Love Is a Thief (25 page)

‘Well, don’t let us keep you,’ he sneered at me. ‘Us musicians have a lot to achieve in the next few days. You can see Beatrice in the evenings after class, except for Monday and Tuesday evenings when the college prefers that students eat together. And tonight we have arranged a welcome dinner. So we don’t really need to see you until Wednesday night, after 9 p.m. if possible, although our Wednesday-night concert recital ends at 10 p.m. so you could just pick her up on your way to the airport.’ Huck then marched Beatrice off to music camp leaving me with three clear days to please myself in my second-favourite city in the whole wide world.

madame butterfly does happiness

O
ne of the non-redtop newspapers that feels very much like a redtop, or a women’s magazine, but is blacktop and serious-looking, recently published an article entitled
‘Giving In to Temptation’
. It claimed that resisting treats is bad for us and self-regulation makes us feel dissatisfied. In fact resisting temptation all the time can actually make us feel angry. If on the other hand people give themselves a little bit of what they fancy from time to time it can help people connect with themselves and build self-esteem. On researching the article further I found that the professor in happiness quoted in the article, Madame Butterfly, actually lived in New York so I arranged to meet her.

It’s not that I’d been feeling blue of late, I hadn’t, but I hadn’t been feeling pink either, or yellow, or whatever the colour is that happy people feel. In general I’d been feeling grey, grey to black, or whatever colour represents a general feeling of numbness and apathy. Work was keeping me occupied, blocking out thoughts of Gabriel and his imminent fatherhood, and distracting me from the oddities of Peter
Parker, but outside work, when I let myself stop for a few minutes each day, that time didn’t feel so great, and like Pavlov’s dog I’d come to recognise that non-work time felt rubbish, so now I rarely stopped.

greenwich village | new york

Madame Butterfly’s office was in a vacant school in Greenwich Village. Children’s paintings still covered the walls as I walked down a long corridor to meet her. There were colourful butterflies made of glitter, crayon suns popping out from painted mountains, stickmen families, stick pets, stick Christmases with colourful stick presents made of gold. The stick people were happy with smiles bigger than their stick heads and they all seemed to be living in the stick mountains. Madame Butterfly’s waiting room was at the end of this painted corridor of happiness, a square room with a small table in the middle, chairs around the periphery and a high shelf that ran all around the room. The shelf was covered in small stuffed animals, mostly birds, a few mice, a squirrel and one toad. This was where taxidermy animals came to retire. All the glass eyes were on me, me and my greyness.

Madame Butterfly opened her door and the wind chimes that were attached made noise as she wafted into the room, all floating scarves, a floor-length shapeless dress. She smiled in a vague way that made her look as if she was smiling at the whole waiting room, including all the animals, who, on closer inspection, had the same wide-eyed look.

‘It’s so great you are here,’ she said, to all of us.

After a cursory introduction about who we both were,
and a toilet break for me because I felt strangely nervous, she asked the most simple and yet most difficult question I’d been asked in a long time.

‘So, are you happy, Kate?’

‘I, er, well, things are moving in the right direction. I am definitely ticking boxes. I have a good job and I work very hard and—’

‘Do you feel happy, Kate?’

‘As I said, I think I have made some good decisions for myself recently, tough decisions, but adult ones, that I will reap the benefits of at a later stage.’

‘OK, but can you tell me how you feel?’

Like I am freefalling out of control into an abyss of nothingness.

‘I don’t know how I feel.’

‘When was the last time you felt 100% joyfully happy?’ An image of Gabriel’s smiling face flashed into my head, followed by an image of him holding a baby. I tried to squeeze them back out.

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Well, let’s tackle this a different way. When did you last cry?’

‘I haven’t cried for weeks actually, which is strange, come to think of it, as I was a bit of a crier before that. Crying is not the issue. My eyes cry whenever they feel like it, never when I feel like it, and for as long as they bloody well please. They are selfish and self-obsessed, like my ex—’ I chuckled, then sighed, like a deflating balloon.

‘Tell me what was happening in your life a few weeks ago around the time that you stopped crying.’

