Anybody Out There? Page 8

  “Okay. Just one drink. And what will your get-out clause be?” I asked.

  “I don’t need one.”

  “You could say you’ve got to get back to the office to finish stuff for a breakfast meeting the next day.”

  “That’s very thoughtful of you,” he said. “But I don’t think so.”

  11

  Mum fought her way over to my bed.

  “I just spoke to Rachel. She’ll be here on Saturday morning.” Two days away. “And the two of you’ll be flying back to New York on Monday. If you’re still sure that’s what you want.”

  “It is. Is Luke coming over with her?”

  “No. And thank God for that,” Mum added heartily, lying down beside me.

  “I thought you liked him.”

  “I do like him. Especially since he’s agreed to marry her.”

  “I think it might have been since she agreed to marry him.”

  Rachel and Luke had been living together for so long that even Mum had given up hoping that Rachel would “stop making a show of us all.” Then, just over two months ago, to everyone’s great surprise, they announced their engagement. Initially, the news plunged Mum into despair because she concluded the only reason they were getting married after all this time was because Rachel was pregnant. But Rachel wasn’t pregnant; they were getting married simply because they wanted to and I’m very glad they went public when they did, because if they had waited even a few days longer, they’d have felt that out of deference to me and my circumstances, they couldn’t. But the date was set, the hotel was even booked—it was owned by a “recovery” friend of Rachel’s who was giving them a good deal. Mum had been horrified when she’d heard: “A drug addict! It’ll be just like the Chelsea Hotel”—and if Rachel and Luke backed out now, they knew I’d feel even worse.

  “So if you like Luke, what’s the problem?”

  “I just wonder…”

  “What?”

  “I wonder does he wear underpants?”

  “Jesus,” I said faintly.

  “And if I stand too close to him, I feel like I want to…to…I feel like I want to bite him.”

  She was staring at the ceiling, locked in some Luke-centric reverie, when Dad stuck his head round the door and said to Mum, “Phone.”

  She gave a little jump, then heaved herself off the bed, and when she returned, she was clearly troubled.

  “That was Claire.”

  “How is she?”

  “She’s coming from London on Saturday afternoon, that’s how she is.”

  “Is it a problem?”

  “She’s coming because she wants to see Rachel in person to beg her not to get married to Luke.”

  “Ah.” Just like she’d begged me not to marry Aidan.

  Maybe she’d had a nerve doing such a thing, but as it had happened, I’d definitely had my doubts. I’d known Aidan was a risk—although, funnily enough, not in the way it turned out.

  Should I have listened to Claire? In the last few weeks spent sitting in the garden watching the flowers, letting my tears leak into my wounds, I’d thought about it a lot. I mean, look at me now, just look at the state of me.

  I kept asking myself if it was better to have loved and lost. But what a stupid, pointless question because it’s not like I was given any choice.

  “I’m not having Claire shag up this wedding on me,” Mum said.

  “It’s not her fault.” After her own union had gone so disastrously wrong, Claire began to deride marriage as “a load of bollocks.” She went on about women being treated like serfs and that the “giving away” bit reduced us to nothing but chattel, being passed from the control of one man to another.

  “I want this wedding to go ahead,” Mum said.

  “You’ll have to get a stupid-looking hat. Yet another one.”

  “A stupid-looking hat is the least of my worries.”

  12

  When Rachel arrived on Saturday morning, the first thing Mum said to her was, “Look radiant, for the love of God. Claire is coming to tell you not to get married.”

  “She isn’t?” Rachel was amused. “I don’t believe it. She did that to you, too, Anna, didn’t she?” Then, realizing she’d put her foot in it, she jerked as if someone had just rammed a poker up her bum. Quickly she changed the subject. “How radiant do you want me to look?”

  Mum and Helen surveyed Rachel doubtfully. Rachel’s look was the low-key sleek New York downtime one: cashmere hoody, canvas cutoffs, and superlightweight trainers, the kind that fold in eight and fit in a matchbox.

  “Do something with your hair,” Helen suggested, and obediently Rachel unclasped a clip on top of her head and a load of heavy dark hair tumbled down her back.

