Planet Janet

by Dyan Sheldon

  I decided to have a few words with the Abominable Brother tonight. I asked him what he thought he was doing, hanging out at the V&A with Elvin, who, after all, is meant to be MY friend. Justin wanted to know if there was something about him that attracted insane women or if we were all insane.

  I’ve been thinking A LOT about Sara Dancer. I decided that at our age pregnancy is a bit like death. You never really think it’s going to happen to YOU!!! And also although I’m sure there must be TONS of Great (or even just excruciatingly good) Women Artists and Writers who have also been terrific mothers, I couldn’t think of any offhand, so I flipped through you, dear diary, to see if I could find any. I couldn’t. As an experienced childminder, I know how demanding and time-consuming even children who don’t need their nappies changed can be. When would you have time to CREATE if you had a baby? How could you devote yourself to your work if you were tied to the schedule of an infant? Sara Dancer wants to be a fashion designer not an artist, but I reckon it’s not THAT different. You still need Peace and Quiet to get your ideas and all. Plus fashion designers have to go to lots of shows and celebrity parties and stuff like that, which is hard to do if you’re breastfeeding.

  THURSDAY 12 APRIL

  I can’t tell you how relieved I was this morning when Sara rang to say the test was negative. She sounded pretty relieved too. She said if she’d known it was going to be negative, she would’ve bought some condoms while we were in the chemist’s.

  I was just getting ready to settle down to writing my story when Marcus rang to say he’d returned to Ye Olde London. He asked me to go to the Tate Modern with him, so I said I’d been dying to go but somehow had never got round to it. It was all right. The building’s pretty cool. But Marcus and I agreed that even though we’re Young and v Avant-garde we’re not really into modern art. Marcus says Soul has been replaced by mere cleverness. I was v impressed. I thought that was a v profound perception and said so. Marcus said what did I think, that he was just another extraordinarily handsome face, and I said no, I never thought that. (Sometimes we really crack each other up!!!) We got v bored of soulless art in a very short time so we went for coffee. I told Marcus all about Mrs Kennedy and the police, of course, and he laughed even more than Flynn had.

  To show you exactly how TENSE the atmosphere is at home and how desperate we all are for some neutral conversation, Justin actually asked me how I liked the Tate Modern at supper. I said I thought some of it was pretty cool, but that on the whole I felt that modern art had replaced soul with mere cleverness. Justin said he’d read that piece in The Guardian too.

  FRIDAY 13 APRIL

  With all the trauma with the police and all, I never got a penny from Mrs Kennedy for the weekend. More dreams dashed against the Rock of Reality! So even though I’ve refused to mind Jupiter since he peed under the table, I gave in tonight because I need the money. And also Willow said she’d do my cards. About five minutes after Willow went off, Jupiter nearly knocked himself out trying to get from the sofa to the armchair without touching the floor. He was pretty quiet after that. On a darker note, the Dippy Hippy says she sees conflict in my immediate future. But she says I should appreciate the fact that whatever happens has a purpose. She says the nature of the universe is change, and since we’re a part of the universe, that’s our nature too. She says there can’t be any growth either in the cosmos or in the individual without some chaos and pain. You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, can you? She says that this conflict will give me the opportunity to grow both intellectually and spiritually. She says it’s important I keep that in mind. I said intellectual and spiritual growth are exactly what I planned for this year, and that I know there’s no gain without pain. I promised her I’d try to keep all that in mind when the Going Gets Tough. I just hope that this conflict isn’t a broken heart. I know it’ll come eventually – that’s life, isn’t it? – and, as possibly Shakespeare said, it’s better to have loved and lost than die a virgin – but I’m not sure I’m ready for it just yet. I’d like a bit of the Joy and Ecstasy first.

  SATURDAY 14 APRIL

  Nan’s all wound up because she read in the paper that according to some poll nearly fifty per cent of the population has no idea why we celebrate Easter. I said I thought it had something to do with the founding of Cadbury. Both Justin and the MC laughed, which is pretty much a first for one of MY jokes. Nan said she just hoped I was joking.

