The Friends We Keep(59)
“I do love you, Pete,” she said, leaning over and kissing him on the lips.
“I know how to make my wife happy,” he said, winking at Maggie, who loved seeing how sweet the two of them were together, even amid her own sadness at not having the same sort of marriage.
Things had become harder and harder over the last few years. IVF hadn’t worked, and after a while, they stopped trying. They had talked about adoption, but Maggie adamantly refused, without giving him an explanation why. Ben had pointed out all the wonderful stories there were, but Maggie wouldn’t listen.
They had each shut down, to the point where there was less and less to say to each other. Ben had his work, his hiking, and Maggie had her cooking. She didn’t hike with him anymore, let him go off with his hiking club on the weekends, while she went to Karen and Pete’s, or out with other friends.
When they were together, if they weren’t talking about something logistical to do with the house, Maggie felt they would run out of things to talk about. Ben didn’t seem to mind, but she hated it. Sometimes, when Ben was on his way home for dinner, she would make a note of things that had happened to her that day that might interest him, or maybe make him laugh. Anything to avoid the silence.
On the rare occasions they went out for dinner, she would see other couples, a few their own age, some much older, who would sit there in silence, looking around the room or—presumably—eavesdropping on the lucky people who did have things to say to each other. Maggie never noticed those people until about two years ago, until she realized that unless she put in the work, they stood a very good chance of becoming one of those couples.
For a long time, she blamed the drinking. Ben would manage a few months sober, sometimes a year, before one drink would derail him, and the chaos would start all over again. It always started with one drink. Ben could handle one drink, but before long it would be a vodka to start, then a second and third, before “splitting” a bottle of wine. Or two. Maggie only ever had a glass, at most, and she tried not to drink in front of Ben.
She found herself saying things at the beginning of the evening like, “Please don’t drink too much,” or the more passive-aggressive, “Drinking again, I see?” and the evening would devolve into resentful silence other than commenting about the food.
When Ben went into AA, as he did every once in a while, usually when she’d find him passed out on the stairs night after night, Maggie always hoped that sobriety would bring the easy, chatty conversation that had defined their courtship and the honeymoon years of their marriage.
But Ben was an introvert, one who might have been very good at pretending to be an extrovert, but he lived in his head. It didn’t occur to him to share his thoughts with Maggie, who could happily burble away to anyone. After a while, she ran out of things to say to Ben. He didn’t seem that interested in stories of her life in the village, and although he was interested in politics, Maggie wasn’t particularly, and she didn’t have the will to learn about it.
She tried to find other ways to fill the silence. In the evenings they would often eat dinner with the radio on. She would scour the Radio Times to find a play, or a show she knew he would like. If there was something on the telly they would have a TV dinner, but Maggie hated that, didn’t want to get into that habit.
After dinner she would go to her little office and check her e-mail, Ben going to his own office, coming to bed long after she was fast asleep.
She could smell the alcohol on him when he came to bed. And she had never been lonelier in her life. She wished her mother’s words were true, but even if this passed, even if he got sober yet again, she had no doubt her life would always be this roller coaster.
She would sometimes try to think of what they once had in common, but it was getting harder to remember. Most of the time, she thought they were hugely mismatched from the beginning. Had she not harbored such an enormous crush on him, had she not worn rose-tinted spectacles every time she looked at him, perhaps she would have seen it.
“Where is that husband of yours, anyway?” said Pete. “He was good fun at the lock-in last Saturday.”
“Oh, you should have been there,” said Karen. “We had Simon from the grocer’s on the piano all night. We didn’t leave until the early hours. Your Ben was the life and soul of the party!”
Did he drink? Maggie wanted to ask, but of course he was drinking. He was only ever the life and soul when he was drinking.
If she wasn’t so scared of being on her own, of the enormous changes divorce would bring, she would leave him. Instead, she harbored her resentments and wounds, and lay in bed dreaming of an easier, happier life.
twenty-six
- 2010 -
Dickie always came along when Topher did the chat shows, particularly the morning shows, as there were always producers there that Dickie had known from way back when. He enjoyed the whole process, arriving early, sitting in the greenroom, hopefully running into a thespian or two that he had once worked with.
They had arrived at the Today show early that morning, Dickie thrilled when Stephen Fry entered the greenroom, here to talk about a new movie. They had worked together years before, and Stephen generously offered to help Topher with his memoir in any way he could.
Topher still couldn’t believe he had a memoir out today, a memoir in which he finally outed himself, mostly because the rumors online had been growing out of control. Perez Hilton had been dropping hints in blind items for months, which at first had terrified Topher—would he ever get work as a straight actor again if the world knew he was gay?—and then became tiring.