(2002) Deception aka Sanctum (20 page)

What am I looking for in here anyway? The truth? A fact? Her motive? At the moment, on a day-to-day, hour-to-hour basis, I think, speculate, wonder about Susie’s motives more than any other single thing. Yet motive is the most slippery of truths. After an utterly honest, undefensive, unpropagandizing three months of incessant talk, a brilliant, insightful psychiatrist couldn’t hope to uncover my true motives for taking an unsatisfactory dump this morning. They could call it tension, stress, a mother complex, and I could call it a desire for world peace. All of them could be equally true. It could be a fleeting vitamin deficiency or a dream I don’t remember having. I know this and still I’m wasting time trying to determine what someone else’s motives were for a series of out-of-character actions months ago. I’m up here for hours at a time searching for a completely unknowable quality.

In conclusion, my being here is both wrong and pointless. And still I’m here, scrabbling through the rubble.

A good, true husband would want his wife to be autonomous, could comfortably allow her to leave questions unanswered, and I used to. I loved being so sure of her. I loved having a wife who could go off to a conference and come in and grunt, “Hello” without elaborating. I was proud that she was free to make her own choices, and so was I. Now pain and insecurity make me want to control her, like the arsehole men who kill their wives and girlfriends in the prison-lovers book. I could never have anticipated this hurting and preoccupying me so much. I don’t want Susie to be free to do things that make me feel like this. I don’t want her to have free will at all. If I could, I would rip the free will from her, rip it out and keep it from her.

No one who knew what this feels like could assent to it. In a way it’s proof that God doesn’t exist. If there were a God, and he did love the world, he wouldn’t have given us free will. He would have anticipated this feeling, deemed free will a flaw, and taken it out. Maybe there is a God but he simply doesn’t care what we feel or how much it hurts, in which case any and all pleas for succor or help from him are just about as useful as a nun’s cunt.

God forgive me. That’s the worst curse I’ve ever read or said or heard of.

chapter nineteen

MUM AND DAD CAME DOWN TO THE KITCHEN AS I WAS FINISHING my porridge this morning. They tumbled bleary-eyed into the room as though afraid to have left me alone during the hours of darkness. By my watch it was six-forty-five. It’s an insult to insomniacs, voluntarily getting up at that time. I went upstairs and found Margie standing in her cot, good as gold, chewing Lizzie Limber Legs and watching her mobile. When I got back down, Trisha had appeared. They were all sitting around the table together, chatting politely. They look a bit scary in the mornings because nighttime dehydration and pillow-creasage exaggerate their wrinkled smiles into horribly sarcastic sneers.

I gave Margie a piece of toast and let her run off into the living room, and then I took a deep breath and turned to the assembled crowd. I told them that I had something to say to all of them: I greatly appreciated their coming to support me, but I wanted them to go home now and let me get Margie back into a routine. Susie will be home soon, I said, and everything will be back to normal. They stared at me, dumbfounded at my gall. Mum was annoyed that I was speaking to her in front of Trisha; I know she wants me to choose her to be on my team first, but I’m too tired to play those games. Dad, sensing what was going through her head, twitched nervously and glanced at her. Mum asked me if I was quite finished, and when I said I was, she stood up, pressing her fingers on the table as if she were addressing a public meeting.

“I think Trisha should go,” she said. “She has been here for a whole week—”

Determined to be evenhanded, I interrupted her. “No, I want you all to go. I didn’t invite you. This is the worst imaginable time for me to have visitors.”

“Lachlan,” she said patronizingly, “you’re not well enough for us to go home.”

“Mum,” I said, closing my eyes. “I am perfectly well.”

She huffed disbelievingly, and her voice rose to a familiar brain-gouging pitch. “LACH-LAN,” she said angrily, “your eyes are bright red. It is clear that you are under a lot of strain. To be quite honest, and I don’t mean this in a bad way, I’m actually afraid to leave you alone with the child. There, I’ve said it. You’re not sleeping, you’re being very moody—”

“I CANNOT SLEEP BECAUSE YOU’RE IN MY BED,” I shouted, dropping a plate to the floor. It broke and spiky shards shot across the kitchen floor. “When I can get to sleep, you wake me at six a.m. Having you here is driving me crazy. Just get out, will you? Will you all just get out and leave me alone?”

