Five
I know I should be able to immediately focus on other, more normal and important things. Like this Harchester Writing Retreat I’m supposed to be going on that Mabel set up for me. The one the author Caleb Miller is some kind of patron of, and that I haven’t even packed for yet. I keep telling myself to do it, then not doing it. Despite the fact that it cost me a fortune, even with Miller subsidizing the whole thing so that writers pay less. And that it should be easy, considering it’s supposed to be at least partly like a holiday.
Low pressure, Mabel called it.
A two-week holiday, like a sort of spa for the soul.
But it feels kind of not that way, now I’m getting down to the nitty-gritty. I keep thinking of last week’s dinner over at Mabel and Alfie’s, and Alfie saying nobody had ever shown him he was the right kind of person to be what he really wanted to be until he met Mabel, and how much more frightening trying to do all that he’s done would have felt without someone who supports you, and helps you believe.
Who sees the real you, and thinks the real you is okay.
You’ve got Mabel and Berinder, I tell myself. You’ve got yourself.
But I kind of know it’s not the same. It’s not being seen so completely. Though if I’m honest, I don’t even know how to let myself be seen like that. Whenever Mabel or Berinder ask me about taking these first faltering steps into writing my own stuff instead of cheesy marketing copy, I kind of don’t know what to say. I don’t even know if I understand.
It’s like the desire is there, but I’m scared of what shape it might take. How silly it could be. How small, and not quite special enough. If you start you’re going to stumble at the first hurdle, I keep thinking. And then I’ll be too crushed to try again. Too sure it means I’m not cut out for something more. And then there are the other, more immediate issues on my plate.
Like the fact that this Uber is definitely going a super-long way around to the book launch party Mabel wanted me to come to. Or the even worse fact that when I finally do get there I realize I am wearing the wrong sort of shoes for something like this.
She said it wasn’t too fancy, so I wore flats.
I prefer flats, I will go with them if I can get away with it.
But there are a million influencer types here, and they’re all in heels.
So I’m completely fucked, in a way that would usually occupy my brain to a ridiculous degree. But for some reason, my brain just didn’t get the memo. All it seems to want to do is think about the weirdo across the hall.
And not even in a reasonable way, either. Because it starts out asking the understandable questions, like who is this asshole who’s doing this to him and what is he going to do to get himself out of the situation. Or even slightly less understandable questions, such as what sort of wife he gave himself and whether she’s smart and interesting and nerdy in the exact way he’s smart and interesting and nerdy, and kind just like he is kind, and a million other things that I don’t think I could ever be.
But then it starts sliding sideways into completely irrelevant nonsense.
I find myself standing by the canapé table, sad crab puff wilting on a napkin in my hand, going over and over every mad thing he said and did in front of me. Like the reveal of his long johns, and the fact that he started actually reciting the opening spiel of Quantum Leap to explain it to me, and the way he sounded when he did.
The way he sounds always.
Like his big, elastic American accent is eagerly devouring every word he speaks, and finding all of them completely delicious. Like his mouth wants to make love to every word he says, and each one of them really enjoys it. All of which is mad enough on its own, I know. But then I also start thinking about his hands. The way they move when he’s talking, when he’s writing. How quick they are, how expressive. How quick and expressive all of him is. Bet he tested off the charts in school , I somehow randomly think in the middle of it all.
Though I suppose it’s not that weird, when I did the same.
You learn to recognize the signs in someone else.
That alien quality, that sense that you’re operating in a way that isn’t quite right. Being clever isn’t going to make men like you , my mum used to say. And she was right about that. It wasn’t until I learned to hide my cleverness that I got dates and made friends. That I fit in with everybody else. And it’s only because Mabel and Berinder are so lovely that I’ve ever even opened up with them.
But I don’t think he’s ever felt the need to hide a thing.
I think he is just himself, completely and utterly, right from the start.
Super enthusiastic, smart as a whip, and worse – so nice-seeming. And if there’s one thing a shit ton of people hate more than any sign of cleverness, it’s any sign of being as sweet as he appears to be. Hell, even I’m here pouring scorn on it and doubting he is and wondering what his angle must possibly be.
And okay, I have good reason.
The long list of terrible men.
My mum in my ear, telling me good people don’t really exist.
But even so, even so. God, sometimes I’m just so tired of insisting that kindness is a thing worthy of rolling your eyes over. Of rolling my eyes, because that’s one more way of making yourself cool. Of making yourself safe . Just once, I’d like to believe enough to talk about Quantum Leap with someone, I think.
Then try not to cringe over thinking something that ridiculous.
