Phoebe's Party

‘Bollocks to this,’ I say to the laundry in my new London voice, and even the laundry knows it is a lie. The radio is on in the background and that cunt Osborne is talking about the recession. My mobile starts to ring. Brad. Voice carefully neutral.
‘Don’t forget we have that Thing tonight.’
Oh, sweet Jesus, we have that Thing. Tonight.
‘At Phoebe’s. Remember?’
Yes. I do. ‘Alright.’
‘Have you been able to get a babysitter?’
‘No, it’ll be alright. It’s only a small Thing, anyway, and I’ll leave early. You can stay if you like.’
‘Oh,’ He sounds disappointed. But only for a moment. He realises he will be free without me there. If he wants to frolic, flirt with and fuck other women, he will be free. But then he says, ‘It’s OK. I’ll come home with you. It’s just I thought we might want to stay out. Have a drink. You know.’
Yes, I know.
‘Monica…Are you sure about this tonight?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Are you sure you’re up to this?’
I don’t answer.
‘I mean, you know…’
‘You want me to promise to behave myself? You want me to promise not to embarrass you among your new friends?’
‘We could just stay in, if you’d rather. Get a movie or something?’
No, I’m not fucking staying in watching a fucking movie, I want to go to Phoebe’s fucking party and eat her posh London food, thanks very fucking much. So he’s afraid of me again, afraid of the crazy lady that is inhabiting my voice. He gets off the phone quick. ‘See you at six.’
And so I go and get ready, and I have a bath, and I don’t have a drink because I have promised to behave, and I get the kids ready and they look remarkably cute: Tyler in his pyjamas, a white body suit that is almost, nearly too small for him already so his body feels snug and sausage-fat inside it, Carrie in her party outfit, she is in a dress. The top is black and fitted close to her body, the bottom is bright, stiff taffeta that puffs out around her in a bell over her black tights and black shoes, very shiny. I sweep her hair to one side over her forehead with a clip and she begs me for lipstick so I let her have a bit of gloss. She is excited, bouncing up and down in the attention she knows she will receive from the grownups at the party.
It’s ten to six. And I think it will be OK to have one drink, just the one, just to steady the nerves – he said to behave myself; he doesn’t want me to be a juddery wreck, if I have just one small glass of wine now, it will make the smile fall off my tongue when we arrive; make the hello, Phoebe, do you want to fuck my husband? stay inside.
So at six o’clock he arrives and I’m not quite ready but it will do, I will just do my makeup in the taxi and just one last little sip, ah. OK. I’m ready. I can do. The Thing. I’m not going to think about the laundry or how much I hate London and I am going to behave myself and I am not going to say anything to Phoebe about seeing her kissing Brad with tongue last time. And I am not going to get upset if they talk about the tube, or the Olympics, or the X Factor, or anything at all really, nothing is going to upset me. It’s a party.
‘Did you brush your teeth?’ Brad asks me in the cab, his voice a low whisper so the driver can’t hear. Carrie hears. She turns round and stares. She puts her hand on my cheek and says, ‘you look so pretty, Mommy,’ and I kiss her little face, her forehead. ‘So do you,’ I say, before I run my tongue over my teeth and he’s right, they feel furry, and I know then, I can’t do this, it’s bullshit, I cannot. Do. The Thing.
We’ve arrived. Brad pays the driver and we get out and I hold Tyler close, feeling his papery bum under the warm cotton of his baby-grow, wrapping his blanket round us both for protection.
‘We’re late,’ Brad says, and he is annoyed, but not terribly, he’s more excited to see people, the London People, of which Phoebe is a marvellous specimen. I don’t blame him for wanting to fuck her, I want to fuck her too, and he knocks on the door and Phoebe opens, and her horse teeth are in my face and so massively huge, I can’t look at them, and she’s all Hallo! Dah-ling come in! right into my face and I can’t breathe, I’m suffocating. I can’t go in, and I am left panting, grey in the shadow when she turns away to the light of her hallway, which is strewn with stripy hats and scarves and the rubber boots of her children, lined up according to size and paired by colour, all stamped with the requisite designer name: Hunter. Stupid name. They’re boots, just rubber boots.
She plucks Tyler from my arm and hands him to one of her teenagers (she has several – do they all belong to her or are some her new husband’s?). I look around and there in the dining room is the distressed farmhouse dining table, brought especially from France or Belgium or was it Luxembourg? Lord knows with these people, France is probably not good enough anymore. Straining with food, not the typical beige buffet of prawn sandwiches and bland quiche served at my Mum and Baby groups, oh no. This is catered, posh, colourful: platters of orange lobster, bright dots of sushi, a tray of crudités sliced thin and long.
The guests are sliced thin and long too. I knew it would be one of Those Things, with only the Beautiful London People there, the ones who don’t need to be told which colours are fashionably clashing, the ones who know how to wear dead people’s suits and have ironic t-shirts and vintage hats and bullshit like that. But still.
The Conversations:
James:
Occupy London is a joke. Those pampered ninnies wouldn’t last a minute in the real world. (James works in graphic design. He has a specialism in using technology like Photoshop to make women look thinner and more marketable.)
Terrence:
(Terrence is just back from Shanghai. He is in the middle of an anecdote about being persistently solicited by prostitutes.) I mean, her skirt was like this short (puts hand on curve of his ass). I could see her lady garden and everything. (Polite, mildly embarrassed and mock scandalised laughter at the term ‘lady garden’.)
Herbert:
I read today that one in four American women are on some kind of pill, can you believe that? One in four. (Sipping drink knowledgably) Actually, I’m not surprised, I’ve just been in our office in Boston and you want to see those birds with their little pill trays at lunch time, it’s like they eat them like candy, you know? (Pause) Hi, Monica (smiles, blanches, recovers). (To the group) She’s American; (to me) do you take loadsa pills, har har?
Slowly, slowly, I make my eyes go blank; I nod, once. This response is deliciously discomfiting. Herbert, Terrence, Phoebe, James, even Brad: London eyes looking. At me. So I lift my glass and smile, shrinking back into the kitchen, which is the exactly correct meeting point between country cottage and modern minimalist, clinically clean, of course. None of this is real, I say to myself, none of it matters, but in the kitchen something happens. In the kitchen, I meet someone I have not met before, or then I realise yes I have. It’s Michael, he’s not been around much though, he… went to … Iraq, I think. Or Afghanistan? And I am annoyed that I don’t know, here is a man who has been AT WAR, and I don’t even know which one, are we still even fighting in both places? I’m so ignorant I can’t even possibly converse with this man, and he is kind, I can see in his face, but he is struggling with something, and asks me if I would like a drink, and god yes I would and we laugh, until I look at his hands and see that’s what he is struggling with: the bottle opener, and then I take in that the reason he is struggling with it is because he is missing the fingers on one hand, not all of them – only two – only! Two. And I can’t help it, I scream, a tiny scream, only a little one, and his face goes pale, and he says, ‘I can’t get used to it,’ and he smiles but not like the others, instead slowly, looking at me, right into me, where I shiver, and I take the bottle from his hands and he doesn’t say anything and I get it open and I pour us each a glass and we clink together before downing both then refilling both, with a half-smile, with a deep breath, and a going-back-into-Phoebe’s-party stiffening of the shoulders. I follow him in.
And then I make a decision. I’m going to leave. I’m going to leave the party, now, with the children (Brad can make up his own mind and either stay or come as he pleases), and then I am going to leave London. I might go back to Montana, where the sky is as big as my dreams, or I might go somewhere else, someplace new. It doesn’t matter where, so long as I go, now, when I still can.