2000 - The Feng-Shui Junkie

by Brian Gallagher

  “She called me,” I insist.

  “And that makes it okay.”

  “She just needed someone to talk to. She’s all messed up. She’s been badly hurt.”

  “She’s a bitch, even if she’s a saint compared with him.”

  “It’s not really her I blame.”

  “Julie, you’re not well.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Anyway, I only wanted to find out…information.”

  “You plan to go back to Ronan, don’t you?”

  “Now what do you think?”

  She says I must stick by my decision to embrace my new life and my new apartment and my new freedom. She advises me to do all the things I insisted Nicole should do. She forbids me to see either of them again. She says she’s more than happy to mediate for me, regarding the Porsche.

  I have to get out of here.

  I reach for my mobile and input for messages. Ronan has left one, at nine o’clock this morning, informing me that he is currently in a taxi on his way to the surgery. (Is he about to discover a new angle on Chi, at long last?) He says that this is simply ‘not acceptable’ because one, he’s going to be late for his patients and two, he already has a car and he would like to know what the hell I have done with it.

  The poor boy is chauffeur-driven to work and he’s complaining.

  There’s a message from Mother, left this morning an hour after Ronan’s. She’s commanding me to come home and sort out my husband who has suddenly returned from work in dangerously ‘Cyclopic’ form. And if I don’t come home now and bail her out, she threatens, I could be putting my own tropical marine fish in danger of liquefaction. She actually says that! She can be so droll.

  I throw the bedclothes off me and jump on to the floor.

  “Where are you going?” demands Sylvana.

  “Home,” I reply.

  “But why do you…?”

  “Because I have nothing but the highest regard for tropical marine fish.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Madeleine Albright wants to see me.”

  44

  When I get home, Mother is in the kitchen manipulating sausages and rashers on the grill with a wooden spoon. She looks funny in her green apron and long light-blue dressing-gown and the huge pink furry Teletubby slippers I got her as a joke last Mother’s Day but one, not guessing she’d actually wear them.

  “He’s inside,” she says, flipping the contents of the grill on to a plate.

  “I guessed. How is he?”

  “I bumped into him this morning,” she says. “He got up a little earlier because he had to take a taxi to work.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “He muttered something all right. I wouldn’t swear to it, but it sounded strikingly like ‘good morning’.”

  “So he’s still tormenting you.”

  “He returned from work just now, for whatever reason. I passed him in the hall. He didn’t even look at me. He went straight into his bedroom and shut the door. I’m convinced it’s male hormones.”

  It’s Chi, that’s what it is.

  She puts the mixed grill down on the table in front of me.

  “Mother, I’ve just had a huge breakfast with Sylvana.”

  “What did you have?” she asks accusingly.

  “Three Danish pastries and coffee.”

  “Dear God, child, you’ve never lost your innocence. Sit down there, now, and eat some proper food.”

  Grudgingly, I sit down and pick up my knife and fork.

  “But what are you going to have?”

  “Toast.”

  “But you made this grill for yourself.”

  “Motherhood, Julie, is all about sacrifice.”

  Stony silence.

  “What are you saying? That I should be a mother?”

  “No, Julie. I’m saying that I am your mother and you haven’t been home in three days, and I know something’s wrong between you and Ronan. Now I realize that it’s none of my business and I don’t wish to pry.”

  Translation: I do wish to pry because it is all of my business.

  “Can we talk about it later?”

  “I hope you’re not planning on separating.”

  I cease sawing a rasher in half and look up at her amazed. “Why?”

  “Because,” she eyes me with a strange glint, “I refuse to live here on my own with him.”

  “We’re just having an argument. Sometimes it’s healthy to take a short break away from your spouse.”

  “I wouldn’t blame you. Even Prudence dislikes him.”

  “Prudence has extraordinary psychic powers,” I observe, rouge-ing at this mention of the cat.

  What I will do is this: finish my breakfast and slip out and nab the cat box from under the tarpaulin and wrap it in a black bin bag and steal it out of the apartment for disposal, before she or Ronan gets wind of it, literally.

  “Oh, by the way, Julie,” she says, as if reading my mind. “Where is Prudence? I haven’t seen him anywhere.”

  “Oh…”

  “Have you seen him?”

  I have indeed seen Prudence. He’s out on the balcony, decomposing.

  I jump up to shove a slice of bread in the toaster. Mother is difficult to lie to, mere inches away. Three metres’ distance and you stand a better chance.

  “Don’t worry about the cat, Mother. I got rid of him.”

  She’s nodding now. “How did you do it?”

  “Mother, I got rid of the cat in the sense that I handed it back to its rightful owner.”

  “You don’t really think I bought that story.”

  “What story?”

  “That Sylvana owns Prudence.”

  “Of course she does.”

  “Then how come she didn’t know the cat’s sex?”

  “Can we just forget this conversation?”

  I pour her more tea.

  A second later Ronan walks in the door.

  45

  He leans against the wall, arms folded, glaring at me through eyes cold and scathing.

  I know what this is about.

  This is about Chi.

  “So it’s come to this, Julie,” he says.

  “Is something wrong?” I wonder, casually buttering some toast.