And fail, obviously and spectacularly. I mean honestly, what am I doing? Fantasizing about bingeing an old TV show with a dude I hardly know. An annoying dude, who does things like spot me across a party and then immediately hoot a name that isn’t mine in an incredibly excitable manner. While wearing what can only be described as a suit someone would wear to prom in the seventies.
It’s blue.
It’s pale blue.
The shirt underneath it has ruffles down the centre.
Plus he’s waving. He’s waving at me. I should feel mortified.
I do not know why I have to stop myself grinning goofily instead.
And even more so when I see him sort of half jog over to me, like some dad on his way to the wedding disco dance floor, fuck . Fuck, fuck, fuck. Now I’ve got to pretend I didn’t like that somehow.
But all I can come up with is this:
‘I feel like I’ve got to tell you my name isn’t short for Constance, Beck.’
Only somehow, it doesn’t come out like I’m trying to chide him. To put him back in line, alongside other things I keep at a distance. It comes out like I want him closer. That I want him to know who I really am.
And I can’t even get out of it, because of course he’s all apologies.
‘Oh no, I’m so sorry. I went and made an ass out of me and... well, also me, it seems,’ he says – because of the saying. The assume saying, oh god . Now I’m almost laughing. And I can see Mabel and Berinder out of the corner of my eye, looking at me curiously. Like, wait, what’s going on here, why is Connie Evans enjoying this big chunk of American cheese?
So keeping a straight face and a stern demeanour is an imperative.
‘Well, it isn’t. I just told everybody that was my name,’ I say, firmly. But unfortunately, that only seems to get me in deeper. He looks way too amazed by this fact. And I think I like that he is amazed. I find myself looking up into his big, perfectly open and delighted face, waiting breathlessly to hear what actually nice things he has to say about that.
And he doesn’t disappoint.
‘Golly, so you have some kind of secret identity? Are you in the witness protection programme? Let me guess: you witnessed a murder and had to flee your country of origin. Really you’re the Russian daughter of an evil oil baron,’ he tells me.
And god, the way his brain works.
All I want to do is join it, in working that way.
But of course I can’t.
‘Of course not,’ I snort.
‘Then you had a more normal reason.’
‘Yes. Connie just sounded cooler than who I really am.’
‘Oh, I see, I see. Mind if I ask who you really are?’
A big smart dork , my brain automatically answers.
Because it is conspiring against me, apparently.
‘Hazel. My actual given name is Hazel.’
‘Well, isn’t that something.’
‘I know what something means,’ I sigh, and look at him pointedly.
But my pointed look just bounces right off him. There isn’t even a hint of what a weirdo on his face. And it’s a big face, so it would be really easy to see. Yet no, no. ‘Somehow I don’t reckon you do,’ he says, and he even sounds sincere.
I don’t know why I keep going.
‘Then you’re reckoning wrong. I get it, okay. It’s soft and sad.’
‘Yeah. Like an autumn day, sat looking out over the frost-covered fields. All wrapped in wool with a warm mug of hot chocolate in your hands and a romantic book at your side.’ He looks away, obviously lost in thought about this preposterous scenario. Then seems to realize I’m staring at him incredulously. ‘Was that too much? Because I can go again, no problem.’
Dear god, please do , I think.
But panic and disbelief win out over what I really want.
‘Going again implies that the first version was made up.’
‘Or that your name and you make me think of a million things. And my mind just doesn’t want to settle for one. It wants all of them, all at the same time. It wants as many things as you can stand to tell me.’
‘Honestly I don’t even know why I told you this.’
He seems to mull this while reaching for a crab puff. Then answers, while placing it delicately on a napkin. ‘Maybe because you know my secret. So it felt safer to share.’
‘So, like mutually assured destruction, then. If I tell, you tell.’
‘Well, maybe not something that dramatic for you. Yours is just a name.’
He pops the puff into his mouth. While I find myself thinking: Is it though?
Because now my head is full of memories, and all of them are of my grandmother. My grandmother, whom I was named after. My grandmother, who used to let me watch whatever I wanted and read whatever I wanted and kept my glasses at her house so I could wear them instead of the contacts I hated. My grandmother, who didn’t care if I wasn’t the perfect little stylish, middle-class girl preparing for her perfect little stylish, middle-class life.
And then I think of my mother saying if it weren’t for the family tradition of naming people after other people, they would have called me something better. More befitting the woman you’re going to be , she’d said once. Though of course I can’t tell him any of that.
I’ve already told him too much.
‘Even so, I don’t think that’s it,’ I say instead.
But somehow that just makes it worse.
‘Maybe you just wanted someone to know.’
‘Lots of people know, all right.’
‘Like who?’ he asks. So gently, too.
I need to stop bristling about it – but I can’t, I can’t.
‘Mabel. My other buddy Berinder.’
‘So two people. And both of them women.’