  EASTER DAY

  Instead of the Easter Bunny, the Easter Bethsheba turned up at the door with a v peculiar-looking hard-boiled egg for my brother. She said she made it herself. I said it looked like it’d been cooked in tea and she said it was, in Darjeeling. Then she wanted to know if Just was back from Greece yet. (So THAT explains why she hasn’t been haunting our road lately!!!) It took me a few seconds to absorb this. I was about to say oh yes, he’s back and he’s sitting in the kitchen right now, when Nan suddenly loomed up behind me and shouted right in my ear that something had gone wrong with Justin’s flight and we had no idea WHEN he was getting back. Bethsheba said oh, but before she could say anything else Nan shut the door very firmly in her face. I said to Nan that I was SHOCKED that she’d lied like that. I said is that what Jesus would’ve done? Nan said no, of course He wouldn’t. Jesus would’ve zapped Bethsheba like a fig tree or turned her into salt.

  The MC said that so we could all eat the same thing she was declaring Easter a no-meat holiday and she made fish. You’d think that even Sigmund could carve salmon without too much trouble, but you’d be wrong. He was just about to make the first cut when a car backfired in the street. He hit the floor as though he’d been shot. Everybody thought it was HILARIOUS, except Sigmund, who said it was obvious none of us read the papers or we’d realize just how violent a society we live in.

  MONDAY 16 APRIL

  There was some jubilation in the Rancho Bandry tonight because Nan’s finally gone home. Sigmund was so excited that he actually volunteered to drive her, but the MC said she was going out anyway and she’d take her. Sigmund said what about supper and the MC said that she reckoned a fifty-five-year-old-man with three psychology degrees should be able to manage supper on his own. Fortunately I don’t have to sit around half the night while Sigmund tries to find the pasta because Disha’s finally back and I’m going over there. I feel like someone being released from prison. Or a bird released from its cage. It wouldn’t’ve been so bad if I could at least have talked to her on the phone. God knows how anyone survived before the telephone was invented. I may have to name my firstborn Bell.

  TUESDAY 17 APRIL

  I can’t tell you how good it was to see D!!! I feel like I’ve been living in the wilderness without her. Thank God there was no one home when I got back. I don’t think I could BEAR to interact with my family right now. It’s only after finally talking to someone who understands me and thinks and feels as I do that I realize what a strain I’ve been under this past week.

  Life really is full of SURPRISES, isn’t it? Hang onto your wig – YOU’RE NOT GOING TO BELIEVE WHAT’S HAPPENED NOW!!!

  After I filled you in on recent events, I started working on some sketches for art. (I wish I’d gone to see those paintings with Marcus. Which of my styles is it?) Anyway, I got pretty immersed in that. (Art is all-consuming, after all.) I heard Justin come home (he was yelling at someone – presumably Bethsheba – to leave him alone), and then I heard Sigmund come in (he was singing some old song). Next time I looked up it was nearly seven. I was famished. I went to the kitchen to see how long it was till supper. Sigmund was sitting at the table, drinking a glass of wine and smoking a cigarette and staring into space. I asked him if he was planning to feed us any time tonight. He told me to get the takeaway menus. “Where’s Mum?” I asked. He said didn’t I get the letter she left me in my room? I said I hadn’t seen any letter, but I went to look just to keep him happy. I reckon I must’ve been in what Sigmund calls denial, because it didn’t even occur to me that the MC had abandoned shi
p (well, it wouldn’t, would it?). I suppose what I vaguely reckoned was that she must’ve taken a sudden holiday. After all, it’s a well-known fact that middle-aged women who are sick of their boring lives often go on holiday to Greece and have affairs with gigolos, waiters or fishermen. (It’s almost romantic in a depressing sort of way.) And also menopausal women are known to be impulsive and unpredictable too. The letter was on top of my chest of drawers, under some stuff I’d decided not to wear. She hasn’t gone to Greece. She’s gone to Hackney to stay with Sappho and Mags!!! You could’ve knocked me down with a paper clip. REALLY!!! The first time I read it, I thought it was a joke until I got to the end and realized there wasn’t any punchline. The second time I read it, I didn’t know what to think. It might as well have been written in code for all the sense it made. Then, obviously unsettled by this unexpected and shocking news, I made an UNPRECEDENTED move!!! I showed my letter to Justin. He had one too, though he didn’t seem as shocked and surprised as you’d think. The letters are pretty much the same. They both say that the Mad Cow’s sorry to leave us like this, but she’s been feeling very unhappy and confused lately, and having Nan around was too much added stress, so she’s decided she needs a break. She’d be thrilled if we wanted to call her, but she can understand if we’re angry and upset and don’t want to speak to her just yet. She said if Justin and I were younger she wouldn’t have gone, but we’re old enough now to be able to get on without her for a while. I said to Justin, “I don’t get it. She didn’t need to leave to get away from Nan. Nan’s gone back to Clapham.” Justin said she didn’t leave because of Nan; she left because Sigmund’s such a jerk. I said but he’s always been a jerk, and Justin said, “Wake up, Janet. The man Mrs Kennedy’s been cheating with is dear old Dad.” I was so gobsmacked I didn’t know what to say.

