Chapter 26

The next evening, Nick and I went to see an Iranian film about a vampire. On the way to the cinema I told him about Bobbi kissing me and he thought about it for a few seconds and then said: Melissa kisses me sometimes. Not knowing what I felt, I started to make jokes. You kiss other women behind my back! We were nearly at the cinema anyway. I do want to make her happy, he said. Maybe you’d prefer not to talk about it. I stood at the door of the cinema with my hands in my coat pockets. Talk about what? I said. About you kissing your wife?

We’re getting along better now, he said. Than we were before all this. But I mean, maybe you don’t want to know about that.

I’m glad you’re getting along.

I feel like I should thank you for making me a tolerable person to live with.

Our breath hung between us like fog. The door of the cinema swung open with a rush of warmth and the smell of popcorn grease.

We’re going to be late for the film now, I said.

I’ll stop talking.

Afterwards we went to get falafel on Dame Street. We sat in the booth, and I told him my mother was coming to Dublin the next day to visit her sister and that she was taking me home in the car after that for my ultrasound. Nick asked me what day the appointment was and I told him the afternoon of November third.

He nodded, he wasn’t forthcoming on these kinds of topics. I changed the subject by saying: my mother is suspicious of you, you know.

Is that bad? said Nick.

Then the woman brought us our food and I stopped talking to eat. Nick was saying something about his parents, something

about not seeing them much ‘after everything last year’.

Last year seems to come up a lot, I said.

Does it?

In fragments. I’m picking up that it was a bad time.

He shrugged. He went on eating. He probably didn’t know that I knew he had been in hospital. I sipped on my glass of Coke and said nothing. Then he wiped his mouth on a napkin and started to talk. I hadn’t really expected him to start, but he did. There was nobody in either of the booths near us, nobody listening in, and he talked in a sincere, self-effacing way, not trying either to make me laugh or to make me feel bad.

Nick told me that last summer he had been working in California. He said the schedule was gruelling and he was run-down and smoking too much, and then one of his lungs collapsed.

He couldn’t finish filming, he said he ended up in some awful hospital in the States with no one he knew anywhere nearby. At the time Melissa was travelling around Europe for an essay about immigrant communities and they weren’t in touch very much.

By the time they were both back in Dublin, he told me, he was exhausted. He didn’t want to go out anywhere with Melissa, and if she had friends over he would mostly stay upstairs trying to sleep.

They were bad-tempered with one another and argued frequently.

Nick told me that when they first married they had both wanted to have children, but increasingly when he brought it up Melissa would refuse to talk about it. She was thirty-six by then. One night in October she told him she had decided she didn’t want children after all. They fought. He told me that he’d said some unreasonable things. We both did, he said. But I regret what I said to her.

Eventually he moved into the spare room. He slept a lot during the day, he lost a lot of weight. At first, he said, Melissa was angry, she thought he was punishing her, or trying to force her into something she didn’t want. But then she realised he was really sick. She tried to help, she made appointments with doctors and counsellors, but Nick never went. I can’t really explain it now, he said. I look back on how I behaved and I don’t understand it myself.

Finally in December he was admitted to a psychiatric unit. He stayed there for six weeks, and during that time Melissa started seeing someone else, a mutual friend of theirs. He realised it was going on because she sent him a text that was intended for the other person. It probably wasn’t great for my self-esteem, he said.

But I don’t want to exaggerate. I don’t know if at that point I had any self-esteem left anyway. When he came out, Melissa said she wanted a divorce, and he said okay. He thanked her for everything she had done to try and help him and suddenly she started crying.

She told him how scared she had been, how guilty she felt just for leaving the house in the morning. I thought you were going to die, she said. They talked for a long time, they apologised to one another. In the end they agreed to keep living together until they could find some other arrangement.

Nick started working again in the spring. He was exercising more, he took a small part in an Arthur Miller play one of his friends was directing. Melissa fell out with Chris, the man she was seeing, and Nick said their lives just sort of continued. They tried to negotiate what he described as a ‘quasi-marriage’. They saw one another’s friends, they ate together in the evenings. Nick renewed his gym membership, took the dog down to the beach in the afternoons, started reading novels again. He drank protein shakes, he put the weight back on. Life was okay.

At this point you have to understand, he said, I was used to everyone seeing me as a burden. Like my family and Melissa, they all wanted me to get better, but it’s not as if they enjoyed my company. In as much as I was functioning again, I still felt like this very worthless, pathetic person, you know, like I was just a waste of everyone’s time. So that’s kind of where I was at when I met you.

I stared at him across the table.

And it was so hard to believe you had any interest in me, he said. You know, you were sending me these emails, and sometimes I’d find myself thinking, is this a thing? And as soon as I thought about it, I’d feel mortified that I would even let myself imagine that. Like, what’s more depressing than some awful

married man who convinces himself that a beautiful younger woman wants to sleep with him? You know.

I didn’t know what to say. I shook my head or shrugged. I didn’t know you were feeling like that, I said.

No, well, I didn’t want you to know. I wanted to be like this cool person you thought I was. I know sometimes you felt like I wasn’t expressive enough. It was hard for me. That probably sounds like I’m making excuses.

I tried to smile back, I shook my head again. No, I said. We let a little pause form between us.

I was so cruel sometimes, I said. I feel horrible about that now.

Oh no, don’t be hard on yourself.

I stared at the tabletop. We were both quiet then. I finished my glass of Coke. He folded up his napkin and put it on his plate.

