Marian Keyes - Watermelon (32 page)

That wasn't part of the script.

I was the one in the right. He was the bastard. That's the way it was.

"You needed me for everything," he almost shouted.

I think I should point out to you at this juncture that James never shouted. He'd never even almost shouted.

"You demanded constant attention," he went on. "And constant rein- forcement. And you never gave a damn about me and how I felt and what I might need."

I stared openmouthed at him.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

Why was he attacking me?

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He was the one who'd left me, right?

So if there was any accusing to be done, I was the correct person for the job.

"James..." I said faintly.

He ignored me and continued ranting and jabbing his finger at me.

"You were impossible. I was exhausted from you. I don't know how I stayed with you as long as I did. And I don't know how anyone could live with you."

Now look it here! That was too much. Anger surged through me.

Talk about a kangaroo court.

I was being done a terrible injustice.

And I wasn't letting him get away with it.

I was livid.

"Oh, I see," I said, absolutely furious. "So now it's all my fault. I made you have an affair. I made you leave me. Well, that's funny, because I don't actually recall holding a gun to your head. It must have slipped my mind."

It's true what they say. Sarcasm really is the lowest form of wit. But I couldn't help myself. He was criticizing me. And I was burning, scalded with a sense of injustice.

"No, Claire," he said. He actually spoke through gritted teeth. Which I'd never seen anyone do before. I thought it was just a figure of speech. "Of course you didn't make me do anything."

"So then what are you saying?" I demanded.

I had a funny cold feeling in the pit of my stomach. I knew it was fear.

"I'm saying that living with you was a bit like living with a demanding child. You always wanted to go out. As though life was one big long party. And it was, for you. You were always laughing and enjoying yourself. So I had to be the grown-up one. I had to worry about money and bills. You were so selfish. I had to be the one who reminded you at one in the morning, at a dinner party, that we both had to be at work the next day. And then I had to put up with you calling me a boring bastard."

I was dumbfounded at this torrent from James. Apart from its unexpec- tedness, I felt that it was so unfair.

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"James, that's the way it worked for us," I protested. "I was the funny one, you were the serious one. Everyone knew that. I was the light relief, the silly one who made you laugh and unwind. You were the strong one. That's the way we both wanted it. That's the way it was. And that's why it was so good."

"But it wasn't," he said. "I was so bloody tired of being strong."

"And I didn't ever call you a boring bastard," I exclaimed suddenly. I knew that something he had said there was wrong.

"It doesn't matter," he said irritably. "You made me feel like one."

"Yes, but you said that I--" I started to protest.

"Oh, for God's sake, Claire," he burst out angrily. "There you go again. Trying to score points. Can't you just let it be? Can't you, for once, just once, accept blame?"

"Yes, but..." I said weakly.

I wasn't even sure what I should accept blame for.

Never mind. I didn't have time to think about it. James drew another breath and was off again. And I had to give what he was saying all my at- tention.

"You just made messes." He sighed. "And I had to clean them up."

"That's not true!" I shouted.

"Well, believe me, that's how it felt," he said unkindly. "You just don't want to admit that it's true. There was always a drama. Or a trauma. And I was always the one who had to deal with it."

I was silent. Totally dumbfounded.

"And you know, Claire," he continued solemnly, "you just don't magic- ally wake up one morning and know how to be an adult. You don't know overnight how to pay bills. You work at it. You work at being responsible."

"I know how to pay bills," I protested. "I'm not a total moron, you know."

"So how come it was me who had to take care of that end of things?" he asked primly.

"James"--my head whirled as I searched for ways to defend myself--"I did try to help."

I distinctly remembered a time when I had sat with James

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as he self-importantly flicked through check stubs and ATM receipts and tap-tap-tapped with a calculator. I offered to help him that day. And he told me with a suggestive twinkle in his eye that he would stick to what he was good at and that I should stick to what I was good at. And then, if I remember correctly, and I'm sure I do, we had sex on the desk. In fact, the bank statements and the Visa bills for July 1991 still bear certain rather interesting imprints. But I couldn't find the nerve to remind him of that.

