What Becomes (9 page)

Tom is remembering the Blind School at the corner of their street, which is a completely unhelpful thing to do. The Blind School depresses him. And since he's already depressed, the Blind School will depress him more, so he should ignore it, avoid it, but he can't. He's too weary for that kind of fight – for every kind of fight.

They're pathetic – the blind. But not the way they
should
be pathetic.

No, they
shouldn't
be pathetic.

That's the problem.

Probably.

They are pathetic and they shouldn't be.

Hands waving, sticks waving, they're totally out of control – they make the whole street look post-apocalyptic. It's hopeless. I end up feeling sorry for them and I'm not supposed to, I'm supposed to feel
empathy
, not
sympathy
– here I am, a human being and they're human beings, too – only with this extra thing, this visual impairment thing, but they're also human beings and that's how we keep our mutual respect, by knowing that we're the same species, no matter what. That's your dignity, right there, that is.

Except anyone who's like me would have no dignity, that would be gone.

And if the blind are pathetic and lost – like they've been let outside randomly – recklessly – each of them needing help, a lot of help, total assistance, asking strangers to lead them, guide them, haul them over roads – then what does that imply? If we're linked, then what does that say about me? Or if they end up standing, blank and standing, like people who have no idea of what's in their own pockets – then I do not wish to empathise.

Or are the blind testing us: the sighted: me? Are they checking we'll pitch in and be Samaritans? Would they be that perverse?

Not that the blind shouldn't be perverse. They should have the right.

Unless it's the school that's playing games: some twisted kind of institution. What does it teach them? Exactly? Anything? Basket-weaving? Mattress-making? Piano-tuning? Traditional blind stuff? Forensic anthropology? I mean, they should learn all the things that anyone could know, not just the blind stuff: being a switchboard operator, that stuff. I think they used to have blind switchboard operators. Of course they should learn
everything
, absolutely should – but crossing roads, too – not being killed, not getting hurt in preventable tragedies, that's what I'd say.

They can't see, so they need to be trained in improvisation.

Human beings, they need to be safe: no tragedy, no oncoming car, just you with your own name and no worries, happy.

Every time he steps beyond what is currently his front door, he feels angry on the blind people's behalf and also tries not to identify with them, not to find them grotesquely bewildered in a way that reflects quite badly on his life. And when he comes home – when he's tired and perhaps apprehensive, given what's going on with Elaine and with all of the crap that is worse than Elaine – then the blind become a pantomime of every bloody sadness in the world. And he is a sadness, too, it can't be denied, along with everything he touches. And his heart cramps as his key slips in the lock.

It's pure self-obsession – disgusting – I only care about the blind, because they're me.

I have decided they are me. All of them, a crowd of me.

Truth is, the only people who ever get my full attention have to be exactly like me, have to
be me
, as if they're pieces of my head.

She's right.

Elaine's right.

She isn't me and she is right.

That's when I'm interested.

Otherwise I'm mainly not.

I'd have to be this tired to admit it, because I like to be good, to believe that I am decent, but I'm not.

But she's a bitch to say it.

Lately, he has been trying, as a discipline, to maintain a positive mental state. But when he's being negative about something which is, itself, negative, does that doubled negative count as a positive?

And none of the blind are Caucasian, why is that? The school is only for the non-white blind? They segregate the blind, first and second class, according to race? Is that why it's useless? A second-class type of school?

Who would think like that?

Would I think like that?

When I take their arms, do the leading, get them over the road, I don't like to talk to them, not really, does that mean I'm racist? If they were white, would I tell them when they're covered in crumbs they can't see, would I point out their different types of disarray?

Or do I say nothing because they're blind?

Am I prejudiced in that way, too?

Am I a bastard?

I think I am.

Quite possibly.

A total bastard.

And my wife would agree.

Is that a positive – because we agree?

Tom needs a coffee, but suspects he can't drink any more – not without actually having a heart attack. Still, he would enjoy the smell of it and folding his hands outside the mug, that warmth. Before he's checked if his tone will sound all right, he discovers that he's already asked Elaine, ‘Would you like a coffee?'

‘I don't know. You would?' Her tone isn't all right.

‘Don't do that.' Nor is his. Again.

‘What?'

‘Then, if I say yes, it's like I'm making you have a coffee and everything has to be about what I want and if I say no, it's like I'm not letting you have one when you do want one – you just . . . I want to sit down somewhere warm.'

‘Okay.' Elaine intended to say something else – something like
no
– or,
stop reading things into every bloody word I say, Jesus, if I started reading things into you, I'd be busy, I'd have a full-time job on my hands, I'd have to take evening classes – instead of evening work to make up for the job you don't have any more
– but even preparing the shapes of that for her tongue feels exhausting and she is, in any case, worn back to the sense that she is hungry and cold, that she also needs to sit down somewhere warm. ‘We could have lunch. Tom? We could do that.' She is simple, just very simple inside herself.

Tom's eyes are pinkish, distressed. She isn't sure how long they've been this way. He hasn't cried, not today – not as far as she knows – but he does look awful, wrung out, and she is a bad person for making no effort to support him. Bad wife. And he is a bad husband for forcing her to conclude that she's a bad wife.

He's not a bad man, though. It wasn't his fault he lost the job – not his mistake. That's half the trouble, they barely did make a mistake: only these little tiny wrong judgements: but they're ruined all the same. They might as well have been careless.

‘Yes. Yeah. Why not.' His voice is flattened now, blanked.

Which should make her sympathetic, only today she resents him for hiding what he feels. She hates it when he's secretive.

