Marshmallows for Breakfast

by Dorothy Koomson

  Ashlyn rolled her eyes. “Right, and you know how a five-year-old thinks, do you?”

  “I don't need to know how a five-year-old thinks to know that you're terrorizing all of us because of your drinking and that I've had enough. This has got to stop.”

  “I'm terrorizing this family?” Ashlyn slapped her dripping wet hand against her chest, incredulous at what she was hearing. “At least I'm here,” she spat. “At least I don't spend every spare second at work or hiding upstairs.”

  “Yes, at least you're here. You're here to drive the car drunk with our son in the back, and crash it into a tree, and pretend it didn't happen. You're here to throw up on our daughter in the middle of the night because you're so drunk but you don't bother to apologize. You're here to dance on the table at my last work party and then fall off and twist your ankle. You're here to make phone calls in the middle of the night to your mother but leave me to explain what they were about. Yes, you're here, Ashlyn, and aren't we all so grateful for it.”

  The indignation Ashlyn felt melted away into hard disbelief, made her angry. “I. Said. I. Was. Sorry,” she hissed. Her body stiffened, her top lip curled back into a sneer. “Is that how you make yourself feel like a man, Kyle? Remembering every little thing I've ever done wrong?”

  Is drinking how you feel like a woman? Kyle almost spat back at her, but pulled himself up short, stopped himself. “If you were really sorry, Ashlyn, you'd stop drinking.”

  Her eyes rolled upwards again and Kyle felt the urge to shout at her. To tell her to stop acting like an oblivious teenager, to take this seriously.

  “I don't drink that much,” she said. “No more than any other normal person.”

  “Normal?” Kyle's voice rose a notch. He stepped forward, grabbed Ashlyn's arm. It was the first time he'd ever grabbed her like that. He tugged her towards the kitchen door, not looking at her shocked face, not caring that her body had gone stiff under his hold. Kyle wrestled the back door open, dragged her out into the light, not caring that she gasped and cringed at the brightness outside. He pulled her across the path outside their house, onto the lawn, then pulled her left towards Summer's cubby house, the large plywood hut that he'd designed and built. The red roof came off, the back of it had hinges that allowed it to be folded back like a concertina. Behind the cubby house was a flower bed that was planted with thick shrubbery and violets.

  “That's normal is it?” Kyle spat, letting go of Ashlyn.

  Amongst the greenery of the shrubs were five green bottles. Five green beer bottles carefully placed to blend in amongst the leaves. Ashlyn's heartbeat quickened. How had he found them? She'd only put them there temporarily. She couldn't very well put them in the recycling box because Kyle would see. She couldn't put them in the bin for the same reason. He wouldn't understand. He didn't understand. He didn't know what it was like and all he did was look down on her so she had to hide the evidence. And not even in the studio because she suspected he went looking through there, too. This was her temporary hiding place, you couldn't see them unless you were looking. And why was he looking? Why was he always checking up on her? Making her feel bad. It wasn't like she was doing anything wrong.

  “Hiding bottles is normal, is it?” Kyle repeated.

  “I wouldn't have to hide them if you weren't such a drink Nazi,” Ashlyn accused. “You're always on my case every time I even look at a drink so I have to hide them. If you didn't do that, I wouldn't have to do that.”

  For a moment, Kyle wavered, wondered if she was right. If he didn't always notice when she drank, would she be hiding the bottles and sneaking over to her studio to drink? Would she be that bad if he wasn't that bad? Stop it, he told himself. Stop it. She drank too much. Normal people could stop after a couple. Normal people could go for a few days without needing a drink. Normal people didn't need a drink. Normal people don't commit so many crimes against their loved ones and their own personal values while under the influence or coming down from the influence and still go back for more.

  Kyle's wife was an alcoholic.

  Every time he thought the word, what came to mind was an old man with grime-smeared features, dirt- encrusted clothes, sitting in the gutter, swigging from a can of extra strength. The reality was an alcoholic was his bright, vivacious wife—the woman who could stop a room simply by walking into it, who could walk around the supermarket in jogging bottoms and sloppy T-shirt and blend in, who had given birth to his two children.

