Remember Why You Fear Me (21 page)

“Goodness,” said a girl. And, “What was it?” said the other.

David told them.

“It hasn’t had very good reviews,” said the uglier girl to David. “And it’s a shame, because I think she was very funny when she was in
Friends
, I just don’t know whether she’s choosing the right projects, and of course she’s getting older now, so maybe she’s not getting the offers she once had . . .”

“He is taken, you know,” said Alex.

“Sorry?”

“My friend. He is
taken
.”

“I didn’t mean to . . .”

“Oh, we’re not
gay
,” sneered Alex. “I bet you think we are. But we were married to
women
. They’re dead now. But we still keep them in our hearts, we’ll never betray them. We’d do anything for them! Show us some fucking respect, we’re fucking mourning!”

By now Alex was on his feet, and the girls were backing into the crowd, and David was dragging his friend out of the pub.

“Get your hands off me, David, I swear to God, I’ll fucking
glass
them, what do they think, they think we can’t find wives as good as ours?”

“Now calm down,” said David. “Come on.”

Alex threw him off; David flinched. And Alex looked at him in surprise. “I’d never hurt you,” he said. “I’m hurt you think I would.”

“All right,” said David. “Just breathe.”

Alex took a couple of gulps of night air, and began to sob. Dry sobs, they made his little fat body heave with the effort. “I’ve ruined the evening,” he said. “And we were having a brilliant evening. It’s the drink. I shouldn’t, for her sake, I mean, when you bear in mind. What she. But I’ve been so down, mate. I miss her. I miss her really bad.”

“I know,” said David.

“I don’t want to be out with
you
. I don’t know
you
. I want to be with
her
.”

“I understand,” said David.

And a look of relief washed over Alex’s face, and his eyes lit up, and even his tongue came out for a second, he looked like a little puppy dog so eager to please. “Next time I won’t drink. Promise. Just fizzy water. Yeah?” David didn’t say anything. Alex’s face creased up. “I
need
her,” he said. “And you understand.”

And his breath was all over David again, and it made him think of Janet, and how close her breath could be, that he wanted to be home with her right now. And he didn’t agree to see Alex again, but he nodded, and that was enough.

The trick, David soon realized, was not to think about it too much.

Someone had told him once—it may have been a medical student, someone he met in the university bar—about the way the brain can screen out unwanted objects it doesn’t want us to see. The nose is the best example. We all see the nose—he told David, and David thought he was very drunk, and wondered why he was bothering him—we all see the nose
all
the time. It’s a big pointy thing sticking straight out the centre of our face, of course we can see it. And if we think about it too much, this permanent obstruction getting in the way of what we want to look at, always there in our peripheral vision, it’d make us feel claustrophobic. It’d drive us nuts. So the brain refuses to acknowledge it. Ignores it, tries to make us look
through
it, makes it seem transparent. David assumed he was a medical student, but he supposed that was just because he was talking about brains and noses and body parts, he supposed he could have been anyone really. And he really wished the student had shut up, he hadn’t wanted to think about such things, now he’d been alerted to it he couldn’t stop seeing his own nose for days.

And David now had to play the same game with Janet. Because it was obvious to him now—she wasn’t just in front of his face, she was
growing herself on to his face
. She was there all the time, always in his peripheral vision, just like a nose—but now there was another nose to contend with, and much more besides. Staring out at her as she stared back at him. He could feel the bristles on his chin flattened against her chin. Her hair tickling his cheeks. Her lipsticked lips. When he breathed, he did so first through his mouth and then through her mouth and then out through the back of her head. Sometimes, when he tried to focus upon any specific object, when he really had to sharpen his eyes and concentrate, he fancied he was having to do so by peering through her forehead, her skull, her very brain. But, like the nose, he tried not to think about it, he
didn’t
think about it; like the nose, he found a way of keeping the obstruction in the corner of his eye. Or else, he knew, he really
would
go nuts.

He wondered why she was there. He wondered why he was so special. And then he wondered whether maybe he wasn’t special at all—maybe this is what happened to all the poor widowers, maybe they all ended up haunted by a dead wife’s face. Maybe they just chose never to talk about it.

