“How were you going to show it to me? Were you even going to show it to me? It’s lovely.”
“I don’t know. Yes, actually. I had it all planned. I was going to pretend it was a tape that had one of your favorite programs on it, then put it on and wait for you to get all sweary and annoyed that it wasn’t, and see your face when you realized what it was.”
How happy I would have been. Three sorts of happiness—some just for me, a bit more for Joel and I to toss back and forth between us like a bean bag and then an extra dollop to broadcast to my friends and family. “Why didn’t you? I mean, why go to all the trouble of making it if you didn’t ever show it to me?”
There’s an almost audible shrug at the other end of the phone. “I don’t know.”
“You must do. Why didn’t you?”
“You were just always going on about how marriage was stupid and an institution that you didn’t want to be a part of, so I suppose I was scared you’d say no. Between you and Ursula I was getting the message. And then you asked and so you saved me the bother.”
“But it’s so amazing. I wish you’d shown it to me.” Did he show it to anyone else, I wonder? Sometimes I think that Joel’s romantic gestures aren’t necessarily for my benefit anyway. “Still, we got there in the end.” As if our marriage is just a theme park in an unfamiliar part of the country which we’ve managed to locate after some tussles over the road map.
“I suppose. I’d better go now, the boys have gone AWOL.”
I put down the phone, the balloon of renewed warmth deflated. Playing the video seemed to have revived feelings in me that were not to be reciprocated by him. He sounded pissed off. I don’t know if it was at me for having played the video, or me for having denied him the chance to use it all those years ago. I’m not used to Joel being the stroppy one—he’s the dependable one, the unchanging one, the loyal one. I’m the one with emotions and grievances and anger. I watch the video again and instead of feeling the love that I did five minutes ago, I feel sadness about a relationship where things could be different but never are.
There’s nothing to do but get on. I shall have a clean and uncluttered house if nothing else. I finish going through the tapes and throw out the video recorder and its attendant cables. I decide then to do the blackspot of Joel’s chest of drawers. Maybe I’m trying to eliminate him already in anticipation of The List’s final damning conclusion. The top of the chest of drawers has the usual collection of coins, receipts and tissues. I check inside the first of his drawers to see if there are any more receipts and find a further two dozen in a jumble of paperwork, along with an envelope containing a few more. I close it again, then decide that I might as well tackle them for the sake of our bank balance if nothing else. Every receipt unclaimed for is the price of a school trip or more.
I dump the whole lot on the floor and begin to make some piles according to their dates. Anything older than three months goes into one big pile, which is too late for claiming. Joel will get a minus point on The List for every ₤10 of unclaimed expenses I find, wasteful idiot that he is.
I lose myself in the paperwork and the radio, finding solace in a task that can be completed, unlike the endless groundhog day of most domestic tasks, the washing and the wiping. May’s pile comes to over ₤100, June is maybe more, April far less. As I whisk through the bits of paper I find myself thinking of those months. All time is now measured by The List, just as my babies’ development used to be remembered in terms of what they could do on various holidays as our photo albums jump between beach and birthday shots.
There was that week in April when he had to go to sort out a floundering production up near Manchester. That week before half term back in May when he was out every night and I was left doing solo bath- and bedtime and trying to get everything washed before we went to Mitzi’s house. The pile for June is getting larger and flicking through them provides an aide-mémoire to the last month, reminding me of all the times Joel was out and got back tipsy or even drunk. June was a very bad month.
I pull out another receipt. June the fourth was that particularly bad night, I think, when I lost it with the boys, Gabe smeared poo on the walls and I felt myself delight in holding their arms a little bit too tightly when I dragged them off to bed. Joel came back well after the boys had gone to sleep, all cheery and beery. Out with the whole crew was what he told me. I look at the receipt from that night, expecting to see the usual roster of beers for the boys and bottles of wine for the girls. Instead, I see four champagne cocktails and a meze selection with the name of a very chic boutique hotel emblazoned at the top, coming to a grand total of over ₤70. I try to think who he’s working with at the moment and who would have ordered a champagne cocktail. It seems unlikely since, Joel excepted, they’re all laddish types and would probably deride such a drink as “gay.” I don’t get out much with work anymore, but this is more like the sort of drinks that you would have to celebrate a commission, or if you were schmoozing a reluctant celebrity to take part in whatever lame reality format was currently under discussion. Again, I couldn’t think what production that would have been in relation to.
I stare at it for a while, feeling sure that it’s telling me something, if only I could interpret the oracle. I go to the laptop and see what I logged for that night. Not very much, as it turns out, though I remember I had intended to punish Joel for forcing me into punishing the boys. I stare at the computer screen for clues. He came in that night very cheerful, conciliatory even, expressing enthusiasm for the nit comb. Was there nothing List-worthy that he did on his return? He’s usually good for at least an emptying out of the balled-up tissues and random receipts onto the chest of drawers, but here—nothing. Nothing. That’s it, nothing. Nothing is my clue. He threw the receipt on top of his drawers and then he put this receipt away, into the envelope tucked in the drawer. He never, ever does that. Joel is nothing if not reliably unreliable. He didn’t want me to see this receipt.
