2000 - The Feng-Shui Junkie

by Brian Gallagher

  Now Debbie’s face contorts into a smile, rather like that of a wrinkled old man.

  Perhaps this is my vocation? Motherhood. Perhaps being a barrister never really was for me? All the struggle, the aggressive competition, the discipline, the rigid cold reasoning. What’s it all for in the end? Money? Status? Power? Authority? The latest MGi? The penthouse apartment with the greatest sea view? The best holiday locations? The best restaurants?

  But with whom? With a man who no longer wants to be with you? What do these things matter when you come home each day an emotional wreck, only to be supported by an emotional bankrupt? What do these things matter when you feel trapped? When the most beautiful things in this world are so simple to achieve, so possible, available practically at the ring of a bell?

  Debbie.

  I turn away from Nicole now because, pathetically, my eyes have filled with tears. I lead the way over to the lift.

  The elevator doors open and I walk in. Nicole follows me, bearing the carrycot. A middle-aged woman who has just entered the main door comes in after us and presses number four for the whole party. The woman spends the whole joyride smiling slant-headed at the baby in my arms, telling me how beautiful she is and how lucky I am to have her, and me standing here, agreeing, craving the fourth floor, secretly wanting to believe it’s true.

  The woman exits first and walks down the corridor. As soon as she’s disappeared Nicole giggles at the mistake. And when I giggle back at Nicole it’s not because I’m necessarily having fun or anything incomprehensible like that, but more because I’m feeling this total resignation, this helplessness.

  Outside my door I hand Nicole’s baby back to her. A vacuum, an empty and cold longing now enters the space left vacant by Debbie. I rummage in my pocket for the keys.

  Nicole’s eyes are beginning to reveal their old merriment once more. She and Ronan have split up, but things aren’t so bad now that her good friend (me) is showing her some humanity.

  And she’s got Debbie.

  Me, I’ve got no one.

  After several cups of coffee and an orgy of chortling over Debbie and what a wonderful gift to life she constitutes, etc. etc., Nicole wonders if she might take her into a bedroom to change her nappy. I show her into the spare room facing the road, forgetting completely that there’s a copy of Your Baby and You on the bedside table. I put it there recently just to annoy Sylvana when she last stayed over.

  While she’s removing Debbie from her wrap, I’m standing behind her, watching her glance at the publication from time to time.

  “I ripped that baby magazine off in your place,” I confess, just to break the tension.

  “Oh, it’s no problem,” she says quickly and she starts humming a tune like it really isn’t a problem.

  “I also ripped off that small Feng Shui handbook of yours.”

  She just shakes her head as if it really isn’t a big deal.

  While Nicole is powdering Debbie’s bottom, the phone goes off. It’s the landline. I run out. Mother, wouldn’t you know.

  “Julie, dear, something has come up.”

  “What?”

  “Ronan’s in the kitchen; we’re having tea together.”

  It takes me just a few seconds to grasp this point. “That sounds very civilized,” I say.

  “He’s very respectful for a change.”

  “He’s up to every trick in the book.”

  “He’s actually talking to me. He’s telling me all about Paris, he’s practically cataloguing the whole interior of the Musee d’Orsay for me. It’s as if nothing happened. Do I take it that you don’t wish to see him?”

  “Does he want to see me?”

  “He does.”

  “I’ll be there soon, Mother.”

  “I understand. Oops! Here he is now. I’ll pass you over.”

  Pause.

  “Julie?” he says.

  “Yes.”

  “Julie, the situation has changed somewhat. I need to meet you.”

  “What for?”

  “It doesn’t have to be here, it can be somewhere else. I need to talk to you.”

  “But there’s nothing to talk about, Ronan. I’m quite happy with my life. I am financially independent, I’ve got my own apartment, I have my car, my friends. I’m even thinking of getting a cat. What more could I want?”

  There’s a brief hiatus at this point.

  “We still need to meet. The two of us.”

  “I object to that phrase.”

  “Julie, I’m not leaving this apartment until we talk.”

  I consider this point. “Fine. We’ll meet there, so.”

  “I don’t want your mother to be a part of our marital conversation. What about dinner in town?”

  “I don’t think so.” I laugh. “I’ll see you in half an hour.”

  I replace the receiver and go back into the bedroom where Nicole has just finished fixing Debbie’s new nappy. I tell her I’m going home for a short while, but I’ll be back to bring them to the airport.

  “Is it to see Ronan?” she asks apprehensively, sitting down on the bed.

  “Yes.”

  I turn to leave.

  “Julie, it’s the best thing you can do, to go back with him.”

  “You think so?”

  “I really do. He’s changed, he really has. I saw it in him. For the last few weeks he’s been miserable with me, really unsettled. I could tell he was thinking about you. I know in my heart he loves you. I think he’s sorry for what he did, even if he doesn’t have the courage to admit it to you. Julie, you’re doing what’s best, don’t be too angry with him, please…”

  “I have to go now.”

