A Secret Life

By robink
- 686 reads
Garry took a cold beer from the refrigerator and looked for the
opener. It wasn't on the top where it lived. She must have tidied it
away. Since she'd been around the house everything was put away and
since she left Garry hadn't had the energy to get things back the way
he liked them. Maybe she'd come back anyway, so if he made the place a
mess she could use that as a reason for going again. Yoyo girl Mandy
was never too sure of her own mind. When Garry tried to open a drawer,
he remembered why he liked things left out on the work surfaces. His
sausage fingers wouldn't fit under the handle lip. The nicks on his
fingertips made it too sore to struggle so he put down his beer and
went to fetch his toolbox. Then he remembered that Brian Chosen
borrowed the flat screwdriver from the toolkit in his van last Thursday
and still didn't give it back. It was lucky that almost all the modern
pumps he got to look at had tamper proof bolts that took a special key,
but no luck for getting a beer.
There might be a flat in the toolbox he kept in the airing cupboard for
house jobs. That would save a trip outside too. He didn't want to get
his boots back on just to get a beer. He looked at the beer. It was
sweating. He picked it up, wiped the water beads from the glass and
looked inside it. It looked good in there, cool and green, bubbles
floating past. Mandy said if he didn't drink so many they could afford
a pool, but who needed a pool outside taking up the garden, and growing
algae in the sun when he could take pleasure in a glass? Or he soon
would.
He got out the vacuum cleaner, the ironing board, clothes rack, and two
boxed games they had played during the long dark hours she made him
stay in. There was the rug that had been on the living room floor until
she'd made him buy a new one. There was also a shoebox but the toolkit
wasn't there. The shoebox wasn't his although it was for a man's shoes,
two sizes larger than his own. Garry pulled in out into the hall
catching his head on the drying rail. He sat down cross-legged on the
carpet and flipped the lid off the box.
Inside were photos. The one on top was of smiling Mandy in a white
wedding dress hugging the arm of a gangly man in a badly fitting grey
suit. Garry stood straight up and started pacing. The house was one of
those where every room had a door leading to the next, so you could do
a circle. Garry did three laps before he stopped at the airing
cupboard. Even looking down on the photograph he could see how happy
her eyes were. Garry couldn't recall ever seeing happiness in her eyes
like that when she looked at him. She didn't look much younger than
when she'd slammed the door on Friday night. He'd never asked if she'd
been married, or if she still was, he'd always assumed she wasn't. "I
suppose it doesn't much matter," he told his house. Garry looked at the
groom. Despite his size, he seemed faint, as if he wasn't there, or
Garry couldn't see him properly. His face was indistinct and seemed to
dissolve when you looked at it closely. He wouldn't recognise him if
the groom walked down the street. It occurred to Garry the groom could
be living across the street. Mandy could have smiled at him everyday as
they turned out of the drive, but those anonymous features would never
have registered. He tried to think what the guy across the street
looked like but he couldn't so he kicked out at the shoebox.
All the contents went scurrying across the hall. There were papers as
well as photos, letters and trinkets, a plastic bride and groom, a
plastic key numbered 21, a dried leaf that had broken in two, a locket.
Garry sighed and gathered it all up into the box. One side had torn
where he kicked it, so he carried it like a baby to the kitchen table,
set it down and pulled up a stool.
There was a torn half photo of a woman with Mandy's smile comforting a
girl. She must be Mandy's mother. Maybe the girl was Mandy's sister.
Garry only knew one reason for tearing up a family portrait. His mother
tore his father off their photos too. Everyone's family snaps were the
same. Even when they weren't torn apart, the family was missing the
person behind the lens, as if they never existed. He picked up one of
the letters. Confident square capitals on a peach envelope and a frank
he couldn't read. He slipped the heavy sheets from their tomb and
started to read. "My sweetest Mandy," it began. He needed a beer.
