.
I imagined Lizzie doing the same years ago, possibly as she shied away from a family gathering; unwilling to dip her face in the saliva bath that greeting her aunts involved; unwilling to listen to her grandfather’s rants about the “good old days” of his youth, when half the world was at war but at least England was still white.
Then I realized that Lizzie would have done none of those things. She loved those people and they loved her. They were her family; that’s the way it worked. It was me they hated, it was me that her grandfather saved his most gruesome sexual references and most twisted racist comments for. It was me that her mother avoided eye contact with. I didn’t have those issues with my family, but only because a “family gathering” consisted of a prolonged phone call on my birthday, when my dad said all he needed to say with two words and my mother kept me up to date with all the friends and neighbors that were either diseased, divorced, or dead. I didn’t have a racist grandfather, a watery aunt, or a dickhead uncle, and I certainly didn’t have a sweet cousin who—
At that point, I heard someone walking up the stairs and I felt my heart kick against my chest. There was a toilet downstairs so no one needed to be upstairs. I had no idea what they were doing, but when they made it upstairs, they would be asking the same thing of me. They hadn’t caught me when I had been fruitlessly searching for a dildo in Lizzie’s mother’s bedroom, and they hadn’t caught me when I had been contemplating mixing up her father’s Viagra and sleeping tablets in the bathroom. But I was alone in what was technically a teenage girl’s bedroom, which was just as bad. There were a few things that made it less weird, of course, but there was still something innately creepy about it.
I reasoned that if they weren’t going to the bathroom then they were going to get their coat, and if they were going to get their coat then they heading straight for me.
I did the first thing that came to mind. That has very rarely done me any favors in the past, but I didn’t have time to think and had nowhere else to turn but toward my own common sense. I slipped underneath the coats and underneath the blankets
. It was already dark in her room, lit only by the moonlight and a few distant streetlights, so I was confident I wouldn’t be seen as I flattened myself as much as possible.
I waited and listened, the sound of my own heart heavy in my ears. I heard the footsteps pause at the top of the stairs. I heard them walk across the creaky floorboards that led to the spare room, and then to the master bedroom, stopping at the doorways both times. Then I heard the door to Lizzie’s bedroom open and I nearly wet myself. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d wet the bed, but it would be the first time I’d wet someone else’s bed.
The footsteps stopped in the doorway and then I heard the door close. I allowed myself to breathe and prepared to throw the covers and coats from me, but when I heard the footsteps again, I realized they were in the room with me.
I felt hands on the coats, pressing down. I felt one of those hands slide underneath the coats and touch my thigh. I didn’t know what to do so I did nothing. The hand moved up and then I heard a female’s voice whisper, “Is it just my imagination or is there a sexy man hiding underneath there?”
It’s definitely your imagination.
It was Lizzie, and the relief I felt couldn’t have been greater. As soon as that relief came, it was quickly followed by lust. I was in the bedroom of a sexy teenage girl, a girl who I had lusted after for years. I felt like I was a hapless teen all over again and was finally living out a scene I had dreamed about many times, albeit without the arguments, awkwardness, casual racism, and coats.
She crept under the covers with me and I felt that desire intensify.
“I’m so so—”
She put a finger to my lips to stop me from apologizing, which, admittedly, is not a great aphrodisiac. Then she kissed me. She was a little sloppy and she tasted heavily of wine, but I accepted that the latter probably had something to do with the former.
She used her free hand to grope me and strip me. I waited eagerly as she peeled my shirt and pants off before removing her top—her warm naked skin pressing against me. I wanted to see her, but the fact that we were in complete darkness, hidden from view, somehow made it even sexier and more risqué. It was certainly as risqué as I was ever going to get when it came to sex.
When things heated up, with us both writhing around naked, the heat and the constant activity became too much and the coats began to fall onto the floor. At one point, there was succession of bangs, most likely caused by keys, coins, or phones in pockets, but in the heat of the moment, we didn’t notice them.
We also didn’t notice when several people began to rush up the stairs, their footfalls a little more urgent than Lizzie’s had been. I only knew of their impending arrival when the door flung open and the light snapped on.
I heard a gasp and I turned to greet the source, shielding my eyes from the light that threatened to scorch my retinas. Lizzie’s mother was standing in the doorway with an appalled look on her face as her half-naked daughter sat on top of me, about to do all the things that not only gave her a grandchild, but also gave her nightmares.
Her mouth hung open and a single word escaped. It confused me at first, and I assumed I had misheard, but when she said it again, I knew otherwise.
“Laura.”
Lizzie’s mother wasn’t staring at me. I thought she had been staring at Lizzie, but then I saw Lizzie nudge her mother aside and enter the room. I felt sick. Dizzy. I didn’t want to turn and look, as if by not seeing who was on top of me, I would be avoiding the charge of adultery.
Lizzie clarified things for me. “Laura, Kieran! Are you fucking kidding me!?”
I tried to speak, to defend myself, but I was too shocked and my words caught in my throat.
“You know, now it all makes sense. You never wanted to marry me; you’ve wanted out of this relationship from the beginning. All those inklings, all those times I’ve suspected something was amiss and let you off because you’re an idiot and get into those situations by default. It’s true. You have been cheating on me from the beginning, haven’t you?”