  Right after the takeaway Justin sloped off as usual and Sigmund, clutching his wine and muttering about how the MC could at least have left him the car, staggered off to the Bunker. I don’t know if they thought I was going to clean up the mess from supper, but if they did they were REALLY deluded. As soon as I was alone I rang D to tell her what’d happened. As one would expect, Disha was SHOCKED and HORRIFIED. She said imagine Mrs Kennedy (who looks like she was invented for SEX) having it off with Sigmund (who looks like he was invented to wear old clothes)!!! And also D said she’d always thought of my mother as being so STABLE and family-oriented. And what day was that? Disha said no really. Who did I think kept everything together? Sigmund can’t even find the coffee without help. And then D remembered that she had said the MC seemed tense, which is true. I said I still reckoned that leaving me with Sigmund and the Abominable Brother is V DRASTIC. D said at least I have to admit I have an interesting life. She says if I don’t become a major novelist I should consider writing for the soaps!!!

  WEDNESDAY 18 APRIL

  At first I was v calm and philosophical about the MC leaving home. And, anyway, I was pretty shocked by Sigmund’s behaviour – you expect more from a psychotherapist, especially if he’s your father. But D and I have already discussed how everyone has a secret self so I wasn’t totally unprepared. In reality we are on our own in this life and have to learn to deal with that and be independent and responsible. (That’s one of the really good things about being in the DP: you’re not looking at the world through the rose-tinted glasses of a child. You appreciate how deep and painful life can be.) I could tell from my reaction that the last few months have REALLY matured me. But tonight I was left alone in the kitchen with the dirty dishes (AGAIN) and it finally hit me what the MC’s done!!! She’s ABANDONED ME!!! Me, her only daughter!!! If you ask me, she might as well’ve left me in a skip with a note pinned to my nappy on the day I was born. In fact, it would’ve been a KINDNESS!!! At least it would’ve saved me all those years of DELUSION – of thinking I was wanted, cared for and loved! I mean, what does it matter what she wrote in her letter? She didn’t give one nanosecond’s thought to how this would AFFECT ME!!! If that’s not MEGA SELFISH I don’t know what is. I burst into tears. I just sat there at the table, surrounded by the empty containers of fast food, weeping like an orphan, my Soul howling. HOW COULD SHE DO THIS TO ME? Eventually I pulled myself together. After all, I am adult enough to accept the fact that I am ON MY OWN.

  THURSDAY 19 APRIL

  I’m going to get a T-shirt made that says Home is Hell. When I got up this morning not only were all the dirty dishes etc. exactly where they were last night, but Sigmund was still in the Bunker playing Bob Dylan at a volume more appropriate to dance music. Loyal friend that she is, D came round to console me. She wanted to tidy up, but I said I reckoned Sigmund should do it, since it’s his fault the MC left. Neither of us could stand the doom and gloom or Dylan for long, so we arranged to meet Marcus and Flynn for lunch so I could get my mind off my woes. That didn’t exactly happen, since my woes were mainly what we talked about. Flynn and Marcus were well shocked about Sigmund and also about the MC’s behaviour. They agreed with me that though leaving home is pretty typical for MEN, mothers aren’t meant to do things like that. If you ask me, it’s unnatural for a mother to just walk out on her children without even a little warning. I can understand her abandoning Justin – if you ask me she waited eighteen years more than she should have – but I’m her DAUGHTER. How could she do this to me? Neither Marcus nor Flynn knows the answer to that question. (The only one who disagrees is Disha, who is showing some feminist tendencies heretofore unsuspected. D says she reckons the mistake the Mad Cow made was in not tarring and feathering Sigmund before she left!!!) Anyway, we had a v interesting discussion about marriage over lunch. I said the thing that really got me was how SUDDEN this all was. I mean, my parents argued a lot, but they always argued a lot, especially lately, so how was I meant to know it was different this time? That’s what married couples do, isn’t it? They argue. Everybody agreed. Marcus said his parents once had a four-day argument over the right way to boil an egg, and Flynn said his mother once threw a Weight Watchers chicken dinner at his dad, straight from the oven. Even Disha agreed that though the government’s always telling everybody that they should be married, it’s probably a lot less stressful to join an army in combat.

