Ronan Ryan

Love Will Save Us in the End

Look at him, in the garden, staring at the flowers like they were weeds, at the weeds like they were flowers, not knowing what to appreciate and what to pull up by the root. Richard. Her husband, Richard. The love of her life was who he was supposed to be.

            He crouched on his haunches, awkwardly, a breeze would topple one knee or the other into the dirt, and he contemplated a rose. Yes, a rose was a flower, he recognized that much. Well done, Richard. He touched a petal with his thumb to be sure, gently pressing on it like he sometimes did with Lorna’s lower lip, like he used to do. Then he stood, stretching chest-skywards while pressing his fists into the small of his back. He had a good head of hair, she’d give him that, no sign of a bald spot, and, as he looked left and right, did she catch a smile? He was proud of himself for not disturbing the flowerbed and was looking around to see if his judicious restraint had been witnessed by an audience, a squirrel perhaps, they got them from time to time. He didn’t think to look behind and up.

            Lorna returned her gaze to her Word doc, all set to write something smart, or smart-sounding, when she heard the door to the shed whine then slam shut and, consequently, a career-making thought failed to materialize. For fuck’s sake, Richard. Everybody needed a hobby at the moment, she understood that, but why did his have to be woodcutting? No, she knew why. He’d made such a fuss about building the shed and felt obligated to have something to do in there to justify its existence. He almost tried to argue that woodcutting was as meaningful as writing a book, almost, before she wilted him with a raised eyebrow. Nothing was as meaningful as her book. Or not many things.

            Ugh. Who was she kidding? The title, A History of Two-facedness in Literature: Deconstructing Duality Visage by Visage, was pretty catchy and she knew she wanted to put some Janus-based imagery on the front cover and she had an author photo, of her staring insightfully into the distance, picked out for the back. The problem was what to put between the covers. She was struggling to think of something brilliant, or interesting, to say and, in what she’d written so far, she’d mainly just been listing examples of her subject. She probably wouldn’t win any prizes for suggesting duality shenanigans were going on between Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, or that there was a boatload of duality in Alias Grace – it was ‘Alias’ Grace, not What-You-See-is-What-You-Get Grace.

            Except maybe she would have had her epiphany by now if it wasn’t for Richard, wandering into her window-framed view and upsetting her concentration.

            And he couldn’t have been in the shed for more than ten minutes – how much wood could he have cut? – when the door whined open, again, and he blundered out into the light, letting the door slam, again, and he had a guilty face on him as he looked up and blithely waved at her. Ignoring him, she typed: fuck fuck fuck die die die divorce divorce divorce.

            She held down the backspace key and took a breath.

            They needed new rules for her writing hours.

No more slamming of the shed door, and its hinges should be kept oiled, and Richard should desist from raising his eyes to her window. That wasn’t enough. She would ask him, diplomatically, to stay out of the garden until she was done for the day and she could present it as an opportunity for exercise, encouraging him to take long walks, exiting via the front door.

            Down in the garden, Richard was still waving.

They’d been married six years but it felt longer. She had no shortage of reasons for marrying him. She must have had. There was his good head of his hair. That was one. And it was a way of sticking it to her ex-boyfriend, Enrico, for spurning her for someone more ‘fun’, that was another. Richard was nothing like Enrico. He was far more predictable, for the most part, and marrying him got her mother off her back – at last, she was ‘embracing adult responsibilities’ – or it did for a while, before her mother started dropping hints then making direct statements about having kids, ‘While we’re young, Lorna.’ And there was that girl at school who said she was unmarriageable. It was satisfying to prove what’s-her-name wrong.

            Richard’s major selling point though was that he owned and managed a bookshop. As a big reader and budding academic, the prospect of a free supply of books was highly romantic to her and if academia didn’t work out, maybe she could help him run or take charge of the bookshop; they could see. And she loved the idea of marrying a man who she could really talk to about books, an engaged listener who could speak knowledgeably. What she didn’t know, until Richard confessed to it on their honeymoon, was that he hadn’t actually read a book in years. Being surrounded by so many, all day and every day, had dulled their allure for him. Instead, he read reviews, reams of them, which he parroted to customers seeking recommendations – ‘I thought the latest Knausgaard was a uniquely ineffable experience, a highwire act by a master performing at the peak of his powers, tilting provocatively between the mundane and the sublime.’

