Is For Life: Chapter Eleven: Seizures and Sexploits

Chapter Eleven

She was at the sink using the crash-dishes-together-angrily, method of washing the pots. She was drunk, but not ridiculously so. He’d had more than her. Since getting home he’d swerved the food and had gone straight for the whiskey. He wasn’t a big drinker, neither of them were. Coping with Sammy was hard, coping with Sammy with a hangover to boot would be impossible.

They’d learned this early on in their parenthood and, since, rarely drank alcohol. They rarely had the opportunity. Shelly swayed, John should have been on his back, but he was still upright, his words, when he’d bothered to use any, were only slightly slurred. He seemed almost unaffected by the drink. The tension that John had brought in with him, behaved like a yobbish uninvited gatecrasher. The icing on the how-to-throw-a-shitty-party, cake was when Shelly had been called upstairs because Sammy was having a seizure.

John had kicked the bathroom door in to get to him. Her lovely party had unravelled and had gone tits up; she knew it was going to from the moment that she’d just plonked her two trees in the corner of the patio. It was the herald of disaster. To carry off the act of being the perfect party host, the perfect wife, best mother, devil in the bedroom—angel in the kitchen façade, you had to pay attention to detail. Shelly had let the details get away from her. The party had soon disbanded and the guests left amid awkward, double cheek kisses and random platitudes.

Sammy had tried very hard to maintain his evening routine. He’d gone upstairs at nine, as he always did, but he’d had to wait for the bathroom to be free, as he usually didn’t. People were using both the upstairs and the downstairs bathrooms. This upset him, the downstairs bathroom was for guests and the upstairs bathroom was just for Samuel May, John May and Shelly May. As Dave, John’s colleague, came out and left the door open behind him, it was one indignity too much for Sammy.

Apart from that, he hadn’t heard water running. David Moss hadn’t washed his hands. Sammy didn’t like open doors, they were untidy, ugly. Doors should be kept closed, apart from when you walked through them, which was the way that it should be. Dave passed him on the landing while Sammy chanted a list of germs and bacteria and plaited his fingers together in perpetual motion.

‘Hey Sammy, great party, eh, bud?’ Sammy didn’t answer as Dave went by. He didn’t even lift his head, but as the man spoke to him, Sammy’s hand came up all by itself and hit Dave hard on the top of his arm.

Sammy went into the bathroom without touching any handles and locked the door behind him by pulling his sleeve down over his hand. He left Dave with his mouth still open in shock. Sammy took his shirt off, being careful not to let the contaminated sleeve come into contact with his body, and threw it on the floor.

He filled the sink to have a wash. He felt uncomfortable, vulnerable, he didn’t like being half naked when there were so many people in the house. He’d put soap on his sponge and was vigorously rubbing his left armpit when he heard footsteps pounding up the stairs.

He panicked.

Somebody tried the bathroom door and found it locked, they continued to rattle it and a woman’s voice shouted, ‘Come on dude, piss or get off the pot, there’s a damn about to burst out here.’

It was Marlene Taylor, Robert Taylor’s mother, from school. She’d left Robert Taylor at home. Sammy wished that she’d stayed at home with Robert Taylor and wasn’t rattling his bathroom door and shouting bad words while Sammy had his shirt off and frothy soap all over his body.

He tried to wash the soap off quickly, but quickly wasn’t Sammy’s way. He had to do it thoroughly. He had to rinse himself and wash his flannel off, three times, and then he had to wash his sponge that he’d used to put the soap on, ‘Sponge on, flannel off,’ he chanted it to himself like a mantra. He had to be really careful that his things were properly clean otherwise bits of soap got stuck in the middle of the sponge and made a horrible slimy blob. He still had to brush his teeth yet.

The door rattled again. ‘Come on man, what you doing in there, playing with yourself? Is that you, Dave?’

Sammy had stopped moving. He still had the flannel in his hands. His eyes were erratic, his knees buckled, and the world fell away from him.

