Daisy Dooley Does Divorce

by Anna Pasternak

  “Being with Troy felt truly intimate,” I argued. “When he held me, I felt like I was lying in the arms of a mature man who could take my emotional weight.”

  “Not to use a condom is hardly mature.” Lucy looked away, disgusted.

  “I know but Troy got all macho and urgent about it.”

  “Daisy, your gullibility is a dangerous liability,” said Jess.

  “Has he called?” Lucy raised an inquiring eyebrow.

  “No!” I said, as if I didn’t expect him to—yet. “It’s only eleven and he’s doing some massive deal.”

  I didn’t dare admit that I had my mobile in my pocket on silent and vibrate and had been waiting to hear from him since the moment I left his flat. Each hour that passed without a sexy little text spoke volumes. Who was I trying to kid? No man is so busy that he can’t type two words that will change a woman’s whole emotional landscape. “Miss you.” “Call later.” “Call me.” “Big kiss.” “Great evening.” “Great tits . . .” Well, maybe that wouldn’t be as reassuring but it would be something. And anything is better than nothing in the contact stakes.

  I felt terrible. The whole brouhaha of the post-divorce date put me in such a tizzy that I had blown everything. Could Lucy and Jess be right? Was Troy just seeking some naughty heat, while I was craving the reliable warmth of a relationship?

  As a teenager, Mum had drummed into my head the mantra that with men you had nothing to lose and everything to gain by resisting. I knew full well that a woman asserts her self-respect and subsequent standing if she makes a man sing for his supper. In fact I had taken her dictum to heart to such an extent that I remained a virgin the whole way through university. I had underfloor heating in my college room and guys would come back after supper and we’d lie on the floor, close enough for me to feel their breath on my face, and while I longed for them to make a move, they never, ever, even kissed me. My body language was so buttoned up that while I was dying of celibacy inside, berating myself for my total inability to exude the slightest whiff of come-hither (let alone cum-thither), they were writing me off as the starchiest girl on the campus. No wonder I was the student that they all took home for Sunday lunch to meet their parents. They could be fully secure that with a repressed bluestocking like me lunch would go without a hitch, but as soon as they’d dropped me back after tea, they’d swing by some other chick’s room and pin her to the floor. I’d be left alone, pining.

  So what the hell was happening to me that at nearly forty, I had offered myself up on a plate to Troy? The neediest dish on the menu.

  I tried to lighten things up by revealing that Troy was into manscaping.

  “I must get Edward on to that. Our laurel hedge has gone crazy,” said Lucy.

  “No, men who wax their chests and even . . . else where,” explained Jess. “Did he have a back, crack, and sack wax?”

  Lucy and I winced. “No,” I said.

  “Don’t look so shocked. That’s what modern women expect nowadays,” said Jess. “Men who shape their pubic hair.”

  “So Troy’s a metrosexual?” asked Lucy.

  “Nope, but he’s into his home comforts and himself. Big time.”

  “He’s selfish?” Lucy laughed. “Then he’s definitely heterosexual.”

  If it wasn’t bad enough facing Lucy and Jess for coffee, I then had to go and meet my father. Ever since Mum and Dad divorced, my regular lunches with my father had all the levity of a tax inspector’s coffee break. It was as if since he had betrayed Mum, the knowledge that he had let himself down, too, meant that he couldn’t quite face me. Before Dad left I wasn’t really aware of his presence, but his absence in my life became deafening. As a child, he was just there; not center stage like Mum, but in the background, hiding behind a newspaper or in his study reading or in the garden badly pruning the roses. He had this strange aloofness that meant that he didn’t like us to engage with him outside mealtimes, so we never did. This disjointed communication, which felt slightly false then, even under the same roof, felt unbelievably stilted now. I never looked forward to seeing him but I always left tinged with sadness for what might have been or, on a good day, still might be. In some sadistic way I held him partly responsible for the fact that I chose to marry a man like Jamie. After all, it’s not as if I had the perfect male role model to emulate, is it? Recently it dawned on me that despite their intellectual differences, Jamie and Dad are not cut from too dissimilar a cloth.