‘I er, well, I had sex with a hot Frenchman—that was nice. I went skiing, also nice. I took two flights in a 36-hour period, although I don’t think that affects tear ducts. Oh, and my ex called me, in the middle of the night, to tell me his new girlfriend was pregnant. As I said, I was a bit of a crier before that week. I cry at most episodes of
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
and even some of the more emotive mobile phone adverts used to set me off.’

‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer
is an emotional and dramatic children’s television drama series,’ she said defensively. She took a sip of water. ‘So how do you feel now?’

‘Today? Today I don’t really feel anything, just numb. Not unhappy, not sad, just nothing. Not hopeless, not hopeful, maybe more hopeless than hopeful. And numb. I feel numb. And I don’t think that’s entirely normal. I am grey. Grey to black.’

‘It’s more normal than you realise. The way modern society is structured is not complementary to how we are structured emotionally. For the larger part of our existence on earth we have been in communities with extended families close at hand, three generations living together, purposeful roles, hunting, growing, procreating, nurturing. In the last few centuries the modern world has brought greater incidences of alienation; people living alone, far from family, far from friends, maybe in different countries, alienated, transient, disconnected. Feelings get stuck inside us. They don’t find full expression. They are not heard. Eventually they grow tired of waiting, and we become numb.’

‘Is it reversible?’

‘Of course it is. But we can’t change the structure of society
so it’s important we find other means of expressing ourselves and letting our emotions out. An obvious one is through diaries or even writing letters to oneself. Writing allows people to connect with how they are feeling and make sense of what they are experiencing, which explains the explosion of blogging and tweeting; social media is a way of connecting, reaching out where an extended family and local community would have been years ago. Although I believe it is counterproductive, sitting alone writing, so I recommend more colourful fun things, things you don’t even realise are helping you feel better. A passive road to happiness.’

‘Well, I am only here for a few days so I won’t be able to join a programme or a class but is there something I could try—a small thing, that might take away the grey?’

‘Of course, that’s very easy, Kate. The next time you have a flicker of desire, take notice of it. Start to really listen to what your body and emotions are telling you. If you want something, go get it. You might be walking past a deli and see the most delicious-looking chocolate cake, or see an item of clothing that makes your pulse race. Or maybe you have an urge to do something slightly reckless, like kiss a stranger in an elevator. Whatever it is, rather than dismiss it and carry on with your day—which is what most of us do most of the time—get in the habit of listening to it. Stop. Take notice of that feeling. And
go with it
.
Buy that chocolate cake, or that handbag, or that pair of shoes. Kiss that stranger. Connect with your spontaneous impulsive and truthful feelings. That will begin the process of you feeling
more connected to yourself and feeling positive emotions, and it should start to make your life feel more colourful.’

‘That’s it. You’re telling me to shop freely, eat badly, kiss randomly and feel good about it.’

‘No, that is excess. That is consumerism. That is promiscuity. I am asking you to pay attention to
how you feel
. When you have a little twinkle inside, a tingle, a flutter, notice it, and go with it. Here,’ she said, handing me a small crystal butterfly and hugging me for a really long time before opening the door for me to leave. ‘It’s not about big gestures, grand plans or group therapy programmes—just listen to yourself a little more. One of the simplest ways to start is by buying yourself flowers; treat yourself, and take note of how that feels. Good luck, Kate.’

I walked back down the corridor, past all the butterflies, the stuffed birds, the dried flowers stuck to wallpaper, and took a taxi back to the hotel. I took myself and my crystal butterfly straight to the hotel bar. It was getting late and New York wasn’t quite as much fun on my own as I thought it would be. Maybe the bar, or the contents of the bar, would give me the flutter of my butterfly that I had lost in the cocoon of my caterpillar. Or maybe I should just have a tequila that has a worm in its bottle which is a bit like a pre-butterfly worm. Tequila didn’t make me flutter, but it made me tingle, which Madame Butterfly said was a good thing, so I ordered another and another and another.

my hotel room | waldorf-astoria

I woke up the next day with no idea where I was, crystal butterfly in hand. When I realised I ordered room service,
it arrived, I ate, I threw up, three times, ordered more room service, it arrived, I ate, it stayed down. I kept my mobile switched off all day and watched reruns of
American Idol
. As night fell I felt as if I were finding my cocoon.