  “And it doesn’t matter that he’s Debbie’s father. He doesn’t want to be involved with us. I mean, he didn’t even show up for her birth and anyway he dumped me after she was born, and that says a lot, doesn’t it? All Debbie needs is a mother who can love her and even though I’m probably too messed up to be a proper mother, I can at least try my best to bring her up on my own. Look at me! I never had a proper father – but I’ve turned out all right, haven’t I? Haven’t P.”

  “Yes.”

  Before I step outside the hall door on to the landing, I take a brown envelope from the top of the bookcase in the hall.

  It’s twelve fifteen. Nicole’s flight is at three.

  “You stay here, Nicole. I’ll be back at about two o’clock, and I’ll drive you and Debbie to the airport.”

  Slipping the envelope into my jacket pocket, I close the door behind me.

  61

  When I reach the Dun Laoghaire pad, I go straight into the kitchen. Sure enough, Mother is seated at the table holding a cup of tea between both hands. But I wasn’t expecting Sylvana to be there, seated beside her.

  “She’s only just arrived,” explains Mother.

  “He’s inside,” says Sylvana, nodding her head in the direction of the living-room.

  “I assumed as much.”

  “I’m saying nothing,” she adds.

  Which, translated, means, “Don’t you dare take that bastard back or I will hang you from the balcony railings by the neck.”

  “Don’t worry, Sylvana, I have everything under control.”

  Mother explains that she invited Sylvana here because she didn’t want my friend to miss any of the action. Sylvana raises her hand in mock annoyance, as if to slap my poor mother on the arm.

  “Anyway, dear,” she says, serious now. “You do whatever it is you have to do.”

  Sylvana: “If he gives any trouble, just call us.”

  I exit the kitchen door into the lounge and shut it behind me. I’m glad she finds it so funny.

  “Julie, I’ve been thinking…” He squeezes his nose suddenly.

  “In between copulating?”

  Ronan is seated on the white leather couch, leaning forward with his hands clasped together over the glass coffee table. He’s in a grey jacket and trousers, and a wine-coloured polo-neck sweater. He’s
fresh and immaculate as always. But beneath his eyes are black shadows.

  He lowers his eyes to his shoes.

  There’s a notable improvement in his attitude since we last met: his tone is conciliatory, regretful, humble even. It must kill him to have to come here and crawl.

  “I’m serious…I’ve been thinking.”

  “You spend too much time thinking. That’s your problem. You have no time left to feel. Nicole was right about you: with you it’s all intellect. You live in your head. In your books.”

  I’m sitting cross-legged on the white leather armchair, at an angle to him, holding aloft a G & T.

  “Where are my books, by the way?”

  The emptied bookcase is half filled with Mother’s small collection. Cookery, landscapes, stately homes, travel, raunchy novels.

  “I’ve put them into storage.”

  I avert my eyes.

  “You got rid of them, didn’t you?”

  I take a sip of G & T. “Well, if you must know, I hired a skip. But the men were very careful. They didn’t tear a single page on the way down.”

  A therapist assured me recently that the violent onslaughts of my recent past constituted a promising development in my growth towards autonomy and spiritual healing. I must stop apologizing for my violent tendencies, she counselled. If I feel violent, she advised me, repression is no answer.

  This therapist was my mother.

  Mothers can be so supportive.

  The next day I ordered a small yellow skip into which I flung roughly five hundred books, all his remaining clothes and mobile possessions. Sylvana was delighted to help me transport them down in the lift and out to the car park in large fruit boxes and bin bags.

  Red fingers have flushed up Ronan’s cheekbones. Lowering his head, he starts stroking his chin meditatively. When he’s satisfied himself that I’ve binned nothing priceless he simply lowers his head, eyes closed. “They’re not important,” he says.

  “Must you always take the good out of things?”

  “I can understand why you did it.”

  “Thank you, but I’d much rather you cursed and blinded a little, and admitted that it’s making you hopping crazy inside.”

  He stands up suddenly and goes to the drinks cabinet.

  “Yes, have a drink, Ronan. You’ll be less nervous.”

  “I’m not nervous,” he brags, annoyed-sounding. “I’m merely caught up in the dramatic possibilities of the situation.”

  Taking a bottle from the drinks cabinet, he says that he acquired a penchant (French accent) for vodka while he was in Paris. He compliments my very full drinks collection, which is in actual fact Mother’s very full drinks collection.

  “I see you’ve become quite self-sufficient,” he says.

  “As I intend to continue being.”

  “Your mother told me she was still residing here.”

  “And will be for the foreseeable future.”

  He pours out the vodka, adding some tonic.

  “I suppose she didn’t phone you,” he says after a while, “to let you know what has happened?”

  “Mother?”

  “Nicole.”

  “That’s the first time you’ve mentioned her name. Quite an achievement. Are we coming to terms with things at last?”

  With his drink in hand, he starts pacing by the window. “Julie, I’m going to get to the point. I’m coming home.”

  “A logical impossibility.”

  “I admit I’ve made mistakes.”

  “Oh please, spare me the dribbles. And take off your shoes before you walk on that authentic sheepskin rug. It’s Mother’s.”

  He orbits around it instead. It gives me a warm, happy glow inside to be able to boss him around in what used to be his apartment before the recent legal conveyance to Mother.

