Someone Else's Shoes(36)

I’m too tired to go out. And home just reminds me of all the things I haven’t done. I can’t even put the recycling out because I wash up a plastic tray and it seems ridiculous. What is the point in us washing out the trays that the chicken thighs came in when China is pumping out a billion tons of carbon dioxide a minute? I can’t watch the news because it makes me want to bury my head under the duvet, and the sight of the floods and the fires makes me anxious for grandchildren I haven’t even had yet so I just stay on the sofa where it’s safe and watch shows where people buy and resell antique boot-pulls to make two pounds’ profit, or women in brightly colored dresses discuss diets and soap operas, and the only reason I watch those shows is because I cannot bear the silence. I cannot bear the silence.

And I know my wife is exhausted and fed up with me but every time I try to do something to help her she sighs and tuts under her breath because I do it wrong. And she used to love me but now she just wears this expression that tells me I’m useless. So I mostly just pretend to be asleep to stay out of her way, and then my daughter, who is smarter than either of us, comes in and says, Dad. You need to get up now. Like she’s the mother of a teenager, or a carer in a home. But I can’t explain it to her: that I just want to sleep. At least once a day I realize that the only thing I can think about is my bed, waiting for me to crawl into it, and all I’m doing is waiting till everyone goes out so that I can head upstairs and sink into oblivion for a few more hours.

And the doctor told me to improve my diet, but the truth is I have no energy to put together nutritionally beneficial meals. So I eat biscuits, toast with butter. And I watch my waistline soften and enlarge and despise myself for that too.

“Navigating?” he says. “Um. Bits and bobs. Normal stuff.”

Dr. Kovitz looks at him over his notepad. Phil notices then the two boxes of tissues on the table. He wonders absently how many people cry in this office every day. He wonders if Dr. Kovitz empties the bin between sessions so it won’t look like the saddest room in the world. He wonders what this man would do if he just lay down on the sofa and cried and cried. But the thing is, if he let himself do that he would probably never stop.

“Normal stuff,” Dr. Kovitz repeats thoughtfully. “That’s an interesting concept. Do you think there’s such a thing as normal stuff?”

“Well. What have I got to complain about, really?”

He smiles at Dr. Kovitz. What has he got to complain about? It’s all pathetic. Compared with most people Phil has a lot. He has a body that works pretty well. He has a house, even if there is a weighty mortgage attached to it. He has a wife. He has a daughter. He will probably get a job again at some point. He is not running from armed terrorists or walking forty miles to fetch water. He is not counting his ribs, or trying to comfort a starving child. And what the hell can this man here do anyway, with his rattan furniture and his boxes of tissues? What good will talking do? It’s not going to rewrite his dad’s ending. It’s not going to lift the burden on Sam. It’s not going to get him a new job, or stop his daughter eyeing him as if he’s become some weird, deformed creature at a zoo.

It feels ridiculous. It’s all ridiculous.

“I should probably go,” he says, rising to his feet.

“Go?”

“You—you have people far more in need of help than me. I—I don’t think this is for me. Sorry.”

Dr. Kovitz doesn’t try to stop him. He just watches him. “Okay, Phil,” he says. “Well. I’m going to keep your session open next week and hope that you come back.”

“There’s really no need.”

“Oh, I think there is.”

He stands before Phil can tell him not to and steps past him to open the door for him. He holds it open, and says quietly, “I hope I’ll see you next week.”



* * *



? ? ?

It takes Phil twenty-three minutes to walk home. When he gets in he closes the door behind him, pats the dog and climbs the stairs heavily toward bed.





thirteen


The gym was closed until further notice. Nisha had walked there on her way home the previous evening and stared at the sign, letting herself absorb the fact that that was it. Her clothes, the things that made her feel like her, were never going to be returned to her. She is not sure why the shoes bother her so much—perhaps because they had been her last gift from him, an emblem of their marriage. Carl had presented them with a huge flourish, admired her in them, wanted her to wear them on their most important trips. It had not been unusual for Carl to dictate her wardrobe. “I like to see you in them. I like everyone to see you in them.” What had been the point when all this time he had been busy planning to eject her and install Charlotte in her place? It all adds to the growing feeling that she has been played, and that in turn makes her so angry she feels like her veins are permanently fizzing with it.

“Girl, you’ve speeded up!” Jasmine puts her head around the bathroom door and pulls an admiring face. Anger seems to fuel Nisha now. She is awake before her alarm, attacks stains and marks as if she is rubbing out Carl’s face. She obliterates dirt as if she is obliterating the past week.

“You ready for your break? Or will I just leave you to do the other twelve rooms while I have a coffee?”