“Ouch,” I say with feeling. “Looks like I’m taking you to A&E.”
Tom rolls his eyes. “Really?” he says plaintively. “Do you think?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Look, be careful. Don’t cut your feet as well.” I step carefully over the broken remains of the coffee table and head through to the bedroom where I quickly dress.
When I return, Tom is standing in front of the angle-poise lamp grasping the shard of glass.
“Tom!” I say. “Wait, let them do it at the ho…” but as I say it he gasps and pulls the chunk of glass from his side.
“Phew!” he says wincingly examining his wound. “It wasn’t so deep after all.”
“Wow!” I exclaim, crouching beside him. “What a man! Maybe take you to the hospital anyway though,” I say. “There might still be glass or something stuck inside.”
Tom lays the bloody glass dagger down on the sideboard and then frowns and inspects his palm and tuts.
“What a twat!” he says, pointing his hand at me. A thick line of blood is oozing from a deep gash across the palm.
“Shit Tom!” I say. “Have you just done that?”
Tom nods sheepishly. “Yeah,” he says. “Sorry.”
The Accident and Emergency waiting room is entirely empty. A black nurse with a Jamaican accent and a sleepy smile asks Tom a few questions – blood group, vaccine status, previous conditions, current drug regime, and then leads him through to a cubicle down the hall.
When she returns, she slouches at her desk, chews a biro and smiles at me.
“So how exactly did he do that?” she asks me. Her voice is full of laughter so I smile back and shrug.
“Cleaning windows,” I say. “He fell off the stepladder.”
“He fell though da window?!” the nurse exclaims.
I grin at her. “Nah,” I tell her, “… onto the coffee table.”
“And what prey, was he doin’ cleanin’ da windows at…” she looks at her watch, “Six in the mornin’ Was they that dirty?”
Her Jamaican accent is luscious. It makes me grin even more. I shrug. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
She nods knowingly. “That’ll be the Prozac,” she says. “It happen’ all the time you know.”
I nod thoughtfully. “Yeah,” I say. “He didn’t tell me about that.” I shake my head. “I didn’t know he was on Prozac.”
The nurse nods. “Everyone’ on Prozac,” she says. “That’s the trouble of it.”
I sigh. “His dad just died,” I say with a shrug. “Maybe that’s why.”
She nods. “Yeah,” she says softly. “But in the end, I is one of them people who thinks drugs is not the answer to everything, you know?”
I nod. “I know,” I say. “Me too.”
*
Tom sits and stares at his bandaged hand. He looks confused, uncomprehending as to quite how or indeed when this thing happened to him. I take a seat beside him and sigh. The air whistles through my nose.
“You okay?” I ask. “You look a bit dazed really.”
Tom nods slowly, silently staring at his hand. He shakes his head and continues to inspect the bandage.
“You must be tired,” I say. “Don’t you want to go back to bed?”
Tom pouts and shakes his head. He licks his lips, opens his mouth to speak, and then pauses for a moment.
For some reason I am expecting that he will say something important, something profound even. But what he eventually says is merely, “How was the Merc’? Did you enjoy driving it?”
I cough. “Yeah,” I say vaguely. “It’s nice. Um, smooth… and powerful.”
Tom nods. “You don’t really give a damn about the car,” he says, adding with a shrug, “Neither do I, when it comes down to it.”
I shrug benevolently. “It’s nice,” I say. “It’s a very good car. And very useful for going to hospitals.”
Tom snorts and lays his hand, palm-up, across his knees.
“Are you okay, Tom?” I ask. “I mean, obviously you’re sad, but, well, I’m worried about you. Generally I mean. Even before all this…”
Tom nods and stands. “Yeah, well,” he says. “Don’t be.”
I nod thoughtfully.
“You want tea?” he asks, turning towards the kitchen.
“Yeah,” I say. “You sure you don’t want me to do…” But Tom is already there. I can hear him filling the kettle.
