A Perfect Life

by Raffaella Barker

  He is here to buy the apartment. The cab stops in a snarl of traffic stretching from Queens right the way to the tunnel. He closes his eyes, remembering something from the end of War and Peace, when Tolstoy makes an argument for momentum deciding outcome, not generals, or battles, even. This applies to Nick and his new roots. Momentum is buying this apartment. And a mortgage with the Bank of America.

  Booking his hotel room from the cab on the way into Manhattan, he feels spontaneous and free, and looking at his watch he realises he can make a seven-thirty NA meeting a few blocks away on the Lower East Side. Going to a meeting is the best way Nick knows of feeling he has arrived somewhere.

  ‘Grounding’, as his last sponsor was keen on saying.

  The community hall door is slightly ajar and the scraping of chairs leads Nick into the right room. He has been to this meeting before, and last time it was packed, but tonight there are not more than twelve people in the room. He sits down on a sofa next to a girl. She is sucking her thumb. It is difficult to look at her, because he is right up against her, but out of the corner of his eye Nick sees enough to make him uneasy. Her legs are folded in the lotus position, pale blue jeans so tight that they look like skin. Even though she is sitting very straight, her head does not come above the back of the sofa. She is miniature. Nick is sure she is a child. He glances around to locate her mother; it is unusual to bring kids of her age to meetings, though he has from time to time seen toddlers, hooked around their mothers’ legs. Mothers with babies at meetings always cry when sharing. It’s a universal truth.

  A woman opposite Nick sways from side to side, her arms clasped tight around a purple fluffy hot-water bottle in the shape of a hippopotamus, her legs black sticks, made thinner by the contrast at her ankle, where flesh disappears and her feet are engulfed in pastel-blue slippers decorated to look like racing cars. Nick wishes the meeting would start. A construction worker, still in work overalls, his dark skin pressed with plaster dust, sits down next to Nick, his hands restlessly turning a battered cigarette packet. Beyond him, the polished toe of a pair of handmade brogues taps the air, and the crossed legs of a Wall Street banker make a cage around his soft brown briefcase.

  ‘He was about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel cake.’ Nick’s favourite Raymond Chandler line is always worth bringing out and trying in a new situation. It works well here. More or less everyone in the room is black and poor. The air smells of cinnamon coffee and hot bodies. The meeting is opened by a pumped-up black dude, gold chains heavy on his wrists, his fingers constantly pinching his nose as he sniffs, clears his throat and talks. Nick is prepared to bet the whole of Fourply on the fact that he is a former cocaine addict, and sure enough, the story comes out.

  Nick sighs, listens, and relaxes for the first time in weeks. He had forgotten the great American godliness, never more pronounced than in a meeting, and there is something utterly inclusive and soothing in the ritual mutterings of ‘Amen’ and ‘Hallelujah’ that accompany the familiar structure of the fellowship. Nick has a warm sense of being included and when he introduces himself he finds himself saying, ‘Hi, I’m Nick, and I am a former alcoholic and drug addict. Today I understood that my marriage is over, and I feel lonely and frightened. I am very grateful to be here tonight.’

  ‘Thanks, Nick,’ choruses the group, and Nick feels his guard drop like a cloak with the sense that no one here hates him and everything might just be all right. He has a tentative feeling of hope, and glances at the faces of all these strangers who wish him well, just for being himself and being here. He realises he has been bracing himself against judgement for months, maybe even years. He rolls his shoulders, stretches and sits back, sighing a long breath of relief. How is it that he has stopped going to meetings? What got him here this evening? He decides to share. A woman finishes sharing her most recent relapse. ‘Thanks, Barbara,’ says the chorus.

  ‘Hi, I’m Nick and I’m an alcoholic and drug addict,’ he repeats, comforted by the familiar repetitive words of reintroducing himself.

  ‘Hi, Nick.’

  Nick finds it is always the same when he shares in meetings. He resists, almost plunges, resists, and then as soon as he jumps in, he is swimming and the muddle that he thought was in his head becomes something he wants to say.

