“He might just like me,” Deidre put forward, not entirely convinced herself.
“He might. I suppose it’s not entirely implausible that he might just find you attractive. Who knows, you might even get laid. Then again, a meteorite could hit Paris.”
Matricide had never seemed so attractive as at that moment.
Deidre watched her mother’s ferocious gesturing as she grumbled about the taxation department. Looking at the pinched skin around her mother’s lips, the tightness of her disapproving mouth, as if all the burdens of the world were pressing down on those two thin strips of flesh, reminded her of the aging of her own face. Already she could see echoes of the same lines and the tensions between the eyebrows, around the nose. Eventually Deidre drifted off into a slight reverie, lulled by the scent of the tulips and the talcum powder Ethel used so profusely.
The epic, that’s what she craved: to get away from her cantankerous mother; away from her cocoon of stale middle-classdom and decay; away from the bank with its hothouse time that took no account of life cycles.
Her mother burped, discreetly. The clock chimed. Deidre kissed the dry forehead and for an instant regret passed between them like a ghost. Regret for the intimacies they had never made time to share, regret for a history that had made it impossible for them to let their guard down and be friends. Ethel, lost for a moment in the memory of the small child whose hair she used to curl, shook herself back to reality and stroked the hand of this woman, her daughter, who looked so tight and unloved and sad. God bring her joy, the old woman prayed.
Deidre pulled back the door of the cupboard and looked at her naked self long and hard. Harshly, no cheating, just the realities of time staring back at her from the glass. She had a figure like Eve in a van Eyck painting. Unfashionably broad hips that ran into long, thin legs. She extended one and turned her ankle. Her legs were the one thing she really loved about herself. They were good, slim in the thigh, and she frequently wore short skirts to show them off. Still, her skin was firm, she looked good for forty-four years old. She turned sideways and wondered how pregnancy would sit on her frame. She couldn’t imagine it. Eight years ago, after the abortion and the divorce, she’d had four unfertilized eggs removed and placed in storage in an IVF clinic. Every year a maintenance invoice for a thousand dollars would arrive in the mail.
Four potential babies.
Deidre didn’t really know why she’d done it—a vague hormonal impulse perhaps, somewhere between pragmatism and buried maternal instinct. Always leave your options open was her major premise in life and it had served her well as a banker. Eight years later the eggs were still there, still waiting. She tried to imagine her breasts swollen in their biological destiny. She couldn’t.
She picked out a long skirt and a thin silk blouse from the wardrobe. It wasn’t too revealing, but she knew she could go without a bra and that her nipples would be just discernible under the silk. Now for the perfume, something light. She hated the heavy, overpowering scents that left you slightly dizzy and nauseous. She chose Chanel No. 19; it was youthful enough to blend in nicely with her own gentle undertones.
Somewhere a phone started ringing. She walked into the bathroom and rescued her mobile from her briefcase.
“Christ, where have you been? I’m having another crisis!” Zoe’s dramatic tones bounced off the pale blue tiles and resounded around the large bathroom. Deidre geared herself up. Sometimes she got sick of playing unpaid social worker.
“Let me guess, Justin hasn’t rung.”
“Not Justin, that was two weeks ago. This one’s called Felix and it’s a lot worse than that, it’s an utter catastrophe!”
“He’s run off with your share certificates?”
“He’s given me scabies! The whole house is crawling with them.”
“Don’t you practice safe sex?”
“You don’t get it from sex! You get it from normal things like rubbing legs together, sleeping in the same sheets.”
“Sounds revolting.”
“It’s called affection, Deidre, you must have experienced it at least once or twice in your life.”
“But I thought you just slept with them for the sex.” Zoe broke into a loud wailing. Deidre, used to Zoe’s tantrums, would make the obligatory soothing noises at the threats of suicides, face lifts or migration. She had even suggested a couple of psychologists Zoe might try. Today she didn’t feel quite so indulgent.
“Well, is it curable?”
“I have to paint my legs with this revolting ointment that stinks of horse piss and wash all the bedding. I’m so upset. I thought he was such a nice man.”
“The painter?”
“The video-installation artist. I haven’t gone out with a painter for at least a month. This time I thought it was special, we really clicked. There was a real intimacy there.”
“You did share diseases.”
“God, you’re cruel.”
“Sorry, I was trying to cheer you up. Guess what I’m doing tonight. I’ve got a date.”
“So you rang that dating service! Good for you, I knew it’d work.”
“No, this was spontaneous, you know, destined.”