He’d hit his head on the edge of the sink and had the makings of a black eye. It had been touch and go as to whether to take him to hospital or not but Pauline had been a nurse until she’d retired. She’d checked him for concussion before letting him go to bed. Sammy was fine, but the mood of the party wasn't.

John had come into the kitchen and had his back against one of the counters at the other side of the room; he watched Shelly crash and bang. The silence drew out between them, both too stubborn to be the first to speak, John, not knowing how he would begin if he did speak. She could see him reflected in the blackness of the window.

He raised his hand, ran it through his hair. He needed a haircut. She made a mental note to book him an appointment the next day. He dropped his arm to clutch behind him at the unit, as though it was holding him up, supporting him physically and emotionally.

‘Shelly, I’m leaving you. I’m sorry.’ His hand came up and went through his hair again; the limb full of nervous energy.

Just like that, only one little sentence. There was no preamble, no lead up, just wham, straight in there. Kaboom.

She was washing a champagne flute though there had been no bubbly on offer that night, only supermarket wine, bought in bulk, in a box. She had the nylon brush inside the glass, twisting it briskly, wishing it was bigger and made of barbed wire, wishing it was up John’s arse, twisting hard and causing him pain, hurting him.

She stopped, everything became still. John’s hand had stopped mid hair rub. Shelly’s hand had stopped mid glass scrub. The only indication that a switch hadn’t been thrown to momentarily stop the world was the noise of the kitchen clock. It was loud in the silence and the steady motion of the second hand, moving around its mechanised central pivot, an indicator that, even with an emotional bombshell like that, life goes on.

‘What about Sammy?’

He smiled, it was a sad, resigned smile, ‘And that’s exactly why I’m leaving you. Never mind Sammy, what about you, Shelly? What about you? How do you feel about it?’

She ignored the question. ‘So you weren’t at work today?’

‘No.’

‘You lied to me. I can’t believe that you lied to me and then went on lying after I asked you for the truth. We don’t tell lies to each other. I trusted you. Is there somebody else?’
‘No. Of course not. Don’t be so stupid.’ Her husband was about to walk out on them. Wasn’t it natural to assume that she had been replaced? And yet he thought that she was being stupid. Stupid little housewife, Shelly May.

‘Why are you leaving, then?’

‘I can’t do it anymore, Shelly. I can’t live like this anymore. He’s suffocating me, killing me.’ He banged his fist on the counter making her jump. She finished washing the glass that was still in her hand and she put it on the draining board. She had no excuse now to keep her back towards him like a shield. She turned to face him, hating this, hating him.

‘Sammy, hasn’t changed, he’s just the same as he’s always been.’

‘I’ve changed. I want more. His voice, Shelly, his damned voice, it’s in my head morning, noon and night. Even when I’m at work I can’t escape it. It’s there, pecking away at me, making me dread coming home. Do you know I hate walking through that door at night? I’d stay at work if I could.’

‘Poor John, poor you, poor you, poor you,’ her voice had risen. ‘He can’t help it. How can you blame him for something that he can’t help? How can you make what Sammy is, all about being sorry for you? You’re pathetic, a weak pathetic man.’

‘If you could see the look of contempt on your face, you’d know why I’ve got to leave. There’s nothing left Shelly. You know it as well as I do. One of us has to do something before we completely destroy each other. One of us has to be brave enough, Shelly.’

‘My hero, so I was wrong, you aren’t weak after all. I can see it now; you’re just doing this for us. You’re so strong, so brave and selfless. You’re my fucking superhero you pathetic, weak, bastard. You leave if you want to but don’t you dare, don’t you ever fucking dare blame us for this. You’re leaving because you’re an emotional fucking coward, yellow to the fucking core.’

‘I expected that kind of reaction. You’re nasty when you’re drunk.’

She opened her mouth to throw more abusive words at him and he held up his hand to stop her. ‘Let me finish. I need to do this now, or I probably never will.’ She swallowed down her next attack. ‘I don’t blame Sammy. I blame me. I can’t cope with him, Shelly. It’s the same old words, isn’t it? It’s the same argument that we had last month and the month before and the month before that. We could put it on a recorder and just play it back, this one and of course the baby argument. I’m not a fucking saint, Shelly; I can’t do it like you can.’