  ‘I just arrived here from London tonight and I am tired, but I’m glad to be here,’ he begins. ‘And being somewhere new, and in the familiar structure of this fellowship, is helping me see where to go. The changes in my life may look like personal catastrophe from the outside, and I have wondered if relocating to New York as I plan to do is just another escape, like drink was, like drugs were, like sex is, but it is more than that.’ He looks around the room. No one seems disgusted; he catches the eyes of the woman with slippers, she looks back at him kindly, steadily.

  He goes on, ‘It is never too late to get the point of your own life. I’m not confident that I have grasped it yet, but at least I can see it. And that’s a start.’

  He finishes before his time is up.

  ‘Thanks, Nick,’ chimes the group and the collective voice is supportive.

  The construction worker follows. ‘Thanks, Nick. Hi, I’m Mo and I’m a recovering drug addict and alcoholic.’

  ‘Hi, Mo,’ say Nick and the rest of the meeting. Nick feels safe and grateful and accepted. He falls asleep. No one minds.

  Six the next morning and Nick is in the gym, rather to his own surprise. CNN news scatters images of war-ravaged Middle Eastern cities and weather-torn tropical islands and Nick pedals obediently up and down imaginary hills, exhaustion forming small crystals in his muscles. He will move to New York after Christmas. Life will begin again. Like it always does.

  Lying on his back pushing absurdly heavy dumbbells up into the air a few moments later, he changes his mind. Foss and Ruby. Foss and Ruby. Jem. Jem, Foss and Ruby. His children. Angel. His wife. Well, ex-wife now, but not someone he can just forget. Indeed, he has experienced several moments of hope that now they are splitting up they might communicate better. It could happen. Nothing is so bad it can’t be made a little better.

  The girl with the thumb in her mouth shared at the meeting last night after Mo, and Nick cried for her innocence and prayed she could find it again. She was a child. She was eighteen. She had the most startling rasping voice and her face behind the curtain of hair was blank and stunned. There was nothing Nick had not heard a thousand times before in her story of trashed mother, absent father, abuse from stepfather and then on the streets with a pimp and a heavy crack addiction. But this time he heard her and he thought of his own children, and he thought of the choices he had made in life to have come to this point with his children fast asleep in their house in rural England and himself sitting next to another terrified child, hearing her choosing to face the world with nothing rather than continue on the grim path her life has been.

  His children, like all children, deserved better. He had no idea of how to give it to them, but he wanted to try.

  Jem

  The only reason I am going home this weekend is that Coral is having a party before she goes to university and I want to go to it. She called me instead of just texting me at school because she was so surprised that Mum let her.

  ‘Hey, Jem, what are you up to?’

  ‘Nothing, of course, it’s so boring here.’

  ‘Mum says I can have a party. She reckons I have had a hard time too and I deserve it.’

  ‘Great.’ Mum is really bugging me and I wish she wasn’t going to be there. But Melons will be, so it’s worth putting up with Mum asking too many questions. She can’t help it, I know she’s worried, but she set this thing up and she can’t expect everyone to just carry on like life is normal. Thinking about going home is weird. Dad doesn’t live there any more. He doesn’t seem to live anywhere. When I asked him where he was living he said, ‘Good question,’ which is not much of an answer. So he’s gone. I don’t really live there now because I am in a cell at schoo
l most nights, though I can come back at weekends, and Coral is about to not live there because she will be in Sheffield at university. That leaves Mum and the midgets. They hardly count as life forms, and I bet Mum decides to get rid of Sky TV. If she’s got rid of Dad that will definitely be the next thing to go. She hates it and she hates all the cartoons Foss and Ruby watch. Mum keeps sending me stupid texts. The worst so far is: ‘I am in the woods, thinking about you playing rugby. Just caught a gold leaf, so am sending it to you with a kiss.’

  I mean, what is that all about? How am I supposed to reply to that? Coral says she’s doing too much meditation and that sort of hippy shit.

  ‘I think she wants to find herself,’ Coral says, giggling, when we speak a couple of days before I come home for the party.

  ‘She’s a bit old, isn’t she?’ I am in my study talking, and there is condensation on the window panes so the nights must be getting colder.

