As soon as Ted was asleep I gripped the padded bed rail, swung my legs over his heavy body. I went into the bathroom, stood in front of the full-length mirror. I could barely see myself; I pulled down the blinds, switched on the light. My dress was damp under my arms and lightly stained with the oil I had fried for dinner. My mascara was smudged across my cheek. I had to ask the question, at last: how did I compare? I knew what she looked like; this was not the question. I even knew what she smelled like; I had smelled it on Jake a few times, I realized now. Shower gel, laundry detergent. Something else, from deep inside her.
Vanessa. I gripped the sink, retched into the plughole. Horrifying, how plugholes are, when you look closely. Some kind of slime, a greenness, reaching. I knew it would never go away, no matter how many chemicals I poured in.
Just sex.
I gagged again, spitting into the sink, wiping my mouth. At that moment, I found it hard to envisage them – Jake and Vanessa, Vanessa and Jake – in anything other than the most pornographic set-ups. I found it almost impossible to see their faces. I could only, if I tried hard, see a graphic close-up of their sexual organs, one inserted into the other, a basic mechanism, the simplest of actions. Something had happened to my imagination: it had become X-rated, an adventure in the furthest corners of the Internet, a place where porn adverts stacked like origami paper, a hundred edges framing the place where a penis entered a woman’s mouth and left it, over and over to eternity.
He was not back by ten. I had drunk half a bottle of wine by then, a strong red that tasted more bitter the more I drank. I had taken off my stained dress, found something black and shiny in the back of the wardrobe instead, pulling cloth in fists from the hangers, throwing T-shirts and skirts on the floor. I knew that, according to movie logic, I should have been emptying Jake’s wardrobe, not my own. But that didn’t appeal: I didn’t want to touch any of his things. I didn’t want to smell her again.
The top note – the perfumed, manufactured part, shampoo, maybe, or deodorant – had an earthy smell, more like a man’s perfume, or something unisex. Something that suggested whisky and cigars and steaming pools of volcanic water plunged into after chopping logs. A man’s good sweat on a tartan shirt, rubbed with fragrant leaves. A camping holiday, without kids. I could see her on this holiday, not me. I saw the way she would sit in the doorway of the tent, with some elegant copy of a classic novel, her legs crossed at the ankle. She would flick her hair, laugh as Jake said something. Under her skirt, under her leggings, she would be as tight as the day she was born. I saw Jake whispering in her ear, telling her how sweet she was, how good she tasted, how much better than me . . .
I had to move to stop myself thinking, had to start doing something. I put a load of washing on, even though there was nowhere to hang it, even though the house was already draped with clothes, filled with their dampness, not warm enough in the larger rooms, even with the heating on. I should make a fire, I thought, but I didn’t know how. Jake had always done it. I swept up instead, moving quickly around the rooms in my short black dress, a diamanté embellishment between my breasts. I used to wear the dress to formal halls at Jake’s old college, a cocktail dress, very flattering, skimming over my hips. Now it was pulled too high by some rearrangement of my flesh, the caesarean surgeon’s knife, the trainee who had been learning how to cut. My breasts loomed out of the deep neckline, my full-cup bra visible. If I lowered my neck, I could bury my head in my own flesh. I wondered, briefly, if I could suffocate myself like this, if I pushed down for long enough, if I really made an effort.
I swept and swept, then got down on my hands and knees to scrub the dirty patches. Our kitchen floor was the most neglected part of our house, mopping often delayed by the busyness of our lives, which, now I looked from this perspective – on the floor, miniaturized, the kitchen a giant around me – were not busy at all. There was plenty of time, plenty of time for Jake to fuck me and fuck her, for months. We’d had great sex lately, both of us exhausted afterwards, muted, gazing at the ceiling. He had come from her, of course he had—
Another retch, onto the kitchen floor, a thin line of spit trailing to the ground. I sat back, propped myself against the cupboards. These were the ones where we kept the Tupperware, the dozens of plastic boxes without lids, with the wrong lids, a stacked confusion. I was always planning to organize them; I never did. The house and I had agreed, long ago, to ignore things like this: pockets of disarray, small, hidden places where chaos broke through.
I reached for my wine, winced as I swigged it. I had barely eaten for hours: a couple of cold fish fingers from Ted’s plate, one piece so mangled that I suspected it had been in his mouth before mine.
Far away, in the next room, the door opened, slower, more tentative than usual. I nearly got up. I nearly combed my hair, splashed my face, ate a piece of chewing gum. I could have run upstairs, changed out of the dress, worn something sensible. But I did none of that. I stayed on the floor.
13
I gripped the glass in my hands: I wondered how much pressure it would take to shatter it. I imagined the blood mixing with the wine, which would suddenly seem thin in comparison, a pale watery red next to the density that would pour from the cuts. I had seen this before, I thought – I could see it in such detail – but I couldn’t remember when.
Lucy?
Jake sounded sober, grown-up: I could hear his thick-soled leather shoes coming towards me. I had an urge to laugh. Was it possible I was married to this man, who was now returning to me, calling my name? Surely it was more likely that we had been pretending, all along.
He was in the doorway, his hand somewhere near his face. A pause.
Lucy? Luce? Are you okay?
He squinted down from his great height, as though I was a stranger, collapsed on the street, a vagrant, in need of rescue by a suited man.
Where have you been? I said to the floor, copying him, asking something I knew the answer to, just to hear the words coming out of my mouth, to make a sound. Maybe, I thought, we could do this forever, our relationship a series of non-communications, until the end of time. Out, he could have said, shrugging. Or How are the boys? But he didn’t.
I’ve been with Vanessa. We – we just talked, Lucy. I told her it’s over. That’s it now.
Eleven o’clock. Just talked? There was too much time for that. There was time for sex, at least, but worse – much worse – there was endless time for tenderness, hugging, carefully worded goodbyes. Suddenly, the porn visuals made no sense, were replaced by romance, gentleness, small moans into a neck or an ear.
Our house was small; there were only three paces between me and him, only a few seconds of me scrabbling up, flying at him as I had seen my mother fly at my father so many times, my fists closed against his shoulders, my eyes almost shut, only an indistinct darkness, someone yelling, someone else screaming.
Fuck you, Jake. Fucking bastard.
I could hear the words, but I couldn’t tell where they were coming from. I could feel only a blur of fabric, limbs lifted and falling against each other, a clash, a cataclysm of familiarity. Jake grabbed my wrists, hissed under his breath:
Stop it. For God’s sake, pull yourself together. Calm down. Christ.
I stared into his face, hoping to see what I was looking for: guilt, shame, the dismal music of a future darkened by his mistake, an eternal repentance. I breathed hard, said nothing as I looked. I had often wondered how many times you have to look at a face for it to become truly familiar; Jake’s still eluded me, still had new angles to present, lost corners, inches that could not be memorized. I still couldn’t see him, not really.