The Pile of Stuff at the Bottom of the Stairs (34 page)

If I can get the video to work, I can play these old three-hour cassettes. And if I can do that, I can put them into two piles. One will be for cassettes with contents worth saving, which I’ll take into work to be transferred onto DVD. The second pile is for the black bin liner, to be discarded like a dumpy first wife. And if I do that I can get rid of the video recorder, which means there will be two fewer cables. Two fewer cables until we give in and buy some sort of games console for the boys.

Bingo, it works. The first cassette has a few old episodes of once loved and now fuzzy with age television programs. The second is, marvelously, our wedding video, shot by a mutual friend we used to work with, a constant presence in our lives for a period of two years but now as obsolete as a VHS tape, seeing as how he still gets drunk, takes drugs and has one-night stands. I wonder what has become of him. It’s not so much the director’s cut as the director’s half cut, since the footage mostly consists of some zoom-ins to pretty female guests’ cleavages and some wobbly ones of our speeches.

The next three go into the bin bag. There’s one marked “Bob Dylan.” I’m about to throw it straightaway when I think I’d better check, just in case. I hate Bob Dylan. All the whining. I realized early on in my dating career that it’s best to keep one’s dislike of Bob Dylan and his fellow moaners (I’m talking about you, Leonard Cohen) quiet. There’s a certain sort of man of a
certain sort of age who feels personally wounded if you say you just don’t get the point of Bob Dylan.

The screen is fuzzy, then a handwritten board appears, reading “Mary Homesick Blues.” I watch on to see Joel standing at the side of the black-and-white screen, holding a pile of placards. He’s thinner than he is now and I recognize the sweater he’s wearing as one that has long since disintegrated to the point where it bypassed even the charity shop. As the music plays, he begins to throw down these placards one by one, in homage to that famous Dylan video. They are all handwritten in curly marker pen and Joel discards each one with the same mock disdain that Bob displays in the original, but there’s no hiding a nervousness in his face. I read the placards that he holds aloft in sequence.

“Mary” says the first.

“I’m happy” says the second.

“With you.”

“And very unhappy”

“Without you.”

“You’re too funny and clever”

“For me.”

“But even so”

“Will you”

“Marry me?”

I bring my hands up to my mouth, which is smiling, and I feel my eyes well up. I feel a little fraction of what I would have felt if Joel had played me this video, or let me find this video, back when we weren’t married. All that resentment I felt at him never asking and the shambolic way we got engaged could have been avoided. This was the Proposal Story that I had longed for, that would have been in keeping with our courtship. Bless him, I think; though I am not religious, I want to touch his forehead
with balm. Watching this video awakens in me a surge of the tenderness I used to feel toward him every moment of every day, that mixture of wanting to hug him like a child and to have him screw me hard against a kitchen unit. We were so young and he was so handsome. He is still—paused on the screen—and I yearn to rewind our life and stop it right there. Our world felt like a perpetual Friday afternoon of anticipation and excitement, instead of today’s permanent Sunday evening. I ring his mobile.

“I’m just tidying up behind the television.”

“Not behind the television.”

“And I just found your Bob Dylan video.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You know, with the proposal.” I want to have some of the moment that we would have had back then and to have it now.

“Right. Gabe, stay near me. It’s Mommy on the phone. Do you want to speak to her? Don’t, then.”

“When did you make it?”

“I don’t know. About six months before we decided to get married.”

“How were you going to show it to me? Were you even going to show it to me? It’s lovely.”

“I don’t know. Yes, actually. I had it all planned. I was going to pretend it was a tape that had one of your favorite programs on it, then put it on and wait for you to get all sweary and annoyed that it wasn’t, and see your face when you realized what it was.”

How happy I would have been. Three sorts of happiness—some just for me, a bit more for Joel and I to toss back and forth between us like a bean bag and then an extra dollop to broadcast to my friends and family. “Why didn’t you? I mean, why go to all the trouble of making it if you didn’t ever show it to me?”

There’s an almost audible shrug at the other end of the phone. “I don’t know.”

“You must do. Why didn’t you?”

