Mr. Commitment

by Mike Gayle

  “Tell me,” she demanded finally.

  I deliberated over her request and decided against it. We’d been together four years. We were planning to get married. Now wasn’t the right time for either of us to start telling The Truth.

  “Look it’s nothing,” I said testily. “I’m okay.”

  “Tell me,” she cajoled, narrowing her eyes at me.

  I reviewed my position. I wasn’t really giving her a chance. It was unfair to act like she was a walking bundle of unreasonability waiting for an excuse to explode.

  I took a deep breath. “You know I had a gig last night?”

  “You said it went really well.”

  “Yeah, it did. It’s just that . . . well, afterward this girl . . . well, woman, I suppose . . . the one who Mark knows, who needed a comedian for her TV show . . . well, she was there. Turns out she’s a TV presenter.”

  “Oh, yeah?” said Mel inquisitively. “What did she want?”

  “She said she liked my act and invited me to audition for the TV show she works for.”

  “And?”

  I weighed up Mel’s “and” in my head. It would’ve been much easier if there hadn’t been room for an “and.” I didn’t want this to be one of those situations where five minutes later I’d be wishing I’d chosen the LEAVE WELL ALONE option. But I wanted to be honest. In fact I had a deep-seated need to be honest.

  “Well, I don’t know if it was just in my head, but I think she might have been flirting with me.”

  “Flirting with you?”

  “And she asked me out,” I blurted.

  “And?”

  “And nothing,” I said confidently. I was pleased with myself. I’d come up trumps.

  “So why are you telling me all this?”

  “No reason.”

  “But you never tell me anything like that unless I drag it out of you. What’s so special about this woman? Apart from the fact that she’s on TV, of course.”

  “Nothing,” I said, endeavoring to disguise the worry creeping into my voice as masculine indifference. “There’s nothing special about her. I was just making conversation.”

  “Why does she fancy you? She hardly knows you.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you tell her about me?”

  “Yes.” I nodded.

  “So why did she ask you out?”

  “I dunno,” I said, shrugging my innocence.

  “Did you make her laugh?”

  “No . . . yes . . . a little bit.”

  “How many times?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Is she pretty?”

  I had to be deadly careful here. Too attractive and Mel would be jealous. Too ugly and Mel would think that I was lying to cover up the fact that she was TV’s Hottest Totty. “Average really. She was all right, I suppose, if you like that kind of thing.”

  “She can’t have been that plain if you’re telling me about her. You’re feeling guilty, Duffy. So what else are you hiding?”

  “Nothing.” I wavered. I was seconds away from confessing to anything just to stop this torture. “I was only making conversation!” I protested. “Telling you all the stuff that happens in my life that you say I never tell you. But if you’re going to accuse me of things every time I tell you what I’ve been doing, then we won’t get very far, will we?”

  Mel started giggling wildly. “Good grief! I’m only pulling your plonker, Duff! I know all about Alexa. Her card is marked, I can tell you.”

  “You know?”

  “Everything,” she said, leaning over the side of the sofa and rummaging about in her bag. “Still, you did leave out one small fact.”

  “What?” I said warily.

  “That she’s TV’s Hottest Totty!” she said, brandishing the men’s magazine Alexa had posed for. “Apparently she described you as ‘cute in a little-boy-lost kind of way,’ but you turned her down because you said you were staying in with me, your girlfriend, which I might add was the right response.”

  “How do you know all this?” I said, trying desperately not to show any hint of joy at being described as “cute” by someone as fabulously gorgeous as Alexa.

  Mel pecked me on the cheek and giggled. “I have eyes everywhere!” She laughed. “The boring answer is that Alexa called Mark and then Mark called Julie at work and told her and then Julie called me about a millisecond after and probably added a bit more to the story to make it more juicy.”

  “So she didn’t fancy me?” I said, trying to sound relieved.

  “Oh yes she did,” said Mel knowingly. “Julie wouldn’t embellish that kind of detail.”

  “So if you knew all the time why did you put me through all this?”

