Sam Leith - The Coincidence Engine

Bree burst out laughing. ‘What?’

‘That is one of “More Steamed Puddings”. After that I will cook “Castle Puddings”.’ Jones looked almost happy.

‘Castle puddings, eh? Whatever floats your boat, I guess. You a good cook, then?’

‘No. My food is not always good. The instructions have to be exact. I am not good at guessing. I know a “lug” and a “pinch”. But what is a “good layer”?’ Bree resisted cracking wise. ‘I have been finding Marguerite Patten difficult. Delia Smith is very good. I like Delia Smith.’

‘My favourite food,’ said Bree, apropos of nothing, ‘is…’

And then she started to think about what her favourite food was. Once again it had eluded her. Every time she played this game – usually imagining herself on Death Row – it changed, but never that much. She had once looked online at a list of actual last-meal requests, and she realised that she had all the same favourite foods as most prisoners on Death Row. Gray’s Papaya hot dogs. White Castle sliders. Fried chicken. Pancakes with bacon. A pint of vanilla ice cream with cookie dough. Cold toast thickly spread with salted butter. Banana cake.

She let her sentence trail off. Time and landscape passed.

‘You cook for friends, then, Jones?’ Bree said a little later. Picking up a conversation with Jones was easy. It was as if you could put him on pause, like a VHS. ‘Throw parties?’

‘No. I cook for myself. I don’t socialise,’ Jones said matter-of-factly. ‘People find me unnerving. I have assessments with a specialist, Dr Albert, and a socialisation worker called Herman Coldfield. Herman works for the government. He tells me to think of him as a friend.’

‘Do you?’

‘No.’

She almost said: ‘Got a girlfriend?’ but then had second thoughts. Of course he didn’t. But did he have sex? Even thinking about Jones’s sexual needs, if he had any, creeped her out. She had started to think of him as a child, almost. The idea of him as a sexual being repulsed her. But presumably he did – well… something. Everybody did. But sex without imagination; without fantasy; without thinking about what the other person was thinking…

Bree pushed that aside, and pictured Jones’s life, and felt a little sad. His half-life. That unfurnished apartment – clean, drab, anonymous – in which he would be at home. The bedroom in which he would do his crying, the kitchenette in which he would do his cooking, the shoes by the door each morning waiting for him to step into them and go out into the world without fear or expectation.

That was how it had felt to her, the first months sober. I’ll be your friend, Jones, she thought.

And so, across country, the three cars proceeded. There were Bree and Jones, making shift with each other. There was Alex, making lonely time – thinking, driving, enjoying the pleasurable melancholy of the road, listening to the Pixies and Talking Heads over and over again, wondering how he would remember this journey, how he would describe it to his children.

And there were Sherman and Davidoff, making no progress, wondering why their iPods didn’t work.

‘My name is Bree, and -’

Bree had liked drinking. She had been a good drunk. A happy drunk. When she took the first beer of the afternoon – never before noon; never, at least not till towards the end – and felt its coldness scald her throat, its warmth blossom in her chest, she had been suffused with… what? A sense of generosity, of well-being, of peace with the universe.

That was the best bit. Of course, she’d smoked then too, just the odd one. So the cigarette, the first hit. That was good. But the drink was where the action was. A six of Michelob, pearled with frost in the top of the refrigerator. Crack and sigh as the cap came off. The bottle sighed too. Then a big pull from the neck and it was like the lights came up.

Bree had been sociable. She and Al had gone out in the evenings, taken Cass when she was tiny. They couldn’t afford a sitter in those days. Nobody was buying Al’s paintings, and though he got a bit of work here and there hanging other people’s stuff it wasn’t enough. Bree had stopped being a cop and was pulling down one quarter of jackshit working part-time at the Pentagon.

That first beer, yes. That had been the kicker. Bree tended to make a point of not thinking about it too much. It had been a long, long time and the craving was weaker. But sometimes it still surprised her, like an old ache. And when she did turn and think about it, the taste of that first mouthful was still fresh in her memory as if it was just gone midday.

Level and confront. My ass. What would you give for just – just once more – the taste? Just once more. No such thing as just once. We know where that leads. But before you die, don’t you want to feel that again? The cold filling the mouth, the eyes closing, the eyes opening to an easier world?

It was only later that it got harder. Al got less fun. Bree still maintained this. She knew – she fucking knew, OK, by the end of it – that things had got out from under her, but that didn’t mean that she was necessarily wrong about Al getting less fun. She’d started staying out when he’d gone home, and they started to row about Cass.

That always hit a nerve with her. That was when it got vicious.

‘You dare say that, you fucking piece of shit. I love that girl. I love her more than anything. I’d kill for her. Kill. I do everything for her.’

‘Who got her up for school this morning?’

‘I was sick !’

‘Bree, you’re drinking too -’

‘My drinking has nothing to do with -’

‘You were sick because -’

‘I got day flu .’

‘You got -’

‘I got her up yesterday, and the day before and the day before, and, ’cause one time -’

‘It’s not just the one time, love.’

‘Love’ stung her. The softness of it.

‘Al, do you even think, ever just think, just once what it’s like to be me?’ She’d hear herself slur on ‘ever’, losing the second vowel, but she’d plough on. The thought of what it was like to be her made her eyes prickle but she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction, and the emotion was redirected into anger. ‘I’m holding this damn family together while you try to sell your piece-of-shit paintings.’ That would wound him, and she’d see him suck it down. Looking back now, it still made her hurt somewhere remembering moments like that when she’d see how hard he was trying. Turning the other cheek. That holier-than-thou stuff enraged her.

‘I work, and I cook, and I come home and I look after our damn kid, and if one morning I get sick I’m what, I’m a bad mother? I get a drink – yes, maybe I have a couple drinks because I damn well need to unwind and now you’re going to sit in judgement over me?’

‘I’m not sitting in judgement.’ He looked miserable, utterly defeated. Bree had always been strong, always stronger than him. ‘I love -’

Doors would slam, tears come. ‘Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.’ And Bree would show him what was fucking what by going out and necking a couple.

‘I love her more than anything.’ Bree wondered. You had to say it. You had to feel it. What if it wasn’t true?

Bree could look back on all this now and know she was wrong. She didn’t like to think too clearly about how wrong – she’d been through that, and you’d go crazy if you spent the whole rest of your life fifth-stepping, Bree reckoned; you’d get addicted to shame.

But what was odd was that as she accessed the memories she didn’t feel wrong. She remembered not just what she did and said, but what she felt. And as she inhabited the memory she felt it again. She felt indignant. She wasn’t that bad then. Nothing worse than millions of normal people who bring their kids up fine, and whose husbands didn’t get their panties in a twist if they had one bourbon over the line most nights. She was dealing with it.