The Confusion of Karen Carpenter

by Jonathan Harvey

  It was a few years ago now, mind.

  It’s raining again. Only softly, but there’s the unmistakable pit-a-pat thud of rain on corrugated plastic. Like cats scampering across. Or a load of impatient people drumming their fingers on it. This image unnerves me.

  I turn back to Wendy, but the sofa beside me is empty. I look round and she is on her mobile, phoning a cab.

  It’s funny. I met Michael and Wendy around about the same time. I put all my energy into hoping and praying that my relationship with Michael would run and run and run and that we’d grow old together, and smell of wee together in an old folks’ home (while still having loads of amazing sex, putting all youngsters to shame with our agility and zest for new positions in the shared TV lounge). I didn’t really hope, however, that my relationship with Wendy would run and run and run and that we’d be bezzy mates for ever. You don’t tend to do that with friends, and yet with lovers you’re planning a life time.

  The irony now, of course, is that things didn’t run and run and run with Michael, but they did with Wendy. To name-check the pub the teachers go to after school, who’d have thought it?

  I pack Wendy into her taxi when it arrives. People in telly take lots of taxis, I’ve noticed. It’s only half ten, but she can’t face the Tube. I think she thinks it’s beneath her. Mum is long back from Zumba and watching Borgen on the iPlayer. She’s got her big glasses on and is sitting really close to the computer screen so she can read the subtitles, and she is munching on a Danish pastry, possibly to help her get in the mood. (Well, I guess it’s either that or some bacon.) I tell her I’m going for a bath and I head up, hoping the water’s hot, and eventually luxuriate.

  The grouting needs doing.

  I remember saying it to Michael the day before he left.

  ‘The grouting needs doing, in the bathroom. Have you seen the state of it?’

  And he nodded and carried on eating his toast.

  I now know what he was thinking. He was thinking, Your grouting is nothing to me. Your tiles are nothing to me. Your bathroom is nothing to me. Tomorrow I’m outa here. You want that dump regrouting? Do it your fucking self.

  I’m making him sound surly and arrogant and twatty and a bit like Stanley in A Streetcar Named Desire. He isn’t. He’s more like Stanley Baxter. He certainly never swore at me.

  Again, there it is: the past tense. It still feels odd that he’s part of my past. I am thirty-six. I am thirty-six and newly single. I met Michael when I was sixteen. Childhood sweethearts. I can’t really remember a time without him. I have certainly not lived any of my adult life without him. Thirty-six is a shit age. I hate thirty-six. Thirty-six, I spit on you. Why do I have to be newly single now? I’m too old to be young and not old enough to be really middle-aged. It’s an in-between age, but in between what, I don’t know. Fun and full-on senility possibly. No matter what Wendy says, I’ll be on the shelf for the rest of my life, I just know it. I know my place, and I know my future. It’ll be ready meals for one. I’ll get a cat and talk to it, spend my evenings doing jigsaws of Westminster Abbey on the dining table. I can just see it all spreading depressingly in front of me. My future.

  I met Michael at my local youth club. Our eyes met across a ping-pong table. Chesney Hawkes was belting out of a crackly sound system, and I had the taste of overly diluted orange squash on my lips. He asked if he could walk me home. We got chips en route. The next day we decided we were going steady. Life didn’t come more simple than that.

  It was almost my seventeenth birthday and Mum and Dad had gone away for the weekend to Blackpool. As I’d be going off to university before we knew it, I’d promised Michael we could finally have sex as long as he brought a condom and a bottle of Bulmer’s cider. He brought Woodpecker and I giggled nervously when he said, ‘I’ll be pecking your wood tonight, girl’. I thought he was incredibly cool because he had this really unusual tracksuit that (he claimed) no one else in Liverpool had and he tucked the bottoms of it into his socks, which he considered quite artful.

  We started off in the lounge, on the couch, necking for England, then decided to move to my bedroom. Then, audaciously, Michael suggested we move to my mum and dad’s bed, seeing as they were away and it was double the size. We lay on the bed and started downing the cider. Suddenly he shoved his hand under my T-shirt and started squeezing my left breast.

