chapter eighteen
When Sam and Clementine got back from the restaurant and walked in the door, shaking their umbrellas, home from their ‘date night’ less than two hours after they’d left, Clementine’s mother was aghast.
‘What happened?’ She turned off the television and pressed a hand to her throat as if preparing herself for terrible news. ‘Why are you back already?’
‘We’re so sorry, Pam,’ said Sam. ‘The service at the restaurant was slow and in the end we just … we decided we weren’t really in the mood for going out to dinner.’
‘But the reviews were outstanding,’ said Pam. The restaurant had been her recommendation. She looked at them expectantly, as if she hoped she could convince them to turn around and go back into the city and give it another go.
Clementine saw that her mother had folded a basket of clean laundry into neat little piles on the couch, and had just now rewarded herself with a cup of tea and a single gingernut biscuit on a saucer, probably to enjoy while she watched Midsomer Murders. Clementine felt a stab of regret. It seemed this was her default state now: regretful. It was just the degrees of regret that changed.
‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ she said. ‘I know you –’ I know you thought a romantic dinner could save our marriage. She glanced at Sam, and he returned her look as passively as a stranger on a bus. ‘We both felt sort of tired, I guess.’
Pam’s shoulders sagged. ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry if I pushed you into it. Maybe it was too soon. I just thought it would be good for you to get out.’ She visibly rallied. ‘Well, how about I make you both a cup of tea? I just made myself one. The water is still hot.’
‘Not for me,’ said Sam. ‘I might just –’ He looked around the room for inspiration. ‘I might just … go for a drive.’
‘Go for a drive where?’ asked Clementine. She wasn’t going to help him. She wasn’t going to pretend that going for a ‘drive’ in the pouring rain to escape a cup of tea with your mother-in-law and wife was reasonable.
But of course her mother was eager to let Sam slip straight off any hook. ‘Of course you can go for a drive,’ she said. ‘Sometimes you need to just drive. It’s meditative. Right now you two need to be kind to yourselves.’
Sam gave Pam a grateful smile, ignored Clementine and left the house, noiselessly closing the front door behind him.
‘You’ve got the place looking very clean and tidy,’ said Pam, when they were both sitting down with cups of tea and gingernut biscuits. She gave her a quizzical, almost uneasy look. ‘All I could find to do was fold this tiny bit of laundry. It’s like you’ve got a housekeeper or something!’
‘We’re just trying to be more organised,’ said Clementine. She and Sam had both become manic about housework since the barbeque, as if they were being monitored by some unseen presence. ‘Although we still can’t find things.’
‘Well, good, I guess, but there’s no need to kill yourselves. You both look exhausted, to be honest.’ She glanced at Clementine over her teacup. ‘So I take it tonight wasn’t a success then?’
‘I’m sorry we had you babysitting for no reason,’ said Clementine.
‘Pff!’ Pam flicked a hand. ‘It’s my pleasure. You know that. It’s good for your father and me to have a night off from each other too. Space is good for a marriage. You have to have your own interests.’ She frowned. ‘As long as you don’t become obsessive about them, of course.’
Pam’s father, Clementine’s grandfather, had been a schoolteacher who spent every spare moment he had working on the great Australian novel. He worked on it for over fifteen years before he died in his fifties of complications caused by pneumonia. Clementine’s grandmother was apparently so angry and grief-stricken and bitter about all the time he’d wasted on that ‘stupid bloody book’ she’d tossed the entire manuscript in the bin without reading a single word. ‘How could she not read it? What if it was the great Australian novel?’ Clementine always said, but Pam said Clementine was missing the point. The point was that the book had ruined their marriage! Pam’s father loved the book more than he loved her mother. As a consequence, Pam took a keen, possibly fanatical, interest in monitoring the quality of her own marriage. She read books with titles like, Seven Seven-Second Secrets for Super-Charging Your Marriage. Clementine’s easygoing, laconic father tolerantly endured weekend ‘marriage retreats’. He went along, or gave the appearance of going along, with everything Pam suggested, and it appeared to have worked, because they were undeniably fond of each other.
Pam was just as vigilant about the quality of other people’s marriages as she was her own, although she was self-aware enough to know that people didn’t always appreciate her vigilance.
