Kismetology

by Jaimie Admans

"That’s because your mother lives two hundred miles away, not three doors down. And what a horrible son you would be if you didn’t even offer up your couch for a few nights to save her shelling out for a hotel room."

  "She’d be reimbursed by the insurance," he sneers.

  "Yeah, and we live three houses away. The nearest hotel is miles away and probably doesn’t allow animals."

  "Who the fuck cares about the animals?"

  "She does. And I do. You can’t just chuck ‘em out on the street."

  "There’s nothing wrong with her own fucking house, Mackenzie."

  "Her kitchen is a charcoaled husk."

  "Yeah, which she probably did on purpose so she could come between us."

  "Don’t be so bloody paranoid, Dan."

  "I’m just surprised it’s her sleeping on the couch and not us. I thought you would have offered her our own bed, right from under our noses."

  "I did. But she said she was fine with the pull-out sofa. Wasn’t that nice of her?"

  "No, it was downright stupid of you."

  "Well, we should have a spare room, shouldn’t we? Oh, wait, hang on, we do have a spare room. At least, we would do if it wasn’t full of your junk."

  "Maybe you don’t remember, but we discussed this and we both decided that if we did that room up as a bedroom, we’d have your mother staying over every damn night. We decided to leave it as it is."

  "It’s not even useable, thanks to your shit filling it up. Who the hell buys all that sporting equipment and never uses it, anyway? Who the hell needs a boxing kit when they’ve got nowhere to hang it up? Or a rowing machine? And, seriously, when are you ever going to use that damn canoe?"

  "I’m busy. Working, you know? That thing that doesn’t involve painting white stripes on pink nails or setting up useless love matches."

  "That was below the belt, Dan. My job is just as much a job as yours is."

  "All right, I’m sorry," he says. "But you insulted my canoe."

  "The damn canoe has been taking up space since we moved in here. You don’t even know how to canoe. And do you see a river anywhere near here? Or a lake? Or somewhere you could actually use a boat?"

  "It’s not a boat, it’s a canoe, and this isn’t about my canoe."

  "No, it’s about the fact that you’re complaining that my mother is in the way, when she could be not in the way if your bloody sports shit wasn’t taking up the entire spare room."

  "Excuse me, I seem to recall that you have half your college stuff in there. Most of the room is taken up by the fake hands you used to practice your nail shit on."

  "Oh please, there are two fake hands and a couple of painting kits. Which take up less space combined that your stupid step machine which you never even got out the box."

  "You bought the fucking thing for me. I don’t even know who told you I wanted a step machine anyway, they’re a load of rubbish."

  "You did. You looked at it in the Argos catalogue."

  "Oh, Mackenzie, leave it out. The simple fact is that you invited your mother to stay without even asking me, and now her cat has pissed on my new carpet and her dog is chewing up everything it can get its teeth into."

  "He is not an it," I say. "And if you didn’t want your suede slippers chewed up then you shouldn’t have left them on the floor."

  "This is my fucking house. I can leave them wherever I want to."

  "It’s our house."

  "So we should be able to throw the fucking dog out, but you won’t let me."

  "She’s my family, Dan. And, as sad as it seems, her animals are her family. They have just as much right to be here as she does."

  "She doesn’t have any right to be here. She should be in a hotel. She would be if you weren’t such a pushover."

  "Oh shut the fuck up. I asked her to stay the first night, and I was going to offer her a few nights longer anyway."

  "You keep telling yourself that, Mackenzie. You just keep telling yourself that."

  "I will keep telling myself that because it’s true, you idiot. If I didn’t want her here then she wouldn’t be here. At least she cares about me. Unlike you."

  "Are we back to the fucking burglar again?"

  "Yes, we’re back to the fucking burglar again. I told you, I was in a very vulnerable position and I hate being vulnerable. And you, the one person in my life I thought would protect me, you roll over and tell me to go back to sleep."

  "You’re twenty-nine-years old. You should be able to take care of yourself."

  "I can take care of myself, but it would be nice to have someone else take over occasionally."