I sigh wearily and move across the room to the smashed coffee table. I prop the stepladder against the wall, and start to collect the smaller chunks of glass. “You’ll need a new coffee table,” I shout, but, over the noise of the kettle, Tom doesn’t seem to hear me.
I wrap most of the glass – all except the biggest chunks – in an old copy of The Argus, and then, aware that Tom has been gone a long time, I follow him through to the kitchen.
Two mugs sit ready, each containing a tea bag; the kettle steams gently.
Tom is sitting on the tiled floor, back to the fridge. Silent tears are streaming down his cheeks.
I pause for a moment, taking this in, then blink slowly and slide to his side, laying an arm across his shoulders. “That’s good,” I say. “You have to let go sometime… you can’t just keep it all inside.”
Tom flicks his watery eyes towards me and returns his gaze to his lap. A drip is hanging from the end of his nose, so I stand and grab a length of kitchen roll, then slide back to the floor.
“I’m so sorry babe,” I say, handing him the tissue. “I know how hard it is; really I do. I remember from when my own …”
Tom judders beside me in a sudden spasm of grief, gasps, and then continues to weep quietly.
I pull him against me and lean my head against his, as though this might somehow lessen the pain he is feeling, as if I can share it between the two of us. I would happily take on half, were that possible. My own eyes water.
After a couple of minutes Tom’s sobs wane. “I don’t…” he attempts. But then he pauses and blows his nose.
“Yeah?” I ask, wiping a tear from his cheek with my thumb.
Tom shrugs and gently lifts my arm away in order to stand. “Finish the tea?” he asks, heading back to the lounge.
Tom nurses the mug as if it were winter; he looks hunched and cold. “I don’t think the Prozac is working,” he says with a sad, ironic snort.
I put my mug down on the floor and take his un-bandaged hand in mine. “It takes a while,” I say. “I think it takes a couple of weeks before it kicks in.”
Tom nods.
“And it won’t, you know, make the grief go away. You just have to… well… You just have to go through grief… Like a tunnel… Eventually you come out the other side.”
Tom nods. “I thought it was working before though,” he says. “I felt a bit better in January.”
I nod and swallow as I think about this. “January,” I repeat. “So how long have you been on it?” I ask. “I mean, I didn’t know… You never said.”
Tom shrugs. “October,” he says. “I started in October.”
I nod and sigh. I think, “So that’s why he’s been so weird.”
“I just feel like…” he says. He shrugs. “I feel like there’s no point, you know?”
I furrow my brow. “It will pass though,” I say, “…that feeling. I know it feels like you’ll never get over it. But it does fade, in the end. You have to trust. And wait.” I shrug. “There’s not a lot else you can do.”
Tom clears his throat to speak. A pedestrian pauses outside his window. The shadow causes us both to look up. We can only see the bottom of his suit trousers where they meet shiny black shoes.
When he moves on, Tom clears his throat again. “It’s not Dad,” he says, his voice a whisper. “He’s better out of it…”
I frown in incomprehension.
“It’s all the rest,” Tom says. “It’s all the other shit.”
I stroke his index finger between my own finger and thumb. “What rest babe?” I say. “What other s
hit?”
Tom shrugs. “Oh I don’t know,” he says.
I stroke his hand and wait for him to continue.
“I thought that if we got back together,” he says, after a pause.
I bite my bottom lip. “Yeah?” I murmur weakly.
“I thought I’d be happy. Happier. I thought, you know, that that was why I was unhappy,” he says. “Because we had split up.”
I cough and release his finger, alarmed that we are suddenly discussing the shortcomings of our relationship. “Aren’t you happy?” I say. “I mean, I didn’t know… Aren’t you happy with me?”
Tom frowns and shakes his head silently for a moment. “I don’t know,” he says. “I’m not happy. But, it’s not specific… it’s, well it’s everything really.”
I nod.
“I don’t think it’s us,” Tom says. “It’s the rest.” His voice wavers. “Sometimes I just feel like…” He shrugs and shakes his head.
I stroke his back. “What?”
He shakes his head again and sighs. “I feel like I don’t see the point anymore, you know?”
