‘Ma, she’s probably going to her own family for dinner, you know how it is.’ I’m thinking of Nate’s vast plans for Christmas. The party he wants to give just before Christmas. The flying visit we’ll make to my home, the equally flying visit we’ll make to his. And then the supposedly grand dinner in our own house where he’ll want to somehow round up a few of his random friends to come in and enjoy his largesse. I’m going off parties. Seriously. I did try looking up if irritability was one of the signs of the perimenopause, but there are so many signs that any normal woman could have them all. Sadly, there is no special mention of disliking parties.
‘I don’t see why she’s not coming here, she’s still married to Dominic,’ Ma bleats, ‘and he’d love her here, I know he would. I have no idea what April is up to, she doesn’t tell me anything.’
There’s a very good reason April doesn’t tell my mother anything. Most of April’s Christmases are spent waiting for phone calls from her married lovers, or occasionally the odd torrid session out when one escapes the marital fold for half an hour, to get over to April’s to hug her, kiss her, bring her some ludicrous present and then disappear, leaving her that strange combination of happy and sad. Onlythencan she actually go anywhere for Christmas. This Christmas, there’ll be nowaiting-for-Jared time as he, predictably, didn’t leave his wife or his house.
I realise Ma is still talking about Dom and how Sue is being so tricky.
‘Why isn’t Dominic ringing Sue?’ I ask suddenly.
Big mistake. There’s something about being in the office that brings out the professional woman in me, and I come over all direct, which is not something I normally do with my mother. In our house, you kept your mouth shut and let Ma run things her way. If you did anything she didn’t like, she would deploy the silent treatment. Which I feel sure has already been banned under the Geneva Convention.
‘Of course he’s not going to ring her, because she’s not answering his calls,’ snaps my mother as if it’s all perfectly plain and I must be an absolute cretin not to have thought of this.
Why does she talk to me like this? I think.
‘She’ll listen to you. You need to do this, Marin.’ I know this move, it’s like one of those marvellous chess games that have names. The Immortal Game. I am the pawn and my mother is the Grand Master. ‘It’s not as if I’m asking for much!’ Ma says in a more heated voice.
Ah yes, the ‘I’m only asking this one little thing of you’ gambit.
Like the good little girl I am, I slip back into my role.
‘Of course, I’ll ring her later. Ma, I’m just at the office, I’d better go.’
‘Fine, fine, busy busy, I know, bye,’ she huffs, as if my having a job is something I do purely to annoy her.
I sit at my desk and tap out a text to Sue. I don’t really feel up to ringing her just yet. But I know I can be honest with her.
Hi, Sue, Ma has been on because Dominic apparently wants you to see him on Christmas. I know – he should be texting or phoning. I apologise for my family in general. Can we talk, so I can say I’ve done my best? xx Marin
Sue and I have always got on. She’s normal, far more normal than anyone else in my family, so I have absolutely no idea how she managed to get married to Dom. But I can only assume that his good looks, and heisvery good looking, somehow blinded her to his ability to seem like agrown-up but act like a teenager.
What’s your day like?she texts back quickly.
I scan down my calendar. Sue works about a mile away in an office in the city.
I could manage a coffee at about twelve, I say,I can come close to you. But I’ve literally got half an hour.
Great, she says,let’s do it.
The city is no fun this time of the year. There’s a wild Christmas frenzy in the air as if people will actually implode if they do not wave their credit cards enough. Nobody looks happy, just harassed, belting along the streets, going to meetings and fitting in a bit of Christmas shopping along the way. Or just in town to buy the perfect gift, which, of course, doesn’t exist.
Sue and I arrive exactly at the same time in front of the coffee shop.
‘Good timing,’ she says. She’s taller than me, younger, fair, athletic. Could have had her pick of any number of men. I remember their wedding day, and she looked like a goddess in a long cream sheath. Dominic had the faint air of a young Hugh Jackman: the shoulders, the face, everything. He’s even nice. But being married to him must be like being married to a large child who wants amusing all the time.
We hug, grab two coffees and find a corner.
‘I knew you’d draw the short straw,’ says Sue, drinking her coffee black. This is obviously the secret to the athletic thing. I have milk and sugar.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, ‘I really am. I wish it had worked out, honey, but you know, you’ve got to do what’s right for you. I adore Dom but he hasn’t quite grown up yet.’
Her eyes are sad as she looks at me.
‘I love him,’ she says, resignedly. ‘But I can’t live with him, I can’t stay married to him. He’s useless around the house, even though I work longer hours than he does. He honestly can’t even work the washing machine.’
I feel a faint stab of recognition. Nate claims that only women understand laundry equipment. He always says it as a joke but it’s not, I realise. He never does the laundry. He can put things in the basket all right, but he never carries the damned thing downstairs or puts on a wash.
Sue’s still talking: ‘And the lads, those idiots he’s in “the band” with. They’re all adults but they still harbour this belief that they could make it big. Every damn weekend, he wants them round so they can pluck their bloody guitars and I’m supposed to provide food.’
