The exhausted-looking doctor says firmly, “I really need you to come with me, Mr. Fletcher.” Mark’s gaze hurriedly bounces from me to my driver’s license and my dog-eared business card. He picks up them both. “If you are sure.” He’s already on his feet, following the doctor.
I grin at Oli. “Would you like me to read you a story? There’s a whole basket of books over there that I think anyone is allowed to root through.”
He shrugs. “If you want.”
“Yeah, I want.” As I read, his head starts to droop with tiredness. He allows it to drop to my shoulder—I carefully put my arm around him.
“Can I climb on your knee?” he asks.
I nod, not able to find the words because my heart is singing so loudly.
4
Leigh
I was slow to sex. My mother demanded too much of my time and attention for me to develop a real relationship with a real boy. I was busy trying to fill the space of my father, who had left us when I was nine. Until I was twenty, my romantic life was mostly limited to my imagination, to crushes on pop stars, movie stars and other inaccessibles such as my university tutors or gay men. I didn’t keep a diary; I knew my mother had no personal boundaries and would not only feel entitled to read it, but most likely want to discuss the contents of it with me too. I stayed in my head. A vivid and filthy place to be. Depending on my mood, a labyrinth of desire, fear, hope, longing. I plotted elaborate trysts between myself and the current object of desire, I wrote poetry, I deconstructed the lyrics of love songs.
I had no idea.
I didn’t have sex until I was twenty-one and then it was with a man whose first words afterward were, “You need to get going because my girlfriend will be home from work in an hour.” A girlfriend had not featured in my fantasies or his conversation. I was stunned to watch his casualness morph into cruelty in just moments.
The shock, disappointment and shame left me spiraling. My self-esteem plummeted. After that I didn’t really hold an expectation that any man would date me exclusively; even if he claimed he was, I’d be dubious. I expected betrayal and complexity—not a great way to view the world. I’d grown up keeping everything close, not confiding my inner feelings, and so didn’t have a gaggle of girlfriends who could have normalized the shitty behavior of men in their twenties, or a cheering mum who would promise me it would be all right in the end, that there were plenty more fish in the sea. Fish that were, more often than not, caught in their thirties when they’d grown up a bit. I confided some things in Fiona, but she didn’t have much experience either so was unable to offer context or consolation. When I recounted a relationship disaster to Fiona she would roll her eyes and say, “Oh God, and you are so pretty. If men fuck you over there’s no hope for someone as ordinary as me.” She’d half laugh as she said it, but I always got the feeling she wasn’t entirely joking.
So, I realized that people played fast and loose with hearts and hymens, that it was best to stay a little secretive, protect yourself. If you had to choose then it was better to hurt than be hurt. Obviously. And the world as I saw it, was one where you had to choose.
Throughout my twenties I dated a series of different men. There was nearly always someone on the go. Sometimes relationships lasted a matter of hours, a couple lasted eighteen months. However long or brief they were, they followed a pattern. For all the years before my father left, I had watched my mother trying to make herself attractive enough to persuade him to stay as he always had one foot out of the door. She rotated through fad diets and punishing exercise and beauty regimes. Her tactic of being pretty and pleasing and pleasant （at least to him） was an unmitigated disaster and yet, without any other model, that was the mode I slipped into with men too. On dates I tried to be pretty, pleasing, pleasant. Young and still experimenting with my sense of self, I was happy to pursue the pastimes of my dates—I didn’t have any hobbies anyhow. So, if a new boyfriend wanted to play tennis, ride a motorbike, swim in the sea, play video games, watch horror movies—I agreed. I found myself agreeing with their politics, or at least not speaking up if they contradicted mine. I even wore the clothes they liked to see me in, and so swapped between preppy, grungy, jeans and hoodies, floral dresses. What harm did it do? There are much worse things to be than a people pleaser. Besides, having spent years being my mother’s confidante in relation to how unhappy my father had made her, I find I’m a good listener. I don’t judge and I’m sympathetic to others’ struggles and problems. I get close to people quickly. There’s nothing weird about being interested in other people’s hobbies, families and lives. Not really. Maybe more people should try to be more accommodating. Maybe the world would be a happier place. Only I fell into the habit of molding myself into their ideal. I was a chameleon. I gave each boyfriend the part of me I knew they would find palatable, but I never gave the whole package.
I guess I’d present myself as uncomplicated. Men adore uncomplicated. But I’m very complicated.
Mark is different. His life experiences are so much more profound than those of anyone else I’ve ever dated. He simply seems more grown-up. He is thirty-nine, six years older than I am, but besides that, he is a father and a widower. He hasn’t got time or patience for games. He is straightforward, honest, sincere. Not that he’s dull, far from it. It’s just his sense of humor is old-fashioned, nonsatirical. He likes things that are borderline corny; he loves a bit of harmless slapstick. It’s pretty lovely.
Being with him is easy. These last six months have been refreshingly direct and purposeful. We have not played games. There are the boys to think about—games would be callous. The four of us left the hospital together. We shared a cab home. Relieved that Seb was glued back together. The thought it could have been worse traveled with us in the cab. It turned out that we lived only ten minutes apart from one another. As I climbed out of the cab, he thanked me for everything I’d done and asked, “Would it be all right if I call you tomorrow?”
“I’d like that.”
And he did call. He invited me over for tea. “The boys have been asking after the nice lady who helped,” he told me, I guess making it clear that it was them who wanted me rather than him. He wasn’t the sort who would want to give the wrong impression. This wasn’t a date. It was fish fingers and chips, served with peas that were chased around the plate but hardly eaten. I was offered a choice of apple juice or water to drink.
“Sorry, I made the mistake of promising Oli he could choose what we’d eat,” said Mark as he apologetically put the plate in front of me. It was a noisy and disjointed evening. Mark hardly managed to get a sentence out uninterrupted but somehow, I still managed to find out more about him than I ever discovered about the closed and secretive men I’d dated in the past. Mark told me he had a sister who lived in Chicago, America, parents who live York, England. His best friend was called Toby and they’d been mates since secondary school, he went to university in Brighton, he dreamed of owning a boat but had never actually sailed anything other than a dinghy. He was a landscape gardener, which explained the tan and muscles, he admitted his business was struggling a bit because of juggling childcare since his wife got sick and then died.