Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? (22 page)

His name is Sean and he just flew in this afternoon on the flight Dan was supposed to be on, which makes me, quite irrationally, dislike him. Ridiculous, isn’t it? Even though I’ve never actually met the guy, already I want to smack him round the head.

Someone shoves a weird looking green cocktail for Paddy’s Day in my hand and next thing Jack is striding towards me and actually managing to displace air; his usually high confidence levels now rocketed somewhere up around the stratosphere.

‘Well twinkle, twinkle little star,’ he says, kissing me lightly on each cheek, smelling sharp and citrusy, his touch still icy cold even though it’s like a bleeding furnace in here. I’m just wondering how the hell he does it…vampire blood perhaps? Then he gives me one of his up and down,
down and up glances, taking everything in, not missing a trick.

‘I couldn’t be prouder of you, by the way. That was a magnificent performance and you rightfully belong on cloud nine. Nice dress, by the way, red really is your colour.’

As calmly as I can, I introduce him to Mum who of course, can always be relied on to say the right thing. She congratulates him warmly and makes a few intelligent and insightful comments about the show, lamenting the fact that there’s not much by way of decent theatre in DC; that you’ve got to travel all the way to New York for that.

Jack chats to her about Washington for a bit, unleashing the full force of his kilowatt smile on her, then after a polite bit of conversation he turns to me and completely changes the subject.

‘So now do I finally get to meet the elusive Mr Annie Cole? Where is he, anyway? Up at the bar?’

I can’t answer him, so instead I just stand there, feeling like I just took a bullet.

Mum, ever reliable, smoothly steps in on my behalf.

‘So tell me, Jack, now that the show has opened, how long do you intend to stay in the city? Do you have another production to direct lined up already? Or perhaps you’re travelling back to work in Europe?’

It’s an adroit subject-change for which I’m deeply grateful, but just then another tidal wave of nausea comes over me and I know I just can’t do this. Stand here and make small talk and chit-chat about complete shite like Mum can. Act like everything’s normal, when my whole life has just gone into freefall.

‘Would you excuse me?’ I manage to stammer. ‘It’s so hot and crowded in here, I just need a bit of air.’

‘Annie? Are you OK? Here wait, I’ll come with you,’ says Jack, suddenly looking concerned, but Mum manages to collar him by asking yet another question about the show and I make my escape through the dense throng of people.

As I somehow push and elbow my way through the mêlée, random snippets of conversation waft over me.

‘And you’re really a lesbian? Full time?’ I overhear an elderly woman, the living image of Joan Rivers, say as I try to wriggle past her, with the door finally in my sights. Honest to God, her face is so pulled back, it almost looks like she could be skydiving.

I pause, momentarily in shock at what I’ve just heard and when I look to see who’s she’s talking to, I realise that she’s got poor little Alex wedged up against the bar, unable to escape from this awful woman and her incredible rudeness. Alex is actually wearing a dress tonight, unheard of for her, with the ginger hair twice as spiky as it normally is, which somehow makes her look even more fragile and child-like than ever.

For a second, our eyes lock.

I fucking hate this,
she seems to be signalling over to me.

I fucking hate this too
.

We’ll get through it though, won’t we?
her big blue saucer eyes seem to ask.

I don’t know.

Next thing, I’m out into the ice cold of Forty-Fourth Street. Free.

Typical Paddy’s Day weather: the light drizzle of earlier has now broken into a fully-fledged storm and it’s lashing rain. Thunderbolts and lightning, very, very frightening. But I don’t care. The earth has spun round more than once for me today and somehow, I need to bring it to a pause.
The street keeps tilting, then righting itself and I just keep on walking. I don’t care that my new dress is ruined or my shoes and hair and make-up.

I just need to pound the pavement.

Which I do. All the way down as far as Times Square, then, as it starts getting really torrential, I stop under an obliging canopy outside a bistro to shelter for a bit.

Try to breathe, try to breathe, just keep breathing
…

A couple of smokers standing outside courteously ignore me and look the other way, for which I’m deeply grateful.

How much despair has been absorbed by these very streets, I absent-mindedly find myself wondering, staring down at the rain-splashed sidewalk. How much pain and hopelessness? How many broken hearts just like the one I’m hauling about have walked this way before me?