Sweat covered the whole of the bottle. It had gone warm already so he
tossed it back in the refrigerator and pulled a cold bottle from the
carton. He double-checked where the opener should be but it still
wasn't there and the drawer wasn't coming any easier. He banged the top
on the edge of the sink a couple of times, there was a sudden hiss, and
beer started spraying everywhere. Foam sprayed over his shirt, onto his
trousers and down the drainer. He threw the bottle into the sink and
the beer popped and fizzed, propelling it in crazy circles around the
plughole. He got the dishcloth, dabbed at his trousers and when the
bottle had finished dancing, he wiped it down too. The top was still
firmly on and most the beer had gone. He tipped it over a glass and a
dribble came out. He kept tipping and dribbling for a while, but he
needed a drink badly so he held the neck of the bottle over the drainer
and smashed it down.
The letter had been smugly watching his antics as if the hand that
owned the confident square writing was standing there saying, "Well
Garry, who do you think the lady wants? The man she married or the
drunk who can't open a bottle without slicing his own hand?"
Garry pointed his bandaged hand at the invisible man, "I can't see you.
You don't exist, so get out of my house and leave my girl alone." Garry
didn't like speaking much, especially to people with smart handwriting
who wrote love letters, and he felt especially proud to have said that,
even if it was in an empty house to an invisible man. "I'm going to
read all about you," he added, "Then you'll not be so invisible."
Some words in the letter Garry didn't understand, but it also had some
words that shocked him. They were the kind of words he only ever used
if a pump was being difficult, not words he could ever write for a
woman to read. The letter described a weekend the writer had spent with
Mandy up in the mountains. The writer wrote explicitly about the time
they shared in their cabin, and outside it. Even the passages that
didn't describe intimate moments were loaded with double meanings. He'd
signed 'Your faithful Surgeon' instead of a name at the bottom of the
third page. What was Mandy doing with a surgeon? He had written a PS
explaining what he would like to do when they next met that left Garry
shaking. He held the letter up against the wedding photo and tried to
decide if the writer was the invisible man, but the writer seemed
confident in his words, and the invisible man looked timid. Garry
looked at the invisible man's hands to see if they were blurred but
they were not. He took a swig of beer, swilled it round his mouth and
strained it through his teeth. He stuck out his tongue and picked the
grains of glass off with his finger. Then he picked up another
envelope.
The next letter was on cheap paper, torn from a writing pad and folded
many times. He opened it out and smoothed it down. On the page were
three ink drawings, caricatures of a woman who looked like a younger
Mandy with a cartoon boy. Next to each drawing, there was a title, a
paragraph of spidery text and a square box. Ticks had been drawn in
each of the boxes in a different colour pen. By the final box, there
was also a row of exclamation marks.
He put the letter down on the table and spread the rest of the pile
out. He drank the rest of the beer down to the dregs. He got up,
crossed the room, took the waste bin out from under the sink and placed
it in the middle of the floor. Then he took an armful of the letters
and stood by the bin counting them in. Some of them had the same
handwriting, but not many. Several of them had red hearts or little
messages on the back of the envelope. He read a few but that was all.
He did look at each of the photos. Each one showed grinning Mandy
holding a different man. He dropped each item into the bin. He swept
the remainder on the table together and did the same. Halfway through
he found the letter with the confident writing and he let the rest drop
into the bin.
The envelope twisted to tube in his fist, a bulging mouth that he
offered up to the gas ring. The blue flame washed over the weave until
the fire found a finger hold and leapt into the crevices of ripped
paper, smouldering the edges to black. A smell of roasting peach filled
his nostril and it burst alight. He held the lighted corner down, to
let the flame gather impetus. When he could feel the heat on his
fingers, he snatched the torch across the room and into the bin. He
waited, but nothing happened. His hand was burnt, nails blackened.
Shaking it didn't stop the pain. He turned on the sink tap, flicking
his fingers through the stream until it ran cold. A sharp acrid smell
caught his nose and he turned to see the bin erupt in flame and thick
billowing smoke. An alarm started. Mandy had said, if you don't quit
smoking, you'll kill yourself in bed. She made him fit an alarm and now
it rang her smug praises. He pushed at the backdoor but it was locked.