  FRIDAY 20 APRIL

  Despite the fact that he never spoke to her when she was here, Geek Boy rang the MC tonight, probably to tell her that we’re running out of food and there’s no washing powder left. (Sigmund, as per usual, was in the Bunker. He seems to be going through all five hundred Bob Dylan albums in chronological order, which means he won’t be out till the weekend at the earliest!!!) After he finished grunting into the phone, Justin said the MC wanted to talk to me but I said to tell her I was busy. In an UNPRECEDENTED gesture of sensitivity and diplomacy, Justin put the phone on hold and said I should talk to her or I’d hurt her feelings. I said what was he trying to do, make me cry? What about MY feelings? Then he said I was acting like a child!!! Is that rich or what? I said I wasn’t the one who ran away from home.

  I’d LITERALLY just hung up from talking to D when the phone rang again. I practically jumped!!! It was Sappho. She said the MC was really hurt that I wouldn’t talk to her. I said she wasn’t the only one who was hurt. How did she think I felt? Sappho said maybe I should try to put myself in the MC’s place, and I said that was not a location I ever wanted to be in.

  As you know, I was v traumatized when I saw Elvin at the V&A with my parents’ other child. But I have had time to think about it and I realize I may have overreacted. Just because Elvin didn’t LOOK as if he were in pain doesn’t mean that he wasn’t. Riding a bike and holding a camera aren’t exactly the same thing, are they? And maybe he was suffering when I spoke to him on the phone, but his hand started to heal rather spectacularly after that. So I decided to put it behind us and after I talked to D I rang up Elvin. As a Serious Film-Maker (and an older man) I reckoned he might have some valuable advice for me during these difficult times. His mother said he wasn’t in. I said could she tell him Janet rang. She s
aid Janet who? I said Bandry. And do you know what she said?!! She wanted to know if I was Justin’s sister!!! Maybe I should encourage Geek Boy to visit India for a couple of years. He’d love India. It’s absolutely FILLED with poor people who live on the street.

  I couldn’t get to sleep so finally I decided to see if Sigmund had left any wine in the fridge. I reckoned a glass of wine would help me relax. It was one in the morning, but the light was still on in the Bunker. At first I thought Sigmund had thoughtfully turned his stereo down really low, but then I realized the sound I could hear was him talking on the phone so I tiptoed down the hall to listen. I reckoned he was talking to Mrs Kennedy. He wasn’t. He was talking to Mrs Bandry!!! Even more AMAZING, he was begging her to come home. I can only assume it’s the car he’s after.

  SATURDAY 21 APRIL

  Living with only men isn’t as much fun as you might think. At least not the two men I’m living with (living with Brad Pitt and Russell Crowe, for instance, would probably be brilliant). Not being women, the subjects they’re willing to discuss in any emotional depth are v limited. So this morning I went over to talk to Willow (she may be a hippy and dippy, but at least she’s female!!!). She wanted to know if I’d talked to the Mad Cow yet and I said no, not yet. I said I really couldn’t believe that she would abandon her own child like this. I said I couldn’t understand what made her do it. Willow said my mother didn’t leave me, she left Sigmund, but since she spends a hell of a lot more time with me than she does with him I fail to see the difference. I said it was unnatural for a mother to treat her only daughter like this. Willow seemed to think that was one of the most hilarious things she’d ever heard. I asked her what was so funny, and Willow said I’d been listening too much to what men say about the mother-daughter relationship. She said I should ask Sappho for a booklist. (AS IF!) I couldn’t believe she was being so unsympathetic to me! I told her she doesn’t know what it’s like to feel rejected by your mother. I’m afraid it may do irreparable damage. Willow said her mother left home when she was four. Then she started on her Change Is the Nature of the Cosmos lecture so I said Disha was coming over and I had to go home, which wasn’t exactly true. But even hanging out with Justin and Sigmund is better than one of Willow’s lectures.