‘If you’re trying to slyly call me a man-hater—’
‘I don’t think it’s being a hater to worry what a strange dude might do with vulnerable information about yourself. Or what a date might think of the real you, if you ever dared to share it.’
I flinch at that. I don’t mean to, but I do.
And I can feel myself bristling even harder, too.
‘You’re one to talk about the real you,’ I say without meaning to.
Only he just laughs and shakes his head at himself. ‘Well, you sure do have me there. Considering I invented a whole wife to make me less of a loser,’ he tells me, with a chuckle still in his voice. As if it’s no big deal and totally honest to frame him that way. Even though it fucking isn’t.
‘That wasn’t what I meant. There was no loser in my words whatsoever.’
‘Oh, I know, I know that. I’m just being honest about the situation.’
He spreads his hands. While I jab one of mine at him, finger first.
‘No, you’re not. You’re adopting other people’s cruel opinions of you as if they’re facts. Even though they’re not facts at all. Because, okay, I get why you did what you did, but you should know that there is nothing wrong with being single. And if people want to scoff at you for being single for whatever little while you have been, well, then, they’re just assholes,’ I say. And I’m breathing hard once I’m done. I’m all red, like I get when something makes me furious.
I’ve no idea why, however. Or what prompted me to defend his honour like my life depended on it. It just sort of burst out of me before I could think about it. And even weirder – I don’t think I regret it.
Something about him makes me think I don’t have to.
Which is dangerous, I know. I shouldn’t trust in that, all things considered.
Though he says nothing to make me think I’m right not to. ‘And I very much appreciate that. But I should probably point out here, in the interest of this full and frank disclosure thing we’ve got going on here, that it has not been just a little while for me,’ he says, and when he does he kind of leans toward me a bit.
Not enough to invade my space, though.
Just enough that he can speak in a hushed tone. Like he doesn’t want anyone else to hear this embarrassing part – even though there’s no one around us, and nothing he’s saying is embarrassing at all. It’s not even relevant, honestly. ‘Well, the amount of time is not the important part,’ I say.
Much to his discomfort.
‘Does it get more important if we are talking more than six months?’
‘It does not. Six months is nothing . I’ve gone way longer than that.’
‘And by way longer you probably mean maybe a year, right?’
I shrug one shoulder. ‘It could even be more. I haven’t kept track.’
‘Yeah, but you would know if it was into decades, I’m thinking.’
I laugh at that. And I shake my head, too.
‘Well, I mean probably, yes. Because that would be a real record,’ I say.
Only he’s not giving me that energy back. He’s just sort of wincing.
‘Yes, ma’am, it would,’ he says, and I know then. I know, about a second before he spells it out. ‘And as for it being more like always, for all of your life, well. You’d sure be aware of it then. Heck, that amount of time might even make you want to not outright just say so to your new friend, in case she realizes that you actually are as weird as people think you are when you do.’
And as he does, I can feel the smile on my face sort of sliding off.
Even though I do my best to keep it there. Because I don’t think he’s weird for this, I don’t. Instead, all I can think is man, no wonder he invented a fake wife when people get funny with you for being single for five fucking minutes . And not even bad people, either. Good people. Friends. Your mum.
So god only knows what his awful-sounding coworkers have been doing to him. And now suddenly I’m even madder about the whole thing than I was before. The same way I would be for someone I like very much – like Mabel, like Berinder. As if somehow he is already on their level with me, without even really trying.
‘That does not make you weird. In fact, fuck those fuckers for whatever fucking thing they have said to you that made you think you are. Not everybody wants a relationship. Not everybody is into having one. Not everybody is lucky enough to find their person, even if they do. The end,’ I end up spitting out.
And Christ, his answering expression when I do.
He looks astonished .
Like it never occurred to him that anyone could say such things.
‘So you don’t even want to work out where I went wrong?’ he asks.
Because I’m guessing most people do. And now, for some reason, I hate all of them.
In fact, I’m scanning the few stragglers still in this room to see if any of them might be the culprits, with what feels like narrowed eyes. ‘No. And I think anyone who does has worms for brains,’ I tell him, so witheringly I feel sure it will make him reconsider. Yet somehow, he just keeps going.
‘But it could be that I am seriously unlikable.’
‘Oh my god, someone has actually told you that, haven’t they.’
‘They might have done. Once or twice. Or seven or eight times. And occasionally I hear it from a quiz I might take in a magazine, like Cosmo . Or a book with a title like How to Not Die Alone .’
I glance back at him to see how much of that is a joke.
But it seems the answer is zero, if his expression is anything to go by.
