We All Live Here

Chapter Eleven

Marriage, I’ve learned over fifteen years, is a never-ending series of constantly shifting compromises. Your partner is not always going to behave in the way you want. You probably don’t behave in a way they want. The trick is to look at the big picture, and ask: how do we move this forward? To think in terms of “us.” For as long as you see yourselves as a unit, you have the same goal: to be together, and to be happy together. That’s essentially the most important thing. So does it really matter if you would rather be watching Sleepless in Seattle when he’s watching the rugby? Does it matter that he wants to stack the dishwasher in a way that irritates you? Will it make a huge difference if one of his parents comes to stay for a week, and you have to bite your lip and accommodate someone when you don’t really want to? It’s easy to find yourself viewing these things as a slippery slope: if I give in now, will I end up giving in on everything? Provided you’re in a relationship of mutual respect, the answer to that is no. The key, I’ve found, to moving forward, is asking myself, during these moments: do I want to be right? Or do I want to be happy?

“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” she says.

“I want to stay close to the girls. I want them to be able to walk to see me after school, like they do now. And the only way we can afford a bigger house around here is with a bigger mortgage. Like I told you, the lawyer said I’m currently paying more than I’m legally bound to.”

“Big of you, Dan.”

“So I’m sorry but that’s what I have to do. Hopefully you’ll get a new book deal soon, which will make things easier for you. But in the meantime I also have to factor in that Marja is going to have to take time off work once the baby arrives.”

“Fine. Basically we’d better hope I can get more work because Marja sure as hell doesn’t want to.”

“She’s pregnant, Lila. Not sitting around on her arse. C’mon, you know how hard it was when the girls were newborns.”

“I worked, Dan! I carried on writing, in case you’ve forgotten. I carried on working when I was on two hours’ sleep wearing a bra filled with cabbage leaves. I maintained a freelance career so that I could do both things. And now because your girlfriend doesn’t want to work, I am looking at a catastrophic drop in our income. That’s more than you said in the first place, and that was bad enough.”

“I’m paying you what I can afford.”

“We can’t live if you reduce it by that much!”

“Well, then, you’ll have to get a smaller house.”

He says it. He actually says it. There is a short silence as they both absorb the fact that, yes, he went there.

Lila’s voice, when it comes, is icy. “Right. Just so I’m clear. So you want me and your daughters to sell their family home and buy a smaller house, so that you can get a bigger house for your new family.”

“Oh, come on! Don’t twist my words—”

But she has already put the phone down.

···

Lila writes another three thousand words that afternoon. They come remarkably easily.

···

It is fair to say that the first couple of weeks of Gene’s stay are not an unqualified success.

He sleeps late and rises like a bear out of hibernation, crashing into furniture and leaving wet towels and coffee spills in his wake. He seems incapable of looking after himself, beyond basic hygiene, and that is variable. He lives off coffee and cigarettes, cookies and potato chips. She has explained the washing-machine to him three times and every time he says, “Yes, yes, sweetheart, got it,” then boils his T-shirts into children’s sizes, or somehow manages to miss the spin cycle completely. He assures her daily that he is looking for work but is easily distracted, an old jester in constant search of an audience, heading out to the garden to divert Jensen with tales of Old Hollywood, or eagerly awaiting the return of the girls, so that he can watch Star Squadron Zero with Violet snuggled under his arm. In the early evenings he is restless, heading out to the bottom of the garden to smoke cigarettes that Lila hopes are just tobacco or disappearing to the Crown and Duck on the corner of the high street where he soothes himself with a couple of beers. He returns, usually late, for dinner, now filled with a level of bonhomie and garrulousness that makes Bill’s jaw, already taut with tension, look like it might be about to grind itself into dust.

Lila is irritated that he goes, irritated that somehow he has the money for beer when he has offered her nothing for food or lodging. But the relief of having him out of the house for a couple of hours is greater so she says nothing, other than explaining yet again that cans need to be recycled or asking him to fold up the bed so that she can get to her desk. She prays he gets himself sorted out soon.

Because even with the sofa-bed folded there is something about his presence in Lila’s study—the scent of his aftershave and the scattered piles of clothes—that makes her feel deeply unsettled. It is like being revisited by a ghost from her past. She often works in one of the girls’ rooms while they are out.

