by Tamar Cohen
You’d always make a pained face when I talked like that. “I feel just awful about Susan,” you’d say (those were the words you always used to describe your guilt about her—“awful,” “dreadful,” “wretched”). “But when two people are as much in love as we are, surely we have a duty to be together, to be happy?” And anyway, “Susan will be okay,” you’d always say. She was so very capable, so terribly resourceful. You made her sound like a library.
Now I have to admit that word “bitch” in last night’s email did hurt. Do you know, I had to break off from reading that email and actually look up other emails from the past, cheerier ones, like the one in which you’d said you would kill anyone who ever hurt me? “I know that sounds naff but that’s how you make me feel,” you’d written. “It’s something very primeval.”
Primeval. What an interesting choice of words. You know, now I come to think about it, that’s kind of how I feel a lot of the time at the moment. Primeval.
You know, the interesting thing is that subconsciously I believe I was actually hoping the you who wrote the first email would protect me from the you who wrote the second. Isn’t that ridiculous? I should probably save that up and tell it to Helen at the next session. She’s really big on the subconscious. It’d be like taking an apple to the teacher.
Anyway, last night I was thinking about Susan. I do that quite a lot since you painted such a vivid picture of your life together. It’s been so useful because now I can picture what she’s doing at any time of the day. It makes me feel closer to her somehow. I know that after dinner, the two of you tend to slope off together to the second floor of your lovely St. John’s Wood house where you have a huge duck-egg-blue sitting room with French windows leading out onto a private roof terrace. Not that I’ve seen it for myself, of course, but you described it so well I almost feel that I’ve been there. There you lounge on the vast designer daybed with Susan’s ancient, flatulent dachshund and read the papers and watch the telly and comment on the things you’ve seen or read.
“Just chitty chat really,” you’d assured me. “Nothing like the range and depth of the things you and I talk about.”
So last night, I was just a teeny bit at a loose end. These evenings are so long, don’t you find? That yawning gap between dinner and oblivion? And I started imagining Susan and you relaxing among the plump, velvet cushions. In my head I’d already followed you through your usual routine. I knew that you’d eat in your gleaming double-height glass-roofed kitchen, sitting around the blond wood square table where Daniel and I enjoyed several dinner parties—so strange to think of it now. You’d probably have eaten in the company of your son Liam who I never got to meet and one of his gorgeous, big-toothed, shiny-haired Sloaney girlfriends with their impossibly long legs. After you’d done the cleaning up—your way of showing appreciation for whatever culinary delights Susan had brought home from her up-market catering firm (successful businesswoman, former model, wife, mother, so very, very capable)—the two of you would have made your way upstairs.
And suddenly this idea came to me to call Susan. Don’t laugh but I’ve always thought the two of us would be closer if circumstances were different. Sometimes I’ve allowed myself to imagine dropping in for coffee on Susan’s days off, and sitting chatting over the kitchen table while you sit working at your computer in your top-floor office. Maybe the three of us could go off and get a bite of lunch a little later on.
So I called Susan’s number. “Hello stranger,” she said, and I imagined her meeting your mildly quizzical gaze and mouthing the word “Sally” before lying back on the cushions so she didn’t see how your mouth froze into an O shape, or your fingers shook as they gripped the edges of the Times.
I didn’t even know what I was planning to say to her until I actually heard her voice. That unfortunate Down Under accent gives her a rather no-nonsense type of voice, doesn’t it, to match her tall, athletic frame, like I imagine a PE mistress might have. “Take a deep breath and run a couple of times around the quad and we’ll soon have you feeling tip top,” is the kind of thing a voice like that might say. Susan probably wouldn’t have much time for journaling. “Go out and buy yourself a nice dress, or take yourself off to Marrakech for the weekend,” she’d probably say. “Much better than sitting in a darkened room wallowing in your own misery.”
