Tessa Hadley - Everything Will Be All Right

— Oh, don’t you? she said, trying to sound blithe and mildly surprised. I’m very fond of them. Perhaps you need to get to know them better.

— I doubt it. I can see exactly what they are. I just think figurative painting’s bankrupt. A dead language. There’s nothing left for it to say. The visual arts — whatever mess they’re in — have left behind that kind of simplistic confidence in representing the real.

For one electrifying split second, Zoe could imagine how it might be to hate Simon. It was like a white fizz, a surge of light from the back of her mind in which everything looked different: his absorbed frown, deciding at a fork in the path which way to take; his slouching step in his sloppy espadrilles; his rudeness to her family; his immovable calm certainty that she was wrong. She pierced through, just for that second, into a deep dark reservoir of protest, agitated and incoherent. Then she pulled herself back from the brink of it, remembering how she needed him for her happiness. She trotted penitently after him down the path, reminding herself of how much she wanted to be part of the purity and consistency in his way of looking at things. The changes that hurt her most were the ones that made her strong. If need be she would unlearn her taste for her father’s paintings too; she knew she could do that, do it easily.

But the moment’s shock left a little tender place, a chill of hurt.

* * *

Peter and rose were staying, and all the close family came back to the house for tea or more drinks except Vera, who had been dropped off at her flat to rest, and the stepchildren, who had escaped, to everyone’s relief, to “check the place out for a bit.” Zoe and Simon disappeared upstairs to her room, which was also a relief. Joyce felt tense under the reproach of Simon’s coolly scrutinizing look; as if there weren’t enough things for her to be worrying over! (She hadn’t even had time yet to think, How dare he disapprove? What does he know about us?)

— He’s very gorgeous, Zoe’s chap, Ann said. Very sexy. And terrifyingly intelligent. But not much sense of humor.

While Joyce organized tea, Peter brought the wedding presents in from the car and heaped them on the big pine kitchen table.

— Open, open, open up, chanted Ann. We want to see what you got.

— Isn’t this supposed to be a decorous occasion, when Rose makes a list of who we need to thank for what?

— Spoilsport!

— OK then, I capitulate! Get ripping!

Rose did in fact make a list.

— Jesus God, what are we supposed to do with these? They look like instruments to procure an abortion.

— Oh, look, multicolored tumblers in little wicker baskets! Aren’t they just frightful?

— Frightful as fuck. Who were they from?

— Pasta maker, pasta maker. You’ve got two pasta makers.

— His and hers! So we can each make our own spaghetti.

— I’ll bet on a minimum thirty-six crystal goblets. People always give crystal goblets. There were definitely some crystal goblet givers there today.

— But we hate crystal goblets.

— Well, you’re going to have to find some way to learn to live with them. Lots and lots of them.

— I told you you should have had a wedding list.

— Oh, but Joycey, wedding lists are so infra dig.

— Open ours, open ours, clamored Ann. If you don’t appreciate it I’m going to have it back.

Ray and Joyce gave them a painting. Peter and Rose got genuinely very excited about this. It was a smallish dark painting of a man slumped in a chair with his back turned, leaning his head on his hand, his elbow propped on his knee.

— I did suggest, said Joyce, that it wasn’t exactly a weddingy subject.

— But it’s just how Ray feels about weddings, isn’t it! Say the word “wedding” to Ray, and that’s precisely the posture of his inner man.

— I don’t know if I was thinking about weddings in particular, said Ray, giving the painting a careless wary glance. It’s just the usual kind of existential angst. I thought you might enjoy it.

— It’s fantastic! Absolutely fantastic. I love it. I’m going to love to live with this guy.

— Me too, said Rose.

Joyce felt hollowed out with hospitality. Peter insisted that she lie down. He put his arm round her to escort her to her bedroom and called her “sweet coz” and thanked her for organizing everything so wonderfully, whispering in her ear so that his hot breath tickled her. She couldn’t forgive him, though, for refusing to invite his father. She knew how much Dick had wanted to come. Peter was obstinate; there was something self-preening in how he cultivated and clung to his childhood hurt.

Joyce put her dress on a hanger and lay down on the bed in her silk dressing gown embroidered with poppies. It was early evening; the thin white cheesecloth curtains drawn across the open windows swelled and lifted in the breeze, making squares of reflected light swim on the wall. Dick often came to see Joyce; she had visited him and Ruth in their cottage. Whenever he came he brought presents: his homemade wine (which Joyce had to save for parties because Ray wouldn’t touch it), bundles of old silver teaspoons bought at a sale, newspaper parcels of runner beans or sweet peas from his garden. Joyce couldn’t help basking in his rusty old charm. If he took her out for lunch he pulled out her chair and helped her off with her coat, so that she felt taken care of. No doubt there was a great deal of delusion in it. No doubt the women who had lived most intimately with him had reason to resent the lightness and sweetness he could make when he chose. Joyce knew for herself how the thirst for lightness and sweetness could lead you into twisted snarled-up ways.

She almost slept; at least her thoughts floated some little way above the bed, although she couldn’t let go of the busy responsibility that had stretched her thin all day, the worry over all the ones who needed to be placated and appeased and looked out for. Fran, Ray’s sister, was a widow of six months and, although she was a hearty sensible creature, was bound to be stricken and sorry at a wedding. Martin and Ingrid still weren’t pregnant. Frisch had come with a new girl, and Joyce had had to judge delicately the degree of friendliness to show toward her, considering how very recently she had been friendly to the one displaced. A good friend of Joyce’s from the days of the craft cooperative (her brother had been at school with Peter) told her over lunch that her breast cancer had come back; hard to believe when she looked so radiantly well. And even as Joyce dozed she couldn’t help her high-strung nerves tuning in to any possibility of raised voices, in case it was Ray and Daniel picking another fight over nothing. It had been a mistake, Daniel’s coming back to live with them after his band split up and his flat fell through and Joyce had had to nurse him through a bad night when he’d mixed his drugs. Ray couldn’t bear it that Daniel didn’t know what he wanted to do next.

Joyce opened her eyes and came wide awake and thought with clarity while she followed the line of a crack across the ceiling how much she would have liked to talk about all this with Zoe. Wasn’t that what mothers and daughters were supposed to do? Wouldn’t she have loved more than anything to tell Lil? She had been so busy — today, yesterday, this month, last year — she had probably let slip precious opportunities for making contact with her now-grown-up child. Zoe and Simon had missed out earlier on their tea. If she took up to Zoe’s room a tray with three cups and slices of Ann’s cake (full of brandy), perhaps they would let her in and she could tell them funny stories from the day, confide in them about her difficulties. Simon’s silence might turn out to be only the insecurity of youth.