The anniversary, p.16
The Anniversary, page 16
I heard May calling from the landing. Lucie? Lucie are you OK down there? The dog, following up its mistress’s question, trotted down the stairs to investigate, and when it found me nosed at my groin. Yes, I called back, just coming. I quickly chose a Merlot and a Cab Sav, unsure which would go better with the meal, and carried these back up the stairs. In my absence May had laid the table and set out the salad, along with a basket of bread. I watched her a moment, stirring butter through a bowl of green beans. Then I opened the Merlot and went to pour myself a glass. As I did so my sister whispered something in my ear, before pulling away as Adam stepped inside. He said what returning men say: Smells good. May retreated to the kitchen bench. I watched him come up behind her and take hold of her waist, tugging her in towards him. He was gentle, but still she flinched. He seemed not to notice, or to ignore this – interpreting it as a self-preserving move on her part, ducking her head a little to avoid the heavy metal rim of the extraction fan where it jutted out over the stove.
When my sister first met him, she thought he was an Evangelical. She was working out at the gym, running on the treadmill. Beside her were the stationary bikes, and a man riding hell-for-leather, as she told me. He had headphones on, and she thought he was singing quietly to himself, in a kind of panted whisper. But as he continued with his routine, the whispering became more forceful. He was speaking quickly, and louder, as if giving commands. She made out the words: Stand up! Up! Come on up, people! She thought he was possibly crazy, and that his ferocious exercise was part of some delusionary phase. She watched him out of the corner of her eye, concerned. His gaze was intent, focused on the wall in front of him as though he could see something there. She slowed the treadmill to a walking pace and thought perhaps she should move; he was tall, well built, clearly very strong, and she didn’t like the idea of being too close to a raving man of that size. Although he soon calmed down, the cycling became less frenetic, and he leant back on his seat to take a sip of water. But the return to some state of possession was sudden – a new song, perhaps, triggering the rise in energy. She listened more closely to his whispered mutterings, intrigued by the fact that he was either oblivious of this behaviour, or didn’t see it as at all out of keeping with normal gym etiquette. Up! Up! he said, Everybody stand! He cycled very hard, and it was then that she heard him say, Jesus, Jesus. At that point she thought perhaps he was not crazy in the conventional sense, but very devout, and his utterances were intended as a form or worship, a self-induced state of exaltation, exercise as a means to possession. It was only later that she realised he was one of the gym class instructors, and that what she had overheard was him practising a new routine – when people should stand up on their bike pedals, when they should sit and race. This was before he changed direction and moved into real estate. He found the ridiculousness of her initial misunderstanding somehow attractive. She joined his classes.
Here, she said, unhooking herself from his arms and gesturing to the large cast-iron pot, hot from the oven, take this to the table.
Lucie, he said, come have a seat. I thanked him and took my place. The girls were fighting over who sat on which chair, despite the chairs being identical. Adam merely raised his voice enough to say, Hey! and they hushed down, squirming a little as children do when, in the midst of a party game, the music stops and they must settle wherever they happen to be, lest they find themselves excluded from playing.
May came, carrying the platter of green beans, and we all flapped our napkins out over our laps. Well, she said, grinning, Here we all are. So lovely to see you at last, she said, reaching out and taking hold of my hand. I smiled back and thanked her. Especially, I said, after everything that— But she quickly brushed this comment away, sweeping her hand through the air close to her face, as one might shoo a fly. It’s nothing, she said. Please eat. It wasn’t clear whether she meant that her hospitality was nothing, as in not an effort of any kind, or that her own illness was not of significance, or that nothing had happened to me either, to either of us in fact, that it was better to act this way, to say nothing. These were things, her gesture indicated, that one does not discuss at the dinner table. In front of the children. In this way May’s own silence could be readily justified and reframed as a way of caring for others, a form of consideration.
Because this was what she had whispered to me while I was opening the wine before the meal – Just so you know, I had a hysterectomy, she told me. A few weeks ago. That’s all. Best not to talk about it around Lexi though, she said. There were some complications and I had an infection but I’m fine now, just tired, she told me, her voice still hushed. But it really bothered Lex.
They had learnt of Lexi’s sensitivity only after May first came home from the hospital. Explaining to the children what kind of surgery had taken place, Lexi leant suddenly against the shelf near which she was standing and said, Can you stop talking about that, please? I feel really strange. They looked at her and said, What kind of strange? But before she could answer she fell down in a faint. She came to fairly quickly, her gaze swimming around the room, her voice small. What happened? she asked. She had a headache. Lexi said that the mention of the surgery, and especially the word womb, had made her feel dizzy, then a little sick, and that was all she could remember.