Just before 10 p.m. there was a knock at the door. I hadn’t ordered room service. I opened the door wearing a food-stained bathrobe with last night’s make-up on my face. He stood there immaculate, fresh faced, highly pressed. He smelt clean. I know this because I smelt stale, as did my room; it gave me away like a weak-willed hostage.

‘You look terrible, Kate,’ said a stern-faced Peter Parker before marching into my room. Once he was in there I could see he wished he hadn’t. He looked around at the chaos; the half-eaten plates of food on every surface, the darkness broken only by the flashing of a TV, my clothes everywhere, underwear everywhere, the mess of me. The corners of his mouth were turned down, as if the entire scene left a bad taste in his mouth; smell in his nose; twitch on his face.

‘Kate, you have two options. You can get in the shower, get dressed and meet me down in the hotel bar in 30 minutes or we can meet tomorrow for a 10km run around Central Park.’

‘I’ll see you in the bar.’

‘I thought so.’ He marched out.

sir harry’s bar | waldorf-astoria

Peter Parker picked the quietest table in the bar, in the furthest corner, by a window, and a very very large potted plant. There were two seats, both very low to the ground, and a low-standing checkerboard table with two glasses of
water on it. Peter looked gigantic on the small chair, incongruous and expensive in comparison to me, who had an air of
‘all inclusive holiday excess’
about me, fitting in perfectly with the cocktail-swigging crowd. The bar staff eyeballed me suspiciously as I walked in.

‘I didn’t recognise you with normal skin tone,’ I said, sitting myself down only to be engulfed by the overhanging leaves of the large potted plant. ‘These days you always tend to have a moody red face. It suited you.’ I said this through the shrubbery that was draped all around me. ‘And prolific sweating on a regular basis is a great way to expel toxins. It’s the basic premise behind saunas.’ I was snappish, blunt and defensive, like a hammerhead shark. I was annoyed that he was here. Why bother flying all the way across the Atlantic to judge me in a hung-over state? He could do that every Saturday in London. It was as if my mother had hired him to act as my critical parent in her constant absence. Peter pushed a glass of water towards me and pulled some of the branches from my hair. One immediately swung back and whipped me across the cheek. So Peter pulled me, on my chair, closer to him.

‘So …’ he began as if reading from a meeting agenda ‘… first of all I would like to apologise to you.’ He sat forward in his chair. He was tracing his fingers along the edge of the table, trying to formulate the best sentence. ‘I have not been myself with you for some time. I have on occasion been somewhat rude.’ Giant understatement. ‘I know that and awareness is step one towards change as written about in … It doesn’t matter what book it was in.’ He took a breath. ‘Kate, there is something about the work you’ve been
doing that’s been bothering me. At times I’ve felt that you’ve pulled things apart, things that previously made sense to people, rocking the boat, someone else’s boat, kissing people all over the place, and I don’t think I liked it—’ He tapped the table with his finger as if he had finally found his point. ‘I don’t like it.’ Another tap.

‘That doesn’t sound like a very accurate description of my work. There has been no rocking of boats. There has been the missing of love boats, my own boat, and the recapturing of love-stolen dreams.’ Had he been listening to
anything
I’d been telling him?

‘I don’t approve of you kissing people,’ he blurted out rather loudly. He sat forward resting his index fingers on his lips as if trying to prevent any other noisy words escaping. And I couldn’t see the relevance of the kissing. It was the smallest and most insignificant part of what I was trying to do.

‘Peter, kissing Mr Patel in Harley Street wasn’t exactly a high point for me and to be honest I still get flashbacks as I’m falling asleep at night. But it made Grandma and Beatrice laugh, and Delaware, she used a computer for the first time in her adult life because she wanted to do a
Google Images
search on Mr Patel, which made them laugh even more. Actually it was quite a humiliating afternoon for me at Pepperpots,’ I said, remembering the moment they pinned his photo onto the map.