In my deadened, numbed state, I still can’t fully accept that it’s come to this. Because there’s no turning back now. Dan coming over for my opening night was my white flag in the sand and he just walked…no…wrong word,
bolted
in the opposite direction away from it.

As personalities go, I’m an accommodator, a pleaser, a hand-wringer. But tonight I’ve reached my cut off point and there’s just no going back. I can’t live like this and what’s more, I won’t. Always making allowances for him, always accepting my lowly position at the very bottom of his list of priorities in life.

The thought of one whole year of a long distance relationship at one time seemed like a challenge that we could both possibly rise to, now it’s a case of…why in the name of arse am I even bothering? If he won’t even meet me halfway, then it’s about time I faced up to this
one insoluble truth – I’m on a loser from the get go. The pillars supporting our whole relationship just crumbled to dust before my very eyes, the moment weight was applied.

And now the pain really begins to hit; the kind of pain you experience from a body blow, or when you lose something essential.

Next thing I hear sobs, big ugly hopeless sobs and realise that they’re coming from me. The two smokers glance over at me, standing there in my party dress, soaking wet, then look away uncomfortably, unsure of what to do. I even catch them semaphoring to each other that I’m like someone clearly out on day release, whose temporarily escaped from the clutches of my carer.

And I keep on sobbing, on and on, getting more and more pathetic by the second, indicating to them that they should just take a step away from me, but on absolutely no account get involved. Finally, they stub out their cigarettes, head back inside to the warmth of the restaurant and on I sob, in peace this time.

I’m not sure how much time passes, but after a while, from some distance behind me, I hear the neat click-clack of expensive high heels. I know without even turning around that it’s my mother, come to find me. Come to take me back.

‘Annie, there you are,’ she says calmly, like me whinging on a street corner in the middle of a thunderstorm is a perfectly normal occurrence. ‘I’ve been looking up and down the whole of Forty-Fourth Street for you.’ She shelters me with her umbrella, then produces a bunch of tissues from out of nowhere and hands them over.

‘I know that you’re upset, dear, but remember, all your colleagues are back at Sardi’s looking for you and your duty
is to be there with them. We can discuss everything else tomorrow, at a more appropriate time.’

God, I’m inclined to forget that about my mother. She’d nearly give the Queen a run for her money in the ‘duty first, raw emotion second’ stakes.

‘Mum, you don’t understand…’ I sniffle into the hanky.

‘I understand perfectly, but come on, darling, there’s a time and a place to discuss the matter and this is neither. Now, dry your eyes and link my arm, please. I’m taking you back to the party. And you will put on a brave face and you will smile and you’ll never betray that there’s the slightest thing amiss and we’ll get you out of there as quickly as possible.’ She’s taking over but I know I need her to. The state I’m in, it’s kind of comforting to have someone make my decisions for me, so I obediently do as she says. Taxis splash past us as we walk back to Sardi’s in the driving rain and I squeeze her arm, so glad that she’s here. So glad that to someone like my mother, my having a crying jag in the middle of the street is simply a matter of faulty plumbing.

‘I can’t do it anymore, Mum,’ I say, falling into step with her as the cold air dries my tears, sticky and cool against my face.’

‘I know, dear. And I did warn you that it wouldn’t be easy.’

Another good thing about my mother – somehow her thoughts always manage to keep pace with mine. She always seems to know what I’m thinking without the necessity of a preamble.

‘I’d ask for a separation, only what’s the point? I already have one.’

‘Tomorrow, dear. We’ll talk about what’s to be done in the morning.’

‘What’s to be done? For God’s sake, Mum, if my marriage was an animal, you’d have put it to sleep a long time ago.’

‘I said, this will wait till tomorrow.’

‘If we were a computer program, you’d reboot us.’

‘Annie, how many more analogies have you got?’

‘As many as it takes to convince myself that it really is over.’

