Marian Keyes - Watermelon (39 page)

When I awoke the next morning, I felt a tiny bit better. Not healed or cured or anything of the sort, but more prepared to wait. To wait for things to get better, to wait for the pain to go.

I had made the decision not to be with James and, being "Instant Grati- fication Girl," I wanted to feel wonderful immediately. I had wanted the fruits of my decision to fall into my impatient lap right now.

I wanted it to be "Out with the old and in with the new!" To throw off the trappings of my previous incarnation, to have not a jot of feeling left for James, not an iota of doubt, not a crumb of indecision. I wanted an im- mediate, miraculous transformation. I wanted the Relationship Fairy to touch me with her magic wand, to sprinkle me with her sparkling recovery dust, and for me to instantly forget everything I ever felt for James, to forget that he even existed.

I wanted to leave my grief under my pillow and for it to be gone in the morning. I wouldn't even have cared if there wasn't any money left in its place.

But there was no magic cure, there was no Relationship Fairy. I'd realized that a long time ago.

I had to get through this on my own. I realized that I had to be patient. Time would let me know if I had made the right decision.

I still didn't know if I had done the right thing by leaving James. But to stay with him would definitely have been the wrong thing.

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See if you can wrap your mind around that one.

And if you get the hang of it, would you mind explaining it to me?

James called at eight o'clock the next morning. I declined to speak to him. And at eight-forty. Ditto. And at ten past nine. And ditto once again. Then came an unexpected lull until almost eleven, when there were three calls in quick succession. Ditto, ditto and ditto. Twelve-fifteen there was another one. Ditto. Five to one, five past one and twenty past one, all saw calls. Ditto, etc. Calls remained steady for most of the afternoon, coming every half hour or so. Then a final flurry came around six o'clock. Ditto re above.

Mum very decently fielded the calls all day. I have to say it, when the chips are down, that woman is worth her weight in Mars Bars.

Dad came home from work at twenty past six and at twenty to seven burst into the room where I was sitting with Kate and all the documents relating to the apartment and roared at me, "Claire, for God's sake, will you go and talk to him!"

"I've nothing to say," I said sweetly.

"I don't care," he bellowed, "this has gone too far. And he says he's going to call all night until you come and talk to him."

"Leave the phone off the hook," I suggested, turning my attention back to the deed of the apartment.

"Claire, we can't do that," he said in exasperation. "Helen keeps hanging the bloody thing back up."

"Yes, why should my social life suffer just because you married a lunat- ic?" came Helen's muffled voice from somewhere outside the door.

"Please, Claire," pleaded Dad.

"Oh, all right then." I sighed, putting down the pen I had been using to make notes with.

"James," I said into the phone, "what do you want?"

"Claire," he said, sounding cross, "have you come to your senses yet?"

"I wasn't aware that I had taken leave of them," I said politely. He ig- nored this.

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"I've been calling all day and your mother says you don't want to talk to me," he said, sounding angry and put out.

"That's right," I agreed pleasantly.

"But we've got to talk," he said.

"No, we don't," I said.

"Claire, I love you," he said earnestly. "We have to work this out."

"James," I said coldly, "We've worked out as much as we can. And now we're at the end of the line. You think you're right. I think you're wrong. And I'm not wasting any more time or energy trying to convince either of us to change our minds. Now, I wish you well and I hope we can keep this civilized, especially for Kate's sake, but there really is nothing further to discuss."

"What's happened to you, Claire?" asked James, sounding shocked. "You were never like this before. You've changed so much. You've gotten so hard."

"Oh, didn't I tell you?" I said casually. "My husband had an affair. It kind of made an impact on me."

Very unkind, I know. But I couldn't resist it.

"Very funny, Claire," he said.

"Actually no, James," I corrected him, "it wasn't funny at all."

"Look," he said, starting to sound annoyed, "this is getting us nowhere."

"That's fine by me," I said, "because nowhere is precisely where we're going."

