Coming Clean (18 page)

He managed a smile. “People in the same boat tell me it gets easier as time goes on.”

By now the kettle had boiled. I made more coffee and we talked about the kids, which seemed a safe enough topic.

“By the way,” I said, “Ben seems to think we should be spoiling him more, to make up for separating. He was pissed off we didn’t get him a go-kart for Christmas.”

“Mercenary little so-and-so. Suddenly our separating has become a retail opportunity. I’ll talk to him.”

I suggested that, since it was Christmas, we should let it go.

We took our coffee into the living room. I sat on the sofa. Greg took an armchair. It felt so odd, the two of us keeping our distance like this. The conversation turned to work. I gave him the latest on STD.

“It’s all a bit weird at the moment. Because the relaunch of the show isn’t happening until the new year, nothing’s changed yet. Right now, there’s this phony peace going on.” I explained how STD had even turned up to the Christmas party, got pretty merry and ended up singing the Aussie version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” which was all about possums playing, dingoes dancing and emus laying.

He asked me how the kids were managing without Klaudia. I said they were really missing her. We’d taken her out for a good-bye pizza and given her a framed photograph of her with Amy and Ben. “It was that one of them splashing in the sea at Brighton. Of course, we all cried buckets, but she’s spoken to the kids on the phone and she sent them a Christmas parcel full of the most disgusting Polish sweets. Of course, the kids can’t get enough of them. She’s promised to call the moment the baby’s born.”

It was past three before we sat down to eat. Ben came to the table still wearing his night vision goggles. I’m pretty sure he’d kept them on only to wind his sister up. Dworkin passed on the starter—my homemade parsnip and apple soup—but decided to join us for the main course. She sat on the floor between Amy and Ben, her bowl full of particularly moist turkey, roast potatoes, green beans and sweet-and-sour red cabbage. She wolfed the lot, including the cranberry sauce.

It seemed easier to let the children lead the conversation. Amy was full of the summer-term school trip to an Outward Bound center in Devon. “We get to go rappelling and canoeing. And there’s horse riding. It’s going to be amazing.”

“I didn’t know you were into that kind of stuff,” Greg said.

“What, because she wears nail polish?”

He ignored the comment, which was probably for the best.

Amy carried on chatting about the trip and all the gear she would need—rucksack, walking boots, Windbreaker, fleece, sun hat.

“Mum,” Ben piped up, clearly determined to draw the parental attention back to him. “For my birthday can I invite the Six Dwarves?”

“Your birthday isn’t for months,” Greg said, “and anyway, don’t you mean the Seven Dwarves?”

“Nah. I’m not inviting Grumpy. You know what he’s like.”

Greg and I burst out laughing. Meanwhile, Amy turned on her brother.

“You can’t invite the Seven Dwarves. They don’t exist. Snow White is just a story, dummy.”

“Shuddup, schlemiel. I meant people dressed up as dwarves.”

I put down my knife and fork. “Will you two stop calling each other names? And, Ben, I’ve told you about using that word.”

“Well, she is one.”

Amy opened her mouth to retaliate, but Greg got in first. “Hang on—has anybody noticed we’ve forgotten to pull our Christmas crackers?”

For Ben, this was always the best bit of Christmas lunch. He loved reading the daft jokes and riddles.

“Dad, pull mine with me!”

I pulled Amy’s with her. A few moments later, having discarded the plastic key rings and miniature screwdriver gift sets, we were exchanging jokes.

“OK,” Ben said, already giggling, “what’s Santa’s favorite pizza? . . . Wait for it . . . One that’s deep pan crisp and even.”

We all groaned. Then the kids got Greg to play “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”
on his head. The festive atmosphere was restored.

•   •   •

N
obody had room for Christmas pudding, so we decided to save it for later. I suggested that before we got stuck into
Home Alone
,
The Wizard of Oz
,
The Great Escape
or whichever annually repeated “Christmas favorite” was showing on TV, we Skype Grandma and Granddad to say merry Christmas.