  One thing that unites them is their steadfast devotion to their mothers. I knew from the time I was a young girl that if my mother, my grandmother, and I were drowning in a river, it would be a no-brainer for my father whom to rescue first. His mother. Jamie would be just the same. If Lavinia Prattlock and I were in some churning swell, head bobbing about, gasping for air—freeze that glorious frame for a second!—Jamie wouldn’t give it a second thought. Mater would triumph.

  On the tube to South Kensington, I tried not to think about Jamie and replayed the night before with Troy in my mind instead. God, it was true that he had been less lovey-dovey in the morning. He hadn’t wanted to spoon or snuggle but he did run me a shower and offer me some expensive herbal shampoo. When he packed me off into a taxi, he blew me a kiss and mouthed that he’d call.

  Walking to the restaurant, I tried to bolster myself up. Well, who wanted to date a guy who made funny putt-putt noises when he kissed anyway?

  Dad was already seated at his usual banquette in Thai Temptations, the Thai café where you could eat all you wanted for £7.99. We had been meeting in this depressing joint, with its formica tables, red ripped plastic banquettes, fake lotus flowers, unflattering,concentration-camp bright lighting, and tired Thai waiters, for years now. Somehow it had become an intrinsic part of the ritualistic discomfort of seeing my father. Among the students hoovering up the ghastly, greasy grub there was always some reedy chain-smoking chap trying to cop off with an acne-ridden tart in the corner. Dad remained oblivious. In a crumpled suit, soup-stained tie, and plastic shoes, he managed to retain a patrician bearing, despite the flecks of prawn cracker falling from his lips.

  “Ah, Daisy,” he said, rising to greet me.

  A bit like Jamie, Dad speaks in a theatrical way but his manner is even more clipped. That’s because he’s used to lecturing his science students, so he speaks e-m-p-h-a-t-i-c-a-l-l-y to ensure you fully comprehend everything he is trying to say.

  “I walked here from the London Library,” he said unprompted. “Took a bit of a detour round Green Park and then came via Victoria. Obviously not as scenic as walking through Hyde Park but I estimated it shaved three, maybe four minutes off the journey.”

  As usual, as he rambled on, I looked as if I was listening when in fact I was deaf from the tedium. When he asked me what I was doing in London, I gave another highly edited, rather depressing version of the night before. “Yes,” he said. “I’d imagine that at your age, being single again, especially if you want children, is quite difficult.”

  Bingo! “Everything is difficult,” I said.

  Oh shit. I could feel myself welling up. I dug my spoon into my acidic tom yum gong soup and took a slurp. Phew, it was spicy. I wafted my hand in front of my face, as if chili were the culprit.

  “You’re a very brave girl,” Dad said, his pale eyes steady.

  “The soup’s not that hot,” I replied, but I knew what he meant. Why did I pretend to misread him? Because I don’t know how to handle any expression of his love as it comes so rarely? Because I’m so accustomed to fighting men that I don’t know how to acquiesce? To let any man, least of all my father, help me shoulder the strain?

  “I admire your courage,” he continued. “Most people settle in life because they don’t have the energy to seek something more. They don’t believe that they will find, let alone deserve, anything or anyone better. You do. I’m proud of you, Daisy.”

  I concentrated hard on my tears as they fell into my soup. Had I really just heard the words that I had craved from my father for
my entire adult life?

  2

  The Sperminator

  It was over a month since my sexual slip-up with Troy and he still hadn’t called. Simply beside myself, I had written myriad elaborate “Hey, remember me, big boy?” texts that I deleted because Jess had forbidden me to contact him. Every time I was tempted to call I had to ring her instead. She had even added a caveat to her answerphone message: “And if it’s Daisy calling, leave him alone. You’re a fully consenting adult who willingly spread her legs. No man revisits a needy lay.”

  Jesus! When I heard it, it was the only time I thought the unthinkable—thank God both her parents were dead. I mean, imagine facing them for tea after they’d rung their daughter for a chat, only to discover that about you?

  Smarting from the sting of rejection, I had taken to my bed at Mum’s, a library of self-help books at hand. Although I kept reading and repeating to myself rousing truths like, “It’s not the world around that causes pleasure or pain, it’s your reaction to it,” I couldn’t help reacting to the fact that I had fallen into the arms of the first cad looking for a frolic. I had thought that fellow divorcés spoke the same language. When we first kissed, I imagined that beneath the passion lay mutual understanding. Tread carefully, was the subtext, emotionally we’ve been derailed. Clearly Troy was back on track, intent on getting the first available hare-brained fool into the sack. There was no alliance, no emotional empathy in his mind. No doubt deranged divorcées were considered wincingly easy prey.

