The Last Laugh

by Tracy Bloom

  ‘Any time after four, I should think,’ she eventually says, scribbling something on her receipt.

  ‘And how long do you want them here for?’ asks Karen.

  I have no idea. I hadn’t thought of any of the logistics of the party, to be perfectly honest. It’s only hitting me now just how much is to be done. Maybe I’ve been in love with the idea of having a party rather than actually organising it.

  I look up at Karen, feeling ashamed. I wonder when we should tell her that it’s a stealth party, that we are going to have to pretend it’s a party for Maureen, even though it’s all about me. Karen must have spotted my confusion as next minute she dives into a bag and pulls out a notebook.

  ‘Tell you what,’ she says, flipping through the pages, ‘shall we go through my failsafe checklist for any successful event and see what needs to be done? It won’t take a minute and then maybe we can share the tasks out. I could write us a list each. How does that sound?’

  Maureen and I stare in awe at the neat and efficient-looking spreadsheet that Karen is currently unfolding.

  ‘I think that sounds brilliant, don’t you?’ says Maureen, nodding vigorously. ‘I’ve been telling her we need to do that for days but she wouldn’t listen. She talks a good talk, this one, but a little more action and a little less talk would sometimes go a long way.’

  ‘Sounds like she hasn’t changed a bit,’ says Karen, grinning. ‘Not in twenty years.’

  Forty-One

  Trust my mum to sniff this one out.

  Trust her to say the wrong thing at the wrong time in the wrong way. I thought she’d been quiet and then she leaves me this voicemail.

  ‘Just seen the local paper, darling.’ (She never calls me ‘darling’ – I should have hung up at that precise moment.) ‘Why didn’t you tell me about Mark’s company? It’s amazing news and a fabulous picture of him. You must be so proud of him. Please pass on my congratulations. What a lucky lady you are. Perhaps you will be joining me and your brother in the Caribbean for Christmas now! Wouldn’t that be fun? Call me back, I want to know all about it. Bye.’

  I slam the phone down, grab my keys and purse and head down to the corner shop. The local paper is stacked high on the counter, the headline LOCAL FIRM IN MULTI-MILLION-POUND TAKEOVER screaming out at me. I grab one, folding it up immediately, and throw a fiver down. The paper remains firmly tucked under my arm as I march home – I can’t bear to look at it until I’m within the protection of my own four walls.

  An hour later and I’m still staring at the double-page spread afforded the successful takeover of Brancotec.

  I feel numb. Mark hasn’t been in touch since the dinner party nearly a week ago and there he is in full colour, beaming out at me amongst a group of Brancotec employees holding champagne glasses as they stand on a patch of grass on a business park.

  So it’s finally happened. His ‘design for life’ came to fruition. He’s followed his plan diligently ever since he laid it out for me twenty years ago in Corfu. He’s a millionaire Finance Director of one of the Midlands’ biggest export companies. It says it there in black and white. My husband. Who’d have thought it?

  Only he isn’t my husband, is he?

  She’s there next to him in the picture. I’d recognise that blonde hair and blue skirt anywhere. The caption underneath says her name is Nancy Walker and she’s a sales executive.

  My husband’s next wife?

  My children’s new stepmum?

  No, he said he ended it, and I believe him. But my mind is all over the place.

  I have to stop looking, I cannot live in this moment. This moment hurts. I’ve screwed it all up, I think. Everything. This is Mark’s big moment and I should have been at his side. Not to cash in. Not to put my hand out and ask when he’s taking me shopping. No, I should have been there to say well done, you did it. I’m proud of my husband. Now I’ve paved the way to let ‘Nancy’ do that. They may not be sleeping together any more but I’m sure she’s simpering congratulations into his ear. He’s hearing the very words he’s dying to hear from me from out of those lips and, who knows, it might just turn his head back towards her as they collapse into each other’s arms in delirious shared success.

  I can’t stand this. Think 1996, I tell myself. The party is only a day away now. The party planned to be a reminder of the joy that life can bring. My last hurrah. My last laugh. I have to make the most of this time because after tomorrow this time will be gone. Then I will face the hell of the future, however that may turn out.

  I shove the paper in the bin.

