Games People Play (11 page)
Authors: Louise Voss
‘Sorry,’ I say.
‘Keep your child under control,’ Dad snaps at the woman, staring disgustedly at the yellow puddle spreading out near the wheels of our trolley.
The boy’s mother rounds on us. She is rather fat, with an orange sleeveless top on, displaying a smudgy tattoo on her left arm. I stare at it, mesmerized, trying unsuccessfully to work out what it says. ‘
Kevin
’, perhaps. Or maybe ‘
Heaven
’, or even ‘
Devon
’. The complicated calligraphy has not aged well, somewhat like the canvas on which it is painted.
‘Oi, misery guts, you don’t bleedin’ well talk to me like that,
all right
?’ She jabs a finger at him, making the fat on her arm wobble, and I feel like asking her to hold still, please, because she was making it even more difficult for me to decipher the tattoo. ‘And what are you staring at?’ she snaps in my direction.
‘Come on, Dad. Let’s try down here.’ Ignoring the fat woman, I negotiate the trolley and Dad with difficulty away from the altercation. Her aggression has shaken me but, in the grand scheme of things, it is the least of our problems.
As we pass the First Class checkin, I permit myself a lingering, envious gaze: no queue there, just one supercilious woman in a fur coat carrying a small dog, being fawned over by the uniformed man behind the desk. Just think how much easier everything would be, if you were only more successful, I tell myself. No queuing. No smelly minicabs or sulky fathers. People jumping to attention when they saw you, being nice all the time. Maybe if your volleys were crisper or your footwork better or your stamina higher or your will to win stronger ...I wish I knew. If I
knew
why I couldn’t quite break through into the big time, maybe I could fix it. But I don’t know.
Eventually, by asking several different but equally miserable-looking people, we manage to find what appeared to be the end of the line for the BA flights.
‘How long have you been waiting?’ I ask the woman in front. She is digging her thumb into the skin of a satsuma, and the fresh sharp smell of its juice cuts through the toxic exhalations of thousands of frustrated travellers, making my mouth water.
‘Twenty-five minutes so far,’ she replies. ‘Haven’t moved yet, and my flight leaves in half an hour – although it’s probably been delayed. They all have.’
Settling in for a long wait, Dad and I automatically go into our ritual queuing behaviour. After hundreds of trips to tournaments around the world, we’ve honed to perfection our ways of dealing with the tedium of checkin or flight delays. I always doodle, leaning on the handlebar of the trolley (abstract doodles, not drawing, in case anybody sees) and Dad takes out his book, usually a sportsperson’s biography. As the queue inches infinitesimally slowly towards its destination, he nudges his holdall forwards with his foot, without looking up from the pages of the book. We rarely speak to one another, as if talking is banned until we are comfortably seated on the plane; anybody observing us would conclude that we were strangers travelling independently of one another. I don’t mind. On this occasion, it doesn’t make any difference anyway, Dad being in such a strop already.
I swallow down the bitter disappointment that Mark hasn’t contacted me on my birthday, wondering if he has a good excuse, or if he is going to make the sort of husband who always forgets birthdays and anniversaries, like Dad was with Mum. And with me, come to think of it. The sort of husband for whom you have to leave Post-It notes around to remind them, with wish-lists of gifts so that you don’t end up with some heinously unattractive vase which even your worst enemy would know you’d hate ...
But Mark is different from Dad. Even if he started out a bit hopeless, I’m sure I could train him. At least he has taste, also unlike Dad, who is sadly lacking in discernment in the gift department. Poor Mum had to endure years of tacky teddy bears and sickly Hallmark-type posters, which Dad would hand over beaming with pleasure, and which Mum would display for the minimum amount of time possible and then stuff into a cupboard.
Twenty minutes later, the queue has still only moved fifteen feet. Bored of my doodles, I pull my mobile out of the side pocket of my backpack, telling myself I’m only doing it to see if Kerry is here yet and trying to contact me. Since all the flights are delayed, she might even end up being on time for once. But the screen is blank again, even though I’d left it switched on.
‘That’s the fourth time today. Why does my phone keep turning itself off?’ I ask Dad, who totally ignores me. Again. I roll my eyes and turn on the phone again.
‘Battery’s probably low,’ says the satsuma woman, turning her head to address me. ‘Or maybe you’ve spilt some water on it at some point?’
‘I don’t think so,’ I say, keying in my code. ‘So, aren’t you worried you’ve missed your flight? Where are you going?’