"Very witty, Claire. Very droll," he said nastily.

"Thank you," I replied with excessive sweetness.

"Now listen," he said, suddenly sounding all official and even more pompous than usual. I could almost hear papers rustling in the background. "I have a...um...proposition for you."

"Oh?" I asked.

"Yes," he said. "Claire, I do love you and I don't want us to split up, so if it makes you feel better I'm prepared to um...make...um...a concession to you."

"What's that?" I asked. I was hardly interested. I barely cared.

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I realized, with a shock, that there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that he could say now to make things better.

I didn't love him anymore.

I didn't know why or when I stopped.

But I had.

James continued to speak and I tried to concentrate on what he was saying.

"I'm prepared to forget all about you having to change when you come back to live with me," he was saying. "You obviously feel very strongly about having to try harder at being mature and considerate and all the other...um...things we discussed. So if it means that you'll abandon this idea that we're splitting up, I can put up with you being the way that you were in the past. I suppose you weren't that bad," he said grudgingly.

Anger surged through me. I forgot for a moment that I no longer cared. I mean, the sheer gall of the man! I could hardly believe my ears.

I said as much.

"Are you glad?" he asked cautiously.

"Glad! Glad?" I screeched. "Of course I'm not bloody well glad. This makes it all even worse."

"But why?" he whined. "I'm saying here that I forgive you and that everything will be fine."

I nearly exploded. I had so many things to say to him.

"Forgive me?" I said in disbelief. "You forgive me? No, no, no, no, no James, you have it all wrong. If there's any forgiving to be done around here, it's me forgiving you. Except that I'm not."

"Just a minute..." James blustered.

"And this is supposedly the reason you had the affair with that fat cow. Me being immature and selfish. But you're prepared to overlook it now, at the drop of a hat. Yet it was important enough for you to be unfaithful to me. Make up your mind, James! Either it's important or it's not."

"It is important," he said.

"Well, then you can't overlook it," I said furiously. "If you want me to be a certain way and it's important, then what kind of relationship will we have if I can't be that way?"

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"All right then," he said, sounding a bit desperate, "it's not important."

"Well, if it's not important then why did you have an affair because of it?" I said triumphantly.

"Can't we just forget it?" he said. I could hear panic in his voice.

"No, James, we can't. You might be able to, but it's not so easy for me."

"Claire," he pleaded, "I'll do whatever you want."

"I suppose you would," I said sadly. "I suppose you would."

I didn't want to bicker and argue and fight with him anymore. I couldn't be bothered.

"James, I'm going now," I said.

"Will you think about what I said?" he asked.

"I will," I agreed. "But don't hold out any hope."

"I know you, Claire," he said. "You'll change your mind. Everything is going to be fine."

"Good-bye, James."

In fairness, I did think about what James had said. I owed it to Kate.

The arguments in favor of and against reuniting with James went back and forth in my head like a tennis ball.

But the one thing I couldn't ignore, the one thing I couldn't argue my way out of, the one thing that I couldn't convince myself was otherwise, was the fact that I no longer cared about James.

I mean, I cared about him. I didn't want anything too terrible to happen to him. But I didn't love him the way I used to. I wished I knew what had caused this to happen. But it could have been so many things. He had had an affair--much as he'd like me to overlook it. That must have done a lot to destroy my trust in him. And my getting the blame for it, well, I wasn't too happy about that. Or it could be the fact that he wasn't man enough to own up to what he had done and just apologize? That went a long way in destroying any respect I might have had for him. Even now he wouldn't admit he was in the wrong. Even though he was scaling down his require-

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ments of me, he was still making it sound as if he was doing me a favor.

He'd betrayed me. And then compounded it by treating me like an idiot.

Or maybe I'd just lost interest in short men.

I just knew one thing, if it was dead, it was dead. No one can resurrect love once it has breathed its last.

I called James two days later and told him that there would be no recon- ciliation.