  I need to do something practical, I need to be busy. I dash out into the hall and decide to move the wall of boxes standing there into the garage, ready to take to Shady Grove tomorrow. A steady stream of deliveries has been arriving all day, courtesy of Karen. I open each box before I move it, delighted to see balloons and streamers and bunting crammed in. Things I would never have thought of, but of course were on Karen’s list. Her bloody brilliant marvellous list.

  The final two boxes are enormous, but light as a feather. I carefully slit the tape seal and peer inside. A mass of unrecognisable pinkish rumpled plastic appears so I drag it out, laying it out on the hall floor before I finally recognise a squashed sumo wrestler taking shape.

  * * *

  ‘What are you doing?’ a voice says from behind me about half an hour later.

  I whizz round and nearly fall over.

  Ellie looks horrified, like properly horrified. Even more horrified than when I’d come home with Geri Spice hair.

  But I don’t stop; I can’t stop. If I stop, it might stop being 1996. And I need it to be 1996.

  So I carry on. In front of my daughter, in the middle of the kitchen, dressed in a sumo suit, doing the Macarena.

  The music is on deafeningly loud, drowning out the bad thoughts. Making me smile. Making me happy.

  I dance towards her without missing a step, willing her to smile back. I turn to stand beside her and bump my enormous foam bottom against her side, indicating for her to join me and shake her booty.

  ‘There’s another sumo suit in the hall,’ I shout at her.

  She looks back at me, dumbstruck.

  ‘Don’t waste it,’ I continue. ‘You may never have the chance to dance with your mum to the Macarena, dressed in a sumo suit, ever again.’

  Her jaw drops open.

  ‘Fuck it!’ I shout right in her face. She takes a step back in shock. ‘Go on, say it,’ I continue. ‘Say fuck it! Fuck it all.’

  She shakes her head in confusion.

  ‘Listen to me,’ I say, pausing for a moment to grab her arms and look deep into her eyes. Suddenly I know what I need to tell my daughter. What I must make sure she understands before I… before I…

  ‘There’s going to be plenty of bad stuff that haunts your memories, Ellie. Loads of crap you’ve not even had nightmares about yet.’

  She stares back at me, petrified.

  ‘So what you have to do, what you absolutely must do, is throw yourself into making good memories. Amazing ones. Ridiculously crazy ones. If you do nothing else with your life, spend it making the most crazy-shit memories you can to cancel out the bad ones. Do you understand?’

  She nods slowly, her eyes wide.

  ‘This is one of those times,’ I say, shaking her. ‘Now is one of those times. Do you understand?’

  She doesn’t move.

  ‘It’s your choice. Walk away because you think it’s stupid or get that sumo suit on and get dancing.’

  I release her and resume my Macarena. She stares at me for a moment before she drops her bag to the floor.

  ‘Will you help me on with the suit?’ she asks.

  Forty-Two

  And here I am on Alice’s bench, the late-evening sun on my face. I think how lucky she was that her husband chose this spot for her to be remembered by. Not a cold, grey headstone filed alongside complete strangers. Not a thorny rosebush or a plaque at the bottom of a tree she never laid e
yes on, where the living are nowhere to be seen. But here overseeing my party, providing a resting place for the merrymakers as they pause with their drinks and silently mouth Alice’s name and the words ‘Loved, cherished and remembered’ before sitting down and enjoying the view. I wonder what she would have made of the sight in front of her now. I hope she would have enjoyed it, been glad to have been part of it, been glad that her name was uttered time and time again in the midst of such enjoyment.

  I’m alone on Alice’s bench at last. It’s been a complete whirlwind since four o’clock as I tried my best to keep up with the formidable organisational duo of Karen and Maureen.

  Our first task had been to get past the fact that this was a stealth party and we only had permission for a quiet gathering on the lawn for Maureen’s supposed seventieth birthday party. The fact that she had celebrated this a few years earlier seemed to have escaped Sandra’s memory as she signed off Maureen’s request to invite several of her friends and family over for an informal drinks gathering on the lawn.

  We’d known that neither Sandra nor Nurse Hagrid (our two main party poopers) were ever seen at Shady Grove on a Saturday and the Duty Manager was a bit of a pushover if boxed into a corner. At precisely 3.30pm Maureen gathered her crack team of distractors and gave them a briefing. Jimmy was to go back to his room and pull the emergency cord. This would summon the Duty Manager and a carer. On arrival in his room he was to express concern over the noises coming from his neighbour Bryan’s room. The Duty Manager would go next door to investigate and discover Bryan and Gloria locked in a clinch. (This was Bryan’s idea. Gloria agreed, but said they must make it look authentic.)

