Angels (39 page)

and other wonderful stuff that I remembered from my child-hood—and the high spot was when Emily had a word with the DJ

and next thing, “I Will Survive” was bouncing off the mirrored walls. One of the braver blokes tried to break into our circle just when the song got to the “Go on now, go!” part, so we shouted it at him until he withdrew again, then we danced like there was no tomorrow.

I FOUND MYSELF
certainly wishing there hadn't been one the following day when Emily knocked on my door and said, “Lara's on her way over.”

“To see you?” I asked hopefully.

She gave me a funny look. “No, to see you.” She spelled the words out as if I was a moron. “Her. Girl. Friend.”

Oh Lord.

The day had begun very nicely, starting with Lou taking us both out for breakfast. Lou had arrived last night when Emily—loosened by several free complicated martinis—called him at two A.M. and invited him over. He'd arrived within twenty minutes and claimed that he'd spent the evening watching a ball game on TV and praying she'd call.

“Sheesh,” Emily had exhaled, making a meal of being disgusted by his insincerity.

Then this morning he'd taken us to Swingers, a cool, crowded diner where the ambience was vibey and flirty, even at ten o'clock in the morning—long, hot looks being exchanged over blueberry pancakes, and that was just the waiters—where he was fun, entertaining, and as nice to me as he was to Emily without in any way coming across as sleazy. He insisted on paying for us both, and on the drive home stopped at a drugstore and bought cigarettes and sweets for Emily, gave her three good suggestions for
Chip the Dog
, and told her to call him if she needed anything.

312 / MARIAN KEYES

“And I mean
anything
,” he stressed, with unmistakable meaning.

As he drove away, I had to say to Emily, “I think he's really nice.”

“Only because you've been out of the game for too long,” she said, booting up her laptop and arranging herself at the kitchen table with an ashtray, a coffee cup, and a packet of Mintos. “But he's actually evil.”

“Evil! That's terrible thing to say.”

“And it's not terrible to cold-bloodedly set out to make a woman fall for you, then do a disappearing act?”

“But are you
sure
that's what he's doing?”

“'Course I am.” She scrolled down her screen and muttered, “Now where did I get to? Oh, here we go. Chip the dog has just bitten the property developer.” She flung her face into her hands and whimpered, “I can't believe I'm writing this stuff. I hate myself!”

“Think of the money,” I replied, just like she'd told me to. “Think of all those lovely things, like being able to eat and pay rent and put gas in your car.”

“Thank you, thank you.” She began to type and everything was grand until Lara rang to say she was coming over.

Half an hour later she burst into the room, as golden and gorgeous as always, except instead of filling me with admiration, it now terrified me. She stopped at Emily's side and looked over her shoulder at the screen. “Hi, sweetheart, how's it going?”

“I've gone beyond shame, Lara. I'm a Hollywood whore.”

“Hey, who isn't? Emily, would you mind if I spent a little time with Maggie in private?”

Emily winced but managed, “Work away.”

“I know this is a little weird,” Lara said softly.

Emily just shrugged and, feeling wretched, I took Lara ANGELS / 313

into my bedroom, closed the door, and braced myself for passionate making out.

“So whatcha do last night?” she asked, moving around the bed and sitting at Emily's desk chair.

“Went to the Bilderberg Room with Connie and Debbie.”

“Sounds great!”

“Er, yes, it was. Good music.”

“Like what?”

I listed some of the songs, all the time wondering,
When is the
making out going to start
?

“I went for dinner at Shakers,” Lara said. “Up in Clear-water Canyon. Great food. You should go.”

“Okay.” The waiting had become too much to bear, so I stood up—I had to because she was quite far from me—forced her to her feet, and pulled her to me. But before I could plant my lips on hers, she'd placed the palm of her hand on my chest and straightened her arm. “No.”

“No?”

“I'm really sorry, Maggie, but I don't think we should do this.”

“'Cause of Emily being outside?”

“No. I don't think we should do it, period.”

I mouthed her words, repeating them back to myself until I got it. “You want to break up with me!”

“Um, yeah, you got it.”

