Two dead wives, p.5
Two Dead Wives, page 5
I don’t know who taught me Tudor history, how I voted on Brexit or who I watched GoT with. I don’t remember the games I played in the garden with school friends and I really don’t know if I ever did sneak home late from parties as a teen. I just want to believe that’s something that probably happened, because everyone wants to think they had friends and that they were cool, right?
I don’t know if being myself is a good thing.
I mean, I probably can assume I’m pretty great. The odds are with me because most of us are fair, kind, honest. Aren’t we? We believe in right and wrong, law and order, actions and consequences. Most likely I’m a total delight. A sort of mix of Malala Yousafzai and Greta Thunberg. My dad acts as though I gave lessons to Kate Middleton on how to be lovable.
It would just be good to know for certain.
7
Stacie
I notice that Dad is almost back to the cottage, so I quickly dress, pulling on the T-shirt and shorts I wore yesterday. No one ever sees us, so there’s no imperative to make an effort. I barely look in a mirror these days. Staring at my bald and scarred head is difficult. I’m exposed, diminished. My hair is growing back slowly; there are downy, feathery patches coming through. It’s something, but it’s uneven and imperfect, so I am still self-conscious. In a way, I’m glad not to be seen. I slip on flip-flops and rush down the stairs, making it into the kitchen just as Dad pushes open the back door.
“Morning, love,” he says, cracking a smile. He puts a green piece of smoothed sea glass on the table as I predicted. A mermaid tear. That’s what some people call them. I remember that. “How are you feeling today?” he asks.
“Fine, thanks.”
“No headaches?”
“Right as rain.”
“Well, that’s great news. Did you take your tablets?” He always leaves them in an eggcup next to the kettle so that I don’t forget.
I haven’t taken them yet this morning but move to do so now. I can swallow tablets without water, I’ve had that much practice. He beams, obviously relieved. I’m sorry that I’m such a concern to him at this age, when I should really be off his hands. However, I’m so grateful for his concern and the safety net he provides. What would I do without him preserving my identity? I’d literally disappear if he didn’t keep reminding me who I am, what I’ve done, what I dreamed of. I am shut out of my own life, and until that door opens again, I need him to safeguard me. It’s not fair on either of us, but it is what it is. A living nightmare.
I reach for the kettle and put it on to boil. “What is it with you and the sea glass, Dad? What attracts you to it?” In part, I’m curious; in part, I’m just making conversation. Months with just the two of us for company, no outside stimulus whatsoever, is limiting.
Dad bends and pats Ronnie’s back to encourage him to calm down. The dog is still circling my father’s legs. Energetic, like a puppy, even though he’s not. He’s leaving a trail of wet and sandy paw prints on the floor; they will dry and the sand will crunch under our feet until it blows out the door or into the corners of the room. I glance around the kitchen, which is as usual in a state of chaos. Neither of us cares, neither of us values tidiness or has a particular proclivity toward it. Dad must have had fried bacon for breakfast earlier; the smell lingers in the kitchen, scalded animal fat.
“Well, my attraction to sea glass, Stacie, is to do with how it comes about. You see, diamonds and other such precious gems—you know, emeralds, rubies and the like—are mined from the earth, spat out raw and sharp. Then mankind smooths and polishes them to perfection.”
“Humankind,” I interject.
He chuckles. “If you like. But sea glass is the opposite way round. Humankind carelessly tosses glass into the sea or leaves it discarded on a beach, and it is nature that does the polishing and refining. It’s a fine example of nature’s indomitability, I think.” He sits down at the kitchen table, stretches his legs out in front of him. Dad is seventy-two, with a thick head of snow-white hair, a ramrod posture, skin that tans easily. He can pass for younger most of the time. It’s only after a long walk, when I see his need to rest, stretch, recoup, that I’m reminded that he’s no longer in his prime, and really, I ought to be looking after him, not the other way round. He takes a moment and then carries on answering my question. “I think it’s amazing, a spiky piece of glass tumbling in the waves, being lifted up, tossed about for all that time. Abrasion working at it until it’s smooth and frosted, until it’s beautiful.” He pauses, smiles at me. “That’s what I like about it, Stacie. Sea glass takes a battering but is all the more beautiful for it.”
