Your life can become such a shambles that good news barely registers. And I've had a lot of good news lately: my business has turned a sharp corner and is really taking off; I am finally out of debt; a nagging stomach issue seems to have healed itself, and I have started an affair that has revealed I may actually have a libido. So what's the problem?
I have to go home at night.
I've made my own bed and I'm sleeping in it, albeit in a different bedroom from my wife. I knocked her up at 18, married her before the baby arrived and was already emotionally estranged from her when the baby died three months after birth... and with her, at least, it's been downhill ever since.
I'm not living in a hell, nothing like that: we respect each other's right to exist, each other's space and each's other's individual pursuits, such as they are. Mine has always been singular: my work — I've poured my heart, soul and every drop of energy into my business. Her pursuits while more varied are no less focussed.
'We never stoop so low as when we bend to lend a helping hand' — I think she read something like that on a motivational poster when she was a kid and it turned her on, God knows nothing else has. She sometimes works in a normal job part time, but otherwise she has devoted herself exclusively to the downtrodden. In her spare time she takes care of the house and to some extent Nancy, our now 20 year old niece who moved in with us six years ago when her mother, Gloria's sister, died unexpectedly, already pre-deceased by her reckless, abusive, alcoholic husband.
In fact, Nancy has given a second wind to Gloria's life. They aren't at all close, the family genes of stoic individualism are far too strong for that, but they matter to each other like a life ring matters to a drowning boater.
It's hard to describe their relationship. There is no hint of mother-daughter and they certainly aren't friends. What comes to mind is a computer analogy: Gloria is the iMac, Nancy is the iPad and they're tethered by some kind of intuitive wi-fi feed that makes them in sync all the time — the genes are that strong. They are both equally quiet, equally introverted, equally spare in their emotions, equally cerebral and equally bland, that's the one word for them, bland. Bland in behaviour, bland in tastes and bland in appearance.
Nancy could easily (and does) pass for Gloria's daughter. They are both thin, both have reddish hair — although Gloria's has been dark blond for years. Both have very white skin and both have sharp features with dull eyes that make them appear... dull, which they aren't, at least not intellectually, both are academically bright, but only academically, in every other way they seem to plod. And they are alike temperamentally: they take what they are given, deal with it and never ask for more. That's why Gloria and I are still together. Like me, she is playing the hand she was dealt — by me. I was the one to insist she take down her pants, she didn't want to... but she never complained, she just took things as they came, the baby, for instance — she took the highs with the lows without complaint. And she's been trying to make the most of a bad situation ever since.
So there is always a meal prepared when I come home, never announced. And the house is always clean and tidy. And there are never any domestic issues to deal with, she always sorts things out - finding a job when we need money, juggling bills when we're short, making do with little, asking for nothing and never, ever complaining. I take her for granted and a couple of nights a month when it becomes unbearable, I steal into her bedroom and take her body.
So on the night it all started there was no hint that anything would be out of the ordinary when I came home expecting to eat a rewarmed meal alone before dropping into bed, as always, exhausted. But that night I noticed the dining room table was set for four and Gloria was in the kitchen at the stove. I didn't ask, instead, soundlessly, I went upstairs to change... and recognized when I got half way up the unmistakable cries of a woman having sex.
I'm not at all ashamed to admit that I felt a flush of excitement. I thought if there is one woman on the planet who desperately needed to get laid, it was Nancy. I also thought she would be the most unlikely. She seemed to have absolutely no desires, no interest in people, no pulse. The thought that some guy could get to her, excite her, connect with her in her own bedroom, well, that gave the girl possibilities beyond my imagination.
I changed as fast as I could and went downstairs and perfunctorily greeted my wife as if nothing had happened... and topped a bottle of beer, something I seldom do after work, in celebration... and in anticipation of meeting the stud whom, sight unseen, I already liked.
When I sat down at the kitchen table it felt like the evening was going to be an event — I was uncharacteristically sucking on a bottle of beer; a guy was upstairs mercifully servicing our niece; we were about to have a family meal... with a guest, an absolute rarity — shouldn't all that be worthy of comment? Not from her. It wasn't at all surprising that my wife was soundlessly slaving away at the stove — it was like she didn't have the imagination to process abstract thoughts. It was like the woman was wound up so tight nothing could get in... even while her doppelgänger was upstairs on her back in the throws of ecstasy — a position she herself had never been in, not once, as far as I knew... the ecstasy part, I mean.
As the first flush of alcohol cheered my senses I tried for the impossible: to imagine my niece in some form of expression. Could her bovine eyes actually be alive with the same excitement her throat was emitting? Could she be thrusting up to meet him? Could her gasps be from passion, not pain? Could her nails be raking his flesh? Could sweat be beading on her forehead? I hoped it was true, all of it, I hoped she was being so totally fucked over that she would never want to be her self again, the bottled up, emotionless mannequin who barely occupied space and time. I wanted her to be totally fucked into liberation, just as I had once dreamed of this for her aunt... and got only misery.
I tried but it was impossible to imagine. The niece, like the aunt, are so uninteresting that imagining passion simply wouldn't compute.
But there were cries; there was ecstasy... then I heard it again, this time on the stairs, this time hidden in laughter, excited, bubbling laughter — a laughter that could never erupt from Nancy. I stood up in confusion, turned to face the hallway just in time to see her coming rounding the stairs, her hand tugging Nancy's, her face shrieking with gaity, her whole body spastic with joy. "Hi," she almost yelled at me, sticking out her very long arm, "I'm Helen."
Nancy has never appeared more remote, more mousy, more insignificant. Next to that riot of a woman, that anarchy of uncontrollable enthusiasm, Nancy seemed to slink even further into her self until she wasn't even there. All evening the exhausted spotlight was only on Helen, her too loud and too shrill voice amplifying her life's story through a stream of high-pitched consciousness that left me begging for the curtain. But no, after dinner there was an encore in the living room, and another at the door... and then the kiss, preceded by a glistening tongue and then the muffled thud of the door closing and the deafening silence that seemed to almost physically assault before the total bewilderment sunk in.
I insisted on cleaning up and persisted with the beer until I made it to bed, the fragments of the evening left in my head entirely unprocessed.
And it wasn't much processed by the time I made it home the next night — I tried, but none of it computed, all of it was too far removed from any of my known reference points. We take what we can get, I understand that — it has been my life. But do we take what will destroy us? Willingly.
Gloria wasn't home, she seldom is, she's always off lending a helping hand to someone or some organization so I nuked the plate she had left for me in the fridge. When I sat down Nancy materialized — she never sits with me, and, as I traced through my data bank looking for something to say to her, she filled the kettle. I opted to keep my mouth full of food.
When she sat down with her mug she looked totally lost. "She thinks I'm the one."
I chewed more aggressively buying time. "The one... for?"
"I have to be more ambitious... she's right about that, I do."
"You're bright, you can have ambition." This was true but her personality would hold her back, even she knew this.
"She thinks I should be a doctor, a specialist."
"You've got the brains for it. Is that what you want?"
"And I have to be more demanding, more emotionally demanding... I have to reach out for what I want"
"I'd agree with that... what do you want? Do you know?"
"To be normal... to work hard... but be normal."
I snickered to add a little levity. "This is a hard place to find that."
