Equal Love

by Peter Ho Davies

  “That’s very nice,” I’d say, “but we’re really not interested.” It got where if I came home and saw a big shiny car in the drive, I just turned around. When I rolled in later, Beth would be in tears because some salesman couldn’t wait for me to get home. “It’s embarrassing, don’t you see?” she’d say. “I kept telling him my husband would be home any minute.”

  Kevin, oddly enough, loved it. Beth said I didn’t play with him enough, but he got lots of attention from the salesmen and they were always giving him glossy leaflets and free pens to play with. It got so bad at one point he had to ask me, “What do you sell, Dad?” “Meself,” I told him wearily. I was taking one of those cheapo pens off him before he dropped it down the side of the sofa or let it leak on the upholstery. “Your old man sells himself.” He didn’t get it. “But then what do you sell?” he asked. “Afterward?”

  Of course, I knew what was going on. Salesmen like to drop by in the afternoon when the wives are at home. I’ve done it myself. There’s always a little flirting, I suppose. We used to joke about it round the office, but I never thought much about it myself until Beth started having all these fellas calling. I started stopping by in the afternoon if I was on a call close to the house, just to see if there was a car in the drive. It only happened the once and she got rid of him sharpish—quite rude she was too, I felt sorry for the bloke—but then she wanted me to stay for a cuddle. When I told her I had to get back to work, she got angry. “What did you come for, then?” she said.

  In the end, I had to ask her. It was distracting me too much. I asked her if any of the salesmen had ever tried it on with her.

  “One or two,” she said. “But they leave off when I tell them my husband’s a salesman too.”

  I nodded.

  “Honor among thieves, is it?” she asked, all sarky.

  She promised she’d stop inviting them in, but every so often I’d come home and something would be funny. The upholstery would smell different or the windows would look cleaner; all the shoes would be lined up, shiny with polish, or the spots on the curtains would have vanished. Beth would say nobody’d been round.

  “You’re lying.”

  “You know, you’re right,” she said. “Now that I think about it, the hoover rep dropped by, and we did it on the living room carpet. He knows all about a good shag. Is that what you want to hear?”

  Another time she told me to ask Kevin if I didn’t believe her. He was playing nearby, turning the pages of a kid’s book, even though he was too young to read. But I said to leave him out of it.

  “We’ve got to have trust,” I told her.

  “We’d need a lot less trust if you were ever here.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “What about you?” she said. “What about you out every evening? What am I supposed to think?”

  “It’s completely different,” I said. “It happens to be my job. I’m doing it for all of us.”

  “We could make do with less,” she said, and I gave her a right rollicking then, called her a cow, told her she was throwing it all back in my face.

  “Don’t you come that with me,” she shouted. “You love it. You know you do. You love it more than me and Kevin put together.” I had to crack her one, just to make her shut up. She started to cry, but I told her I’d never in my life hit a woman before and it was her own damn fault.

  …

  They left while I was at work, of course. Just scarpered. I came home from another twelve-hour day and there wasn’t even a note. I was so worried I couldn’t concentrate at the office. It was like I couldn’t see the point anymore. This went on for about ten days, mind you, and I didn’t make a sale the whole time until I heard from her. The first thing she said was “I’m not coming back to you, so don’t get started. I just want to know what you’re prepared to do for your son.”

  I told her I’d do whatever was necessary. I started at nine the next morning and sold my first books before elevenses.

  She’d gone back to her village near Sligo and moved in with her mother. I kept sending her checks and thinking the two of them’d come back one day, but Beth went on saying how the village was such a good place for Kevin to grow up. Maybe she was right. She used to call from the corner phone box, and behind her I could hear kids in the street, a bicycle bell, sometimes even cows.

  It was awful at first, the empty house. I couldn’t go into Kevin’s room without bawling. But it got better once I knew they were okay. I wanted to do right by them, and once I got stuck in at work, it kept me so busy I didn’t have time to be unhappy.