‘I don’t suppose you’d think about seeing a marriage counsellor, would you?’ she said now to Clementine. ‘Just to talk things through.’
‘Oh, well, no, I don’t think so,’ said Clementine. ‘There’s nothing really to say, is there?’
‘I suspect there’s a lot to say,’ said Pam. She bit into her biscuit with her strong white teeth. ‘Well. How was your day? Any, ah, gigs?’
Even after all these years she still said the word ‘gig’ self-consciously, in the same way that she always said ‘croissant’ with the proper French pronunciation, but with an apologetic, self-deprecating look to make up for her pretentiousness.
‘I did one of my talks,’ said Clementine.
If Sam’s face showed a spasm of irritation when she mentioned the talks, her mother’s face showed a spasm of delight. ‘Of course! I forgot you had one scheduled for today. How did it go? I’m so proud of your bravery, Clementine, I really am. How was it?’
‘Erika came along to watch,’ said Clementine. ‘Somewhat bizarrely.’
‘Not bizarrely at all! She was probably just being supportive.’
‘I never noticed before that Erika has exactly the same haircut as you,’ said Clementine.
‘I guess it helps that we go to the same hairdresser,’ said Pam. ‘Maybe dear old Dee can only do one type of haircut.’
‘I didn’t know you two went to the same hairdresser,’ said Clementine. ‘How did that come about?’
‘I have no idea,’ said Pam hurriedly. She was always keen to rush over the details of exactly how much time she spent with Erika, as if it would make Clementine feel envious or usurped. She was too old for that now, although she could still feel the lingering memory of her childhood insecurities. She’s my mother, thank you very much.
‘Speaking of Erika,’ said Pam. ‘I actually called her tonight while you were out, just to give her an update on the Sylvia situation, which … well, let’s just say things aren’t improving as she gets older … but anyway, Erika told me something a little upsetting.’ Pam reflected. ‘Although she didn’t seem that upset about it.’ She used the side of her hand to absent-mindedly sweep together some crumbs on the coffee table into a microscopic pile. ‘Apparently Oliver found a body, the poor boy!’
‘What do you mean he found a body?’ For some reason Clementine felt herself experiencing a flash of anger, directed at her poor mother. It just seemed so outlandish. ‘He just stumbled upon a body, did he? He was just out for a run and he tripped over a corpse?’
Pam looked at her steadily. ‘Yes, Clementine. Oliver found a body. It was one of their neighbours.’
Clementine froze. It was Vid she thought of first. Big men like Vid were prone to dropping dead of a heart attack. She didn’t want to see Vid again but she didn’t want him to die.
‘The old fellow two doors down from them,’ said Pam.
Clementine felt everything unclench. ‘Harry,’ she said.
‘That’s it. Did you know him?’ asked Pam.
‘Not really,’ said Clementine. ‘From a distance. He didn’t like it if you parked on the street anywhere near his house. Once there was a delivery truck in Erika’s driveway when we were visiting and so we had to park on the street near his driveway. He suddenly emerged from behind his azalea bush yelling abuse. Sam told him that his property line didn’t extend to the street, he was polite, of course, but you know what the horrible man did? He spat at us. Holly and Ruby were thrilled. We lived on that story for days. The spitting man.’
‘He was probably lonely,’ said Pam. ‘Unhappy. Poor old fellow.’ She tilted her head, listening to the rain. ‘It’s really got a settled feeling, that rain, hasn’t it? As if it’s here to stay.’
‘It makes everything seem diabolically difficult,’ said Clementine.
‘You know, I’m so happy that Erika is still seeing that lovely psychologist!’ said Pam, her eyes brightening at this sudden pleasurable thought. She loved anything to do with mental health. ‘It means she’ll be armed with all the tools she needs to deal with her mother.’
‘She might not be talking to the psychologist about the hoarding at all,’ said Clementine. ‘She might be talking about her infertility.’
‘Infertility?’ Pam put down her teacup abruptly. ‘What are you talking about?’
So Erika hadn’t confided in Pam either, even after all this time. What did that signify?
‘But she and Oliver don’t want children! Erika was always so vocal about not wanting children!’
