The Pile of Stuff at the Bottom of the Stairs (38 page)

“How are you going to work out the finances?” I ask.

“Rebecca will have a share in the overall house worth whatever she puts in.”

“A proportionate share or a value share?”

“I don’t know, exactly. Obviously this all needs to be worked out, but it’s the principle that you need to agree to. I’m selling off part of your family home.”

Joel looks as though he’s about to cry and I want to comfort him as I do the boys when they fall off the slide on the playground. These are the moments that finally make adults of the permanent teenagers that we are: the death of a parent, the birth of a child and the time when we can no longer call our parents’ house our home. I look at Ursula and realize that I didn’t know her at all. I thought she was unable to see that the place was crumbling around her, but all along she was aware of exactly how decrepit it was and, more surprising still, exactly how much the house was worth.

“So,” I say, to break the silence. “What do you want from us?” Joel looks up. “Joel. Me.”

“I need to know that everything will be all right,” she says, looking at me.

There’s a small voice at the kitchen door. “Mommy,” says Rufus. “Can Daddy read me just one more story?”

“Of course,” Joel says and leaps up and out of the room.

“Will everything be all right?” Ursula asks me.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I hope so.”

“That’s enough for me,” she says. We look at each other with a warmth and understanding that I’ve never before detected. “I’ll go now. Tell Joel that I’ve gone.”

“And that he’ll see you later?”

“That’s for you two to decide.”

*     *     *

After what seems to be the longest “just one more story” ever, Joel returns to the kitchen, where I’m continuing to empty a bottle of wine. I wonder what excuse he’ll make this time, but he sits down and pours himself a refill.

“So?” I say.

“So,” he says in a weary tone.

“Are you OK?” He shrugs. “Are you feeling disoriented about the fact that your childhood home won’t feel like your home anymore?”

“What? Of course not. Do you think I’m eight or something?”

“What, then?”

“You know what. Everything.”

“Joel.”

“Yes.”

I’m scared. I realize that I have no idea what he’s thinking. He’s left us and is asking Becky for divorce advice, I tell myself, but a louder voice in my head shouts that I miss him and he looks as though he may miss us too. “Come home. Here, I mean.”

He gives a tentative smile and I have my first clue as to the answer. “Really? What about Kitty?”

“There’s no ‘about her,’ is there?” Please say no.

“No, not at all.”

“Promise?”

“I promise. You know how I stick to my promises. I’ve just given her a glowing reference to go and find work somewhere else.” I feel a shock jolt of sympathy for her. It always seems to be the women whose lives get altered in these circumstances. “I’m so sorry, Mary, it was idiotic.”

“It was. With someone at work, too.” I shake my head. “I’m sorry, too. I was so angry,” I say.

“The list, you mean?”

“Yes. I was so angry about everything. So angry that I didn’t have any room for any love, at least not toward you. The dirt and the gunk were breeding and every time I cleaned away some grime from somewhere, it was like you’d stolen a piece of me. It was like the mold was breeding so fast that my heart had gone moldy. Our love was untended.”

“I’m sorry about that, too. I feel unappreciated as well, you know.”

“I’ll laugh at your jokes more, then. Sorry, that was below the belt.”

“You could, though, make me feel like you were interested in me. And I’ll try to appreciate all that you do.”

“I don’t want you to appreciate it so much as just do it.”

“I will.”

“Though when you’d bloody gone, I started to think that this house was too tidy without you.”

“Can I have that in writing?”

“No, obviously not.” Then I realize that there is a way of getting him back without losing everything I’ve worked toward for the last six months. “Actually, maybe we should get something in writing. I think I feel a list coming on.”

•   
Neither M nor J to make jokes about male household incompetence, either as denigration or as an excuse.

•   
J to never, ever, ever use the word “chillax.”

•   
Neither M nor J to refer to themselves in the third person, especially not as in the following sentence: “Mommy’s tired because Daddy’s made a mess in the kitchen and she has to do all the tidying up.”

It’s there on the fridge door for everyone to see: The List, version 2.0.