I eye him slyly. Am I reading too much into what he is saying, or is he trying to tell me something with all this talk about smoothing out rough edges, surviving and in fact being improved upon by being tossed and tumbled by nature’s forces? Is he relating it to my circumstances? Or even his own? I appreciate him trying to pass on his wisdom, if indeed that is what he’s doing, but it’s a bit early to be philosophizing. I need coffee first.
“I’ve been out for the papers,” he adds as he pulls them from his canvas bag and lays them on the table. “I’ve had a flick through them already. On the bench up at Williton Cross.”
“Oh. Anything in them?”
“Not really. Same old, same old. Hospitalizations on the rise, hope for the high street declining. How can they call it news when they print the same stuff every day? I’m not sure why I buy them.” He doesn’t always bother; sometimes he comes home with croissants for a treat instead.
I pry open the canister of coffee beans, and as I do so, something swells inside me, a wave of yearning, my legs quiver. A memory nearly knocks me over. I recall specifically yearning for someone. I lift the canister to my nose and inhale deeply, hoping the sensation will linger, balloon. Apparently the olfactory system can help restore memories. I have a nebulous feeling that the yearning, the longing, was a perpetual state. This someone I wanted didn’t give me a sense of completion or contentment. He’s not about that. It is a he, I’m certain of that much.
I pause and allow the thought to swell.
The teeth of a zip, parting slowly. My dress falling to the floor. I don’t care. I don’t worry about it creasing. He drops to his knees and edges my underwear down my thighs. The idea makes me inwardly squeal with joy and surprise but outwardly blush, because I can’t imagine that world being mine. Sexy, glamorous. So at odds with my scarred head and flip-flop-shod feet.
I’ve had this thought before. This sense of him doing various things to me. With me.
Then, frustratingly, the impression—thought? Memory? Call it what you will—snaps and vanishes. It feels like an elastic band has been twanged somewhere deep in my gut.
I wonder what has just played out on my face—the longing, the lust, the disappointment—because Dad asks, “What is it, Stacie?”
“Nothing,” I lie. I am not about to tell my dad that I have memories about a man kissing and licking me, climbing inside me. “I was just thinking, maybe we should plant something in the back garden,” I say instead.
“Like what?” he asks.
“I don’t know. Roses, or sweet peas?” I’m looking for the joy of progress. I’m imagining green shoots poking up from the earth. Promising a future.
Dad shakes his head swiftly. “Won’t grow. Not with the wind and the sand. Nothing much grows in our garden. You tried that when you were a little girl.” He glances at me quickly, not quite confident enough to make eye contact. “Don’t you remember?”
A categorical “No, I don’t remember” upsets him maybe even more than it upsets me. I work around it, offering the sort of sentence that can be interpreted as a statement of fact but is really a question. “I was into gardening for a time.”
“When you were about seven or eight, you had your own patch of the garden. We turned it over together, built a little fence around it. You enjoyed painting the fence yellow. Then you planted snapdragons, phlox and a rose bush.”
I am excited at the thought of this idyllic childhood. I try very hard to recall the abundance of pretty bobbing snapdragons, roses (pink?) and bright, colorful phlox. A country garden blossoming, almost overripe. I think I recall the pungent scent of blooms hanging in the air. I almost see a bed of flowers that is so full, it’s somehow fleshy. But I don’t feel joyful or soothed by the thought. I feel uncomfortable and cross. Perhaps this is understandable when Dad adds, “They didn’t grow. It was a wet spring. The shoots drowned. The salty air, the sand, everything worked against you.”
“Was I disappointed?”
“No, you didn’t even notice, you’d already lost interest. Something else caught your attention probably. Gardening is not your thing, Stacie.”