"You're letting your pride get in the way," he said. As though he'd been briefed.

"I'm not," I said wearily.

"You want to punish me," he suggested.

"I don't," I lied. (Of course, it was nice to have the boot on the other foot.)

"I can wait," he promised.

"Please don't," I replied.

"I love you," he whispered.

"Good-bye," I said.

James continued to call, maybe twice or three times a day. Checking up on me, wondering if I'd changed my mind yet--if I had, as he put it, come to my senses.

I was nice to him on the phone. It was no skin off my nose. He said he missed me. I suppose he did.

I found the phone calls a bit irritating. It was hard to believe that only three months ago I would have killed to have gotten a call from him. Now it was more likely that I would kill if the calls didn't stop.

Then I stopped being irritated, and all I felt was sad.

Life is a very peculiar creature.

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I couldn't have said that I was happy. But I wasn't miserable. Or devastated the way I had been when James first left me.

I suppose I was calm. I had accepted that my life would never be the same again and would never be the way I had planned it. The things I had hoped for were never going to happen. I was not going to have four children with James. James and I would not grow old together. Even though I had always promised that my marriage would be the one that survived, the one that didn't break up, I could now accept, without too much heartache, that it had broken up.

Of course, I felt sad. Sad for the idealistic me, the one who had gotten married with such high, high, expectations. Even sad for James.

I really did feel older--and how!--and wiser.

I suppose I had learned--the long, hard way--a bit of humility.

I really had control over so little. Either in my life or in any other people's.

And if I heard someone say "Everything happens for a reason" or "When God closes one door, he opens another," it was no longer too difficult to stop myself from punching them in the face. Not difficult at all, in fact.

I didn't feel that my life was totally over.

Irredeemably altered, maybe. But not totally over.

My marriage had broken up, but I had a beautiful child. I had a wonderful family, very good friends and a job to go

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back to. Who knew, one day, I might even meet a nice man who wouldn't mind taking Kate on as well as me. Or if I waited long enough maybe Kate would meet a nice man who wouldn't mind taking me on as well as her. But in the meantime I had decided that I was just going to get on with my life and if Mr. Perfect came along, I'd manage to make room for him somewhere.

I did all the boring legal things that I should have done weeks ago. Well, maybe I shouldn't have done weeks ago. Maybe I wasn't ready then. Maybe now was the right time.

Either way it didn't make a bit of difference. The fact is they weren't done then and they were being done now.

I wanted custody of Kate. James said that he wouldn't fight it if he was given plenty of access to her. I was delighted because I wanted Kate to know her father. And I knew I was very lucky that James was being so reasonable. He could have been deliberately nasty and uncooperative and, in fairness to him, he wasn't.

James and I came to an agreement about the apartment. We decided to sell it. He was going to live in it until it was sold.

That was pretty dreadful, actually. When he received the documents from my lawyer he took it quite badly. I suppose he finally realized that it was over.

"You're really not coming back, are you?" he said sadly.

And even though I had instigated the whole thing, even though it was what I really wanted, I felt so sad also. I had a pang of intense regret. If only things hadn't turned out this way. If only things had never gone wrong.

But they had.

Tearful eleventh-hour reunions are the stuff of romance novels. They rarely happen in real life. And if they do, they usually occur when either one or both parties have had a few drinks.

No one showed any interest in buying the apartment for the longest time. In a way I was glad, because the thought of anyone else living in what I still considered to be my home was too awful to contemplate. But on the other hand, it was a real worry because money was so tight. I like to hold James responsible. He probably nabbed any prospective buyers and bored them to death with talk of tax relief on mortgages and

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suchlike. They probably fell asleep before they'd even seen the bedroom. But I shouldn't be so unkind. He meant well.

I spoke to my boss and told her that I'd be back in the saddle by early August. Now if I hadn't been feeling pretty miserable before this point, the reminder that I had to go back to work was nearly enough to tip me back over the edge.

