Marian Keyes - Watermelon (30 page)

He sounded as if he had no trouble at all in believing it.

"I can't believe you let me in."

Well, actually you're not the only bloody one, I felt like telling him, but didn't.

"Why's that?" I asked with icy politeness.

"Oh," he said, shaking his head with a wry little smile, as though he couldn't quite credit his runaway imagination. "I thought that perhaps your mother and sisters might have done something really nasty when I arrived. You know, poured boiling oil down on top of me. Something like that."

And he sat there and, looking straight into my eyes, he smiled smugly, accepting the ease with which he had been readmitted to the Lion's Den as nothing less than his due,

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confident that, although I was from a mad family and a nation of savages, he was really quite safe.

I resisted the urge to lunge across the table at him and rip out his larynx with my teeth, hissing, "Boiling oil would be too good for you."

Instead I gave a cold little smile and said "Oh don't be ridiculous, James. We're perfectly civilized around here, no matter what you might like to think. Why would we hurt you? And after all"--tinkly little laugh like shards of ice banging off the side of a glass--"we need you to be in good health so that you can afford Kate's child support payments."

There was a resonant silence.

"What are you talking about, `child support payments'?" he asked slowly, as though he had never before in his life heard of such a thing.

"James, you must know what child support payments are," I told him, faint with shock.

I just stared at him.

What the hell was going on?

He was a boring, accountant-type person.

He and child support agreements should be best buddies.

In fact, I was amazed that he hadn't arrived with a huge itemized agreement for me to sign. You know, detailing all kinds of things, such as the cost of keeping Kate in shoes for the rest of her life, projected economies of scale, sinking funds, amortization and suchlike.

After all, this was the man who could, and probably frequently did, cal- culate a waitress's tip to within fourteen decimal places.

Not that he was cheap, you understand.

But he was very, very organized.

Forever scribbling on the backs of envelopes or on napkins and coming up with immensely detailed calculations which, oddly enough, nearly al- ways turned out to be correct. In five minutes he could tell you to the nearest penny how much it would cost you to decorate your bathroom, taking everything into account, including paint, fittings, labor, coffee for the workmen, workdays (your own, that is) lost from sleepless nights when the workmen disappeared for three weeks, leav-

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ing the bathtub in the hall etc.... Honestly, he thinks of everything!

"Child support payments," he said again thoughtfully. He didn't sound happy.

"Yes James," I said with steely resolve, although my stomach was lurching around like a ferry in rough seas. If James was going to be difficult about money, I'd die.

No, let me take that back. I wouldn't.

I'd kill him.

"Right, right, I see," he said, sounding a bit stunned. "Yes, we obviously do have a lot to talk about."

"Yes, we certainly do," I confirmed, trying to sound jovial. "And you're here now so we're in the happy position of being able to do so." I gave him a bright smile.

It was so reluctant that I think I damaged muscles in my face.

But I had to keep this as amiable and friendly as possible.

"So," I continued briskly, determined to sound as if I knew what I was talking about, "I know we're both unfamiliar with this sort of thing, but don't you think we should try to sort out the basic issues ourselves and let the lawyers dot the t's and cross the i's?" (I permitted myself a little smile at this. Which he completely ignored.) "Or would you prefer to do the whole lot, lock stock and barrel through our lawyers?"

"Aha!" He suddenly seemed to brighten up. He raised his index finger like Monsieur Poirot demonstrating the fatal flaw in the argument. "That would be fine if we had lawyers. But we haven't, have we?" He looked at me in a kindly but pitying sort of fashion as if I was a bit of a half-wit.

"But...well, actually I have," I told him.

"Have you?" he asked. "Have you indeed? Well, well, well." He sounded quite astonished. And not that pleased.

"Um...yes, of course I have," I said.

"My, my, weren't you the busy one?" he said a bit nastily. "You certainly didn't waste much time."

"James, what are you talking about? It's been two months," I protested. And to think that I had felt guilty about all the procrastination and time wasting.

I was confused.

Had I done something wrong? Was there some sort of pro-

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tocol? Some sort of time limit that I had to observe before dealing with the wreckage of my broken marriage?

Like not being allowed to go dancing in a red dress until my husband had been dead for six years, or whatever it was that Scarlett O'Hara so scandalized the Atlanta community with?

"Yes," he said. "I suppose it has been two months."

He sighed.

For a moment the wild thought crossed my mind that he might be sad. And then I realized that, yes, he probably was sad. Wouldn't any man be sad when he suddenly realized that he now had two families to support?