I look at the receipt again. This is not the receipt of some celebratory after-work drinks or even the schmoozing of a contact. This is the sort of receipt you’d be left with after a first date. I keep staring at The List, hoping it will offer me a further explanation. Something else leaps out at me.
Leaves the plasticky packets from disposable contact lenses lying around.
Joel doesn’t wear contact lenses. I do.
There’s another.
Buys extraneous Tupperware.
Joel has never bought a transparent plastic food-storage container in his life. I see another, one that proves beyond doubt what I realize I have been suspecting for weeks now.
Sighs in over-dramatic way when tidying up.
I hear a key at the door and then footsteps coming up the stairs. Gabe and Rufus leap into my arms and show me their purchases from the museum shop, where they spend the bulk of their time on these educational sorties. Joel sees me with The List open and I look at him.
“You found it, didn’t you—you’ve read it?” I ask.
“And you’ve found my contributions to it. The next point I was going to add was going to be ‘Makes self-righteous little lists of partner’s misdemeanors without ever questioning own behavior.’ ”
“I can’t believe you’ve been snooping through my computer. That’s like reading someone’s diary.”
“Come off it, Mary, you didn’t exactly make much of an effort to hide it. On some level, I think you wanted me to find it.”
“Much like this,” I say, waving the receipt from the fourth of June. He comes closer to peer at it and reddens.
“Oh,” is all he can manage, and that short word tells me I had been right to suspect. “Where did you find that?”
“You didn’t exactly make much of an effort to hide it,” I parrot. “On some level, I think you wanted me to find it.”
He shakes his head.
“We’ve got a lot to talk about,” I say.
* * *
We make it through to the boys’ bedtime with much vent
riloquism.
“Gabe, what was the best thing about your day?” I ask.
“Yes,” says Joel. “Gabe, was it the bus or the museum or the lunch that came in a cardboard box?”
“Did you eat much lunch, Gabe, because you’re not eating much now?”
“Rufus, will you pass these plates to your mother? Good boy.”
We silently clean up after them as they watch television.
“Gabe and Rufus, who do you want to do your bath? Mommy or Daddy?” I ask. “Why not Mommy, since you’ve been with Daddy all day.”
“And I’d love to read you two your books,” says Joel.
“Rufus, do make sure you actually do some reading yourself. Show your daddy how good you are at reading now.”
I usually long for their sleep, but I find I am dreading it and pour two large glasses of wine in preparation. I am onto the glass that I poured for Joel by the time he gets downstairs, half an hour later than we have usually put the boys down. He’s procrastinating as much as I am.
“I’ve had a bit of head start,” I say.
He swigs back a glass in compensation.
“Let’s talk about this,” I say, holding the receipt.
“No, let’s talk about your thing,” he says. “Your computer thing.”
“I said it first.”
“Turn around, touch the ground…” he attempts.
“Toss for it. Heads or tails? Bagsy heads. Heads it is, I win. We need to talk about this receipt.”
“I don’t understand what you mean,” he says.
He’s always been a rubbish liar. I loved his inability to dissemble at the beginning. “Yes, you do. What’s going on?” I wave the receipt again.
“I went out for some drinks with someone from work.”
“Some one. One person from work.”
“Yes. It’s not a crime.”
“A woman?” He doesn’t answer. “Let’s be more accurate, shall we? A girl?”
He finally nods. “I didn’t do anything. What are you suggesting?”
“I don’t know. Nothing. Well, I would have said nothing, but you’re being so weird that I’m thinking maybe something.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, whatever you do with nubile girls from the office after you’ve downed some expensive champagne cocktails and a meze selection.”
He makes a puffing sound with his mouth in dismissal and then moves into a Southern drawl. “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” He giggles nervously.
“It’s not funny, don’t put on a silly voice at me. Especially not a bad Bill Clinton impression. He was bloody lying. Is that what you’re telling me? That you didn’t have sex with her, but she gave you a blow job?”
“No!” He is outraged. Like I’m the one in the wrong.
“Enough of the semantics, just tell me what’s going on.”
“Nothing is going on.”
“You’re doing it again, you’re saying ‘is’ so as to avoid lying, but something did go on, didn’t it? Something went on.”
“Not really.” He slumps—all the fight’s gone out of him. The atmosphere has changed. I know now that the interrogation must end and the gentle prodding must begin. It pains me to repress my anger, but the longer I do so the more I’ll hear. “Tell me.”
“There’s a girl at work, one of the researchers.”
“Name?”
“Kitty.”
It would be, I think.
“She laughs at my jokes.”
It’s so hard to stop myself from mocking. “Right. And?”
“It’s not like I fancied her, particularly. It might sound strange to you, but physically I still fancy you the most. I’ve never been attracted to anyone the way I was, the way I am, to you.”
“She’s young, though, isn’t she?”
“I suppose. Yes, twenty-three or twenty-four, I think.”
I feel a pain in my stomach. “Go on.”
