Jane Asher - Losing It

The habit continued as a silly part of our foreplay for several years after we got married. A note inscribed with something like ‘Gaston’s Matrimonial Property Law Book IV’ or ‘6.40 Waterloo to Haslemere’ left on my pillow would send me into smug swoons of delight and straight into his arms. What fun I had choosing nighties or underwear that I knew he would enjoy, dressing myself up like a present for him to unwrap slowly in the soft light of our bedroom. How I miss it.

Ben shut himself in his room after school today, and when I knocked he said not to come in because he was working. That’s not like him – I hope he’s OK. I always used to think he was the tough one when they were little, but – it’s funny – he’s grown up to be the one I worry about the most. I just wish he didn’t have to pretend to be all right, all the time – I’m sure it’s the mixture of trying to look cool and in charge with being so unsure underneath that’s getting to him. I’ve never felt that with Sally. Maybe Holly can talk to him about it – perhaps I’ll ask her.

I hate it though. Having to give my little boy over to the care of another woman when it really counts. It’s not the empty-nest syndrome they should warn us all about – it’s the empty heart. Sounds ridiculously soppy but it’s true: it’s so hard to have Ben still here in his physical presence, but gone from me in so many other ways. I felt like screaming outside his door today: ‘Don’t you realise I wiped your bottom and fed you at the breast and washed your snot and vomit and tears off the shoulders of all my clothes for years? I was the centre of your universe, the most perfect, necessary being; now I’m an embarrassment.’ But of course I just said, ‘Oh, OK, darling’ or something feeble like that and went back downstairs.

Dear Stacey,

Hiya! Guess what!!! I finally gotta date!! So I’ll be going on to the other side soon after you read this – or maybe I’m even there already. I guess your British post takes forever, huh?

Anyway, pray for me, Stacey. I know you will, and I know the Lord is gonna take good care of me and I’ve got the cute little teddy you sent and he’s gonna go in there right alongside me and I’ve got my angels praying for me too, so it’s like – hey! – it’s all gonna be just cool. No – I am NOT gonna send you a picture – you’ll just have to wait until after, when I’m thin and gorgeous (and pigs will fly, huh?)

You remember I’d seen my PCP beginning September? Ooops, sorry, I forget you don’t call them that over there – you’d say your general doctor, I think. Is that right?? Anyway – you know what I mean. And – whaddaya know?? – I got a referral. So I saw the WLS guy early October – hey, maybe I told you all this, but I’m just so excited!! – look, here’s one of my real smiley faces to show you how happy I am – cute, or what, huh???? Anyways, I had real high BP so I had to have medication for that and then a pap smear and all kinds of stuff, and he told me to come back in a month, so I did and he was real pleased with me and said my BP was down and now I’VE GOT A DATE FOR THE OTHER SIDE!

I got my approval from the insurance real easy, too. Some people have all kinds of trouble, but when they heard my weight and my history and I told them who my surgeon was they were real sweet and I got approval right there and then over the phone. I feel kinda scared, too, but I just know everything’s gonna be fine. I was real surprised it was so easy, ’cos I’m not like their usual – well, it’s hard to explain, but let’s just say I’m a little different. And no – I’m not gonna tell ya ’cos I like my little mysteries!

Pray for me, Stacey, and I’ll pray the Lord will find a way to help you over to the other side too, sweetie.

Yours with the peace of the Angels to watch over you

Crystal

I can pinpoint almost to the second the moment everything changed. I was feeling so fatherly, caring and – I don’t know – sort of smug about my relationship with the checkout girl until then. I’d been back many times to SavaMart, making sure I chose Stacey’s till of course, and getting her to open up to me that little bit more each visit. I’d get home and describe progress to Judy, enjoying the fact that I now knew more than she did about the whereabouts of various goods in the store. I knew it was irritating her that I insisted on doing the shopping at SavaMart rather than Waitrose or Sainsbury’s, which, admittedly, do have a far better class of produce, not to mention service and choice. But Jude can be very understanding when she wants to be, and when I explained that this wretched checkout girl had become a bit of a project, if not challenge, she put up with the unexciting selection of goods I invariably returned with, and relaxed into the unusual luxury of not having to shop.

Meanwhile, I determined to help Stacey – as to why, I find that very hard to answer. Looking back on it, it’s difficult to rid myself of the way I now inevitably see things, and to try to remember what originally prompted my innocent and uncomplicated interest in the girl is almost impossible. I know I had become fond of her: making genuine contact with her had become a bit of an obsession, I can see that – it was certainly more than an amusing challenge, which was how I presented it to Judy and Ben. I keep coming back to the word fatherly. Yes – paternal, quite definitely. I think, in spite of the gross physical differences between the two of them, Stacey somehow reminded me of Sally, or, at least, of Sally when she was still at an age to need her dad in a real, physical way. Stacey’s disguised but – to me – quite apparent vulnerability stemmed from her size and Sally’s was simply because of her youth and inexperience, but the protective response they both produced in me was the same.

So, a middle-aged attempt to replace a beloved daughter? No, not replace: Sally, however changed and grown-up, will always keep that particular place in my heart that a first child has. But my feelings – and I use the word lightly in the context of those early days – for Stacey rekindled the caring, nurturing part of my character, if you will, that had previously been reserved for my offspring. One reads so much about the unhappiness of today’s youth – and, indeed, I come across its manifestations only too often in court – but it’s rare for me to come slap bang up against it in real life, so to speak, and I was determined to do my little bit to change the fortunes of at least this one unfortunate creature. I was also aware that since I had begun to take an interest in her, the bouts of depression, or boredom, that I had been experiencing increasingly often over the last few years had entirely ceased. Something about the girl fascinated me, and took me out of myself so much that I noticed I was worrying about her rather than about my own problems.

Each time I saw her I wondered whether her size bothered her in any way – she seemed so bored by everthing around her, apart from the brief flicker of life I’d seen in her eyes at the appearance of the store manager, the smooth Warren thingummy, that I really wasn’t quite sure if there could be any sensitivity to her own condition buried deep within the parcel of flesh. But, having seen Judy and, more markedly, Sally worry obsessively about their figures over the years, I knew that Stacey’s apparent indifference was almost certainly hiding a miserable awareness of her own unattractiveness. I thought a compliment couldn’t go amiss, and might just chip away at the defensiveness she wore around her like an impenetrable shawl.

‘What a pretty ring!’ I said to her on about my tenth visit to the store. On the middle finger of her right hand she wore a small gold ring, sporting a swirling design of filigree work and tiny blue stones. Inevitably it was partly submerged in the fleshy roundness of what still tended to remind me of a sausage, but it was true that the little points of blue against the gold, nestling into the cushions of pale, smooth skin, as in folds of cream satin in a jewellery box, made a sweet and surprisingly touching sight. I wondered briefly if the adored Warren had perhaps had a moment of madness and presented it to her as a birthday gift, or, more likely perhaps, if it came from a doting mother or father.