He was probably envisioning lawyers' fees and estate agents' costs stretching as far as the eye can see into the future as we sorted out the severing of our marriage. And of course keeping those three little brats of Denise's in pink nylon shell suits wouldn't come cheap either. Although, by rights, it should.

So I put any sympathy that I might have entertained to one side and said, "James, did you bring the deeds to the apartment with you?"

"Er, no," he said, looking a tiny bit bewildered.

"Why not?" I asked, slightly exasperated.

"I don't know," he said, looking at his shoes.

There was a perplexed pause.

"I suppose I just didn't think of it. I left London in such a hurry."

"Do you have any of our documents with you?" I asked, fighting the urge to smack him. "You know, bank statements, our pension details, that kind of thing?"

"No," he said shortly. His face had gone very pale. He must have been furious at being caught unprepared.

This kind of inefficiency was really very unlike him. He was acting totally out of character. Although he hadn't exactly been acting in character for quite a while. Maybe he was having a nervous breakdown? Or maybe he was so in love with fatso Denise that he'd turned into a bimbo. His eyesight had obviously failed him when he ran off with her. What's to say that his brain hadn't gone the same way?

"Do we need all those documents?" he asked.

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"Well, not right away, I suppose," I said. "But if we want to work things out while you're here, it would be a lot handier to have them."

"I suppose I could get some of them faxed over," he said slowly. "If that's what you really want."

"Well, it's not exactly a question of what I want," I said, feeling a bit confused. "It's so that we can try to figure out who owns what."

"God, how sordid!" he said with great distaste. "You mean, things like `I own that towel, you own that saucepan' kind of thing."

"Well, yes, I suppose I do," I said.

What was wrong with him? Hadn't he given this any thought whatsoever?

"James," I asked him as he sat on the chair looking totally shell-shocked. "What did you think was going to happen? That the divorce fairies would come along and magically sort it all out for us while we slept?"

He managed a pale little smile at that.

"You're right," he said wearily. "You're right, you're right, you're right!"

"I am," I reassured him. "And if it makes you feel any better, you can have all the saucepans."

"Thanks," he said quietly.

"And don't worry," I told him, all fake bonhomie and back-slapping jocularity, "one day I'm sure we'll look back and laugh at all of this."

Naturally enough, I was sure of nothing of the sort. I was dimly aware that there was something deeply, deeply wrong with my having to comfort him, with my having to make light of things and encourage him to be strong.

James suddenly got to his feet. He just stood there for a few moments looking lost. He was obviously planning how to get the mortgage docu- ments and all that stuff sent over from London, I thought. He must be mortified that he'd been so inefficient.

"I'd better go," he said.

"Right," I said. "Fine. Why don't you go back to your hotel [hotel! what a joke!] and organize the deeds of the apartment to be sent over? And then we can meet up later."

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"Fine," he said, still being very quiet.

I couldn't wait for him to leave.

This was too much.

It was finally happening.

It really was really, really over.

We'd dealt with it like civilized human beings. Too civilized, in my opinion. The whole thing had a dreamlike quality, and it was horrible.

"I'll call you this afternoon," he said.

He said good-bye to Kate, and although he looked as if he was explaining her child support entitlements to her, at least he seemed to be making an effort to bond with her.

Finally I managed to get him to leave.

He looked as exhausted as I felt.

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I barely managed to close the door behind him before I started to cry.

As though they instinctively knew that he had left--hey, what am I talking about, because they had been lying on the floor in the bedroom above the dining room with their ears pressed to a glass trying to hear everything that was being said--Anna, Helen and Mum magically emerged from the woodwork, wearing their Concerned Expressions.

I was distraught.

As though she sensed my grief, Kate started to bawl.

Or maybe it was just because she was hungry.

Either way it was a bit of a cacophony.

"The bastard," I managed to say between sobs, tears stinging my face. "How can it be so easy for him? He's like a fucking machine, with no feel- ings at all."

"Wasn't he upset, even slightly?" asked Mum anxiously.

"The one thing, the only thing, the fucker is worried about is how sordid it's going to be when we have to split up our possessions."

"But that's not so bad," said Helen soothingly. "Maybe then he'll just leave everything to you. And you'll get everything."

Nice try, Helen.

Not quite what I needed to hear though.

"So there was no mention of a reconciliation?" asked Mum, her face white, her eyes worried.

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"None!" I burst out, prompting a fresh bout of wailing from Kate, who was being held by a miserable-looking Anna.

"Reconciliation!" screeched Helen. "But you wouldn't take him back, would you? Not after the way he's treated you."

