Page 89 of Husband Material
“No. It’s…it’s my father. He’s had a heart attack.”
“Oh my God.” I jerked to my feet. “Is he going to be okay?”
Oliver was concentrating very hard on the pile of index cards. “Actually he’s… He didn’t make it to the hospital.”
“Fuck, I’m sorry.”
I tried to hold him, but he wasn’t in a mood to be held. And that shouldn’t have hurt—he was shocked and grieved, and we’d just had a giant fucking fight about nothing, and different people processed feelings differently—except it did hurt. It hurt quite a lot.
“I need to see my mother,” he said. “I should leave.”
“Of course.” I dithered in a kind of I-want-to-support-you-but-I’m-not-sure-how way. “Shall I come with you?”
“I think”—and, again, I shouldn’t have read rejection into his voice but, again, I did—“it would be best if I went alone.”
That made sense. Obviously, it made sense. His mother hated me. I was the worst person he could possibly have brought. “Whatever you need. And, like, call. Or don’t call. Just…do…do what you have to. I’ll be here. I mean, not here. I’ll be at home and—”
He gave a nod, cutting me off. Then turned and strode purposefully away.
I WAS SITTING IN MYpants on my sofa, eating kung po chicken direct from the container, when I realised that maybe I wasn’t exactly smashing it coping-wise. Oliver had been at his parent’s house—well, his mum’s house now—for almost a week, dealing with…death logistics. And it wasn’t like we hadn’t been in contact—there’d been texts and a couple of phone calls—but Oliver had seemed distant. Which I got because, between the administrative faff of arranging a cremation, the emotional sucker punch of your father dropping dead not long after you’d told him to go fuck himself and, oh yes, that enormous fight we’d been in the middle of, he had a lot on his mind. I just wished he’d let me, I don’t know, be there? Help? Do something? Feel less useless.
Except I guess that was kind of selfish. The thing was, in all the time we’d been together, there’d never been a point in our relationship when what Oliver had needed from me was absence. Space, occasionally, sure, when work was demanding or when I was being annoying. But this was different. Like, I had no idea what he was thinking, and there was some tiny, messed-up part of my brain that was worried he was hating me. Because if going to bed angry was bad for your relationship, going to organise your father’s funeral angry had to be a whole other level of fucked up.
In any case, Oliver was in Milton Keynes, and I was backslidingwith alarming rapidity. Which meant I was actually that guy: the one who could only keep it together if he had someone to keep it together for. And, at some point, Oliver was going to come home and find me unconscious in a pile of old socks and pizza boxes, and then be all, “Not only did you destroy my relationship with my family and question the authenticity of my identity over a rainbow balloon arch but you are also a human refuse pile with less self-respect than one of those fish that spends its whole life attached to a larger fish feeding on its leftovers.” Except he’d just saya remoraand assume I knew what it was. And then I’d have to say, “What’s a remora?” and he’d say, “It’s a fish, Lucien, that spends its whole life attached to a larger fish feeding on its leftovers.”
Probably I needed to stop watchingThe Blue Planetwhile angsty.
Tipping what was left of my rice into what was left of my kung po sauce, I made a glum and futile pact with myself to stop being so shit. Because nobody who had recently celebrated his thirtieth birthday—and by celebrated I mean panicked about—should be going to pieces after less than a week of having to make his own French toast. Not that I made my own French toast. Even if I’d been able to make it as well as Oliver, it wouldn’t have tasted the same without him.
Fuck, I had to do something. So I pulled out my phone and messaged the WhatsApp group—currently called Stand by Your Pan.
Help, I typed.Oliver has gone away for, like, five seconds and I am eating takeaway in my pants.
Bridge responded immediately: HOW IS OLIVER??? I EHARD ABOUT HIS DAD :(:(
Trying to talk about someone’s dead parents in all caps created tonal issues that even I was sensitive to. I think he’s okay. He’s not really talking to me.
Why, asked Priya,is there takeaway in your pants?
I’m in my pants. The takeaway is in my mouth.
If I come round to be supportive and shit, will you at least put trousers on?
HES SAD HE DOESN’T HAVE TO WAER TORUSERS IF HE’S SAD
Sorry—that was James Royce-Royce—James can’t make it because he’s at the restaurant and I can’t make it because I have to look after Baby J.
BRING JBABY J IT’LL BE CUTE. LUC CAN’T BE SAD IF THERE’S A BABY1!!!!
For someone who knew me better than anyone, sometimes Bridge didn’t know me at all.
Nobody is taking my baby boy to Luc’s flat—that was James Royce-Royce somehow texting from a professional kitchen—he’ll crawl into a pile of laundry and die.
My flat is clean these days, I protested.
An incredulous digital silence followed. Then a message popped up from Priya:Only because you don’t live there.
That was depressingly close to the truth. Keeping the flat clean by the cunning strategy of staying full-time at Oliver’s had worked remarkably well, but I’d been back for four days now and it was four days in which I had done approximately zero washing up.
