The Difference Between You and Me

by Celia Hayes

  “Do you want me to take you home?” he asks, looking at me while I button up my jacket.

  “No,” I reply glacially.

  “Trudy, you’re upset. Let me take you to your mother’s.”

  “Forgive me, but I don’t think this is a good time for a family reunion,” I say with a touch of sarcasm as I put the strap of my bag on my shoulder.

  “What are you going to do?” he asks as he accompanies me to the door.

  “For a start, give you this back. It’s pretty but it’s decidedly out of place.”

  I take off my engagement ring and place it in his open palm.

  “Don’t you want to talk about it? Why don’t you wait a minute and calm down?”

  “Talk about it? Thank you, but I’m not interested in the details. Wait a minute? Calm down? Why should I calm down, Horace? To make it easier for you to realize that you’re just a slimy piece of shit?”

  I never lose control. I never go over the top. I’m not rude. I’m only aggressive at work. I’ve never spoken to him like that before, and I think it upsets him more than all the rest of the things I said. It surprised me a bit as well, to be honest, but at this point I don’t think there’s much point worrying about it.

  “Trudy…”

  I walk away with a single thought in my mind – getting out of there.

  My body starts to move by itself, as if in a trance.

  I find myself outside without even knowing how I got there. I have blurred memories of the stairs, none of the corridor and some fragments of voices in the background from the flats that I pass without even noticing them.

  Air.

  Air. I inhale deeply.

  I’m in the street and I’m alone. More alone than I have ever been in my whole life.

  What will become of me now?

  It seems such a stupid question. It makes it sound as if I don’t have anything else, but that’s exactly how I feel. As if I don’t even have an identity.

  I don’t know who I am any more.

  I don’t know where I am.

  I don’t know what I’m doing.

  And in that precise moment I realize that I’ve lost all the certainties I’ve painstakingly constructed over the years and I raise my eyes to the heavens.

  A flash of lightning illuminates the city and immediately afterwards the skies open and pouring rain falls on what’s left of me, washing away any shred of dignity I might still be holding on to.

  Chapter 4

  Destination Nowhere. Return to Sender

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Of course I am! Why do you ask?”

  “Nothing – you just seemed…”

  “Don’t worry, I’m going to relax for a bit and in a couple of hours I’ll be as good as new”

  “Trudy, that’s the balcony!”

  An annoying noise brings me back to myself, a sort of shrill bell that pierces my eardrums. I express my irritation with a sort of primordial mewling.

  What happened? What time is it? Why can’t I see? Oh my God… I’ve gone blind!

  “Ouch!”

  In a complete panic, I jump up and send myself flying across the floor, for I am wrapped up like a spring roll in the sheets. My temporary disability, however, has no effect at all on my persecutor, who manifests his indifference to my wellbeing by continuing to ring that interminable bell.

  “Wait… Wait a minute,” I whisper, my voice groggy with sleep, crawling blindly until my nose meets the edge of the bedside table. From there I fumble about until, somehow – I don’t know quite how – I manage to find the switch of the bedside table lamp.

  Fiat lux!

  Okay, I’m not blind.

  “I’m… I’m coming.”

  Well, more or less.

  “Burn in hell, you rotten bastard!” I shout at the shoe rack when I stub my toe on it as I make my way from the bedroom to the front door in a zigzag, hitting every corner, wall and piece of furniture I encounter along the way.

  “Yes!? Who the hell is it?” I snap, throwing the door open to reveal the aesthetic disasters that two hours of sleep and a shameful betrayal had wrought upon my lovely person.

  “My goodness! Trudy, what have you done to yourself?” gasps my mother, staring at me in shock from the doorway.

  “Put it this way – I’ve had better days,” I say as I move aside to let her in, and, without bothering to close the door, head towards the living room, her in tow.

  As soon as I get to the coffee table, I throw myself like a dead weight onto the sofa and start hugging a cushion. I would love to go back to sleep – I desperately need to, but with her here it’s impossible.

  My vision still blurred, I watch as she wanders into the room. She’s not comfortable in my house. She never has been, because my mother is a simple person. Old-fashioned, you might say. One of those women that run around the house with flowered aprons and pins in her hair to avoid messing up her hairdo while she tidies the wardrobes. It’s actually quite strange to see her standing there between two black leather armchairs, surrounded by furnishings so modern that they’re practically science fiction. The fact is that we are poles apart; she loves hanging curtains and decorating old furniture with decoupage. And I… errr. Well, I don’t.

  “Trudy,” she mutters anxiously. “Trudy…” But the tone becomes tinged with reproach as soon as she notices the mess around her. Chaos reigns everywhere – there are clothes scattered on the floor, an empty bottle of wine next to the TV, cigarette packets all over the place, the remains of a pizza on the table and all my photos scattered on the carpet.