  “Why, Miss Walsh, you’re beautiful,” Mum said sourly. “Comb it! Comb it! And smile a lot.”

  The thing was, Rachel was already radiant. She usually was. She had an air about her, a sort of throbbing stillness, with the faintest suggestion of a secret dirty streak.

  Then Mum clocked the Ring. How had she not noticed until now? “And wave that yoke around every chance you get.”

  “’Kay.”

  “Right, let’s see it.”

  Rachel eased the sapphire ring off, and after a scrabble between Helen and Mum, Mum got it. “By Janey,” she said fiercely, clenching her hand into a fist and punching the air. “I’ve waited a long time for this day.”

  Then she examined the ring in great detail, holding it up to the light and squinting, like she was a gem expert. “How much was it?”

  “Never you mind.”

  “Go on, tell us.” Helen joined in.

  “No.”

  “It’s meant to be a month’s salary,” Mum said. “At least. Anything less and he’s taking you for a fool. Right! Time for us all to make our wish. Let Anna go first.”

  Mum gave me the ring and Rachel said, “You know the rules: turn it three times toward your heart. You can’t wish for a man or money, but you can wish for a rich mother-in-law.” Again, as she realized what she’d said, she went poker-up-the-bum frozen.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “It’s okay. We can’t go on tiptoeing round it.”

  “Really?”

  I nodded.

  “You sure?”

  I nodded again.

  “Okay, let’s see your makeup bag.”

  For a while, squashed between Rachel, Helen, and Mum, all of us strewn with cosmetics, everything seemed normal.

  Then we pretended to be Claire.

  “Marriage is just a form of ownership,” Mum said, doing Claire’s soapbox voice.

  “She can’t help it,” Rachel said. “Her abandonment and humiliation traumatized her.”

  “Shut up,” Helen said. “You’re ruining the fun. Chattels! That’s all we are, chattels!”

  Even I joined in. “I thought getting married was all about wearing a lovely dress and being the center of attention.”

  “I hadn’t thought through any of the gender-political implications,” we all (even Rachel) chorused.

  We laughed and laughed, and even though I was aware that at any moment I might descend into uncontrollable weeping, I managed to keep laughing.

  When we’d finished making fun of Claire, Rachel said, “What’ll we talk about now?”

  Mum suddenly said, “I’ve been having funny dreams lately.”

  “About what?”

  “That I’m one of those girls who’s marvelous at kung fu. I can do one of those kicks where you twirl around in a circle and take the heads off of twenty fellas while you’re doing it.”

  “Good for you.” It was nice to have a mother who had fashionable dreams.

  “I was wondering if I might take up Tae Bo or one of them yokes. Maybe myself and Helen could do lessons.”

  “What are you wearing in the dreams?” Rachel asked. “Special kung fu pajamas and stuff?”

  “No.” Mum sounded surprised. “Just my ordinary skirt and jumper.”

  “Ahhh.”
Rachel held up a finger in an attitude of wisdom. “That makes a lot of sense. You feel you’re guardian of the family and we need protection.”

  “No, I just like being able to kick lots of men in one go.”

  “Clearly you’re under almost intolerable stress. With everything that’s happened with Anna, it’s understandable.”

  “It’s nothing to do with Anna! It’s because I want to be a superhero, Charlie’s Angel, Lara Croft self-defense woman.” Mum sounded close to tears.

  Rachel smiled very, very kindly—the sort of kindly smile that gets people killed—then went off upstairs for a snooze. Mum, Helen, and I lay in silence on my bed.

  “You know what?” Mum broke the quiet. “There are times when I think I preferred her when she was on the drugs.”

  13

  For our one-drink date, Aidan and I went to Lana’s Place, a quiet, upmarket bar, with concealed lighting and muted, sophisticated tones.

  “This okay?” Aidan asked as we sat down. “Not too weird?”

  “So far,” I said. “Unless it’s one of those places where the bar staff tap-dance at nine o’clock every night.”

  “Jesus.” He clutched his head. “I never thought to check.”

