Sorrow and Bliss(82)

‘Oh.’ I looked upside down at the last thing I had written. ‘It says I never asked what it was like for him.’

He said, ‘The ——?’

‘No, all of it. Our marriage. Being my husband. I never asked you what any of it was like for you.’

‘Right.’ He closed the journal.

‘It’s the thing I’m most ashamed of now, I think.’ I stood up and put my hand out for it. ‘Out of, obviously, an array of options.’

Instead of getting up, Patrick stayed seated and briefly scratched the back of his head. I waited. He kept the book in his hand. ‘Do you want to know?’

I said no and forced myself to sit down again, ‘I don’t.’ I was not as brave as that. ‘What was it like for you, Patrick?’ My bag was on my shoulder. I didn’t take it off.

He said, ‘It was fucking awful.’

Ingrid said fucking car alarm, fucking pantry moths, an actual fucking sultana in my bra, and it was unshocking. But I had never heard Patrick swear, not once in our lives, and said by him, the force and violence of the word made me recoil.

He said sorry.

‘No. I’m sorry. Keep going. I want to know.’

‘You know already. It’s everything your mother told you.’ He put the journal aside. ‘Just that it was always about you. I know you were sick but I was the one who had to absorb all your pain and have your rage directed at me, just because I was there. It took over everything. I feel like my entire life has been subsumed by your sadness. I tried, God Martha, I tried, but it didn’t matter what I did. A lot of the time it seemed like you actively wanted to be miserable but you still expected constant support. Sometimes I just wanted to go to a restaurant based on the food not on whether the manager looked depressed or the carpet reminded you of something bad that had happened to you once. Sometimes I just wanted us to be normal.’

He paused, clearly uncertain whether to articulate his next thought. He did. ‘You threw stuff at me.’

I looked down. I thought, perceiving myself from outside, I am hanging my head. I am bowed by shame.

‘I can’t describe what that was like, Martha. I really can’t, and you expected me to just get over it. You would say you wanted to talk about things but you didn’t. You decided that because I don’t provide a continuous emotional commentary and describe every single feeling I have as it’s occurring that I don’t feel anything. You told me I was blank. Do you remember? You said I was just the outline of where a husband should be.’

I said I didn’t remember. I did. It was in a department store. We were buying a mattress. I kept asking for his opinion. He kept saying he didn’t mind either way, until I stormed out and did not come home for so many hours without telling him where I was that by the time I got back he had called everyone he could think of to see if they had heard from me. ‘I mean yes, sorry. I do. I’m sorry.’

‘You constantly accused me of being passive and not wanting anything but I wasn’t allowed to want anything. That’s how it worked. Accepting whatever I got was the only way to keep the peace. And even –’ Patrick felt the back of his neck, pressing his fingers into a muscle, looking as if he’d located some source of pain ‘– you’ve known me this long but you think the first thing I’d do after I left you is go and sleep with your cousin.’

‘No I –’ I did.

‘It belonged to one of her Rorys. He had the same watch as me. But you didn’t even question if there could be another explanation or consider you could be wrong. What’s the point, if that’s who you think I am?’

I said I am so sorry. ‘I’m the worst person in the world.’

‘No you’re not.’ Patrick’s hand came down in a fist and he hit the arm of the sofa. ‘You’re not the best person in the world either, which is what you really think. You’re the same as everybody else. But that’s harder for you, isn’t it. You’d rather be one or the other. The idea you might be ordinary is unbearable.’

I did not dispute him. Only said, I’m sorry it was fucking awful.

‘Some of the time.’ He sighed and picked up the journal again and let it fall open anywhere. ‘Most of the time it was amazing. You made me so happy, Martha. You have no idea. You have no idea how good it was. That’s the part I’m finding hardest to deal with. That you were oblivious to everything that was good about it. You couldn’t see it.’

I told Patrick I could now.

‘I know.’

I watched him turn back, in search of some particular page, scan it silently for a second and then he started reading aloud: ‘At a wedding shortly after our own, I followed Patrick through the dense crowd at the reception to a woman who was standing by herself.’

I touched one of my ears and felt very hot.

‘He said instead of looking at her every five minutes and feeling sad I should just go over and compliment her hat.’ Patrick looked up. ‘Did I?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t remember that. I just remember –’ he smiled vaguely ‘– at the time thinking you were so, I mean who would care so much about some woman who can’t get an hors d’oeuvre in her mouth, but you were beside yourself. You looked like you were in physical pain. You just talked and talked and talked until she was okay. That’s what I, that’s the kind of thing –’ He trailed off, and turned somewhere else in the journal and said, ‘This is brilliant. Really Martha.’