  “I’ve been waiting all evening for you to tell me. I thought I was going to explode with excitement.” She stopped talking and carefully examined the two-dimensional Alexa in the magazine. “Granted she’s got a pretty face and a nice pair of bazookas, but her teeth are crooked, her bum’s much bigger than mine, and green lingerie really doesn’t suit her!” She creased up into a ball of laughter. “My boyfriend chatted up by TV’s Hottest Totty!” She tittered, failing to regain her composure. “I quite like the idea of having to fight for you. Makes you seem more . . . I don’t know . . . interesting!” She kissed me and then added, “It almost makes you seem sexy.”

  “Almost?”

  “Nearly,” she purred.

  “So you’re not annoyed, then?”

  “Of course not. I trust you completely.”

  I hugged her and kissed her firmly. Staring over her shoulder, once again I began to ponder the other skeletons in my mental cupboard, but decided to save them for some other time.

  Later that night, still lying on the sofa with the TV on in the background, I looked down at Mel, who was lying next to me with her eyes closed. I whispered her name quietly to see if she was asleep. She wasn’t.

  She opened her eyes. “You can turn over and watch Frasier,” she said, yawning.

  “That’s not what I wanted,” I said quietly. “I still don’t understand. How did Mark come to have a tape of my stand-up to give to Alexa?”

  “I gave it to him,” confessed Mel sheepishly. “I knew you’d never get round to sending it off yourself. I’m sorry, Duff. I’m an interfering old cow.”

  “Don’t be silly,” I said. “You’re right: I should’ve got round to sending the tape ages ago. I dunno what’s wrong with me sometimes.”

  “You just got a little bit scared, that’s all.” She kissed me sleepily. “I want to do everything I can to help you. You think that I take what you do for granted, but I don’t. I know you sometimes think that I don’t think you’re funny, but you are. You make me laugh all the time—although not always intentionally. Just promise me even when we’re old and gray that you’ll keep making me laugh until milk comes out of my nose.”

  I looked at her puzzled.

  “You don’t remember, do you? Last summer. We were round at my flat and I was feeling really down about work. You were trying your best to cheer me up and it wasn’t working because I was being a miserable old bag, and then just as I began drinking a glass of milk you leaped up and down on the sofa like a chimpanzee, singing ‘New York, New York.’ I laughed so hard milk came out of my nose.”

  “I’ll try my best.” I paused. “Mel, thanks for . . . you know . . . everything you’ve done.” Words seemed to fail me.

  “Don’t thank me.” She smiled. “Just get me that Ferrari!”

  This isn’t about wardrobes

  The alarm clock in Mel’s bedroom went off at 7:30 A.M. I took a long hard squint at it before entombing it beneath a large pile of clothes. It’s Saturday morning, I thought groggily, no one should be up this early on a Saturday. Out of the only eye I was willing to open this early in the morning, I observed an already up-and-out-of-bed Mel keenly.

  “Time to get up,” she said, coyly beckoning me out of bed. She was wearing a long misshapen Snoopy T-shi
rt and nothing else. She looked crumpled and yet strangely alluring, so much so that I was half tempted to leap up and chase her around the room Benny Hill style. Unfortunately, given how early it was I lacked the strength of will to execute my plan, so instead, as my libido faded to black I resolved not to reply, closing my eyes instead in a bid to feign sleep. Maybe now she’ll leave me in peace, I thought, turning over.

  She didn’t. Instead, her countermeasure was to wrench the king-sized duck-down duvet off the bed, exposing my body to the cold of the room, and in a move carefully calculated to wind me up shouted, “Time to get up!” again in a chirpy singsong voice, whilst dancing coquettishly just out of reach. Without saying another word, I made my way to the bathroom and took a shower.