The woman opens her mouth to reply, but there is a sudden commotion in the crowd; people swear and tut as somebody pushes through unapologetically. ‘Rachel Anderson!’ the person yells, and I beam with delight and recognition, waving manically back in the direction of the familiar voice. At that point, after all the stress of the past twenty-four hours, I couldn’t care less that Dad has put down the book on top of his wallet of travel documents and is glaring at me through narrowed eyes.
‘
Mark
!
Over here!’
‘Happy birthday, babe, didn’t you get my message?’
Mark appears through the crowd and wraps his arms around me, squeezing the breath out of me and lifting me, all five foot ten of me, off my feet. He puts me down and kisses me effusively and passionately.
‘What message?’ I ask joyfully, when we surface again.
Mark turns and stares hard at Dad, although he speaks to me: ‘I know your mobile’s playing up so I left a message with Anthea at your house.’
A chilly sensation worms its way between my shoulder blades as I realize the gravity of the situation, as if the blue touchpaper has been lit but nobody is standing well back. It’s bad enough that Mark knows that Anthea – or Dad – hadn’t passed on the message (on my birthday, too!). But, on top of his migraine (or whatever), Dad now knows for a fact that Mark and I are still an item. And here are both men, in this gun-powder keg of tension already existing in the terminal, almost pressing noses, growling at each other.
Not good, I think. I unfasten my arms from around Mark’s neck and sheepishly allow them to drop back by my side. The woman with the satsuma has turned round and is staring with unsubtle, almost greedy fascination at the unfolding tableau.
‘Dad,’ I say nervously. ‘Dad, um, please don’t jump to conclusions.’
‘Shut up, Rachel,’ says Dad, not taking his eyes off Mark for a second.
‘Ivan . . .’ Mark pleads quietly. ‘Be reasonable, mate.
She’s twenty-three years old. It’s her
birthday
. . .’
‘Oooh, happy birthday!’ the satsuma lady whispers, nudging me in the side.
‘Are you trying to make a fool of me?’ Ivan suddenly turns on me, making me back away and bang my hip on the handle of my trolley. By now, several other people have stopped grumbling about the queue and are gazing, riveted, at the free entertainment.
‘No, Dad, of course not. We don’t see that much of each other, and it’s not serious or anything…’ I stop, catching the momentary stricken expression which crossed Mark’s face. For a second he looked young; vulnerable; not at all like his usual confident self, and it makes me love him even more. I slide my arm round his waist, but he shakes it off. Then, without another word to Ivan, he grabs my elbow and steers me, with difficulty, through the crowd to the doorway of a small Tie Rack concession. I don’t dare to look back at my father’s face.
‘Sorry, er ...Mark, you know what he’s like. Nightmare!’ I say, hearing the unnatural shrillness in my voice. I wanted to call him ‘babe’ the way he called me, but my mouth somehow wouldn’t quite form the word, and it came out as if I was struggling even to remember his name. I’m just not good at scenes. It’s hot in the terminal and I can feel sweat clutching at my armpits and sticking my T-shirt to my back.
‘Why don’t you ever stand up to him?’ Mark demands. I am shocked to see that he is white with anger. ‘You let him walk all over you, you live in fear of what he’s going to think or say or do next – frankly, Rachel, it’s pathetic! You’re a grown woman, you make your own bloody decisions. And that’s how you see us, is it: “nothing serious”? Well, thanks a million.’
‘No!’ I say, distressed. ‘Of course not! I was just trying not to...Dad had a very hard night...He’s really under pressure at the moment and I didn’t want to add to it...Of course that’s not how I see us. I’m crazy about you! You must know that.’
I reach out to touch Mark’s hair, but he ducks violently, knocking into a stand containing pashmina scarves encased in clear plastic near the store entrance. The neat coloured packets fall in a slithery cascade across the floor, spilling out into the main terminus, sending a shop assistant scurrying out after them before they get kicked under trolleys or secreted into handbags. The shop assistant probably knows from past experience that even usually respectable and law-abiding people feel more inclined to steal when under this sort of duress, as if being jostled in a queue for an hour gives them the right not to return an errant accessory straying into their path.
‘I’m not so sure I do know that,’ Mark says. He sounds formal and far away, and I am scared. We stand for a moment watching the assistant grovelling on the floor for the scarves, but it doesn’t occur to either of us to help her. ‘In fact, is this why you won’t sleep with me? Because you don’t like me enough? Is that it?’
‘No!’ I repeat. ‘I really
am
crazy about you.’ I curse myself because, although it’s true, I know that I sound uncertain. For the first time, I notice that Mark is holding a large red paper bag with raffia handles. He sees me look at it, and hands it to me.
