Marian Keyes - Watermelon (12 page)

Dinner was a bit of an odd affair because we were all slightly taken aback by Adam.

Helen has always had hordes of men (although it's more accurate to call them boys) in love with her. A day didn't pass that the phone didn't ring with some stammering youth on the other end of the line.

And the house had a steady stream of male visitors. Their invitation to tea usually coinciding with the breakdown of Helen's stereo, or Helen's desire to have her room painted, or, as in this case, Helen's needing to have an essay written and Helen's having no intention of doing it herself.

And the promised tea rarely materialized on completion of the task.

But none of them had been like Adam.

They were usually a bit more like Jim, one of Helen's earliest conquests.

Poor Jim, to give him his full title.

He was lanky and skinny and went around wearing black all the time and all year round. Even at the height of summer, he wore a long black overcoat that was miles too big for him and big black boots. He dyed his plentiful hair black and never looked me in the eye. He didn't talk much, and when he did it was usually to discuss suicide methods. Or to talk about singers from obscure bands who had killed themselves. He once said "Hello" to me and gave me a kind of sweet little

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smile, and I thought that I had misjudged him but I later discovered that he was blind drunk.

He always carried a decrepit copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or American Psycho in the torn lining of his black overcoat. He wanted to be in a band and kill himself when he was eighteen.

Helen absolutely hated him.

He was always calling her, and whenever he did, Mum would speak to him on the phone and lie through her teeth as to Helen's whereabouts. She would say something like "No, Helen's missing, presumed drunk" while Helen stood in the hall looking at Mum, waving her arms frantically and mouthing "Tell him I'm dead."

After Mum had hung up the phone she would shout at Helen.

"I'm not doing any more lying for you. I'm putting my immortal soul in peril. And why won't you talk to him? He's a nice lad."

"He's an asshole," Helen would reply.

"He's just shy," Mum would say in his defense.

"He's an asshole," Helen would maintain, louder this time.

On occasions like Valentine's Day or Helen's birthday, at least one bunch of black roses would be delivered from him. Handmade cards would come in the post with very graphic pictures of shattered hearts and blood, or a single red teardrop. Terribly symbolic.

There was a time when you couldn't go into our kitchen without finding Jim in there, still wearing the long black coat and talking to Mum. Mum had become his best friend. His only ally in his quest to win Helen's heart.

Most of Helen's would-be boyfriends spent far more time with Mum than they ever did with Helen.

Dad hated him. Possibly even more than Helen did.

I think he felt disappointed by Jim.

Because Dad was so starved of male company he had hoped to do a bit of male bonding with him, what with Jim being a more or less permanent fixture in the kitchen along with the oven and the refrigerator.

One evening he came home from work, and as usual found Jim sitting in the kitchen with Mum. Helen went straight to

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her room as soon as she heard that Jim was on the premises. Dad sat at the kitchen table attempting to talk to Jim.

He said, "Did you see the game?"

Jim just looked at Dad completely blankly.

So that was the end of that: now Dad also thought Jim was a dead loss. He said that Jim should put his money where his mouth was and stop just talking about killing himself and actually get on with it.

Mum said that Jim was really a little pet, once you got to know him. And that it was a sin to encourage someone to take his own life.

It felt as if Jim was always around. Whenever I came home from London he seemed to be drooped over the kitchen table, with a little black cloud hovering over his head. But I always said "Hello, Jim" to him. At least I was polite.

Even if he totally ignored me.

Then I discovered why he had been ignoring me.

On my second day home from London the doorbell rang and I went and answered it and found a haircut wearing a big long black coat standing on the front doorstep. I wasn't sure whether he had come to see Helen or Mum, but Mum was out so I called Helen.

"Helen, Jim's at the door."

Helen came down the stairs looking puzzled.

"Oh hello, Conor," she said to the gloomy youth on the step.

She turned to me.

"Where's Jim?" she asked.

"Well...here...isn't he?" I said, a bit startled, indicating the boy in the long black overcoat.