  Felled by my sluttish behavior, most days I felt too humiliated to move. Mum regularly found me sobbing on my bed or hyperventilating on the bathroom floor. As my Pavlovian response to stress is to pick my face, I had hacked at nonexistent pimples, leaving angry, red craters on my forehead.

  Mum came in with a dachshund-shaped hot water bottle and a cup of soup. “Oh Daisy, not again,” she said, gesturing to my face. I shrugged. What did it matter if my forehead resembled a war zone? I couldn’t have felt any more ashamed. “Nothing lasts forever,” she soothed, stroking my limp hair.

  “They’ll be gone by tomorrow,” I said, applying toothpaste to the spots that now looked like white mini molehills.

  “No,” she said. “I mean the pain.”

  That weekend she summoned Jess to lift my spirits. Jess, who was born in South London and is a smog-riddled townie through and through, just doesn’t do the country. She looked absurd in black opaques and a purple mini, legging it across the fields, while I trailed behind in an old Dooley’s Dachshunds sweatshirt, the dog logo stretched too tight across my chest, and a pair of faded cords. “At what point do intelligent, educated women wake up to the fact that the knight in armor just ain’t gonna show?” she shouted, before crouching by a hedge to pee. “Why do you buy into the dream, Daisy?”

  “So I can feel even more inadequate than I already do?” I managed a weak laugh. “I mean, I know what’s important in life—loyalty, a giggling fit with a girlfriend, a sense of spiritual connection, being able to communicate with your guardian angel.” Jess grimaced as she came back from behind the hedge. “Okay, okay,” I teased, “enhancing your intuition or listening to your spirit guide.” She pretended to throttle me. “Wait,” I shrieked, “honoring kindness, practicing patience, caring how you feel inside instead of obsessing about how you look on the outside, blah, blah, blah. But I still feel a failure because I can’t get the right man. Sure, I got a man to marry me. Just not the man I wanted to be married to for the rest of my life.”

  We sat down on a stile. Jess lit a fag. “Why have you always been in such a rush?”

  “I don’t know. I was so hung up on having the big wedding, I overlooked the marriage.”

  Jess threw her head back and screamed, “Why, oh why, Jamie Prattlock?”

  “Don’t you think I’ve asked myself that a thousand times? Why did I marry a puzzle-book addict pushing forty who thought that wacky clothes gave him a personality?” I turned to Jess. “Because I wanted to belong.”

  “To that type? To those sort of braying, prank-playing, chinless wonders?”

  “I know, okay. I somehow thought that if I got married, I’d feel like everyone else. I’d feel normal.”

  “No chance.” She patted me on the back. “You need a fuck buddy.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re not getting any and it’s safer and less tacky than a one-night stand.”

  Oh please, I thought to myself. A free-love friend? Free love or loveless freedom? “But is it any more thrilling or emotionally captivating than using a vibrator?” I replied.

  “Probably not,” said Jess. “But look at me. I have enough sex to stay single. It feels safer that way.”

  “Does it really?” I raised an inquiring eyebrow. “Is loneliness safe?”

  “I’m not lonely,” she countered. “I just haven’t got time for emotional intimacy. Getting to know someone is so all-consuming and often a waste of time because they’re not all they’re cracked up to be. I like my job and my life and I love sex. But I’m not bothered if I have a boyfriend or not. I need servicing and regular refueling, not connecting on all levels with a bloke.”

  “So you never feel empty after a one-night stand?”

  “Hardly, if he’s worth his salt or his seed.” She giggled.

  “No, I mean emotionally empty,” I said.

  She shook her head. “Usually I feel relieved when they leave so that I can get some sleep. I hate spooning, men snoring, the way they get sweaty and push the covers off, leaving you cold, then leave little chest hairs all over the bed. And unlike you, I certainly don’t want to lie entwined, discussing meaningless guff until dawn.”

  “I don’t believe that if the right guy came along, you wouldn’t trade independence for interdependence.”

  Jess groaned, “No. How often do I have to tell you? I’m not like you, Daisy.”