  My rude awakening was based on the fact that it was now March and six weeks had passed since we’d become engaged. It was time for us to plan the wedding. We’d already settled on a date in October the following year and her parents’ local parish church. My only suggestion for the big day—that we have a disco for the evening do—was shot down by Mel for being “tacky above and beyond the call of duty.” I couldn’t believe it. As far as I was concerned, a wedding reception without a mobile DJ playing the Commodores’ “Three Times a Lady” and Dexy’s Midnight Runners’ “Come on Eileen” just wasn’t a wedding reception. Mel, however, wanted something more tasteful, like a string quartet or a band, and wasn’t going to budge. Thus began a minor argument which concluded in a win for her corner, when I gave up after ten minutes of going backward and forward having realized The Simpsons was on TV and I’d already missed five minutes.

  These minor wedding decisions were only the beginning. There were the catering, flower arranging, photographers, wedding video, hotel and honeymoon booking, reception-room scouting and booking, car hire and cake makers all to be organized and paid for. Mel had a thick loose-leaf folder with the words “Wedding Planner” emblazoned across it in swirling gold lettering—a present from my mum. Weekends—once a time to relax and renew one’s batteries after a week of work—were now more toilsome than days in the office. Weekends were now officially Duffy and Mel days—devoted to the pursuit of marital harmony.

  Where are we going today?” I asked Mel sulkily, having showered, shaved and sufficiently warmed up my personality.

  “We talked about it last night.”

  “We did?” I tried to remember the previous night. All I managed to recall was eating Chinese and falling asleep in front of the telly.

  “Yes. While we were watching the news. I told you we needed to go there to put things on our wedding list and your reply was, ‘Whatever you want.’ ”

  “Oh yeah,” I said, bluffing total recall. “We’re going to . . .”

  “Ikea.”

  I’d never been inside an Ikea before. I’d been as far as the car park on a couple of occasions, but I’d always preferred to wait in the car as though repelled by an invisible force field. I didn’t understand the concept of shopping for home furnishings at all. To me a chair was a chair. A table was a table. Curtains were curtains. But to Mel these things took on a mysterious significance which I couldn’t begin to comprehend. To her a chair wasn’t a chair unless it was a set of six and matched the napkins. A table wasn’t a table unless it was large enough to seat six to eight people at a dinner party. Curtains weren’t just curtains, they were the critical focal point of a room. “Make a mistake with your curtains,” she once informed Nosferatu, “and you might as well give up altogether.”

  My heart sank the moment we arrived at Ikea. Such was the allure of home furnishings, that like salmon in search of their spawning ground, teeming multitudes of Proper Couples had felt the mysterious urge to come here. We queued for ten minutes just to get into the car park. After that we had to drive around like buzzards circling wounded antelope in search of the last parking space in the Western Hemisphere. Still, there were brief moments of satisfaction to be had. I spotted a parking space only seconds before a couple in a Vauxhall Tigra; the race was on but even in Mel’s 2CV there was no way they could beat me. As I eased into the space and checked the rearview mirror to gloat, I was just in time to see the male driver of the Vauxhall Tigra being harangued by his other half for not being quick enough off the mark.

  “What are we doing here, Mel?” I whined miserably, as we came through the electronic doors and she put one of those huge shapeless yellow bags on her shoulder. I’d meant the question metaphysically rather than literally.

  “Shopping, stupid,” joked Mel, choosing to take my words at face value.

  This one sentence said more about the gap in understanding between Mel and me than anything else in our lives. This was different. This was innate. Shopping to her wasn’t a means to an end—it was an end in itself. She was on a spiritual journey, searching for that elusive something or somethings that would help her to make sense of the world and her place in it. Why she needed me to join her on this journey I failed to understand, but I was there, and we were getting married so I opted to make the most of it.

  Within minutes Mel had a look of postcoital bliss over her face as she glided from sofa to armchair to futon and back again, casually stroking their material as if they were fondly remembered lovers.

  “So what do you think?”

  She was now pointing to a beige object of roughly the same dimensions as the lifts we had at work. By the look on her face I gathered she’d been in conversation with me about this item of furniture for some time. To have admitted my folly would’ve been, well, sheer folly. So I bluffed.

  “It’s nice.”

  She gave me The Look.

  “What have I said?”

  Silence.