Her company made him happy, most of the time. Sometimes the claustrophobia would be too much. Her head right against his head, no room, no space of his own, a wife always there bearing down on him, he couldn’t breathe. That’s when she would help him. She’d suck in big lungfuls of air, then blow them back into his mouth. She’d give him what he needed. She’d take care of him. She’d breathe for both of them.

It did occur to him that those lungfuls of air she was sucking must have been his air to begin with. But that made him feel a little churlish.

Her mouth would move against his perfectly; when he yawned, she yawned in unison; when he chewed, she chewed; when he forced his mouth into a scowl, a grimace, an artificial grin, just to see, just to test her, yes, she’d do it too. He’d say, “I love you,” when he went to sleep at night, and her lips would whisper back the same words to him, in an instant, he didn’t even have to wait.

Having her this way was better than nothing.

He didn’t like to eat much. He didn’t like the way it looked, the concentration he needed to change the way it looked: he had to take his fork and push the food through the back of her head, past her tongue, past her teeth, past her lips, before it could reach his own. Everything he ate seemed now second hand. She’d sucked all the taste out of it all. Sometimes the food was merely stale. Sometimes it seemed like dirt. Like earth.

All he could really taste properly was that lipstick, her lipstick, creamy and gloopy and clamping down on him hard.

One night, as he was brushing his teeth, he felt something wriggling in his mouth. He assumed it was Janet’s tongue, it often found its way in there. But out with the gobbet of soil-mint toothpaste he also spat out a worm. It wasn’t a very big worm, to be fair, but seeing it there in the sink was still alarming. David stared at it. He gave it a jab with the end of his toothbrush, and it writhed at the touch. “But what are you doing there?” he said. And, “But she was
cremated
!” The worm looked at him, or so David thought, it was frankly rather hard to tell; it twitched, and that might have been a shrug—hey, I’m a worm, what would I know? And then it slid itself down the plughole.

He dreamed of Janet at last. And it was the last dream he ever had, or, at least, the last dream that was truly his.

She was wearing her favourite summer dress, the one she’d wear even when it was cold and raining because she’d say it made her feel better.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said, “and for such a long time!” And she kissed him, but as her face leaned in to his she changed direction, she avoided the lips altogether and plumped for the cheek. And what was the good of that, he couldn’t taste it at all?

“Should we eat?” she said, and they took their places in the restaurant. It was the same restaurant at which they’d had their first date. Where he’d first dared use the “love” word on her. Where he’d proposed. And it was odd, because they had all been different restaurants.

“How have you been?” she asked. “How have you been holding up?”

“I miss you,” he said.

It took a couple of hours for the waiter to take their order, but that didn’t matter, and they swapped stories of old adventures together, two lives well led. And after a while David realized he was the only one doing the talking, and Janet was just sitting there, listening, smiling, drinking his memories in, drinking in his happiness.

The food arrived, and it wasn’t what David had ordered; he’d thought they were somewhere Italian, but now it was all Chinese. And he didn’t expect he’d be able to taste his meal, but it was good, it was so good, that sweet and sour sauce was simply to die for, he cried at how good it was.

They ate their fill. Once in a while David would have to turn his head away, spit out a few worms here and there. And Janet would tut amiably, and say, “David, I thought
I
was the one who’s dead!” They’d laugh a lot about that.

It was the same restaurant in their honeymoon hotel. It was the restaurant of every birthday and anniversary. It was the restaurant to which he’d take her to say sorry after they’d had a fight, and where, by accepting the invitation, she was assuring him it was all right, everything was all right, she still loved him.

“I didn’t know where to scatter your ashes,” he said.

“That’s okay.”

“I scattered them in the park. I’m sorry.”

“But it’s a nice park,” she said.

“I can’t remember,” he said. “I keep trying to remember. What the last thing I ever said to you was. Do you know? Can you tell me? Tell me it was something nice. Tell me I said I loved you. Please. I loved you.”

It was the restaurant where she’d told him she was pregnant. It was the restaurant to which he’d taken her once she lost the child, because they couldn’t face being at home, they didn’t want to eat at all.

“Why do you haunt my face?” he asked her. She looked a bit hurt at that.

“You need to move on,” said Janet, at last.

“I can’t move on.”

She paused. “I’ve moved on.”

He took this in.

“Are you breaking up with me?” he asked.

“I’m sorry.”

“Is it something I’ve done?”

“No,” she said. “No. It was just. An accident of circumstance. Oh, baby, please. Please don’t cry.”