  On the phone, Beth used to ask me if I missed her, and I’d say, “Yes,” and when she’d say, “Honestly?” I’d say, “Of course.” That was our problem, she always said. She could never be sure when I was telling the truth. “I know you think you are,” she told me. “But it’s a pitiful thing in a salesman.”

  She kept saying she’d come back if I got a new job, but I didn’t see how we’d make ends meet. Sales was the only thing I was halfway decent at.

  Only once did she tell me how romantic I’d been. “What did you expect from a salesman?” I said.

  “Was that all it was?” she wanted to know. “Just salesmanship?”

  “Salesmanship in the service of love,” I said. “Salesmanship in a good cause.”

  …

  If I didn’t believe in education, I don’t think I could do this job. Force myself on other people. Go into the homes of complete strangers and take up their time.

  Of course, the trick, if there is a trick, is to make it like you’re not a complete stranger. The idea is to get to know the customers and let them get to know you. I ask them about their kids, what lessons they like at school and which ones they have trouble with. Everyone loves talking about their kids, and if the kids are there I talk to them too. If you can sell to the kids, they’ll do the rest of your job for you. You won’t have to say another word about buying the books to the grownups. That’s why I was sorry that Mrs. Kidner’s daughter wasn’t there that day.

  I always ask the kids what they want to be when they grow up, and if they say a scientist or a doctor, I know I’m onto a winner. I turn straight to Volume X, “Vole to Zygote,” page 581. There’s this big color picture of a bunch of black kids in the jungle somewhere. They’re all grinning away, standing around a table covered in what looks like pink spaghetti. Then I make them read the caption: “Children at a medical center in Namibia examining the worms that an hour before were inside them.” The kids just die, and while the parents are laughing, I shake my head and tell them that my boy always loved that. “Oh, you have children,” they say, as if it’s a new idea to them, and I tell them all about Kevin.

  I’ve always been good with the payments to Beth. She told me so herself. “You’ve been a good provider,” she used to say. “That boy has never wanted for anything.” All I asked in return was that she write to me about him and send me photos as often as possible. That way I could talk about him to my clients like anyone else. He always got high marks at school, and I was that proud of him when he got into college.

  …

  There was a time, I think, maybe six months after she left, that Beth might have come back. She said Kevin was unhappy. He wanted his dad. I didn’t know what to say to that. It had been so long, the thought of it made me feel funny. I’d got used to my life, and I was selling better than ever, top of the table every month.

  Beth put Kevin on the phone, and he asked me if we were all going to live together again. He didn’t like all the Irish kids calling him a Brit, he said. He told me how much he missed me. Said what a great time we had on the weekends. I told him I needed to sort some things out with his mother. I did like having Kevin for weekends, don’t get me wrong. I’d take a half-day Friday, drive up to Holyhead, and meet him off the ferry. I used to pretend he was a sailor—“Aye-aye, Cap’n” and all that—even if he did look a bit green around the gills. We’d get a B&B in Rhyl, spend the da
ys on the beach if the weather was good, at the pictures or in the amusement arcades if it rained. We ate fish and chips every night. Got on famously.

  But when Beth came back on the line, I told her I wasn’t so sure.

  “Then it’s me,” she said. “Since you and Kev are getting on so well.”

  I told her that wasn’t it.

  “What, then?” she said, and I was silent. I didn’t know what to tell her. I could hear an ice cream van drive by the phone box playing its tune. I thought, I could just fancy an ice cream, and then I heard Kevin asking Beth for one and her telling him “Shh” and how it’d spoil his tea.

  “Go on,” I whispered to her. “Let him have one.”

  “Oh, all right,” she said, and I heard him whoop and run off. I laughed, but when she spoke again her voice was icy.

  “So tell me. When you’re with him, those weekends, you think it’s work, don’t you? Like he’s a customer. What is it you think you’re selling him, exactly?”