I remember once, very early on when we hadn’t known the two of you long. We were all out somewhere and Susan had been talking about pensions and how she’d be entitled to a big chunk of yours, no matter what. “You have to protect yourself, you know,” she’d said. “If Clive and I ever divorced I’d take him to the cleaners.” You’d laughed along with everyone else, even though one sensed you’d heard this speech a hundred times before. I wonder if maybe being taken to the cleaners was something that flashed quickly through your mind when you heard me on the phone last night, saw Susan’s mouth stretch soundlessly into the shapes that make Sal-leeeee. I do hope it didn’t cause you too much anxiety. Worry is such a futile emotion, Helen always says. I don’t bother telling her that futility is one of my specialist subjects.
How did it feel, I wonder, lolling on that designer daybed, listening to your wife chat away to your mistress? Oops, I mean ex-mistress of course. I can’t imagine it was terribly comfortable, although I’m sure you carried it off with your usual insouciance. I expect you were wondering what it was I was saying every time there was a silence (which, let’s face it, isn’t that often when having a conversation with Susan, although I did my best to hold my own). I expect your heart was rather painfully hammering, despite those warnings your doctor gave you to keep stress to a minimum. (That was one of the reasons you gave me for ending it, do you remember? That all the stress of your double life was taking its toll on your health? You even rolled up your sleeve to show me the little raised patch of stress-induced eczema in the crook of your arm. “I must start putting myself first,” you said without even a flicker of irony.)
I must say, Susan was very friendly on the phone, very voluble, as if I’d caught her at a loose end and she was glad of the interruption. She wanted to know all about how I’d been.
“It’s such a long time since we last got together with you and Daniel,” she said warmly. “You must both come to our house for dinner one night.”
I could imagine the look on your face. I’d have paid good money to see it, I really would.
“I would love that,” I told her, truthfully. “But in the meantime why don’t we go out together, just the two of us for a girlie night out?”
“Good idea. Men are so boring, aren’t they? I don’t know about Daniel, but Clive’s such a grumpy old bastard.”
I laughed.
“At least we’ll be able to have a proper chat,” said Susan.
An hour and a half later your email popped up. It had that “sent from my iPhone” tag along the bottom and I imagined you barricaded in your master bath, running the cold tap in the sink to cover the tapping of the keyboard.
I must say, you sounded terribly out of sorts in that email (which, incidentally, contained more typos than I’ve ever seen in such a short message—don’t iPhones have a spell check function?). I can, of course, see why that phone conversation with Susan might have bothered you. Believe me, I’m not as insensitive as you seem to think. But I still think “bitch” was a little strong.
Citalopram. That’s the name of the happy pills the doctor gave me. I keep wanting to call them Cilitbang. Waging war on stubborn stains. Helen Bunion would adore that. All that hidden symbolism. Might you become just a stubborn stain in time, Clive? Silleeeee Salleeeee.
When I first went to see that doctor, I sat hunched over in the plastic chair next to her desk, feeling like something shriveled and leathery and dug up from a peat bog. She was in her twenties, a temp at the doctor’s office I’ve been registered with for years but hardly ever visit. She has long wavy blonde hair and was wearing a perfectly tailored skirt and suede mushroom-colored knee-high boots so soft
they made you want to lean across and do tic-tac-toes on them with your finger. She looked at me brightly with her flawlessly (though discreetly) made-up eyes and said “And what can I do for you?” That’s when I started crying of course, at the notion of someone maybe being able to do something for me, or someone even wanting to try.
She did a funny thing with her mouth when I cried, scrunching her lips together very tightly and blinking a bit while looking straight at me, her fingers still poised expectantly over her keyboard ready to fill in the “presenting problem” box. As she waited for me to stop crying, she did the same thing Helen does, tilting her head to one side while maintaining the lip-scrunching expression. I wonder if that’s a gesture all medical practitioners are taught in Sympathy Classes. Does your shrink do that too? I expect they probably do a higher class of sympathy in Harley Street, do they? Maybe the head tilting is an exclusively NHS gesture.
“Poor old you,” she said.