‘This is for you,’ he says, without smiling. ‘Happy birthday.’ He kisses my cheek then, in exactly the same distant way Dad did earlier when he gave me the hair straightening device. I want to clamp Mark’s head in my hands, force his mouth on to mine, force the passion for me back into his soul, and not let him go. He can go to the pub whenever he wants, I think frantically. I don’t care if he never comes to another of my tournaments; I’ll come to as many of his as he likes. Just please don’t let me lose him...
‘
Excuse
me,’ says the assistant haughtily, her arms encircling a wobbly pile of packaged scarves, which she begins to reload on to their chrome display stand.
Mark leans against the entrance of the shop, closing his eyes.
‘Are you all right?’ I ask, and he nods with his eyes still shut. I know what he is going to say before he opens his mouth, and I will him not to. When he does speak, it is so quiet I have to strain over the grumbling travellers and the blurred flight cancellations coming over the tannoy. Straining to catch the last words I want to hear.
‘Rachel...I can’t handle this any more. You’re a great girl, but, I mean, your dad ...It’s too much. We had a good time, didn’t we? Let’s just ...leave it for now, shall we?’
‘Please don’t say that,’ I manage, clutching his hand and forcing him to look into my eyes. ‘Please ...I’m so sorry I said we weren’t serious. I’ll go now and tell him we are. I’ll make him understand, I don’t care what it takes. We can start sleeping together whenever you want. You’re . . .’ I pause. Mark is so many different things to me, I can’t decide what to say first: ‘You’re the man of my dreams’ sounds too corny and fake. ‘You’re wonderful’ is too sycophantic, and ‘You’re everything to me’ too desperate. I curse my lack of experience in these matters, when it seems that everything depends on me saying the right thing. I wish it was like tennis, where I would (more often than not) instinctively and without hesitation pick the right shot to play in any given situation in a match. Words are so much more tricky. But then I haven’t had eighteen years of practising words of love, not the way I’ve practised my tennis shots, anyway.
‘You’re – so important to me,’ is what I whisper in the end, tasting the inadaquacy of the words as they rise like bile into my mouth.
‘Sorry, Rachel,’ he replies, meeting my gaze for the first and last time. ‘Clearly not important enough.’
He turns and starts to weave his way across the log-jam of people, away from me, and away from my father.
Susie
Everyone in Lawrence seemed to have an open door policy. Sometimes it drove me mad, but, as the years passed, most people did seem to get more respectful of the rhythms of family life, especially the folk with kids and rhythms of their own to adhere to. Billy and I still got the loners and the unattached, but I’d become fairly adept at giving them the right amount of welcome and hospitality. I wasn’t afraid to kick anybody out when I’d had enough of their company. The problem was, though, that because of Billy’s little sideline as the local pot dealer, I couldn’t downright turn people away.
So I liked it best when it was just the two of us in that before-supper-after-work hour. Billy would be swigging a beer, tired but alert, stretching and chatting aimlessly to the cats; the three of them drifting around the place in a slow dance of unwinding. Billy was quite feline himself: little and soft and lithe. The way he moved, slowly but deliberately, made me imagine him with a tail. If he’d been a cat, he would have rubbed his head against the furniture as he passed, that tail in a delicate question mark of enquiry.
Newport and Pavonia, the real cats, didn’t know what to do with themselves after he left. They didn’t dance any more; they just sat at the kitchen window and waited for me to come home; complaining bitterly about what had kept me once I climbed up the steps and unlocked the door. It made me angry, on their behalf as well as mine.
Billy used to retire to the couch and skin up a joint after dinner, but even then, with him immobile in one place for hours, the rest of the house had seemed more animated than it did when he wasn’t there. It was as if he exhaled life into the house along with the marijuana smoke: a sleepy warmth which permeated the walls and leached into every room, while he sat in front of the TV.
Once he’d gone, the place felt empty, even with the cats and me inside. The evenings were the hardest. I could just about get through the days, coasting on my normal routine: caffeine; appointments; viewings; valuations; gossip by the water cooler, little cone shaped paper snippets about who was seeing whom.
All the other women at Harvest Realty were divorced, so they weren’t at all surprised when I told them about Billy. I think they were secretly pleased. I was the cone-shaped gossip when I was absent from the office, I was sure of it. It was another reason not to want to work there any more.
I wanted Billy back. I kept waiting for him to come back, to be there when I returned from work, smiling hesitantly at me and telling me that it had all been a big mistake. I wanted our life together back again.
Everything had unravelled into a chaos of loose ends and needed untangling: everything, from holiday photos to insurance policies, bottles of wine and pictures on the wall. What could have been so wrong about us, for this to happen?