“But
why
?” What was wrong with me? Why did I keep getting rejected?

She fixed me with her blue laser beams and said candidly, “I was sore after Nadia and I was curious about you. It seemed like a good idea at the time, you know…? I'm way sorry.”

“So didn't you fancy me at all?”

“Sure!”

“Since when?”

“Since…ah, since the night I found out about Nadia and you were really nice to me.”

314 / MARIAN KEYES

“Not since I first came to Los Angeles, then?” I didn't know why this was so important but it was.

“Not right away, no. See, you're a little confused right now 'cause of your marriage and Troy and I'm real sorry but I think I took advantage of you.”

“Um…”

“Like, you're great, you're really great.”

“But not great enough.”

“It's not that, it's like…I don't know how to say this…”

“I'm not your type?”

“Don't be pissed at me,” she said sadly.

Very hurt, I swallowed. “So what is your type? Girls like Nadia, I suppose.”

“Yeah, I suppose.”

“And why? She had a great body?”

Uncomfortably, Lara assented.

Now, I wasn't expecting that. I thought men made choices based purely on physical attraction, but I expected girls to be less shallow.

Doesn't a good personality count for anything anymore? I wondered bitterly.

“You've got a great body too,” Lara said, so nicely it took some of my mortification away, “but because she usta be a dancer, you know…And, like, she really took care of herself.”

“It was my nails, wasn't it?”

“It didn't help,” she admitted.

“And…” I made myself say it: “Was my…you know…bum…um, part…the wrong color?”

She shrugged. “I didn't really see it. But, Maggie, it's not about that. I'm pretty sure your natural inclination is not to be with girls…”

There, she'd said it.

“…and I swear to you that if I didn't break up with you, you'd break up with me real soon.”

I paused, wondering if I should play the pity card or go for pride.

Pride won. “Actually, I wanted to do it today, but I didn't know how.”

ANGELS / 315

“
What
?” she said sharply. “And here I am feeling totally like the worst person ever!”

“Yes.” All at once the silliness of the situation struck home and I began to laugh. “Tell me, Lara, tell me honestly, was I terrible?”

She stared at me and a smile creased her face as she filled up with mirth. “No, but I've gotta say I've had better.”

“Me too.”

And suddenly we exploded into convulsions, huge belly laughs of relief and liberation and the full-on insanity of it all.

When we eventually quieted down I said, “But we'll still be friends, right?” And that was enough to start us all over again.

“Keep Wednesday night free,” she said before she left. “For the premiere of
Doves
.”

When the door had shut behind her, I cornered Emily. “I've good news for you. It's all off with me and Lara.”

She stopped her frantic typing. “What happened?”

“She broke it off with me. Says I'm not her type.”

“So what's the story? You hate her now like you hate Troy, and every time she comes over here you'll stick a fork in her leg?”

Aghast, my heart pounded. “No, we're friends.”

“That's a relief.”

“Emily, I'm sorry.”

“For what?”

“Sleeping with all your friends. I won't do it again.”

“You can sleep with whom you like. It's the bad atmosphere when it doesn't work out that I don't like.”

“I won't be sleeping with anyone else; I was off the rails and out of control, but I'm okay now. I'm sorry. It's back to being clean-living Maggie; I'm just not cut out for anything else. I might even join an enclosed order.”

Emily shook her head. “Some sort of middle ground might be nice.”

316 / MARIAN KEYES

Then she added, “But thank Christ you knocked that lezzer lark on the head before the arrival of Mammy Walsh. Else we'd have all been in the soup.”

I heartily agreed.

AFTER THE SECOND
miscarriage, I had cried for four solid days.

I know people often say things like, “I cried for a week,” when they mean they cried on and off for a few days, but I really did cry nonstop for four days. I even cried in my sleep. I was hazily aware of people coming and going, tip-toeing around my bed and whispering to Garv, “How is she now?”

By the time I stopped crying, my eyes were so swollen I looked like I'd been beaten up and the surface of my face was white and crusty like those dried-out salt lakes that you see in the desert.