I reached over for the water jug and poured too quickly. Chunks of ice splashed into my glass. Between my life and May’s I could only think of all the things I wasn’t meant to say. I was, in a sense, in a state of quarantine, my inner life fenced off by the collective onslaught of pleasantries in which I was complicit (how is London, what year are you in at school, when did you move here). I knew this to be a way of coating my own damage, of sealing it and preventing it from leaking out and infecting the people I was living among. They were afraid of my experience, I realised, and so dared not ask. Adam turned to take the other bottle from the sideboard, the Cab Sav this time. It had been, I calculated, nearly two weeks since the night Patrick died. Although this was an unreliable tally: I’d lost hours flying from London to Australia, gained some heading from Japan to New York, then there had been the flight in between, from New York to London. If I travelled in a certain direction for long enough it seemed possible to erase that terrible night entirely – such was my magical thinking at the time. And if May didn’t ask about the accident, if she never spoke of it, perhaps that was because it hadn’t happened at all.
I looked over at my sister. She perched on the edge of her chair and sat very upright, her spine straight in the fashion of an obedient schoolgirl. She always had been rewarded for her good behaviour – a child that wanted to please people. I was more tempestuous, and when we were young she had often witnessed the arguments that erupted between me and our father. May made herself different by being the good child. She made herself stand out in that odd way that brings praise when young, and invisibility when older. She didn’t scream or make demands or speak out of turn. I had often thought what an effort that must take, but now I understood that this was easier for her – she didn’t want to be unsettled. Maybe she never had those greater and disruptive feelings. Or if she did, they were feelings she must have pretended not to know, refused to tell me about. Held off for as long as she could. Of course we wouldn’t talk about Patrick. Not now, maybe not ever. Just as we never spoke about our mother. Sometimes I used to try, when we were young and sharing a bedroom. I’d whisper to her after the lamp had been switched off, but she never replied. I knew she was still awake, I could tell from her breathing. I wanted to hear the story, the one she once told about our mother’s return that night. She first told me this when I’d been ill. I’d had a bad fever, so bad in fact that our father said I’d been delirious, and it was while I was recuperating that May told me the story about our mother and the sweets. But you must never tell Father, she said, because he didn’t know that she knew, and neither of us wanted to make him angry. After all, for a long time he was all we had. Later, I wrote about the scene that May had described, although May never commented on this. I’m not sure she ever read one of my novels cover to cover. Although she was happy to talk about them in generalities. In all truth, she once told me, the proximity between our own lives and certain episodes in my fiction unnerved her. I didn’t exactly intend this; sometimes, when I write, I feel not so unlike that fevered child, the scenes that emerge coming hot from the mind – a strange fusion of wish-fulfilment and prediction, sometimes hallucinatory in their power. None of this was to May’s taste; she preferred not to dredge things up, but to leave them unspoken. The child and now the woman still upholding her code of silence – keeper of the peace.
Adam pushed back from the table and, without saying anything, went to the fridge and stood a moment staring into its bright interior. May glanced at him, said nothing and dropped her head down a little towards her food, so as to look at the meat she was cutting. To the fridge, her husband said, Do we have any mayonnaise? May replied, as if to the dead chicken on her plate, I don’t know, did you buy any? She carved at her meal as if it were made of some dense and resistant substance, requiring her full attention and preventing her from going to Adam’s aid. Eventually, however, he found what he was looking for and returned to the table, sitting down heavily in his seat and letting out a sigh that could have been a sigh of effort or relief, it was hard to tell, and perhaps not an involuntary sigh at all but a sign or signal that belonged to the language of their marriage. My sister appeared to understand this sound because it elicited no response in her, no query, no concern; it was a familiar piece of marital code it required no interpretation on her part. Instead, she pushed some greens on to the end of her fork, so that they overlapped with a piece of roast potato, and lifted it towards her lips, asking me, How is the book going, and the prize thingy, sorry, I should have remembered – the name of it, I mean. It was a big deal, right?
She sawed at the meat on her plate. Then her knife slipped and a piece of roast chicken fell to the floor. Rupert! May called, without glancing up. The dog came padding in. My sister put one hand beneath the table and clicked. She did not even need to make eye contact with the dog for him to understand the message: food in waiting. It was a tiny piece, but still you could hear him slobbering all over the tiles, and then sniffing around at everyone’s feet in case he’d missed something.
I pushed my food around, the nausea rising. Are you not hungry? May asked.
I think it’s the jet lag, I replied, my body clock all mixed up. Sorry.
Lexi leant over and started to pick out bits of tomato from the salad, putting one piece after another on her plate. May reached across the table and smacked her hand away.
Hey! Lexi yelled. What was that for?
Use the salad servers, May replied.
They’re too big for my hands.
Well you can’t just eat the tomatoes. What about everyone else, what about Lucie? What if Lucie wants some tomatoes?
I don’t actually— I started to say, but Lexi interjected.
There’s still lots there, she said.
That’s not the point, replied May.
You just said it was the point.
You know what I mean, can’t you just have some manners?
What, like, for once?
I didn’t say that.
But you were about to, right? That’s what you say, just for once in your life, Lexi said, putting on a whining imitation of her mother’s voice.
