Read Online Crossings by Betty Lambert - Free Book Online Page B

the old guilt. I hadn’t looked out for her.
    But Francie doesn’t answer this. ‘What was I?’ She is sitting soaping her breasts in the tub. ‘Was I fourteen or fifteen?’ We work it out. Fifteen.
    When Jocelyn came home from class, Ben would tell her all over again.
    At least, that’s how I remember those months. I wore an eighteen-and-a-half size dress. I was enormous.
    But Jocelyn’s version is quite different. One day her creative writing instructor phoned me and told me she’d written ‘a very interesting play. About you.’
    â€˜Can I read your play?’ I say to Jocelyn. She is cuddled up on the front room sofa with David. I am trying not to show how much this bothers me. Public displays of affection, ugh.
    â€˜No, Vicky. I couldn’t.’
    So I sneak it. One day when she is out, I take it from her desk and I read it. It’s lying right on top, she trusts me that much. On the cover it has ‘A’ and
‘Most
interesting.’
    Is that true, about Joss cuddling with David? No. They still don’t. When he got home at Christmas, the most they did was touch each other lightly on the shoulder. David is even worse than me about public affection. It is all in my mind. They are just sitting there, but the charge is high.
    It is called
Merry-Go-Round
and is all about a successful wo­man writer who lives in a big old house with her sloppy sister and her emasculated husband. She is beautiful and competent, and nags everyone about cleaning up the mess. Her husband sleeps all day and the beautiful writer comes into his room, picks up his canister of pencils and dumps them, crash! onto the floor. To wake him up. To make him feel guilty. When she isn’t dumping canisters of pencils and nagging her sloppy sister, she is sitting at her typewriter going clackety-clack like a machine, making money. She keeps making logical statements with no regard for emotional truth. The husband brings her cups of tea. It is very funny and farcical and I would have given it an A too. Or an A minus anyway.
    One day I hear Ben going on downstairs to both of them about the latest surefire way to do himself in. It fulfills all the require­ments: it is painless, allows no reversal of decision, and does not leave a mess for anyone to clean up. I come downstairs like Armageddon.
    â€˜Look. Ben? Look. You just walk down to Granville Bridge and you just climb over the rail and you just push yourself off. I mean, I’m sick and tired of all this crap. If you want to do it, do it and get it over with.’
    They are all horribly embarrassed for me. We don’t know what to do with violence. We just feel so ashamed for the person. They don’t know where to look. Ben gives me a pitying smile.
    I register at the free clinic.
    â€˜I’m destructive,’ I say in my first session. ‘I told my husband to go jump off a bridge.’
    About a month later, I am saying, ‘You’ve got to get out, Ben. I’m destroying you.’ Full of disinterested concern, that’s me. ‘I’ve talked to Ivan, he’ll take you. Really, you’ll be better off there.’ It is all arranged. He is to leave Friday.
    â€˜You keep the car, Vicky,’ says Ben.
    â€˜No, that’s your car. You did the motor job.’
    â€˜Then you keep the hi fi. And the cats.’
    â€˜All right.’
    â€˜After,’ he says, ‘after, you can have the car back.’ Meaning after he is dead.
    On Friday morning I go out and stay away until noon. When I leave at eight the house is congealed. Francie and Jocelyn, where are they? I don’t remember. When I get back, there is Ben, standing like a waif in the garden.
    â€˜I can’t,’ he says.
    â€˜You have to,’ I say and go away for another four hours. When I get back, he is gone, and I am left with the hi fi and the thirteen cats. We did not believe in possessions. There was so little to