Coming Clean (9 page)

Her kitchen chairs were an idiosyncratic assortment of styles and eras. Then there was the yard sale crystal chandelier that hung over the distressed kitchen table. “Distressed?” my mother had whispered to me the time we popped in to coo over Freddie just after he was born. “It looks suicidal. And can’t she afford matching cups?” To my mother, words like “set” and “suite” were sacraments. As far as she was concerned, “shabby chic” was merely shabby.

No sooner had Annie and Rob moved into this house than Annie had started collecting fabric swatches, wallpaper samples, dozens of those tiny tryout tins of paint. Who knew there were so many shades of white? She fussed over tiles and textures, fretted over faucets. She took a course to learn how to reupholster chairs and sofas.

She was also tidy and organized. The upshot was that Annie’s house felt like a proper home. Mine was just a place where the kids and I ate and slept.

“Annie, how do you do it?”

“How do I do what?”

“This . . . the baking, the perfectly behaved kids, the stylish, crud-free house. Everything in your life seems to be so calm and well ordered. I feel like I’m always running to catch up with myself.”

“You know how I do it,” she said, grinning. “I’m a surrendered wife.”

I laughed. “Yeah, right. That’ll be it.”

“You mock, but there’s a grain of truth in it.”

She was right. There was. Before having the children, Annie had been a radio producer at the BBC. That’s where we met. We worked at
The World at One
together. Then I moved to GLB. She stayed on at the Beeb until she had Freddie. She’d always intended to take the year’s maternity leave she was entitled to, but a few weeks after their son was born Annie and Rob sat down and had a long talk about the future, now that they were parents. They came to the conclusion that, for them, family life could work only if they assumed traditional roles—Rob as breadwinner and Annie as mother and homemaker.

“You and I are different,” Annie went on. “You’d go crazy if you didn’t work. I’m not so driven. I enjoy being a full-time mother and making a home. I feel like I’m doing my bit for the next generation. It really pisses me off that stay-at-home mothers are so undervalued. And anyway, Rob could never cope if I weren’t here running things.”

Rob was a corporate lawyer who was forever tearing about the globe, closing multimillion-pound deals.

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do. The man gets lost trying to find his way to the kitchen. He hasn’t the foggiest where we even keep the Hoover. I truly believe that he thinks the sock and underwear fairy puts all his clean laundry away.”

“He’d have to change if you went back to work.”

“You mean, like Greg changed.”

“Greg’s different. He thinks tidiness is petit bourgeois . . . I don’t get it, Annie. People had you down as a future
World at One
editor. And you gave it all up to star in
Mad Men
.”

“All I can say is that it works for us. It keeps things simple and straightforward. We both know where we are.” She took a dish of posh Normandy butter over to the table.

“You think I asked too much of Greg, don’t you? And that’s why my marriage failed.”

“I don’t know, Soph. It’s not for me to say. Only you can know that.”

“But you suspect that if I’d given up work and stayed at home with the kids, Greg and I might still be together.”

“Do you think that?” she said.

I shrugged. “Maybe. Who knows?”

Just then all four kids appeared. The movie had finished and they were claiming to be starving. Annie sat them down and began slicing and buttering scones.

Freddie, who was waiting to be served, started spinning his plate. Just as Annie was asking him to stop because there was going to be an accident, the plate crashed to the floor. Dozens of pieces lay scattered around the table.

“Fuck—” Freddie said, slapping his hand to his mouth. “I mean
oops
. Only daddies say ‘fuck.’”

It was all I could do not to burst out laughing. When Annie started yelling at Freddie, I couldn’t believe it. The rest of the children were stunned into silence. “You naughty, naughty boy. How dare you say that word. It’s rude and disgusting. Do you hear me?”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry—I didn’t mean it. Don’t shout. Please don’t shout.” Freddie was clearly distressed. Tears were streaming down his face. I wanted to pick him up and give him a cuddle. Then Annie scooped him up and held him to her, rocking him and kissing him. By now she was close to tears.

“I’m sorry, darling. I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t mean to shout. I don’t know what came over me.”

“Freddie’s not a bad boy,” his brother, Tom, said.

“No, of course he’s not. It was me who was bad.”

“Bad Mummy.” Freddie was starting to giggle. He gave her a playful smack on the arm and that seemed to be that. He jumped off her lap and Annie carried on handing out scones.

“Now, then, who’s for jam?”

I couldn’t let the incident go. I knew plenty of mothers who shouted at their kids—myself included—but Annie wasn’t one of them. Seeing Annie lose it like that worried me. After tea, when the children had disappeared back into the living room, I asked her if she was OK. “I’ve never seen you get angry with the boys, that’s all.”

