The Peacock Emporium(94)
“How should I know? As long as it takes.”
“As long as it takes. God, I should have known.” He paced the room, a television detective explaining the genesis of some long-standing crime.
“What?”
“The one thing I wanted. The one thing I thought we had agreed on. And, oh, look, suddenly, after getting everything she wants, Suzanna has changed her mind.”
“I haven’t changed my mind.”
“No? No? So what is this, then, because it sure isn’t up there with oysters and champagne on the getting-pregnant front.”
“I haven’t changed my mind.”
“Then what the hell is this about?”
“Don’t shout at me. Look, I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry, Neil. I just can’t do it right now. I can’t do it now.”
“Of course you can’t—”
“Don’t do this, all right?”
“Do what? What the hell am I doing?”
“Bullying me. I’m just about to bury my best friend, okay? I don’t know whether I’m coming or going—”
“Your best friend? You hadn’t known her six months.”
“There’s a time limit on friendship now?”
“You weren’t even sure about her when she started. You thought she was taking advantage of you.”
Suzanna stood up and pushed past him to the door. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”
“No, Suzanna, I can’t believe that just when I thought we were finally back on track, you’ve found a way to sabotage everything again. You know what? I think there’s something else going on here. Something you’re not being straight with me about.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous.”
“Ridiculous? So what am I meant to say, Suzanna? ‘Oh, you don’t want a baby after all. Don’t worry, darling. I’ll just put my own feelings on hold for a while . . . like I always do.’”
“Don’t do this, Neil.” She reached past him for her coat, pulled it briskly around her, knowing that she would be too hot later.
He was standing in front of her, refusing to move out of the way when she stepped forward. “So, when is the right time, Suzanna? When does this stop being about you, huh? When do my feelings finally get a look-in?”
“Please, Neil—”
“I’m not a saint, Suzanna. I’ve tried to be patient with you, tried to be understanding, but I’m lost. Really. I just can’t see how we move on from here . . .”
She stared at the confusion in his face. She moved forward, placed her hand on his cheek, an unconscious echo of her mother’s gesture. “Look, we’ll talk about it after the funeral, okay? I promise—”
He shook off her hand and went to open the door as the taxi arrived, hooting to signify its arrival. “Whatever,” he said. He didn’t look back.
* * *
—
It was widely agreed that it was a dreadful funeral. Not that Father Lenny hadn’t made an effort with his eulogy—which was beautiful and apt and knowing, and had enough humor to raise the odd brave smile among the mourners—or that the church didn’t look beautiful, what with the ladies from the supermarket having made such an effort to decorate it with flowers, so that the casual observer might have thought they were about to host a wedding. It was not that the sun didn’t shine, as if to offer hope that the place to which Jessie had gone was indubitably wonderful and filled with birdsong—all the things one might hope of a heaven.
It was just that, however you dressed it up, there was something so unspeakably awful, so wrong about burying her. About the fact, they all said afterward, that someone like her should be gone. About the small pale figure who stood motionless in the front pew clutching her grandmother’s hand, and the empty place beside her on the pew, which meant that she was effectively orphaned even if only one parent had died.
Suzanna had been asked by Cath to come to the graveside. She had told her that she would be honored, and taken her place alongside Jessie’s distant relatives and oldest schoolfriends, trying not to feel like an impostor, trying not to think of where Jessie had met her death.
He had not even attempted to come, apparently. Father Lenny had told her the previous day. He had been to see the lad in the hospital. Even though it went against his every instinct, he said, his job was also to comfort the sinner. (And it wasn’t as if anyone else was going to visit him. It had been all he could do to stop Jessie’s neighbors on the estate from forming a lynch mob.)
In fact, Father Lenny had been shaken by the lad’s appearance. His face stitched and swollen from his unsupported journey through the windscreen, his skin bruised and purple, his injuries had uncomfortably echoed Jessie’s in previous weeks. He had refused to say anything other than that he loved her and that the van wouldn’t stop. The doctor said he wasn’t sure his mental state meant he could take in what he had done.
“Would have been better for everyone if he’d died too,” Father Lenny had said, his voice uncharacteristically bitter.
The familiar liturgy of dust to dust, ashes to ashes had ended. Suzanna saw Emma with her grandmother’s hands on her shoulders, supporting and holding her close. She wondered who gained the most comfort from their seemingly unending physical contact. She thought of the first day she had reopened the shop, when the child and her grandmother had come and stood in the lane. They had refused her invitation to come inside. They had just stood opposite, holding hands, their faces gray and wide-eyed as they absorbed its shattered exterior.