It’s still so jam-packed in Sardi’s that by the luck of God, no one bar Jack seems to have even noticed that we’d disappeared for a bit. Harvey Shapiro is standing in the middle of the bar, puffed up and swollen with brandy and success in his trademark white suit, looking like a man who owns the civilised world. He’s reading out the reviews from a stack of newspapers beside him which, unbelievably, all seem to be raves. One brilliant review miraculously after the other, like ducks in a row.

I stay discreetly at the back with Mum’s overcoat draped over my shoulders, so no one clocks how soaked to the skin I am, while raucous cheers go up time and again for each five-star review. In fact, review is the wrong word: dear Jaysus, these notices are more like love letters. Jack is likened to a young Sam Mendes and hailed as the brightest new talent on the Great White Way. I spot him out of the corner of my eye, at least having the good grace to look faintly embarrassed about all the fuss. Like someone who’s just won the Lotto, but who doesn’t like to brag about it.

All of the cast are showered with praise too, even me. But the most glowing tributes of all are reserved for Liz, whose performance is lauded time and again, confirming what we’d all long suspected – that she’s the true star of the show. ‘The kind of presence that can elevate sports
stadiums into Nuremberg rallies,’ as the
New York Times
has it. Bloody hell.

I look around to give her a congratulatory hug, but there’s no sign of Liz anywhere, so now that the duty part of the night is over, I whisper to Mum that I’m going to slip away quietly.

‘Good idea, dear. I’ll get your coat for you and I’ll meet you outside.’

Getting to the door is a lot easier said than done though because well-wishers keep pulling me this way and that. Then I see Chris imperiously wave me over from the other side of the bar and I know right well this’ll lead to twenty questions about Dan’s whereabouts. Which I’m hopeful I may be able to fend off sometime in the distant future, but I certainly can’t, not right now.

Just get me out of here,
I’m silently praying,
just get me out the shagging door and home to safety and I’ll deal with everything tomorrow…

‘Surely not leaving already?’

Fuck.

It’s Jack, doing his quizzical raised eyebrow thing and eyeing me up and down, as usual, missing nothing.

‘Emm…yeah…I’m just…not feeling the best…it’s been an exhausting night…’

‘You’re missing a great party.’

‘I know, but I really need to go…’

‘I so enjoyed chatting to your mother, by the way. An amazing lady, a real trailblazer. I can see where you get it from.’

‘Emm…yes…she’s wonderful…’

‘Annie, I don’t mean to pry but…you’d tell me if there was anything wrong, wouldn’t you?’

‘Course I would.’

Another unexpected thing about marriage breakdown; turns you into the most shameless liar. The fib sounds lame, even in my own head.

‘Sure you won’t stay to enjoy the celebrations? You deserve it. We can now officially say the show is a smash hit, and you’re a considerable part of the reason for its success.’

‘I really have to go,’ is all I can say, unable to listen to another sentence from him, physically starting to feel my knees buckle.

‘You’re not well, come on, let me at least take you home,’ he says, gently steering me out the door. Just then Mum appears with my coat and our bags and politely says that she’ll take it from here.

Jack just nods wordlessly, hails a cab for us, sees us both into it and politely waves us goodbye.

Then he goes back to the opening night celebrations and I go home to face up to the shards of my broken marriage.

‘You were way too young getting married, I distinctly remember saying so at the time,’ Mum says to me the next morning over breakfast in my little apartment, all Hermès and pearls and serene, calm efficiency.

I’d spent so much money buying in gorgeous food for Dan and me, it seemed a crying shame to let it all go to waste, so I invited Mum over for cream cheese bagels and coffee. Well actually that’s a lie; it would be more correct to say she’s eating them, I just rearrange mine on a plate then shove it away, my appetite long gone. I couldn’t bear to think of all the other plans I’d made for Dan and me today; it still hurt too bloody badly.

‘What’s more, Dan’s family agreed with me too,’ Mum goes on, as calmly as ever.

‘See more of the world, I said to you both. Why rush into this? If you both still feel the same in a few years, then let’s talk about marriage. I did advise you at the time, dear. You must remember.’

‘I know,’ is all I can automatically reply, plonking two Tylenol into a glass of water, then staring at them while they dissolve. Funny thing; I feel like I’ve a thumping hangover even though I hardly drank at all last night the headache from all the crying is that bad.