As I cried, and the young blonde doctor tilted and scrunched, I suddenly had an image of myself as I must look to her—another middle-aged woman in a brown coat sobbing in a GP’s office on a weekday afternoon, and that just made me cry even harder, great snotty gulps that tore from me like vomit (I can see you frowning at that crass simile—you always fancied yourself as a wordsmith. “I’ll write a book one of these days, when I have time,” you always said as if it was as simple as bleeding a radiator).
When I’d calmed down a bit and got through five tissues from the square, pastel-colored box she kept on the shelf above her computer, she asked me what was making me so upset. I was in a quandary then. I wanted to tell her the truth because really I wanted the help she was offering so sweetly, and yet this was, after all, my family practice. I didn’t want to bring my children in at a future date, for a repeat asthma prescription or an unexplained rash, and find the same doctor sitting there, meeting my eyes with a quick conspiratorial lip scrunch. I didn’t want to see her look at them with pity as she inspected their tongues or shone a light in their ears, knowing their mother was a slut. Can you see my dilemma now?
So I told her between sniffs that my life was a mess, my relationship a disaster, my finances in ruins, my career a joke. I told her all the truths—except the big one. I didn’t tell her about you. I don’t know that she was actually that interested in the whole truth and nothing but the truth anyway, to be honest. She was much more concerned about the form she got me to fill in that listed lots of different scenarios and I had to circle the frequency with which they happened to me. When she asked me the one about feeling like I’d be better off dead, she looked very saddened when I circled option 3, “a lot of the time.” I was glad then, I hadn’t gone for my first choice, option 4, “all or almost all of the time,” which was far closer to the truth. Who wouldn’t feel they’d be better off dead if given the choice?
Between my snivels, I asked the sympathetic doctor for “something to help me sleep.”
“Oh dear, there’s nothing quite so awful as going without sleep, is there?” she said, and her long blonde hair made a little whooshing noise through the air as she shook her head sadly to emphasize how very sincerely she was empathizing.
“But you know sleeping pills are a very quick fix. They’re not actually addressing the underlying issues.”
As she said the word “underlying” her voice dropped suddenly very low, as if it were something a little distasteful.
“So we don’t really tend to prescribe them. We prefer to look at alternatives like cognitive behavioral therapy or, in some cases, antidepressants.”
I stared at her blearily through the tissue that was clamped to my nose and asked: “Will either of those work in time for me to get some sleep tonight?”
The young doctor laughed as if I’d said something quite funny. “I’m afraid the antidepressants won’t kick in for a good few weeks, and therapy is pretty much a long-term proposition,” she said kindly.
“So I have to wait a good few weeks before I can get a decent night’s sleep?” I asked her stupidly.
She did the scrunchy lip thing again.
“Poor old you,” she said a second time, at which point I obviously started blubbing all over again. “You’re having an awful time, aren’t you? But I’m afraid you’re just going to have to grit your teeth and get through these next few weeks. Just keep telling yourself that it’s not for long and in just a few weeks you will feel better.”
Just a few weeks?
Is she totally mad?
I had such a lovely time with Susan last night. She’s such fun. I can quite see why you married her.
I’m trying to decide which was the best part, but you know I rather think it might have been getting ready. Does that sound silly? You see, all the time I was getting showered and dithering over what to wear, I was imagining what might be going on in your house, and what might be going through your mind as you watched Susan getting dressed up to come and meet me. Did you try to issue some subtle warning, I wonder? Did you say “You know, Sally’s never been terribly stable’? Or your favorite: “She’s one of those sad, damaged women.” Yes, I rather think you might have. Susan will, of course, have been brisk but kind. “Oh you’re just an old misogynist,” she might have chided. “Sally’s just a little bit socially awkward. Anyway, I feel sorry for her.” Susan is always collecting lost causes. It was one of the things you used to complain about most bitterly. “Oh, I expect one of Susan’s misfits will be hanging around at supper,” you’d sigh. Or “We had to take one of Susan’s dysfunctionals with us on holiday.”
