Does he really deserve all this? The nights alone in rented rooms, the takeout pizzas, the collapsing body, the abiding contempt in my heart?
Just for wanting one more go at getting it right?
“Did they know Rose?” Jackie asks me as we are leaving my flat.
I turn to look at her. She is wearing some Western designer’s idea of a cheongsam. It’s midnight blue with red piping, very tight fitting, cut short with a small slit up the side, but she doesn’t look anywhere near as tarty as she usually does. In fact, she looks great.
“Did who know Rose?”
“These people we’re seeing tonight. The people at the party. Did they know your wife?”
“Josh knew her. He worked with her in Hong Kong. He’s another lawyer. Nobody else. Why do you ask?”
“I just want to know if I’m going to be compared to her. To Rose. I want to know if they are all going to be looking at me and saying-oh, she’s no Rose, is she? She’s not like our Rose.”
“Nobody’s going to compare you to Rose, okay?”
“Honest?”
“Honest. She was never their Rose. They never knew her. Only Josh. And he’s not-he doesn’t-oh God. Jackie, shall we just go?”
“How do I look?”
She smoothes the sides of her dress with her hands, and something about the small, insecure gesture tugs at my heart.
“You look-incredible.”
“Really?”
“Really. Incredible is exactly the word. Believe me. I know words. I’m an English teacher. Incredible, adjective. Hard to believe, amazing. You really do.”
Her smile just beams.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“I just feel that Rose is this perfect woman and nobody can ever compete with her and nobody can ever be as good as her.”
“Jackie-”
“This perfect woman who never said the wrong thing and always knew exactly what to wear and who always looked beautiful.”
“How do you know what she looked like? How do you know how she dressed?”
“I’ve seen enough pictures of her. In your shrine. Sorry, I mean-your flat.”
“Look, you don’t have to compete with Rose. And nobody’s going to compare you to her.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Apart from me, I think.
But that’s nothing personal.
I’ve done it to every woman I’ve met since Rose died.
I just can’t stop myself.
I look at them all-Yumi, Hiroko, Vanessa, Olga, Jackie, all of them, even the smart ones, even the beautiful ones, even the incredible ones-and I always think the same thing to myself.
That’s not her.
33
SOMEONE BUZZES US UP to the third-floor flat of the house in Notting Hill. We can hear the roar of the party behind the closed front door. Laughter, glasses clinking, everyone speaking at once. I go to knock. Jackie stops me.
“Wait, wait.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know, Alfie. I mean, I really don’t know. What am I doing here? Why am I here? What’s the point? Really?”
“To meet my friends,” I say. “To have a good time. Okay?”
She shakes her head uncertainly but I go ahead and knock. Nobody answers. I knock louder, longer, and Tamsin opens the door, pretty and friendly, blonde and barefoot, smiling at me as though I have never disgraced myself in this flat, as though I didn’t act like a prize dickhead after one Tsingtao too many, as though I am her best friend in the whole wide world. I do like her. There’s a generosity of spirit about her that disarms me. We kiss cheeks, squeeze arms, and she turns on Jackie with wonder.
“I love your dress,” Tamsin says. “Where did you get it? Tian Art? Shanghai Tang?”
“No,” Jackie says. “Basildon.”
There’s a second of silence. Then Tamsin throws back her head and laughs. She thinks Jackie is joking.
“I’ll give you the address if you like,” Jackie says, smiling uncertainly. “It’s near the market. A shop called Suzie Wong. They say Posh Spice went there once. But I don’t believe it.”
“Come in and meet everyone,” Tamsin says, ushering us inside.
The place is packed. Everyone seems to know each other. Champagne flutes are put in our hands, then someone-a woman-gasps with shock at the sight of Tamsin’s engagement ring and she is whisked away to display it. There is something overstated about these people. Every twist and turn in a conversation-about property prices, private schools and, above all, work-is greeted with something approaching awe.
Josh is in the middle of the room braying about Tai Chi.
