Grażyna Plebanek - Illegal Liaisons

“… sits winking!” yelled Tomaszek and tumbled over.

Megi halted to pick him up, herself weak with laughter.

“Sing, you dope!” Antosia, for whom rituals were very important, was cross.

“Mommy, she called me a dope.” Tomaszek pointed an accusing finger.

“Antosia!” Megi’s expression was far from stern.

At that moment she caught sight of Jonathan.

“Come and help us,” she groaned, heaving up her laughing son.

“Do-pey, do-pey,” chanted Antosia to her brother.

“Don’t say that,” said Jonathan spontaneously.

He walked up and pulled Tomaszek to his feet. As he took him by the hand he was horrified at how small and fragile it was. He covered it with his own and grasped Antosia’s hand, soft as a puppy’s paw. Megi grabbed the children on the other side and together they formed a circle around the Christmas tree.

Jonathan wanted to weep so he pressed his face against a branch, hissed “Auuu!”; they laughed.

Jonathan stirred the pot, roughly shaking logs of carrots. The thick mass floated to the surface. He’d learned how to make Polish krupnik , thick barley soup, from his mother. Chicken in beer sauce, a speciality of Nick’s, his mother’s English husband, was roasting in the oven. For dessert, in keeping with French custom, there would be cheese.

Jonathan had taken refuge in cooking when Andrea’s silence had become unbearable. He’d already gone through the stage of hoping that she would write to him, of worrying that something had happened to her, of being frightened that he’d offended her, furious that she treated him this way and, finally, of feverishly trying to arrange “accidental” meetings. Now he was going through a stage of blunt despair.

The children were on their Christmas holiday and his writing course was to resume after the break. Megi had been working exceptionally long hours recently, while Antosia had caught a cold that she quickly passed on to her brother. Jonathan stayed at home with the feverish children, tied down because their nanny had gone to Poland.

He dished out medicine, cooked, pressed food into the noneaters, read to them and, during their brief naps interrupted by blocked noses, checked whether a text message had arrived from Andrea. So long as the children were poorly, he concealed his frustration and forged it into patience, but when they picked up, he was drained.

When one day Tomaszek, still grumpy and afflicted with a head cold, approached and started to tug at Jonathan’s T-shirt, demanding that he play with him, Jonathan, who was just taking the dishes out of the dishwasher, couldn’t stand the weight of the little person clutching at his feet any longer. He took a cup from the dishwater and flung it against the floor as hard as he could.

Tomaszek froze, looking at the swing of his father’s hand, at the plume of sharp pieces. A long while passed before he overcame his fear and started to cry.

Antosia ran downstairs and stood at the door, staring owl-like at her brother and father. Jonathan was still standing over the shell of the broken teacup, his face white, his hands clenched; Tomaszek was shaking with sobs which were becoming less and less like those of a child and more and more like those of an animal.

Jonathan couldn’t bring himself to hug him, afraid that if he took him in his arms the child would fall apart like the teacup. Antosia ran up to her brother and put her arms around him; he clung to her tightly.

“Daddy?” whispered the girl.

Jonathan hid his face with his hands.

“I’m sorry, sorry …”

He felt as if he’d had an accident. If he yelled, “I’m going through a difficult period!” they wouldn’t have understood anyway. He really was going through a difficult period – one of lying in wait for a call from Simon’s woman, the bitch in the red dress, the reason his children were having a bad time with him.

When Saturday arrived, Megi took over the domestic helm and Jonathan pretended that he’d caught a cold from the children. He ached all over; he wanted to cry, didn’t eat, forgot to drink. When he slept, he slept like a log. Blessed sleep, terrible awakening when persistent images invaded him again – the magic of secret meetings, the best sex of his life, soaring, starry lightheartedness. And the thought that all this had fallen apart. He no longer had Andrea. She was having a good time somewhere else with someone new, someone better placed than him.

Then had come the phase of blunt stupor, which led him to the kitchen. Since he couldn’t escape from home he decided to discover its creative aspect – cooking. He anointed the chicken with herbs and in his heart cast a spell over all those who could send him text messages not to do so – except for Andrea. The worst moments were when, with a pounding heart, he opened the envelope only to come across a stupid joke from Stefan.

The approaching spring loosened the beaks of birds; they began to sing but the sound only irritated Jonathan. Others waking up to life, he felt, was unfair when he himself was unwell (he felt left out). He had had no idea that the wound of rejection could go so deep; he couldn’t cheapen his experience by thinking of it as Stefan described it – a couple of fruitful fucks with a good piece of ass such as Andrea. And what, it’s ended? Everything comes to an end.

Why couldn’t his thoughts stop there, give his mind and pride a break? Unfortunately, they didn’t. A behaviorist at heart, he demonstrated an unexpected determination to drill and bore away at the shaft of suppositions until he felt himself falling in head-first.

Why had she ditched him, and without a word? Was he lousy and if so, where – in bed, in life, in conversation? Images from their meetings appeared before his eyes; obscured the car window as he drove. He shook his head like the dog he was beginning to resemble – shaggy, bristled, with hungry eyes.

He discovered a strange dependence on things he hadn’t had the chance to notice before. Such as the fact that routine was a savior. However crumpled he may have been on leaving the house to take the children to school, he returned in a better condition – fleeting conversations calmed him and the gaze of women for whom he was one of few men they saw at this hour, eased his pain.

In spite of this he felt ill. He was undergoing an enforced detox, with no anesthetic or therapist to help. Stefan, although he tried, couldn’t put himself in his position because for him women were like stunning clothes – he kept trying new ones. Jonathan wouldn’t have been able to talk about this to his father or mother. If anyone were to understand him it would have been Megi.

Jonathan exchanged a few greetings and goodbyes in the school parking lot and got into his car. He watched the women disperse to their cars and realized that he drifted among them like a helpless teenager. Pain was tearing at him, respecting no boundaries.

But he had children now! The thought appeared so suddenly that he even pulled himself up straight. For a moment he couldn’t understand what this realization was supposed to mean; finally, it dawned on him. He turned the key in the ignition and drove out of the parking garage too fast.

He raced ahead, angry at the red lights, overtook old men in their cars, grumbled about “snails”; he raced, red in the face, with seething insides and the feverish thought, “She’s got to tell me, I’m an adult, a father, damn it!”

It wasn’t yet ten when he came to a halt. He glanced at Andrea’s window and saw that the bedroom curtain was still half-drawn – a sign that she was in the bathroom. He instinctively hunched in on himself when he saw Simon leave. The latter looked well-off in his trench coat, carrying a briefcase. Jonathan shook the trouser legs of his jeans as though to give them an elegant crease. For a while, he observed Simon in his rear mirror, and when Simon disappeared round the corner, Jonathan climbed out of the car.