"I really did offer to help," I protested again. "But you wouldn't let me. You said that you'd be much better at it because you had a head for figures."

"And you just accepted that?" he asked nastily, shaking his head slightly as if he could hardly believe how crass and stupid I'd been.

"Well...yes, I suppose," I said, feeling foolish.

He was right. I had let him worry about threatening letters and discon- nection notices and all that. But I'd really thought he wanted to do it. Not that there were ever any threatening letters or disconnection notices or the like. James was far too organized to allow that to happen. I thought he liked being in control. That it would be less haphazard if only one of us was involved. How wrong I was.

I wished I could turn the clock back. If only I'd paid more attention to things like the date we paid our mortgage.

"I'm sorry," I said awkwardly. "I thought you wanted to do it. I would have done it if I'd known you didn't want to."

"Why would I want to do it?" he asked nastily. "What person in their right mind would enjoy being entirely responsible for the bills of a house- hold?"

"You're right, of course," I admitted.

"Well," said James, sounding a bit warmer, "I suppose it wasn't really your fault. You were always a bit thoughtless."

I swallowed back a retort. Now was not the time to antagonize him.

But I wasn't thoughtless. I know I wasn't.

James had other ideas, however.

"If only you hadn't been thoughtless when it really mattered," he mused. "Because the problems in our marriage

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weren't just about you not pulling your weight. It was about the way you made me feel."

"What do you mean?" I asked. I braced myself for another round of ac- cusations. Accusations that I didn't want to hear. But ones that I had to listen to if I wanted to make sense of why he left me.

"Well, it was always about you, wasn't it?" he said.

"How? In what way?" I asked, bewildered.

"I'd come home from work, after having had a terrible day. And you wouldn't talk to me about it. You'd just go on about your day, telling me stories and expecting me to laugh at them."

"But I would ask," I protested. "And you always told me it was too boring to explain. I only told you funny stories because I knew you'd had a horrible day and I wanted to cheer you up."

"Don't try to justify yourself," he said forcefully. "It was so obvious that you never wanted to hear anything unpleasant. All you wanted were good times. You had no interest at all in hearing about anything unpleasant."

"James..." I said feebly.

What could I say?

His mind was so made up.

And I swear to you, this was all news to me. I had never suspected that he had felt this way. And I had no idea that I had behaved in such an insuf- ferable way. James wouldn't by any chance be interested in absolving himself of all guilt in this sorry fiasco, would he? James wouldn't, by some freak chance, be manipulating me in any way?

I had to find out.

"James," I said in a little voice, "I'm sorry to ask this, but you wouldn't be trying to avoid the blame for leaving me? You know, by blaming me and making it all my fault."

"Oh, for God's sake," snorted James. "That's exactly the kind of childish, selfish response I should have expected from you."

"Sorry," I whispered. "I shouldn't even have asked."

Another silence.

"Why didn't you tell me?" I burst out. "We were so close. It was so beautiful."

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"We weren't so close and it wasn't so beautiful," he said bluntly.

"It was. We were," I protested.

He's taken enough away from me, I thought. He's not going to take my memories.

"Claire, if it was that beautiful, why did I leave you?" he asked quietly.

And, really, what could I say? He was so right.

But, hold on. He was off again. More accusations. His grievance was an unstoppable force.

"Claire, you were absolutely impossible. I had to keep so much from you. I had to carry so much worry on my own because I felt that you couldn't cope."

"Why didn't you try me?" I asked sadly.

He didn't even bother to answer.

"You were such a bloody handful. I'd come home from work, exhausted, and you'd have decided on the spur of the moment to have a dinner party for eight people and I'd have to run around like a crazy person, buying beer and uncorking wine and whipping cream."