He picked up his glass; there was still a drop of whiskey at the bottom, the ice melted away to nothing. He slugged it back and grimaced. ‘Want to hear something new? Shall I tell you something that I’ve never said before?’

‘Oh why not, go on, enlighten me. Tell me more about poor old John. Life is so hard for you, isn’t it, baby? Give me all of your self pity. Make me feel sorry for you. I fucking dare you?’

He ignored the taunts and continued, ‘Just lately, it’s got harder. All these thoughts come into my head. I don’t want them there. I try not to think them but it’s impossible to tell your mind what to think. They’re ugly, nasty thoughts, Shelly, and I just can’t stop them.’

He took a breath, looked at his empty glass as though it might have magically refilled, and carried on talking, ‘He starts on and I want to take my fist,’ he made a fist and held it up in front of him, his face contorted into an ugly expression of anger and violence, ‘and I want to smash it in his face. I want to hit him and keep on hitting him until he just shuts up.’ He was screaming at her, spittle flying from the corners of his mouth.

‘Then it’s best that you do leave. We don’t need you.’ He was ranting, but she had calmed. She was quiet, her voice dull, a little voice in an expansive room.

‘I know.’ His eyes welled with tears while Shelly was dry-eyed and empty. ‘You never have needed me.’

‘You are seeing somebody else, aren’t you? I know you, John. You can’t manage on your own. You won’t leave as long as I’m here doing your washing, making your meals, ironing your shirts. You wouldn’t leave unless you already had somebody to do all of those things for you. Who is she?’

‘There isn’t anybody.’

‘Who is she?’

‘Shelly, this is about us, you, me and Sammy, it doesn’t concern anybody else. There isn’t anybody.’

‘Liar,’ she spat. His hands were
trembling. He was shaking his head as though he couldn’t understand what was happening to him. Shelly had never felt clearer. ‘Who is she?’

He shrank; right there in front of her eyes he caved in on himself, became smaller, stooped and weary. He looked so very tired. ‘Somebody from work. Marion. You don’t know her.’

Shelly cancelled the mental note about the hair appointment. She wouldn’t be arranging it for him now. He had Marion do to that for him.

‘Marion,’ she tested the word out for the first time to see how it fit in her mouth. She was surprised that it fit just like any other word. ‘I hope you waited long enough to ask her if she had any handicapped children before you fucked her.’

And then, with one sentence, he destroyed her.

‘She’s pregnant.’

And she knew what he meant about taking his fist and smashing it into somebody’s face, she hadn’t before. He could stop talking now. She’d heard enough. She-wanted-him-to-just-shut-up.

‘That’s why I had to go out today. She had a scare, started bleeding, thought she was going to lose the baby.’ His hand swept through his hair and then dropped to his side. The movement was faster now. It was as though he needed to be doing something. There had to be some movement in the stillness. He raised both palms and spread them in front of her in a calming gesture. ‘It’s okay though. She’s all right. The baby’s all right, I mean.’ He let his breath out in a whoosh.

As if she fucking cared. What planet was he on? Why would she have one ounce of sympathy for the woman who was stealing her husband? Did he honestly believe that she cared about his unborn brat? She wished the little bastard would die. She wished it was in a bucket waiting to be incinerated.

Leaving them was one thing, but replacing his damaged child with a normal one, wiping the slate clean as though he could just start again from scratch, that was too much for her to take. She wished Marion and Baby Perfect dead.

It was coming. She felt it rise and couldn’t do anything to stop it. It might have been the drink, might have been something else, a dodgy burger, maybe. Or it might just have been the news that her husband was leaving her for another woman, a pregnant woman. She clamped her hand over her mouth and ran from the room slamming the door to the downstairs bathroom behind her.

Lurching over, she emptied sixteen years of marriage into the toilet bowl.