She avoided my gaze and carried on clearing the table. “It’s nothing. Time of the month. I always get low blood sugar.”

I could have pointed out that, in all the years I’d known Annie, she’d never mentioned that she suffered from PMS. I could have reminded her that before her outburst she’d wolfed down a couple of scones and jam. I did neither, partly because Rob showed up.

He dumped his gym bag on the kitchen floor—no doubt for Annie to sort out—and declared his manhood with an air-tennis serve before announcing that he had beaten “that smug git Dave Pilkington, seven-five, six-two, six-oh.”

“Well done,” Annie said, continuing to load the dishwasher.

Rob didn’t seem to notice his wife’s halfhearted congratulations. He came bounding over to me, wrapped me in one of his bear hugs and asked how I was doing. I told him I was good, much better than I had been. “We wanted to have you and the kids here for Christmas, but my parents invited us there. Come for New Year’s Eve. We’re having a party.”

This caught Annie’s attention. “Hang on—that’s the first I’ve heard of it.”

“We may as well. We’ll never get a babysitter for New Year’s Eve. And it’ll be fun. You could roast a ham, do a few salads and a couple of your fruit tarts . . .”

“I guess.”

“Right, I’d better get a move on,” he said, looking at his watch. “I’m due at the airport at seven.” He turned to Annie. “Did you pick up my dry cleaning, hon?”

“Yes. And before you ask, I bought you a load of new socks and underpants. They’re on the bed. And I’ve folded your shirts and picked out a couple of ties. And don’t forget to pack your cuff links.”

“I won’t. Did I ever tell you how totally wonderful and amazing you are?”

He planted a kiss on her cheek, downed a remaining scone in a couple of mouthfuls and said he was going to take a shower.

“Fine,” Annie said. She picked up Rob’s gym bag and started to unzip it.

“I
think you’re reading too much into it,” Gail said when she called later that evening. “Like she said, Annie was probably just a bit hormonal.”

“Maybe, but I’ve never known her to shout at her kids.”

“Oh, come on. We all shout at our kids—especially when we’re premenstrual.”

“Annie doesn’t. At least she didn’t used to. And she seemed a bit off with Rob. Not that I blame her. He’s not a slob like Greg, but he definitely expects her to run around after him. Until now, I’ve never seen her get irritable with him. She’s always going on about how great her life is, but I think she’s finally got fed up with the way he treats her.”

“She needs to get a housekeeper. That’s what you should have done. It’s one of the reasons your marriage fell apart.”

“I can’t believe you just said that. My marriage ended because I didn’t have a
housekeeper
?”

“I said it was
one
of the reasons. What you don’t get is that this whole ‘new man’ thing is a fallacy. Feminism did women no good. Even now, women are fighting a losing battle. What we have to understand is that men are all lazy, self-absorbed slobs. Football is their religion and the pub is their cathedral.”

“That’s not true. Plenty of my girlfriends have husbands who are tidy and help around the house.”

“Yeah, but they also wear sunblock, Birkenstocks with fawn socks and make chutney. Fine, if that’s the type of guy you want, but
real
men are a handful. The only way for a wife to cope with running a home is to get a wife. I’d be lost without Violetta. When you have a full-time live-in housekeeper, there are no arguments about who does what.”

I said that I took the point about the lack of arguments. “But Greg and I couldn’t have afforded a live-in housekeeper, so it’s all pretty moot.”

“I bet you anything Frizzy-Haired Feminist has got a housekeeper.”

I laughed. “What? Bet she hasn’t. Hard-core feminists like her do not employ other women to clean their toilets. They think it’s exploitative.”

“So by not employing them—in a recession—they’re doing them a favor?”

I said it wasn’t me she needed to convince.

“So who do you think cleans her house?” Gail said.

“I’m guessing nobody. She probably lives in an even bigger mess than I do, which probably suits Greg down to the ground.”

“Anyway, getting back to Annie. You tell her from me to start ringing around domestic agencies.”

“Gail, not every problem can be solved by throwing money at it. And I’m not sure that Annie and Rob could stretch to hire a housekeeper.”

“What? Rob’s a corporate lawyer. They earn a fortune.”

I reminded her that Rob hadn’t made partner yet, and while they could afford a twice-weekly cleaner, they weren’t quite in the housekeeper bracket.

My sister, the fifty-one-year-old Jewish princess with hair extensions, nail extensions and house extensions so numerous that nobody could find the original four-bed semi, didn’t appreciate that not everybody lived like her. Greg always joked that if a beggar approached Gail and told her he hadn’t eaten in three days, she would have patted his hand and said: “Darling, you have to force yourself.”

Gail had always been the domineering older sister. She denied it, of course, and preferred to think of her bossiness as “mothering.” There were nearly twelve years between us—ten between our brother, Phil, and me—and Gail had been “mothering” both of us, but me in particular, ever since I could remember.