  Coral puts on a stupid voice. ‘Oh no. You’re never too old. D’you want to speak to Mel? She’s found herself already.’

  There is a lot of giggling. I reckon they have been at the vodka or whatever Coral has bought for the party.

  ‘Hi, Mel.’

  ‘Hey. Looking forward to seeing you at the weekend.’ The funny thing about Mel is she has a tiny voice. Big tits though.

  ‘Yeah, me too.’

  Mum is at the station to meet me when I get off the train. Jake has brought her in his red TVR. And of course the top is down and he is listening to Genesis. Great. How can Mum have such a geek friend? I can’t even go into whether he might be her boyfriend, it is beyond rank. So I am supposed to sit in the back of a spivvy sports car while Mum yaks away about what an exciting weekend we are going to have. I don’t see why she should get away with it.

  ‘Where’s Dad?’

  She more or less deflates in front of my eyes; if it wasn’t so shocking, it would be funny.

  ‘He’s staying at one of Jenny and Steve’s holiday cottages. He says it is like living in an aquarium because it is in that courtyard village thing they built, but he can stay there for the winter and it’s quite cosy. I’m sure he’ll want to show you it.’

  ‘I might go and stay with him this weekend.’

  That knocks the final air out of her. ‘Oh, OK,’ she says.

  Jake has been on his mobile phone all the time since I got in the car. Now he turns round to greet me.

  ‘Hi, Jem, how’s it going?’ Mum had always said we mustn’t make judgements about people because of their clothes, but how can anyone wear a custard-yellow polo shirt with long sleeves? If he is Mum’s boyfriend all I can say is she is making a big mistake. And how embarrassing is it for us? He is nearer my age than hers by miles.

  We are driving up the hill and away from the sea, and turning down the winding lanes that lead home from the station. I suddenly desperately want Dad to be at home when we get there and for it all to be normal. I wouldn’t even mind Jake hanging around if Mum and Dad could just live together and be like they have always been. It isn’t easy lighting a cigarette in the back of a TVR with Phil Collins breathing away and wailing about ‘something in the air’, but it is worth it. Inhaling is a big fix of defiance and my gaze holds Mum’s in the mirror. She doesn’t say anything. I can’t believe it when I see Jake is singing along. It isn’t that anything is wrong at home, it’s just different in an empty way. Even the fact that Gosha the au pair has left is different, though I don’t know why, because au pairs always leave.

  Jake drops us off and I leave Mum to say goodbye to him. I don’t want to see if he kisses her, or rather how he kisses her. In the TV room, Foss and Ruby are sitting on a pile of magazines each and the sofa is upside down.

  ‘We’re looking for the keys to the tractor. Daddy wants them and he says he will give me five pounds if I find them. Mum doesn’t know where they are either.’

  This is Ruby’s greeting. Foss waves a bread stick at me.

  ‘This is nice,’ he says, dipping it into a pot of yoghurt. Basically, they have gone feral. I am so relieved none of my friends came home with me this weekend.

  ‘Where’s Coral?’

  ‘They’re having sex,’ says Ruby without looking up from the TV.

  ‘What? Did Coral tell you that?’

  She giggles. ‘No, not Coral, silly, the people on this deserted island who are camping. Look, they’re both in the same sleeping bag.’

  ‘Oh yeah.’ I watch for a moment. It is some pornographic crap. Finally it sinks in. It really IS some pornographic crap, and I react. ‘What the hell are you watching?’ I grab the remote control. They have got on to one of the Sky adult channels.

  Ruby pouts. ‘I’ve seen it before. One of the babysitters Mummy got for us last week was watching one about a plumber.’

  Oh my God. We need a new au pair.

  Angel

  Agreeing to Coral having a party was the easy bit. In fact, Angel wished she had offered it first.

  ‘You deserve to have a good time,’ she says when Coral comes in waving the invitations which are in the shape of pouting red lips.

