Joe Cocker
WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS
I was facing off against the living-room mirror, trying to edge my lipstick into something that made me look less a clown and more a respectable older woman.
I rolled my eyes. Respectable older woman, going on a date with her husband’s love interest…
When my mouth was neat, I stared at David through the mirror’s reflection.
He was standing behind me, checking the time – for the umpteenth time – and tapping away with his heeled boot, somehow making a deafening noise with the smallest of gestures.
‘David, run this by me again?’
He sighed. ‘How many times, Patti?’
‘Once more,’ I promised, and capped the light rouge lip liner I’d been playing with.
‘Eudora thought I was interested in her–’
‘Which you are, still?’
‘Which I am, still. But she’s heard things about me, indecent things.’ He rolled his eyes, though I couldn’t help but think that whatever Eudora had heard was likely true. ‘And it’s made her wary, because she thinks of herself as a challenge now, which–’
‘She is.’
‘She is not, and stop interrupting. Anyway, I tell her about you, my doting and loving wife, and suddenly she’s more comfortable around me. So now–’
‘Now we’re going to dinner with her.’
‘I told you to stop interrupting,’ he snapped.
I turned to face him directly. ‘I’ve never seen you quite so rattled about a date.’
‘Well I’ve never taken my wife on a date before. It’s a little unsettling.’
‘But it’s part of a master plan?’ I’d crossed the room and started to straighten his collar.
He’d ironed his shirt and everything, which I took to be a sign of serious interest. ‘Because she’ll definitely think you aren’t interested in her, if you ask her for a friendly evening meal out with your wife in tow. ’
He batted my hands away from his neck. ‘So you do understand!’
‘I wouldn’t go that far. I don’t know how I feel about being a third wheel in all of this either, it has to be said.’
Of course, as many times as David had explained this masterplan, he’d also explained that I wasn’t a third wheel because Eudora was bringing a friend.
It had catapulted me back to our days as twenty-somethings, when he would meet a woman and ask if she had a friend for his friend, and vice versa.
In our strange and dysfunctional way, I thought of those memories as our earliest acts of caregiving for each other.
Though these days, acts of caregiving had been replaced by David asking whether I’d taken my blood pressure medication and me asking whether he’d got a doctor to look at that mole on his back yet.
Our love language had changed over the years, but this felt like a homage to greater times.
‘It’s not like you’ll be forced out, Patti. She’s bringing…’ He petered out and I laughed.
‘You still can’t remember her name.’
‘No.’ He scratched his temple. ‘It would seem that way. I want to say… Sarah? No, Suzanne… S-s-s…’
‘Someone, she’s bringing someone.’ I turned off the lights in the living room and ushered him out the door, into the hallway. ‘Come on, then, let’s go and meet my someone for the evening and you can go and meet your girlfriend.’
‘She isn’t my girlfriend,’ he snapped.
‘Yet!’
‘Patti, please, don’t be ridiculous.’ David grabbed his house keys from the bowl on the hallway table. ‘I haven’t had a girlfriend since 2002.’
* * *
If the venue for a first date (that isn’t really a first date) was any indication for how much an individual cared for the person they were courting, then David was holding nothing back when it came to his feelings for Eudora.
He name-dropped the restaurant on the drive there and the fact that it was somewhere I’d never even heard of was the first giveaway that my husband had done his research.
The fact that David pulled a pressed blazer out of the back of the car when we arrived there was the second tip-off.
It has to be said that my husband looked handsome.
At home, he’d dressed in dark mustard chinos with a pressed white shirt, and now he paired a dark navy-blue blazer with it all to complete the look.
If it hadn’t been for the deep red lipstick I was wearing, I would have been tempted to give him a kiss on the cheek.
David held his arm out for me to take on the walk into the restaurant, and I caught sight of us both in the tall glass doors on our approach.
My own confidence had – soared? Sky-rocketed?
Boomed? – crept up ever so slightly since I’d started seeing Sheila: the new comfort in my own body; the guts to wear dresses that I mightn’t have done before.