As usual, this meant Skyping Phil. We caught him, Betsy and their boys, Adam and Luke, in the kitchen. They were having breakfast with Mum and Dad.

Phil panned the laptop camera around the room so that we could see everybody. They were all in their pj’s and wearing party hats. The grown-ups were drinking mimosas. Betsy said hi from the stove, where she was frying bacon while simultaneously putting cinnamon rolls in the oven and yelling at one of my teenage nephews to find the maple syrup.

“Nope, we’re fresh out,” a voice said.

“Shoot. I cannot believe I have run out of maple syrup, today of all days. Don’t worry, we can use honey.”

“Honey on bacon? Euuch. Dad, you have to go to the store.”

“What, on Christmas morning?” Phil said to his son. “No way.”

“Then nobody’s going to eat the bacon.”

“No, you mean you’re not going to eat it, which means there will be more for everybody else.”

“Will you two stop bickering?” Betsy chimed in. “Honey will be fine. Phil, are you watching the toaster? It’s been acting up and I’m worried the bagels are going to burn.”

“We don’t need bagels,” my mother was saying. “The cinnamon rolls will be fine.”

“I could manage a bagel,” Dad came back. “I can’t eat pastries for breakfast. The fat aggravates my reflux.”

“Don’t worry,” Phil said. “There are bagels coming.”

“I don’t think so,” Betsy came back. “Phil, get over here. There’s smoke coming out of the toaster. I ask you to do the simplest thing . . .”

I had a great deal of affection for my sister-in-law—probably because her house was even more messy and chaotic than mine. Unlike me, though, Betsy didn’t let it bother her. Phil said that at the hospital she was all organization and efficiency. At home she was Roseanne.

The other difference between Betsy and me was that she had a husband who tidied up after himself and actually did more housework than she did. Granted, Phil’s contribution didn’t amount to a whole hill of beans, but the point was he was willing. “And that means the world,” Betsy had said to me, more than once.

By now Amy and Ben were more than a tad bored watching pixelated images of their Florida family bickering over breakfast. “Just say thank you for your presents,” I whispered. “And then you can go and watch TV.”

They did their duty, as did Adam and Luke, who apparently loved the iTunes gift cards we’d sent them. On the grounds that Christmas was all about kids, we adults had long since imposed a no-buy zone. So every year we sent gift certificates to Luke and Adam and every year Phil and Betsy reciprocated with gift certificates of identical value for our two. Greg called it farcical. I called it Christmas.

Greg said hi and merry Christmas to Mum, Dad and the rest of the family. Then he took the kids to the other end of the room to watch
Home Alone 4.

My mother’s face filled the screen now. “Greg looks well,” she said. Assuming that the pictures she was getting of us were just as pixelated as the ones we were getting of her, I had no idea how she could tell. “You know, it’s so lovely to see you being a family again.”

“Mum,” I said, lowering my voice, “please don’t start getting ideas. This is for one day. We’re doing it for the kids, that’s all.”

“And I bet they’re happy to see you together. You know, maybe you should think about going back into counseling.”

“Esther, don’t start.” It was my dad. I could see the edge of his unshaven chin. “You promised you wouldn’t start . . .”

“I’m not starting. I’m just pointing out that children are happier and do better in life when they have parents living under the same roof. It said so in this magazine article I read the other day at the hairdresser’s.”

At this point, Adam asked Mum and Dad if they had any maple syrup at their place. Dad said he thought they might. “I’ll go take a look,” he said, getting up from the table.

For a few minutes, the rest of us carried on chatting and exchanging news. Then Betsy suggested that Mum take me on a tour of her new bathroom.

