Marian Keyes - Watermelon (31 page)

I have to say that walking into that restaurant was one of the most grati- fying experiences I'd ever had. James looked up from whatever he was reading and he literally, literally, did a double take.

"Er, Claire," he said, all of a fluster, "um, you're looking wonderful."

I smiled in what I hoped was a mysterious, enigmatic, sophisticated way. "Thank you," I purred.

That'll teach you to leave me, you bastard, I thought as I swung into my seat, giving him an eyeful of my thighs in my sheer, shimmering stockings and my short tight black dress.

He couldn't take his eyes off me.

It was wonderful.

I had got a few funny looks as I had walked from where I had parked the car to the restaurant. I suppose I was a bit overdressed for a bright Monday evening in April, but who cared.

The waiter, a youth in an ill-fitting dinner suit--an alleged Italian, but with a Dublin accent--came rushing over and spent an unnecessary amount of time patting my napkin onto my crotch.

"Um, thank you," I said when I felt that it had gone on far too long.

"You're welcome," he drawled, as Italian as bacon and cabbage. He winked at me over James's head.

Honestly!

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And then I got really paranoid.

Maybe he thought I was a hooker.

Did I look like a prostitute?

I knew my dress was too short.

Oh what the hell, I decided.

James smiled at me. A beautiful, warm, admiring, approving smile. And for a moment I saw the man I'd married.

Then he noticed the young waiter bending down so he could get a better look at my legs under the table and the smile vanished, leaving me feeling bereft.

"Claire." He frowned like a Victorian patriarch. "Cover yourself. Look at the way the waiter is looking at you!"

I reddened.

I felt foolish and embarrassed now in my short dress, instead of sexy and sassy. Fuck James for making me feel like this! Behaving like a bloody Amish person.

He hadn't always been like that, you know. I could remember a time when the shorter my dress was, the better he liked it. Well, times, as they say, had changed.

I put my head down and spitefully looked for the most expensive thing on the menu.

"I suppose we should talk about money," I said after the waiter had gone away.

"It's all right," he said. "I'll pay. I'll put it on the card."

"No, James," I said, wondering if he was being deliberately obtuse. "I mean, we have to talk about our money. You know, yours and mine, our financial situation."

I spoke slowly and deliberately, as if I was talking to a child.

"Oh, I see." He nodded.

"So, do we have any?" I asked anxiously.

"Money? Of course we do," he said, annoyed. I'd hit him where it hurt. Casting aspersions on his ability to provide for his wife and family. Or should I say his wife and families.

"Why wouldn't we have any money?" he asked.

"Well, because of my not working and only getting maternity pay and with you paying the mortgage and then the rent on another apartment and..."

"What do you mean, paying the rent on another apartment?" he said in loud and annoyed tones.

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"You know, the apartment that you and...and...Denise live in," I said. It nearly killed me to say her name.

"But I've moved back into our apartment," he said, looking at me in a slightly baffled way. "Didn't you know?"

Several things occurred to me at once.

Could I fatally wound him with a fork?

Would a woman judge be more lenient?

What would prison food be like?

How would Kate turn out if her mother murdered her father?

James's voice swam toward me through a haze of murderous rage.

"Claire," he was saying anxiously. "Are you feeling okay?"

I realized that I was gripping my butter knife so hard that my hand hurt. And, although I couldn't see my face, I knew it had gone bright red with fury.

"You mean to tell me," I finally managed to hiss at him, "that you've moved that woman into my home."

I thought that I would choke or vomit or do something antisocial.

"No, no, Claire," he said. Sounding hurried, anxious, afraid that--heaven forbid--I might cause a bit of a scene. "I've moved back into our apartment. But Deni...er...she hasn't."

"Oh."

I was totally flabbergasted. I didn't know what to say. Because I didn't know how I felt.

"I'm not...er...you know...with her anymore. I haven't been for some time."

"Oh."

In a way that was almost worse.

I still wanted to strangle him.