“Taught by this marvelous little Chinaman. Really knows his onions. Damn good for stress. Encourages you to think outside the box, Tai Chi.”
Josh begins waving his arms around, champagne sloshing from his flute.
“Oh, I know Tai Chi,” says a woman I vaguely recognize. India. From the dinner party. “It’s the exercise tape by that big black man.”
“That’s Tae Bo, darling,” somebody says, and they all have a good chuckle about her adorable mistake.
“Tai Chi, Tae Bo, tie-dyed-it’s all the same to me!” India chortles, her thin little face creasing with laughter.
“They’re so confident,” Jackie whispers. “Even when they say something really, really stupid.”
I recognize Dan, India’s husband, and Jane, the fat, pretty girl from the dinner party, who seems to have lost some weight and gained a man. She nods at me with some coolness. I can’t blame her. Dan stares right through me. It’s not hostility. I think he probably has the memory banks of a tropical fish.
“Old Josh getting married,” says Dan. “How does a woman know when her husband’s dead?”
“The sex is the same but you get to use the remote control,” says Jackie.
“What’s the difference between a girlfriend and a wife?” says Josh.
“Forty-five pounds,” says Jackie.
“What’s the difference between a boyfriend and a husband?” says Josh.
“Forty-five minutes,” says Jackie.
“Bloody funny,” says Dan.
We are having a good time, Jackie and I, knocking back our champagne and sort of holding on to each other. The party swirls around us. There is something in the English middle class that reminds me of the Cantonese. It is a kind of glorious indifference. They truly don’t care about you. It’s not hostility. They just don’t give a monkey’s. And if that doesn’t bother you, it can be quite relaxing to be around them.
Then somebody asks Jackie the standard metropolitan middle-class question, and it all goes out of key.
“And what do you do?”
It’s Jane. The fat girl who has started working out, and who looks pretty good now, and who must be feeling pretty good too with her quiet boyfriend in the glasses behind her, his arms around her newly slim waist as if he is afraid of her getting away. And although I know that it is only the standard question on London nights such as this, it still feels as if the question to Jackie has a certain edge, as if Jane is getting her own back on me for not falling for her over the warm, fancy salad.
“What do I do?” Jackie says, and my heart sinks, because we were having such a good time tonight, and I love to see her trading dumb jokes with Josh and Dan and whispering little comments to me on the proceedings and the people and just quietly enjoying herself. Now Jane has gone and spoiled everything. And I once thought she was nice.
“Yes. What do you do-I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.”
“Jackie.”
“Jackie,” Jane says, as though Jackie is an impossibly exotic name that she has never heard before. Which is a distinct possibility, I suppose.
“I’ve got my own company,” Jackie says.
They are impressed. They all want to be a credit to capitalism. They look at Jackie with new eyes. They are thinking-a dot-com start-up? Or a go-getting little PR company working out of one room in Soho? Or possibly something in the fashion game? The dress is rather striking.
“Dream Machine,” Jackie says. “That’s the name of my company.”
“Dream Machine,” says Jane, with a grudging respect. “What kind of line are you in?”
“Well,” says Jackie. “It’s a cleaning service.”
I want to stop her while she is ahead, get her to cash in her chips and leave the table, but the champagne and the polite, interested expressions on all the flushed, well-fed faces around her are encouraging her to go further.
“Dream Machine cleans offices all over the West End of London. We’ve got this line: cleaning the old-fashioned way-on our hands and knees.”
“Money in that,” Josh says. “Good money, I’ll warrant. Get the old bog holes sparkling, mate. Can’t beat it, can you? Key to the executive washroom and all that.”
“Fab!” India says, as though nobody has ever thought of cleaning offices before in the history of the world.
Jackie smiles her happy, beaming smile, very pleased with herself, and I think she’s gotten away with it.
But she hasn’t. Jane is still watching her.
“So you’ve got this-what?-army of Mrs. Mops who go around scrubbing and scouring all over London?”
