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After the wedding, after our honeymoon, when we came back and began the task of doing the house up, we were probably still equal.
It’s strange to know a house as well as I know this one, to know its guts and drainage system, to have seen inside each and every wall and under every floor. Everything needed doing: rewiring, replastering, replumbing, central heating, painting, and furnishing. I got the estimates, chose the workmen, and timetabled everything. She liked it that I did that: took control. She chose the colors and furnishings, but she was working hard at the time, so I did everything else.
Maybe the change happened after her mother died. It must change you, becoming an orphan with no parent to chastise or please, no one at the back of your mind to keep you in check.
I was downstairs just now, listening to the Mirror journalist offering the answering machine untold wealth (Alistair Garvie, from god-almighty London, where barter economies are a thing of the past and they have schools). I went off and made a cup of tea, and it occurred to me that Susie grieved differently for her mother than for her father. She was bewildered by her father’s death, stu
Maybe the change came when Susie inherited all that money. That would make you feel powerful. She must have felt that she didn’t need to be subservient to anyone. Even I felt powerful when she got it and paid off our mortgage. Just knowing that all that cash was sloshing around in the bank with my name attached to it in some tangential way made me feel strong. She got pregnant a month after her mother died, just when the money came through. Three years of trying and she gets pregnant then. She never worried about money until she inherited. We never even talked about money before, but afterward we did. We talked about little else for the duration of her pregnancy.
I still don’t know exactly when our relationship shifted in her favor, but it did, and I didn’t even notice until we were in court and I was drying my damp palms on the knees of my trousers, staring at the back of Susie’s head, wishing with all my might that she’d turn around and smile at me.
The clues were all there: her hassles at Su
She was my sweet, soft-hearted Susie, and then, quite suddenly, she was someone else.
chapter ten
WHEN I WENT BACK TO COLLECT MARGIE AT NURSERY YESTERDAY, the ta
It’s rare for people to pity me. I did well at school, had pals, wasn’t crap at sports, and got straight into medical school. I had good-looking girlfriends, met Susie, and we both graduated. Even though I didn’t go into practice, everyone knows that was because I chose not to. I don’t think they even pity me for giving up work and staying at home. The women love it because they think I’m caring. Most men my age have realized that seeing patients day after day after day isn’t the unmitigated joy they had supposed. They try to pretend that I’m missing out, but they know, most of them, that their careers will climax in a whimper of boredom. At least being at home there is a possibility that I will write something one day, something important and useful. I’m just not ready yet. I have to let the ideas form first.
Anyway, the women at nursery pitied me, and I have to say, I rather liked it. I don’t know if it’s because they’re female, so I don’t feel threatened, or if I’m too bigoted to think women could possibly challenge my position in the social hierarchy. The pity felt like a comfort, like empathy, as if they understood. Some other mums came in while I was there, and they felt sorry for me too. They all came up to talk to me and rubbed Margie’s hair, cupping my elbow and issuing distant invites to bring Margie over to play. I found myself standing bravely, nodding sadly and sighing quite a lot. My tragic tableau was spoiled when Margie bit another child on the head and we had to leave. I used to get Yeni to drop Margie off on Thursdays, but I might just go myself tomorrow.
I keep thinking about Harvey Tucker. What an utter, utter bastard. Is there any need for him to snub me now, at this moment when I couldn’t be more down? Mum phoned from Marbella this morning. I told her she didn’t need to phone every day and reminded her that it would be costing a fortune. It didn’t work. It was just the usual: more nagging and coughing and needing to be reassured.
It is just possible that Harvey Tucker has the wrong number and is leaving kind, considerate messages on someone else’s machine. I don’t ever recall his phoning here for Susie. One digit out and he could be doing that. Psychiatrists’ writing is awful, so it wouldn’t be hard to get a scribbled phone number wrong if Susie had written it down for him. But that’s crap, because I’ve left him our number every time I’ve phoned. So that’s crap. Tucker, Tucker, you motherfucker.
Yeni has gone out for the afternoon with her friends from the English class, a pimply boy who may or may not be her boyfriend and a fifty-year-old hermaphrodite woman with a jolly-hockey-sticks attitude. Margie’s having a nap now, but before she went down I got our wedding pictures out and we looked at them together. I told her the story of our wedding. About the big cake and dancing with Mummy, and the big car. She said “Vroom” and spluttered orange juice on the couch. Margie’s teeth have come in quite sharp with gaps between them. Her head is big as well, or maybe her hair is just so thin and dark that it makes her head seem unusually big and square. I hope she won’t grow up ugly.
Looking at the wedding photos, I can see nothing untoward in them. Susie’s not brandishing steak knives or anything. We are a normal happy couple, standing stiffly on church steps, in a garden, by a tree, wearing stale smiles. The photos took hours.
The whole wedding felt like it had nothing to do with us. Susie’s parents, her father really, took over. He ordered the biggest, fanciest everything, with knobs on the knobs and extra bells. Both sets of parents were beside themselves with joy; two only children, each marrying a soon-to-graduate doctor. Her parents told me several times they were pleased- even though I was a Catholic. Susie and I laughed about it behind their backs: the joke was on them because I’m a lapsed Catholic. She didn’t want to tell them about that. She said it made me seem even more dangerous.
Mr. Wilkens ordered the biggest dress, the biggest di