‘She wants me to donate my eggs to her,’ said Clementine blandly. She had been putting off telling her mother about Erika’s request, not wanting Pam’s forthright opinions further complicating her own already complicated feelings, but now she was conscious of a childish desire for her mother to fully comprehend the continuing cost of being Erika’s friend. Look what you asked of me, Mum, even now all these years later, see how kind I am, Mum, I am still being so KIND.
Although who was she kidding? Donating your eggs was the sort of purely philanthropic act her mother would have killed for the chance to perform. Clementine used to tell her father that if she were ever in a car accident, he needed to double-check that she really was dead before her mother began enthusiastically handing out Clementine’s organs.
‘Donate your eggs?’ said Pam. She gave her head a little shake as if to make things settle back into place. ‘But how do you feel about this? When did she ask you?’
‘The day of the barbeque,’ said Clementine. ‘Before we went next door.’ She thought of Erika and Oliver sitting so straight-backed and tense on their white leather couch (only a childless couple would own a white leather couch). They both had such neat little heads. Oliver’s spectacles were so clean. They had seemed so endearing in their earnestness. And then, that instant feeling of distaste at the gynaecological word ‘eggs’, and the irrational sensation of violation, as if Erika were proposing she reach right over and help herself to part of Clementine – to some deeply intimate part of her that she’d never get back – followed instantly by that old, familiar shame, because a real friend wouldn’t think twice.
She had thought she wouldn’t need to feel that awful shame ever again, because Erika was fine now, ‘in a good place’ as people said, and no longer asking for more than Clementine could give.
‘Oh my gosh,’ said Pam. ‘What did you say?’
‘I didn’t say anything at the time,’ said Clementine. ‘And we haven’t talked about it since then. I think Erika is hoping I’ll bring it up soon, and obviously, I will, I’m just picking the right moment. Or I’m procrastinating. Maybe I am procrastinating.’
She could feel something ascending within her. A rising scale of fury. A melody from her childhood. She looked at her mother’s familiar face: the grey fringe cut in that unflinching straight line over her protuberant brown eyes, the big, determined nose, the large, utilitarian ears, for hearing, not earrings. Her mother was all strength and certainty. Never a moment’s doubt over a spider or a tight parking spot or a moral dilemma.
‘That little girl needs a friend,’ she’d told Clementine the first time she saw Erika in the school playground. The different kid. The unpleasant-looking kid sitting cross-legged on the asphalt playing with old brown leaves and ants. The kid with the greasy blonde hair flat against her head, the pasty dead white skin and the scabby sores dotting her arms. (Flea bites, Clementine learned many years later.) Clementine had looked at the little girl, and looked back at her mother and felt one enormous word caught in her throat: No.
But you didn’t say no to Pam, especially not when she used that tone of voice.
So Clementine went and sat down opposite Erika in the playground and said, ‘What are you doing?’ And she’d glanced over at her mother for the nod of approval, because Clementine was being kind, and kindness was the most important thing of all, except that Clementine didn’t feel kind. She was faking it. She didn’t want anything to do with this dirty-looking little girl. Her selfishness was a nasty secret she had to hide at all costs because Clementine was privileged.
Pam was a woman ahead of her time in her use of the word ‘privilege’. Clementine learned to feel bad about her white middle-class privilege long before it became fashionable. Her mother was a social worker, and unlike many of her exhausted, jaded, bitter-jokes co-workers Pam never lost her passion for her vocation. She worked part-time while bringing up three children and she loved to share unflinching accounts of what really went on in the world.
Clementine’s family wasn’t particularly wealthy, but privilege was measured on a different scale when you saw what Pam did. Life was a lottery and Clementine knew from a very early age that she had apparently won it.
‘What are you going to say to Erika?’ said Pam.
‘What choice do I have?’ said Clementine.
‘Of course you have a choice, Clementine; it will be your biological child. It’s a big thing to ask. You don’t –’
‘Mum,’ said Clementine. ‘Think about it.’ For once she was the unequivocal one. Her mother hadn’t been there at the barbeque. Her mother didn’t have those ghastly images burned forever across her memory.
She watched her mother think about it, and come to the same conclusion.
‘I see what you mean,’ she said uneasily.
‘I’m going to do it,’ said Clementine fast, before her mother could speak. ‘I’m going to say yes. I have to say yes.’