It looks like a shrug. If you could shrug with your face. Like, well, that’s just the way things are , I guess . And I refuse to let that be the case. ‘You’re not going to die alone. Or at least, not unless you want to die alone. Which is a perfectly valid choice, and not something anyone should be an asshole to you about,’ I say, and now his astonishment at how hard I’m going about this is starting to settle into something else. Delighted bemusement, I think it is. Actually no – I know it is. Because he has that big face, and his emotions are equally enormous, and so it’s just easy with him. He’s like a complicated adult story, told via the medium of a beautiful pop-up book.
And for some reason, I think I like reading it.
I like seeing something new and knowable unfurl before me from another human being. But especially when he caps it off with that soft yawn of a voice, saying the kinds of things nobody else would even think to. ‘Well, it sure is nice to hear that. Though you should probably know, it’s not really the case for me. In fact, to be honest... I never wanted anything more than to be married to someone. You know how other little kids wanted to be firemen and doctors and lawyers, like their parents? Not me. I always dreamed of being a husband,’ he says.
And the weirdest thing happens when he does.
I wait for the laugh to pop out of me at something I think I should find funny.
But no laugh pops out of me at all. I don’t even feel the slightest bit amused.
Instead I get this funny feeling in my chest. And I find myself leaning closer to him, so full of curiosity I know it’s all over my face. My eyes feel too wide, my lips feel too parted, and words, when they come, are much too breathless. ‘And what made it dream-worthy for you?’ I ask, like some virgin talking to a slut, wanting him to teach her his ways.
But luckily, he doesn’t seem to notice that.
He just seems pleased that I’m interested.
‘You really want to know? Well, all right, I’ll tell you,’ he says, all beaming grin and obliviousness. In fact, he almost seems casual about the speech he then launches into. ‘One of the main things I used to dream about a lot was reading the papers in bed with someone in the mornings. The lifestyle section, the sports pages, the important news of the day. Me and whoever it was chattering about what we read. Drinking a warm drink that I somehow like, probably because they found it for me. Going for a walk in the park after that, or maybe something more. I’ve never really liked antiquing, but I would antique just for the pleasure of being with another person who does. Walking by their side, with their hand in mine. Listening to them say all the little things that make them glad to be alive.’
And all the way through it, he doesn’t even act like he’s saying anything special. He spends half the time searching for another crab puff as he speaks. I have to stand there and listen to him telling me all of this while he makes himself a second little paper plate out of a napkin.
Though to be honest, I’m glad.
Because it means I can rearrange what I know is a too-tender expression on my face, before he clocks it. I can blink back the absurd and inexplicable tears in my eyes. I can seem normal, I can seem like my armoured self, like Connie Connie Connie and not whatever that absolute nothingness did to me.
He just talked about reading the paper , I yell at myself inside.
But the problem is, myself doesn’t want to listen. Instead, it wants to marvel over how much he made the mundane sound so beautiful. It wants to tell him that I get it now, that nothing on earth has ever made more sense to me than what he just said, and though I manage to stop myself, it’s not for a good reason.
We just get interrupted before I can.
By some guy with a big, meaty hand.
And the reason I know his hand is big and meaty is that he thwacks it into Beck’s shoulder before he says a single word. Then he laughs, as if he cracked a joke only he is great enough to get. At which point, two things become immediately clear to me. That at some point, this man was a gym teacher in an American high school.
And that he is also, without a doubt, the primary source of Beck’s troubles.
Oh, he is so much the source that I don’t even need to see Beck’s face to know it. I can just smell it, wafting in waves from this asshole’s dark brown buzz cut and his ruddy face and his too many, veneered teeth. From the suit that’s definitely expensive but doesn’t look it, the ring on his left pinky that’s probably for some winning-team nonsense from 1999, the waft of his abrasive and overly applied aftershave.
It’s plain as day.
But I look at Beck all the same. And I see him try to smile around his despair and panic. I watch him try to be friendly, as if everything is normal.
Instead of being completely terrible, in every conceivable way.
‘Holy crap, is this goon talking to a real live woman?’ this dude actually has the nerve to say. And when he’s done saying it, he laughs. He laughs .
While Beck just... I don’t know.
Tries to be a good sport.
Chuckles and nods, like he’s attempting to be kind to this chode.
‘You got me,’ this big decent man who just wants to be someone’s husband says, and then honestly can I even be blamed for what I do next? I don’t even think I’m in full control of myself when I do. These loud disaster sirens just start going off in my head, and they wipe out any sort of reasonable thoughts or sense of caution.
It’s pure survival mode.
Kill or let Beck be killed by a level-eleven douche hurricane.
And apparently I would face god and walk backward into hell before I’d allow that to happen. Because I laugh, and look at him like he just said the most foolish thing in the world, and then I say the worst thing I possibly could.
‘Of course he’s talking to me. I’m his wife.’