  “What have I said?”

  “You know,” she said, barely moving her lips.

  “What?”

  Silence.

  “What?”

  “Saying it’s ‘nice’ like that. I’m not stupid, Duffy. If you didn’t want to come why are you here? Can’t you just make the effort this one time?”

  “What’s wrong with it being a ‘nice’ wardrobe? It is a ‘nice’ wardrobe. It’s pleasant, agreeable, congenial and pleasing to the eye.” I stepped forward and ran my fingers along its surface, attempting to empathize. “Smooth.”

  A smile gradually cracked across her face, which eventually manifested itself into a toothy grin. I’d won her back from the edge of an argument, which was no mean feat. I gave myself a pat on the back as if I’d just defused the timer on six tonnes of plastic explosive.

  “I think it would look great in our bedroom,” said Mel, still examining the wardrobe. Mel had been talking about “our” bedroom for a while now. She wanted to hand in her notice on her Clapham flat and move in with me and Dan so we could save up enough money for a deposit on a place of our own. While it was true that my flat was cheaper, it was also true that Mel would hate living with me and Dan. Mel was allergic to slovenliness at the best of times and, well, the flat Dan and I inhabited was pretty much the shelter of the slovenly. She’d be fighting a losing battle that would eventually drive her insane.

  I looked at the wardrobe again. In Mel’s bedroom it would’ve looked fine with her antique pine dressing table, framed Hopper prints and lilac walls. But in my bedroom it would’ve looked crap because it would never go with my off-white walls, Incredible Hulk poster and bookshelves littered with CDs, records, video console games and my ever-growing collection of comedy videos. I had no concept of what “our” bedroom would look like, but there was little doubt in my mind it wouldn’t look like my bedroom. Not if Mel had anything to do with it.

  Out of curiosity I read the label on the wardrobe and was horrified. “We can’t buy it anyway. It’s a flatpack wardrobe. Remember the flatpack chest of drawers we tried to assemble that one bank holiday? It took us three days just to find the screws and another three days to give up and chuck it underneath your bed!”

  It was a joke of sorts, although to be truthful neither of us had the time or p
atience for flatpack furniture. Mel, however, didn’t laugh. Instead she fell into the kind of silence you’d imagine fills the air before a volcano erupts. I was scared.

  “I’m sorry, babe, it’s just that—”

  I didn’t get the chance to finish my sentence. Mel turned and walked briskly away, and I chased after her berating myself for not choosing the option marked LEAVE WELL ALONE.

  Ikea was now overspilling with examples from the entire couple rainbow. Ones in matching jumpers, ones with matching kids, odd ones, young ones, old ones—and they were all in my way. I lost sight of Mel whilst trying to get round an Indian couple wheeling their children along in two of Ikea’s pushchairs. By the time I’d apologized my way through them she’d disappeared. I raced frantically through Beds, Office Furniture and Storage Units before I caught sight of her in Dining Rooms.

  “Mel!” I called out after her, but she refused to acknowledge me. “Mel, wait!” I shouted.

  A blond man wearing a herringbone jacket and jeans, with a small boy on his shoulders and his heavily pregnant significant other by his side, tapped Mel on the arm and pointed to me. She stood still but the flow of couples was coming too fast for her to remain stationary for long. She stepped out of the couple slipstream wearily and sat down on a dining room chair that was part of one of the displays. It was a sleek modern-look dining room with a frosted-glass table. A perforated metallic black lampshade hung above it; Swedish novels lined the “Billy” bookcase; a large sign pointed out the wooden-effect flooring was from the Tundra range at £15.00 a square meter.

  I pulled up a chair opposite her. “Look, I’m sorry,” I whispered—we were now attracting a considerable amount of attention from passing couples. “It was a stupid thing to say. Of course we can get the wardrobe. Please.”

  “This isn’t about wardrobes!” said Mel through clenched teeth, her voice increasing in volume and anger with each syllable. “It’s about you and your attitude. All I want is a bit of support. Some reassurance. Is that too much to ask?”