  I was silent.

  “Well, it’s a great routine. A great bit, a great line, a great pitch. He can’t get enough of it. Except you don’t want him to buy, do you? All you know is how to go on selling.”

  “It’s not like that,” I managed. The phone against my ear was hurting me, and I realized I was pressing it against my head.

  “Well, if it isn’t him, it is me, isn’t it? What else?”

  And that’s when she asked me if there was someone else.

  Just like that it was. Like a gift. I knew at once—I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life—I could get away with it. Those moments are so rare. When you know, you know, you’re going to be believed, that someone trusts you. In sales, you live for moments like that. You can’t turn your back on them.

  “Yes,” I said.

  Done. Just like that.

  Occasionally she would ask about this other woman I was supposed to be seeing, and I had to tell her something. Her name was Sarah, I said. She was divorced.

  “Was she a customer?” Beth asked.

  “That’s right,” I said. “A librarian.”

  It was easy. Beth didn’t want to know much. She didn’t ask, for instance, if I had been seeing Sarah before she left. I was relieved. I don’t know what I would have told her. It was Kevin who wanted to know everything.

  “Does she have kids?” he said. “How old is she?”

  I thought for a minute. “No children,” I said. “And she’s thirty-six.”

  He kept on wanting to meet her.

  “She’s very busy,” I told him.

  “Doesn’t she want to see me?”

  “She’s shy,” I said.

  Once or twice he asked me if I had a picture of her—“Someplace,” I said—but after a while he stopped mentioning her. It felt bad lying to him, but it was for his own good. We still had great times together, and this way he got the very best of me. At any rate, a few months later Beth took up with some bloke called Conor, and that was that, really.

  …

  This is how bad a salesman I’d be if I were in any other line of business, anything other than encyclopedias.

  I was out in Greece on holiday with Kevin one time. He would have been about thirteen then. We went down to the market. I asked him if he wanted to try on a leather jacket. He started grinning like the Cheshire Cat. I knew he’d been after one for ages, but his mother wouldn’t get him one.

  He wanted to buy the first one we saw, but I made him wait. “Look and you might learn something,” I told him. We went from stall to stall looking at the prices they had marked, doing research, like. All the traders seemed to have the jacket he wanted for about a thousand drachmas, so I said to him, “We won’t be too ambitious. We’ll try and get one for eight hundred.” We went around some more, looking for a likely-looking stall, and all the time I’m thinking, “Eight hundred, eight hundred, eight hundred.” Then Kevin points out a little place with some good-looking jackets and he tries on a few, trying not to look too interested, just like I told him. We pretend to leave, and the little man stops me at the door and asks if we see anything we like, and I just point at the one Kevin fancies and go casually, “How much?”

  And he says, “Eight hundred.”

  And I say, “Done!”

  And Kevin says, “Dad!”

  The funny thing is that afterward I went off thinking, “Damn, I could have had it for less,” and I was really kicking myself. It was a boiling hot day, and Kevin wouldn’t even carry the jacket. He said it smelled funny, and I snapped at him, and we had a scene. “I only got it for you,” I told him. “Well, I don’t want it,” he shouted. “You’re useless. I don’t want anything from you.” I remember there were these little kids following us around, spitting grape seeds at the backs of our legs, but we just ignored them and walked back to the hotel. He went to our room and wouldn’t come out and I went down and sat by the pool on my own. I ordered a beer, but when it came I just put the glass against my head to cool down. It was our last day on holiday, and when we got back to England, he’d be going back to his mother.

  I asked myself why I’d got so angry. I’d bought a nice jacket for about half the price I’d have paid in England, so why was I so upset? And I realized it was because I lost. The salesman beat me. That’s what I was so angry about. And I didn’t stop feeling angry until I thought how he must feel. He was probably sitting there thinking the same thing. He must have been telling himself, “What a fool I am. I could have said two thousand drachmas and that stupid tourist would have said yes.” So we were both cursing ourselves, and for what? He’d still made a sale for a good price and I’d still got a jacket for a good price. It all equaled out. Everyone should have been happy!