“In us?”
“In anything. I feel like, if I could, you know, just opt out, of the rest of my life… But I’m too much of a coward, you know, to…”
“That’s not being a coward,” I say. “Staying and fighting is brave. Opting out is the cowardly way.”
“But what if, you know…” he says, his voice cracking. “What if you know that it’s all…”
I frown at him.
“What if you know it’s all pointless. That it isn’t going to get any better,” Tom says, a fresh tear sliding down his cheek. “I mean, if it’s all shit, why do you have to carry on? Why can’t you just…”
I run a hand across my head. “Tom, what’s wrong? I mean… I understand that you’re down, but, I don’t know, give me some specifics here.”
Tom shrugs. “It’s like I said. It’s everything.”
I nod. “Like?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” Tom says quietly. “I’m not being funny, but, well, it’s me…”
I shrug. “Try me,” I say. “List them. List all the things that are wrong.”
Tom stares at the ceiling for a moment. The light suddenly fades and we both look up to see the same pedestrian as before standing in front of the window.
“It’s this dingy fucking flat,” Tom says, standing.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“To tell him to stand someplace else…”
“But Tom you can’t just…”
But it seems that he can. I shake my head and sigh deeply as I see Tom’s shadow mount the staircase beyond the window, see his bare feet and jeans join the poor man who just chose to stand in the wrong place.
When Tom returns he slumps back onto the sofa next to me and picks up his cup of tea.
“Jesus, what did you tell him?” I ask.
Tom shrugs. “I just asked him to stand somewhere else. I said he was blocking the light.”
I shake my head. “That’s…”
“Well he was,” Tom says. “And it does my head in.”
I frown. “Maybe you need to move,” I say. “I mean, if it’s the flat that’s depressing you.”
Tom shakes his head dolefully. “It’s not just the flat, it’s the world,” he says.
“The world,” I repeat.
“Yeah, George Bush,” Tom says.
I frown. “George Bush,” I repeat flatly.
“Yeah, and Iran, and Iraq, and the tsunami, and Live Eight…”
I nod.
“… and Blair,” Tom says. “And nuclear power …”
I nod slowly. “I know what you mean,” I say with a sigh. “But that’s all… Well, it’s all elsewhere, isn’t it? Look out your window and everything’s fine,” I say.
Tom shakes his head. “But it isn’t,” he says. “Everything’s fucked.”
I shake my head. “But not here…” I say. “A hundred years ago you wouldn’t even have known what was happening in Iraq.”
“My life here is as fucked as anything else,” Tom interrupts. “It’s all… plastic bags and frozen food, bottled water and chemicals… and the shit vegetables we get here. Do you remember what the food tasted like in Italy?” he spits. “You can’t even buy a fucking red pepper here that doesn’t come in a plastic sealed package.”
I nod. “Yeah, that’s true, but…”
“And the car? You know? I mean, I wanted it, and truly, like, minutes after I picked it up…” he shrugs. “I just couldn’t see the point. So I went out and bought a new TV…” He nods at the huge LCD screen. “But it’s just full of Iraq and Iran, and Bush… Only bigger.”
I nod. “Oh babe,” I say. “It sounds like maybe you are depressed.”
Tom shrugs. “That’s what I said – the Prozac isn’t working.”
I nod. “Maybe,” I say. “Maybe it isn’t.”
“But even if it did work,” he says. “All of that stuff would be… I mean, it would still be true, yeah?”
I nod. “But there’s other stuff,” I say. “I mean, maybe the fact that you’re depressed is making you focus on the wrong things.”
Tom snorts. “So what should I focus on?” he asks. “Tell me!”
I shrug. “I don’t know Tom,” I say desperately. “Maybe you should think about what you want. What kind of life you want. And how to get it.”
Tom drags his fingertips down across his cheeks distorting his features. “It’s too late,” he says, shaking his head.
I sigh and shake my head. “You’re only forty, Tom,” I say. “It’s not too late for any…”
Tom shakes his head and interrupts me. “That’s not what I mean,” he says. “I mean, it’s too late… It’s the wrong era for what I want. The wrong époque.”
