Read Online The Language of Dying by Sarah Pinborough - Free Book Online
Authors: Sarah Pinborough
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suddenly. I can feel the tension that grips my shoulders and my gut.
What now?
the pang asks. What did I say wrong? Did I put the cans in the cupboard unevenly? Is the TV remote control slightly out of place on the table? Or is it just one of those days?
Onomatopoeia is the key to my existence during my married years.
Snap. Crack. Slap. Bang:
sounds that belong in comic books rather than in my world. There’sno Superman to come and save me, though. My battle is quieter and more pathetic than that. The kind you just have to get on with on your own.
Some of the sounds I like. The click of the front door as it shuts behind him when he goes to work. The gasp of held air I can release when the house is my own. I don’t relax though. Never – not entirely. Since I no longer work, he schedules my day for me. There is cleaning and shopping and cooking and ironing. Sometimes I get things done quickly and try to watch a film or read a magazine on the sofa, but it makes my stomach knot too much to enjoy. He rings every hour to make sure everything is as it should be and sometimes he comes home early to surprise me.
I don’t think he’d like to find me with my feet up, reading something pithy about hair and make-up and the lives of celebrities. In fact, I know he wouldn’t like it. Reading isn’t something he likes me to do. He can’t share in reading. It can only be in my head and try as he might he can’t get all the way in there. That’s part of what will make me take the job in the library, years later. A way-too-late kick in the balls to someone long ago left behind.
I don’t know exactly when he starts to show himself through his cracks. Not long after we are married, maybe two or three months. I am sitting on one of the huge leather sofas that fill our expensive lounge, hanging up the phone after a long girly chat with Penny and thenI jump out of my seat with the smack as the remote control hits the wall beside me. I stare at him, confused. I can’t believe that he threw it. Not at me, not then, but that he threw it at all.
‘I was watching the film,’ he says. ‘I couldn’t hear it over your pointless drivel and now I don’t have a clue what is happening.’ He is calm but his words are sharp and cold and I stare at him, my heart pounding hard, my face hot.
‘Sorry,’ I mumble.
‘Only call your sister once a week from now on.’ He turns his head back to the TV. We sit in silence and with a cold dread I feel the paper walls of my castle crumple and sag.
Most things in life change gradually. Events creep up on you from behind just like the language. You barely notice the beginnings; it’s only when things go terribly wrong that we wipe the sleep from our eyes and wail miserably, ‘How the hell did that happen?’ Still, that’s the way for all of us. Even you with your Zen and your calm intelligence. You brush off and put aside the first symptoms of the cancer that is killing you.
It’s just a touch of indigestion
, that’s what you think.
Nothing to worry about
.
I am like that with the malignancy in my marriage. The first few symptoms of my fairy-tale prince’s very flawed character are easy to brush aside. After a few cautious, watchful days of everything going back tonormal, I put the remote-control incident into a box in my head where I don’t have to think about it. He must have just had a bad day at work. This is what I tell myself when I lie awake in the warmth of our bed, listening to the gentle sounds of his breath as he sleeps. Neither of us mentions it. I don’t mention it to Penny either and I tell myself that’s because it’s not worth mentioning, despite the faint echo of alarm bells ringing in my subconscious. I don’t want to tell Penny, that’s the truth of it. I think she will be disappointed in me, or worse, maybe she will be expecting it, because it is all too good to be true.
Three months later I can no longer ignore the symptoms.
He comes to pick me up from the
What now?
the pang asks. What did I say wrong? Did I put the cans in the cupboard unevenly? Is the TV remote control slightly out of place on the table? Or is it just one of those days?
Onomatopoeia is the key to my existence during my married years.
Snap. Crack. Slap. Bang:
sounds that belong in comic books rather than in my world. There’sno Superman to come and save me, though. My battle is quieter and more pathetic than that. The kind you just have to get on with on your own.
Some of the sounds I like. The click of the front door as it shuts behind him when he goes to work. The gasp of held air I can release when the house is my own. I don’t relax though. Never – not entirely. Since I no longer work, he schedules my day for me. There is cleaning and shopping and cooking and ironing. Sometimes I get things done quickly and try to watch a film or read a magazine on the sofa, but it makes my stomach knot too much to enjoy. He rings every hour to make sure everything is as it should be and sometimes he comes home early to surprise me.
I don’t think he’d like to find me with my feet up, reading something pithy about hair and make-up and the lives of celebrities. In fact, I know he wouldn’t like it. Reading isn’t something he likes me to do. He can’t share in reading. It can only be in my head and try as he might he can’t get all the way in there. That’s part of what will make me take the job in the library, years later. A way-too-late kick in the balls to someone long ago left behind.
I don’t know exactly when he starts to show himself through his cracks. Not long after we are married, maybe two or three months. I am sitting on one of the huge leather sofas that fill our expensive lounge, hanging up the phone after a long girly chat with Penny and thenI jump out of my seat with the smack as the remote control hits the wall beside me. I stare at him, confused. I can’t believe that he threw it. Not at me, not then, but that he threw it at all.
‘I was watching the film,’ he says. ‘I couldn’t hear it over your pointless drivel and now I don’t have a clue what is happening.’ He is calm but his words are sharp and cold and I stare at him, my heart pounding hard, my face hot.
‘Sorry,’ I mumble.
‘Only call your sister once a week from now on.’ He turns his head back to the TV. We sit in silence and with a cold dread I feel the paper walls of my castle crumple and sag.
Most things in life change gradually. Events creep up on you from behind just like the language. You barely notice the beginnings; it’s only when things go terribly wrong that we wipe the sleep from our eyes and wail miserably, ‘How the hell did that happen?’ Still, that’s the way for all of us. Even you with your Zen and your calm intelligence. You brush off and put aside the first symptoms of the cancer that is killing you.
It’s just a touch of indigestion
, that’s what you think.
Nothing to worry about
.
I am like that with the malignancy in my marriage. The first few symptoms of my fairy-tale prince’s very flawed character are easy to brush aside. After a few cautious, watchful days of everything going back tonormal, I put the remote-control incident into a box in my head where I don’t have to think about it. He must have just had a bad day at work. This is what I tell myself when I lie awake in the warmth of our bed, listening to the gentle sounds of his breath as he sleeps. Neither of us mentions it. I don’t mention it to Penny either and I tell myself that’s because it’s not worth mentioning, despite the faint echo of alarm bells ringing in my subconscious. I don’t want to tell Penny, that’s the truth of it. I think she will be disappointed in me, or worse, maybe she will be expecting it, because it is all too good to be true.
Three months later I can no longer ignore the symptoms.
He comes to pick me up from the
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