Mum and Dad had just finished refurbishing the granny annex. I’d seen the new kitchen, but Mum and Dad still hadn’t shown me the bathroom. I’d heard all about it, though—from Gail. She’d had the tour a few days earlier, just before she, Murray and the kids left for their customary Christmas break in the Canaries. “I can’t help thinking,” Gail had said, “that mint tiles with an eggplant bath mat and toilet seat cover is all a bit
meh
. Why is it that when it comes to decorating, our mother can only think in edible colors?” I suggested to Gail that maybe she should ease up on our eighty-year-old mother, but I couldn’t help laughing. Mum had always been the same. I remembered the last time she decorated the living room at the old house and how she’d adored showing off her salmon drapes and guacamole broadloom.

“Oh, you should see it,” Mum was saying to me now about the bathroom. “I keep all my guest hand towels in this pretty wicker basket.”

“Yeah,” Phil butted in, “except she won’t let anybody use them because she says they’re for guests. So I have to go into the kitchen and wipe my hands on a dishcloth.”

Betsy said that if Mum was going to take me on the grand bathroom tour, she should be quick because breakfast was almost ready. Mum said she needed to go to the little girls’ room, so she suggested that Phil should head off with the laptop and that she would catch us up.

Phil picked up the laptop and led me out of the kitchen and onto the patio. We crossed the lawn and went on past the pool and Betsy’s vegetable patch, which had long gone to seed. At the bottom of the garden was a small white rendered bungalow. This had been built by the couple who’d previously owned Phil and Betsy’s house. They ran a hot tub business and the bungalow had been used as an office and showroom. When Mum and Dad agreed to come to Florida, Phil and Betsy had set about converting it.

“So how are you and Betsy coping with Mum and Dad?”

“Actually, it’s working out a lot better than we thought. Betsy drives Mum to the supermarket a couple of times a week, but they manage to get out and about on the bus. They seem to be taking life much more in their stride. They’ve even started going to the seniors’ day center in town and by the sound of it they’re making friends. They seem to be very anxious about not invading our privacy, though. In fact, we have to nag them to come over.”

I said I was glad things were going well. I also said I felt guilty about him and Betsy having to take full responsibility for Mum and Dad as they approached advanced old age. “It’s a huge ask. It feels like Gail and I palmed them off onto you.”

“Come on—you did not palm them off and you know it. Betsy and I asked them to come and live with us. It was our decision. And you know how laid-back Betsy is. She just rolls with the punches.”

By now we were outside the bungalow. I could see Mum’s new mushroom drapes. Phil was about to knock on the door. Then he stopped.

“I can hear Dad on the phone,” he said. “Maybe we should give him a minute.”

“’K.”

For a while, neither of us spoke.

“Soph,” Phil said eventually, “are you getting that?”

“What?”

“Listen.”

I listened.

Dad must have moved to the open window because I could hear every word.

“No, it’s probably safer if I come to you,” he was saying. “Where do I find you? OK, I know where that is. Top bell. Anita. That’s a pretty name. You know, Anita, I have to admit that I’m a bit nervous about this. The only woman who’s ever seen me naked is my wife. So I guess we should talk about payment . . . Fifty dollars. That seems very reasonable. Oh, and would it be OK if I brought a couple of buddies with me?”

I heard myself yelp. “Omigod! What the—? Phil, correct me if I’m wrong, but it would appear that our octogenarian father is planning to have group sex with a hooker.”

“Yeah, that was pretty much my take on it. Although, in fairness, they could be planning to bang her one after the other.”

“Wow. That’s put my mind at rest no end.”

Just then Mum appeared. “Phil, what are you doing waiting outside? Let’s go in and show Sophie the bathroom.”

“Shit, Phil,” I hissed. “We can’t go in. Dad’s still on the phone. Mum will hear everything. You have to think of something.”

He did. “Mum . . . actually Sophie’s got to go,” he blurted. “Ben’s just been sick. Too many sweets. Why don’t you and I get back to the house?”

The picture on my screen was all over the place now, but I saw Phil take Mum’s arm and start leading her away from the granny annex.

“But Ben was fine a few minutes ago,” Mum protested. “And where’s your dad with the maple syrup?”

“He’s coming. He’s coming.”