  ‘Jeez, not much there, is there?’ He winked and I didn’t feel too embarrassed because he said it with such a twinkle.

  ‘Two aspirin on an ironing board or what?’ was my retort, and he pissed himself like it was the funniest thing he’d heard in ages, his life practically. He leaned in and started snogging the face off me, which he was actually quite good at. He took my hand and put it over his crotch and I could feel he’d got a stiffy through the nylon of his trackie bottoms.

  He whispered urgently in my ear, ‘Look what you’re doing to me, Karen,’ and I went, ‘Michael, what are you like?’

  And he was laughing again and then he pulled me over so I was sitting on his lap, and he was still snogging me. Anyway, just then I had a little panic because I was suddenly thinking, I don’t want to lose my virginity in my mum and dad’s bed. It doesn’t feel right.

  So I said to him, ‘Have you ever seen When Harry Met Sally?’

  And he was like, ‘Yeah, it’s boss.’

  And so I started writhing around on him, joking and making little orgasm noises, and he started joining in. And we were getting louder and louder till he was shouting, ‘Jesus, you dirty bitch!’

  And I was shouting, ‘Shove it in me, Michael La’!’

  And it was just the funniest thing imaginable and we were being very loud. Like really loud. So loud in fact that I didn’t hear footsteps on the landing and then a voice saying, ‘Karen?’

  I swivelled round. It was my mum.

  Shit.

  It was my mum, stood in her own bedroom doorway, gobsmacked because she had discovered what looked like her daughter losing her virginity in her own bed, and because I was wearing this massive gypsy skirt, she couldn’t see what was really going on, which was nothing.

  ‘I thought you were in Blackpool,’ I said, hoping to God that under the gypsy skirt she couldn’t see that my legs were either side of Michael.

  ‘Your father couldn’t find anywhere to park, so he turned round and came home. You know what he’s like.’

  I nodded. Like it was perfectly normal to be straddling my boyfriend on her bed.

  ‘Who’s this?’ She was nodding her head in Michael’s direction.

  ‘Michael.’

  ‘Michael?’

  ‘Michael Fletcher,’ Michael piped up. ‘I go to St Margaret’s.’

  Mum held out her hand and Michael shook it.

  ‘We were just re-enacting a scene from When Harry Met Sally. You know when they’re in that restaurant . . . ?’

  But Mum was giving Michael a funny look. As well she might. And he was staring at her, mortified. But Mum then chuckled, gave a flirty shake of the head and went, ‘Yes. It is me.’

  Michael’s eyes narrowed, unsure what she was on about.

  ‘Val Carpenter.’

  Again more narrowing.

  ‘Of Val Carpenter and Cheeky the Liverpool Bear fame.’

  Michael smiled blankly, clearly having no idea what on earth she was going on about.

  ‘Anyway . . . nice meeting you, Michael.’ She shook his hand again.

  ‘You too, Mrs . . . Thingy.’ How mortifying. Michael had forgotten my surname.

  Mum turned out of her own bedroom and I heard her rushing down the stairs, calling my dad with a chuckle in her voice.

  Why didn’t I just stand up? If I’d stood up, she’d have seen that Michael still had his trackie bottoms on. I was my own worst enemy sometimes. Michael was now pissing himself with laughter, so I got off his lap and slapped his face. He looked surprised.

  ‘What was that for?’

  I shrugged. ‘Go home.’

  ‘Ka
ren, you fridge!’

  Charming.

  Mum said nothing when Michael had gone. I thought I’d got away with it, but then a few days later I overheard her on the phone to one of her friends saying, ‘Yes, and he was quite clearly penetrating her, Sheila, on my best Marks’s king-size duvet. The one with the poppies? I mean, it’s not an ideal situation, is it? Meeting a prospective son-in-law when he’s got his doodah inside your daughter. How’s your arthritis?’

  Even now I am embarrassed when I think of that. More so when I remember trying to convince Mum that nothing had happened. Even more so again when she was having none of it and started to get all inappropriately pally about it and asking if he’d brought me to orgasm. I had to draw a line somewhere, and that was it.

  I have not discussed sex with my mother from that day to this.