I frown at him, so he expounds. “I should have been born a hundred years ago,” he says. “When things were simpler. I was born in the wrong time.”
“You would have been sent to war,” I point out. “Or imprisoned… for buggery.”
Tom nods. “I guess,” he says. “So I wouldn’t have fitted in then either… is what you’re saying.”
He shakes his head, sighs and stands. My hand falls away from his back.
“Sorry about all this,” he says flatly. “I don’t mean to dump on you… I… I think I’m going to go and lie down for a bit. I feel wiped out.”
I blink slowly. “Go for it,” I say. “I’ll join you in a bit.”
As I pick up the remaining shards of glass I think about Tom, about George Bush and vacuum packed vegetables; about nuclear power and Mercedes cars; frozen dinners and bottled water, and I wonder that we’re not all taking Prozac. But of course, as the black nurse said, nearly everyone is taking Prozac these days.
The waiting pedestrian walks past the window again, and the light in the flat momentarily dims. I’m glad Tom isn’t here to see it.
I feel totally overcome, flooded by his sadness. And it strikes me that Tom might be feeling suicidal, but it is he in fact who is being lucid. The madmen are the rest of us who manage to float through all of this with our stupid smiles on our stupid faces.
*
I open my eyes. The vision from my right eye is blocked by the plump pillow my head is resting on. Through the other I can see Tom. He’s staring at the ceiling, apparently unaware that I am watching him.
I stretch and say, “God, I slept like a log, what time is it?”
Tom tips his head smoothly towards me. “You were snoring,” he says, his voice monotone.
I roll onto my back. “Sorry,” I say.
Tom shrugs. “It’s okay,” he says.
We lie like this for a moment, and then he says, a little unexpectedly, “Do you ever wish you were religious?”
The question stumps me for a moment. I roll onto my side and rest a hand on Tom’s chest. “Not really,” I say. “Why? Do you?” I figure that he’s thinking about his dead father, about the possibi
lity of an afterlife.
“Sometimes, yeah,” he says. “Just to have someone to tell me what to do really. A priest. Or something.”
I nod thoughtfully and then snort. “He’d probably tell you to get married and make babies,” I say. “They have a tendency to homophobia. And paedophilia.”
Tom half rolls his head towards me and says flatly, “Yeah, I guess so.”
I run a finger along his shoulder.
“But we don’t have any spiritual guidance anymore, do we?” he says. “There’s no one to turn to for, you know… absolute answers.”
I nod. “Maybe that’s because we’re wiser,” I say. “Maybe we’re clever enough to know that there aren’t any. Absolute answers, that is.”
“I used to ask my dad. When I was a kid, he always seemed to know what to do. It was nice.”
I nod and sigh in empathy. “Yeah,” I say. “And he’s not around anymore.”
Tom snorts. “Oh, he stopped having the answers years ago anyway,” he says. “Once I got to thirty, well, anything I couldn’t work out for myself, he didn’t know either… I guess we catch them up.”
“It’s part of being a grown-up,” I say quietly. “That realisation that you’re on your own, that no one knows any better.”
Tom nods. “I know,” he says. “The trouble is, I don’t know either. A guru would be good. Someone to say, do this, do that… I mean, I can see why all those people joined communes in the seventies, you know?”
I shuffle across the bed so that my side touches Tom’s. He feels hot and sweaty. “You don’t need a guru Tom,” I tell him. “Or a commune. You just need to… to, re-set the sails. To work out a new destination.”
Tom nods.
“It’s normal I think,” I say. “It’s a forty thing, and a losing your parents thing. Life’s not linear. You have to tack, to move a bit to the right, and a bit to the left, and try and find a direction that fits.”
“You think this is normal?” Tom asks, his voice incredulous.
I sigh. “I think there are times when you have to question the direction you’ve taken. Sometimes you need to choose a new one. Sometimes you even have to turn around and go back.”
“I guess,” Tom says.
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