“I don’t think we should call it The List,” I said when we began to compile it. “It is a new beginning, after all.”

“The Pledge?”

“Sounds like something from Alcoholics Anonymous.”

“Or those teenage girls who take an oath of chastity.”

“I really don’t want to think about teenage girls and their frustrated sex lives every time I look at the fridge.”

“I do.”

“If we can’t decide what this thing is going to be called,” I said, “how are we ever going to work out what should go in it?”

“I was never the sort of person to do revision timetables before exams.”

“I was, to the detriment of my revision. I used to spend so long doing the perfect multi-sectioned, multi-colored poster that I barely had time to look at my books.”

“You’d never guess.”

“Well, it was all right for you, with your expensive education,” I snapped back.

•   
J to throw or tidy away five things before he goes to bed each evening.

•   
J to check for pile of stuff at the bottom of the stairs.

“Hang on,” he said. “Why’s it all about me? What about something that you’ve got to do?”

“Like what?”

“Mary to not read homeware catalogs in bed.”

“I do not.”

“I’ll extend that to décor magazines, too. Mary to not suggest that we redecorate rooms that are fully functional. Mary to not say we need a new kitchen while existing one works fine as it is. Mary to not—”

“I get the picture. Thank you.”

“Mary to say thank you more often. As well as please.”

“Give it a rest. Please.”

•   
Two laundry baskets. Colors and whites.

“What happens with things that are gray? Or patterned so that they’re both colored and white?”

“Don’t be annoying, Joel.”

“I’m serious.”

“I’ll show you the way.”

“The way of the laundered.”

•   
M to never use the phrase “It’s not fair.”

“Now that’s not fair,” I said.

“Uh-uh.” He wagged his finger.

“No, really. I can’t not use the phrase if life isn’t fair. Make life fair and I’ll stop using it. And don’t you dare say, ‘But life isn’t.’ ”

I’d never have admitted it to Joel, but life isn’t—certainly not when you have children and jobs and houses. You’ll drive yourself mad making sure that life is entirely equitable, I’ve learned that now. But just because it isn’t, doesn’t mean that you have to give up trying.

•   
On days that both M and J working or both not working, responsibility for children to be absolutely equal in terms of picking up from childcare, cooking boring food, getting up for breakfast.

•   
Each parent to be allotted
30
-minute slot in the morning for showering, ablutions, etc.

•   
Each parent to be allotted one evening a week where they don’t have to be back for bath/bed.

•   
Further late evenings to be pre-agreed.

•   
Both parents to be allowed equal amounts of time for a chosen hobby, e.g. the “band,” going to the gym, shopping.

“Remove those inverted commas.”

“And you tell me I don’t say please enough.”

“Please remove those inverted commas from the word ‘band’ in the list. Thank you.”

“I thought we agreed not to call it the list—you know, because of the other one.”

“Does it really matter what it’s called?”

“It does, it really does.”

He sighed. “Maybe we need help.”

I nodded. And I knew just the person.

The boys were shipped off to my parents for a whole weekend and in their place came Becky. She even stayed the night in the top bunk and said that she enjoyed the luminous stars on the ceiling when it got dark.

“As far as I can see,” she said, having read a series of notes, Post-its and marital mission statements, “there are three areas of activity in your marriage.”

Joel sniggered.

“No,” said Becky. “That wasn’t one of them.”

“Well, that’s certainly true,” he said ruefully.

“Can we just concentrate on this? Otherwise we’ll never get through it. Tell us, Becks, what are these three areas?”

“Earning, childcare and housework. They have to be treated equally.”

Joel snorted.

“Equally,” she repeated. “Right. I want you to write down as many tasks attached to each of these domains as possible and I’ll come back in an hour.”

“It’s like some awful management away-day,” muttered Joel.

“Or a school test,” I said, cupping my arm around my pad of paper so that he couldn’t copy any of my answers.

“Doctors appointments, birthday-party arranging, birthday- present buying, shoe measuring, vaccinations… there are so many little tasks involved in having children,” said Becky on reading my extensive list under the heading of childcare. Joel’s contribution consisted of three words: “park, zoo, etc.”