"That's not Jim, that's Conor. I haven't seen Jim in about a year. I suppose you'd better come in Conor," she said ungraciously. "Oh, and by the way, that's my sister Claire. She's home from London because her husband left her."

"Nice one, Claire," she hissed angrily at me as she herded Conor into the sitting room. "I've been avoiding him for the last month."

There is no doubt but that she will burn in Hell.

At least that explained why Jim ignored me every time I said "Hello, Jim."

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Because it wasn't Jim at all.

But it looked just like him.

Then every time I saw Jim, I would say "Hello, Conor."

Apparently I was still wrong.

His name was William.

But he was the absolute image of Jim and Conor.

But Adam was a different proposition entirely from Jim and his clones.

Handsome, intelligent(ish), presentable...you know, normal! He had one or two social skills, didn't look as if he would crumble into dust if he was caught in a direct ray of sunlight, and could do more than just stare glassy- eyed at Helen and dribble.

After he had shaken hands with us all he then said politely to Mum, "Can I help you to set the table?"

Mum was very taken aback. Not just at the offer of help. Which was in- deed remarkable in itself.

But at the suggestion that we set the table at all.

You see, people tend to fend for themselves at mealtimes in our house and eat their dinners in front of the television watching Neighbours instead of at the kitchen table.

"Erm, no, that's all right thanks, Adam, I'll do it."

And looking slightly bemused, she did just that.

"You're in for a treat tonight," she said girlishly to Adam. Honestly, it was so embarrassing. A grown woman and she was behaving like a star- struck teenager. "Claire has made the dinner for us."

"Yes, I heard that Claire was a great cook." He smiled at me, throwing me into pleasurable confusion. He really shouldn't smile at me like that while I'm draining the pasta, I thought, as I nursed my scalded hand.

I wondered who had told him that I was a great cook, because I was sure that it certainly wasn't Helen.

Maybe he was just being charming. But, hey, what's wrong with that?

"All right, ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats for this evening's performance," I called out, indicating that the dinner was ready.

Adam laughed.

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I was pathetically pleased.

There was a general shuffling and scraping of chairs as everyone sat down.

Adam looked totally incongruous as he sat at the table, completely dwarfing his chair, looking ridiculously square-jawed and handsome.

I placed the salad that I had prepared in the center of the table. Then I put the pasta and sauce on plates and brought them over to the diners. The arrival of the food threw Mum, Dad and Helen into a bit of a quandary. The fact that it was homemade made Dad and Helen suspicious.

Quite rightly.

God knows they had every reason to be suspicious after the ways they had suffered in the past. I suppose it was too reminiscent of all Mum's disasters.

And naturally Mum was only too happy to foment trouble. If she encour- aged them to refuse point-blank to eat it, it would mean that I wouldn't cook any more dinners and the old order would be restored, thereby letting her off the hook.

When Helen's plate was put in front of her she made noises as if she was vomiting. "Uuuugggghhhh!" she said, staring in disgust at her plate. "What the hell is that?"

"Just pasta and sauce," I said calmly.

"Sauce?" she screeched. "But it's green."

"Yes," I confirmed, not for a second denying that the sauce was green. "It's green. Sauce can be green, you know."

Then Adam came to the rescue. He was tucking in with great gusto.

I suppose he was one of those penniless students who can go for months without getting a square meal and so would eat just about anything. But he was acting as if he was enjoying it. And that was good enough for me.

"This is absolutely delicious," he said, charmingly cutting through Helen's histrionics. "You should really try it, Helen."

Helen glared at him. "I'm not touching that. It looks revolting."

Dad, Mum and Helen stared, with held breath, their faces frozen with horror, at Adam as he swallowed a mouthful of food, obviously waiting for him to die. And when, after about

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five minutes, he was still alive and not rolling around on the floor like a victim of the Borgias, screaming to be put out of his misery, Dad ventured a try.

Now, I would love to be able to tell you that one by one every member of my family picked up a fork and despite their earlier prejudices were won over to my fancy cooking. But I can't do that.

