Chapter 1 Party of One #2
Life will be good again, now I’m back in London, the city we lived in before Ben persuaded me that the countryside would help me get pregnant.
Loneliness isn’t a constant feeling, it turns out.
It ebbs and flows. I’ll be on the Underground and suddenly realize that I don’t have to be anywhere ever again, because no one is expecting me.
No one is waiting for my return. And if anything happens, there will be no one at the end of the phone.
No one to come get me if I am sick or hold me close if the world gets too harsh.
I’ve started wondering if I slip on the stairs or choke on a chunk of steak, how long it would be before anyone came in and found me, gray and gaunt-faced.
You can’t help but think of the news stories, letters piling up on doormats for weeks, months, the sound of the TV burbling on, bills paying automatically, the lights on but no one home. I try not to go there.
—
In a way, aloneness feels like you’ve forgotten something—like you’ve come home and something important, like the kitchen or the floor, is gone.
Ben is in the States now. Engaged.
The crisp slam of a car door outside makes me head to the bedroom window.
I gaze past the edge of the clay-pink curtains to see a black Bentley glide by, behind the wheel a good-looking gray-haired man, who can’t be more than mid-forties, jumper slung over shoulders, sunglasses on.
No sooner do I feel the pull of attraction than I catch the glint of a gold band on his steering-wheel hand.
I look back at the empty parking spot outside his house, Number 11, three doors down from me on the opposite side, his front door a gleaming austere black with two bay trees flanking it.
Suddenly, in the other direction, farther up the street, another front door bursts open, this one a vibrant turquoise, and out spills a nanny with three crisply uniformed, quarreling children in tow.
The nanny, a lighthouse of calm in a maelstrom of flailing arms and noise, says something I do not hear, and to my astonishment the children instantly look to her and fall into silence.
She smiles, they nod, and she leads them on to the gate.
She’s younger than me but not by much, her dark hair slicked back into a bun, her makeup impeccable.
There is an unstudied grace to her. However much they pay her, it’s not enough, as she’s clearly got the magic touch.
Maybe everything is better around here, I think with a bite of cheerful cynicism.
The nanny looks up in my direction, perhaps sensing my gaze. I don’t know why but I pull back, fast, from the window frame, then, feeling slightly foolish, I peer back cautiously. But they have moved on, already oblivious, their backs to me as they walk away up toward the main road.
I imagine my lovely neighbors cursing the gauche new arrival and her movers for waking them up so early this morning. There’s a chance some of them already hate me.
I chose this neighborhood because the kind of people who live here have made it.
And before you say it, I know money isn’t the ultimate marker of success.
To that I say: show me a metric that is, because I thought I was “happily” married and we were trying for a baby and that ended up being a marker of nothing.
I truly felt I had the whole package: a loving husband, a nice house, a career, fun couple-friends…
and none of it turned out to signify anything at all.
When the life you worked so hard at, for so long, falls apart, it forces you to reassess: you start watching other people live their lives, like a ghost watching the living, unnoticed but yearning.
You look at others like they know some secret truth that, if you could just decode it, would get you back in.
I lean closer to the window in order to look at my side of the street, and that is when I see it.
Three people, a man and two women, their features contorted in fast-moving patter.
They are concerned, arguing, their gestures quick and emphatic, a shake of the head here, a widening of eyes there, an offhand gesture toward my house.
And then another. The man is sweaty, in running gear, a no-nonsense gorpy headband pushing back his short, wet-look curls.
My stomach is suddenly in knots, but I cannot look away—they’re talking about my house, about me, no doubt. And not one of them looks happy.
The younger of the two women, tall, well-dressed, in her thirties, with a light cashmere jacket and tumbling brown hair, is speaking now in hushed tones to the man, and the older woman with gray hair nods in agreement.
The man, listens, though he can barely restrain his urge to interrupt.
Then suddenly he seems to make up his mind.
He turns abruptly and begins to walk with purpose toward my gate. The others’ voices rise in disapproval. He surprisingly relents, chastened, as he rejoins them. The gray-haired woman steps forward in the group to take charge and redirect the discourse.
And that is when all three look up, directly at me.
Our eyes lock.
All of us momentarily caught red-handed.
It is impossible to read their expressions. Whatever I’ve done to cause this conclave, I can categorically say I had no idea I was doing it.
I raise a limp hand and wave, offering a smile—there’s a chance, after all, I tell myself, that this has nothing to do with me.
But they do not smile back.
A sudden, urgent yelp comes from downstairs, and my eyes whip back to the stairs.
“Shit. Blue,” I erupt, the details of my own life rushing back to me.
The meow comes again, long and incessant. He’s pissed off. I left him in the cat carrier.
I forgot to say I’m not completely alone. I got “custody” in the divorce.
It’s odd to think now: Ben was so desperate for a baby, encouraging me to try again and again and again—I went through all that physical and mental pain and the loss of three pregnancies and was pumped full of hormone injections and IVF pills and lived through shuddering midnight rushes to A&E—and yet, when we divorced, Ben looked me in the eye and told me, without a shred of irony, that yes, I should have Blue, because he didn’t want the responsibility.
I glance back out the window, but they are gone, figures now walking back to their respective lives.
Downstairs, I free Blue from his cat carrier, and hug him tight.
When I release him, he looks at me in much the same way they did. On him, however, it’s adorable.
He’s always been a head-turner, with his soft, gray-blue, heart-shaped, deep-furred face, and those warm amber eyes.
He licks his paws, then yawns at me luxuriously.
But already I can’t get the neighbors out of my head.
I look back at Blue and force a smile, a feeling of inevitability beginning to settle uncomfortably inside me.
“Welcome to your new home, buddy.”
It’s then that the doorbell rings.