“But I love you,” he said, and the tears were flowing now, why was he crying now and ruining the date, why now when he’d all those weeks of numbness to get through? “I love you,” he said, as if that solved a blind thing, as if that did even the slightest bit of good.

“I know,” she said. And she took his hand. And she squeezed it. And she let it go.

It was the restaurant in which he had the dream his dead wife didn’t want him anymore.

They talked a bit more after that. Other adventures they’d had, some of them just the same adventures as before. He repeated his anecdotes a little.

“Save me,” David said, but it was so quiet he didn’t think she heard.

The waiter brought them the bill. “I’ve got this,” said Janet, “it’s on me.” She took money from her purse, lots of money, and gave the waiter a generous tip. He bowed his thanks.

“Well,” she said.

“Well,” said David.

“Well,” she said, “this has been fun. We should do it again some time.”

“Yes,” said David, and he knew they wouldn’t. And he got up from the table to get her chair, and she thanked him, and let him give her a peck goodbye.

When he woke up he wasn’t crying, his face was still dry, he’d wanted to cry, but only in the dream, just the bloody dream. And he thought that he’d lost her, he patted at his face, tried to find some trace of her—and part of him wanted her gone, wanted that freedom, his face back to normal—and another part was terrified she’d kept her promise and had gone for good, and then what would he do, who would he even be? And she was still there—she was still there—she hadn’t deserted him—still the numbness—still numb. And he laughed and she laughed in unison and he gulped for air and she gulped too, and he went back to sleep wrapping his arms around himself in a tight hug.

“Look, fizzy water!” said Alex, as he opened the front door, and he laughed, and he waved the bottle about like it was some sort of trophy. He showed David into the house. It was quite a small house; David still felt his own was conspicuously designed for two people, and rattling about there on his own was awkward and embarrassing—but it was hard to believe that Alex had shared this house with his wife, there surely wasn’t the space to keep her anywhere. “Nice place, isn’t it?” asked Alex, and David agreed. Alex was in a good mood. He seemed very proud of whatever he was concocting in the kitchen, he kept on winking and going back in there to stir it and telling David it’d be a surprise. And, “It’s just so nice to have you here, mate,” he said. “It’s just so nice to have company.”

They settled down in the sitting room together for a little while—Alex told David that this stage of the cooking could take care of itself. There wasn’t much room, David and Alex sat close side by side on the sofa. “So,” said Alex, “how are you holding up?”

“I’m not sure,” said David, honestly.

Alex nodded at that, as if it were the wisest thing he had ever heard. “Not still adjusting, then?”

“What?”

“You said you were ‘adjusting.’”

“Oh. Yes. Yes, I don’t know.”

Alex nodded again. “As for me, I took your advice. Knocked the booze on the head. Thanks. Thank you for looking out for me.” He waggled the bottle of water again. “Refill?”

“Why not?” said David.

“It’s helped me to clear my head a bit. Know where I stand with this whole death thing. The drink, it was keeping me away from those important decisions. But now I know what’s going on. What we both need to do.”

“Oh?”

“But there’s time enough for that,” said Alex, as a timer went in the kitchen. “And I think dinner is served!”

“I hope you like this,” said Alex, as he brought over to the table a steaming saucepan. “Tracey’s the real cook. Well. But I’ve been practising. Got a book and everything.” He tipped on to David’s plate a pile of spaghetti bolognaise. “Enjoy!”

Each time David lifted his fork he saw worms wriggle on the end of it. Each time he lifted the fork near his mouth, he at first had to pass it through the back of Janet’s skull, and he didn’t know why, he thought that as the worms brushed against her brain they
became
her brain somehow, that her brain was unravelling into these flapping tendrils, that in death the brain was finally rotting to these thin white ribbons. In his mouth the brain tasted of soil, and he was used to that, but it was a squirming soil, if he didn’t gulp it down quickly it’d try to escape back into Janet’s head, and he couldn’t have that, you couldn’t go home again. So he sucked in those earthworms, and those strands of his dead wife’s mind too, he stuffed them in his mouth, he swallowed, swallowed hard so they couldn’t come up again and beat a path to freedom, he did it again, the same mechanical exercise, gulping down, trying to gulp all the food away. It took him a minute or two to realize that Alex was looking at him, hard.