For our first date with Eudora, I was wearing a deep-red wraparound dress with black heels that my feet would punish me for the next day, and my reflection coupled with David’s left me feeling pretty bloody pleased with the pair of us.
Before David could yank the door open, I paused and gave his arm a quick squeeze. ‘We scrub up all right for a pair of old’uns, don’t we?’
David gave me a warm smile and kissed my cheek. ‘I do appreciate you doing this for me, Patti. You know that?’
Despite our unconventional arrangement, and despite David’s blasé approach to life, there had never really been a time in our marriage – or before it, in truth – where I hadn’t felt appreciated by him. It was an easy yes then, as I nodded confirmation and stuck up my thumb to gesture to the doors.
‘Come on, you fool, let’s get this woman to fall in love with you.’
David held the door open and motioned for me to go ahead of him.
There was a wash of relief on his face when the front of house said we were the first to arrive.
David liked to know which direction his quarry was coming from, I thought with a sly smile, but I didn’t think it would be a helpful thing to voice aloud.
Instead, I smiled primly as he held my seat out for me and I said nothing sarcastic at all about how he was treating me like more of a lady than he perhaps ever had.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said as he pulled out the seat opposite me for himself.
Elbows on the table, my chin between my palms, I answered, ‘What am I thinking, husband?’
He was watching the door. ‘You’re thinking I never pull your chair out when we have dinner.’ An abrupt laugh hiccupped out of me. ‘See, I knew it.’
‘But I’ll always expect it now, as payment.’
‘Should I sit next to you instead? Is it suspect if I… But if I sit next to you then I won’t be able to see the door.’ He started to bite his thumbnail. ‘No, no, I’ll stay where I am.’
‘David…’ I placed a hand palm up on the table.
‘That’s good,’ he said, placing his hand inside my open offered one. ‘It’ll look good if we’re holding hands when they walk in. Look at me lovingly, too, would you? I want them to really feel that we’re husband and wife.’
‘David!’ I said again, this time through bubbling laughter. ‘We are husband and wife, you pillock.’
‘Oh, you know exactly what I mean.’
I squeezed to get his attention. ‘I do. Please, try not to be quite so nervous? She’ll suspect that something is amiss if you do, and then the whole thing might fall to bits.’
‘You think the whole thing will fall to bits?’ he repeated in panic.
I rolled my eyes and dropped back in my seat. ‘There’s no reasoning with you when you’re like this. Shall we get some wine, for the table?’ I glanced around for a waiter. ‘What does Eudora drink, do you know?’
David’s eyes widened. ‘No. Should we get red and white, to be sure?’
‘She might prefer rosé.’
‘Patti, please.’ He snatched his hand away and started to smooth down his shirt. ‘I hardly think that she’s bisexual.’
‘Yes, because wine choice is the defining factor for these things.’ I collected the wine menu from the space between us. ‘We’ll get red and white, and if it turns out that Eudora is bisexual then we’ll have to cross that bridge when we–’
‘They’re here.’
I moved to turn around and David batted a hand at me.
‘Don’t turn and stare! Just, should we– Let’s stand? Let’s stand and I’ll do introductions.’
‘Okay.’ I pushed my seat back. ‘But remember to introduce me as your wife.’
‘Piss off, Patricia. Eudora, hello!’ He moved from whispered nerves to smooth-talking charm at a speed that could have caused whiplash.
I resisted the urge to rub at my neck as I stood, feeling a sudden tension there.
‘Lovely to see you, and lovely to meet your friend. Let’s get these introductions out the way.
’ I was too busy rearranging my dress – that was suddenly revealing more leg than I would have liked, despite my earlier confidence – to notice that David was tugging at my shoulder, trying to turn me around to face the newcomers. ‘Eudora, I’d like you to meet my wife–’
‘Patti.’
It felt like cold water hitting my face. Even before I looked up, I knew.
Oh God, please let me be wrong, please let me…
I lifted my head to greet Eudora and her friend.
‘Sheila.’