The memory of the blossoming garden doesn’t make sense then. Another mix-up. Dad used to be a doctor. Not a specialist, a GP. Still, he’s been really helpful in trying to get me to understand my unique position. After surgery such as mine, a temporary memory loss is expected. Temporary being the hopeful word. However, I’ve been warned that false memories and susceptibility to suggestibility can also occur. It’s confusing. Exhausting.
“Was Mum into gardening too?” I ask carefully.
My mother is not an easy topic for my dad. That much has become abundantly clear. It’s understandable, but I have to ask about her. How will I remember my past if I self-censor and avoid important subjects? When I think of my mother, I can’t recall her hair color, height or smile, but I sense a keen desire to please her. Nothing particular, just an all-pervasive sense that I wanted to make her happy. My mother walked out on us, before my ninth birthday. I can’t remember the specific moment, but I remember feeling abandoned, confused. I wouldn’t mind forgetting that feeling, but I can’t. My damned head.
Dad says, “No, she was not in the least bit interested in gardening. I was the green-fingered one.”
“Here one day, gone the next,” I mutter.
“It must have seemed sudden to you,” Dad says, turning away from me. And to him? Was it sudden for my dad, or had he expected it? Maybe they had been fighting for months before her departure; a house whipped by hissed whispers behind closed doors. Or maybe they did not fight at all; instead were simply unhappy, disconnected. Did sullen, weighty silences drench the room after I’d gone to bed and they were alone together?
“She went far away.” I struggle and stretch for the memory. It’s like a tin on a too-high shelf in a supermarket. Very definitely there, but just out of reach. “Not so much as a backward glance. Moved abroad?” Dad nods. I pick up a tea towel but don’t really know what to do with it; there are no pots to dry. This is a heavy conversation for so early on in the day, but our weird world, centered around a pandemic, life-threatening illness and memory loss, means we don’t follow the usual conversational guidelines. I am constantly attempting to piece my jigsaw mind back together, slot things into place, so I blurt out questions whenever they come into my head. Dad tries to provide answers.
“Yes, she did.”
“Was there someone else?”
“Yes.”
“I see.” Moving abroad, leaving your child for another man, delivers a certain message. Received loud and clear. “Did she remarry?” I ask.
Dad picks up the bottle of ketchup that’s on the kitchen table and puts it in a cupboard. I realize that clearing the table is preferable to baring his soul. “I think so. I don’t know for sure. She didn’t stay in touch directly. Sometimes there were rumors. From time to time, an indiscreet friend we had in common would let something slip.”
“Did she have any more children?” I think I remember something about that. I can’t recall if they were sons or daughters. Brothers or sisters. But I remember feeling replaced.
He nods, seeming stiff and reluctant. “Yes, I believe so.”
I don’t ask anything more. I’ve pushed him far enough on this topic for one day. What does it matter now anyway? She isn’t here. She hasn’t been in touch. I’m obviously not part of her life, she is not part of mine. Her leaving changed Dad. His words. He’s told me that was when he gave up being a GP. He just couldn’t hold everything together; taking care of me, dealing with his own broken heart and absorbing his patients’ problems was too much. He became quite reclusive, prioritizing time with me above everything else, including other people’s company and a career path. He took casual work that fitted around my school hours and holidays.
I look out of the kitchen window. The view to the back of the house is a gloomy field and a scattering of outhouses. There is a solid line of trees and bushes in the far distance that blocks out the light and acts as a curtain drawing a veil between us and the outside world. The tarmac around the house is framed by nettle patches and scrubby, parched grass strewn with dented drink cans and litter. I’m not sure where the litter came from. Surely not Dad. Most likely chucked over the hedge or blown through. The place has a sad, neglected air to it. It’s time to change the subject.
“So gardening is not my thing. That’s okay. Good to rule it out.” I wait a beat. “Fairy lights then. Colorful ones. Something to bring some cheer.” The back garden, which butts up against the beach, is always covered in a fine layer of sand. The grass, the stone path, even the vibrant piles of sea glass are muted.