  Well, not sex involving me anyway. She occasionally divulges secrets from her and my dad’s bedroom, which no offspring wants to know.

  ‘I’m a woman with needs, Karen. I have a high drive. Sometimes your father can’t keep up, bless him. He tries – God knows he tries – but I’m a twenty-first-century gal. I’ve seen Sex and the City and I am entitled to my orgasm, Karen, entitled to it. Or them. Why speak in the singular?’

  ‘Because it’s Dad you’re talking about?’

  ‘It. You’re absolutely right.’

  I lie on my bed, unable to sleep.

  Careful what you wish for, I think – you used to moan the bed wasn’t big enough for you and Michael. Well, it’s too big just for you now. I stretch out my arms and legs so I am making a starfish and wonder if I’d get cramp if I fell asleep like this. I then wonder if Rochelle has as much room to spread out, wherever she is. Would she be in a police cell or a prison cell? I have never known anyone arrested for murder before, so have no idea. I have only procedural crime dramas in my head, the sort that Wendy’s boss is involved in making. I can only picture someone affecting a cockney accent and telling her, ‘You’ll go down for this. You will. You’ll do bird.’

  I fear Rochelle will go mad. Not because of what she has or hasn’t done, but because her manic fingers no longer have an outlet for their kinetic energy. If only they could give her a dummy keyboard, I think she would sail through the experience unscathed. Instead her digits will be twitching, no idea what to do with themselves. Desperate to spell out words, sentences, but without any to make.

  I contemplate what she has done.

  Word on the street/in the classroom/according to Custard Claire is she did it and she’ll go down for it. She may not even contest it.

  I wonder if I am the mad one, not her, for not wanting to know what has become of Michael. If he is living over the brush with some slut in Cornwall, I do not want to know, but maybe I don’t want to know because I can’t quite believe it of him. I try not to think about it because when I do, a name pops into my head.

  Asmaa.

  I don’t know anyone called Asmaa. He does. It’s a name he mentioned often a while back. It is someone to do with his work. I remember her name because I thought he was talking about having asthma and he corrected me.

  Part of me knows. This has got something to do with her. Whether he is with Asmaa now or not with Asmaa, I just know – and I’m not stupid – his departure has something to do with her.

  I realize now that I am not like Rochelle, and do not want to be. Whatever Asmaa has or has not done, I do not have any desire to get into my non-existent car and run her over. I wouldn’t even hire a car to do it, or borrow someone else’s. Not for fear of damaging the car, but because no matter how much someone has hurt me . . . Well, I’m not saying I don’t want to hurt them back, but killing them is a step too far.

  Anyway, my gripe should not be with Asmaa. It should be with Michael.

  I realize I am laying a lot at this Asmaa’s feet, and she is really just someone he mentioned a few times a while back. Still, it was someone he mentioned enough to make me wonder what was going on.

  I know deep down that if I really want to know what is going on with Michael, I can find out easily enough. All I have to do is go to his depot and wait for him. All I have to do is ask some of his friends from work. I realize now that I probably need to find out. Or else how many more nights will there be when I can’t sleep? How many more nights, days, months of not understanding why he went? How many more times must I lie on this bed and try to picture what this Asmaa looks like?

  And so I decide that by the end of this week I will find out. I will go to his depot and ask him. It is Monday now. I will find out by Friday.

  FIVE

  The atmosphere in my local supermarket is one of seething menace. I would love, for once, to do my weekly shop in calm serenity, at one with my trolley and fellow shoppers, but that’s impossible here. I have never witnessed a knifing or particularly violent crime, but I always feel I’m about to in these aisles. Everyone looks thoroughly pissed off, staff and customers, possibly because they pipe in muzak versions of things like ‘The Birdie Song’. I often find myself apologizing to anyone and everyone if I perform the slightest misdemeanour: lingering too long deciding whether to plump for skimmed or semi, blocking the end of an aisle with my poorly angled trolley, asking a member of staff if they know where they keep their water chestnuts. (That was a night I was making a Chinese meal at home.)