Helen, with great shudders and contorted face, noisily refused to touch it, in spite of the beautiful Adam giving it his seal of approval.

She made herself some toast.

Dad ate a little bit and declared that no doubt it was lovely but that his tastes were humble. That he couldn't possibly appreciate such exotic and sophisticated food. As he said, "I'm a simple man. I never even tasted lemon meringue pie until I was thirty-five."

Mum also ate a little bit but with a martyred air. She made it very clear that to waste good food was a sin.

Even horrible food.

Therefore she ate it. Her attitude seemed to be that we were put on this earth to suffer and that this dinner was sent to her as some kind of penance. But at the same time she was hard-pressed to contain her glee at Dad and Helen refusing to eat it. Every so often she would catch my eye and it was obviously a bit of a struggle for her to maintain her poker face.

Though she would rather have died than admit it, she was thrilled.

Then Anna arrived home.

She wandered into the kitchen looking very pretty in a rather ethnic, ethereal kind of way, all trailing scarves and long crocheted see-through skirt and colorful jewelry. She had obviously met Adam previously.

"Oh hi, Adam," she said breathily, obviously delighted, flushing with pleasure.

Does he make every woman he comes into contact with blush? I wondered.

Or was it just our family?

Somehow I suspected not.

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What hope could there be for a man so young who had such an intense effect on women? He could only grow up to be a complete and total bastard. Expecting women to weep, faint, scream and fall in love with him as easily as breathing. He was far too handsome for his own good. A disfigurement or two wouldn't have hurt at all.

"Hi, Anna." He smiled at her. "Nice to see you again."

"Er, yes," she muttered, blushing even more and knocking over a cup.

Conversation wasn't exactly scintillating at the dinner table. Helen, never the hostess with the mostest at the best of times (unless we include the hostess with the mostest rudeness), had picked up a magazine and read through dinner.

"Helen, put down the magazine," Dad told her sharply, obviously em- barrassed.

"Shut up, Dad," said Helen in a monotone, not even looking up.

But every now and then she would look up at Adam and give him a witchy little smile. He would look at her, totally enchanted, and after holding her gaze for a little while, smile back at her.

You could have cut the sexual tension with a breadknife.

Anna, never a great conversationalist at the best of times, seemed to be completely struck dumb by Adam, such was her awe. Any time he ad- dressed a question to her, she just simpered and giggled, hung her head and acted like some sort of village idiot.

It was quite annoying, to be honest with you. He was only a man, and a very young one at that, for God's sake. Not some sort of deity.

Mum and Dad pushed their food nervously around their plates. They didn't talk much either.

Dad made a brief stab at talking to Adam.

"Rugby?" he murmured at him, as if he was in a secret society and he was trying to find out if Adam was a member also.

"Sorry?" said Adam, looking quizzically at Dad, desperately trying to figure out what he was trying to say to him.

"Rugby?"

"Em, er, sorry, but what do you mean?"

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"Rugby? Do you play it?" Dad decided to lay his cards on the table.

"No."

"Oh," Dad sighed like a deflating balloon.

"But I like watching it," said Adam gamely.

"Ah pshaw!" said Dad, practically turning his back on him, making his disappointment felt with a dismissive wave of his arm. And that, I suppose, was the end of that fledgling friendship.

For some reason I felt that it was my responsibility to talk to our visitor. Maybe it was because I had gotten used to being in civilized society, where guests were treated like guests. Where if someone invites you to dinner they don't throw you in with a crowd of strangers and completely ignore you.

"So you're in Helen's class in college?" I asked him with false brightness, desperately trying to kick-start some kind of conversation.

"Yes," he replied. "I'm in her anthropology group."

And that seemed to be the end of that topic.

"This is really delicious," he said, smiling at me. "Any chance of some more?"

"Of course," said Mum coquettishly, almost knocking over her chair in her haste to serve him. "I'll get it for you. And would you like another glass of milk?"