  The woman Kyle loved was an alcoholic. He had to accept that. After all this time he had to accept that. She had to accept that. He had to force her to accept that. This was the moment he had to step up. Stop pretending the life they'd been living these past few years was fine. He owed it to Jaxon. He owed it to Summer. He owed it to himself. He owed it to Ashlyn.

  “It's not my fault,” Kyle stated, steeling himself. “It's not my fault. You're an alcoholic, Ashlyn.”

  She rolled her eyes, shook her head.

  “You're an alcoholic,” he repeated. “You have to get help.”

  “Grow up,” she spat and turned on her heels and marched back into the house, slamming the kitchen door behind her. Kyle stared after her. Not sure of what to do. He didn't want to argue with her, but he'd started on this path. He'd started on this path of honesty so he had to follow it and see what lay at the end.

  Her hands were submerged in the washing up again. She lifted a plate, snatched up the sponge and started scrubbing at it.

  “Ashlyn—”

  “I don't want to talk about this anymore,” she interjected. “You've obviously got some sort of problem and you're trying to push it onto me.”

  “If you don't get help, I want you to leave,” Kyle said, only a touch above a whisper. He wanted to know what it sounded like out loud. He'd never said it aloud. It was something that had crossed his mind a few times, but had been fleeting and whimsical. He had never grabbed hold of it and held it, turned it over, run the fingers of his mind over the grooves of the words, examined it and got to know it. Got to know what the meanings behind the words were. What every word would result in.

  He said it quietly, but she heard. She heard and she gasped. Ashlyn threw down the plate, not caring this time that water splashed out onto her. She spun to look at her husband. He was standing perfectly still, his feet placed firmly on the varnished wood floor, his arms folded across his chest. He'd lost weight, she realized. She hadn't looked at him properly for months. Why would she look at him when he was always there? He was a presence, one that was part of her life; a shape, a form that answered if she asked a question, who asked questions and waited for a reply, but didn't need close scrutiny. Every day she'd been sleeping beside this man and he'd changed. Kyle had lost weight and she hadn't realized. His face was thinner, he had shadows under his eyes, he'd had his hair cut, not razored but shorter. And he was missing something. His confidence? His laid-back air? The light in his eyes? Whatever it was that made him Kyle had gone. Had it disappeared overnight, or seeped out over the past few months when she hadn't been looking? A thought niggled at her conscience: maybe it was something to do with her. Maybe she had done it. No, that was nonsense. It wasn't her fault. If Kyle had changed, it was down to him. And she resented him for making her think it could be her fault. Yes, he'd changed, he made her feel rotten. All the time he made her feel rotten. He used to make her feel wonderful, he used to complete her. She used to think she'd die without him. Now he just made her feel awful. Is it any wonder she needed a drink or two? When this man did that to her?

  “What did you say?” she breathed.

  “I said …,” Kyle hesitated, could he say it again? Could he go through with this? “I said … I said …” He bit down inside, of course he could go through with it. He had to. “I said if you don't get help I want you to leave. I'm not putting the kids through this anymore. I'm not going through this anymore. Get help or leave.”

  “You think I'm going to leave the kids here with you? You'd go crazy in a min
ute.”

  “We'd work it out. You have to get help, Ashlyn. I don't want you to leave, I want you to get help. But if you don't, then I want you to leave.”

  “You can't have the kids,” she said.

  “No one would give you custody, not with all the things you've done while you've been drinking.”

  “It's called a residency order, actually,” she snarled. “It's not called custody, it's called a residency order. How do I know that? Because I wanted to leave you before. When I was doing everything and you were doing nothing I wondered if it wouldn't be better if you weren't here permanently. So I found out about it. But I'm not like you, I wouldn't go through with it. Because no matter how much of a shit you are, I wouldn't hurt you like you obviously have no problems hurting me.”