  ‘Do you think so?’ Coral looks disbelieving and, pinning one of the invitations on to the kitchen noticeboard, she leaves the room. Angel’s hopes that the party might mend broken lines of communication with her daughter dwindle again. Coral is unreachable, distant. She is either on the phone, or waving a hand as she disappears out of the door and into Matt’s car, arriving home at the heart of a group of girlfriends, all jangling identical earrings and smiling secret smiles. Matt goes back to university a couple of weeks earlier than the others to do a course, and Coral finds a whole lot of new interchangeable friends. Angel is not sure where they have come from.

  Talking to Jenny, whose daughter Ally is the same age, is a relief.

  ‘The girls look twice the age of the boys, and the boys look like they could have half-fares on the train. I can’t believe they are old enough to drive,’ says Jenny, and Angel laughs.

  ‘The ones Coral brings home are either like that or they look about thirty. I don’t know which is worse.’

  Angel and Jenny are walking through the village to collect Foss and Ruby from school. Angel goes on, ‘None of Coral’s friends seem to have anything to do. Having a job doesn’t feature, and when I suggested to Coral that she might go to the village pub and earn some cash waitressing, she glared at me and said, “That is not what I worked my butt off for at school, Mum. I am having a break, just a few months, not even a gap year like lots of people, and I start university in October. Is that OK with you?” I was pole-axed. So I didn’t even react.’

  Angel laughs it off now with Jenny, who has a similar story about her own daughter, but at the time, she was confounded by Coral’s fury. Coral’s hands were on her hips, her jaw was thrust forward, and Angel retreated, shaking, not sure how she could have done it differently, but quite certain that there were ways to handle children so much better.

  Coral had been at boarding school for the past five years, so Angel was quite unused to the daily presence of a grown-up member of her family in the house. Her privacy was gone at the moment she was convinced she needed it most. And as Jenny suggested, Coral probably knew it and resented her mother for needing space.

  Right now, though, is lunchtime on Saturday, the party is tonight, and Angel has had enough privacy this morning to send her into a decline. Jem is still asleep, Ruby and Foss are waiting, with a packed rucksack between them, at the bottom of the drive for Alice West to pick them up and take them to a play date.

  ‘We would rather wait down there,’ says Ruby, ‘because then you won’t waste time talking to her like mums always do, and she can’t have coffee.’

  Waving them off, Angel ponders their unpredictability. Until now, through all the years when Angel was working and unavailable, Ruby swung on her arm every time a friend came to play, pronouncing orders she wanted carried out from the moment of the friend’s arrival.

  ‘What you have to do, M
ummy, is say to Mrs Killross, “Would you like to come in for coffee?” And you have to make sure you have some cake on a tray and get one of those white pots for coffee which has cups and saucers.’

  ‘Oh yes, and then what?’ Angel is always fascinated by Ruby’s visualisations, or indeed hallucinations.

  ‘Then you talk to her, like she’s your friend.’

  This also clearly has an agenda, and Angel wants to know more. ‘What might we talk about?’

  Ruby considers for a moment. ‘Well, probably it would be things like your daughter’s ballet exams and things like that,’ she says. Ruby’s vision is so solemn, consuming and important to her; Angel is uncomfortably aware that she has never had a conversation about a ballet exam with any other mother, nor has it occurred to her to do so. All this must change.

  Today, though, there is not a moment to practise ballet conversations as the need to get all the sleeping teenagers to get up and do something presents itself. They clearly had a practice run for the party, after the pub last night, if the stack of bottles and cigarette packets in the fireplace in the sitting room is anything to go by.

  Throwing them into a bin bag, Angel wonders if she has got this wrong too. Is it a mistake to let your teenage children drink and smoke in your house? Oh probably, but who is making the rules anyway?

  Wandering into the hall, Angel shouts hopefully up the stairs, ‘Is anyone getting up?’ Returning to the kitchen she begins to pace between the fridge and the table, thinking of all the things that need to be done for Coral’s party.

  Clear the barn, find a lot of candles, set up the trestle tables, get the music out there, and then someone has to go and buy some more drink. And it would look so nice if they put lanterns along the top of the wall. Writing a list in bigger and bigger writing, as if the size of it will make things happen, Angel quickly becomes carried away.