Someone Else's Shoes(68)

“It might be more money,” she says. She hasn’t told him about the threat to her job yet. It’s another conversation she feels he probably isn’t up to.

He doesn’t say anything.

“I mean I really love the people I work with.” She feels a slight flush rise to her cheeks as she says this, and hopes it’s not as apparent as it feels. “But if Simon’s not going anywhere then maybe I should. It’s worth a try anyway, right?”

He looks at her for a moment. His face is blank, unreadable. And then he turns back to his plate.

“Phil? . . . Is everything okay?” she says, finally.

“Fine.” He finishes his meal, and as Sam sits, he raises himself heavily from the table, takes his plate to the dishwasher and heads into the living room. Sam is left eating alone at the table.



* * *



? ? ?

For some time now, during the hours that Sam has assumed he was sleeping, Phil has been awake, his eyes closed, wrestling with his father through the small hours, feeling his bony hand gripping his wrist, unable to turn from the intensity and fury of his stare. Sometimes he feels paralyzed, lost in the endless repetitive loop of his thoughts: You are a weak, useless man. Do it! DO IT! Now, for the first night in months, his father has left him alone, but this has brought no relief. Instead he has been haunted by thoughts of the woman lying beside him, her hands on another man’s body, her face lit up by his presence. How long has this been going on? What lies has she told in order to sneak away? In the past couple of weeks she has often returned home flushed and slightly breathless and the thought of what she has been doing with this unknown lover causes a pain in his stomach that pulls his knees to his chest. His Sam. The woman he has laughed with, lain with for more than two decades, who now cares so little for him that he might as well be a piece of discarded furniture. She feels suddenly like someone he has never known. And how could he not have noticed what was happening? Some part of him had known something was different, something off in the air between them. But it had felt like just too much to confront, and he had turned his head away until the fury of his daughter had forced him to see it.

The one thing Phil does not ask himself is why. Because it is obvious why. What can he offer Sam these days? He has been a hollow thing for months, unable to function. Unable to offer her anything. Useless. He should have known she would turn to someone else eventually.

These thoughts whirl and chase each other all night, so that by dawn he is gritty-eyed and overwhelmed. He feels nauseated, restless and exhausted at the same time. He hears her get up, the sound of her showering and getting dressed around him—is she thinking about what to wear for him? Some special lingerie, or an outfit this man has told her he particularly likes?—then she’s heading lightly downstairs. She no longer reaches across the bed to kiss him before she leaves. He used to think this was her not wanting to disturb him but now he thinks it is probably just that she no longer wants anything to do with him at all. She probably despises him. He hears the front door close and her car starting, and he presses the balls of his hands into his eyes, wanting it all to stop. Wanting to be lifted out of this body, this life, and put somewhere that he doesn’t have to deal with any of it.



* * *



? ? ?

He has lain there for some unknown length of time—half an hour? Two hours? His hands, his arms, feel odd, his body curiously disconnected from his mind. When he can bear this sensation no longer he gets up and out of bed and walks around the room. He gazes out of the bedroom window at the street, which looks the same but is clearly altered forever. Then he turns to the wardrobe, opens it, and stares down at the black kitbag his daughter had brandished at him the previous day. He scrutinizes it, his breath coming hard in his chest, as if the thing sitting there is radioactive. And then, slowly, he crouches down and unzips it. There they are, peeping out from the opened zip, the sexy red high-heeled shoes. It’s like they belong to someone he doesn’t know. He picks one up, staring at it, and then, compelled by some unknown impulse, he presses it to his nose, and as he holds it, he feels his face twisting into a grimace, and then a howl, a silent howl, is emerging from him. She wears these shoes for this man. These shoes are a shared secret between his wife and her lover. He probably fucks her in them. The word hammers its way into his head, even though this is a word he almost never uses out loud. His hands have begun to shake and he stuffs the shoe back into the bag. Phil paces backward and forward, letting out low moans of distress. Then he sits again, his head in his hands. Finally he stands up, walks over to the bag, grabs the shoes and stuffs them into the empty plastic bag that sits in the bottom of his wardrobe. He has no idea why the bag is there. It has just been there for no reason for as long as he can remember, like so much in this house. He holds it in front of him, his face contorted, as he walks briskly down the stairs, as someone would if they were disposing of a full nappy or a dog turd. Then he stands in the hallway, unsure what to do with it. He just knows those shoes cannot stay in this house. They cannot be here, their presence contaminating everything he has known and loved. Almost without realizing what he is doing, he opens the front door and walks outside, wrenches open the door of the camper-van (they stopped locking it months ago, when Sam started secretly hoping someone would steal it) and climbs inside, breathing in the moldering smell of neglect and mild, steady decay. He opens one of the laminated cupboards above the little cushioned sofa bench and shoves in the shoes, slamming it shut. And then he sits down on the bench and breathes hard, trying to clear the red mist that has landed in front of his eyes.