Ordinary Miracles (18 page)

Baths are another pleasure. It’s nice to have one just for the sake of it – not partly because someone may be licking
or sniffing you later. I just love lying there caressed by the
water, surrounded by strange, exotic scents.

Bruce and I used to take baths together in the early days.
We’d soap each other down – rubbing each other’s backs
–
getting at the hard to reach places with a cheerful zeal
usually only found in detergent commercials. But soon our scrubbings turned into caresses as Bruce slipped his hand
between my legs. He paid great attention to my breasts too –
covering them with suds and foam until they resembled a
small alpine landscape. He liked having his toes washed, one
by one. Fred would get excited then – that was our pet name
for Bruce’s penis. I loved the way Fred grew in my hands – the
pinkness and presumption of him. The determination too.

Those baths often ended abruptly with both of us scampering
into the bedroom – me already moist and Fred already
juicing. Fred was my friend then. An exuberant little creature
that gave us both much pleasure. I don’t know why, as the
years passed, he stopped being so playful. Sometimes he even
seemed a rather sullen presence who pondered his future
while languishing amidst the generous folds of my husband’s
boxer shorts. Disappointed perhaps – certainly moody.

A bit like Charlie’s being now.

Charlie is getting more and more distant and something
has to give. I think I may move to a flat. Thankfully, I don’t
have to discuss this relocation with Bruce because he’s away
on location with
Avril,
who is now demanding all his time.
Even if I announced that I was running away with the entire Chippendale troupe I don’t think it would quite register with
him at the moment.

When I told Charlie that I’d probably be moving out, a tight
look came over his face.

‘You do what you think is best,’ he said, while struggling
to open a milk carton. He then exclaimed ‘Fuck!’ as some of the
milk spilled onto the table.

We’ve been very polite to each other lately, Charlie and I.
Too polite. We’re usually so at ease in each other’s company, but now we’re more guarded. He shouts at Rosie sometimes.
He never used to. And he doesn’t like her coming into the
house any more. I’ve tried to explain to him about my needing
some time to myself. I’ve also said that I have an enormous
affection for him.

‘How enormous?’ he asked. ‘Are we talking inches or yards here?’

‘Oh, don’t kid around, Charlie, you know what I mean.’

‘No I don’t. And I don’t think you do either,’ he said. And
then he left the room.

Do you know what I wish sometimes? I wish I could just
press the pause button on my life. Just stop it for a little while
and take a rest. Fast forward and rewind would be useful at
times too.

But maybe re-record would be the best of all.

Chapter
13

I’m no longer Mr
McClaren’s temporary secretary – his usual
one came back from her holiday. But I am still working for the
same company. It manufactures women’s hygiene products,
but you’d never have known it from Mr McClaren’s letters.
Amidst his frequent references to the Riviera not once did he
mention the sanitary towel with the revolutionary flap.

This sanitary towel is now taking up a great deal of my
time. I’m a product demonstrator for it, though thankfully I don’t have to actually put the thing on. I just stand by
the shelves where it’s stored in the supermarket, thrusting
coupons into the hands of passers-by.

‘Fifty per cent off Superdry this week,’ I say. ‘Special intro
ductory offer.’

Thank goodness no one has asked me to go into great
detail about the flap. I’m not quite sure I understand it, but there is a diagram at the back of the box that I can refer to
if necessary. The flap prevents leakage, apparently. You can
open it out during the first heavy days, but leave it alone if
extra absorbancy is not required.

Arnie, my yoga and meditation teacher, gets all fired up
on the subject of menstrual cramps. As he demonstrates
the various exercises that can relieve them he always says,
‘Never forget your primeval force – your groundedness – y
our wisdom. Woman is the earth. Woman is strong.’

The men in the class do these exercises too. They’re that type.

I have, of course, bumped into some people I know in
this supermarket. I dreaded this at first, but now I’ve got
used to it.

‘Jasmine!’ they say. ‘What are you doing here?’

And I tell them that I’m demonstrating Superdry, the new sanitary towel with the revolutionary flap. I refer to the diagram at the back of the box. I go on a bit about
leakages and extra absorbancy and then I thrust a coupon
into their hand.

This of course is not the answer they wanted. They stare
at me for a while and then they usually say ‘I heard about you and…and…’ as though actually mentioning Bruce by name might cause offence.