“She just made me feel like I was great. That I wasn’t just the most irritating man on the planet, but that I was funny and fun and clever. Almost everything she said started with the words ‘You’re so right.’ Or no talk, just laughter. Everything you say starts with ‘Can’t you just…?’ or ‘Why don’t you ever…?’ ”
“And?”
“It made coming home more bearable to have that to look forward to when I got to work the next day. Being made to feel like I had some worth. It was like swimming in a heated pool on a cold day—I dreaded getting out and having to face the freeze of being with you.”
It’s my fault, then, I stop myself from saying. “So what happened?”
“I found myself spending time with her. Going for lunch. Innocent.”
“Innocent,” I repeat.
“Nothing happened, Mary, not really.” He reaches for my hands.
I shake him off. “Something happened.”
“I would never jeopardize this house, this home, the boys. I would never do that.”
“But you did?”
“No, you did, Mary.”
“What do you mean?”
“I found your list thing, your catalog of my faults.”
“I know that. But how?”
“The night Gabe got ill; when you didn’t answer your phone, I thought I’d better look on the Net to see what I should be doing. I’d left my laptop at work so I used yours. You don’t usually leave it lying around, but you had. I clicked on the most recently opened document by mistake, and something called something like ‘May home work’ came up.”
“May Good Housekeeping.”
“That’s the one. I found this weird Excel document and I just saw something about wet towels, then I went to the health site to try to find out about rashes and forgot about the document, until later, when I saw you looking at me and then typing things. Next time you were out, I had a look at it.”
“About three weeks ago,” I say, thinking of his behavior and matching it to The List, the sudden flurry of positive points.
“Yes.”
“Would you read someone else’s diary if you found it hidden in a cupboard?”
“You could have password-protected it. On some level, you wanted me to see it.”
“On some level, I don’t know how to change the password on my computer. That document was buried about five layers back.”
“Well, I found it.”
“Just like I found the receipt of your little jaunt with Kathy, sorry, Kitty.”
“Bring it back to her.”
“Yes, I am bringing it back to her. We are talking about you and her first, then we’ll move on to The List.”
“But they’re connected, aren’t they? I worked out that it was a test for me, though I wasn’t quite sure of the scoring system or what was going to happen if I failed. What was going to happen if I failed?”
I shrug. “Don’t know.”
“Or if I passed? You were going to be nice to me again?”
“Back to the girl,” I say.
“Do you not know what was going to happen or are you not telling me?”
As he asks me, I realize that I don’t know, really. What would have happened had he passed was even more opaque than if he failed. I can’t tell him I thought about divorce because I don’t think I ever did. Not truly. “Look, let’s talk about the girl and then we can talk about The List.”
“OK. At first I tried to do all the good things on your list, like complimenting you and doing cooking and craft with the boys. And clearing up the mess afterward, obviously. And I’d go and check your spreadsheet and see if you’d noticed these things and most of the time, you had, you were adding them on. Or taking them away, whatever way you want to look at it.”
I nod. “It’s very fair, The List.”
“But I also noticed that it didn’t make much difference. Not in comparison to all the things I was doing wrong. But I noticed that the more I was trying to be nice, the more crimes I seemed to commit just by breathing. So
I thought, fuck it, I might as well do them all anyway and then see what happens.”
“So that’s when you started pissing around doing the same misdemeanor over and over again. Making the tally go haywire.”
“Yes.”
“So that then you’d be allowed to get off with that girl, Carly.”
“Kitty.”
“Get off with Kitty in the meantime.”
“What do you mean?”
“Doing that old male trick of behaving so badly that your girlfriend dumps you and then acting all wounded and hurt when she does.”
“I didn’t want you to dump me. I don’t want you to dump me. The boys.”
“So did you sleep with Kitty?” I hiss her name.
“No, I didn’t sleep with her.”
“But you did get off with her?”
“Once. That night you’re talking about, the one with the champagne and the meze selection. It was very garlicky. And very small—you know what these posh hotels are like.”
“No, not really. Only then?” My head is trying to understand the chronology. “Was that before you found The List?”
“Twice, it happened twice. Yes, that’s right. I was determined that nothing should ever happen after that time, I felt so ashamed. But then, I went back after I read your list.”
“And did what? Kissed? Felt her up? Oral? What?”
“Kissed.”
“With tongues?”
“Yes, obviously with tongues.”
“Don’t you dare get stroppy with me.”
“I’m stroppy with you?” he says. “Mary, you spend your life in barely disguised fury with me.”
“Is it any wonder, with you spending your time snogging teenagers?”
“She’s twentysomething. And it was once.” I look at him. “OK, twice.”
“It doesn’t matter how many times you got off with her. It’s the fact that you wanted to. It’s the fact that you wanted to be with her and not with me. It’s the fact that I don’t find you funny when I’m knackered. It’s the fact that you were glad when you saw my list because you thought it gave you permission to sleep with her, didn’t you? It absolved you of your guilt in snogging her and gave you the green light to shag her. And what stopped you?”
The Pile of Stuff at the Bottom of the Stairs Page 27
