Lisa Owens - Not Working

“Hello?”

“Mum, it’s Claire.” There’s a long silence.

“It came up as ‘unknown number.’ ” She sounds peeved to have been so easily duped.

“I know. You won’t answer my calls. I wanted to try and…Are you still angry with me?”

She sighs, which I take to be a good sign. Low-key resignation I can handle.

“I’m not angry. Hurt? Yes. Confused, about why you’d make a joke in such poor taste at my father’s funeral—”

“Okay, right: this is why I’m calling. I mean, I should say first it wasn’t strictly a joke, but—”

Another sigh. “I don’t have the energy for this at the moment.”

“Please wait — it wasn’t a joke, but neither was it meant to be a big thing at all. And I’m sorry about the timing: I agree it wasn’t perfect.”

“Is that an apology?”

“Yes.” I hold my breath. Could it be this simple?

She laughs. “Oh, well then, everything’s fine !”

“Mum…”

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Claire, really. That it’s okay to sling around accusations about my father, so long as it’s not at his funeral?”

I try to keep my tone level. “I really think you’re overreacting: if you’d heard it at the time, you’d have understood it wasn’t an accusation . It wasn’t meant to be a serious thing: I honestly thought everyone else knew what I was talking about.”

“Well, it sounds pretty serious to me. And, Claire, come on: you just apologized about the timing!”

“That isn’t— Stop twisting everything I say! Can you please fucking try and understand?”

She doesn’t speak, but I don’t know where to go from here.

“I think we should leave it there for now,” she says eventually. “I don’t think this is doing anyone much good.”

A few seats down, I spy the former love of my life. He’s gained some weight, and his clothes aren’t the best, but here comes that old familiar throb, regardless. I redirect my gaze to the floor and stare at the gray linoleum in a poetic, intense way, to suggest he couldn’t be further from my brilliant mind.

“It’s you,” he says, crossing the car, and I take a moment to stir myself from my deep reverie.

“Oh!” I say. “Hi.” He stands above me, holding the rail above his head. He’s wearing the same aftershave he always did — intoxicating and popular, I’ve smelled it a hundred times since on passing strangers.

“I must have walked right past you.”

“No change there, then.” I was intending a lighthearted riposte, but the words come out strange and bitter.

“You have,” he says. “Changed, I mean. In a good way: you look great. You really…You look really well. Not that you didn’t look good before.” He has positioned himself so that his feet lightly touch either side of mine.

“What are you up to these days?” I say, eager to take the heat off me.

“Bit of research, bit of advising. The band takes up most of my time.” He nudges my foot with his. “Hey, you should come watch us play. We’re on tonight in Camden — I’ll put you on the guest list. It would be great to have a drink after, catch up.” His tongue gleams, caught between his teeth in a way he might think is playful. “Just you and me.”

“Oh,” I say, “tonight, I can’t. Some other time, I’ll look you guys up.”

“Coffee, then?” he says, smiling his wide, joker smile. “Surely you can spare half an hour for a coffee — for old times’ sake?” His knees now gently press into mine. Such immediate, easy intimacy!

“Sorry,” I say, with Herculean effort, dispelling dizzy scenes of emotional free fall in some glowing, foggy-windowed cafe. “I have plans. This is my stop.”

“It was great to see you,” he says as I stand up. He places a hand lightly on my waist, leaning in so his lips skim my ear. “You seem really happy.”

“I am,” I say. “I’m really happy.” And as I disembark — five stops from where I need to be — I realize that in some deep, lonely way I’d been waiting for this moment for too many years.

“Wi-Fi’s fucked.” Luke is in boxers: barefoot, bare-chested.

“It comes and it goes,” I say.

He steps hopefully around the room, cradling his laptop like a colicky infant he’s lulling to sleep.

“You’re going to make a great father,” I say, and because he’s opened his mouth to protest, I add, “When the time is right, I know, not yet.”

I’m carrying a baby in my bag, but not in any careful way: just another thing tossed in there with my phone, my hairbrush, my purse and my keys.

I’m at Sarah’s — the same flat I shared with her before Luke and I bought our place, five years ago. She’s had a series of quiet PhD-student flatmates since, but tomorrow Paddy’s moving in, so tonight I’m here to mark her last night of freedom with wine and a dinner of potato chips.

“The TV was a deal-breaker.” Sarah nods at the huge, sleek flat screen sitting in place of the tiny ancient box on which we used to watch Friends . “I was a bit sad to get rid of the little box.”

“No antenna issues with that beast, though, I bet.” We had been obsessed with making tiny adjustments to the antenna to get the picture spot on. “Remember when we’d got it just perfect and then Luke came along and ruined it?” On his second ever visit to the flat, Luke had seized the cable, asking what it was for, and Sarah and I cried out in horror as it fell from his startled fingers.

“Bloody Luke. It was never as good after that,” says Sarah.

“He’s lucky I didn’t end things right there and then. So”—I lean forward to press up some chip crumbs with a fingertip—“how are you feeling about living with Paddy?”

She smiles. “Don’t laugh, but I’m ridiculously excited about all the stupid little things you probably take for granted. Like cooking a big pot of chili together and freezing it in batches.”

I nod energetically, dosing our glasses with wine. “I know exactly what you mean. There’s something so appealing and…primal about that: stirring a bubbling pot with your mate, storing up food for the winter. You know that bit in Little House on the Prairie— or was it the one in the woods? When they smoked and salted the deer meat?” Sarah nods, but I think she’s indulging me. “That was my favorite part. The first summer I read it, I begged my dad for weeks to build me a smokehouse in the garden. He refused.”

“I can’t imagine on what possible grounds.”

“I know. So unreasonable.” I take a sip of my wine and sigh. “Luke and I have tried all that batch-freezing business, but we cannot seem to get it together. We’ll forget to put in a crucial ingredient, or leave it in the freezer so long it becomes completely inedible. We have some fish pie in the bottom drawer that I swear is more than three years old.”

Sarah looks forlorn. “Claire! You’re killing my dream!”

“No. Hey.” I put down my glass and take her face in my hands. “Listen to me. You will be fine. You have a pension. And a car. You and Paddy will do the chili thing: I believe in you, okay?” She nods, and I release her, returning to my glass, which I press to my cheek. “It still amazes me sometimes that I’m allowed to live on my own without proper adult supervision. Isn’t it sort of incredible we can do whatever we want, whenever we want? Have potato chips for dinner.”

“Not go to work.”