The screen went black.

“I
can’t believe it,” Gail said, all winter white fun fur and Canary Islands tan. “Dad sees hookers?”

“Well, so far it’s hooker, singular.”

“Whatever. And he takes his buddies. Words fail me. It’s sick, perverted, obscene. Our father involved in this kind of debauchery? And at his age. How could he do this to Mum? Has he gone stark staring mad?” She paused. “I’ve got it. It’s Alzheimer’s. He’s losing his mind. It’s the only explanation.”

I had to admit that the possibility had occurred to me and Phil. “On the other hand, when you speak to him he seems no different than usual. He’s not confused. His memory’s fine.”

“Alzheimer’s can strike in odd ways,” Annie said. “Risk taking can be a symptom. One night my granddad wandered out of his care home and the police caught him playing chicken on the motorway.”

•   •   •

I
t was New Year’s Day and Gail, Annie and I were at Gino’s on Hampstead Heath, about to order brunch.

Gail and I had a New Year’s Day tradition going back years, of taking a long walk on the heath and then going for brunch at Gino’s. We had a strict no-husbands-or-kids rule, but a girlfriend at loose ends was always welcome. Today Annie had come along. She’d called yesterday to wish me a happy new year. During our brief conversation—I was getting dolled up for Debbie-from-down-the-road’s New Year’s Eve bash and running late—it emerged that she was still feeling pretty troubled and hadn’t been sleeping. She said that as much as she wanted to go back to work—and there had been a development in that area, which she would tell me about when we had more time to talk—the idea of leaving the boys was tearing her apart. The upshot was that she felt in dire need of a shoulder for crying on and hoped that mine might be available. Since Annie and Gail had always gotten along and two shoulders had to be better than one, I suggested she join us on the heath.

This New Year’s Day, though, the rain was falling like bullets, so we’d been forced to abandon our walk. Instead we’d headed straight to Gino’s.

Annie looked tired and I was eager to move the conversation onto her troubles, but Gail—whose sensitivity to people’s emotional needs rarely extended beyond her own—was preoccupied with Dad, his buddies and Anita the hooker, and she refused to let the subject drop. She seemed to find it gruesome, but unputdownable.

She managed to break off when the waitress came to take our order—three full English breakfasts, OJ and cappuccino—but the moment the waitress was gone, she was off again.

“What about Mum? It would kill her if she found out.”

“And suppose he gave her some kind of disease,” I said. “Greg reminded me that the statistics among the elderly have skyrocketed in the last few years.”

Gail shook her head. “Christ, it doesn’t bear thinking about.” She paused. “So you discussed this with Greg?”

“I couldn’t not. He saw the look on my face after I came off Skype. He knew something was up.”

“Phil has to talk to Dad,” Gail said. “He’s a doctor. He’ll be able to work out whether it’s Alzheimer’s. Assuming it’s not, then he needs to read him the riot act.”

We decided that the only way forward was to have a conference Skype with Phil and Betsy.

By now the waitress had arrived with our plates of bacon, eggs, sausages, tomato and fried bread. As we downed our OJ, squirted brown sauce over our fry-ups and acknowledged that we could already feel our thighs thickening and our ventricles slamming shut, we asked the waitress if, when she brought us our coffee, she could also furnish us with white toast, butter and jam.

“So,” Annie said, doing her best to sound chirpy. “How was everybody’s New Year’s Eve?” She dipped some sausage into creamy fried egg yolk. “Rob dragged me up to town to this new French place, which I have to admit was sensational, but the West End was mobbed. We couldn’t get parked and had to walk for miles. And when we came out, it was pouring, just like it is now. There were no cabs, so we were soaked by the time we got back to the car.”

“Well, at least you got out,” Gail said. “Murray and I were in bed by nine.” It seemed that Murray had come back from the Canaries with a “chest.” “I suppose I could have left him, but you know what men are like. He managed to do such a good impression of a Victorian miner expiring from silicosis that I didn’t have the heart.”