"James, that only happened once. And it was for six people, not eight. And it was for your friends who came down from Aberdeen. It was sup- posed to be a surprise for you. I was the one who whipped the cream."

"Look, I'm not going to get into specifics," he said testily. "Doubtless you can try to justify anything I say to you, but you were still in the wrong."

"I can try to justify anything I did because I feel that the things I did were right," I thought confusedly to myself. But I didn't say anything.

"I thought you liked me being spontaneous," I said timidly. "I thought you even encouraged it."

"Well, that's the way you would see it," he said sneeringly. "I suppose that's the way you want to see it," he said a bit more kindly.

A smiling waiter approached our table with a lively gait. But froze in his tracks and then made a sharp right turn to another table when he noticed the glower that James gave him.

"So you thought you'd help me to grow up. You thought that if you left me that it might shock me into it," I said,

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realization dawning gradually and unevenly. "What a pity you had to use such extreme measures."

"Oh, that wasn't why I left you," he said. "It wasn't done to make you grow up. Frankly, I didn't think that was possible. But I wanted to be with someone who cared about me. Someone who would take care of me. And Denise did."

I swallowed back the hurt.

"I cared for you. I loved you." I had to make him believe me. "You never gave me the chance to help you. You never gave me the opportunity to be strong. I am strong now. I could have taken care of you."

He looked at me. He was wearing his fatherly, indulgent face.

"Maybe you could have," he said, quite kindly. "Maybe you could have."

"And now we'll never know," I thought out loud, my heart almost breaking with a sense of loss, missed opportunities, of being misunderstood.

There was a bit of an odd pause. Then he spoke.

"Um, uh, I suppose not," he said hurriedly.

So now what?

I felt sick, sad, sorry.

Sad for both of us.

Sad for James, who had carried so much worry on his own.

Sad for me for being so misunderstood.

Or was it sad for me for being so misunderstanding?

Sad for Kate, the innocent victim.

"You must have thought I'd go to pieces completely without you," I asked him. I felt hot, angry with shame and mortification.

"Yes, I suppose I did," he admitted. "Well, you can hardly blame me, can you?"

"No," I said, hanging my head.

"But I didn't, did I?" I said. Tears poured down my face. "I coped without you. And I'll manage fine in the future without you."

"I can see that." He nodded and looked with mild amusement at my wet, tear-streaked face. "Oh, you silly thing, come here." He kind of pulled me awkwardly across the table, pushing the flower vase and the salt and pepper shakers aside, and

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patted my head onto his shoulder in a supposedly comforting manner.

I left my head there for a moment. I felt a bit uncomfortable and foolish. I sat up straight again. It would hardly do my cause any good if I continued to behave like a child needing comfort.

But that didn't seem to please him either.

"What's wrong?" he asked, sounding a bit annoyed.

"What do you mean?" I asked, wondering what I'd done now.

"Why are you pulling away from me? I may have left you for another woman, but do I have rabies or what?" He gave a small smirk at his little joke. Which I weakly tried to return.

"Um, no," I said, totally confused. What did he want from me? I couldn't please him whatever way I behaved.

I was exhausted.

Things were much more straightforward when he was a faithless, phil- andering bastard. I knew where I was then. I'd understood that situation. But he must be right. I must have enjoyed being irresponsible. Otherwise why couldn't I accept blame for my part in the marriage breakup?

But it was hard to accept that it was all my fault. He was the one who left me. He was the one who broke my heart.

Nothing that I had expected to happen had happened. I'd thought that he might ask if I would come back to him. Either that or for him to continue behaving like a total bastard. I certainly hadn't expected to end up apolo- gizing for causing this situation all by myself.

Things had been black and white. He had been the darkness and I was the light. He was the wrongdoer and I was the victim.

Now it was all mixed up.

I was the wrongdoer and he was the victim.

It didn't feel right.

That was hard for me, but I was prepared to give it a chance.