In the past, when I'd heard about women having miscarriages, I couldn't imagine their sadness because, I suppose I wondered, how could you miss something you'd never had? I could identify with other losses, like if one of my friends got dumped by her boyfriend, I felt lonely, rejected and humiliated for her. Or if someone belonging to a friend died, I could go some way toward understanding the shock, the grief, and the very weirdness of death, even though my grandparents were the only people I'd loved who'd died.

But I hadn't been able to imagine the grief of losing a baby. Not until it had happened to me. Not until it had happened to me twice.

And the funny thing is that in ways, it's similar to the other losses.

I felt as lonely, rejected, and humiliated as if I'd 318 / MARIAN KEYES

been dumped—lonely for the person I'd never get to know, rejected because they didn't want to stay in my body, and humiliated by my very defectiveness. And I also felt shock, grief, and weirdness, as if someone had died.

But there was an extra dimension to my sadness, something that went to the very essence of my humanness. I had wanted a child and the longing was as visceral and inexplicable as hunger.

Throughout it all, it was as though a pane of glass separated me from the rest of the human race, so isolated was I. I felt that almost no one could understand the exact nature of my pain. Those who'd miscarried would—although I didn't know anyone—and those who were unsuccessfully trying for a baby. And maybe people who'd already had children would, but the vast majority wouldn't get it.

I intuited that, because for a long time I'd thought the way they did.

The one person who truly shared my loss was the one person I could barely look in the eye—Garv. Having to go through it all with him made it worse and I couldn't figure out why. Until I realized that I couldn't stop thinking about something that had happened when I was about twenty: a child from the neighborhood had run out from between two parked cars and been knocked down and killed by a motorist who hadn't had a hope of stopping in time. The parents of the dead boy were devastated, of course, but there was also a lot of sympathy for the man who'd been driving.

I overheard several people say, “My heart goes out to the driver, the poor man, what he must be going through.”

Well, I was the same as the driver. I was responsible for Garv's grief, it was my fault, and it was horrible living with it.

But Garv coped a lot better than I did. In the two weeks after the miscarriage, he kept the household running, monitoring my visitors, replacing my
Mother and Baby
magazines with
Vanity Fair
, and ensuring that I ate. I flailed around, failing to reclaim normality, and refused to talk about what had happened. I couldn't even use the word

ANGELS / 319

“miscarriage”—when anyone started on about it, I interrupted and called it “a setback.” And when they said, “Okay, setback,” and continued trying to probe, I'd say, “I don't want to talk about it.”

I was so resistant that even the most dedicated of friends kind of gave up.

Then someone came up with the idea that Garv and I should go on holiday. All of a sudden everyone was in agreement that a holiday was a great idea, and it felt like everywhere we turned there was another spooky face intoning, “It'll dooo yooou the world of gooood.” Or, “A few days lying by a pooool reading a crappy booook and you won't knoooow yoooourself.” It was like a horror film. “You yourself were conceived on holiday, Margaret,” Mum said, accompanying this information with a wink and a disconcerting leer.

“Don't tell us, for God's sake, don't tell us,” Helen begged.

In the end Garv and I felt we had no choice. I had no energy to resist everyone's urgings and the idea of staving off real life for another week was too tempting to resist.

So off we went to a resort in St. Lucia, spurred on by visions of silvery palm trees, powder-white sand, hot yellow sun, and goldfish-bowl-size cocktails. Only to discover that three days before we'd arrived, they'd had a hurricane—even though it wasn't hurricane season—and their beach had fallen into the sea, along with most of their palm trees. Not only that, but my bag crammed with gorgeous, newly purchased beachwear never turned up on the airport carousel. Salt was rubbed vigorously into the wound by the construction workers who commenced rebuilding the beach every morning at seven A.M., outside our window. And the icing on the cake was the fact that it pelted rain and—no—it wasn't the rainy season either.

But the cherry right on the very top of the icing on the cake was the attitude the hotel staff took to my missing bag. No matter how hard I tried to convince them that I wanted my stuff urgently, it didn't seem to cut any mustard. Every 320 / MARIAN KEYES

morning and every evening Garv and I made inquiries as to its whereabouts and nobody could ever give us any hard information.