  Kyle didn't even flinch. He was like a pillar of rock. Nothing she said could penetrate this exterior. Not for the first time she wondered what she had to do to get through to him. He seriously didn't give a damn that she was going to leave him. He didn't give a damn that she decided not to. He didn't give a damn about anything to do with her. Had he ever?

  “And they would give them to me, Kyle, because I'm here for them. I work around them, I work half the night so that I can be here during the day. I make their meals, I pick them up when they fall over. I'm always there when they go to bed. I love them. Of course I'll get the kids, because I'm their mother.“

  “So why don't you try acting like it? Put them first for a change.” His arms folded tightly across his chest, Kyle spun on his heels and walked out.

  She couldn't know. She couldn't know that he'd almost said he didn't mean it. That he couldn't live without her and the kids. That he was nothing without her. She couldn't know that the idea of her leaving him was something he couldn't bear. Those days when she took Jaxon and Summer to visit her mother he thought he'd go crazy at the quiet in the house, that he'd wander from room to room, sitting on their beds, picking up their toys, hugging their clothes, remembering their conversations. She couldn't know that if she didn't get help, he might not be able to make her leave.

  “It was OK for a while, after that. Surprisingly. She went to meetings for alcoholics. The very next day. I think I'd scared her as much as she scared me with her admission. She went to meetings every day and stopped drinking. I don't know why, but I thought it'd get magically better. You know, she stops drinking, all our problems go away.

  “Not exactly like that. She was in a permanent bad mood, almost like a permanent hangover. But at least she wasn't drinking. We started arguing more, but at least we were communicating.” Kyle rolled onto his back, spread himself out on the picnic blanket, stared deep into the sky as though he wanted to be there. As though his place was amongst the clouds rather than here on earth with me and the kids. “Then I messed up.” His eyes glazed over as he immersed himself further in the world above us. He sighed.

  “Boy did I mess up. She asked me to come to some meetings with her. But…” His voice trailed away. I watched him. He was obviously suffering as he remembered. “Couldn't do it, Kendra. The thought of sitting there, listening to people talk about why they drank. Why it was their partner's fault. I didn't want to hear it. I didn't want someone looking at me sitting beside her and judging me.”

  “I don't think that's how it works,” I said. “They don't apportion blame to anyone.”

  “No, it probably isn't. But I didn't want to find out. I judged myself for not saying something sooner about what she was doing. I judged myself, I didn't need anyone else to do it.”

  “And it was a way of making sure she got her punishment, making her go to meetings with the threat of losing everything hanging over her,” I said.

  Kyle turned to me, eyed me with trepidation. Wondering if I was condemning him.

  “Not judging you,” I added. “I mean, she put you through hell, Kyle, you wouldn't be human if you weren't pissed off with her. And not that keen on helping her out, even if it meant she was getting better. She became an alcoholic alone, why shouldn't she get better alone? And, if you're blaming yourself on top of that, I'm not surprised you didn't want to go along.”

  “I did want her to get better. And I helped as much as I could—I didn't drink, I asked her how the meetings were going, asked her how she was feeling. But I couldn't do what she wanted. I couldn't help her in that way.

  “When I said no, Ashlyn thought I'd betrayed her. That I'd forced her to do this thing and now I wasn't supporting her. We had a few rows about it, nothing over the top, more low- level ones. No real shouting, just sniping. We stopped talking except if it was about the things to do with the kids. Then, one night, she just didn't come to bed. Then another night, and another. I think it was Summer who asked her why she wasn't in the big bed anymore—I sure as hell wasn't going to ask—and she said she'd been working all night and had fallen asleep in the studio. I didn't say anything, and that became the way things were—she basically moved into the studio permanently. That's why the children know how to open the door and to come on over anytime—they started going over there in the mornings to see her. And then one morning she was gone. She'd moved out. Gone in the middle of the night. Except Jaxon had seen her. He'd had a bad dream and was awake when she came in to his room to say good-bye. Summer was asleep in our bed so she didn't say good-bye to her. But Jaxon, who liked to sleep in his own bed, was awake. She told him not to say anything. And he took her literally and stopped talking. Two days later she called wanting to see the kids. Not me, just the kids. So I dropped them off at her mother's place—she wasn't staying there but didn't want me to know where she was staying so asked me to leave them there. The next time I saw her was a few weeks later when we went to New York.”

