I bullied Anna into loaning me fifteen pounds for it and Helen into going to the liquor store for it.
Anna would have willingly gone to the store for me.
And Anna would have willingly come back from the store for me.
But when, is the question.
She might have reappeared in a week with some vague story about how on the way to the store she met some people in a van who were going to Stonehenge and how she thought it might be nice to join them. Or how she had some strange out-of-body experience and lost a week.
I could have told her that there was nothing strange about it. That if she went over to her boyfriend Shane’s apartment and smoked a lot of drugs that was what generally happened. And that the correct name for it was an out-of-your-head experience, not an out-of-body experience. Not that it was an easy battle to win with Helen. “I’ll drown,” she grumbled, the weather still being inclement.
“You won’t,” I assured her grimly through gritted teeth, my tone of voice implying, “But it would be no trouble at all to arrange.”
“It’ll cost you,” she told me, changing tack.
“How much?”
“A fiver.”
“Give her another fiver,” I ordered Anna.
Money changed hands.
“That’s twenty that you owe me now,” said Anna anxiously.
“Have I ever reneged on my debts before?” I asked Anna coldly.
“Er, no,” said the poor girl, far too frightened to remind me that I still owed her for the bottle of wine that I “borrowed” from her the first night that she was home.
“And where are you going?” I asked Helen imperiously.
“Upstairs to change into my Speedos.”
When Helen returned from the liquor store, a long time later, drenched wet and dripping water everywhere and complaining loudly, she handed me the liter bottle of vodka, which was in a soaking wet bag.
Change from the fifteen pounds was not asked for.
Nor was it offered.
By the time I discovered that the bottle had already been opened and about a quarter of it was missing, Helen was long gone.
As were her chances of making it alive to her nineteenth birthday.
My vengeance would be a terrible and awesome spectacle to behold, once I got my hands on her.
I was not a woman to be trifled with.
In spite of the vodka I still couldn’t sleep. I roamed the house from room to room late at night when everyone else was asleep. Carrying the bottle and my glass. Looking for somewhere that I felt safe. Hoping to find a place where those horrible pictures would stop running through my head. But my jealousy and hatred kept me awake. They kept prodding at me and I couldn’t settle anywhere. I couldn’t find any peace. In desperation, I thought that perhaps if I tried a different bed or a different room I might be able to sleep.
I went into Rachel’s old room. (You know, the room you’ll be staying in when you come on your starvation week.) I turned on the light.
The room had that same ghostly feeling that my and Margaret’s room had had when I first arrived back from London, the feeling that no one had slept in there for a long time. Although clothes still hung in the wardrobe and posters were still on the wall and a plate was still under the bed. Then I came across the exercise bike and the rowing machine that Dad had bought about nine years ago in an enthusiastic but short-lived attempt to get fit.
There they were, on the floor of Rachel’s room, covered in dust, looking old-fashioned and creaky and cobwebby, a far cry from the exercise bikes and rowing machines of today, with their computer programs, their video screens and their electronic calorie counters.
I looked at them affectionately, prehistoric and all that they were, and memories came rushing back in waves.
The excitement the day the van delivered them! Dad, my sisters and I were thrilled.
Mum was the only one who wasn’t excited. She said that she couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about, that she had no need to go courting pain and suffering. That she already had a surfeit of that in her life, what with being married to Dad and mother to the five of us.
The rest of us were beside ourselves.
We all clustered around oohing and aahing as the chrome-and-metal machines were unloaded and installed. We all held great hopes and high expectations. We thought that we would have bodies like Jamie Lee Curtis (she was very in then) from the briefest contact with them, and naturally demand to use them was high. Dad also said that he wanted a body like Jamie Lee Curtis, and Mum didn’t speak to him for a week.
We all jostled and fought to use the machines in the beginning. Like a wartime munitions production line, they were in use around the clock, and more than one tear was shed and more than one harsh word was spoken in the pitched battles about who was next. We especially loved the bike. Margaret, Rachel and I were obsessed with the size of our butts and thighs, and we spent the best part of our teenage years standing with our backs to full-length mirrors, almost breaking our respective necks as we tried to swivel our heads around without moving our bodies to see what our butts looked like from the back.
Asking each other anxiously, “What does my butt look like? Really big or just mediumly big?”
We wasted so much time torturing ourselves and worrying about the size of our butts.
It was so sad!
Because we were beautiful.
We had such lovely figures.
And we had no idea.
I’d now pay very large sums of money indeed to have the body that I had then. This made me think in alarm, “Jesus, will a day come when I look back at the body I have today and wish that I still had it?” Although I couldn’t possibly imagine ever being that desperate.
A combination of accidents and disappointed expectations eventually caused the novelty of the madness to wear off.
Although Helen was only nine, she decided that she alone knew how the rowing machine worked. She assembled us all for a demonstration. To impress us, she set the weights far too high and then attempted to lift them without doing any warmup exercises. She promptly pulled a muscle in her chest. And caused an almighty fuss.
