Page 26 of Someone Else's Shoes
He sighs, then says, his voice low and confidential, ‘In my experience, it’s worth looking at the assistant.’
‘His assistant?’ she says, her skin prickling. ‘But –’
‘Young, pretty?’
She thinks of Charlotte with her glowing skin and immaculate, sleeked-back ponytail. Her bland smile whenever Nisha walked into the office.
‘The assistant knows the husband’s every need, every want, and every movement. They also know where the money goes.I am very sorry to say, Mrs Cantor, but in the vast majority of cases that’s where you’ll find your explanation. I hope very much that you’re able to sort this out, and of course I’m always here for you.’
‘If I can get a retainer,’ she says.
‘If you can get a retainer.’
He ends the call abruptly, as someone who charges eight hundred dollars an hour but isn’t getting paid for this particular communication is wont to do. And Nisha is left sitting on the flammable bedspread breathing heavily into the silence.
9
Sam arrives home at 3.30 p.m., her headache resolutely refusing to lift. The dog greets her with the slightly pained and bug-eyed demeanour of a creature who desperately needs to empty his bladder. As she clips the lead to Kevin’s collar, without even removing her coat, she hears the television in the living room and feels a flash of irritation. Would it really be so hard for him just to get up and walk the dog for fifteen minutes? Would it? God knows he does nothing else to help around the house these days.
‘Has Kevin been out?’ she says carefully, although she knows the answer.
‘Oh,’ Phil says, turning to look at her like the dog’s needs are a surprise. ‘No.’
She waits for a moment.
‘How’s Andrea?’ he says.
‘On the mend. Please God.’
He sighs heavily, as if Andrea’s woes merely add to his own burden, and gives her a small, unconvincing smile before turning back to the television. Sometimes this smile makes her sad. Today it makes her want to scream.
‘I’ll take Kevin, shall I?’ she says, when his gaze returns to the television.
‘Sure,’ he says, as if that were the only sensible option. ‘You’ve got your coat on.’
She leaves the house with a low hum of rage ringing in her ears.You shouldn’t leave him alone so much, her mother had toldher the previous week.I mean, it’s hard for a man not being the main breadwinner. He’s bound to feel sorry for himself.
Men of that age are surprisingly fragile, their GP had said.I do believe women are the much tougher of the species.He had said it like he expected her to take it as a compliment.
You’re a bit moody these days, Mum, her daughter had said.Shouldn’t you think about taking HRT or something?
No, I’m not tougher. I’m not moodier, she wanted to yell at them.I’m just bloody tired. But if I give up and lie on the sofa all day the whole damn thing will fall apart at the seams.
She scolds Kevin, who dawdles outside the neighbours’ house, sniffing endlessly at the base of their privet. Then she feels guilty because none of this is poor Kevin’s fault, crouches down and throws her hands around his fat neck, whispering, ‘Sorry, darling, I’m so sorry,’ until she looks up and sees Jed from number 72 staring at her like she’s finally lost her marbles.
She walks all the way to the canal because she cannot think what to do if she’s at home, ignoring the couples who walk arm in arm, scowling at the cyclists who force her onto the side of the path. Cat is working this afternoon. She seems to have a portfolio of part-time jobs – barista, delivery girl, waitress (‘It’s making the gig economy work for you, Mum. You don’t want to be dependent on just one job.’) – and Sam knows that if she stays at home she will either have to sit with Phil in the dead-aired, enervating living room, or start one of the 148 tasks that need doing in the house that everyone else seems to believe are her responsibility. If she does this, she will be seething, her rage barely suppressed, within minutes. And then she will hate herself for it, because depression is no one’s fault. As she has never had it, she reminds herself, she cannot fully understand the compulsion to do nothing. Or perhaps the lack of compulsion to do anything. Either way, at least ifshe’s walking Kevin she can feel like she’s done something – and boosted her step count while she’s at it.
She recalls a philosophy teacher asking her class, ‘How many of the decisions you make each day are because you actually want to do something, and how many are to avoid the consequences of not doing it?’ Nearly everything she does these days is just to stop something else happening. If she doesn’t keep her steps up she will get fat. If she doesn’t walk the dog he will wee in the hall. Sometimes Sam feels she has been so conditioned to be useful every minute of every day that there is almost nothing she does in which she is not simultaneously keeping a subconscious tally.
Do men hear this constant inner voice, telling them constantly to strive to be better, to be productive, to be useful? Even when Phil was happier he was mostly oblivious to the towel rail that had half come out of the bathroom wall, the pile of socks that needed sorting on the washing-machine, the crumbs on the floor, the fridge that really needed its shelves wiped before they all died of penicillin poisoning.
She finds herself wondering absently if Joel does things. She pictures him changing a toilet roll without being asked, his expression cheery, no hint ofI changed the toilet roll for you, babeon his lips. Like some kind of fantasy man. And then she thinks of dancing with him the previous night, the heat of his hands on her waist, and flushes with guilty pleasure.He’s sweet on you, Marina had said, and she finds herself mentally counting all the nice things he has said to her before deciding she’s being ridiculous and pushes the thought of him away.
She pulls Kevin out of the path of another rampaging cyclist who rings his bell and swears as he whooshes past (she wants to yell at him but she once read a newspaper story about a woman who was pushed into the canal after protesting to a cyclist so she stays quiet). She remembers, with ajolt, she hasn’t taken that kitbag back to the fancy gym. Will the owner have alerted the police about the missing designer clothes? She thinks about the list of things she has to get through in the rest of her day: pick up her father’s prescription and drop it round to her parents, stopping for a cup of tea so they don’t complain that they never see her, sort out the pile of washing on the upstairs landing, defrost the freezer because the door has stopped closing, go through the pile of bills on the side that she has put off all week. She checks her watch. She’ll take the bag back before work on Monday. Another job to squeeze into her already packed day.
Then she thinks about Andrea, who has nothing in her day except time in which to contemplate the abyss she has been staring into for months. And then she feels guilty for complaining about anything.
I need a holiday, she thinks. And that thought makes her think of the camper-van. She puts her head down and trudges towards home.