“If you like. I’m not sure where we’d buy them.”
“I bet we could get them online if we had internet.” Dad chuckles, amused by the very thing that frustrates me. “We need broadband. We should find a provider,” I add firmly, not for the first time.
“Oh, that’s not so easy when you’re out in the sticks. It’s not like living in a big city, oozing choice.” He smiles at me as though he’s delivering good news.
I know he isn’t interested in being online in the same way I am. Dad gets all the entertainment he needs through his television. He has an enormous library of DVDs, mostly films that were popular in the nineties and noughties. He supports local shops. He reads his news in papers. He thinks constant updates are bad for our mental health, especially at the moment. That’s fair enough. I can understand why he sometimes snaps the radio off and insists we think about something more pleasant. But the lack of access to the internet frustrates me. I’d like more regular updates on what is happening beyond our cottage. I’d like to see if I had social media accounts; I must have had. I certainly know that TikTok and Insta exist and are considered by many a great way to lose hours. Was I one of those many? Could my social media accounts help jog my memories? Of course, I’d have to recall my passwords first. Googling Stacie Jones would be a starting point.
I long to be back out there. To be part of it. Dad is forever telling me that there isn’t anything to be part of right now. He has a point, I suppose. He keeps saying that if I’m going to be ill at all, this is the best time. I’m not missing out. I just need to concentrate on getting well. Dad is someone who enjoys taking life slowly. Naturally content in his own company, he doesn’t seem to find lockdown much of a struggle. I get the feeling that he’s never been one to socialize much, happy to keep himself to himself. That much is revealed by his eternally tatty clothes, which only make it into the washing machine when I nag him.
“You know what, Stacie, you’ve always reminded me of that princess in the fairy tale.”
“Which one?” I ask, skeptically. My life seems a long way from a fairy tale.
“The one who slept on twenty mattresses but could still feel the pea that was hidden under the bottom one.”
“You’re saying I’m a bit of a spoiled bitch?”
Dad laughs. “You’re not a spoiled bitch. I’m just aware that you struggle with the mundane stuff that others accept more readily. I’m okay without internet. All these years it’s never once crossed my mind that it’s a problem not having it. You’re home now and it matters to you. You want more.” I nod. He’s right. He’s identified something that feels true about me. I’m not very good at making do. I’m an unsettled sort of person. I always want to optimize, to strive forward. Dad continues, “Natural enough, you’re young. Ambition is a good thing.” Thwarted ambition or unfulfilled ambition is less of a good thing. It’s simply difficult and painful. This goes unsaid. “You feel more than most. That’s all I’m saying. I understand that it’s not easy,” he adds with a sympathetic smile.
“I feel more but remember less. What a crap combination.”
For a moment or two there is no sound in the room other than Ronnie’s claws scratching on the floor. The silence screams. “Hey, Stacie. Are you making coffee?” Dad prompts.
“I am.”
“Is there enough for two?”
“Of course.” I make a big pot of coffee every day. There’s always enough for two, more than enough. I allow myself to be distracted, because Dad needs to think he can distract me. Dad isn’t someone you’d rush to describe as in touch with his feelings, but he reaches for them when he knows it’s important to me, and that’s pretty amazing. He’s undoubtedly a good guy. The best. Maybe that’s why I’m not married. I’ve struggled with meeting the right man because my dad set the bar too high. I don’t know. I really don’t.
I grind the beans, glad of the noise that fills the kitchen, making conversation redundant. I throw yesterday’s granules and filter bag into the recycling bin. Swirl the glass pot under the tap. I take another sniff of the fresh granules and will the man I can’t quite remember, can’t quite forget, to crawl into my head again. The sense of him settles in my consciousness. It’s where he belongs. I recall his eyes meeting mine. I think I do. It feels real. And the way he looked at me. Wow. I was his world, his entire world, and yet simultaneously, it’s as though he was indifferent. As though he was playing with me or experimenting with me, or simply confused by me.