The poor creatures who suffered at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition didn’t screech and carry on as much as Helen did. She claimed to be paralyzed down one side; the only thing that relieved any of her symptoms was huge quantities of chocolate and around-the-clock attention.
Helen was Helen from a very early age.
According to her the pain was unbearable. She asked Dr. Blenheim to put her out of her misery. The rest of us also found her pain unbearable and agreed that she should indeed be put out of her misery.
But Dr. Blenheim said there was some kind of law against doing this.
Murder or willful manslaughter or something, I believe he called it. Dad assured him that we preferred to call it a mercy killing.
And, as none of the rest of us ended up looking even remotely like Jamie Lee Curtis, in spite of all our exertions, we felt a little bit let down and disappointed and decided to get our own back on the bike by ignoring it.
After a while even Dad stopped pretending to use the machines. He muttered something vague about having read an article in Cosmopolitan about too much exercise’s being as bad for you as none at all. I had read the article in question myself. It was actually about compulsive exercisers, truly sick people, but as far as Dad was concerned he now had a cast-iron excuse. He was perfectly justified in abandoning the bike and the rowing machine.
So the two machines were sadly discarded and left to gather dust, along with the pink leg warmers and pink-and-blue twisted sweatbands that we’d bought to look good on them.
In fact, Margaret and I had even bought Dad a pair of pink leg warmers and a sweatband. He wore them once to entertain us. I think there’s still a photograph of it around somewhere.
In any event, I was very surprised when I almost tripped over the bik
e and the rowing machine in Rachel’s room.
I hadn’t seen them in years. I had thought that they would have long ago been exiled to the Siberia that is the garage along with the SpaceHopper, the pogo sticks, the roller skates, the skateboards, the game of Kerplunk!, the Trivial Pursuit, the swing ball, the squash rackets, the chopper bikes, the Teach Yourself Spanish tapes, the fiberglass canoe and the thousands of other toys and diversions that enjoyed a period of brief but fierce popularity—not to mention causing countless fights—in our family before they fell from favor and their appeal faded and they were cast into the outer darkness, to live with the lawn mower and the screwdrivers.
I was very glad to see them.
If a bit taken aback.
They were like old friends I hadn’t seen in years and whom I had bumped into somewhere totally unexpectedly.
I can see now with the benefit of hindsight that what I really needed was a punching bag. So that I could have worked off some of the terrible anger I felt toward James and Denise.
But in the absence of a punching bag, and the fact that the current legis-lation forbade me from using Helen’s head, the discovery of the bike and the rowing machine was a Godsend. I somehow realized that a little bit of physical exercise might be the one thing that would stop me from going around the bend and exploding with jealousy and resentment.
Either that or vast quantities of alcohol.
So I put down my bottle and my glass on Rachel’s dressing table and climbed up on the bike, tucking the nightgown under me. Yes, I was still wearing one of Mum’s nightgowns. Not the same nightgown that I started wearing the night I arrived back. Things hadn’t gotten that bad. I hadn’t sunk that low. But a nightgown that was definitely from the same stable.
Feeling a bit foolish (but not that foolish; after all, I had a half bottle of vodka under my belt), I started to cycle. And while the rest of the house slept I cycled and sweated. And then for a while I rowed and sweated. And then I got back on the bike again and cycled and sweated a bit more.
While James slumbered peacefully somewhere in London, his arm thrown protectively over Denis, I cycled like a madman, in a bedroom that still had posters of Don Johnson on the wall, hot, angry tears pouring down my puce face.
I couldn’t help but feel sorry for myself at the poignant juxtaposition.
Every time I pictured the two of them in bed together I cycled even faster, as though if I cycled hard enough I’d get away from the pain.
When I thought of her touching his beautiful naked body I would get another spurt of furious sickening energy and I pushed my body even harder.
I was afraid that I would kill someone if I stopped cycling.
I hadn’t exercised in months, had done nothing strenuous in ages (apart from give birth to a child) but I didn’t get tired or even get out of breath.
The harder I pushed myself the easier it got.
I felt as if my thigh muscles were made of steel (and they definitely weren’t, let me assure you). The pedals whizzed around in a blur. I felt as if my legs were lubricated, they worked so easily. It was as if someone had oiled my joints. I cycled faster and faster until eventually the tight hard knot in my chest started to unravel.
A feeling of calm settled on me.
I was able to breathe almost normally.
When I eventually clambered down from the bike, the handlebars slippery from my sweat, my nightgown sticking to me, I felt nearly elated.
I went back into my room and lay down.
Kate eyed my scarlet face and my soaking nightgown but didn’t seem particularly interested. I put my burning face on the cool pillow and knew that now I would be able to sleep.
I woke up very early the next morning. I even beat Kate to it. In fact, in a neat reversal of roles I woke her up with the sound of me crying.
“Now you see what it’s like,” I thought as I sobbed. “Is it any way to start the day?”
The specters of jealousy and anger returned.
They had stood over me as I slept, looking down at me. “Should we wake her now?” one consulted the other.
“All right,” said Jealousy. “Would you like to do it?”