“You were just always going on about how marriage was stupid and an institution that you didn’t want to be a part of, so I suppose I was scared you’d say no. Between you and Ursula I was getting the message. And then you asked and so you saved me the bother.”

“But it’s so amazing. I wish you’d shown it to me.” Did he show it to anyone else, I wonder? Sometimes I think that Joel’s romantic gestures aren’t necessarily for my benefit anyway. “Still, we got there in the end.” As if our marriage is just a theme park in an unfamiliar part of the country which we’ve managed to locate after some tussles over the road map.

“I suppose. I’d better go now, the boys have gone AWOL.”

I put down the phone, the balloon of renewed warmth deflated. Playing the video seemed to have revived feelings in me that were not to be reciprocated by him. He sounded pissed off. I don’t know if it was at me for having played the video, or me for having denied him the chance to use it all those years ago. I’m not used to Joel being the stroppy one—he’s the dependable one, the unchanging one, the loyal one. I’m the one with emotions and grievances and anger. I watch the video again and instead of feeling the love that I did five minutes ago, I feel sadness about a relationship where things could be different but never are.

There’s nothing to do but get on. I shall have a clean and uncluttered house if nothing else. I finish going through the tapes and throw out the video recorder and its attendant cables. I decide then to do the blackspot of Joel’s chest of drawers. Maybe I’m trying to eliminate him already in anticipation of The List’s final damning conclusion. The top of the chest of drawers has the usual collection of coins, receipts and tissues. I check inside the first of his drawers to see if there are any more receipts and find a further two dozen in a jumble of paperwork, along with
an envelope containing a few more. I close it again, then decide that I might as well tackle them for the sake of our bank balance if nothing else. Every receipt unclaimed for is the price of a school trip or more.

I dump the whole lot on the floor and begin to make some piles according to their dates. Anything older than three months goes into one big pile, which is too late for claiming. Joel will get a minus point on The List for every ₤10 of unclaimed expenses I find, wasteful idiot that he is.

I lose myself in the paperwork and the radio, finding solace in a task that can be completed, unlike the endless groundhog day of most domestic tasks, the washing and the wiping. May’s pile comes to over ₤100, June is maybe more, April far less. As I whisk through the bits of paper I find myself thinking of those months. All time is now measured by The List, just as my babies’ development used to be remembered in terms of what they could do on various holidays as our photo albums jump between beach and birthday shots.

There was that week in April when he had to go to sort out a floundering production up near Manchester. That week before half term back in May when he was out every night and I was left doing solo bath- and bedtime and trying to get everything washed before we went to Mitzi’s house. The pile for June is getting larger and flicking through them provides an aide-mémoire to the last month, reminding me of all the times Joel was out and got back tipsy or even drunk. June was a very bad month.

I pull out another receipt. June the fourth was that particularly bad night, I think, when I lost it with the boys, Gabe smeared poo on the walls and I felt myself delight in holding their arms a little bit too tightly when I dragged them off to bed. Joel came back well after the boys had gone to sleep, all cheery and beery. Out with the whole crew was what he told me. I look
at the receipt from that night, expecting to see the usual roster of beers for the boys and bottles of wine for the girls. Instead, I see four champagne cocktails and a meze selection with the name of a very chic boutique hotel emblazoned at the top, coming to a grand total of over ₤70. I try to think who he’s working with at the moment and who would have ordered a champagne cocktail. It seems unlikely since, Joel excepted, they’re all laddish types and would probably deride such a drink as “gay.” I don’t get out much with work anymore, but this is more like the sort of drinks that you would have to celebrate a commission, or if you were schmoozing a reluctant celebrity to take part in whatever lame reality format was currently under discussion. Again, I couldn’t think what production that would have been in relation to.