He fumbled with the key while the kitchen filled with a cloud that
clawed at his lungs. When the key wouldn't turn, he shoulder barged the
door and fell into the garden in an explosion of smoke and splintering
wood.
The air outside was filled with frost that stung his lungs as it purged
the smoke. He lay on the grass listening to the alarm. It sounded like
her laughter. From down there the pool excavations towered above him
like giant molehills. "Why can't you get someone to dig the pool Garry?
You're going to kill yourself digging that hole." Later she'd said,
"Please come in darling, your dinner's spoiled." She hadn't understood
why he needed to hollow out the deep end himself. "I swear, if you pick
up another shovel full, it will be your grave," she said about one in
the morning. During the summer, the mornings had started early, there
was enough light to work through the night. In the winter starlight,
the abandoned works were frozen monuments to his frantic efforts to
make her stay. He wanted to knock them down now. The woman in the
shoebox was not the woman he dug the ground for. The woman's eyes did
not burn for him. Her laughter had turned to alarm. He wanted to fill
the hole.
The smoke had stopped but the ringing had not. It wasn't the smoke
alarm anymore. It was the phone. He pulled himself to his feet, ignored
the mud clumped on this knees and elbows, and walked back into the
kitchen, picking up speed as the rings got quicker. Soot covered the
kitchen ceiling, the lino tiles had curled up and shrivelled, and all
that remained of the bid was a blue pool on the floor. The phone was
shaking off its hook. He picked it up.
"Don't hang up."
"Mandy."
"I'm going to say what I have to say then I'm going to put the phone
down ok. Just listen to what I have to say."
"Mandy, I.."
"Don't. It's too late for all that. This is how it's going to be. Are
you listening?"
"I burnt your things."
"You're drunk Gary. I have my things. You've been drinking but that's
up to you now. I tried to make you stop. I gave you every chance. All
you did was dig the back lawn. I don't want to get into that now. It's
over."
"I know about them Mandy."
"Are you hearing me? It's over. I decided today. I'm not coming
back."
"I know about your men. I know you're married."
There was silence inside the receiver. Garry could hear the lapping of
static, ghosts of whispers echoing from the neighbourhood. He heard a
car pass by the other end of the line. It was a line, he thought, a
physical connection that held them together. If the line broke, should
it snap, fray, or burn like a fuse, they would be cast adrift from each
over, momentum speeding them in opposite directions. She would go soon
and that would be the end of the line.
"I found the shoebox."
"You read my letters?"
"I read some of them. I counted how many men."
"You make it sound torrential. You have to think about the time. My
whole lifetime."
"You loved him, your husband?"
"Yes, at the time. Yes I did."
"More than me?"
"Different. It's always different. How can you compare love?"
"So, you did love me?"
"I did for a time."
"But I did everything you wanted. I did everything."
"I know Garry, I know. You tried everything. I just got
distracted."
"Distracted?"
"I'm living with someone. He moved down south last month and I missed
him more than I wanted to be with you. He's good to me. That's why I
rang. I'm staying with him."
Gary ran his hand through his hair over and over. "You're not coming
back."
"No Garry, I'm not. Say, can you post my box of letters? You can write
me one yourself if you like. Remind me what it was like." She gave him
an address that he wrote in the soot on the cupboard by the
phone.
Then she said, "I'm going now," and he heard the click of the receiver
being put down and the line became a point. He hung on for a while to
see if he could hear her footsteps walking away but it was pointless.
He needed a beer so he went to the refrigerator, drew a white heart in
the black, and pulled out a bottle. It was warm. He twisted the
thermostat. Maybe the pump had gone. He tugged the cabinet and peered
down the side to see the pump. It looked ok. It was plugged in. On the
wire coiled behind the plug perched a bottle opener with a dancer for
its body. He fished it out, opened the bottle and swigged warm beer. He
knelt on the floor by the bin and started pulling paper ashes from the
blue plastic.
---This is an early version of this story + I would really appreciate
your comments. One or two words will do. Thanks ---
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