We started off in the Coach and Horses on Greek Street. Oh, how silly of me. Of course you know where the Coach and Horses is. It was with you I first went there. Now, for goodness’ sake, don’t read anything into my choice of venue. It just happened to be the first thing that popped into my head when I was arranging things with Susan. It’s very convenient, that’s all. Central for both of us. I can’t pretend that the irony of it completely escaped me, however, and I admit I did have a little chuckle when I steered Susan to that exact same table where we sat that one time when you asked me to marry you. Perhaps you’ve forgotten that little incident. You’d been having one of your periodic meltdowns where you angsted about where our relationship was going and you emailed me, terribly excited, to say you’d come up with some sort of a plan.
When I squeezed into the pub to meet you—it’s always so very crowded, isn’t it?—you had a smile on your face as big as Brazil.
“I know you’re going to think I’m being silly,” you said. How ridiculous that word “silly” always sounded coming from you with your ex-boxer’s physique, your angry curls, your flattened, much-broken nose. “But I’ve come up with an idea that might make both of us feel just a little bit secure.”
I felt relieved then, I remember. Finally you’d come up with a solution that didn’t involve wrecking lives and destroying families. Sliding into the seat opposite you, my cheeks still flushed from my walk through Soho Square, I gazed at you expectantly, waiting for you to provide me with whatever answer had been staring us in the face the whole time.
“I want to ask you to marry me!”
My expression must have been a picture, it really must, because your terribly-pleased-with-yourself smile was already fading when I blurted out the one basic fact that you seemed to have overlooked: “But you’re already married!”
You looked a bit cross then and petulant, as if it was pedantic of me to have become hung up on a technicality at a moment of high romance such as this.
“I know I’m married,” you told me, clearly hurt. “I just wanted you to know how serious I am about you. I wanted to give you some measure of commitment.”
“How can you commit to me when you’re already committed to your wife?” I asked you, quite reasonably I thought.
Again that shadow of irritation passed over your face.
“I thought you’d be pleased,” you said, and your voice was small and bruised like an ove
rripe plum.
Ironic now to think that the one marriage proposal of my life (I don’t count Daniel’s “Weddings are a waste of money but we should look into whether it’s worth doing it for tax reasons”) should have come from a married man.
I loved you I loved you I loved you I loved you.
Susan was looking slightly older, I thought (although at forty-six she’s not far off my age), but more peaceful. Sorry, does that make her sound like a corpse? What I mean is she’d lost that gaunt look she wore for the last year of our affair. Not that I really got a chance to study her in those days, you understand. My guilt kept my gaze constantly averted, bouncing off the very corners of her so that I only ever took in small pieces—a blue eye sunk like a pebble into damp sand creases, the corner of a mouth pulled down to the chin by invisible thread, the way sunlight brought the split ends of her straight white-blonde hair into sharp relief.
Last night though, she was sleeker, shinier, plumper. Her smile had lost the weariness of old. She was wearing her trademark navy blue, but she had over her dress a white jacket with a sequined trim that sparkled where the lights in the pub hit it. She looked alive.
“You look wonderful,” I told her, truthfully.
“Thank you, love, and so do you.”
It was nice of her to lie, but I could see she was a little bit shocked. You see, I haven’t exactly been looking after myself since we last saw one another (can it really be three months ago, that hunched figure weeping in the rain outside the restaurant on York Way?). Grief has hollowed me out with a blunt spoon, troweling grooves into flaccid flesh. My hair bears the telltale stripes of a bad home dye, the roots an alarming shade of blood-orange where the chemicals have been absorbed by greedy strands of gray, the rest a rusty brown, like corroded iron. I’ve lost weight (oh, the wonders of the Misery Diet) so now I wear my skin like an ill-fitting suit and the bones protrude, lumpen from my chest. Thank God she couldn’t see my legs where the hairs proliferate like weeds now that no one looks at them anymore.
