Page 63 of Isn’t It Nice We Both Hate the Same Things

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

Dave finds me lying atop the spare bed on Thursday evening. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Genevieve is gone. They left a couple of hours ago.’ And I needed a moment, I want to say.

Because I’ve just had to experience her leaving, again.

Because the next time I’ll see her, in a mere few weeks, she’ll be a mother, and it feels like we’re about to arrive at something monumental and I want a moment to acknowledge it.

He walks further into the room and lies down next to me.

Shuffles a little and rests his hands – clasped together – over his belly.

He’s been to see his dad today, and the drive home appears to have tired him.

Under his eyes, the skin is a little sunken.

His hair’s been tugged in all sorts of places.

Together, we stare at the ceiling – white, tinged with yellow, faint hairline fractures in the centre. In the corner, an old water stain has returned – dark, the size of my torso.

‘Look,’ I say, pointing at it.

And he groans, frustrated. ‘Damn it.’

‘You should get someone back out to check—’

‘All right, all right,’ he says, silencing me. He did always hate it when I had to remind him of things. Even when I was right.

He raises his left hand, turns it over and then back the other way. ‘I told my dad,’ he says. ‘About us.’

‘Oh.’

‘He said he’s going to miss you.’ Then, there’s the hint of a smile. ‘And that he suspected it.’

‘Six months, Dave, of course he suspected it.’

Dave looks back at the ceiling. Mulling it over.

‘Why didn’t you tell him before?’

He turns to look at me, with a stricken expression. Eyes, heavy. Brow, furrowed. And I just know.

For me, this relationship was over a long time ago.

But for him, it’s only just happened. It wasn’t me leaving him, or me moving out.

It wasn’t the separation agreement or the shattering of our mutual friendships.

I can sense, just by looking at him, that telling his father was Dave’s way of acknowledging that this marriage was completely severed, unsalvageable.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘That I was slowly killing you. I didn’t realise. If I could go back, I’d change so many things.’ He shifts, rolling over to face me. Head rested in a hand, propped up by an elbow. ‘I would’ve told you about her at the start.’

He draws circles into the patterned mauve bedcover as he speaks. ‘I would’ve handled things better when my mum was sick.’

It’s comforting to hear that he acknowledges his behaviour – I like hearing it.

‘She wasn’t supposed to die like that,’ he says. ‘Everything in her body shutting down, slowly. Sometimes I felt like you were lucky. Your dad wasn’t in any pain.’

I stiffen. ‘I don’t think either situation is ideal.’

He’s nodding before I’ve even finished my sentence. ‘I know, I know. I just mean—’

‘I know what you mean.’ Because I can remember what she was like as we progressed towards the end.

How her body started to fail her, and she couldn’t walk.

Or use her arms. Needed assistance to breathe, and Dave was making sure the machine was serviced every few months.

The infections, and the swallowing difficulties.

His mother was dying before his eyes and there was nothing he could do about it.

‘It’s only been three years, and I think about her every day. One day it’ll be twenty years,’ he says. ‘I don’t know how you handle that. He’s been gone from your life longer than he was in it.’

That’s the first time I’ve realised that, and it hollows me out.

All these years I’ve been robbed of him.

Robbed of conversation, of his cooking. Robbed of him walking me down the aisle.

Robbed of his advice and his perspective.

Robbed of the happiness he gave those around him – robbed of seeing Mum light up when he was near.

I brush away tears.

Dave goes to comfort me, almost out of instinct, but stops himself. Instead, he murmurs, ‘You never spoke about him. In the beginning, I wondered if you were estranged, and then I realised that was just your way of dealing with it.’

I smile, grim. ‘I should’ve handled things differently too. I couldn’t even tell you what his favourite film was.’

I can’t decide what’s worse – that Dave is still mourning his mother, and that he cannot forget her, or that I tried too hard to forget my father. And because of that, I barely remember anything about him.

‘If I didn’t think about him, I could forget how devastated I was that he was gone,’ I say. ‘I think that was my strategy.’

He holds my gaze.

‘I was so mad that I missed his final moments. So mad. And it’s stupid, I know. But I wish I was there when it happened. I felt so alone, when I found out how he’d died. And I never wanted to feel that again.’

This time, when he reaches for me, he doesn’t stop himself. And I let him squeeze my hand.

‘When I met you, I think I was looking for an even greater way to forget him,’ I say. ‘And moving away did that.’

He nods and bites his lower lip. And I let myself think on that for a beat longer. When I met you, I think I was looking for an even greater way to forget him. And moving away did that.

The guilt is all-consuming. Maybe, after all that, Dave was right. Maybe he wasn’t the only one responsible for the downfall of our marriage.