  “Can we talk about it another time?” I ask, already knowing that my proposal will get short shrift. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to say that she and I don’t understand each other at all – it’s just a problem of syntax. I have a theory about it: there’s a whole series of phrases which automatically produce an immediate rejection. Each sender-recipient pair (daughter-mother-in-law, boyfriend-girlfriend, mother-daughter) has its own. Seemingly innocuous phrases which inexplicably generate the inevitable response ‘non-existent recipient. Return to sender’. ‘Can we talk about this later?’ is one of them, and, as expected, has exactly that effect. She doesn’t listen to me, no. Rather, she comes and sits down next to me and starts staring at me as though I were dying.

  “Darling,” she says understandingly, grasping for the right words to begin. “You know, yesterday Lisa called me. Horace has been there, and he was in a bad place.”

  “Oh, Horace was in lots of places yesterday – one of them especially unusual,” I retort, hiding my face under the cushion.

  “I think you should at least allow him to explain,” she says, blushing bright red.

  Let him explain what?

  “Are you kidding? Tell me you’re kidding,” I beg her, popping out from my soft hiding place.

  “Well, I…”

  Visibly embarrassed, she puts a hand on my knee and re-iterates, “He was really upset.”

  Oh really! Poor Horace…

  “Him?”

  “I understand perfectly, it’s just—”

  “No, Mum. You don’t understand.” I come back to myself immediately. I even manage to sit up.

  “Trudy—” she starts, repeating my name as though it were a magic spell capable of bringing me round.

  “No, let me finish,” I interrupt. “If you understood, you wouldn’t even think of asking me to see him again. You should be outraged to say the least.”

  “But I am,” she reassures me. “I really am.” She touches my face with her fingertips as though rubbing away traces of faded make-up. I let her do it. I have neither the physical nor mental strength to react. “And I’m not asking you to forgive him. Absolutely not! What he did was horrible. Horrible!”

  I hate it when she repeats adjectives. She always has an ulterior motive when she repeats adjectives.

  “And yet, just think, you spent six years of your life together and you had so many magni
ficent projects together. I can’t understand how someone as sweet and caring as Horace…” she resumes, stopping only to sigh. “It’s just not like him. No. Look, if a stranger had told me I would never have believed it. Then, I thought, what if there was something wrong? If this was just a way of expressing some deep anxiety? You have such a busy life. You’re never there. You have no idea how many times he’s complained to us about how much you’re away. Perhaps he was miserable. He’s a man. Men have different needs,” she explains, convinced that having read a couple of articles in Vanity Fair is the same as having a degree in psychology.

  “Mum,” I almost scream, “Don’t you start as well! Do you really think that this is my fault? Is this what they told you?”

  “Lisa just said—”

  “Lisa? Lisa just said to you?” I shout with a rage that I thought had already passed. “And you believe Lisa? Do I have to remind you how she’s treated me up until today?!”

  I stand up and point at her threateningly, lowering my voice and glaring, my hair still messy, pyjamas two sizes too big dangling from my arms and two alarming black circles under my eyes.

  “And you’re defending him?”

  “My baby,” she says, attempting to embrace me.

  “Oh no,” I say, stepping back with both hands raised to stop her from touching me. “Don’t even try!”

  “Darling, please be reasonable.”

  Where have I heard that recently?

  Oh, wonderful! He shags Bronze Arse and I’m the one being unreasonable?

  “Marriage… Your relationship… Life is made up of these difficulties. Love is sometimes sacrifice, sometimes compromise,” she says, stringing together disconnected nonsense and only ending up irritating me even more.

  I’m about to answer and vent all of my anger on her, but once again my phone interrupts an argument, giving me a good excuse to get myself out of this.

  “Hello?” I answer, in a voice that sounds like something from beyond the grave.

  “Trudy!” shouts Rupert from the other end. “What’s happened to you?”

  Shit… It’s already ten o’clock!

  “Oh, my God, I’m mortified,” I start apologizing, rubbing my forehead manically. “I had a… problem yesterday and—”

  “No, look, it’s fine,” he interrupts. “To be honest, I was just worried something had happened to you. You’ve never come in late before. Are you okay?”

  “Me? Well… Not… Yes, sure I am,” I say, after hedging the question for a moment.

  “When do you think you can get here? We need to talk about a few things, don’t you think?”

  Right! The acquisition, the promotion… There must be a thousand things to discuss and I’m here basking in self-pity.

  “Give me twenty minutes and I’ll be there.”

  How could I have forgotten about work? And I have the alarm on my phone set and… Shit! I turned it off yesterday so that nobody could call me.

  “Ok,” I shake my head, “now I have to get back to reality.”

  I stand up, put the handset back on the charger and explain to my mother that I haven’t got any more time to argue with her. There will be other opportunities to talk about it.

  Maybe tomorrow.

  Maybe never.

  “Whatever you like,” she replies resignedly. “But when you’ve finished work call me, okay? You could come and have dinner with us.”

  I nod, more to get it over with than anything else. “Yup. Yes sure. Now go.”

  “Okay. I’ll tell your father to get some salmon from Martin’s. He’ll be glad to see you. He was so worried when I left,” she babbles away while she puts on a light jumper.

  “Fantastic.”

  “I’ll be off then.”

  “Good.”

  “Remember dinner.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “You know Dad.”