            That was a disappointment but when Richard slipped into passing off the opinions of others as his own with her, she usually went along with it and waited for him to stop speaking then provided him with her first-hand opinions of what she’d been reading and he listened attentively – since marrying her, he hadn’t needed to read as many reviews – and it was fine. Overall, he was a solid, steady man and it helped their marriage coast along that he was out the door in the morning before she got up and she tended to work late in her office at the university, and, by a fair margin, the majority of their time in each other’s company was spent sleeping.

            The sex was solid too. Richard had stamina. He went on and on and on. But you couldn’t call him adventurous. He was no Enrico. Enrico would throw her on the bed with enough vigour that she had to grab hold to keep from bouncing off onto the floor on the far side. After she encouraged Richard to throw her on the bed, and to tear her clothes off while he was at it, he picked her up with the declared intention of throwing her but then he just planted her down, her head against the fluffed pillow, no chance of a perilous bounce. And he didn’t tear her clothes off. The most he could bring himself to do was to remove them in a clumsy hurry and when a button of her blouse came away in his hand, he whispered, ‘Sorry, are you okay?’ Richard was always polite at sex.

            She didn’t exactly light his world on fire either. His metronomic thrusting made her sleepy and it was a bit of a mood-killer for him whenever she couldn’t suppress her yawns or dozed off. So sometimes she wondered whether he was faithful. A few months before the pandemic, he did hire that twenty-two-year-old fresh from college, to be his ‘assistant’ as he called her, like he was fucking magician. Zula. She didn’t look like a ‘Zula’, not that Lorna had met others, but it was a name more suited to someone who was sexy, in an imperious kind of way, and Zula was meek and her ass was excessive and she had a small head and resentful eyes, or at least they were resentful when she arrowed them at her boss’ wife. Lorna concluded that she shouldn’t be concerned. Richard was generally good, solid, at being ethical. He didn’t have the imagination to cheat on her and, even if he did, Zula wasn’t hot.

Well, that didn’t go well.

Lorna forgot to be diplomatic when she asked Richard if he could spend more time away from the garden and the shed and the house while she was working. She suggested that just because the lockdown prevented him from allowing customers in the shop, that didn’t mean he couldn’t be there, taking inventory and what have you, and he said he’d been delegating all odds and ends to Zula, he had to give her things to do if he was going to keep employing her, and she said, hang on, why haven’t you made her redundant? She is redundant. And he muttered something about rewarding Zula’s loyalty and how he was devoting his energies to woodcutting, and Lorna said that was fine, whatever, but couldn’t he take his timbers and his tools and do his woodcutting in the park, think of the exercise and the fresh air? And he said, no, he couldn’t, he wasn’t some leper, and what was she talking about, ‘timbers’? Didn’t she understand what the art of woodcutting involved? She didn’t deign to answer that, and he thought she was being very dismissive of him, it was a stressful time for everyone, not just her, but he was willing to compromise, he could do his woodcutting in the spare room, not the shed, if that was better and she said it wasn’t, it was worse, because he had the loudest footsteps in the world and she banged her own feet on the floor to illustrate, thump, thump, thump, like she was having a marching fit, and, anywhere inside the house, she could hear him whenever he cleared his throat and she was sick of that habit of his too, and he accused her of not wanting to find a solution, she was only picking a fight, and she told him to go fuck himself, she shouted it, because if they were going to argue, they might as well really argue, but, with his hand pincering his hip, he shook his head and refused to meet her eyes and said they could discuss it later, when they’d calmed down, which was typical of him. But she wanted more emotion, not less.

            Then he cleared his throat and said, ‘I’m not your enemy. You are your enemy.’

            She rolled her eyes, he deserved that, it was such a cliché, of course she was her own enemy, her own worst in fact, it was the same for everyone. Was he cribbing from horoscopes as well as reviews now?

            He put on his jacket and zipped it up and patted his pockets, then left, out the front door, he didn’t slam it, and she watched from the living-room window as he slowed his stride at the bottom of the driveway, made a phone call, cast a hurt look in her direction while speaking into his phone, and walked off.