  The Duty Manager would go back to Jimmy to explain that it was just Bryan and Gloria in his room together. Jimmy would then act outraged and claim that Gloria had kissed him only last week, how dare Bryan steal her from under his nose. We were then relying on Jimmy and Bryan to keep the Duty Manager fully engaged in a game of room ping-pong as she did her best to arbitrate the love triangle that had suddenly kicked off down on corridor seven (the furthest from the back lawn and with no view of the driveway). It was hoped they could keep her occupied for long enough to provide access to all the vehicles and allow them to start setting up. Once they were on site we were convinced the Duty Manager would not have the gumption to order them off, and Maureen could convince her that it had all been agreed and a bouncy castle and a giant foam machine on the lawn of Shady Grove was nothing to be concerned about.

  All had gone smoothly and by four thirty there was still no sign of the Duty Manager or our theatrical threesome. In fact it was nearly five o’clock when a weary-looking Janette emerged and dived straight for the office, shutting the door firmly behind her. Jimmy, Bryan and Gloria came out into the garden, with Bryan looking like the cat who got the cream, his hand firmly in Gloria’s.

  ‘How did it go?’ I asked.

  ‘Bloody marvellous,’ grinned Bryan.

  ‘He said it was love at first sight,’ muttered Gloria, her eyes watering.

  ‘During armchair aerobics,’ added Bryan.

  ‘He’s known all this time,’ whispered Gloria.

  ‘And I never dared tell her.’

  ‘Why not?’ I asked in wonderment.

  ‘In case she knocked me back.’

  ‘But you’re eighty-three.’

  ‘I know, but you never stop fearing rejection.’

  ‘But not today?’

  ‘Not today,’ nodded Bryan. ‘I just started kissing her and I knew I never wanted to stop.’

  I would have cried tears of joy for them if I hadn’t promised myself that I would not cry today.

  It wasn’t until six o’clock that a drained-looking Janette finally appeared and stood at the patio doors, her forehead screwed up as she tried to process what the hell was going on. Maureen grabbed her before she could get too far along the lines of working out that it was unlikely that Sandra would ever agree to inflatable sumo wrestlers being a healthy pastime choice for geriatrics.

  ‘Isn’t it marvellous?’ I heard Maureen gush. ‘It’s like a dream come true, really. To be celebrating my birthday like this.’

  ‘What? With a bouncy castle?’

  ‘For the grandchildren, Janette. They’ll love it, don’t you think?’

  ‘But you don’t have any grandchildren, Maureen.’

  ‘Oh you clever girl, you remembered,’ she said, giving her cheek a squeeze. ‘Some of my friends may be bringing grandchildren,’ she added.

  ‘Okay,’ Janette nodded slowly, looking unconvinced.

  ‘And what is that?’ she asked, pointing at an enormous nozzle attached to an equally enormous pipe.

  ‘Air conditioning,’ was Maureen’s description of the foam machine.

  ‘Air conditioning? Outside?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Right. And Sandra said this was all right, did she?’

  ‘Of course! It’s my dying wish, you see,’ Maureen said, looking directly into Janette’s eyes. ‘To make this happen.’ She cast her arm around the chaos on the lawn.

  Janette stared back at her, then let out a sigh. She wouldn’t argue with a dying wish.

  ‘I’ll be in the office if you need me,’ she said, before turning away and disappearing for the rest of the night.

  It was terrifying how quickly it got to seven o’clock. At six thirty Maureen sent me off to her room to get ready and, as I’d stood in front of her wardrobe mirror in a Union Jack dress, knee-high boots and hair which was supporting a full can of hairspray, I could hear my own heart beating at such an alarming rate I thought I might have a heart attack. It had all been building up to this moment. I had focused all my energy and emotions on tonight and now I wasn’t sure my poor heart could deal with the importance of it. Tonight needed to deliver on a scale it is unfair to expect of any event. This was New Year’s Eve times a million. My last laugh. My living wake. My last night as me, before cancer me took over.