They both swing slightly too quickly in towards the next restaurant they see, which is Japanese – they aren't all that fond of Japanese – and which they know will be expensive. The whole avenue up this high is expensive – glistening shops and men in overworked shoes and dandy overcoats, women with immobile hair, immobile faces, aggressive jewellery. Tom and Elaine find themselves surrounded by an atmosphere of fussy cleanliness, of demands pending and important expectations that should be met. This, in addition to their own atmosphere – the one which is more like a migraine, or a bereavement – the one which means they are about to spend more money they can't afford, because the new worry this will give them – such a manageably small cause for concern – this will be a distraction, almost a type of joke.

Tom opens the restaurant door. Rubbing up against the hot curve of his skull comes –
this is Elaine, a person you used to like.

Out of habit, he lets her go before him and start to climb the narrow stairs.

Time was, you'd have enjoyed this. You'd have wanted to watch her arse. This is Elaine's arse, an arse you used to like. Worse than that – you still like it.

So, Elaine first and then Tom, they bump upwards on the suddenly draining flight of steps. It seems tactless that when they emerge at the top they have to stand side by side and hear the catch and fall of breath in each other's throats, their mouths. The air up here is snug and peaceful and is scented gently, perhaps by seaweed, certainly by something salt. They wait, stare at the mostly empty tables. They sway – or the room does – either way, it's something they can't help.

Elaine's elbow nudges Tom and flinches back, denies the contact. She is reversing their process, unpicking how they used to be. When she began to love him, her body knew it first and as soon as they were over, it knew that, too. Time was, it would set her hand at the small of his back, would lean in for him when they walked, brush his shoulder, and she would go home once they'd parted and realise how clearly she remembered every touch, although each had been involuntary. She would watch herself taking things for him, holding on. She'd kept his jacket while he'd looked for his keys on that night they'd parked outside his house and simply stayed there, never gone in, and then she'd set the jacket down and kept him instead and they'd lost hours in the car, burned up hours, not looking for anything except themselves, the good parts of themselves hidden in each other.

But once you start that, you find all kinds of rubbish. In the end you can't work out who disgusts you more.

A waitress appears neatly from behind a curtain and leads them to a table which is not by the window, although Tom notices there are three tables which
are
by the window and only one of them is occupied. He feels he might remonstrate with the woman, complain. Then again, he and Elaine are perhaps so obviously unhappy that they'll be seated away from others, no matter where they go, in case they cause a scene, or simply demoralise couples with less experience.

And maybe I only want to complain because she's Japanese. Maybe I hate Japanese human beings, too.

The couple who are sitting by the window, they're Japanese. Maybe the waitress hates white human beings and they never get to sit where it's light.

I would like that – to be hated by someone who doesn't know me, loathed for no reason.

The waitress smiles at him. ‘Would you prefer to sit in the window?'

‘No. No.' This is the wrong thing to say, because Elaine may prefer this and he should ask her. ‘At least . . . Elaine?'

‘I don't care where we sit.' She has taken off her coat and is comfortable and wishes to Christ that Tom didn't make an opera out of everything. ‘And might I have some green tea? Would you like tea, Tom?' The sound of
tea, Tom
almost makes her laugh. These days she is often close to laughing. ‘Tea, Tom?' It sounds like a cracked little bell, or a cracked little life: the way they'd intended to be. It is funny – as funny as falling in love, or having plans.

‘Tea? Oh. Yes. Thanks.'

Elaine watches Tom frown at the retreating waitress. He never does know how to deal with service providers – checkout assistants, bag-packers, waitresses, the doorman in their borrowed flat – they make him blush. She used to wait on tables when she was a student and therefore knows it's best to be a firmly courteous and straightforward customer. And you ought to tip well.

We shouldn't tip at all. Shouldn't be here. Borrowing Paul's flat – Madison Avenue and someone on duty twenty-four hours a day to help you work the lift, press the button for you, in case you don't want to, or you're tired. Bet they've never seen tired like us.

Shit.

We're idiots.

Should have stayed in Chicago.

Should have stayed in Edgbaston and never even tried to come over here.

At least when you fuck up at home you're still at home.

Their tea arrives in a heavy, red-glazed pot they both find well made, pleasing – and they say so carefully, also complimenting the tiny, matching cups – and each of them picks the same bento box from the menu because then they get a little of most things and won't be jealous of each other's choices.

They are polite.

‘The miso soup was good.'

‘It said they make their own tofu.'

‘I wonder what that involves.'

‘I have no idea.'

Tom saying this last so apologetically that Elaine does let herself smile, in the hope that smiling will be like releasing a laugh in stages. ‘I don't know, either.'

‘The little cube of beef – is it that kind they get from those cows they massage and feed beer to, or sake? The special cows? It's – whatever it is – it's . . . lovely.'

Tom guesses this will be the best Japanese food he'll ever taste: miniature portions of nameless fish, perfect slices of strange vegetables, great rice. He feels most secure about judging the rice, since they eat it so frequently now – filling and cheap, like chips.

Grew up on chips. So many years and I'm that much further forward – from chips to rice. Not Freedom Fries, not French Fries, not Fries – chips. Salt and fat and bulk and starch to imitate contentment, fill you up.

This meal he finds ludicrously moving, perhaps enraging, too. It's set out like a series of gifts, special delicacies nestling in lacquered boxes, as if someone back behind that curtain is fond of them, wants them to thrive.

Their usual customers here, he is sure, demand these levels of faked affection as a matter of course and that is offensive, but still this strange kind of love is also disarming, intoxicating. ‘You know . . .' He does, in fact, think that he will cry soon because of it. ‘I'm worth two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I found out.' This is not what Tom anticipated saying.