After a while, he told me that was the first time he had ever told the story of that year and what had happened. He said he had never actually heard the story from his own point of view before, because he was used to Melissa telling it, and of course their versions were different. It feels strange, he said, hearing myself talk about it like I was the main character. It almost feels like I’m lying, although I think everything I said was true. But Melissa would tell it differently.

I like the way you tell it, I said. Do you still want to have children?

Sure, but it’s off the table now I think.

You don’t know. You’re young.

He coughed. He seemed on the point of saying something and then he didn’t. He watched me sipping my Coke and I looked back up at him.

I think you’d be a great parent, I said. You have a kind nature.

You’re very loving.

He made a funny, surprised face, then exhaled through his mouth.

That’s intense, he said. Thank you for saying that. I have to laugh now or I’m going to start crying.

We finished our food and left the restaurant. Once we crossed Dame Street and got down to the quays, Nick said: we should go

away together. For a weekend or something, would you like that? I asked where and he said, what about Venice? I laughed. He put his hands in his pockets, he was laughing too, I think because he was pleased at the idea of us going away together, or just that he had made me smile.

That was when I heard my mother. I heard her say: well, hello, missus. And there she was on the street in front of us. She had a Bally black winter coat on, and a beanie hat with the Adidas logo. I remember Nick was wearing his beautiful grey overcoat. He and my mother looked like characters from different films, made by totally dissimilar directors.

I didn’t realise you were coming up tonight, I said.

I’ve just this minute parked the car, she said. I’m meeting your auntie Bernie for dinner.

Oh, this is my friend Nick, I said. Nick, this is my mother.

I could only glance at him quickly, but I saw that he was smiling and he held out his hand.

The famous Nick, she said. I’ve heard all about you.

Well, likewise, he said.

She did mention you were handsome all right.

Mum, for God’s sake, I said.

But I had you pictured older, said my mother. You’re only a young fellow.

He laughed and said he was flattered. They shook hands again, she told me she would see me the next morning, and we parted. It was the first of November. Lights sparkled on the river and buses ran past like boxes of light, carrying faces in the windows.

I turned to look at Nick, who had his hands back in his pockets.

That was nice, he said. And no pointed remarks about me being married, that’s a bonus.

I smiled. She’s a cool lady, I said.

*

When I got home that night, Bobbi was in the living room. She was sitting at the table, staring at a print-out which was stapled

together in one corner. Nick had gone back to Monkstown and said he would email me later about Venice. Bobbi’s teeth were chattering faintly. She didn’t look at me when I came in, which gave me a weird sensation of disappearance, like I was already dead.

Bobbi? I said.

Melissa sent it to me.

She held up the print-out. I could see it was double-spaced, with long paragraphs like an essay.

Sent you what? I said.

For a second she laughed, or maybe exhaled a breath she had been holding very tightly, and then she threw the pages at me. I caught them awkwardly against my chest. Looking down I saw the words printed in a light sans-serif font. My words. It was my story.

Bobbi, I said.

Were you ever going to tell me?

I stood there. My eyes ran over the lines I could see at the top of the page, the page where I described myself getting sick at a house party without Bobbi when I was still a teenager.

I’m sorry, I said.

Sorry for what? said Bobbi. I’m so curious. Sorry for writing it? I doubt you are.

No. I don’t know.

It’s funny. I think I’ve learned more about your feelings in the last twenty minutes than in the last four years.

I felt light-headed, staring down at the manuscript until the words wriggled like insects. It was the first draft, the one I had sent to Valerie. She must have let Melissa read it.

It’s fictionalised, I said.

Bobbi stood up from her chair and looked my body up and down critically. A strange energy wound itself up in my chest, as if we were going to fight.

I heard you’re getting good money for it, she said.

Yeah.

Fuck you.

I actually need the money, I said. I realise that’s an alien concept for you, Bobbi.

She grabbed the pages out of my hands then, and the back of the staple tugged against my index finger and broke the skin. She held the manuscript in front of me.

You know, she said. It’s actually a good story.

Thanks.

Then she tore the pages in half, threw them in the trash and said: I don’t want to live with you any more. She packed up her things that night. I sat in my room listening. I heard her wheel the suitcase out into the hall. I heard her close the door.

*

The next morning my mother picked me up outside the apartment building. I got into the car and strapped my seat belt on. She had the classical station on the radio, but she turned it off when I shut the door. It was eight in the morning and I complained about having to get up so early.

Oh, I’m sorry, she said. We could have given the hospital a ring and arranged for you to have a lie-in, would that have been better?

I thought the scan was tomorrow.

It’s this afternoon.

Fuck, I said mildly.

She placed a litre bottle of water on my lap and said: you can start that any time you like. I unscrewed the cap. No preparation was necessary for the scan except drinking a lot of water, but I still felt like the whole thing had been thrown at me unexpectedly. We didn’t speak for a while, and then my mother glanced at me sideways.

It was funny meeting you like that yesterday, she said. You looked like a real young lady.

As opposed to what?

She didn’t answer at first, we were going round a roundabout. I stared out the windscreen at the passing cars.

You looked very elegant together, she said. Like film stars.

Oh, that’s Nick. He’s just glamorous.

My mother reached suddenly and grabbed my hand. The car was stopped in traffic. Her grip was tighter than I expected, almost

hard. Mum, I said. Then she let me go. She tidied her hair back with her fingers and then settled her hands on the steering wheel.

You’re a wild woman, she said.

I learned from the best.

She laughed. Oh, I’m afraid I’m no match for you, Frances.

You’ll have to figure things out all on your own.