Lisa Owens - Not Working

“I know math!”

“What’s thirteen times fifteen?” he asks, meeting my eyes in the mirror.

I don’t even try. “They only go up to twelve in primary school.”

“Hm.” I flinch as he cruises the Adam’s-apple bump.

“Think of the holidays — how great that will be when we have kids of our own.”

He frowns in the glass, enhancing top-lip access. “I’m wondering where this teacher thing has come from. Feels a bit sudden.”

I look into the bath, at the grayish flotsam stranded at the far end. “So, do you not want to have children, then?”

“I never said that.”

“Just not with me.”

“Didn’t say that either.”

“Oh. ’Kay.” I turn on the tap, batting the flow toward the debris, trying to rinse it away. “And…when… do you think you might want to?”

He turns his face one way, then the other.

“When you’ve worked out what you want to do, we’ll talk,” he says, fluttering his razor in the water.

Stop saying “great” so much. Also “wow!” “interesting” and “amazing.”

So, I think, watching our Good White Towels blush slowly pink in the washing machine, that really is a thing that still happens in this day and age, after all.

“I’m just trying to understand what it is you do all day.” Luke has a knuckle in one of his eyes, and I can see he’s really trying. On the table are a check I told him I would cash and a parcel for his sister I told him I would mail.

“I know it sounds strange,” I say, “but the more time you have, the less time you have. Every moment becomes so precious.” He’s looking up at the ceiling, inflating his cheeks. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’ll do it tomorrow,” I say, and he nods and blows the air through his teeth.

It’s good of him not to mention his own job, which — when it comes down to the nuts and bolts of the thing — is all about giving people more time.

Just after we started going out, Luke got shingles and was wiped out for a week. I bunked off work for two days to watch daytime TV by his side, play Scrabble and prepare nourishing invalid food (chicken broth, whole wheat toast, orange wedges, grapes) — except one evening when he hit rock bottom and I ordered Domino’s as a special treat.

Sick-Luke was wretched and ashamed: he had the tragic air of a disgraced politician. “But you don’t understand: I’m never ill,” he kept insisting.

“Good. Because I’m never this nice,” I’d reply, easing him into a warm bath or fluffing up his fever-flattened pillows.

“Listed and historic buildings are particularly vulnerable to structural damage from buddleia, with annual maintenance costs estimated at nearly £1 million.”

No wonder the heritage people didn’t embrace Adam Buddle, or by extension, me.

“Let’s try looking at it another way. What do other people say your strengths are?” inquires Ann, the enormously patient “Career Genie” I found online and phoned at a very low ebb.

“I really can’t think of anything.”

“What about Mum and Dad? I bet there are things where they would say, ‘Oh, Claire’s really good at that.’ ”

When I was growing up, my parents held an unwavering, blanket belief in my abilities that I took for granted; lately, though, I’ve been plagued by the sense that I’ve failed to deliver on all those high hopes.

“Um, sometimes they’ll phone me for help with the crossword?”

“Logic, communication, language skills,” Ann says, clacking her keyboard. “That’s a good start. Come on, something else.” There’s a long stretch of silence. “It can be anything, no matter how small or silly.”

“I’ve…I’ve had compliments about my scrambled eggs.”

“Well, that’s all about good time management,” says Ann, proving she at least has found her vocation.

Maybe I haven’t been working all day in the traditional, office-bound sense, but I’m still a person trying to get somewhere too.

I meet one of my uni friends, Rachel, for a drink after work (her work). She’s spent ten minutes analyzing a string of texts from a human rights lawyer, which are by turns flirtatious and brusque.

“What should I say to this?” she asks, showing me a reply that’s just come in.

Not too bad. Yours? it reads. (The original question, which I helped her to draft, was, Hey, how’s your week going? )

“I’m not sure I’m the right person to ask. I’ve been out of the game so long, I’m more likely to say something that will scare him away.”

“How is Luke?” Rachel asks. “Is he still being difficult?”

It takes me a moment to work out that she is referring to the last time we met, when I told her Luke and I had been fighting. I only said this because she’d been saying how lucky I was to have him, and I didn’t want to seem smug or complacent.

“It’s a bit better, thanks,” I say, and warming to the fiction, add, “I took your advice. It really helped.” Her suggestion was to set some time aside each week to discuss our relationship frankly.

“That’s so great,” she says, squeezing my hand. “Always happy to help.”

I ask her about work, in the vaguest terms possible to obscure the fact I’m not entirely sure what she does. It has something to do with Africa, I want to say an NGO, but couldn’t be certain without checking her email signature, and inwardly curse myself for not doing this before we met. As she talks, I cling to a few key words, which in any other realm would be awful jargon (conflict resolution, mediation, dialogue), but in Rachel’s world — which is actually the real world — are literal and vital.

“I wish I had your conviction,” I say. “You’re so passionate about what you do. You’re making a difference. That must feel amazing.”

She jerks a shoulder. “I don’t think about it that way. Believe me, a lot of it is very boring paperwork. You know,” she says, “not everyone can be a hero, or live the dream — we just need to contribute what we can. Pull our weight, earn a living. There’s no shame in that.”

I sense a lesson intended for me there, doused in disapproval. It’s a tone I’m becoming more familiar with the longer my state of voluntary unemployment lasts.

“I totally agree. Well said,” I say, squeezing her hand this time, and she extracts it delicately to compose a reply to her hot-and-cold lawyer.

“Never really got the point of sorbet,” I say while an advert for a new brand is playing. “It’s neither kitten nor cat.”

“What?” says Luke, grinning.

“It’s not delicious and luxurious like ice cream, but it’s still full of sugar so it’s not even healthy.”

“What was the other thing you said?”

“Neither kitten nor cat?”

“Yeah.”

“What about it?”

“It’s not a saying.”

“It is!”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Luke, I promise you it definitely is. Neither kitten nor cat — neither one thing nor the other. Falls between two stools.”

“Yeah, that’s a phrase. The cat one is not.”

“I’ve said it hundreds of times and you’ve never batted an eyelid.”

“You’ve never said it. It’s not a phrase. Where did you get it?”