  “You’re back early, Ronan,” chirps Mother. “Had you no dental appointments today?”

  “I had my secretary cancel them.”

  “Are you not feeling well?” she asks.

  He turns to me: “Julie, let’s talk about this inside.”

  “Don’t mind little old me,” says Mother, determined not to miss an opportunity like this.

  “It’s not you, Gertrude, it’s just that – ”

  “That’s okay, then,” she interrupts, pouring out a cup of tea. “Sit down, here’s a cup of tea.”

  “No thanks.”

  She gives it to me instead.

  “Thank you, Mother.”

  “You’re welcome, dear.”

  “Julie, my Porsche is missing,” he snaps. “Where is it?”

  “What makes you think I took it?”

  “A few reasons.” He pauses, glancing at Mother. “For one thing, you obviously imagine I’ve been seeing another woman.”

  “Ah,” I observe. “Motive.”

  Mother chuckles to herself, stirring sugar into her tea. When Mother chuckles like this I read it as a warning signal. I do not want Ronan to see her dark side. There are dimensions to her personality he hasn’t even dreamt about.

  “Ronan, your car has obviously been stolen.”

  “Obviously.”

  “I think you should call the police,” I cunningly add.

  “Against my wife?”

  I look up at him, feigning amazement. “You don’t seriously think I stole your car?”

  “Confiscated, borrowed, hid…it’s all the same.”

  “Only a non-lawyer could say something like that.”

  “Well? Did you?”

  “I most certainly did
not steal your car.”

  I sold it: important technical difference here.

  Mother: “Ronan – don’t be at Julie. She’s had a hard week.”

  Ronan makes this sound: not quite a snigger, not quite a sigh.

  “I’d never have suspected her – but for one thing.”

  “What?”

  I am insanely curious, flipping through my microchip memory, certain that I did not carelessly deposit so much as one microbe of evidence connecting me to the evil deed.

  “Yesterday I was rooting in the kitchen press,” he begins.

  “As husbands tend to do,” is my little filler.

  “And I discovered the stopper of our wine decanter.”

  Christ, the wine decanter. Sometimes my mind works even more quickly than I give it credit for. Like brilliant lightning, I flash back at him, “Really? ”

  “It had bits of yellow paint stuck to it.”

  I swallow.

  He eyes me inquisitorially, sucking away my defences like a monster octopus.

  “How on earth did they get there?”

  “I’ll tell you how they got there: somebody used the stopper to smash my Porsche last Thursday evening in the car park.”

  “And you think it was me?” I cry.

  I am utterly incredulous now, frowning at Mother, shrugging in bafflement, my whole being a pious offering to integrity, a shamelessly poker-faced bonanza of moral rectitude. Right now, in other words, I’m playing a blinder. I am that desperate for Mother to think of me as a well-behaved, well-raised little daughter.

  And Ronan knows it. “You look surprised, Julie.” He smiles.

  I hate him. He sees through me. “I thought the gurriers did that to your car?”

  “Gurriers did do it, only not the ones I thought.”

  “I’ll thank you not to refer to my daughter as a gurrier; I think I brought her up exceptionally well.”

  “Yes you did, Mother,” I reassure her, secretly wondering what she would think of me if she actually knew what I did to cars and art books and living-rooms and paintings and living things, and things in between like bucket-suffocating tropical fish.

  “But there’s something else,” he resumes, stroking his chin.

  This reminds me of the headmistress going through my annual school report. “What now?”

  “Somebody recently penetrated my surgery.”

  “Penetrated,” I comment, taking a panic bite of toast. “A good word.”

  “Have you anything to say about that?”

  “Certainly wasn’t me.”

  “You’re lying,” he says with contempt.

  “You’re right; lying is wrong.”

  “Children! What happened in your surgery, Ronan? Was there a robbery?”

  I pour myself some more tea, splashing, trembling.

  “The intruder grilled cheese on toast.”

  He examines me with limpid eyes.

  Smirking.

  Real-time brick-shitting panic now. They found the cheese-on-toast remains I left in the surgery kitchen. But what makes them think it wasn’t Harry?

  I glance at Mother, shrugging helplessly at her.

  “That doesn’t seem such a terrible crime to me, Ronan,” she says.

  Me (tentatively): “I dare say the thief was hungry.”

  He straightens up, leaning back further, and strokes his chin some more. “Certain people are not into cheese on toast…” he says mysteriously.

  “This is true,” says I.

  He adds: “And certain people are.”

  Oh, I get it. He must be referring to Harry. Harry must detest cheese. This crosses him off the suspect list. Me – I adore cheese on toast.

  They’re on to me.

  “Stop being so abstruse, Ronan.”

  But he ignores me. “Furthermore, toasted cheese was not all the intruder grilled.”

  Whatever can he mean?

  Again, I glance at Mother, perplexed.

  “Do you remember the painting in my office, Julie?” he asks.

  “Which one?”

  “There was only one.”

  “Oh, you mean that lovely one of the goldfish.”

  “You think it was lovely.”

  Pause.

  “Well…it was interesting anyway. I feel sure it had a hidden meaning, even if I could never detect it.”