And I think to myself-I’m so glad I gave you the cold shoulder, you cruel bitch. You were never nice at all. Just overweight and lonely, which is not quite the same as being nice.
“No,” Jackie says. “There’s just me. Sometimes I get a friend in. If there’s extra work. But usually it’s just me.”
“Oh,” Jane says. “You’re Mrs. Mop.”
Then they are all laughing at Jackie, and she can’t do what they all do, she can’t laugh at herself and make it nothing, defuse the lonely moment, take the sting out of the words with the magic trick of just not caring; her life is too hard for her not to take it seriously, to take everything seriously, so she has to stand there going red while Jane and India and Josh and Dan and Jane’s four-eyed boyfriend all cackle with glee.
But then it passes, because I know there is no real harm in these people, except possibly Jane, and soon they are talking about the politics of housework and chore wars and feminism’s response to the fact that somebody has to clean toilets, all these half-chewed scraps of public debate that they have picked up from some Sunday tabloid that they skimmed through a redwine hangover. From here they glide effortlessly into a conversation about how difficult it is to hire someone you can trust to clean your home, but by now Jackie is pulling on my sleeve, her lovely face still burning.
“I want to leave.”
“You can’t leave.”
“Why not?”
“Because then they win.”
“They win anyway. They always win.”
We stay. But the night has gone flat for both of us. She makes half-hearted conversation only with people who approach her first. I retreat with her to a corner and make small talk about the prints on the wall, Tamsin’s ring, any rubbish that comes into my head. Just before we leave, when she goes off to the toilet, Josh pulls me to one side.
“I like her,” he says. “She’s nice.”
“I like her too.”
“But, my dear old Alfie, when are you going to get yourself a proper woman?”
“What does that mean? A proper woman?”
“It’s always-I don’t know-someone inappropriate. Your little harem of foreign girls. Very nice and all that. A different flavor for every day of the week. I’m not knocking it, mate. I’ve been in my fair share of foreign parts too, as you well know. But you cannot be serious, man. Not if you think you can make the hot and spicy stuff last a lifetime. It’s inappropriate. And now Mrs. Mop and her tickling stick.”
“Don’t call her that.”
“Sorry. But, come on, Alfie. When are you going to get real? She’s no Rose, is she?”
“I think Rose would have liked her. I think Rose would have thought she was funny and bright.”
“Oh, she’s horny enough, in an obvious sort of way. She is definitely wise to the rise in your Levis.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“But what’s so admirable about cleaning floors for a living? I mean, just because you’re poor, it doesn’t make you a good person, does it?”
“She’s bringing up a kid alone. A girl. Twelve years old. I think anyone who does that has got some guts.”
“She’s got a child? Then I think you’re the one with guts, Alfie. I wouldn’t go out with someone who was dragging around a reminder of the man that came before me. If you’ll pardon the expression.” He raises his champagne glass in mock salute. “You’re a better man than me.”
“I never doubted it, Josh.”
We laugh, but there is no warmth or humor in our laughter, and I wonder what I am doing in this place, with these people. Is it because I don’t have anywhere else to go? Or do I secretly want to join them, to be able to laugh that easily and chat that mindlessly and care so little about everything under the sun? Perhaps I shouldn’t be so scared of caring. Perhaps that has been my problem.
“What do you call it when a woman is paralyzed from the waist down?” says Dan.
“Marriage,” says Josh, and the room roars as Jackie and I leave the apartment.
She is silent in the back of the black cab on the way to Liverpool Street.
“I thought you were the best-looking woman there,” I say. “And the smartest.”
“Me too. So why do I feel so bad?”
I can’t answer that.
And I watch her back as she walks down the platform and gets on the train for the long ride out into Essex. She doesn’t turn around. But just as I am about to walk away, she sticks her head out of the window and waves, smiling, as if to say: don’t worry, they can’t hurt me for long, it’s going to be okay in the end.
She’s brave. She is. That’s exactly the word. Jackie is a brave woman.
Ah, I think to myself.
That could be her.