Perhaps it was me. I knew after Ivan, I’d had a problem with commitment, but it wasn’t as if Billy seemed to mind. In fact, we used to laugh about it. Every year, on the date of our engagement, I got a joke anniversary present from him: a child’s plastic tiara, or some crotchless knickers, or a CD of songs by an unlistenable Bulgarian folk band. The gifts always came with a label bearing a message like: ‘
real
diamonds when we’re married, hon
’, or: ‘
for our
wedding night – now remind me, when is that, again?
’; and, with the CD: ‘
Marry me soon else I’m booking
them for your birthday party
’. I’d laugh and slap him affectionately and say, ‘Yeah, yeah, don’t rush me!’ whenever he asked plaintively when I was planning to make an honest man out of him.
One year he gave me a baby’s dummy – a pacifier, they call them here – as my gift. The label read: ‘We’d better get on with it, else Junior will think I’m his grandpa’. We decided to stop trying for a baby quite soon after that, and the subject wasn’t mentioned again, apart from some wistful jesting about parenthood when the cats kept us up at night, skidding along the corridors chasing their tails or other, more detachable objects. One morning when we got up, there was a maze of tangled white thread at ankle height wrapped around all the furniture, a vase broken, and an empty cotton reel on the kitchen floor; and Billy said, ‘Oh you kids! I’m grounding you. No TV for two days.’ I could have sworn there were tears in his eyes. And he hadn’t even liked that vase.
Come to think of it, Billy often did try to get around difficult subjects with a quip or a bad pun. And once or twice I thought how closed down his face looked when he was giving me my anniversary gift for yet another year; even while he was joking about something or other – but he never made an issue out of it, never. I really thought that if it was all that important to him, he’d tell me. I thought we told each other everything. After all, I’d told him often enough how scared I felt of making that commitment again. That it had nothing to do with how I felt about him; and wasn’t it commitment enough for us to be engaged, and settled together?
Had I been missing something? With a cold squeeze of cognizance, I thought that, in all probability, I had.
I needed to get away. I forced myself to try and be positive. I was looking forward to going skiing. Then maybe I would look into becoming a life coach. I could tell people how to live life to the full; to have adventures; take risks, where appropriate; de-clutter; de-stress; de-cide. I would always tell my clients to put themselves first, the doormats of this life who feel second best. I would think of my experience being married to Ivan and I would say: Whatever you do, don’t put
anybody
else first, not even if they’re some top notch dishy tennis player who thinks he’s going to become the next Björn Borg. If you aren’t happy, then you don’t have a hope in hell of making your nearest and dearest happy either. Think positive. Imagine the outcome of your dreams, and act like they’re already becoming reality. We all know these things already – to be honest, from what I’ve read up about it, it seems like pretty basic stuff to me. I suppose it comes down to having the conviction to make other people believe what you tell them. Perhaps being a life coach gives you authority. If someone will pay you eighty bucks an hour to tell them on the phone to think positive, then they think it’s money well spent.
I actually did quite a lot of research on it, online, and Rachel was right, there were courses you could do, by correspondence. Many of the courses were based in England, and you could have tutorials, so that would be my excuse for moving away from Lawrence for a while. I might move back here afterwards, I might not. There was probably a reason why there were no life coaches in Lawrence (I checked), students and hippies didn’t tend to rush to pay eighty dollars an hour to be told how to improve their lives. They just rolled another big fat one and put on a Little Feat CD.
But that was OK. I’d rent out the house to some graduate students and keep the income, which would have the dual benefit of pissing off Billy. He’d have moved in like a shot given half a chance, but there was no way that I was going to let him and Eva set up home together in
my
house.
Although Billy had more tact than that. He wouldn’t really have moved in. Even as I thought it, I knew it wasn’t true.
But all the same, I couldn’t prevent myself from imagining Billy and Eva in the sauna in the garden, the one Billy had built himself to a genuine Scandinavian design, with fresh scented pine and an iron fireplace to heat the rocks on. I saw Billy lying naked on the slatted wooden seat, leaning back in Eva’s arms the way he used to in mine, letting their skin get red hot, turning over and gently sliding inside her in a slick of sweat and heat, then running out in the garden to cool off afterwards. When it was snowing, would they laugh and squeal and try to lie down long enough to make snow angels, the way we used to? Oh
shit
.
It really hurt. But I couldn’t stay in Lawrence forever, just to spite them. I’d go and stay with Gordana and Ted in Surrey. I was sure they’d have me, after the skiing holiday, for a few weeks, and that way I would get to see more of Rachel. Obviously I couldn’t stay with her, since she lived with the Spawn of Satan and his mistress, but maybe I could persuade Rach to come to Gordana’s too, at least for a little while.