To think that he threw away our marriage, our relationship, for something that hadn't survived even two months of living together. The waste. The sense of pointless loss was almost unbearable. Then I burst out, "Why didn't anyone tell me?"

What had happened to the highly efficient bush telegraph system that my friends and I operated?

James spoke to me soothingly.

"Maybe nobody knows yet. I haven't made much of a fuss

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about it. And I haven't seen much of anyone over the past month," he ex- plained, obviously keen to keep me calm.

He must be having a nervous breakdown, I thought. He'd become a spooky, shadowy, Howard Hughes-type reclusive figure.

"I've been away on business," he continued.

"Oh."

All right, then he wasn't having a nervous breakdown. He hadn't become a spooky, shadowy, Howard Hughes-type reclusive figure.

I might have known. James was far too practical to bother with nervous breakdowns. If they couldn't be justified in financial terms he wasn't inter- ested.

At least that meant that he hadn't been away on vacation with fatso Denise that time I called him.

What a waste of all that angst and misery.

And then the curiosity started burning a hole in me.

What had happened with James and Denise?

I knew I shouldn't ask questions, but I just couldn't help myself.

"So did she kick you out?" I asked. I tried to say it lightly but it just sounded bitter. "Gone back to Mario or Sergio or whatever his name is."

"Actually, no, Claire," said James, looking at me carefully. "I left her."

"Gosh." Bitterness seeped out through my pores. "You're making quite a habit of it. Leaving women, that is," I added viciously, just in case he hadn't understood.

"Yes, Claire, I know what you meant." His tone of voice implied that somehow he felt he was above all this. But that he was a decent guy who was prepared to indulge me.

I carried on regardless. "And, anyway, I thought a gentleman would never say that he'd left a woman. I thought it was mannerly to say that she had left you even if she hadn't."

Even I was amazed at how illogical I was being. I was aware of the edge of hysteria in my voice. But I was powerless to stop. I had no control over my runaway emotions.

"I'm not telling the whole world that I left her," he said tightly, "I'm telling you. You asked me, remember?"

"Well, why aren't you telling the whole world that you left

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her? I want you to tell the whole world that you left her," I said, a dangerous wobble in my voice. "Why should everyone know that you just dumped me--and Kate--and then think that she kicked you out? Why should she be spared the humiliation?"

"Fine, then, Claire," he said, sighing loudly at my unreasonable and irra- tional demands. "If it makes you happy I will tell everyone what happened with Denise."

"Good," I said, my bottom lip trembling like jelly.

This was awful! Where had the recovered poised Claire gone? I had tried so hard to stay completely in control with James, not to let him see how much he had hurt me, how devastated I was. But all the pain was so close to the surface. I was on the verge of cracking.

It was all so embarrassing. I was very upset and he was in control. The contrast was mortifying.

"I'm going to the ladies room," I said. Maybe I could get a grip of myself there.

"No, Claire, wait," said James as I started to stand up. He tried to grab my hand across the table.

I shook his hand away angrily. "Don't touch me," I said tearfully.

Next I'd be saying something like "You lost the right to touch me when you left me."

"You lost the right to touch me when you left me," I found myself saying.

I knew it, I just knew it! The person who had the job of writing my life's dialogue used to work on a very low budget soap opera.

But I meant it.

I wanted to hurt him badly. I wanted him to feel the same loss that I had felt. To want someone so much that it aches. And to realize that you can't have them. And most of all I wanted him to feel that it was his fault.

Who made it happen?

You did.

"Claire, please sit down," he said, letting go of my hand slowly. He was doing a good impression of looking pale and upset. For a moment I felt guilty. God, I couldn't win.

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"Relax, James," I said coldly. "I'm not going to make a scene."

He had the grace to look ashamed.

"That's not what I'm worried about," he said.

"Oh really," I sneered at him.

"Yes, really," he said, sounding a bit more patient. "Look Claire, we've got to talk."

"There's nothing left to say," I responded automatically.

Whoops! There I went again. More bloody clich�s! Honestly, I could have died. It was so embarrassing.