At first, the lockdown had provided a dose of excitement. Nobody knew how bad it would get and the end-of-days vibes made Lorna feel more alive and a little smug, with the wealth of their toilet-paper supplies and how much meat they had in the freezer, and, while lesser academics were bound to slack off or become immobilized by stress, she was confident she would maximize the pandemic by getting that book written.

            And she and Richard had more sex. He was into them wearing face masks during it. That was new. At night, they fell asleep holding each other instead of facing away. That was new too.

            Two years into their marriage, they had tried to get pregnant and, when it wasn’t happening, they visited a fertility specialist and were told that Richard had lazy sperm. He wanted to try IVF but she didn’t and she didn’t want to keep having unprotected sex either. She discovered she was relieved by the diagnosis, like it let them off the hook, and anyone who felt that way probably shouldn’t have kids so she went back on the pill.

            But early on in the lockdown she changed her mind and came off it again, to see what would happen. Because she and Richard were getting on, they were asking questions like, ‘How are you?’ with an emotional investment in the answer, and the odds of becoming pregnant were miniscule and maybe there wouldn’t even be a tomorrow!

            Then there was a tomorrow and a tomorrow after that, so many tomorrows, so many yesterdays too, and all the tomorrows and all the yesterdays seemed to be the same day, on repeat in both directions, and the wearing-masks-during-sex thing lost its thrill, well, no, it was never a thrill, more of a quirk, and she was offended when she noticed that Richard was covertly using hand sanitizer after touching her and they stopped having sex and they stopped holding each other at night, they were socially distancing in bed, and they stopped touching each other at all. Just in case, she went back on the pill because you can never be too sure.

            Richard was drinking a lot and he wasn’t a mean or an obnoxious drunk or a drunk who thought he was funnier the more he drank. He wasn’t a funny or a fun drunk. He was a lethargic, sink-into-the-couch drunk. The spark in his eyes faded out.

            For a while, she was drinking with him and she was an obnoxious drunk, or she could be because she became a truthteller when she drank past a certain threshold and that was a problem whenever the truth wasn’t good. So, to keep from saying something she couldn’t take back, she vowed to give up alcohol for the rest of the pandemic, however long that might be. Richard offered to do the same, or to at least cut back, if his drinking made it more difficult for her, but she told him it wasn’t necessary. She didn’t want to deny him one of his few pleasures.

They’d never spent so much time together before and, for her, it was sobering in more ways than one. She realized some things.

They had little in common.

She was bored by him.

She was bored by herself, by who she was in his presence.

The most horrible truth was that she didn’t love him. She didn’t know if she ever had.

Before the pandemic, she had occasionally fantasized about divorcing him and being with someone else or being alone, being free – surely everyone who was married had those fantasizes – but she was too busy to consider any of it very seriously. Now she wasn’t and she’d done more than consider it; she’d decided she wanted a divorce, only she wasn’t willing to ask for it during the pandemic. That would be a nightmare. She was waiting it out, then she would ask.

And since she’d arrived at that decision, Richard wasn’t just boring her; he was annoying the hell out of her; he couldn’t put a foot right. But he hadn’t become more annoying than usual, not really. She felt bad about the betrayal she was planning and about the pretence she was committed to – if he were to ask her right now, ‘Do you love me?’ she was prepared to lie, because that would be easier – and she was taking her guilt out on him.

He wasn’t the asshole here. She was.

No, he was the asshole.

When he was in the shower, she unlocked his phone and looked at the most recent messages between him and Zula. It was something to do. Snooping for the sake of some fucking variety.

From Zula she read: What can I help you with today, Mr Dick?           

From Richard: You could sit on my Facebook if you’d like? ; )

Then a close-up crotch-shot pic from Zula with the caption: Think on THIS in your wank-shed.

…

…

            Mr Dick!?

Wank-shed!

And did Richard somehow think he was being clever with the Facebook line? He wasn’t even on Facebook. He hated social media!

And the crotch-shot. Lorna only glanced at it but it was imprinted in her brain now.

What could Richard possibly see in that pinheaded slapper? Her excessive ass? Was he into that?

And her. Zula. What did she see in her ‘Mr Dick’? Mr Dickhead more like. How could she be impressed by him? He was a bookshop owner who couldn’t be bothered to read books!

Lorna would kill him.