“Oh no, why don’t you?” said Anger politely.
“It would be my pleasure,” said Jealousy graciously. Then grabbed me roughly by the shoulder and shook me awake.
And I woke to the horrible picture in my head of James in bed with Denise.
The bitter rage was back, coursing through me like poison.
So after I fed Kate, I finished the rest of the vodka and then went back into Rachel’s room and got back up on the exercise bike.
If there was any justice in the world I should have been as stiff as a poker after my exertions the previous night. But the one thing that I had learned over the past month was that there wasn’t any.
Justice, that is.
So I wasn’t as stiff as a poker.
I spent the next week or so eaten up by anger and jealousy. I hated James and Denise. I terrorized my family without even realizing that I was doing it. And when things got too much for me I climbed aboard the bike and tried to cycle away some of my terrible rage. I also drank far too much. I owed Anna a fortune.
Helen was charging me extortionate amounts for going to the liquor store for me.
And the forces of supply and demand dictated that I had no choice but to pay her.
I was a buyer in a seller’s market.
I couldn’t face leaving the house yet, therefore I paid her.
Or rather, because I had no hard cash myself, Anna did.
I had every intention of paying Anna back, but in my own time. I wasn’t particularly worried about the impact I was having on Anna’s cash flow.
But I should have been.
I mean, she was only on welfare.
And she had a mid-weight to heavy drug habit to support.
But I only cared about myself.
I was kind of half drunk most of the time. I thought that I’d numb the pain and anger by getting drunk. But it didn’t really help. I just felt sort of lost and confused. And then when I sobered up, in the few minutes it would take for me to drink my next drink and for the effects to hit me, I would feel horribly depressed. Really, really bad.
It was only when I accidentally overheard a conversation among Mum, Helen and Anna that I realized how awful I was being.
I was just about to go into the kitchen when I caught the sleeve of my sweater (well, Dad’s sweater) on a knob on the cabinet in the hall. While I extricated myself I heard Helen talking in the kitchen.
“She’s such a bitch,” Helen was complaining. “And we’re afraid to watch anything on TV that has people kissing in it or anything, in case she goes ballistic.”
Who were they talking about? I wondered. I was perfectly prepared to join in the character assassination, no matter who the unfortunate person was. That’s how mean and bitter I was.
“Yes,” Anna said, joining in. “I mean, yesterday when we were watching TV she threw the vase that I made for you for Christmas at the door, just because Sheila told Scott that she loved him.”
“Did she?” asked Mum, sounding outraged.
I realized, with a shock, that they were talking about me. Well, it must have been me. I was the one who had thrown that horrible vase at the door.
I stood quietly at the door and continued to eavesdrop like the horrible person that I had become.
“I really can’t believe it,” Mum went on, sounding shaken to the core.
“And what had Scott to say about that?”
“Oh, Mum, can’t you forget about Down Drongo Way for five minutes?”
said Helen, sounding like she was going to cry with frustration. “This is serious. Claire is behaving like a monster.”
“Well, maybe I am, but I learned everything I know from you, my dear,”
I thought acidly.
“It’s like she’s possessed!
” continued Helen.
“Do you think she might be?” asked Anna with great excitement, obviously ready to whip out her Filofax and give them the name of a good ex-orcist. (“I hear he’s great. All my friends use him.”)
“Look, girls,” said Mum gently, “she’s been through an awful lot.”
“Yes, I bloody well have,” I silently agreed, standing frozen at the door.
“So have a bit of sympathy. Try and have a little bit of patience. You can’t imagine how awful she must feel.”
“No, you most certainly can’t,” I mutely concurred.
A silence followed.
“Good,” I thought, “that’s shamed them.”
“She broke your Aynsley ashtray last night,” mumbled Helen.
“She did what?” said Mum sharply.
“Yes, she did,” confirmed Anna.
“Right,” said Mum decisively. “She’s gone far enough.”
“Ha!” said Helen triumphantly, obviously speaking to Anna. “I told you that Mum didn’t care about that crappy old vase that you made for her.”
“Time I left,” I thought.
I quietly went back upstairs, feeling shaken. A strange feeling had come over me. I later looked it up in my emotional reference book and identified it. There could be no doubt about it.
It was definitely Shame. Later that evening I had a visit from my dad. I’d been expecting it.
This is what used to happen whenever I misbehaved when I was younger. Mum would discover the indiscretion or misdeed or wrongdoing or whatever. She would then send in the heavy guns by telling Dad.
He knocked quietly and then stuck his head around my bedroom door, looking distinctly sheepish.
It had been a long time since he’d had to do this. No doubt Mum was behind him, in the hall with an electric cattle prod, hissing, “Get in there and tell her. Put the fear of God in her. She won’t listen to me. She’s afraid of you.”
“Hello, Claire, can I come in?” he asked.
“Sit down, Dad,” I said, indicating the bed.
“Hello, my favorite grandchild,” he said to Kate.
I didn’t catch her reply.
“Well!” he said, trying to be jovial.