And I wouldn't mind but it wasn't even true. There was lots to say.

Whoa, whoa, steady, easy, hold on, hold on, I told myself. "Isn't calm and civilized discussion the game plan?" the reasonable part of my brain sweetly asked the argumentative part. "Well, isn't it?"

"I suppose so," the argumentative part grudgingly conceded. Like a surly teenager.

"Can we at least try to be in control?" asked the reasonable part.

"I must stop," I told myself, taking a deep breath. "I will stop."

"Claire," he said, trying to sound gentle--as he pawed for my hand again. "I know I've treated you badly."

"Badly!" I exploded before I could stop myself. "Ha! Badly! That's one way of putting it."

Well, so much for being reasonable and in control! In spite of my pathetic efforts to keep a lid on my emotions the gloves were well and truly off now. All pretense of being calm and grown-up and civilized had gone by the board. Well, all pretense of my being calm and grown-up and civil- ized had. He still maintained a huge amount of equilibrium.

Equilibrium was one of the things he did best.

"Appallingly, then," he conceded.

He didn't sound very contrite. He sounded as if he was humoring me.

The unfeeling bastard! How could he be so self-contained? It wasn't human.

"How could you have been so irresponsible?" I burst out. I knew that would hurt him more than anything. He could

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take accusations of unkindness, cruelty, hardheartedness on the chin. But to call him irresponsible was a low blow.

"How could you just have abandoned us? I needed you."

I ended on a high impassioned note.

A silence followed.

He sat very still--ominously still--for a moment and some kind of emotion, although not one I was familiar with, flickered across his face.

When he spoke again it became clear that a change had come over him. Something had snapped. The patience well had run dry. He had gone to fetch a packet of tolerance and the cupboard was bare.

No more Mr. Nice Guy. Not that he had been much in evidence anyway.

When he spoke it wasn't in his normal voice. But in a nasty singsong flippant tone. "Yeah," he said with a long pause between each word. "You. Certainly. Did."

"Wha...at?" I asked, a bit taken aback.

I was still immersed in feelings of loss and abandonment, but I managed to grasp that something had happened to James. And that this something was not to my advantage. It was immediately obvious that things weren't right when he agreed with me so readily. It was even more immediately obvious that things were very wrong indeed when he agreed with me so readily in such a peculiar tone of voice.

"Oh," he went on, still in the peculiar tone, "I'm just saying how right you are. That's what you want, isn't it? In fact, I'll say it again, will I? You needed me."

What had happened? Events had taken a sudden and unexpected turn. I felt as though I had wandered into someone else's discussion. Or as if James had, all on his own, decided to change channels. I was still knee- deep in the old conversation, the one about James leaving me, and felt pretty wretched about it. But he had flicked over to a new conversation about something totally different. I struggled to catch up with him.

"James, what's going on here?" I asked in confusion.

"What do you mean?" he replied unpleasantly.

"I mean, why are you being so weird all of a sudden?" I said nervously.

"Weird," he said in a thoughtful, weighty tone, and looked

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around the room as if he was appealing to an invisible audience. "She says I'm being weird."

This from the man who was chatting to people who weren't there.

"Well, you are," I said. In fact, he was getting weirder by the second. "All I said was that I needed you and--"

"I heard what you said," he interrupted angrily, the singsong flippant tone abruptly gone.

He leaned across the table and fixed me with a furious face. "Here goes," I thought.

Relief mingled with my fear. At least now I'd know what the hell was up with him.

"You said that you needed me." He made some kind of annoyed sound and threw his eyes heavenward. "What an understatement!"

He paused--for impact?--and stared at me, his face hard and angry.

I didn't dare speak. I was enthralled. What was coming next?

"I know you needed me," he threw at me. "You needed me all the bloody time, for some bloody thing or other. How could I not know?"

I could only stare at him.

He didn't often get angry. So, on the special occasions when he did it was usually quite a treat. A bit spectacular. But not today. I didn't know where this anger of his came from but the message he seemed anxious to convey was that I was the one at fault.