Trisha deliberately misunderstood and said, “Cheer up,” weakly. Speechless with impotent rage, I picked up her cup and threw it at the wall. The toffee-brown tea splattered across the white emulsion, flecking at the outer edges. They all looked suddenly very old and brittle. In the living room Margie put the television on. An interviewer was questioning someone about a bombing in the Middle East.

“Young man,” said Mum, “it’s about flipping well time blah blah blah.” I can’t remember her exact words, but I was supposed to shape up, ship out, and something something. I wasn’t listening, I was sitting at the table, sagging and bent, wishing I were asleep or at least winning the fight. The more emphatic I was, the more they thought they should stay with me and deprive me of a bed. “And furthermore—”

Trisha stood up suddenly. It’s easy to forget how tall she is. She stands about five eight, which isn’t eugenically freakish or anything, but in Scotland, where all the women are tiny (smallest in Europe), and especially among older women, she seems supernaturally long. I was only half listening, so this is a paraphrase. “I think Lachlan has done incredibly well. I think he deserves a little peace and quiet now. The very least we can do is go and stay at a hotel.”

I don’t even think it was just to piss Mum off, either. I think she believed it.

“I don’t need you to tell me what to do, you sneaky prig,” Mum shouted, and I covered my face. Name-calling. Always death to rational argument. “I think I know what’s best for my own son.”

“I’m not telling you what to do,” said long tall Trisha. “I’m telling you my opinion as to what we should do. I think we should leave him in peace and be supportive from a distance.”

“From a distance?” Mum was really fired up now. Dad and I have both seen this scenario a hundred times. When Mum gets past a certain degree of annoyed, she starts crying and blaming and lashing out with accusations of all sorts until only physical exhaustion can calm her down again. I see the same pattern in myself sometimes. Knowing that an emotional tsunami was imminent, Dad stared anxiously at the table. Mum turned on me, wagging her finger. “If you don’t get some sleep and sort out your marriage PDQ, young man, there’ll be hell to pay, you mark my words.” She was shouting and trembling and just about to blow when Trisha interrupted her.

“Any idiot can give advice,” said Trisha calmly. “It’s taking it that’s hard.”

It was such a sensible observation that we were all stunned into silence. Then Trisha picked up the newspaper and sauntered off.

Mum’s head was twitching, side to side. She blinked hard, and her anger just sort of subsided as she sank down into her chair again. Dad, as surprised as I was, caught my eye and pressed his lips together. Margie came running in and climbed onto Mum’s lap. I went next door and turned off the television, came back into the kitchen, and we all continued our breakfast as if I hadn’t smashed two bits of crockery and shouted at a crowd of benignly inspired pensioners.

Ten minutes later we heard Trisha lugging a suitcase downstairs. I ran up to help her with it, whispering, “Thank you,” under my breath. I was so pleased I felt like asking her back to visit again.

She patted me on the shoulder and looked over at Mum and said something like, “You’ll sleep now that I’m unselfish enough to leave.” Margie ran over and kissed her knees as she pulled her coat on. Mum and Dad stood in the living room like guilty children waiting to be told off, half watching her.

Trisha turned to address them, “Good-bye, Margery. I hope you have a safe journey home,” she said, not only taking the high ground but building a small, sustainable, eco-friendly resort there. “Good-bye, Ian.”

It would have been a splendidly dramatic exit if the taxi hadn’t taken forty minutes to arrive. We had to call three times to find out where they were.

* * *

When she had gone, Mum said that since there was a spare room now, there was no need for them to leave, but Dad cleared his throat sharply, and she spontaneously changed her mind. He’s so rarely insistent that it’s compelling when he is. They phoned the airline and changed their return flights to the next day. At Dad’s insistence, they booked into a bed-and-breakfast for the night. Mum went upstairs to pack and left me and Dad alone. I offered to come and get them the next day and take them to the airport, but he said no, they could manage perfectly well on their own and I should have a quiet evening and try to sleep. We were standing in the living room, facing each other, and he reached out to me, almost showing affection, but chickened out at the last minute and slap-patted my shoulder, muttering, “Well done.” I appreciated it, I really did.