  "Oh, come on! I take care of you all the time. And I take care of your fucking mother half the time as well. You don’t think I’m a good boyfriend? What other boyfriend would have let you spend the past few months dating anything with a pulse, huh? What other boyfriend wouldn’t have minded you seeing other men almost every night for months on end?"

  "Daniel, it’s up to me who I date."

  "Oh, we’ve resorted to full names now, have we? Okay, fine. Mackenzie Atkinson. It is not up to you who you date when you are already dating me!"

  "How can you say that? The dates I was going on… They were with men old enough to be my father. Some of them older than my grandfather. And they weren’t even real dates, for god’s sake. They were in your restaurant. It wasn’t like we were going to nip off to the bathroom for a quickie, was it?"

  "I have no idea."

  "Is that why you wanted me at Belisana? So you could check that I wasn’t copping off with a seventy-year-old?"

  "No, Mac, that’s—"

  I’m too mad to care about interrupting him. "You really think that’s what I want? Dan, I haven’t met a normal man in weeks. Every time I was with a loser twice my age I couldn’t wait to get home to you. Because no matter how many dates I go on for other people, I’m dating you, Dan. And that’s all I want. Are you seriously telling me that you don’t know me well enough to know that I wouldn’t date anyone twice my age in a million years? That you don’t know me well enough to know that the only man I want to date is you?"

  "No, Mackenzie—"

  "Don’t ‘no, Mackenzie’ me. What you’re saying is that you don’t trust me. You think that just because I’m forced to have dinner with some old age pensioner that I’m automatically going to go home with him?"

  "I give up, Mac. You’re taking this entirely the wrong way."

  "On that note, what about Evan?"

  "Evan? Who the heck is Evan?"

  "Evan, you know? The sixty-something bloke who asked for a blowjob or a threesome in the bathroom stall. And, do you know what, I came out in the kitchen to tell you what happened, because I thought the only reason I was there in the first place was so you could make sure no sleazy, old boys tried anything, and when I told you what had happened, you laughed. Yeah, that’s right. Fabulous boyfriend that you are. You giggled at me. And then when Holly came out and said he’d tried it on with her too, you stormed out there and barely restrained yourself from decking the guy. The least he got was a banning order. And you did that for Holly, who works in your restaurant, but not for me, who is your girlfriend. Explain that one to me, Dan, because it’s really been bugging me."

  "At least Holly doesn’t let her insane mother take over my house."

  "Holly’s mother probably hasn’t had her house burn down around her ears."

  "It was just the kitchen! For god’s sake, stop being so melodramatic. It was the kitchen. Not the whole house. Nobody died. So her kitchen is a little crunchy for a few days, so fucking what? I don’t get why she has to stay with us."

  "Why are we suddenly back to talking about my mother? This is about how you care more about Holly than you do about me."

  Dan throws his arms up in despair, and he really looks like he’s about to blow. "Holly is staff. It’s firmly against the rules to proposition staff in my restaurant."

  "What about girlfriend rules, huh? Some old sleazebag can proposition
your girlfriend and you think it’s funny, but if he dares touch one of your waitresses, he gets thrown out on his backside without his feet touching the floor."

  "Exactly, he put his hand on Holly’s leg. He didn’t so much as touch you."

  "Oh, so Holly gets better treatment than me because some old creep finds her more attractive than me?"

  "Did you seriously just ask me that?"

  "I don’t know, Dan. I don’t know anything right now. Just that this is getting really stupid."

  "You can say that again."

  I stare at him for a moment.

  "Have a nice day with your mother, Mackenzie. I’m going to work."

  "It’s only half past three. You don’t have to be there until six."

  "Well, it’s nicer there than it is here. There’s no old lady camping out on the settee."

  "She’s not an old lady, Daniel. She’s not even fifty yet."

  "Whatever."

  "Fuck you," I call after him. Just in case it wasn’t clear.

  Twat.