  He exhaled deeply. “If I could go back in time, I'd just go to the meetings with her.”

  “It might not have made any difference,” I said.

  “But at least then I'd know.”

  “True. How about the next time she's back you tell her you'll go to meetings with her?”

  He turned his head to me. “It's too late now.”

  “Even if you were divorced it wouldn't be too late—if you wanted it to work out. If you wanted to try anything to make it work.”

  I could see him thinking it over. As he thought I caught sight of the children running in our direction. Was it my imagination or had they grown several meters in the past few days? All right, maybe not meters, but their bodies looked longer, as though they were both going to take after their father when it came to height. Jaxon arrived first and threw himself bodily onto his father. Kyle, who hadn't been expecting it, was winded by the blow and made an ouf sound as he almost doubled up. Seconds later Summer was on top of him as well and he was flailing under his children, all of them laughing. In a few hours, Ashlyn would call. Then they would become transformed, they'd stop laughing and joking, they'd go and hide in their rooms, devastated that their mumma wasn't here, devastated she was another world away.

  Kyle owed it to them, really, to try everything. And if that meant going to meetings with his wife then that's what he had to do. Isn't that what for better or worse meant?

  SPANISH OMELETTE

  CHAPTER 23

  Oh, Kendra, there's a message for you,” Janene said to me.

  She was using her normal voice. The one with which she spoke to Gabrielle and Teri. It immediately made me suspicious. It'd been an age since we'd gone camping and her silent threat to get me back hadn't materialized.

  “Your phones rang when you were in the loo so I took a message. Forgot to give it to you.” I'd been to the loo over an hour ago. It was probably an important client who expected to be called back within fifteen minutes. This was her revenge, trying to lose me business.

  She came across the office, her flat, beady eyes not receiving the message that her face was “smiling” at me. She handed me the note.

  Mrs. Chelner, she'd written, along with a mobile number. She'd also printed URGENT, and carefully scored under
it three times. She cocked her eyebrow a fraction as she waited for me to fall apart. To rip the phone from its cradle and dial frantically. Our business worked on maintaining good relationships and running an efficient service. Either this person needed a temp quickly or the temp they had wasn't working out. Whatever the situation, they were not going to be impressed by an unreturned phone call. Bitch.

  “Thanks for that,” I said smiling sweetly and placing the yellow square on the desk. No way was I giving her the satisfaction of being riled about this. I'd probably already lost the business, wasn't going to add to my distress by giving Janene even a splinter of pleasure.

  Gritting her teeth, unimpressed—veritably peeved—that she hadn't managed to get a rise out of me, she turned on her LK Bennett heels and stalked back to her desk. Gabrielle was monitoring all of this from her desk, even though to the outside world she was still typing away on her computer. If she was honest—as she had been with me once—she wasn't particularly enamoured with Janene, but she wanted to give the girl a chance. She thought that with understanding and training, she could mold Janene into a decent worker—the irony of course being that Gabrielle thought I was queen of the lost cause. Teri was staring open-mouthed at Janene's audacity. She had confessed to me that she didn't like Janene, but did her best to get on with her so as not to upset the office dynamic. We all, in our own ways, pandered to Janene's bad behavior like overindulgent parents pandered to a brat for a quiet life. That annoyed me more than I cared to admit to anyone, myself included. I hated people getting away with bad behavior.

  Mrs. Chelner. I groped around my memory to place her. The name seemed familiar, but the company wasn't immediately coming to mind. As I ransacked my brain, what Janene had said replayed itself in my head.

  “Did you say my phones rang?” I asked her.

  “Yeah,” Janene said. “Your mobile kept ringing so I turned it off. It's in your top drawer.”