He offered to get me a prescription for some sleeping pills, but I said I’d rather do it naturally. He chuckled indulgently as if I were opting for primal-scream therapy instead of taking an aspirin. I’m always amazed at how prescription-happy that generation was. I suppose if they now admitted it’s wrong, they’d have to own up to turning half their patients into drooling addicts.

I insisted that they allow me to drive them over to the bed-and-breakfast. I had to drop Margie off at nursery at the same time, so after an infinity of packing, dressing, and general organizing, we all bundled into the car. Margie started singing the noises-in-our-car song— parp parp peep peep— and I felt my heart swell in elation. I was going to be alone, actually alone, very, very soon. I joined in, singing the choruses, perhaps a little too joyfully. When I caught Mum’s eye in the rearview mirror, she looked terribly hurt. I apologized.

She sniffed and looked out of the window. “In front of her . . .” she said, or something upsetting like that. I pretended not to hear.

My attention was elsewhere: Mum and Dad were leaving. I was going home to be alone for the first time in over a week, and I had arranged for Yeni to pick Margie up at lunchtime so that I could sleep. I was days ahead of myself. Margie ran in to nursery, kicking her little legs up behind herself, working her fisted hands at her sides, all her gestures expressive of her absolute determination to enjoy the day. She stopped inside the door, scanning the horizon for the jolliest children as I pulled her coat off, and then lolloped off across the room toward a ginger-haired boy. The mums were sweet to me. Gathering around, they said they’d seen me in the paper but not to worry. I know I looked nice in the paper because they were all either smiling at me or trying not to smile. One woman got flustered and pointedly ignored me. Harry’s little blond mum was on the other side of the room, and then suddenly she was standing at my shoulder, slightly behind me, behaving like a politician’s supplicant wife on the campaign trial.

I don’t understand why she is selling herself so hard. She has perpetually untidy thin hair, which looks as if she has just got out of bed. Her eyes are small and green, the smallness being a positive benefit in one’s midthirties, in the sense that small eyes age better than big eyes. The divorcée’s tinge of bitterness and regret that infuses her conversation doesn’t show on her face. Her lips are swollen and red, as if she’s been eating all the red candies in the box and needs admonishing. Even the way she stands is profoundly sexy, with her butt sticking out, emphasizing her chest. She flirts with me, with glances and looks and the way she turns away and then back toward me. It flatters me so much I get quite flustered. Until today I comforted myself with the thought that she was probably a vacuous idiot, but now I know she isn’t. I’m quite taken with her.

I only realized Harry’s mum was there because the mum who was talking to me glanced behind my shoulder a couple of times, as though addressing my partner. She was standing so far back that I had to turn a full 180 degrees (away from everyone else) to see her. She was wearing a low-cut green sweater with a silver stick on a chain that sort of pointed down into her cleavage. Our eyes locked, and I nodded hello just as a hush descended over the room behind me. Even the babies were momentarily quiet. Everyone in the room stared at the kitchen door and sort of gasped under their collective breath.

I turned to see the young woman assistant standing in the middle of the room. She was so brown she could have been working on a sugar plantation in the Caribbean for a month. Her eyes were an eerie blue, her dark skin, her white-bleached hair making her look like a photographic negative. Aside from dramatically increasing her risk of developing a melanoma, she’ll ruin her skin using a sunlamp that much, and she’s only young. Aware of the effect she was having, she drew herself up. She actually seemed quite pleased with herself.

“Good God,” I muttered. “She shouldn’t do that.”

“She can’t help herself,” whispered Harry’s mum. “She’s tanorexic.”

It was so unexpected, I laughed out loud, even though it was obvious who we’d been talking about. I couldn’t stop myself. It would have been even more rude to stare straight at the girl and laugh, so I turned my shoulders to Harry’s mum. She laughed back and fingered her necklace.