  When the waitress took our order, she asked, “Should I open a tab?”

  “No,” I said. “I might have to leave in a hurry.

  “If you turn out to be a weirdo,” I said after she’d gone.

  “I won’t be. I’m not.”

  I didn’t really think he would be. He was different from the speed-dating guys. But it doesn’t do to be too trusting.

  “We have matching scahs,” he said.

  “Hmm?”

  “Scahs. On our right eyebrows. One each. Isn’t that kind of…special?”

  He was smiling: I wasn’t to take this too seriously.

  “How’d you get yours?” he asked.

  “Playing on the stairs in my mother’s high heels.”

  “Age what? Six? Eight?”

  “Twenty-seven. No. Five and a half. I was doing a big Hollywood-musical-style thing, and I fell down the stairs and at the bottom hit my forehead on the corner of the convection heater.”

  “Convection heater?”

  “Must be an Irish thing. Metal yoke. I needed three stitches. How did you get yours?”

  “Day I was born. Accident with a midwife and a pair of scissors. I also got three stitches. Now tell me what you do when you’re not being a magician’s assistant.”

  “You want the real me?”

  “If that’s okay. And if you could speak quickly, I’d appreciate it. Just in case you decide to leave.”

  So I told him all about my life. About Jacqui, Rachel, Luke, the Real Men, Shake’s air-guitar prowess, Nell, my upstairs neighbor, Nell’s strange friend. I told him about work, how I loved my products, and how Lauryn had stolen my promo idea for the orange-and-arnica night cream and passed it off as her own.

  “I hate her already,” he said. “Is your wine okay?”

  “Fine.”

  “Just that you’re drinking it kind of slowly.”

  “Not as slowly as you’re drinking that beer of yours.”

  Three times the waitress asked, “You guys okay for drinks?” and three times she was sent away with a flea in her ear.

  After I’d brought Aidan up to speed on my life, he told me about his. About his upbringing in Boston, how he and Leon had lived next door to each other, and how unusual it was in their neighborhood for a Jewish boy and an Irish-American boy to be best friends. He told me about his younger brother, Kevin, and how competitive they’d been as kids. “Only two years between us, everything was a battle.” He told me about his job, his roomie, Marty, and his lifelong love of the Boston Red Sox, and at some stage in the story, I finished my glass of wine.

  “Just hang on while I finish my beer,” he said, and with admirable restraint, he made the last inch last a full hour. Finally he couldn’t avoid being done and he looked regretfully at his empty glass. “Okay, that’s the one drink you signed up for. How’s the plumbing in your apartment?”

  I thought about it for a moment. “Perfect.”

  Well?” Jacqui asked, when I got in. “Nut job?”

  “No. Normal.”

  “Vrizzzon?”

  I thought about it. “Yes.” There certainly had been a frisson.

  “Snog?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Tongues?”

  “No.” He had kissed me on the mouth. Just a brief impression of heat and firmness and then he was gone, leaving me wanting more.

  “Like him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, really?” Suddenly interested. “In that case, I’d better take a look at him.”

  I set my jaw and held her look. “He is not a Feathery Stroker.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that.”

  Jacqui’s Feathery Stroker test is a horribly cruel assessment that she brings to bear on all men. It originated with some man she slept with years ago. All night long he’d run his hands up and down her body in the lightest, feathery way, up her back, along her thighs, across her stomach, and before they had sex he asked her gently if she was sure. Lots of women would have loved this: he was gentle, attentive, and respectful. But for Jacqui it was the greatest turnoff of her life. She would have much preferred it if he’d flung her across a hard table, torn her clothes, and taken her without her explicit permission. “He kept stroking me,” she said afterward, wincing with revulsion. “In this awful feathery way, like he’d read a book about how to give women what they want. Bloody Feathery Stroker, I wanted to rip my skin off.”

  And so the phrase came about. It suggested an effeminate quality that instantly stripped a man of all sex appeal. It was a damning way to be categorized and far better, in Jacqui’s opinion, to be a drunken wife beater in a dirty vest than a Feathery Stroker.