‘Me and Bruce?’ I suggest.

‘Yes. Yes.’ You can see they’re really intrigued. Hoping for some nice juicy little bit of gossip.

‘Bruce is off filming in Galway at the moment,’ I usually
reply. ‘The film’s called
Avril: A Woman’s Story.
It’s about
espionage and love.’

They usually move off sometime soon after that, these people I hardly know who want to know so much. Who even stand around and wait for a while, hardly believing
that they’re not going to hear more. And as I watch them
walk away there is one small consolation – they usually have
a packet of Superdry amongst their shopping.

I wish I was offering people bits of pizza instead of sanitary
towel coupons. No one crowds around me like they crowd
around that woman near the delicatessen. There aren’t too
many men in this section either. When one passes I have to
remember not to thrust a coupon under his nose.

I’m wearing a white dress and a gold-coloured badge with
‘Superdry’ on it. At least I don’t have to wear a little cap.
Standing for hours on end is very tiring. Sometimes I take a
quick stroll up to the Mr Proper section to ease the aches.

Smiling all day is fatiguing too. I have to smile at everybody, even at the women who brush impatiently past me,
almost snarling. The trolleys they’re pushing don’t help of
course. A lot of those trolleys sort of scuttle along sideways.
Everywhere I turn as I stand in this aisle I see women and
men wrestling with them – tussling over which direction
they should take as though remonstrating with a bored
horse from a riding stable. And you can tell which shoppers
are really pissed off because they keep shoving their trolley
into people.

‘Sorry – sorry,’ they say, but you can see they don’t really
mean it.

Many of the women in this supermarket behave as if they’re double parked. It’s the double life that probably does it – working and then having to go home and take over most of that too. I admire them, but it doesn’t seem fair. Sometimes I feel like standing on a soap-box and
giving little lectures to the men who breezily saunter by the
household cleaning section. Occasionally, just occasionally,
I notice a man pondering whether to purchase the lemon
or pine scented kitchen cleaner, while his wife consults her
Blackberry.

One thing that would really make this job easier is ear-plugs – but then I suppose the same thing could be
said about much of life. The music in this supermarket is really fraying my nerves. On the very rare occasion when
they play something half-decent this raspy voice always cuts
in and roars for Jim Boyle or somebody to go straight to men’s
toiletries. You’d think there was some sort of emergency with
the aftershave.

It’s a secular shrine, this supermarket. It’s very large and
shiny new and in the middle of suburbia. It’s the kind of
place where you find loads of peach. Peach toilet paper, peach bath towels, peach napkins, peach room freshener.
The funny thing is they don’t actually sell the real thing in
the fruit department.

‘I can’t see the point of peach,’ Bruce used to announce
sometimes. He had a thing about that colour. When we had
a row I think he secretly feared that I might seek revenge
through Dulux.

There’s a little café beside this supermarket and it mainly
seems to sell lasagne. Lasagne is everywhere these days – like
peach. I don’t go to that cafe. I go to the one further away
where you don’t have to look happy. I have egg and chips and
let my jowl droop. It’s a very no-nonsense place. Scowling is perfectly acceptable – in fact almost
de rigueur.
They always
have the radio on, but not too loud. It’s usually some pop
station where everyone has either an American or Australian
accent. Sounding like you come from a place that could,
just possibly, have year-round sunshine is quite lucrative
apparently. But no one in this café is fooled. They know
that even when Dublin bay is called the ‘Bay Area’ in weather
forecasts, the rain will still piss down if it wants to.

It was pissing down as I waited at the bus stop this evening.
It’s amazing the conversations you can have about buses
when you’re waiting for them for prolonged periods of time. They begin to sound like strange creatures out of a wildlife
documentary whose habitat and migration patterns are still
a mystery.

When I got home, Charlie was out. He left two used mugs on the kitchen table. As I was clearing them away I noticed
something.

One of the mugs had pink lipstick on its side.

Chapter
14

There’s a strange woman
in Charlie’s bed. I saw her there
when I went by. The door was open. She was wearing a
T-shirt and a big smile. I fled like a child. My stomach felt like
it had been punched. I went back to my bedroom – winded
– sore and dazed. I know I’m being stupid. Charlie’s a free
agent and can do what he likes. It’s just I didn’t think he’d
do something like this. Not without telling me anyway.