creature, bird-like but not a bird. It comes and sits on our heads, he thought. It investigates our skulls with its beak-like implement. First it’s my turn, now it’s her turn. You’re neverunaware of the other person’s torment but there are intervals of reprise in your own. You mistake this for contentment. For now you are okay. Don’t you realise that soon she will be watching you, equally paralysed, equally fearful, the creature, like something Peter Jackson could toss off in his lunchbreak, sitting, where else, on your skull. Obviously the ideal marriage would be something else, with fewer horned ghouls.
They stood together in the kitchen, not touching, shaking with sobs. He smelled his work-shirt: nothing. He felt gratitude to Bridget for finally putting some clarity into their lives, gratitude and loathing. Paddy didn’t go to work the next day. They sat down and Bridget produced a piece of paper on which she’d written an outline of arrangements for the separation. Paddy felt both excited and bored looking at this piece of paper, as if they were planning a holiday. Yes, he saw the need but he just wanted to be there. Of course they changed their minds the next day—they had to stay together and see this through. They had to. Why exactly? She suggested they both make lists of the reasons they had for continuing to be married.
His list was 1. All we’ve shared. 2. All we might share. He was stuck after that, unhappy. It read very sentimentally. He wanted to add further items such as, My penis fits you, which was drawn from her verbatim account one night. Compliments were nice. He had a number 3. It was, Love question mark. He’d written it out like that. At the last minute he decided against presenting such a hideous piece of equivocation. Also not entered: 4. My need not to disappoint my mother. A great heaving sense of dejection and failure went through his bones when he considered having to announce to Teresa the end. This was separate from and even counter to any actual evidence that his mother would regard the matter with a similarly heavy heart. Yet it was like walking home with a bad school report. You looked into the Hutt River and imagined being swept away. You saw and felt all this even though you were a grown man.
They went to compare lists, sitting across from each other at the kitchen table. Except Bridget had come to her senses again.She’d not gone through with hers. His list was the sole list. The situation was horrific, perfect. She looked at his list and then he reached for it and screwed it up.
More than two years before they split up, when he told Lant about Bridget’s episodes of illness and the lack of any discoverable cause, Lant said at once, ‘I think it’s you, Card.’
‘Me?’ said Paddy.
‘You make her sick.’
Lant stood outside the little curtained cubicle in the bike shop while Paddy tried on bike shorts. He handed Paddy different sizes. When Paddy walked out, he said, ‘How do they feel? Are you ready to take on the world in those shorts?’
‘They’re padded in the groin area,’ said Paddy. ‘And behind.’ They were pleasant, like nappies, though that sort of contact made you also feel a sudden desire to urinate, or the fear that you just had.
Then Lant reached inside the waistband and tugged unhappily. ‘Too big,’ he said. ‘Why do we all want to hide our bodies?’ He waved at Paddy’s large teeshirt.
‘The obvious reasons,’ said Paddy. Lant was lean, with the physique of someone sick or extremely fit. When he was drunk, he smoked. He was no paragon. His genes covered more of his faults than Paddy’s did. Both his parents were tall and bony. Paddy’s father had been heavy, his mother was medium. Paddy thought he just looked normally comfortable, normally fattish. A person on a professional salary sits in a chair for twenty-five years, what is the surprise.
Lant made him buy hugging bike shirts as well, and a thin, vented wind-jacket in
They stood together in the kitchen, not touching, shaking with sobs. He smelled his work-shirt: nothing. He felt gratitude to Bridget for finally putting some clarity into their lives, gratitude and loathing. Paddy didn’t go to work the next day. They sat down and Bridget produced a piece of paper on which she’d written an outline of arrangements for the separation. Paddy felt both excited and bored looking at this piece of paper, as if they were planning a holiday. Yes, he saw the need but he just wanted to be there. Of course they changed their minds the next day—they had to stay together and see this through. They had to. Why exactly? She suggested they both make lists of the reasons they had for continuing to be married.
His list was 1. All we’ve shared. 2. All we might share. He was stuck after that, unhappy. It read very sentimentally. He wanted to add further items such as, My penis fits you, which was drawn from her verbatim account one night. Compliments were nice. He had a number 3. It was, Love question mark. He’d written it out like that. At the last minute he decided against presenting such a hideous piece of equivocation. Also not entered: 4. My need not to disappoint my mother. A great heaving sense of dejection and failure went through his bones when he considered having to announce to Teresa the end. This was separate from and even counter to any actual evidence that his mother would regard the matter with a similarly heavy heart. Yet it was like walking home with a bad school report. You looked into the Hutt River and imagined being swept away. You saw and felt all this even though you were a grown man.
They went to compare lists, sitting across from each other at the kitchen table. Except Bridget had come to her senses again.She’d not gone through with hers. His list was the sole list. The situation was horrific, perfect. She looked at his list and then he reached for it and screwed it up.
More than two years before they split up, when he told Lant about Bridget’s episodes of illness and the lack of any discoverable cause, Lant said at once, ‘I think it’s you, Card.’
‘Me?’ said Paddy.
‘You make her sick.’
Lant stood outside the little curtained cubicle in the bike shop while Paddy tried on bike shorts. He handed Paddy different sizes. When Paddy walked out, he said, ‘How do they feel? Are you ready to take on the world in those shorts?’
‘They’re padded in the groin area,’ said Paddy. ‘And behind.’ They were pleasant, like nappies, though that sort of contact made you also feel a sudden desire to urinate, or the fear that you just had.
Then Lant reached inside the waistband and tugged unhappily. ‘Too big,’ he said. ‘Why do we all want to hide our bodies?’ He waved at Paddy’s large teeshirt.
‘The obvious reasons,’ said Paddy. Lant was lean, with the physique of someone sick or extremely fit. When he was drunk, he smoked. He was no paragon. His genes covered more of his faults than Paddy’s did. Both his parents were tall and bony. Paddy’s father had been heavy, his mother was medium. Paddy thought he just looked normally comfortable, normally fattish. A person on a professional salary sits in a chair for twenty-five years, what is the surprise.
Lant made him buy hugging bike shirts as well, and a thin, vented wind-jacket in
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