Page 82 of How Much Wine Will Fix My Broken Heart?
Sounds about right. I continue to push Joe’s stroller and move on to the next snake, which doesn’t seem to want to make an appearance. Or maybe he’s that big twig?
‘I sometimes walk around this place and realise I only know where half these countries are because Tom went to them. São Tomé and Principe. It’s one of thirteen countries on the Equator, did you know that?’
‘Was that where he went dune surfing?’ Doug asks.
‘No, I think that was where he went scuba diving and stepped on a lionfish,’ I say.
I hear Doug chuckling in the darkness. All that travel was Tom’s greatest achievement. He kept tallies, religiously checked his passport to count for stamps and visas, and he’d study maps when we were together, plan trips. He’d watch YouTube videos of trains and treks, work out the cheapest and best ways to get places. He had such an intense wanderlust to get out there and see the world, to experience it and breathe in some different air, watch the sun circle another sky. I used to get him to tell me all his stories at night when I wanted to go to sleep. Tell me about that time you went to Namibia, the story with the bus, and he’d give you gorgeous nuanced details of dirt roads, landscapes that looked like they were painted onto skies and heat so hot his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. They were the best stories to fall asleep with.
‘He got about, eh?’ Doug says.
‘That he did.’
Doug wanders over, putting his hands in his pockets like he does. Like he’s shoving all his emotion back in those pockets or else he’ll be a little bit lost. I never know how to make things right for Doug. He lost his wingman. I feel that so empathetically yet I also never want to tell him how to grieve; that journey is his own. I urge him to sit down on a bench next to me.
‘Joyce asked if we were free tomorrow morning. She said there was something on and she didn’t feel she could face it. She was a bit vague,’ he says.
‘I can be free. We can do it together?’ I suggest.
He high fives me, in a very un-Doug kind of way.
‘OK then, Americano. That’s new.’
He looks at his hand and opens his fingers up and down.
‘Yeah, it’s the guys from work. It’s all we do – high five and call each other “dude”. Tom would find it lamely hysterical.’ He’s not wrong. ‘Is there anything else I need to do for the day? Please use me so I can feel helpful. Are you talking? Joyce tells me the Aussie ex-girlfriend is reading a poem,’ he continues, slightly horrified.
‘Yes, Ellie has written something for the occasion but, no, I’m not speaking.’
I guess it would be customary for the widow to do so but I never have. Even at the funeral, I couldn’t eulogise my own husband. I wasn’t sure what people wanted to hear. He was taken from me before his time. Every ounce of my being ached. Cancer could go fuck itself. My words would have seethed with anger, I’d have finished it with a mic drop – not even that, I’d have thrown that mic like a javelin and stormed off. That would have been the eulogy, a winning tribute. I am trying to gauge if that’s judgement or disappointment in Doug’s look.
‘You should say something…’ he says softly. ‘You can imagine Tom looking on at you and having a laugh because it would make you feel so incredibly uncomfortable.’
The comment makes me chuckle. That it would.
‘I like how Tom did that, constantly,’ Doug carries on. ‘He’d push us out of our comfort zones whether we liked it or not. Do you know one thing he did for me before he died? He used to give me pep talks. When I was browbeaten and life and love had got the better of me, I used to call him, and wherever he was he’d sit down and put the world to rights. He was like my own personal life coach. He’d literally shout at me for not having any belief in myself. I think he gave me one of those speeches in the middle of a crowded train. Anyway, he recorded one for me before he died. I keep it on my phone for the hard days.’
I tear up slightly, my hand gripping my nephew’s stroller.
‘I have anxiety attacks sometimes that I’ll lose it so I’ve saved it to about five devices. It’s irreplaceable. Did he do one for you?’
‘He did,’ I whisper, taking a deep breath. ‘It’s him reciting the words of “Always On My Mind”.’
It was our wedding song. It’s a three-minute sound recording of him reciting it like a poem. He laughs in the middle. He takes a long pause at the end before he switches the off button. I save it for the very bad days, the ones when I feel like I’m forgetting him, when nothing but the sound of his voice will do. To say it out loud, though, seems to numb my face, that all too familiar emotion rising to the surface of pain – real physical pain. It can be like that sometimes, grief. It seems to play like a song where the high notes come crashing down to absolute lows and you don’t know how to scale back up them again.
Doug senses it immediately and wraps his body around mine. It’s warm and familiar. He’d do this all the time when I went to visit him in New York. After I got run over by the rollerblader, had my phone stolen, got off my tits on drugs and then ate the bad hot dog, we used to sit there in Doug’s flat looking at reruns ofSeinfeldwithout saying a word. He knew there was no city big or bright enough that was ever going to help me. I just needed canned laughter, four walls and big Doug hugs. Oh, and bagels. I got through a lot of bagels.
‘I’ve upset you, I’m sorry, G,’ he whispers. ‘Let’s hang out while I’m here. I want to see you, chat and walk around this old city again with one of my bestest friends. I’m renting an apartment in Clifton.’
‘You’re renting a flat, Doug. You’ve gone American on me, again.’
‘Never. Also… and don’t hate me for this…’
‘Yes?’
‘I think I may have slept with your sister, the pregnant one. I mean, I didn’t get her pregnant. This was a while ago and I knew I’d slept with one of the sisters, but is it terrible that I never knew which one?’
He pulls a face at me and I laugh loudly, the sound echoing around that empty reptile house, possibly waking up the geckos.