  “That woman and I are over,” he says.

  “That’s a familiar phrase. Where have I heard it before?”

  “I mean, well and truly over.”

  “How over does someone have to be before they become well and truly over? Is there a decisive moment in this eternal petering-out process, this dying flame?”

  “Splitting up takes time.”

  “So I’ve discovered.”

  “We have separated for good.”

  “Yes, we have.”

  “No – I mean, that woman and me. She never meant anything.”

  “In which case I clearly meant less.”

  “She was only a symptom of deeper issues.”

  “But a sexually gratifying one.”

  “It was a bad misjudgement on my part, I admit it.”

  “What about your child?”

  “That was an unfortunate error.”

  “That’s how you regard children.”

  “It would be different with you, Julie.”

  “So you want children now?”

  “I’ll seriously consider it.”

  “You must really be desperate.”

  “Not at all. I thought of having a child while I was in France.”

  “It’s not you who would be having it.”

  “I thought, it mightn’t be such a disaster after all…Okay, I might lose my freedom and you might lose your figure, but only for twenty years or so.”

  He’s trying to be funny.

  “You’re pathetic. You come back here with your tail between your legs, promising to give me a child. I don’t even believe you. It’s just an excuse to worm your way back in. You’re a wimp.”

  “Whatever you say, Julie.”

  “You’re a laughing stock. A buffoon who pretends to be so urbane and sophisticated.”

  He doesn’t like this. He sips his vodka, turns to the windows again, hand in his pocket, and peers out at the cold afternoon. “The whole point is I have finished with that woman now. I have no interest in her.”

  “Just her body.”

  “It was so-so.”

  “And her art.”

  He makes a noise with his nostrils. “Is that what you call it?”

  “It was you who encouraged her.”

  “It’s expressionistic kitsch, it’s…”

  “How did it do in Paris?”

  He eyes me quizzically. “The revamped Chi? It was a disaster. As for her other work, there was minor interest. She won’t make it anywhere. Hasn’t got the application.”

  “You needlessly raised her expectations.”

  “By burning Chi, I think you needlessly dashed them.”

  A point, of course.

  “Anyway, Ronan…” I stand up and help myself to another G & T. “I don’t share your pessimism about her work. Nicole, unlike you, is able to feel. She puts her heart on her canvas and I respect her spontaneity. There’s emotion in her paintings.”

  He smirks.

  “Besides,” I add, sitting down again, “what about those excellent sketches she made of you?”

  “You saw the sketches?”

  “I saw them all, even the nude ones.”

  “A very poor likeness.”

  “Rubbish! I could have recognized your arrogant leer in them a mile away.”

  Ronan starts pacing again. “She tore them up.”

  “The fewer reminders of you the better.”

  “I offered to buy them off her. And still she tore them up.”

  “You’re despicable. And vain.”

  “She needed the money. She sold her Fiat.”

  “And you pretend to despise commerce. In reality you put commerce higher than aesthetics.”

  “That’s very good, Julie.”

  “Oh, get out.”

  “I have no problem with commerce. That woman and I were never more than a mutual business venture.”

  “With a bit of hot sex added.”

  “The sex wasn’t great, strange to say.”

  “Not even in our bed?”

  “We never slept in our bed.”

  I take another sip. “You’ve been digging your grave for quite some time, Ronan. S
lowly but very efficiently. Every time you open your mouth, it seems, you scatter away another shovelful.”

  “Julie, this has been a bad period in our relationship. Something of a disaster, actually. What some people might call the lowest trajectory of a learning curve, or what others might call…”

  “Please, leave now.”

  He paces around a bit more, stops and stares at me. “What do you want me to say?”

  He’s acting like I’m being unreasonable. Like he expects me to dismiss his liaison with Nicole as so much adolescent swagger.

  “Try saying sorry.”

  “I have no problem with that.”

  “Right then; say it.”

  He sighs.

  He has a problem with it.

  “I’m sorry. Now. Are you happy?”

  We fall silent. Just the wind through the slightly open french windows. Mother and Sylvana are obviously still in the kitchen, but they have stopped talking. Knowing them, they’re tuning in to every word.

  “I don’t want you in my life any more, Ronan.”

  I’m fingering the envelope in my inside jacket pocket, ready to pull it out.

  “I accept that going to France was an overreaction on my part.”

  “I gave you your last chance. Remember? That day on Dun Laoghaire pier?”

  “I made a mistake and I’m coming home now. My bags are outside.”

  “It’s gone.”

  “What’s gone?”

  “Home.”

  “What do you mean, gone?”

  “The apartment is no longer yours.”

  “Please explain, Julie.”

  “I sold it.”

  “You sold it?”

  “Precisely.”

  He’s turning white before my eyes.

  “Okay,” he says, nodding. “You sold our apartment…We’ll get over that. When did you…?”

  “To my mother.”

  “What? ”

  He’s turned grey now. Concrete-grey. Mushroom-soup grey.

  “Surely you prefer to keep it in the family?”

  “You sold it to her? ”

  “Watch your tone.”