“Well, Debbie’s party was great,” I said, explaining that I’d been able to accept the invitation only because the kids were spending New Year’s with Greg and his mother at her place. “Debbie and her husband had managed to off-load her kids, too, so we all got pretty wasted. I think I must have rolled home some time after two. I remember not being able to get my key in the door and that I was singing ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.’”

It suddenly struck me how insensitive and Gail-like I was being. The night before, Annie had phoned me almost in tears and I hadn’t even asked her how she was. I was about to tell her how worried I was about her and ask how she was doing when Gail broke in.

“So, Soph, how was Christmas Day with Greg?”

“Oh God—yes, how did it go?” Annie said, clearly eager to find out and giving no impression she felt I was neglecting her.

“As usual, seeing him has left me feeling a bit discombobulated. It just felt so odd having him there as a guest in his own home. Oh, and we also managed to have a fight.”

I explained that FHF wanted to take the kids up in a hot air balloon. The consensus was that I should have been consulted and had every right to feel put out that I hadn’t been.

“Oh,” I said. “And FHF got me a Christmas present.”

“No! You’re kidding,” Gail said.

“According to Greg, she meant it as a peace offering.”

“So what did she give you?” Annie asked.

I bent down and reached into my bag. I wasn’t sure why I’d brought it with me—to give Gail and Annie a laugh, I suppose. “OK, you have to promise not to make me put it on.”

“Don’t tell me,” Annie said. “It’s one of those Christmas sweaters covered in reindeer and holly.”

“Far worse,” I said as I unpacked FHF’s Christmas peace offering and laid it on the table.

“What on earth is that?” Gail said, peering at the thing as if it were some newly discovered animal species.

“It’s a hand-knitted Peruvian earflap hat,” Annie obliged.

Gail looked none the wiser.

Then, before I could stop her, Annie shoved the earflap hat on my head. “Ooh, very vegan women’s cooperative, I’m sure.” She burst out laughing.

“Gorgeous, isn’t it?” I said to Gail, turning my head to the left and then to the right so that she could get the full effect.

My sister leaned forward, her fingers making tentative contact with the long-plaited tassel. “I say again. What is it?”

Just then the waitress arrived with the toast and jam. “Oh—and, miss,” Annie said, “my friend would like a side order of mung beans with that, please.”

I snatched off the hat, slapped Annie playfully on the arm and explained to the bewildered-looking waitress that my friend was joking.

“Hang on,” Gail said. “There’s something I’m not getting. Does FHF genuinely think this thing is attractive or has she sent it to you because she knows it’s horrible and she’s just being a bitch?”

I said that I couldn’t be certain, but judging by the pictures I’d seen of FHF, I suspected it was the kind of thing she wore herself. Annie agreed that earflap hats were the epitome of earthy feminist chic and said I had no choice but to give FHF the benefit of the doubt and send her a polite thank-you note. She picked up a piece of fried bread and wrapped it around some streaky bacon.

“I can’t believe I’m eating this,” Annie said, bringing the bread to her mouth. “Usually when I’m stressed, I go right off food.”

“Lucky you,” Gail said, making a start on the toast and jam. “I’m the complete opposite.”

“She’s not wrong,” I said, watching my sister’s knife quarrying into thick Normandy butter. “When Carl, her hairdresser, threatened to move to New York, she gained thirty pounds.”

“I did not,” Gail said, laughing. “It was only five and you know it. So come on, Annie—why are you so stressed? Soph has only put me partly in the picture. Why don’t you tell your Aunty Gail all about it.”

Suddenly my sister had morphed into Dr. Ruth.

Annie didn’t hold back. She told Gail how she’d finally admitted to herself that being a full-time mum was depressing the hell out of her. “Don’t get me wrong. I love the boys to bits, but I’m getting almost phobic about being around them. Before I had children, I had all these romantic notions about motherhood.”

