Would Like to Meet. Polly James
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the bike to allow me to wobble my way past. “You don’t look very well.”
That’s just great, isn’t it? I don’t look very well, when what I wanted to do was look stunningly gorgeous, absolutely irresistible, and totally on top of everything. Especially when Dan looks better than I remembered and has obviously taken up cycling, too.
“I’m fine,” I say, as I drag the tumble dryer out from under the counter. “Absolutely, completely fine.”
“Oh,” says Dan. “Oh, I see.”
He almost looks disappointed. As well as annoyingly attractive.
“How are you?” I say, because I feel I should.
“Um, I’m fine, too … I suppose,” says Dan.
There’s an awkward silence, and then he adds, “You can leave me to get on with this, if you like. If you’ve got anything else to do, I mean.”
He can’t bear to be anywhere near me, can he? Not even for a moment. I’m amazed our marriage lasted as long as it did, when he obviously finds me as repulsive as those horrible men on the internet find their wives. No wonder we hardly had sex any more, and so much for the excuses Dan made when I asked him why he thought that was, in the middle of one of our arguments. Repulsion’s a much more relevant factor than my going to bed later than him, and I’m sure he didn’t seriously think that I didn’t fancy him any more. I only mentioned middle-aged spread once, and I was joking!
Talking of middle-aged spread, maybe I should get a bike, or do something to get myself in better shape. It looks as if that’s what Dan is up to, and I really don’t want to think about why he’s only bothering to do it now. It’s certainly not for my benefit, is it? I think he’s lost some weight already.
I’m still trying to guess exactly how much when he finishes whatever he’s been doing to the tumble dryer, and stands back up.
“Found the cause of the problem,” he says, though he doesn’t look too pleased about it. Bewildered might be a better word.
“Someone’s cut through the wires to the motor,” he continues, “and removed some working parts. I’ll need to order replacements, so this could take a while.”
I bet he thinks I caused the damage when I was trying to fix the dryer, but I know I didn’t. It must have been Joel, the bloody idiot. I wondered why he’d stolen my wire-cutters, along with all my other tools, though I can’t imagine why he thought cutting through wires would solve anything. Dan says he can’t either, “though why Joel does most things is shrouded in mystery”.
We both laugh at that and, all of a sudden, I can breathe again. This is sometimes how it used to be: we could find the same things funny, as well as finding each other irritating.
Dan’s eyes meet mine for the first time since he arrived, then he smiles and says, “You can always send Joel to the launderette.”
“As punishment, you mean?” I say, at which the more relaxed mood evaporates abruptly. I have no idea why, but Dan turns round, grabs his bike and starts wheeling it backwards towards the door.
“Right,” he says. “I’ve got to go. I’ll be in touch when the parts come in.”
Then he opens the door, pushes the bike outside and rides off without a backward glance. Now my breathing’s gone all funny again.
* * *
I’m still sitting on the sofa, trying to work out why Dan suddenly started being so frosty, when Joel finally returns home.
“Where’s Dad?” he says. “Still in the kitchen working on the dryer?”
“He left,” I say. “Ages ago. As soon as he found out what you’d done to break the bloody thing.”
“Ah,” says Joel. He looks a bit embarrassed for a moment, then treats me to the winning expression he used to rely on to get him out of trouble when he was a toddler, more than twenty years ago.
“It worked, though, didn’t it?” he says, ignoring my scowl. “My plan, I mean, not the dryer, obviously.”
“What plan?” I say. “Why on earth would you plan to break the tumble dryer? I’ve got half a ton of damp washing in the kitchen that’s going to go mouldy if it doesn’t stop raining soon. And most of it belongs to you.”
It’ll serve Joel right if all his clothes end up covered in mildew, though God knows how much he spends on them each month. Almost as much as he spends on trainers, I should think, and he’s paranoid about looking after everything he owns, or about me looking after it, anyway. He went ballistic last week when I shrank one of his T-shirts by accident, so he’ll go nuts if his entire wardrobe ends up going mouldy.
“My plan,” says Joel, disregarding the threat of damage to his precious “streetwear” in an uncharacteristically offhand way, “was to get you guys back together again, or talking about it anyway. So, did it work?”
“No,” I say. “And nor does the dryer so, tomorrow, you’ll have to take everything to the launderette.”
Joel looks horrified, though I’m not sure whether that’s due to the failure of his stupid plan, or to the prospect of having to take his clothes to the Eezimat, then sit there for hours watching them dry. I’d find that pretty boring myself.
Oh, shit. I didn’t always find it boring, though. Not when Dan and I got locked inside the art school’s launderette overnight and decided to wash everything we owned, including what we were wearing at the time. That night was far from boring, or from being “punishment”.
Oh, God, this splitting-up thing must be catching: now Joel and Izzy have split up, too. He told me about it late last night when he came back from a date with her, and said it was his choice, but then clammed up when I asked him why. I try again this morning, when he finally drags himself out of bed.
“Well, you and Dad are hardly a good advertisement for long-term relationships, are you?” he says. “And anyway, I’m fine with it.”
He may be, but he looks a lot more bleary-eyed than he normally does after a night out drinking.
In fact, he looks so rough that I don’t feel I can ask him to go into the loft to find my painting things, so I end up doing it myself, which is not the world’s most enjoyable experience. First the ladder wobbles alarmingly, and then I have to climb off it into the attic, which is so dark that I can barely see a thing, apart from all the horrible cobwebs near the hatch. I hate spiders – and so does Joel – so I’ve no idea how we’re going to deal with them now Dan’s not here.
“You’ve got no choice, so just man up,” I say to myself. (That’s another thing that happens when your husband’s left you: you start talking to yourself, like a lunatic.)
Luckily, my art stuff is in the box closest to the hatch, so soon I’m back downstairs, sitting at the kitchen table and drawing the viola Pearl gave me from the garden at Abandon Hope. My first few strokes of the pencil are tentative, but after that, my drawing becomes more fluid and the result is surprisingly good, given that I’ve done nothing but draw stupid website icons for the last ten years. The trouble is that, once the flower drawing’s complete, I can’t think of anything else to draw and – after a few minutes spent racking my brains to no avail – I realise I’ve been doodling Dan’s name, over and over, by accident.
I scribble all the doodles out.
“What shall I draw next?” I say to Joel.
“I don’t know,” he says, which is no help whatsoever, but then I recall what I used to do whenever I ran out of ideas at art school: go for a walk in the countryside.
I pack up my sketchbook and drawing