  “But you don’t take any real risks, and is a life without risk a life worth living?” I stood up.

  “Oh cut your Californian crap,” she said. “Have you gotten over your risk of unprotected sex with Troy?” I looked away. “Tell me everything is okay.” Jess grabbed my arm. “It is, isn’t it? No false alarms . . . now you’re scaring me. Daisy, everything is okay, isn’t it?” I didn’t know if everything was okay and while I reassured Jess it was, I had a funny feeling it wasn’t.

  It was weird that before I married Jamie we never discussed having children. We didn’t do that gaga googoo babyspeak in which we fantasized that we’d have cute mini-mes in our offspring of potential Poppy or Piers Prattlocks. We didn’t lie in bed discussing what schools they’d go to and Jamie never once grabbed my tummy muffin hanging over my jeans and called me Mumpty, but still, I always assumed I’d have kids. Or rather, it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t. Once the engagement ring was on my finger I didn’t give it much thought, but in the back of my mind must have been the latent belief that, one day, I’d give birth to a Prattlock. Everything changed on the honeymoon, however, as I knew the moment I’d shaken the last speck of confetti from my hair that I’d made the biggest mistake of my life.

  At first I couldn’t give vent to the notion. I couldn’t admit to myself that I had been that silly and shortsighted, could I? Like a spoiled child who asked for a Barbie for her birthday, only to realize the minute she started brushing Barbie’s hair that what she really wanted was a Snoopy. Needed Snoopy, even.

  We were sitting on a chairlift in Colorado where we were skiing. It was Christmas, and on the surface, all was idyllic. The wide skies were sea blue and the snowcapped mountains took my breath away. Literally. I couldn’t breathe. Here I was snuggling up to the man whom three days earlier I had professed to love in front of four hundred people and I couldn’t get my breath. Nothing to do with the altitude, I felt as if I was suffocating.

  I looked across at Jamie. He was wearing a red wool Santa’s ski hat with a long dangly bit that finished by winding round his neck as a scarf. Jiggling his legs so th
at his skis swung back and forth, he took his poles in one bulky mitten and tapped my arm with the other.

  “Okay, old girl?” I managed a smile. No one would have thought that I was crying on my honeymoon because it’s normal for your eyes to water on the chairlift. The wind does that. But in fact I was winded by my own stupidity. I wanted to feel happy. Christ knows, in that moment I would have given anything in the world to feel that this was right, but it didn’t feel like a honeymoon was supposed to feel.

  We played the part of British newlyweds with award-winning zeal. On a mountain peak or outside achalet-style café Jamie would hand a stranger his camera. “Would you mind?” He would pull me into the frame, wrapping an unfamiliarly protective and presumably husbandy arm around me. “Would you mind awfully taking a picture of the wifey and me?”

  As we stood smiling polished smiles, I ached inside. More than anything, I wanted to feel proud of Jamie. I wanted to feel like a newly minted wife should feel: high on hope and expectation. I wanted to be able to squeeze his hand—admittedly difficult through Gore-Tex gloves—and for that squeeze to mean everything.

  How could I admit to Jamie that I’d gotten it all wrong when I couldn’t stomach the truth myself? Deep down did he know? Did we both recognize that we had not married our soul mate? Did he feel lonely too? It sounds laughable, lonely on your honeymoon? The very place that you are supposed to feel absolutely at one, alone, together. But that was the point. I didn’t feel united. I didn’t feel that the man larking around in the snow, pelting me with snowballs, and trying to do silly turns was my other half. My better half.

  How could I have been so foolish? By the time I married him we had been together for a year, so I knew that he felt he could express himself in garish floral shirts and themed hats instead of opening up emotionally. I knew he was saying, “Hey, I’m a pretty witty laid- back kinda guy,” as he put on his felt “bone head” hat before he went off to ski each morning. I knew by then that he wasn’t what I wanted. And vice versa. That we weren’t ever going to look like a power couple, him in a soft navy cashmere overcoat, underneath which he was slick and Armani clad. I’d offered to buy him a jacket for Christmas and he’d chosen a cherry red duffel coat with a hood instead. Obviously when we walked down the street, people weren’t thinking, “What a striking couple”; they were trying to fathom what the hell I was doing with a six-foot-two Little Red Riding Hood in drag on my arm.