  The women who shop here look like they’re about to venture forth to face the weekly beating from Him Indoors, and the men look as if they’re just stopping off for provisions before heading off to rob a building society at gunpoint. The staff just look bored and hacked off that I have dared interrupt the enjoyment they were having shouting out to each other what they plan to do after they get off. With the advent of chip and PIN, they appear to have lost the ability to tell you how much money you have to part with for the privilege of standing at one of their tills. They wait glumly while you enter your PIN, then don’t even bother to say, ‘Thank you,’ when ripping off your receipt and shoving it at you. Every time I come, I have to bite my tongue, for fear of saying, ‘Hello. I am here. I am a human being. A human being who helps to pay your wages. Be nice to me or I won’t come here again.’

  I will come here again, though. I will always come here again. I have no choice – it’s the easiest shop to get to, and after a hard day at the coalface/interactive whiteboard I can’t be bothered to get two buses to the other one.

  Basically I’m screwed.

  As is this trolley. There must be hundreds of trollies in this store, so why do I always manage to choose the one that has an automatic tilt to the left? Pushing it is like taking part in one of those ‘Strongest Men in Britain’ things you see on TV on a bank holiday, in which burly blokes push trucks laden with really heavy things made of iron. I nearly put my back out attempting to steer to the right to keep it in a straight line. Navigating this store is like sailing single-handed across the Atlantic. With a ‘Birdie Song’ soundtrack.

  I am not having a good time. And everyone, everyone appears to be giving me daggers.

  So imagine my surprise when I accidentally crash my left-lurching trolley into someone else’s as I roll awkwardly into one of the frozen-food aisles and gasp a quick ‘Sorry!’ only to have one gasped back at me with less than a millisecond’s delay.

  ‘Sorry!’

  It’s a man’s voice and I turn to smile, relieved to find someone else with manners here. Possibly the one person in the whole store who doesn’t want to knife me. He has a kindly face, I see. Rugged but gentle, and he looks harassed. He is leaning over one of the freezers, weighing up the choice between two packets of something.

  Imagine my surprise when he frowns, then emits a wry smile and says, ‘Miss Carpenter?’

  He knows me!

  ‘Yes?’

  Oh God, he recognizes me and I don’t recognize him. He must be a parent from school – who else would call me ‘Miss’? Unless he’s a throwback from a costume drama and has arrived on a white charger, sodden with rain. A quic
k check of his work overalls tells me no, I was right first time.

  ‘I’m Kevin. O’Keefe? Connor’s dad.’

  He smiles again, and God forgive me if I don’t find myself thinking, You’re awful jolly for someone who’s just lost his wife.

  I know. It’s shocking, isn’t it? I’m being terribly judgemental about someone who is just trying, let’s face it, to be nice.

  ‘Mr O’Keefe! Kevin! How’s it going?’ I immediately regret it.

  I know how it’s going for him. It’s going badly. He’s probably going through the worst week of his life and here I am chirruping away like a roving reporter for a local news station, jumping in on someone’s grief with a big smile and asking for a comment.

  Mr O’Keefe! Karen Carpenter, East London News! I know your wife’s just died a long, painful, drawn-out death, but any comment for the viewers? No?

  I see Kevin grimace, which makes me feel even worse.

  ‘Crap question – sorry,’ I splutter, and he is laughing.

  ‘No, no, it’s just . . . Oh, I don’t know. I’m running around like a headless chicken trying to get everything sorted for the funeral and I literally don’t know which way up I am.’

  He has an Irish accent. Why did I think he was a cockney?

  ‘Well, if there’s anything I can do to help!’ I say, once more sounding like the crap reporter. There is nothing I can do to help. This is not my drama. Him losing his wife has nothing to do with me. I am just his kid’s teacher.

  I expect him to pull a face and comment on the weirdness of my statement, but instead he nods and says, ‘There is, actually,’ and he thrusts his packets in front of me, fresh from the deep freeze. I look. They’re both party platters.

  ‘Which one of these d’you think I should get for the buffet? I’ve no idea. Buffets and spreads were Tony’s domain.’

  I have no idea who he’s talking about. Who’s Tony?

  I say it. ‘Who’s Tony?’