I was our parents’ “happy accident,” and straightaway Gail became Mum’s little helper. She learned how to bathe and feed me and change my diapers. When Mum felt like having a nap, she would get Gail to walk me in the pram. I don’t think she ever saw me as a sister. I was her “practice” daughter. I certainly always thought of her as my second mum.

For the last few years she’d been trying—and failing—to mother our parents. As they got older, she worried about their health, but they weren’t interested in sessions with her personal trainer, consultations with her nutritionist or one of those impossibly expensive health checks, which include a colonoscopy and an MRI scan and which can practically pinpoint the day you’re going to depart this world.

The day Mum and Dad left for Florida, Gail and I—plus Gail’s husband, Murray, and all four of our kids—saw them off at Heathrow. Between the hugs and tears, Gail didn’t stop nagging them about wearing the anti-deep-vein-thrombosis flight socks she’d bought them. “And remember that practically all the food you buy in the U.S. is packed with sugar. They think muffins and granola are health foods. I’m FedEx-ing you a dozen jumbo packs of sugar-free muesli and some eighty-percent-cocoa-solids chocolate bars. Hershey’s tastes of vomit.”

In the end, Murray had to practically pry Gail and me away from Mum and Dad. We saw them through passport control and they stopped for one final look back. “Go! Go!” I cried, making shooing motions. “And put on the socks,” Gail yelled. “Put on the socks.” One more wave and they disappeared.

I moaned about Gail’s “mothering,” but over the last few months she, like Annie, had done her best to lift my spirits. She would phone to announce that she was taking me shopping or that she’d booked us a spa day and would badger me until I agreed to go.

Dr. Phil was on my case, too. He kept calling to ask if I was having suicidal thoughts. He even offered to phone this Harley Street shrink he knew, which managed to make me feel even more depressed.

I felt that the least I could do to return everybody’s kindness was to pull myself together, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t.

At one point, Annie said she couldn’t work out why I was so miserable, particularly when Greg and I had been so unhappy. “You are sure you’ve done the right thing, aren’t you?”

“Of course I’m sure. It’s just that being alone after eleven years is a bit of a shock to the system.”

A few days after Greg left, Gail made me an appointment with Carl, her West End hairstylist. Apparently, I needed a new look to accompany my new single status. Gail insisted on coming with me to the salon on the grounds that we were having lunch afterwards, so it made sense. Of course, the real reason she came was to project manage the proceedings.

Carl, leather of trouser, permed of lash, greeted us with double kisses and glasses of Ty Nant with cucumber slices. He and Gail clucked, tutted and fussed over my lifeless, “thirsty” hair. Every so often Carl, who talked nineteen to the dozen, entirely about himself, would break off from thinning out my “mushroom” head to admire himself in the mirror. “Do you know, girls,” he said at one point, finger flicking his hair, “I got up today, took one look at myself and thought, ‘Carl, the Lord gave and he just carried on giving.’”

“You just wait until he starts taking away,” Gail said. She was standing beside him at the mirror, pulling her skin up over her cheekbones.

Looks weren’t simply important to Gail. Gail
was
her looks. Losing them terrified her, but women like Gail didn’t go gentle into that particular good night. Every time a new line or wrinkle appeared she was at the Harvey Nichols cosmetic counter buying the latest three-hundred-quid-a-pop potion. I kept trying to assure her that she was still a gorgeous, sexy woman, but she couldn’t see past her apparently tote-sized eye bags and marionette mouth.

Just before her forty-fifth birthday, Gail informed Murray that she’d booked herself into a Harley Street clinic for a face-lift. She’d expected him to roll his eyes, tell her she was beautiful and didn’t need surgery, and maybe have a brief moan about the ten grand she was about to part with, but Murray—who denied his wife nothing—put both feet down. Nobody was taking a knife to his wife’s face. The idea sickened him. He also knew that once Gail started with cosmetic surgery, she would become hooked and that one day he would wake up next to Jackie Stallone. He pulled himself up to his full five foot eight and said that if she had surgery it would be over his dead body.

Gail caved in without a fight. The day after Murray’s “over my dead body” speech, she called me. “The man was just so powerful and commanding. There was no way I could defy him. Being forbidden was just so sexy. My legs turned to jelly. The next minute we were tearing off each other’s clothes.”

From her early teens, Gail’s only ambition was to become a model. Mum and Dad begged Gail to study and go to university. “What will you have to fall back on?” became their mantra. Gail wasn’t interested. She assumed that with her perfect figure, emerald eyes and olive skin, it was only a matter of time before Mario Testino was on the phone.

