Someone Else's Shoes(42)

Sam takes a long, careful sip of her tea. “I had a drink with my work colleagues to celebrate bringing in some deals. It was nothing.”

“Well, I’m not sure it’s a good idea leaving Phil on his own if he’s down in the dumps. I never leave your dad to go drinking at the pub. I’m not sure he’d like that very much.”

You never went to work, Sam wants to say. You never had to earn money just so that your family could keep a roof over its head. You never had to deal with a boss whose every labored sigh tells you he thinks you’re a waste of space. You never lie next to the back of a sleeping man wondering if you’ve actually become invisible.

“Well,” she says carefully, “it doesn’t happen very often.”

Her mother sits down at the table and sighs. “It’s very hard for a man, you know, losing his job. He doesn’t feel like a man any more.”

“That’s not very egalitarian of you, Mother. I thought you believed both sexes should be treated equally.”

“Well, it’s just common sense. They get—what’s the word?—emasculated. If you’re earning all the money and then going out to the pub in the evening, how’s poor old Phil meant to feel?”

“Are you telling me you never go out without Dad?”

“Only to my book group. And that’s only because Lina Gupta always wants to talk about her hemorrhoids and that kind of talk makes him go a bit funny. Honestly, how she can shoehorn a reference to Anusol into a discussion about Anna Karenina I don’t know.”

Sam and her mother chat for a while—or Merryn chats and Sam adopts her well-worn role as tame audience for her mother’s concerns about the planet, annoyance at the politicians who are variously self-serving, idiotic or just plain irritating, her neighbors’ woes (who is dying, suffering some terrible ailment, or already dead). Sam had observed some years previously that her mother was uninterested in the minutiae of Sam’s own life beyond how it might affect her or Phil, whom she considers the finest of sons-in-law (“You’re very lucky to have him”). Also, while they profess endless public love for each other, her mother and father use every available opportunity to offload on her separately about the maddening qualities, difficulties and frailties of the other. (“He cannot read a road map any more. He says he can, but then he goes completely the wrong way”; “She leaves her glasses everywhere. And then she accuses me of taking them! She’s so blind she can’t see where she’s put them.”)

“So what are you going to do about Phil?” her mother says, as Sam puts her coat on to leave. She has cleaned the kitchen and the upstairs bathroom, faintly saddened by the sheer number of unpronounceable pills and other medication her parents now seem to require just to function.

“What do you mean?”

“Well . . . I think maybe you need to give Phil a bit of a boost. Make him feel good about himself.”

“Why should he get to feel good about himself? I don’t.”

“Don’t be facetious, Samantha. He needs your support, even if it is irritating.”

“I’m doing everything I can.” She cannot keep the weariness from her voice.

“Well, sometimes you have to do more. When your father had that problem with his you know what—”

“Mum, I told you, I really don’t want to know about Dad’s penis troubles.”

“Well, we got him some of those blue pills. And apart from that unfortunate incident in Sainsbury’s, after he took too many, they worked a treat. He felt like himself again and that means we’re both happy.” She pauses, thinking. “That said, we do have to use the Tesco over by the bypass now. And the parking spaces are much too narrow for a family car.”

Her mother places a hand on her arm. “Look, all I’m saying is that it may well be that you’re having to do more than your share of the heavy lifting just now, but if you can boost Phil up a bit it’ll make you both feel better in the end.”

Her mother’s blue eyes are piercing. She gives Sam a reassuring smile. “Just have a think about it . . .” Then her gaze swivels. “Tom, what are you doing with that wretched device? I can hear the water sloshing onto the living-room floor from here. Honestly, do I have to do everything myself?”



* * *



? ? ?

Sam thinks about her mother’s words during the short walk home. She and Phil have been, in the language of women’s magazines, disconnected for months. Without any outings together, there is little for them to discuss beyond the dog (no, he has not walked him), their daughter (no, he’s not sure where she is) or her work (he doesn’t want to talk about that). Maybe this is one of those times when she really does have to try a little harder. Maybe if she focused less on how tired she is, and how furious at the deficit of support coming her way, they could see a way through.

She stops for a moment on the pavement and registers this. It’s quite a startling thought for Sam, to be taking seriously advice given by her mother. And then she thinks about her father and the blue pills and has to sing loudly to herself all the way to the post office to get the image out of her head.



* * *



? ? ?

Phil is on the sofa, watching some program in which couples bicker about low ceilings and storage space. Sam stops as she hangs her coat on the peg and gazes at the top of his head, where his hair is thinning slightly. She had persuaded him to get a haircut two weeks previously, as he had begun to veer tragically toward Mad Professor, and now at least he looks like somebody she recognizes. She has a sudden memory of the two of them, legs entwined on that sofa, Phil reaching over to kiss the top of her head, and she thinks, Maybe I could make you feel better.