Elegance and Innocence: 2-Book Collection

‘You look tired,’ Mrs P says, breaking the silence between us.

I stare up at the ceiling. ‘I’m not sleeping very well,’ I say at last.

She expects me to go on but I don’t. I’m too tired to talk, too tired to do anything but curl up on the dreaded daybed and fall asleep. There’s a tiny spider attempting to scale the elaborate moulding in the corner; I watch as it slips back over the same few inches, again and again.

‘Why do you think you’re sleeping so badly?’ Her voice is frustrated, tense. I feel for her, having to play such an active role in our session. She must’ve imagined herself as a kind of female Freud, curing patients of deep-seated traumas and neuroses. But instead she gets to watch me take a nap.

‘My husband … we’re …’ I yawn and force my eyes to stay open. ‘We’re falling apart. The whole thing is falling apart. And I can’t sleep any more when he’s there.’

‘What does that mean? “Falling apart?”’

I shift onto my side and pull my knees up towards my chest. I can’t get comfortable. ‘It means the glue that used to stick us together isn’t there any more.’

‘And what glue is that?’

The answer flashes in my brain almost instantly, but I think a moment longer because it’s not the one I’m expecting.

‘Fear,’ I say.

‘Fear of what?’

The spider tires again. And fails.

‘Fear of being alone.’

She crosses her legs. ‘And what’s wrong with being alone?’

The spider has given up. I watch as it descends slowly from the ceiling on an invisible silk thread.

‘I don’t know. I used to think everything was wrong with being alone. That I would die, kind of literally implode with loneliness. But lately, lately I’m not so sure.’

‘Louise, do you love your husband?’ Her voice is challenging, hard.

I’m quiet for a long time. A gust of wind blows through the open window and the spider wavers, dangling precariously. It couldn’t be more fragile.

‘Love isn’t the point. As a matter of fact, it only makes it more confusing. It’s not a matter of loving or not loving. I’ve changed. And it isn’t enough just to be safe any more.’

‘And is that what you were before? Safe?’

‘That’s what I thought. But now I see that I was afraid.’ I close my eyes again; I’m getting a headache. ‘It’s like that thing, that thing that when you know something, you can’t ever go back and pretend you don’t know it. You can never go back to the way you were before.’

‘But you can move forward,’ she reminds me.

Yes, I think. But at what cost?

Weeks later, I come home from work to find my husband sitting, still in his overcoat, on the living room sofa. He looks dreadful, as he has done for weeks. By some strange, sick law of nature, as I become more attractive, he declines. It’s as if only one of us is allowed to be appealing at a time. His eyes are ringed with dark circles, his hair wild and unkempt and he seems to have forgotten that razors exist. He should be gone, at the theatre getting ready to go on, but he’s not. He’s here instead.

‘Oh!’ I say when I see him sitting there, staring into the middle distance. ‘You’d better go, hadn’t you?’

But he just looks at me, like some feral animal that’s been trapped in the house by accident.

I should feel concern, or worry, but the truth is I’m more irritated than anything else. We have an unspoken agreement, an arrangement that each of us has been honouring for months now: I go to work in the day and he’s gone in the evening when I get home. He’s now on my time and I don’t want him here.

But I sit down anyway, in the green chair, and wait.

‘We need to talk,’ he says at last.

Here it is; the conversation we’ve been avoiding for months. I feel sick and yet strangely exhilarated, calm even. ‘Fine,’ I agree. ‘You start.’

He stares at me for another long moment and when he speaks, his voice is accusatory. ‘You’re different. You’ve changed. And I feel like I’ve done something wrong but I don’t know what it is. What have I done wrong, Louise? What is it that I’ve done?’

I take a deep breath. ‘You’re right; I have changed but it’s all been good. Surely you can see that?’

‘All I see is that you’re more concerned with the way you look.’

‘But that’s good. I look better than ever before – you should be proud of me.’

‘I liked you better before. You were easier to be around.’

‘You mean less demanding.’

‘I mean less vain,’ he contradicts. ‘Less self-obsessed.’

It’s starting to get ugly. I can feel myself baulking at every word he speaks. It’s hard to believe that this is the same man that only six months ago, I would’ve given my right arm to please.

‘You know what, people are supposed to change,’ I remind him. ‘It’s a good thing. You’re just used to me not giving a shit what I look like. The truth is, you like me better when I’m depressed. Well, I don’t want to be depressed any more. I don’t want to spend my whole life hiding and feeling ashamed and apologizing for myself. I have a right to look good and to be happy. And I have a right to change!’ I’m shaking, my whole body quivering with the force of my declaration. ‘Anyway, the problem isn’t about me changing. I think the real problem is that we don’t really want the same things any more.’

‘Like what?’ He sounds crushed.

‘Like … I don’t know … everything. I mean, we’re not going to have children, right? So what are we going to do? Just sit around in this flat of ours, hunting for the perfect lampshade and growing old?’

‘Is that really so bad?’

He just doesn’t get it. ‘Yes! Yes, it is that bad! Can’t you see that it’s bad for us to be sitting around here like two pensioners with no surprises, no passion, no hope, just waiting to die? I mean, doesn’t that strike you as bad?’

For a moment it looks as if he’s going to cry, and when he speaks, his voice is hoarse. ‘Is that really the way you see our life together? Is that really what you think? That we’re like two old pensioners?’

I know I’m hurting him. But if we don’t speak honestly now, we never will. ‘Yes, that’s exactly what I think.’

He sits, motionless, cradling his head in his hands. Silence stretches out before us, vast and insurmountable. Then suddenly, quite suddenly, he pulls himself onto his feet and I watch in horror as he crosses the floor and kneels in front of me.

‘I should have done this earlier, Louise. I’m so sorry, I’ve been very selfish.’ He’s looking up at me, his eyes two enormous pools. I feel sick.

He reaches in his pocket and pulls out a tiny, clear plastic bag.

‘Perhaps we haven’t been very passionate … I’m not very good at showing you how important you are to me. I’m sorry. I’d like to make it up to you.’ And he puts the little plastic bag into my lap.

There, floating amidst the emptiness, are three tiny coloured stones. It’s a surreal moment; I can’t quite figure out how we went from discussing our life together to this bizarre, make-shift proposal.