For Gail, her beauty represented a passport to a new, glamorous life. For Mum and Dad, it represented a passport to drugs and anorexia.

They tried grounding her, but she took no notice and went out anyway. Meetings were held with her teachers. At one stage Dad even called in Rabbi Finkel. When the rabbi suggested that, painful as it was, Dad might have no option but to stand back and watch Gail make a mistake, Dad called him a putz to his face and changed shuls.

Nothing could be done to “save” Gail. She left school at sixteen, with a few mediocre exam passes. When she was signed by one of the top London modeling agencies, Mum and Dad practically went into mourning.

Gail was never out of work, though—mainly photographic. It turned out that she was too short for the catwalk. Nor was her face quite the stuff of
Vogue
covers. The Bianca Jagger Mediterranean look was so over apparently. But fashion editors on the more down-market magazines loved her look. In the mid-seventies, when her friends were living off student grants in houses fit only for the wrecker’s ball, Gail owned a flat in the West End and drove around in a pink Mini Cooper with blacked-out windows.

Once she’d convinced Mum and Dad that she wasn’t developing a cocaine habit or starving herself, they started to cheer up. When Gail appeared on the front cover of
Glitz Magazine
, Mum sent copies to the entire family—even the Canadian cousins in Montreal.

•   •   •

I
was four when Gail started modeling, so I wasn’t old enough to be jealous. If we’d been close in age, it might have been a different story and Mum would have been left to handle the emotional fallout. I can only imagine how grateful she must have felt to be let off that particular hook.

When I was growing up, Mum and Dad always made a point of telling me how pretty I was, but I knew that I took after Dad’s side of the family (who had “the nose”) and that I would never be in Gail’s league. I decided that my only option was to be smart, so, unlike my sister, I threw myself into my schoolwork and made it to university.

Our brother managed to combine looks and a big brain. What’s more, Phil fulfilled every Jewish parent’s dream by becoming a doctor. Mum still had the champagne corks from his graduation party. These days “my son the doctor” was professor of orthopedics at the University of Florida College of Medicine.

During her modeling years, men were always coming on to Gail: handsome, charismatic bad boys who played in bands and suffered from severe “conquest” addiction. (And to quote Mum: “God only knows what other addictions.”) Of course they ended up hurting her.

She met Murray at one of her girlfriends’ weddings. She was one of the bridesmaids. He was the best man.

Even when he was twenty-five, Murray’s shirt buttons strained across his paunch. He was also an accountant—albeit one who worked for a top City firm and was earning a six-figure salary.

When Gail announced that they were getting married, Mum and Dad were speechless with delight. They’d been plutzing about her ending up with some drug-ridden rocker who would die of a heroin overdose. Now here she was about to marry a nice Jewish accountant.

Some of her friends assumed that Gail, whose heart had been broken once too often by good-looking creeps, had “settled” for Murray on the grounds that he was hardworking, dependable and would look after her.

Gail might well have been looking for emotional security and there was no doubt that money mattered to her, but there was no getting away from it: Gail was crazy about Murray. When they first started dating, I would hear her on the phone to her best friend, Elaine. She would rave about how funny and kind Murray was and how great he was in bed. Like I said, I’d never been jealous of Gail, but at thirteen I knew enough about sex to know that I was seriously missing out.

These days Murray owned his own accountancy firm. M. Green and Co. had four branches in the South East. Two more were planned for Leeds and Manchester. Gail gave up modeling when she had the children. She described herself as a homemaker and charity worker. “What that actually means,” Murray was fond of saying, not without a twinkle in his eye, “is that when my wife isn’t barking orders at Violetta or having her ears permed, she manages a little light fund-raising. That is to say, she sells a few raffle tickets to her girlfriends over lunch at the Ivy.”

Gail was always quick to point out that the raffle tickets cost fifty quid each and that over the years she must have sold hundreds if not thousands. “That’s my contribution to the care of the elderly in this country. What’s yours?”

•   •   •

“A
nyway,” Gail was saying now, “I have a problem far worse than Annie’s.”

“Don’t tell me. Harrods Food Hall has run out of wild Baltic salmon.”

“Hey, will you play nice? This is serious.”

“OK, sorry. Go on.”

“I can’t come.”

“Where?”

“What?”

“Where can’t you come?”

“No. I can’t
come
.”

“Oh! . . . Right. Gotcha.”

“Murray went down on me the other day—God, that man is still such an amazing lover . . .”

It was hard to imagine Murray, with his now even more considerable paunch and nose hair, being an amazing lover, but who was I to argue?

“. . . and nothing happened. I couldn’t do it.”

“Maybe you were tired or feeling a bit tense.”

“No, it wasn’t that. The thing is—my clitoris has gone numb.”

“Stop it. They can’t go numb.”