I stare at it for a while, feeling sure that it’s telling me something, if only I could interpret the oracle. I go to the laptop and see what I logged for that night. Not very much, as it turns out, though I remember I had intended to punish Joel for forcing me into punishing the boys. I stare at the computer screen for clues. He came in that night very cheerful, conciliatory even, expressing enthusiasm for the nit comb. Was there nothing List-worthy that he did on his return? He’s usually good for at least an emptying out of the balled-up tissues and random receipts onto the chest of drawers, but here—nothing. Nothing. That’s it, nothing. Nothing is my clue. He threw the receipt on top of his drawers and then he put this receipt away, into the envelope tucked in the drawer. He never, ever does that. Joel is nothing if not reliably unreliable. He didn’t want me to see this receipt.

I look at the receipt again. This is not the receipt of some celebratory after-work drinks or even the schmoozing of a contact. This is the sort of receipt you’d be left with after a first date. I keep staring at The List, hoping it will offer me a further explanation. Something else leaps out at me.

Leaves the plasticky packets from disposable contact lenses lying around
.

Joel doesn’t wear contact lenses. I do.

There’s another.

Buys extraneous Tupperware
.

Joel has never bought a transparent plastic food-storage container in his life. I see another, one that proves beyond doubt what I realize I have been suspecting for weeks now.

Sighs in over-dramatic way when tidying up
.

I hear a key at the door and then footsteps coming up the stairs. Gabe and Rufus leap into my arms and show me their purchases from the museum shop, where they spend the bulk of their time on these educational sorties. Joel sees me with The List open and I look at him.

“You found it, didn’t you—you’ve read it?” I ask.

“And you’ve found my contributions to it. The next point I was going to add was going to be ‘Makes self-righteous little lists of partner’s misdemeanors without ever questioning own behavior.’ ”

“I can’t believe you’ve been snooping through my computer. That’s like reading someone’s diary.”

“Come off it, Mary, you didn’t exactly make much of an effort to hide it. On some level, I think you wanted me to find it.”

“Much like this,” I say, waving the receipt from the fourth of June. He comes closer to peer at it and reddens.

“Oh,” is all he can manage, and that short word tells me I had been right to suspect. “Where did you find that?”

“You didn’t exactly make much of an effort to hide it,” I parrot. “On some level, I think you wanted me to find it.”

He shakes his head.

“We’ve got a lot to talk about,” I say.

*     *     *

We make it through to the boys’ bedtime with much ventriloquism.

“Gabe, what was the best thing about your day?” I ask.

“Yes,” says Joel. “Gabe, was it the bus or the museum or the lunch that came in a cardboard box?”

“Did you eat much lunch, Gabe, because you’re not eating much now?”

“Rufus, will you pass these plates to your mother? Good boy.”

We silently clean up after them as they watch television.

“Gabe and Rufus, who do you want to do your bath? Mommy or Daddy?” I ask. “Why not Mommy, since you’ve been with Daddy all day.”

“And I’d love to read you two your books,” says Joel.

“Rufus, do make sure you actually do some reading yourself. Show your daddy how good you are at reading now.”

I usually long for their sleep, but I find I am dreading it and pour two large glasses of wine in preparation. I am onto the glass that I poured for Joel by the time he gets downstairs, half an hour later than we have usually put the boys down. He’s procrastinating as much as I am.

“I’ve had a bit of head start,” I say.

He swigs back a glass in compensation.

“Let’s talk about this,” I say, holding the receipt.

“No, let’s talk about your thing,” he says. “Your computer thing.”

“I said it first.”

“Turn around, touch the ground…” he attempts.

“Toss for it. Heads or tails? Bagsy heads. Heads it is, I win. We need to talk about this receipt.”

“I don’t understand what you mean,” he says.

He’s always been a rubbish liar. I loved his inability to
dissemble at the beginning. “Yes, you do. What’s going on?” I wave the receipt again.

“I went out for some drinks with someone from work.”

“Some
one
. One person from work.”

“Yes. It’s not a crime.”

“A woman?” He doesn’t answer. “Let’s be more accurate, shall we? A girl?”

He finally nods. “I didn’t do anything. What are you suggesting?”

“I don’t know. Nothing. Well, I would have said nothing, but you’re being so weird that I’m thinking maybe something.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, whatever you do with nubile girls from the office after you’ve downed some expensive champagne cocktails and a meze selection.”