Lexi, please. I just mean—
I know what you mean, Lexi spat. For God’s sake, they’re just tomatoes. Tom-at-oes, she said, sounding the word out slowly and phonetically as if her mother were an idiot. Lexi shoved her chair back then she stomped off to her room and just before she slammed her door she shouted out, Why didn’t you just stay in hospital? Everything was fine then.
We all fell into silence, chewing very carefully. May’s face was flushed. Jess poked at the food on her plate while she kicked idly at the leg of the dining table. I’m tired, Mummy, she said. I’m not hungry any more.
I know, honey, May replied. Just eat this bit here, she said, pushing a small pile of potatoes to one corner of the plate.
I’m sorry, I said at last, excusing myself as a headache started to throb behind my eyes. The jet lag is really getting to me. I think I might have to lie down for a moment.
Do you want some more water? May asked me. Or a hot drink? She went to get up. No, no, I said. I’m fine. I’ll be fine. I just need to lie down.
But you’re not though. What about a hot-water bottle? Or just some paracetamol. Camomile tea? It was the language one uses when tending to a child. What does the child want? The child that exists in an endless state of wanting, then needing, then wanting again. Wanting so badly they feel it as a need, the ache of the body. It was the habit of maternal language. Not the language of the host. A host would say, Can I offer you a glass of water? Can I get you a cup of tea? They would never assume wants. Like a person who deals with financial matters but never utters the word money. Instead, they use words like lucrative, substantial, insufficient – descriptors of proportion or gain – or they might say something like ‘the number is around two hundred’. One could entertain preferences, but not announce desires. There could be only approximations. The language of the host would work hard to efface their own labour, their own appetites, disguising any hint of the inconvenience that might be caused by fetching that water or that tea. Not so the language of the child or their weary parent.
Sure, I said. Actually, some more water would be great, thanks. The jug on the table was empty. I didn’t say, in the returning voice of the house guest, Please don’t trouble yourself, or, if more familiar with the environment, Don’t you get up, I can do it. I drank the water in one go while May stood beside me, watching. I’m sorry, I said again. But I really think I have to lie down. Besides, I should get early night – I’ve got a TV interview in the morning.
Gosh, she said, you should have told us! Are you going to be okay to do that?
I’ll be fine, I replied. It’s not a long slot.
It must be good for sales though.
I shrugged and pushed my chair back from the table. Hopefully it’ll be over before I know it, I said.
From my bed I could hear the muted sounds of the kitchen: chairs scraping on the floorboards, cutlery on plates. The jet lag made the ground beneath me feel unstable, whether I was standing on solid earth or lying down. Now, as I stretched out between the sheets, I had the sensation of sinking and turning. If I closed my eyes the darkness seemed to swell and shift. I drifted in and out of semi-sleep but couldn’t settle. The plunging feeling of the jet lag was too much like the feeling of the ship tilting and dipping on the high seas. Somewhere in the room a fly was dying. It made a high-pitched buzzing, striking a note of frenzy. It buzzed and buzzed, unceasing. Eventually I reached over and turned on the light, then got up to look for it, hoping to set it free from whatever web it was caught in, but I couldn’t see it anywhere. I lay back down. Its frantic noise sounded like a kind of plea. Why would the spider not come and kill the fly? I closed my eyes.
The air was hot and damp, too hot to sleep. Above me the ceiling fan turned slowly, pushing warm air from one part of the room to another, a sticky breeze moving gently over my bare shoulders, my face. Dull memory of his hands touching me there. The stroke of his fingers. During that first taxi ride, when Patrick didn’t go to the airport, when he reached across to brush my hair behind my ear. He had confessed then that he was secretly writing a script which, he told me, was basically a love story.
I’d complimented him on the seminar, and he’d waved this away explaining that he wasn’t all that into those ideas any more, that he was mainly working on this other thing. The love thing. Not a story exactly, more of an exploration. It’s not going so well though, he said. I think I can pull the production funds together, but that means nothing if the script is crap. He sighed heavily. The windows were fogging up. Until that all gets going, what, I keep turning up to talk about this academic bullshit. Sorry, he said, I probably shouldn’t say that. I mean, you’re studying this stuff.
He rubbed a hand across his stubbled jaw. I dismissed his concern. Some of it is boring, I said.
They’ll hate it, you know. My film. Everyone here, I mean. He worried that it would be deemed too emotional. Really? I said, when he confided this. But isn’t that the point? And I mean, who cares?
Ah, he said. Now this is what I like about you.
Human beings are never so very different from the art they make, and he himself had a powerful effect – electrifying. If he worried that others might doubt him, even then I had every faith. What was there not to believe in? With his salt-and-pepper hair and expressive frown lines etched into his forehead like a grid. The ancient leather jacket that he wore then over a striped jumper. The jacket, I noticed, smelt strongly of tobacco.
