Page 68 of We All Live Here
“Oh. So this is about Marja. I see.” Dan is taking the whole family up north to see his parents. A lovely blended family trip. How perfectly cozy. Lila feels her calm resolve start to leach away.
“It’s not just about Marja, Lils.”
“Don’t call me Lils.”
“Why? Why are you being like this?”
“Because ‘Lils’ implies an intimacy we no longer have.”
He sighs. He has this way of engaging with her as if he’s at the end ofhis tether, dealing with an irrational madwoman. “Okay. Lila. Please can I take the kids this weekend. You can have them next weekend and the weekend after.”
She takes a moment to consider how helpful she wants to be. “Fine by me. But you’ll have to ask Celie. She has her own plans these days.”
“Well, anything she wants to do she can just do from mine?”
“I’m not saying she can’t. I’m saying it might be wise to ask her. She’s practically an adult.”
“Fine. I’ll ask her.” There is a short pause, and Lila prepares to put the phone down.
“Oh, and I was wondering if I could pop round this week to pick up some of the baby stuff from the garage.”
“What?”
“The old cot and baby seat for the car. I think there’s some other stuff in those boxes too. I’m going to need them soon.”
Lila is poleaxed by the casual sense of entitlement. “But—they’re not yours.”
“They’re as much mine as they are yours.”
“Dan, they were our family things. They were our children’s. You don’t just get to come and pick them up for your new family. That’s just—that’s just—No.”
“Lila, you’re being ridiculous. What do you need them for?”
She opens her mouth to speak but the cruelty in his comment has briefly winded her. “No,” she says finally. “You can’t have them.”
“Lila, this is nuts. I’m having a baby in a few months’ time. I have no money. You are never going to use those items again. Or, if you do,” he says with exaggerated equanimity, “it’s not likely to be for at least another year. So I’d like to come and pick upourbaby things.”
“They’re gone,” she says quickly.
“What?”
“I threw them away. When I was having a clear-out.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t care.”
“Lila, you’re being irrational and selfish. They are not your things to dispose of.”
“We had an agreement, Dan. You took everything you wanted when you left. You literally said it to me, that you were taking everything you needed, like you were telling me we were the unwanted part of that equation. You don’t get to swing by whenever you fancy it and help yourself to more.”
“I’m not ‘helping myself.’ I’m asking for the baby seat and cot that I helped pay for—items you don’t need—to look after my new baby.”
Lila’s jaw has clenched. “Sorry,” she says. “I took them to the dump ages ago.”
There is a long, loaded silence. A silence that tells her he knows she is lying, and that she knows he knows it.
Finally Dan says: “You are fucking impossible.” And puts down the phone.