She heard him stepping out of the shower, clearing his throat, his heavy feet on the tiles, and she waited in the bedroom. Sitting on the bed, she raked her clawed hands along the blanket.

Then he sauntered out of the ensuite, wearing only a white towel around his waist, curls of steam trailing him, and she, well, she lost it. Her shoulders shook and tears spilled from her eyes. For the life of her, she could not stop laughing.

Startled, Richard checked that his towel was secure then his hands climbed, one over the other, to his pink belly, to the Rorschach test of hair on his chest, to his red face, to his wet hair, as he said, ‘What? What is it? What?’

Every ‘what’ fed her laughter, she couldn’t get a word out, and he retreated back into the ensuite, to try to see in the mirror what she’d seen when she looked at him.

When she was capable of offering an explanation, he accepted it, or appeared to.

            It was the pressure, she said. Because of the lockdown and because she was writing such a great treatise. She went mad for a moment. As you do.

            She decided to hold off on confronting him about Zula and she renounced her objection to him going out to the shed. She had her secret and she would let him think he still had his. A reckoning would come but, until the pandemic lifted, it was best to kick the can, or two cans, two grenades, down the road.

            In the meantime, she had mixed feelings about his betrayal.

            Sometimes, she couldn’t care less.

Sometimes, she almost admired him. He had more nerve than she’d thought.

            Sometimes, she felt like following him out to the wank-shed and taking a hammer to his hard-on.

            Then, five mornings in a row, she woke up feeling nauseated and had to run to the toilet to empty out the gross contents of her stomach.

It always annoyed her, in TV shows and movies, when sexually active female characters have been throwing up and it doesn’t occur to them that they might be pregnant, and when it’s finally revealed that they are, often after an older, wiser woman imparts her recognition of the ‘signs’, viewers were expected to be surprised too. Lorna had never thrown up in her adult life without wondering mid-heave if she was pregnant.

            Now she was, two tests confirmed it, and none of her options were appealing.

She’d had an abortion before and had no regrets – Enrico would have been a useless father – but she didn’t think she could go through that again. She didn’t want to be a single mother or to raise a child with Richard, not for eighteen years or however long it would take to shove them out of the house, and, even if she were married to an ideal partner, she had serious doubts that she was ready to be a mother. She was only thirty-seven.

Her pregnancy was the third grenade she was juggling, or kicking. Whatever she was doing with it, three was too many.

But when she sat down on the deflated living-room couch with Richard to tell him she was pregnant and observed his fearful expression, she panicked and exploded the wrong grenade, blurting out that she knew about his affair with Zula, and he stood up and insisted they’d merely been sexting, nothing more, they hadn’t so much as kissed. He swore on his mother’s life.

‘Richard, your mother is already dead and you hated her.’

‘My father’s life then, yours, mine. Anyone’s life you like!’

She told him to sit and he did. He said it began as innocent messaging and it was still innocent, more or less, and, if you thought about it, sexting by itself was only an escalated form of texting, albeit with a handful of explicit pictures involved, and she replied that everything was only something else that had escalated, that the pandemic was an escalation of one person breathing in the face of another, that fucking was an escalation of sustained eye contact.

He conceded this. He said he was sorry, over and over, then tried to explain why he did what he did. He was bored and stressed. He was lonely. He didn’t know if she loved him anymore. If he was being brutally honest, he didn’t know if he—

            She stopped him there, with the ultimate admission-stopper: ‘I’m pregnant.’

            He stood up again. He sat down again. He raised a smile. It fell. He raised another one and maintained it but his eyes were frightened. He said, ‘Congratulations. To both of us. Congratulations.’

She would have to stay with him. Maybe not forever. Maybe just a few more years. Survive the pregnancy, the sleepless nights of the infancy, maybe the first day, the first year, of school, the hard stuff, together. Once they got to a smooth-sailing stretch of child-rearing, one of those, they could reward themselves with a divorce then. What was a few more years?

Maybe they’d have an exceptionally charismatic child, a child who was a source of effortless conversation. A child she could live vicariously through, one who’d be totally cool with her doing that. A child whose existence would be an equivalent achievement to the writing of a great treatise.

Richard put his arm around her and she didn’t shrug it off but it didn’t feel right so he held her hand instead.

‘Our child will be a lucky child,’ he said, ‘All we have to do is love each other.’