Anxious People(16)

So the bank robber left home one morning with that drawing of the frog, the monkey, and the elk tucked away in a pocket without realizing it. The girl who had drawn it put it there. The little girl has an older sister, they ought to fight the way sisters are always said to do, but they hardly ever do that. The younger one is allowed to play in the older sister’s room without the older one yelling at her. The older one gets to keep the things she cares for most without the younger one breaking them on purpose. Their parents used to whisper, “We don’t deserve them,” when the girls were very small. They were right.

Now, after the divorce, during the weeks when the girls live with one of their parents, they listen to the news in the car in the morning. Their other parent is in the news today, but they don’t know that yet, they don’t know that one of their parents has become a bank robber.

During the weeks when the girls live with their bank robber parent they go on the bus. They love that. All the way they invent little stories about the strangers in the seats at the front. That man there, he could be a fireman, their parent whispers. And she might be an alien, the youngest daughter says. Then it’s the older daughter’s turn, and she says really loudly: “That one could be a wanted man who’s killed someone and has their head in his backpack, who knows?” Then the women in the seats around them shuffle uncomfortably and the daughters giggle so hard that they almost can’t breathe, and their parent has to put on a serious face and pretend that it really isn’t funny at all.

They’re almost always late to the bus stop, and as they run across the bridge and the bus stops on the other side, the girls always shriek with laughter: “The elk’s coming! The elk’s coming!” Because their bank robber parent’s legs are very long, out of proportion, and that means you look funny when you run. No one noticed that before the girls appeared, but children notice people’s proportions in a different way from adults, possibly because they always see us from below, and that’s our worst angle. That’s why they make such good bullies, the quick-witted little monsters. They have access to everything that’s most vulnerable in us. Even so, they forgive us, the whole time, for almost everything.

And that’s the weirdest thing about being someone’s parent. Not just a bank robber parent, but any parent: that you are loved in spite of everything that you are. Even astonishingly late in life, people seem incapable of considering that their parents might not be super-smart and really funny and immortal. Perhaps there’s a biological reason for that, that up to a certain age a child loves you unconditionally and hopelessly for one single reason: you’re theirs. Which is a pretty smart move on biology’s part, you have to give it that.

The bank robber parent never uses the girls’ real names. That’s the sort of thing you never really notice until you belong to someone else, the fact that those of us who give children their names are the least willing to use them. We give those we love nicknames, because love requires a word that belongs to us alone. So the bank robber parent always calls the girls what they used to feel like, kicking in their mother’s belly six and eight years ago. One of them always seemed to be jumping about in there, and the other always seemed to be climbing. One frog. One monkey. And an elk that would do anything for them. Even when it’s completely stupid. Perhaps you have that in common after all. You probably have someone in your life whom you’d do something stupid for.



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But obviously you would still never rob a bank. Of course not.



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But perhaps, though, you’ve been in love? Almost everyone has, after all. And love can make you do quite a lot of ridiculous things. Getting married, for instance. Having children, playing happy families, and having a happy marriage. Or you might think that, anyway. Not happy, perhaps, but plausible. A plausible marriage. Because how happy can anyone really be, all the time? How could there be time for that? Mostly we’re just trying to get through the day. You’ve probably had days like that as well. But when you get through enough of them, one morning you look over your shoulder and realize that you’re on your own, the person you were married to turned off somewhere along the way. Maybe you uncover a lie. That’s what happened to the bank robber. An infidelity comes to light, and even if no one’s actually been unfaithful to you, you can probably appreciate that it’s enough to knock a person off balance.

Especially if it wasn’t just a fling, but an affair that had been going on for a long time. You haven’t only been cheated on, you’ve also been deceived. It’s possible for someone to be unfaithful to you without really thinking about you at all, but an affair requires planning. Perhaps that’s what hurts most of all, the millions of tiny clues that you didn’t notice. Maybe you’d have been even more crushed if there wasn’t even a good explanation. For instance, maybe you could have understood if it was about loneliness or desire, “You’re always at work and we never have any time for each other.” But if the explanation is “Well, er, if you want me to be really honest, the person I’ve been unfaithful with is your boss,” then it can be harder to get back up again. Because that means that the reason you’ve been working so much overtime is also the same reason why you no longer have a marriage. When you get to work on the Monday after the breakup, your boss says: “Well, er, obviously it’s going to be uncomfortable for everyone involved, so… perhaps it would be easiest if you no longer worked here.” On Friday you were married and had a job, and on Monday you’re homeless and unemployed. What do you do then? Talk to a solicitor? Sue someone?