Maybe I was in the wrong job, maybe I didn't have a true vocation, maybe I was just bone lazy. Well, whatever it was I wasn't one of those lucky people (although I just think they're weird) who get great joy from their job. At best I thought of it as a means to an end, at worst a hell on earth. And I couldn't wait until I retired. Only thirty-one years to go. Unless I got lucky in the meantime and died.

No, honestly, that was just a joke.

So, in five weeks' time, it was back to the office for me. Back to adminis- tering seven hours a day, five days a week, forty-eight weeks of the year.

Jesus!

Why couldn't I have been born rich?

Sorry, sorry, I know I shouldn't complain. I was lucky to have a job. It was just that I wished that I could have someone to take care of me and Kate. I was just fantasizing. Even if I had stayed with James I would still have had to return to work. It was simply that having to go back to work reminded me of how alone I really was now. How much responsibility I had. It was no longer just me that I was working for. A child was dependent on me.

I knew that James would provide for Kate--oh yes, I knew. Believe me, I knew it. And I had an expensive lawyer to prove it! Not that James was stingy or mean in any way. Credit where it's due, etc., etc. But the days when I could spend my entire month's salary on lipstick, magazines and alcohol had gone. Long gone.

Being grown-up is not all you're led to believe it is. Not even slightly. It was too late now but I wished I'd read the small print.

I found somewhere for Kate and me to live in London.

Well, actually, Judy did.

It would have been impossible for me to find somewhere

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in London while I was still in Dublin. Not unless I was willing to pay the national debt in agency fees.

Some friend of a friend of a friend of Judy's was going to work in Norway in July and needed his apartment looked after for nine months. I could af- ford the rent and the area wasn't too awful. Judy had seen the place and assured me that it had a roof, a floor and the full complement of walls. Then Judy lied through her teeth and told the friend of a friend of a friend that I was neat and clean and quiet and solvent. I'm not sure if she even mentioned Kate at all.

Andrew--that was his name--called me to put his mind at rest that I wasn't some kind of maniac who would douse his precious home with gasoline and set it alight before he'd even reached Terminal Two.

On the phone I was at my most prim and proper. I emphasized that I felt that cleanliness should be joined at the hip with godliness and that I was in favor of bringing back the death sentence for burglars and litterbugs.

"Well, perhaps a public flogging would be adequate. It might thrash some respect back into them," he suggested.

"Hmmmmm," I said noncommittally, because I wasn't certain whether he was joking or not.

Andrew sent me a contract and I sent him all kinds of references and bank details and, most importantly, some money. (Borrowed from Dad--would I ever grow up?)

Over the next ten days or so we had detailed phone conversations about what I was to do with his mail. And which of his plants needed to be told jokes.

He gave me all kinds of useful advice.

He warned me that the woman downstairs was crazy. "That's fine," I said unguardedly, "I'll probably like her."

"And don't go to the first Chinese restaurant," he warned. "They got caught with a German shepherd in their freezer. The one farther up the street is far better."

"Thanks," I said.

"Use up anything that's left in the cupboards or liquor cabinet," he offered.

"Thanks," I said enthusiastically.

"And if anything goes wrong," said his disembodied voice,

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"then don't hesitate to call me. I'll leave you a number that you can contact me at."

"Thanks," I said again.

"I'm sure you'll be happy here," he promised, "it's a lovely airy apart- ment."

"Right," I said, swallowing. "Thanks." I was trying not to think of my own lovely apartment, which I had decorated and designed and made beautiful over the years. Some day I will have another one, I promised myself. When the time is right.

I felt even worse when I realized that "lovely, airy apartment" is usually what real estate agents say when they mean the windows are broken.

Oh dear.

"I'll be in London briefly in October," he said. "I hope we can meet up then."

"That would be lovely," I said.

Nice guy, I thought as I hung up the phone.

For a neo-Nazi.

I wondered what he looked like.

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