  Her criteria were wide and merciless—and distressingly random. There was no definitive list but here are some examples. Men who didn’t eat red meat were Feathery Strokers. Men who used postshave balm instead of slapping stinging aftershave onto their tender skin were Feathery Strokers. Men who noticed your shoes and handbags were Feathery Strokers. (Or Jolly Boys.) Men who said pornography was exploitation of women were Feathery Strokers. (Or liars.) Men who said pornography was exploitation of men as much as women were off the scale. All straight men from San Francisco were Feathery Strokers. All academics with beards were Feathery Strokers. Men who stayed friends with their ex-girlfriends were Feathery Strokers. Especially if they called their ex-girlfriend their “ex-partner.” Men who did Pilates were Feathery Strokers. Men who said, “I have to take care of myself right now” were screaming Feathery Strokers. (Even I’d go along with that.)

  The Feathery Stroker rules had complex variations and subsections: men who gave up their seat on the subway were Feathery Strokers—if they smiled at you. But if they grunted “Seat,” in a macho, no-eye-contact way, they were in the clear.

  Meanwhile, new categories and subsections were being added all the time. She’d once decided that a man—who up until that point had been perfectly acceptable—was a Feathery Stroker for saying the word groceries. And some of her decrees seemed downright unreasonable—men who helped you look for lost things were Feathery Strokers, whereas no one but extreme Feathery Stroker purists could deny that it was a handy quality for a man to have.

  (Funnily enough, even though Jacqui fancied Luke something ferocious, I suspected he was a Feathery Stroker. He didn’t look like one; he looked like a tough, hard man. But beneath his leather trousers and set jaw he was kind and thoughtful—sensitive, even. And sensitivity is the FS’s defining quality, his core characteristic.)

  It was only when I realized how anxious I was that Jacqui might dismiss Aidan as a Feathery Stroker that I saw how much I liked him. It wasn’t that Jacqui’s opinions affected me, it just makes things a bit awkward if your friend despises your boyfriend. Not that Aidan was my boy
friend…

  My last proper boyfriend, Sam, had been a great laugh, but one terrible night he’d got tarred with the Feathery Stroker brush for eating lowfat strawberry-cheesecake yogurt, and although it had nothing to do with me and him breaking up—we hadn’t been built to last—it made life a little bumpy.

  I’d never seen a Feathery Stroker being decategorized: once a Feathery Stroker, always a Feathery Stroker. Jacqui was like the Roman emperor in Gladiator, the thumb went up or the thumb went down, the fate of a man was decided in an instant and there was no going back.

  I abhor the Feathery Stroker test, but who am I to judge because I have a “thing” about nuzzlers. Men who nuzzle. Men who badger you in a hands-free way with their face and head, nudging their head into your neck, polishing their forehead against yours, before finally kissing you—sometimes with accompanying croony noises. I don’t like it at all. At all.

  “So when are you seeing this possible Feathery Stroker again?” Jacqui asked.

  “I said I’d give him a call when I was in the mood,” I said airily.

  However, he rang me two days later, said his nerves couldn’t take the waiting for me to ring, and would I meet him for dinner that evening. Certainly not, I replied, he was a stalker and I had a life. Mind you, I could do the following night if he wanted…

  Four nights after that dinner, we went to a jazz thing, but it wasn’t too bad, the musicians took breaks after every second song—or so it seemed—so there were plenty of opportunities to talk. Then around a week later, we went to some fondue yoke.

  In the meantime I went on the date with Teenie’s friend (to the Cirque de Soleil, a terrible night, a circus is a circus, gussying it up with a French name changes nothing), and in theory I was open to all offers, but the only man I saw was Aidan. Nonexclusively, of course.

  He always asked after everyone—Jacqui’s job, Shake’s air-guitar practice et al.—because even though he’d never met them, he knew so much about their lives. “It’s like The Young and the Restless, or something,” he said.

  We never strayed into serious territory. I had questions—like why he hadn’t rung me when I’d first given him my card or why he’d said he’d wanted me but didn’t think he could have me. But I didn’t ask them because I didn’t want to know. Or rather, I didn’t want to know Yet.