Gail burst out laughing. “Of course you did. We all did. Then reality sets in and you realize that kids are essentially noise covered in poo and puke and that they stretch your patience—not to mention your vagina—to unimaginable dimensions. Like you, I’d give my children my kidneys and both lungs if they needed them, but there are times—like when they use your Chanel lipsticks as face paint—that you wish you’d stayed a virgin.”

I said that, for me, it was when Amy refused to sleep for months on end and I had to get up and go to work each morning. But I took her point.

“It wouldn’t be so bad,” Annie said, “if Rob helped around the house. I know he works long hours and he’s permanently exhausted and I do try to make allowances, but so far this Christmas there hasn’t been a single occasion when he’s done something without being asked. And even then he wouldn’t get up off his behind until he’d finished reading the paper or messing about on his laptop.”

“Where have I heard that before?” I said.

Gail said that Murray was the same. “I think he genuinely believes that if he loads the dishwasher, his penis will drop off.”

“I’ve tried explaining to Rob that I’m tired of being at everybody’s beck and call and that I feel like a glorified maid, but he just thinks that I’m run down and need a tonic.”

Gail made the point that if Annie carried on like this, she’d need Prozac, not a bloody tonic. “Take my advice. Go back to work and get yourself a nanny-slash-housekeeper. That way, everybody’s needs are taken care of and you get to start exercising your brain again.”

“Gail’s right,” I said. “There may not be any jobs at the BBC, but why don’t you at least put out some feelers?”

“I have,” Annie said. “That’s the problem.”

I asked what she meant.

“One of my old contacts suggested I give the
Today
program a call. Long story short, one of the producers is going on maternity leave for six months and they can’t find a suitable replacement. So I went in and saw the editor and he offered me the job on the spot. It starts at the end of January.”

“Annie, that’s amazing,” I said. “The way things are right now, have you any idea what a stroke of luck that is? So what did you say?”

“I said I needed some time to think, which didn’t go down too well, bearing in mind I’d made the first approach. I think he thought I was a bit bonkers.”

“I’m not surprised,” Gail said. “For your sanity’s sake, you must take it. What does Rob say?”

Annie sat spooning cappuccino foam.

“You haven’t told him, have you?” I said.

“Uh-uh.”

“Why on earth not?”

“Because I know what he’ll say. He’ll tell me that we had an agreement and that if I go back to work, I’ll be letting down the boys.”

“He’s bound to say that,” Gail said, waving a jammy knife to emphasize her point. “Emotional blackmail is the first weapon men reach for. What he’s actually worried about is who’s going to pick up his dirty underpants and book his haircuts. Here’s what you do: refuse to engage with those arguments. You can’t let Rob get even the faintest sniff that your mind isn’t made up. At the first sign of weakness he will launch an entire arsenal of guilt-seeking missiles and the battle will be lost.”

“But I hate the idea of this becoming a battle. Surely I need to be reasonable and listen to what he has to say?”

“Honey, reason will get you nowhere. It’s reason that’s kept you where you are for so long. Hit him with a fait accompli. But of course there can be no treaty unless you offer him something in return.”

“The housekeeper,” Annie said.

“The housekeeper. Trust me. Find the right one and she will save your marriage, your family, but most of all . . . your sanity.”

“OK. I’ll do it. If I’m honest, I’m not sure I have much choice.”

“Good girl,” Gail said. “You won’t regret this. I promise.”

Just then my cell went off inside my bag. I reached down and began rummaging.

“What’s the betting it’s Huck the Fuck?” Gail said. By now she was fully up to speed with my supermarket encounter with Huckleberry. Like Annie, she was convinced that he fancied me. “You know, I vaguely remember him,” Gail was saying to Annie. “I think Soph brought him home once or twice. He was gorgeous. You could see why all the girls called him Huck the Fuck.” She laughed. “Huck the Fuck. What a great name.”

Finally I found my cell. Gail was right. It was Huck. I pressed “answer.”

“Hey, Fuck. How are you?”