“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- 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 reconciliation.
“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.
thirty-seven
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 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 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!
&nbs
p; 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 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 afford 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, “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 apartment.”
“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.
thirty-eight
Men.
Ah, yes, men. I suppose the issue was bound to rear its ugly head sooner or later.
Now look, I want to make one thing clear. I didn’t like this Andrew guy.
It’s just that he sounded nice (apart from the public flogging sentiment).
And I was officially a single woman again and there were some thought patterns that I just slipped back into. I couldn’t help it! It was obviously genetic. Or hormonal.
Anyway, I was only curious. It didn’t hurt to wonder about these things.
I wasn’t planning on acting on it.
And it didn’t mean that I was going to jump into bed with the first man who gave me the eye.
I mean, if I was that desperate for a man, wouldn’t I have stayed with James?
Although I realize that after the way I behaved with Adam there’s a good chance you won’t believe me.
Okay, fine, you don’t have to believe me, but Adam was an exception.
Adam was special.
So you heard that Adam had a girlfriend and a baby. Well, what do you think of that? Pretty sensational, eh?
I suppose it made sense. There was always a hint that there was more to him than met the eye. But I was kind of expecting his Terrible Secret to be something like a drug habit, or a minor prison sentence, or something with a little bit of notoriety, even glamour, to it. I certainly wasn’t prepared for the news that Adam was a Family Man.
It was a shock. I’d go so far as to say that it was an unpleasant shock.
But when Helen broke the news to me, I wasn’t able to give it my full attention and indignation. I was a bit distracted, what with being on my way out to catch a plane to London to end my marriage and all that. No, it was definitely not good news, but I was too preoccupied to look it in the face and think about how I actually felt.
And I tried not to think about it in the following weeks.
Well, I had an awful lot of things to sort out and I couldn’t afford to waste time daydreaming. And Adam and I, such as it was, had been over even before I found out about his baby, so there was nothing to be gained by thinking about him. Adam was the past.
Anyway, to be perfectly frank I didn’t like thinking about Adam. It didn’t make me happy. It was painful. If he accidentally strayed into my head, he didn’t last five seconds, a bit like an overboard sailor in the icy waters of the Antarctic. Alarms would go off and a couple of burly security guards would be sent to throw him out double fast.
If he even crossed my mind, I was lucky enough to have some kind of incredibly complicated, tedious legal document to immerse myself in.
And Helen was around a lot. She was studying for her exams and causing no end of disruption, complaining bitterly and asking questions and talking about having to have sex with all her lecturers if she hoped to pass. So she took my mind off Adam. She took my mind off everything except slowmotion fantasies of brutal murders.
But it was June and the weather had suddenly become beautiful and hot.
And sometimes when I was alone with Kate in the backyard, half asleep, the sun on my face, feeling so relaxed, when maybe I should have been thinking of James, instead my mind would accidentally drift Adam-ward and I would remember how sweet he had been and how lovely he had made me feel.
And at times like that, when my guard was down, I allowed myself to miss him, to feel sad that he wasn’t there. But only for a moment. I didn’t like to miss him. I didn’t really like to think about him at all.
Let’s face it, I didn’t like what Helen had told me. It was not news that gladdened my heart. Or any other of my internal organs. It’s not that I felt he had two-timed me. I was hardly in any position to object, what with me being married. And from what I’d managed to piece together from Helen’s garbled narrative, I was fairly sure he was estranged from his girlfriend while he had his
little fling with me.
If it’s even worthy of being called a fling.
If I hadn’t found it so unpleasant I’d probably call it the one-night stand that it so obviously was.
I think I felt a bit, oh, I don’t know, set up, I suppose. Fool that I was, I had been flattered by all the attention that Adam had paid me. It had been wonderful to feel so desired and admired. Especially after what had happened with James.
And now I felt that he’d only wanted me because of Kate. Not that he wanted Kate, or anything sick like that. But he wanted me because I was a mother. I probably reminded him of his girlfriend. I didn’t know what the setup with Adam and his girlfriend was, but if she had run off with the child, it must have been really hard for him and maybe I was some sort of replacement.
I felt, I felt…a bit mortified, I suppose. I had been thrilled that Adam had chosen me. But it wasn’t really me that he had chosen at all. It was my circumstances.
I was hurt.
And I felt foolish for thinking that someone as gorgeous as him could seriously be interested in someone as ordinary as me. What could I have been thinking of?
The only thing I could say in my defense was that I wasn’t myself. I’d been through a lot and my sanity was an infrequent caller.
But while we’re on the subject of Adam I should admit that I was angry with him.
Not very. But a bit. I was pissed off with him for playing with my feelings.
For making me feel special when I wasn’t. And then for giving me that sanctimonious speech about going back to James. He had no business doing that if he didn’t care about me. People have to earn the right to make me feel guilty.
It was something that I really should try not to give away as easily as I used to.
But as time passed and I spent more time dozing in the sunny garden, my feelings began to change. I started to see the other side of the coin. In fact, I started to feel downright metaphysical about it. Not something I was normally prone to.
It might have been the excess of sun.