"But that's not the point," I sobbed. "At least I wanted the choice. I wanted the chance to tell him to fuck off and that I wouldn't touch him with a ten-foot pole. And the bastard didn't even have the decency to do that."

The three of them nodded in sympathy.

"And he was so smug!" I burst out. "I remembered how he likes his bloody coffee!"

There was a sharp intake of breath from all three of them. They stood shaking their heads sadly at my foolishness. "That's bad," said Anna. "Now he'll know that you still care."

"But I don't," I protested violently. "I hate his guts, his uptight, unfaithful, accountant's guts!

"And the bloody nerve of him!" I continued, tears pouring down my blotchy face.

"What?" asked the three, moving forward slightly to hear yet another of James's misdeeds.

"He was upset about the dividing of our things and I, I, me! was the one who ended up trying to make him feel better about it. Imagine it! Me comforting him. After all that's happened."

"Men," said Anna, shaking her head in weary disbelief. "Can't live with them, can't live with them."

"Can't live with them," continued Mum, "can't shoot them."

There was a pause. Then Helen spoke.

"Says who?"

"So what's the outcome?" asked Mum.

"None yet," I said. "He's calling this afternoon."

"What are you going to do until then?" Mum asked, her anxious glance straying inadvertently in the direction of the liquor cabinet, even though it had stood empty for many's the long year, but old habits die hard. It might have been more appropriate if her glance had strayed inadvertently out into the garden and under the oil tank, but never mind.

"Nothing," I said. "I'm so tired."

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"Why don't you go to bed?" she said hastily. "It's been an ordeal for you. We'll take care of Kate."

Helen looked as if she was about to protest. She opened her mouth mutinously. But then she shut it again.

Nothing short of miraculous, I must say.

"Okay," I said. I dragged myself up the stairs and got into bed still wearing the lovely clothes that I had been decked out in that morning. There was no trace of the smiling, well-made-up, attractive woman I had been then. Only a red-faced, puffy-eyed, blotchy-skinned wreck.

Mid-afternoon, Mum woke me by gently shaking me by the shoulder, whispering "James is on the phone for you. Will you talk to him?"

"Yes," I said. I stumbled from the bed, clothes all crumpled, half-blinded from sleep in my eyes, drooling like a lunatic.

"Hello," I mumbled.

"Claire," he said crisply, all authority and efficiency. "I've tried to get our deeds faxed over to me but there's no fax shop in this bloody city."

Instantly I felt guilty. He made me feel as if it was all my fault. As though I had personally gone around and shut every fax shop in Dublin just to spite him.

"Oh sorry, James," I stuttered. "If you'd mentioned it I would have suggested that they could have been faxed to Dad's office."

"Well, never mind." He sighed, sounding irritable and exasperated and conveying that, if he wanted something done, he was better off doing it himself and not involving me or any members of my immediate family. "Anyway it's too late now. They're being mailed and should arrive in the morning."

You'll be lucky, I thought, thinking of the relaxed attitude of the Irish postal system, compared to the English one. But I said nothing. Doubtless when the time came and the documents didn't, I would somehow be made to feel that that was my fault also.

"But I do think that we should meet this evening anyway," he continued efficiently, ever the professional. Time is money, isn't that right, James! But in fairness he did have a point. We had to meet anyway. We had so much to talk about. It made

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sense. I obviously wanted everything sorted out as quickly as possible so that I could get on with my new life.

I didn't have any other motive, did I?

I wasn't pathetic enough to think that, if he saw enough of me, he might realize that he still loved me?

Maybe I just enjoyed his company.

Maybe hell!

But I had to admit that I was fascinated by the fact that he no longer loved me. You know, in the same sort of way that people always look at the blood on the road and the mangled vehicles being towed away after a car crash. I know that it's horrible but at the same time I'm so drawn to it. I know that I'll be upset afterward but I still can't stop myself.

Or maybe I just wanted the chance to beat the shit out of him. Who knows?

"Well, what should we do?" he asked. "I would come out to your house but I'm not sure I'm particularly welcome."

I could hardly believe my ears.

How dare he!

He had no right to feel welcome, but at the same time, I had treated him with the utmost good manners.

Which is more than the way he could be said to have treated me.

Hadn't I made him coffee?

Hadn't I not set the dogs on him?

Not that we had any dogs, but that wasn't the point.

Worse still, I could have set Helen on him.

Just what had he been expecting?

The roads from Dublin Airport to be lined with cheering natives, waving Union Jacks? Brass bands and red carpets? A national holiday to be de- clared? Me greeting him at my front door, wearing a sexy negligee, smiling and saying huskily "Welcome back, darling"?