  * * *

  Alice’s bench, it turns out, is the perfect view to reflect on one’s life as it dances around before my eyes. As I wobble back onto the lawn in my too-high boots and my too-high hair, I hear a ripple of applause coming from my left. There sit all the inmates on the patio wearing the England flag in various guises – on hats, on T-shirts; some even have face-painted tattoos. They all have St George’s cross flags, apart from Jimmy, who’s sitting in the corner proudly wearing a Scottish shirt and waving a blue and white flag.

  ‘They’ve come as football supporters from Euro 96,’ says Maureen, beaming at her tribe. I laugh. My first laugh of the party and instantly I feel better.

  ‘As long as you don’t all start behaving like hooligans,’ I joke.

  ‘You just watch out,’ says Bryan, still gripping Gloria’s hand. ‘We’re still capable of causing a riot, aren’t we?’ he adds, hailing all those around him. Some mutter, some cheer.

  ‘I’ve given them all a shot of ouzo,’ says Maureen under her breath. ‘Half of them will be asleep inside half an hour. The rest of us will keep going as good and hard as the rest.’

  ‘Okay,’ I nod. ‘And you have come as…?’ I hardly dare ask, taking in the lace confection over her head, lace gloves and black low-necked dress. My best guess is an Italian widow but I can’t quite fit that into the nineties theme or the exposure of wrinkled cleavage.

  ‘Madonna,’ she states.

  ‘Excellent, good choice,’ I nod. It figures, I think. A very smart and talented woman, but completely bonkers. That would describe Madonna, or indeed Maureen, quite nicely.

  ‘We all set?’ asks Karen, appearing at my side. She looks almost identical to how she normally looks, apart from the fact she’s wearing a black shoulder-length wig.

  ‘Are you getting changed?’ I ask.

  ‘This is it,’ she says.

  I look down at yet another gorgeous designer dress. No clue there. Then she shoves a mug in my face with the words ‘Central Perk’ written on it in a distinctive lo
go. I look at her wig again.

  ‘You’re Monica Geller from Friends,’ I roar. ‘Of course.’

  We used to watch Friends complete with subtitles in Corfu. For a long time our greeting when we saw each other was ‘How you doin’?’ in Greek. We dreamed of Matt LeBlanc showing up at our resort so we could impress him with our bilingual knowledge of the show. I totter forward and give Karen a hug. I used to call her Monica when she was being overly anal about stuff. Wanting to organise me more than I wanted to be organised. I used it as an insult, she took it as a compliment.

  And then suddenly we are on a roll. The guests arriving thick and fast, leaving me with no choice but to play hostess with the mostess.

  I’m just catching up with Dave who’d arrived whilst I was getting ready and is busy setting his trusty decks up. Seeing him again is like having a rum and Coke for the first time in a while and wondering why you ever stopped drinking it. He hugs me so tight and bounces me up and down, just like any decent drink should. Then he gives me a massive wet sloppy kiss on the cheek and the next thing I hear is him saying, ‘Fuckin’ hell, who’s that?’ in my ear.

  I whizz round to see who has caused such a reaction and, to my utter astonishment, I watch a bright pink stretch Hummer pull up the drive and come to a stop next to the geriatric England supporters. I have no idea who it is. I mentally scan my guest list, failing to assign any of them with the exuberance, spare cash and audacity to arrive in such a fashion.

  For what feels like an age, but is probably just a minute, no one emerges. The footie supporters start to get impatient and stride up to the numerous blacked-out windows and peer in. One raises his stick and taps, but still no one gets out. Then the chauffeur leaps out and commands the hooligans to step back as he holds the door open for his VIPs.

  Then before our eyes out pops Posh Spice. A black side-parting falling over the face of Zoe, clutching an open champagne bottle. Then comes Sporty Spice, threatening the crowd now gathered around them with high kicks and flicks, Lisa’s face clear and free of make-up poking out the front of a scraped-back ponytail. Baby Spice steps out next in a short pink A-line dress and blonde bunches, giggling and blushing as the chauffeur offers a hand to Emma. And last, but not least, out strides Scary Spice, aka Heather, in a leopard-print jumpsuit and afro wig. It’s quite the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen but she seems to have got herself nicely into character as she growls at the very overexcited Bryan, who is clearly quite beside himself at the glamour that has just arrived at Shady Grove.