“How’s Bill coping with him?” says Eleanor. It is raining heavily and they are sheltering in a copse, while Truant looks out resentfully.

“Um, not great.” Lila thinks of Bill’s mouth, pressed into an ever-present line of disapproval, the way he walks out of any room that Gene walks into. The way he will often address Lila as an intermediary, even if Gene is clearly within earshot. “Do you think he will be eating with us this evening? If his drinking schedule allows?”

“Bill had your mum to himself for more than thirty years. Why is he so pissed at Gene?”

“Neither of them can let it go. It’s exhausting. Gene hates Bill because I think he always assumed he could pick up with Mum again, like he does with all his girlfriends. And Bill got in the way of that. Bill hates Gene for causing Mum so much pain in the first place, because I guess he actually did have to pick up the pieces. And Mum would have told him how awful Gene was again and again over the years. She really saw through him. So I guess he only sees Gene through that prism.” Lila lifts her hood from her head and shakes off the excess water.

“Wow,” says Eleanor. “It’s going to be a long few weeks.”

“Violet likes him. So that’s…nice.”

“He’s probably teaching her how to roll a spliff. Hey, what happened with the hot architect? Any news?”

There has been frustratingly little news on the hot-architect front. Gabriel Mallory frequently employs a babysitter to collect his daughter, a young Mediterranean-looking girl in her late teens who seems to know Lennie well, from the way they immediately take each other’s hands and head out, chatting. Sometimes it’s a woman she assumes is his mother, brisk, gray-haired, formally dressed, with the capable, no-nonsense air of a senior nurse. On the couple of times he has been at school pickup he has said hi to Lila, but has arrived too close to turnout time to engage in any real conversation. Lila has started to feel a little foolish that she ever imagined a flicker of interest in her.

Daily pickup has become increasingly difficult anyway, with Marja’s growing bump. There is only one topic of conversation among the mothers when someone is visibly pregnant, and from her position on the other side of the playground, Lila endures the daily touching of The Bump, hears the conversations about scans, and sees the handing over of outgrown baby clothes. Every time she notices, something in her feels dead and cold. For the last few days, she has asked Bill if he will take over the pickup and excused herself. Instead she holes up in whatever part of the house is least full of angry old men or emotionally volatile teenagers and writes and writes, slowly shaping the three chapters that will get her out of at least one of the many messes that now make up her life.

···

The message comes at nine forty-five one evening, when Lila is lying in a bath, noise-canceling earphones in, trying to forget about dinner in which Bill and Gene argued over the fact that Bill had moved Gene’s boxes from the hallway into the shed. According to Gene, there were priceless Star Squadron Zero costumes and other memorabilia in those boxes, and they shouldn’t be left in some damp beetle-infested outhouse, for crying out loud. According to Bill, Gene’s hands must apparently be drawn on: he couldn’t see any other reason why the man couldn’t just walk out to the garden, pick the damn things up himself and move them into his room.

According to Lila, this was all just frankly exhausting and she didn’t understand why she had suddenly acquired two more children as well as the ones she already had. According to Celie, she was not a bloody child actually and the fact that she was constantly being treated like one was half the reason she hated being in this bloody house anyway. According to Violet, there was no Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. But there was an empty carton and a spoon in Gene’s bedroom. This might have been the first point at which Violet’s warm feelings toward her new grandfather cooled a little.

Hey—I hope you don’t mind me taking your number from the school WhatsApp. Just hadn’t seen you at school lately and hope you’re doing okay. Gabriel

Lila stares at the message, then pushes herself upright in the bath, reading it again. She thinks for a moment, and then types: I’m okay, thanks. Usual chaos. Just had a lot of work on.

It’s a bit relentless this single-parent lark, isn’t it? Nice to meet a fellow soldier in the trenches.

Hah! I’m under constant artillery fire here. Hope you’re doing better.

All the better for speaking to you , he responds, and Lila’s hairline prickles with pleasure.

Well, likewise.

Hang on in there , comes the reply. Maybe see you tomorrow.

Lila writes two kisses in answer, then deletes them. For the rest of the evening, she wonders if she should have left them.