  CHAPTER 43

  "Daniel just nearly broke the car window by slamming the door really hard as he got into it," Mum says. "I was just coming back from my walk when I saw him stomping out the door half dressed. Is everything okay between you two? Are you arguing again?"

  "We are not arguing!" I shout.

  She takes a step back and looks wounded.

  "I’m sorry," I say, quietly. "I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you. It’s Dan I’m mad at."

  "Why? What’s he done this time?"

  "Been a stubborn, insensitive beast," I reply, fully aware that I’m probably giving Mum exactly the ammunition she wants by running Dan down in front of her.

  "So what’s different from any other time?"

  I’m so mad at him that I don’t even feel like defending him right now.

  "Sorry," Mum says before I get a chance to speak. "Is it because of me? Because I can go home if you want me to."

  "No," I say. "You stay as long as you want. This is just a problem between Dan and me, not about you at all."

  "I mean it, Mac. I’ll leave if you want me to. I might not like Dan, but I don’t want to cause problems between you two."

  "No," I say. "It’s okay. We were just fighting over the spare room."

  "What’s wrong with the spare room?"

  "It’s full of Dan’s gym equipment that he never uses, that’s all. Seriously, Mum, forget it, it’s not about you at all."

  I’m such a bad liar. I wonder if my mother knows this.

  She shrugs. "So, what do you want to do this afternoon?"

  Collapse? After being woken at three o’clock this morning, when I eventually got back to bed after installing Mum on the pull-out sofa it was closer to five o’clock. And Mum obviously got off to sleep because Baby sat at the bottom of the stairs whinging all night, and the cat took to sharpening its claws on the stair carpet.

  "I don’t know," I tell her instead. "What did you have in mind?"

  "Well, I haven’t seen your little friend Jenni for a long time. Why don’t you invite her over for a bit of a girly afternoon? I assume Dan is not coming back until after his shift?"

  "No," I say. "He’s not. And my ‘little’ friend Jenni is five foot nine and busy on a Saturday. She spends time with her father. You know, that nice man that you turned down?"

  "Oh, Jeff…" Mum smiles at the mention of his name, and a strange look comes over her face.

  "You hated him, remember?"

  "Oh yes, yes. That’s right, I did. Dreadful man."

  "I don’t know where you got that from. I think Jeff is lovely."

  "Mackenzie, I thought we said that you weren’t going to berate me anymore for my choice—or non-choice—of men."

  "Okay," I say, reluctantly. "I’m sorry, I’ll never mention the man again."

  "Thank you."

  "I just don’t get why you two weren’t perfect for each other."

  "Mackenzie…" She says in a warning tone.

  "Sorry."

  "So, what do you want to do this afternoon?"

  "I have no idea."

  By day two, my resolve to be nicer and more tolerant of my mother has weakened somewhat. I mean, when I said, "grab some clothes so we don’t have to come back until Tuesday," I didn’t bank on the three suitcases that have taken up permanent residence in my hallway. I also hope that there is nothing breakable in said suitcases because Dan has kicked them or fallen over them every time he’s walked past. I think it’s more about him making a point than them being in the way, but still. They are in the way. A little. But I have a point to make too, and it is that Dan is wrong to be acting the way he is acting. So I will not be the one who caves first. I will not apologise. Despite the fact that I had another sleepless night with the dog crying and the cat sharpening until sometime after six a.m. Dan didn’t get in until after four this morning—no, I was absolutely, categorically, not waiting up for him—at which point he slept in the spare room. Possibly standing upright because there is no room to lie down. Unless he slept on the rowing machine, which must have been almost uncomfortable enough to make me feel sorry for him. But not quite uncomfortable enough. Let him have more discomfort before he finally gives in and apologises first. At which point I will apologise also, because I may have been a tiny, tiny, minute, little bit out of line. Now he’s gone out again. I suppose he might have gone to work, but unless he’s swapped shifts with someone, then he’s very early today. Like about ten hours early. It’s Sunday morning. Dan never works until seven on a Sunday night.