Frankly, I was baffled.

I wasn't sure what I should say.

Sorry sir, but we're fresh out of fatted calves.

He sounded as if he was sulking. As if he wanted me to say something like, "Oh, don't be so silly, James. Of course you're welcome." But James didn't sulk. He was far too grown

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up for that. And no man in his right mind could have expected me to wel- come him back with open arms.

But what was I going to say?

"I'm sorry you feel that way, James," I managed to say humbly. "If my family or I have behaved in any kind of inhospitable fashion, then I can only offer my apologies."

Of course, I didn't mean a word of it.

If my family had offended him in any way--if, for example, Helen had attracted his attention when he left the house by making horrible faces or gestures at him from an upstairs window or mooning him or something even worse--then I would personally offer rewards.

But I had to humor James.

Although I was gagging on my polite words, I always had Kate in the forefront of my mind. Nothing would have given me greater pleasure than to tell James just how unwelcome he was, but that would be cutting off my nose to spite my face. I didn't want Kate to grow up without a father, so telling James that he wasn't unwelcome (I'm afraid that that was as far as I was prepared to go) was the price I had to pay.

"Well, should I come over then?" he asked grudgingly.

What was wrong with him?

He was behaving like a manipulative child.

"Oh, James," I said kindly, "I wouldn't want you to come over here if you're not feeling particularly welcome. We both want to be relaxed. Per- haps we should meet in town instead."

There was a long pause while James digested this.

"Fine," he said coldly. "We could go for dinner."

"That sounds nice," I said, thinking, that does sound nice.

"Well, I've got to eat something," he said ungraciously. "So you might as well come along."

"You always were a silver-tongued devil," I said, forcing a smile into my voice. But I felt suddenly so sad.

We arranged to meet at a downtown restaurant at seven-thirty.

And the preparations were, if anything, even more elaborate than the ones that morning.

I wanted, naturally, to look beautiful.

But I decided that I wanted to look sexy also.

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James had always loved my legs and loved it when I wore high heels, even if they made me nearly as tall as he was.

So I wore my highest pair, with my shortest dress, black, of course and the sheerest pair of stockings I could find.

As luck would have it, hadn't I shaved my legs only the previous even- ing? When I was preparing to have sex with Adam, actually. But let's not talk about that right now.

I put on piles of makeup.

"More mascara," urged Helen from the sidelines. "More foundation."

The subtle approach had been, shall we say, less than successful this morning. So now we were going for overkill.

As I applied the stinging stuff that I put on my lips to keep my lipstick in place, it struck me how terrible this all was. So awful. I used to apply my makeup with that kind of care when I was going out with James first. And now here I was dolling myself up, trying my damnedest to look beautiful for the Grand Finale of our relationship.

It was all such a waste.

Failed relationships can be described as so much wasted makeup.

Forget the laughs, forget the fights, forget the sex, forget the jealousy. But take off your hat and observe a moment's silence for the legions of unknown tubes of foundation, mascara, eyeliner, blusher and lipstick who died that it might all have been possible. But who died in vain.

I looked at myself in the mirror and, I had to admit it, I looked good. Tall and slim and nearly elegant. Not a watermelon in sight.

"Jesus," said Helen, shaking her head in undisguised admiration. "Look at you. And it's such a short time since you were a fat old bitch."

Praise indeed.

"Put your hair up," suggested Helen.

"I can't, it's too short," I protested.

"No, it's not," she said, and came over to me and swept it up onto the top of my head.

Goddammit, she was right. It must have grown a bit while I completely neglected it over the previous two months.

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"Oh," I said, delighted. "I haven't had long hair since I was sixteen."

Helen busied herself with slides and clips while I grinned like a lunatic at my reflection in the mirror. "James will be sickened," I said. "He'll be so sorry that he can't have a beautiful babe like me. I'll have him on his knees begging me to take him back as soon as I walk in the door."

My beautiful fantasy of a drooling and contrite James was interrupted by Helen saying loudly, "What have you done to your ears?"

"What's wrong with them?"

"They're kind of purple."

"Oh, that's just the hair color. I suppose we'd better take my hair back down to cover them," I said sorrowfully. I had very quickly grown attached to this sophisticated look.

"No, no, we'll think of something," said Helen with a bit of a gleam in her eye. "Stay there." And off she went.

She arrived back with Anna, who whistled when she saw me, and a couple of cloths and a bottle of turpentine.

"You do that ear," instructed Helen. "And I'll do this one."

I went to meet James with ears that were red, raw and almost bleeding, instead of a rich, glossy, chestnut color.

But my hair remained up.

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