Reality snapped into place with a sickening shudder, exposing the brightly lit hell in front of me and the shimmering, sweaty girl on top of me. I grabbed Laura by the waist, feeling her soft and warm flesh on my palms—flesh I had thought belonged to my wife. I moved her aside, practically tossing her off me. She complained, grumbling, as if she expected me to finish what I had started.
I remained in bed but did little to cover my dignity. Exposing my bits to a family of psychopaths and pricks concerned me considerably less than losing the woman I loved. “What? No, that’s not true, how can you say that?”
“It all fits into place,” she continued, tears running down her face one by one. “Taking Eddie and Ben for walks so you could flirt with all those young girls, teenage girls for fuck’s sake. The telephone number in your pocket, on the lipstick-stained napkin.”
Lizzie’s mother dropped her jaw in disbelief, turning her horrified expression to Lizzie and then back to me. That was the sort of gossip that people like her thrived on, and she seemed insulted that she had never been told anything about it. It was fuel for a fire that had been raging since our marriage, and I knew that if I managed to get out of this with my marriage, then Lizzie’s mother would use that against me until the day I died.
“No, no,” I said desperately, shaking my head. These were the sort of things I knew would be brought up and used against me, but I had always hoped it would be innocent, that she would use them to make me put the trash out or to give her the remote. “We’ve been through this,” I told her, begging her. “They were misunderstandings, you’ve got it all wrong.”
“Of course I got it wrong,” she said sarcastically. “Because I’m just some silly little idiot, aren’t I?”
“What? No, don’t—”
“Some silly little idiot who couldn’t see that her husband was trying his best to sleep around, couldn’t see her marriage was over as soon as it began.”
I stuttered and stammered, trying my best to come up with a reply, but she turned away and left. Her mother remained in the doorway berating me, but nothing that she said sank in. I felt vulnerable, exposed, stupid. There I was, half-naked and in bed with my wife’s cousin, while a room full of racists, bigots, and twats stood over me and gave me their fiercest expressions. I knew that I deserved it for what I had done, or for what they thought I had done, but that didn’t make me feel any better.
The next few hours felt like a dream, and a surreal one at that. I went from having a wife and an accidental lover to having neither. Once Laura was exposed, she tried to push the blame onto me, saying that I led her on, that I got her drunk and took advantage of her. It didn’t matter about her reputation as a whore, or anything that had gone before. I was the outsider, I was the bad guy. On the journey over, Lizzie had described her family as a busy household: her grandfather was the television, the one they all loved even though they knew they shouldn’t, and the one that kept them entertained; her father was the liquor cabinet, the stash of expensive booze that everyone had forgotten about, which was her way of saying that he was a secret alcoholic; her mother was the hearth, essential, posh, and archaic; and her cousin was the remote control, because she was very rarely where she should have been and everyone had had a play at one time or another. It was common knowledge that she was loose, but they didn’t want to let that get in the way of besmirching me.
I tried my best to ignore the busybody matriarch, to ignore all of them and to get to Lizzie, but she was nowhere to be seen and getting to her involved running through an obstacle of old men who wanted to prove themselves. On my way out of the bedroom and out of the house, I had two offers to “take things outside” from men who still referred to fighting as “fisticuffs,” along with an invitation from Herman to see his gun collection, which was what convinced me to get as far away from the house as possible.
14
The Fallout
“Well, what did she say?”
My mother was
waiting outside the psychiatrist’s office with an expectant smile on her face. I had only been in there for an hour—although it had felt like much longer—and she had seemingly pored her way through every single magazine on offer, most of which sat on her lap. On the seat next to her was a pair of scissors and several coupons that she had cut out of the magazines.
“Are you allowed to do that?” I asked, pointing to the coupons and ignoring her questions.
“They’re coupons, dear, of course you’re allowed to do that. That’s what they’re for.”
I let that one hang. The look I received from the woman at the reception desk suggested that she wasn’t allowed to do that, but it also said that she’d already had that conversation with her and had only stopped because she valued her sanity too much.
“Did she fix you then?” she asked as we left the clinic.
I groaned in reply.
“Is everything okay now?” she pushed.
It was sweet that she was so concerned, but it was also annoying. Since the night at the party, my head had been all over the place. Weeks of nothing but frustration, doubt, and regret. I hadn’t spoken to Lizzie, at least not in the way that I wanted, and it was killing me.
“No, everything is not okay,” I told her.
“Oh, so you’re still mental then?”
The worst thing about that question was the honest grin on her face when she asked it. She wasn’t joking, and she expected an equally serious reply. We were at the car waiting to climb in, her at the driver’s side and me at the passenger’s side. I was watching her little face over the roof, her judging eyes quizzing me as they had done since that regretful night.
“I’m not mental.”
“You’re seeing a psychiatrist,” she reminded me. “That doesn’t sound like the actions of a sane man.”
My jaw dropped and then I heard my dad, waiting in the back of the car with a window cranked open like a loyal dog. “Your mother has a point.”