  “Would you like to know what happened to it?”

  “I’d love to.”

  “The so-called intruder burnt it under the grill.”

  Right now, I’m pouring Mother some tea, although her cup is already full. It seems to be a law of nature: when you’re in dire straits, you run out of decent options.

  “He burnt it under the grill?”

  I eye Mother and she eyes me.

  “It was a valuable painting, Julie.”

  “Maybe that was its hidden meaning.”

  “Doesn’t it strike you as a slightly strange thing for your average intruder to do to a painting?”

  “You get all types out there.”

  Mother: “Perhaps the gurrier in question ran out of toast?”

  I can’t help it: I explode in uproarous laughter. Immediately I apologize for my inappropriate reaction and offer my sympathies in respect of the sad loss of his dear artwork.

  “I don’t know you any more, Julie,” says Ronan, darkening.

  “Try spending more time at home,” I reply.

  He’s not smiling.

  “Oh, don’t be such a stick-in-the-mud,” Mother teases.

  “She destroyed a work of art!” he yells.

  “There’s no need to accuse my daughter of vandalism.”

  “Thank you, Mother.”

  I mean, it’s a scandalous accusation.

  “Also, she destroyed the equipment in my surgery.”

  Staring out of the window, he patiently awaits my reaction.

  Mother looks at me.

  I look at Ronan. “What did you just say?”

  He gives a calm, graphic account of how the spit fountain in his dental surgery is presently lying in shards all over the floor, along with the former glass cabinet. He recounts how the mechanical-arm light has been pulled asunder, the dental chair has been cut into strips with its insides scattered all over the floor and most of the contents of his filing cabinet have been torn into pieces. The damage he estimates at fifteen thousand pounds.

  “Shall I go on, Julie?”

  I stand up furiously, eyeballing him in total shocked silence. “You’re lying!” I shout.

  “It’s true.”

  Harry.

  It’s the only possible explanation. He must have followed Nicole to the surgery. Or discovered an address, or a name and he traced it to the surgery. He entered via the damaged back door.

  Who else could it have been? It makes perfect sense. But not to them: Harry does not eat cheese on toast.

  Just my luck.

  “I swear to God, Ronan, I did not do that to your surgery. I swear on my grandmother’s grave, I swear on…”

  Mother: “It’s okay, Julie. Sit down.”

  I sit down, numb.

  “I believe you,” she adds.

  “Well, that’s no surprise,” says Ronan contemptuously.

  “You watch your lip, mister. I’m her mother, and I’m not going to stand here and let you bully her.”

  “Bully?” he says, laughing briefly. “Haven’t you heard what she did to the fish, Gertrude?”

  Mother is turning white with anger. “Don’t call me Gertrude.”

  “Mrs O’Connor.”

  “She already knows,” I reply, watching her nervously.

  “Did your exemplary daughter tell you that she flushed the fish down the toilet?”

  “That’s enough now,” she warns him, “if you know what’s good for you.”

  “They were flushed down the toilet. Julie told me herself.”

  “No, they weren’t,” she replies, paling.

  “Fine.”

 
“They were flushed down your gob.”

  “I don’t think there’s any need to pursue this,” I say.

  Ronan is frowning now.

  “No, Gertrude – Mrs O’Connor – please, do go on.”

  “Mother…”

  “Did you notice anything strange about your pasta last Monday evening, Ronan?” she says stiffly.

  I put my hands up to stop her but it’s too late.

  Funereal silence.

  The kitchen is a graveyard of soundlessness. Ronan’s face looks like a tomb. It is pale and morbid and shell-shocked. He is speechless as a gagged mummy. He is beginning to understand things about me and Mother that he never before suspected.

  Oh God.

  She gets up and goes to the sink, turns on the tap, squeezes in some Fairy liquid and starts scrubbing some cutlery, klakking it noisily on to the draining board.

  I start pleading: “Ronan, the fish were already dead. Don’t you remember? You put them in the bucket where they suffocated without any water. What was the point in letting them go to waste?”

  His countenance registers negative feedback.

  “The recipe was straight out of Delia Smith,” I urge.

  He starts nodding to himself. “I’m beginning to understand.”

  “Ronan, it was authentic cuisine…”

  “With a totally tropical taste,” Mother adds, drying the dishes via our Eiffel Tower dishcloth.

  Ronan is still sporting his recently crucified expression, his face a damp grey Turin shroud of woe.

  His head turns very very slowly towards Mother. His mouth stiffens, and he nods again. “I get the picture.”

  “Ronan…”

  “One of you actually put the dead fish in the mixer…‘Moulinex’ – now I get it…”

  “It was me who did it,” I urge.

  “It was me, Julie,” warns Mother, turning to me, trying to cover for me.

  “Mother, I’m the one who pasted the fish, have you got that?”

  Like, that’s an order.

  No way is she going down for me.

  Ronan: “And then your mother poured it on my pasta.”

  “You’re a quick learner,” she remarks.

  “That’s sick.”

  Mother: “Were you ill?”

  “This is totally insane.”

  “They kill fish every day,” she says. “A few more won’t matter.”

  “There’s a psychiatric term for this kind of behaviour.”