  I’m currently holed up in our bedroom. Mum is downstairs in the living room, where she’s demanded absolute peace and quiet so she can practice her yoga. Obviously absolute peace and quiet doesn’t stretch to Baby’s non-stop barking. I kind of wish Dan was here. The bed was cold and empty last night, and now I can’t even set foot in my own living room until the yoga meditations are finished for the day. Hmm. Maybe Dan has a point about Mum staying here. But I will not be the one who backs down, and I certainly will not be the daughter who throws her own mother out on the street.

  CHAPTER 44

  "I’m sorry," Dan says quietly, coming in to our bedroom after work on Sunday night.

  "It’s okay," I say. "I’m sorry too."

  "I didn’t mean to shout at you, I was just pissed off at your mum and that damn dog."

  "I know. I was just pissed off at you for not getting up the other night. I know it’s a bad idea for my mum to be here, but I swear it’s only for a couple of nights. And I know I should have asked you first—"

  "No, this is your house too, and you have every right to let your mother sleep on the couch if she needs to. I was too harsh yesterday, so I’m the one who should be sorry."

  "Well, we’re both sorry. Can we just forget it?"

  "Sure," he says, grinning. "You know make up sex is the best kind, right?"

  I laugh. "We can’t, Dan. My mother is downstairs, and I don’t want to feel that much like a teenager again."

  "Fine," Dan says, huffily. "I should have known."

  "Are we going to argue again?"

  "No," he says. "We’re not going to argue. Apparently we’re not going to do anything. I wouldn’t want to upset your mother."

  "Dan, don’t be like that." I put my hand on his shoulder. "She’ll be gone by Tuesday."

  "Yeah," Dan says. "And I’m a sparkly, flying trout. I’m going to take a shower."

  "Will you come home with me today?" Mum asks over breakfast on Monday morning. "I left some things in the airing cupboard upstairs that I want to get."

  "Okay," I nod. "But we have to make it snappy because I’ve got to be in work in exactly forty-five minutes. If I’m late again I’m going to get sacked."

  "I thought you were doing the matchmaker thing now."

  "I am," I say. "But I haven’t given up my proper job because it’s like security for me. Truth is, I have no idea whether the matchmaker thing will work out. I need t
o test my services on you and Jeff first."

  "Jeff?" She splutters over a mouthful of toast.

  "Yeah, you know, Jenni’s dad? Who you hate?"

  "You did not tell me that," she says. "Why didn’t you tell me you were working for Jeff?"

  "I’m not working for Jeff, exactly," I say. "Actually Jenni and I manipulated him into being my test subject."

  "Oh."

  "Why do you care, anyway?"

  "I don’t," she says. "Dreadful man."

  "Well, it’s not going very well so far. I mean, maybe it would be if I’d even made a start on finding him the perfect woman, but I’ve just been busy, you know. And I wanted to get you sorted out first."

  "Yes," she says. "Yes, quite."

  "You were happy with Ron when I asked Jeff to be my guinea pig. It’s not a very good excuse because if I ever want to do this as a business, I should get used to working with more than one person at a time."

  "So, will you come home with me?" She asks, abruptly changing the subject.

  "Yes, but we should go now. I don’t have long."

  "Where’s Dan this morning?"

  "Still in bed."

  And judging by the amount of words he said to me after he got out of the shower last night—zero—that’s where he can stay.

  "What do you want here, anyway?" I ask Mum as we make our way up the stairs.

  "Nothing much," she says.

  "So why are we here? Couldn’t it have waited until after work?" I check my watch again for the millionth time. It’s ten minutes to nine. It takes me at least a quarter of an hour to drive to work, and I start work at nine sharp. I’m going to be late again.

  I wait on the landing while Mum goes in to the airing cupboard and starts digging around. Another five minutes go by.

  "Mum, I have to go!" I yell.

  "Okay," she comes out of the room with her arms full. "I can make my own way back. I just didn’t want to walk past the kitchen on my own."

  I nod sympathetically. "Well, I can’t stay here any longer. I’m late as it is."

  "It’s fine," she says. "I won’t stay long. I just want to collect some things."