  That’s why I’m grateful that they don’t let us bargain on this job. When I sell something, there isn’t a winner and a loser. Bargaining just makes people uncomfortable. Here I am trying to persuade you of something, of how much these books are worth, and if we end up haggling, it means that everything I’ve been saying to you is a lie. I think this is worth what it’s worth and that’s what I’m selling it for. When I told Mrs. Kidner that, she said, “Bravo!”

  …

  Kevin only told me he was dropping out of college because he wanted to come and stay with me while he looked for work in England. It was his mother’s idea, he said. I got home from work one afternoon, the summer before last, and there he was, sitting on the sofa watching cricket with a can of beer in his hand. I’d given him a key, but it was so long since he’d come to see me that I assumed he had lost it. I was pleased that he had kept it safe all this time, but I couldn’t understand why he was dropping out of college.

  “I just am,” he said. “Look. I’ve been over all this with Mum. Graduates aren’t any more likely to get jobs now than anyone else, and I wasn’t enjoying it, so why not start looking for something now? The sooner I start looking, the sooner I’ll get something, right?”

  I asked him if he was interested in anything in particular and he told me he wanted to get into advertising, “eventually.” Said perhaps I’d inspired him. “All them samples, pens, brochures, and stuff you used to bring home when I was a kid—I loved that.”

  I wondered what he was planning to do in the meantime.

  “Well,” he said, “I know you contribute to my college expenses. I thought you wouldn’t mind going on with that. After all, once I find a job, you won’t need to help out any longer. You’ll be saving in the long term.”

  I told him he was being an idiot. He might get some job now, but how was he ever going to get on without a degree? I was paying for him to go to college, but he shouldn’t expect me to pay for this foolishness.

  “But it’s the same money,” he said. “You’d have spent it anyway.”

  “It’s what I’m spending it on that counts.”

  “You’re spending it on me either way,” he shouted.

  I told him not to talk to me like that. I told him I was his father, but he just
laughed.

  “You’re unbelievable,” he said. “Unbe-fucking-lievable.”

  I followed him around the house as he picked up his things and went out the door. He wouldn’t even let me give him a lift to the station. Just walked up the road with his bags. I haven’t seen him since.

  I keep calling Beth to ask her if she’s heard from him, but she says she hasn’t.

  “What did you say to him?” she asked the first time. “You didn’t raise your hand to him?” Now she just says she has no news of Kevin, but I don’t know if she’s telling the truth or not.

  “It’ll blow over,” she said once. “You’ll see. It’s not as if he doesn’t love you.”

  I told her I wasn’t so sure.

  “Oh, I forgot,” she said. “You never would let anyone else convince you of anything, would you? You always had to be the one.”

  “Just let me know if he needs anything,” I told her. “Anything at all. I mean it.”

  “Oh, Tom. I know you do,” she said softly. “If only sincerity were enough.”

  …

  Last month, when he found out about Mrs. Kidner, my boss called me in and wanted to know what I thought I was playing at.

  “Couldn’t you tell?” he said. “According to her son, the house is like a shrine to that little girl.”

  I told him it seemed perfectly normal to me.

  “Well, we’ve got to cancel the order. The son says she does this from time to time. He doesn’t mind people humoring her a bit, but he says he’ll write to the papers if we put the sale through. It could be very embarrassing for the company.”

  “She wanted them,” I said. “She really wanted them. I wouldn’t have sold them to her if she didn’t want them.”

  “But she doesn’t need them. She’s buying them for a dead girl. The company can’t do that. It looks like we’re taking advantage.”

  “She can afford it,” I said. “I saw her house. I wouldn’t sell to anyone who couldn’t afford it. And she wanted them. Just because it’s in our interests doesn’t change that.”