“Takes a village to raise a child,” I said. Joel was right, I was the sort of girl that had to prop my arm on a ruler, my hand was so permanently raised to answer the teacher’s questions.

“Joel, anything else to add?”

He looked at his shoes.

“We’ll start with childcare.”

“Can I just say at this point,” I asked, “that childcare is not just looking after children? It means tidying up after them, dealing with household things at the same time.”

“Good point, Mary. Can I get on?” She looked down at our contributions. “I’m going to auction these off. Here’s your currency.” She handed us each a pile of Lego pieces. “You’ve got 50 of these. I’ve got 25 key tasks. If you want one, you say so. If you both want it, you buy it with your Lego bits. First off, being rung by the school or Deena when the boys are ill or injured.”

Joel put his hands as low as he could.

“Why not make it two points—one of us is the school’s contact and one is Deena’s?” I suggested.

“Very good, Mary, well done.” I was so teacher’s pet. “Which one do you want?”

“I’ll be the school’s and Joel can have Deena. You can start by actually saving Deena’s number to your phone.”

And so it went on, through other kids’ birthday parties, listening to reading and accompanying the class on school trips. I could see Becky was good at this, she’d wisely chosen to begin with the most uncontroversial area of our unholy trinity.

“Who knew,” she said as we finally thrashed out our respective responsibilities, “that there was so much work involved in bringing up children?”

“Indeed, who knew?” said Joel.

“I knew,” I said. “Speaking of which, Becks, have you made any decisions in that area? You know, children, babies, having them?”

“I think so. The issue’s in abeyance. Which, given my age and the state of my insides, is in practical terms a decision.”

“To not?”

“Yes, to not. I’ve realized that just because I can, or maybe can’t, have children, it doesn’t mean I have to. It was all mixed up with how I felt about Cara.” Joel gave a pantomime hiss. He didn’t know the half of it, about Cara and Mitzi, and about Cara and me. He and Becky would never know. “I think children maybe represented the sort of anti-Cara. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yes, I do.” I knew exactly what she meant. “I hope we’re not the ones to have put you off.”

“Not really. I’m just not sure everyone is supposed to have children,” she said.

“I used to think that about Ursula,” said Joel.

I was surprised. “Really? You never told me.”

“I’m over it. In the end, I’m glad she did have me, it’s just that she wasn’t exactly child friendly when I was growing up.”

“I thought you did everything together.”

“Everything she wanted to, yes, but nothing I wanted to. Have you any idea how boring it was being dragged around listening to boring adults and never getting to bed early enough and being given vol-au-vents instead of fish fingers? I hated being hauled out of school for whole terms while she had a sabbatical somewhere.”

“But she clearly loves you and being with you.”

“More now. I think I have become more interesting at the exact same time as her life has become more boring. You know how history didn’t exist until people learned how to write? Ursula feels the same about children. I had no value until I could read. I look at you and the boys and it’s so different for them. You’re so with them. They’re very lucky.”

“You’re being sarcastic, aren’t you?”

“No, of course not. You’re a great mother, you know you are.”

“I don’t do enough arts and crafts with them and teach them math in a fun way and make up journals filled with pressed flowers and coloring-in.”

“You read too many parenting books. You sing made-up songs with them and play football like you really want to win.”

“I do really want to win, but Rufus is getting better than me.”

“It’s not what you do, it’s that you’re really there for them—they take you for granted, but in a good way. I could never bank on Ursula.”

“Thanks. I really appreciate that. And you’re an amazing father. I know everyone says that, over and over, but it is actually true. Especially since you didn’t have your dad around when you were growing up. Or your mother, as it turns out. I think it’s a real achievement to be so good at something you never had yourself.”

“Even though you think I’m so useless around the house.”

“Despite that. Sometimes even because of that. You let them
do the measuring when you bake even though it might ruin the recipe, you spend hours making complicated junk marble runs and space stations, you get all the toys out at once so that they can create strange worlds where Lego, trains and dinosaurs co-exist. OK, you don’t tidy them up afterward, but, well, they have a lovely time with you.”