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 about it. And I haven’t seen much of anyone over the past month,” he explained, 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 interested.
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 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 irrational 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.
“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 clichés! 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 civilized 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 mor
e than anything. He could 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 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.
That wasn’t part of the script.
I was the one in the right. He was the bastard. That’s the way it was.
“You needed me for everything,” he almost shouted.
I think I should point out to you at this juncture that James never shouted.
He’d never even almost shouted.
“You demanded constant attention,” he went on. “And constant reinforcement. And you never gave a damn about me and how I felt and what I might need.”
I stared openmouthed at him.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
Why was he attacking me?
He was the one who’d left me, right?
So if there was any accusing to be done, I was the correct person for the job.
“James…” I said faintly.
He ignored me and continued ranting and jabbing his finger at me.
“You were impossible. I was exhausted from you. I don’t know how I stayed with you as long as I did. And I don’t know how anyone could live with you.”
Now look it here! That was too much. Anger surged through me.
Talk about a kangaroo court.
I was being done a terrible injustice.
And I wasn’t letting him get away with it.
I was livid.
“Oh, I see,” I said, absolutely furious. “So now it’s all my fault. I made you have an affair. I made you leave me. Well, that’s funny, because I don’t actually recall holding a gun to your head. It must have slipped my mind.”
It’s true what they say. Sarcasm really is the lowest form of wit. But I couldn’t help myself. He was criticizing me. And I was burning, scalded with a sense of injustice.
“No, Claire,” he said. He actually spoke through gritted teeth. Which I’d never seen anyone do before. I thought it was just a figure of speech. “Of course you didn’t make me do anything.”
“So then what are you saying?” I demanded.
I had a funny cold feeling in the pit of my stomach. I knew it was fear.
“I’m saying that living with you was a bit like living with a demanding child. You always wanted to go out. As though life was one big long party.
And it was, for you. You were always laughing and enjoying yourself. So I had to be the grown-up one. I had to worry about money and bills. You were so selfish. I had to be the one who reminded you at one in the morning, at a dinner party, that we both had to be at work the next day. And then I had to put up with you calling me a boring bastard.”
I was dumbfounded at this torrent from James. Apart from its unexpectedness, I felt that it was so unfair.
“James, that’s the way it worked for us,” I protested. “I was the funny one, you were the serious one. Everyone knew that. I was the light relief, the silly one who made you laugh and unwind. You were the strong one.
That’s the way we both wanted it. That’s the way it was. And that’s why it was so good.”
“But it wasn’t,” he said. “I was so bloody tired of being strong.”
“And I didn’t ever call you a boring bastard,” I exclaimed suddenly. I knew that something he had said there was wrong.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said irritably. “You made me feel like one.”
“Yes, but you said that I—” I started to protest.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Claire,” he burst out angrily. “There you go again.
Trying to score points. Can’t you just let it be? Can’t you, for once, just once, accept blame?”
“Yes, but…” I said weakly.
I wasn’t even sure what I should accept blame for.
Never mind. I didn’t have time to think about it. James drew another breath and was off again. And I had to give what he was saying all my attention.
“You just made messes.” He sighed. “And I had to clean them up.”
“That’s not true!” I shouted.
“Well, believe me, that’s how it felt,” he said unkindly. “You just don’t want to admit that it’s true. There was always a drama. Or a trauma. And I was always the one who had to deal with it.”
I was silent. Totally dumbfounded.
“And you know, Claire,” he continued solemnly, “you just don’t magically wake up one morning and know how to be an adult. You don’t know overnight how to pay bills. You work at it. You work at being responsible.”
“I know how to pay bills,” I pro
tested. “I’m not a total moron, you know.”
“So how come it was me who had to take care of that end of things?” he asked primly.
“James”—my head whirled as I searched for ways to defend myself—“I did try to help.”
I distinctly remembered a time when I had sat with James as he self-importantly flicked through check stubs and ATM receipts and tap-tap-tapped with a calculator. I offered to help him that day. And he told me with a suggestive twinkle in his eye that he would stick to what he was good at and that I should stick to what I was good at. And then, if I remember correctly, and I’m sure I do, we had sex on the desk. In fact, the bank statements and the Visa bills for July 1991 still bear certain rather interesting imprints. But I couldn’t find the nerve to remind him of that.
“I really did offer to help,” I protested again. “But you wouldn’t let me.
You said that you’d be much better at it because you had a head for figures.”
“And you just accepted that?” he asked nastily, shaking his head slightly as if he could hardly believe how crass and stupid I’d been.
“Well…yes, I suppose,” I said, feeling foolish.
He was right. I had let him worry about threatening letters and disconnection notices and all that. But I’d really thought he wanted to do it. Not that there were ever any threatening letters or disconnection notices or the like. James was far too organized to allow that to happen. I thought he liked being in control. That it would be less haphazard if only one of us was involved. How wrong I was.
I wished I could turn the clock back. If only I’d paid more attention to things like the date we paid our mortgage.
“I’m sorry,” I said awkwardly. “I thought you wanted to do it. I would have done it if I’d known you didn’t want to.”
“Why would I want to do it?” he asked nastily. “What person in their right mind would enjoy being entirely responsible for the bills of a household?”
“You’re right, of course,” I admitted.
“Well,” said James, sounding a bit warmer, “I suppose it wasn’t really your fault. You were always a bit thoughtless.”
I swallowed back a retort. Now was not the time to antagonize him.
But I wasn’t thoughtless. I know I wasn’t.
James had other ideas, however.