  “I think I heard the lift coming…”

  “Right, the lift. I’d better hurry, right? You’re late and I… Well, I still have to do the shopping,” she mumbles hesitantly, finally managing to throw her arms around me in an unguarded moment. I know it’s terrible, but I take this opportunity to put my nose over her shoulder and check the time on my wristwatch.

  My God, I’ve already wasted five minutes!

  My brain is a succession of tick tock tick tock tick tocks.

  “I have to hurry,” I explain, pushing her away.

  She seems upset, but doesn’t reply. She merely stands there in shock, unable to abandon me to my destiny.

  “Mum, don’t worry,” I say, attempting to sound reassuring while I push her out of the front door. “I promise that I won’t try and hang myself with my dressing gown belt. Not without notifying you first. I love you. I’ll call you later. I’m in a hurry now. Shower. Work. Goodbye.”

  And finally, with great effort, I manage to shut that damn door.

  The first thing I do once I’m alone is dash to the bathroom, taking my black suit with me. A quick shower, a bit of make-up and I find myself running breathlessly along the street while my mobile phone starts playing an old song by the Proclaimers. Thinking it’s Rupert again, I answer, but realize immediately that I should have ignored it, because I find myself listening to Horace’s wheedling voice saying “Please, don’t hang up.”

  The temptation to do just the opposite is strong, but something holds me back.

  “What do you want?”

  “Trudy, I need to talk to you. I know that you don’t want to see me, but it’s really… It’s really important,” he says, managing finally to conclude a sentence that seemed destined to remain incomplete.

  “I don’t see the point. I already know more than I wanted to.”

  “No, believe me. You don’t know anything and I don’t want it to end without you having heard my side of the story. I need to explain. I know I don’t deserve it, but if you still love me even a little…” And his words paralyse me.

  “Don’t do this,” I plead, while I cling to the door handle as my voice cracks with emotion. “It’s not fair.”

  “I know,” he admits, “But I’d do anything to see you again, even if it was for the last time.”

  I don’t reply.

  “Trudy, please. I promise that afterwards I’ll leave you alone, if that’s what you want. Just give me a few minutes. What are a few minutes…?”

  “Compared to the last six years of my life?” I conclude for him.

  “Trudy—”

  “Horace, they’re waiting for me in the office,” I cut him off.

  “Will you think about it at least?”

  Silence again.

  “I’ll tell you what, I’m free today. I’ll come and pick you up at seven and I’ll take you home, what do you think?”

  “I have to go.”

  All he says is “See you later,” sensing the essence of surrender in my refusal to answer.

  Chapter 5

  Acceptance of Grief

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m packing my suitcases.”

  “Do you want a hand?”

  “No, I think I’ve got everything: Valium, Zoloft, Rizen, Prozac…”

  I close my eyes for a moment and analyze closely the atrocious headache I’ve been living with since I woke up. Two ibuprofen on an empty stomach gets my gastritis going. To solve that, I take some antacids and there goes the colitis. At that point it’s a chain reaction of bromide, magnesium hydroxide, mineral salts, three cups of coffee and magically the gastritis returns and I start the whole cycle again.

  And that’s without even mentioning my period…

  No, let’s forget about that.

  I’ve been in the office for about an hour. I wanted to talk to Rupert but he was busy, so I took the opportunity to bring myself up to date with some of my work. I barricaded myself in my office asking not to be disturbed for any reason, and since then I’ve been mostly wasting time staring at the computer monitor. Karen is with me as usual. Sh
e sits across the desk with a notebook in her hands, having decided to ignore my orders. Even though I’d only asked her to do the job she’s paid for, like sorting out my mail and stopping me from committing suicide with double-sided sticky tape.

  “What do you want?” I ask her, without looking up from the yellow folder on which I am writing down some figures.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t you think it would do you good to discuss it?”

  “No.”

  “Trudy, keeping everything inside isn’t going to help. Sooner or later you’ll explode.”

  “Karen…” I say, raising my chin and sighing, “I’m fine. I don’t know what else to say to convince you. I’m fine, really. I’m sorry I called you last night. I shouldn’t have bothered you. In fact, I don’t actually remember doing it,” I admit, shifting about in my chair as I try to get comfortable. “I… I must have drunk too much wine.”

  “That’s what I thought,” she notes regretfully, “and I would have come if only you’d been able to tell me where the hell you were.”

  I had my reasons: I was in a terrible state.

  There’s a gap of about four hours, and I’m missing two bottles of red wine and a box of chocolate biscuits from the cupboard. I am almost sure that I went out – that memory is a little less blurred – and knocked back two White Russians and a Bloody Mary. I also have the terrible suspicion that I gave my number to a bouncer named Rufus. Not a bad looking guy, I’d say, but too short for my tastes.

  “I went to a bar, but I went home early,” I assure her. “Everything was under control.”

  “If you say so,” she murmurs, not looking very convinced.

  “Look, I—”

  “Miss Watts,” a secretary calls me, poking her head into the room. “Mr Shaw is on line two.”

  Rupert!

  “Okay, thanks, I’ll take it right away.”

  About time! I don’t think I could have held out much longer.