That was the question I posed to myself last night.
What do you do when you find the proof that the life you were living was a fabrication, a web of complex subtle lies?
That was my next question, followed by:
Why do you have to be a English tutor and think of rhetoric to talk to yourself when all you really want to say is a million paragraphs of expletives?
I went through the motions this morning, getting the children ready for crèche and school, waking my husband up with his cup of tea, two slices of toast with jam.
Jam, why would anyone prefer jam to Marmite?
Why would anyone sleep with my best friend instead of being content with me?
Why would my best friend sleep with my husband when she knows the consequences of their actions?
Why is my life falling apart?
That's better, I'm personalising it, yesterday it was like watching someone else's drama unfolding before me on a badly made for TV movie. The breakfast I made for me is still sitting on the side in the kitchen, the other breakfast dishes lie strewn around the house, trails of clothes and toys filling the space that should be stripped pine, hand waxed over many weekends. I couldn't go to work. Ringing in sick was difficult, I found it hard to string coherent sentences together, I am much better in the written form, in my head ideas coagulate into pre-made sentences. I once tried to explain it to Séannie, he thought I was mad, he's always thought me mad. Maybe that's why he visited with Janice.
Does the why matter now?
Okay, so the why doesn't matter, and the how, well I know that, snooker twice a week with Damien. Bless Damien, he hasn't a clue that calling me at college yesterday would lead me to this point. From the conversation we had, he doesn't know he was used by Séannie to cover up the visits to Janice. Damien broke his wrist, in November, he told me on the phone, he was hoping I could get together with him that evening to work on the muscles he needed to strengthen to get back to work. He had remembered that I had attended a seminar on the musculature of a writer and in his own words 'chance I might be able to help him'
After calming the internal turmoil that he had inadvertently caused I answered and agreed to meet him, maybe at The Well sometime after nine. It's amazing how quickly your mind can calculate when put under pressure. It went something like this.
Oh it's Damien
Damien broke his wrist - - - - When?
He can't be playing snooker, which means neither is Séannie
So where does Séannie go?
I'll follow him
What about the kids?
I'll get Marion
I know, I will cover my undercover operation - -- - How?
Damien wants to meet
The Well
I'll tell Séannie there's a open night for students
I'll arrange Marion
I'll go out first ---- No, I'll swap cars with Marion
No, I'll pick Marion up, drop her here, go back to Marion's pick up her car and wait at
John Richard's Cross for Séannie
Follow Séannie to wherever he's going
Meet Damien in The Well
Be home before Séannie. Job done.
It worked, like clockwork, Séannie didn't suspect a thing, Marion was only too happy to help, maybe she knew something, she didn't like Séannie never had, maybe Marion will send her CV in for the vacancy of best friend.
Best friend, now that was a shock, I don't know who I was expecting it to be, but never did Janice's face come to mind. We ate lunch once a week and were on the phone every other day. We were like sisters, she was Godmother to the twins and her husband, Padraig was Godfather to my sweet little angel, Hilary. they had sex, we had sex. Two couples who up to yesterday I would say were bucking the trend, we were happily married. We went to gigs together, Padraig and Séannie enjoyed retro-pop and there had been a spate of old pop-stars getting back on stage, we regularly went to bop with the other thirty-somethings.
I was following Séannie at a bit of a distance and when he turned up the boreen to Janice's I was thinking, I wonder if she knows something and doesn't know how to tell me. Even when he stopped at her house I was still in denial, I was thinking maybe I'd got it wrong, perhaps he was just picking something up or Padraig called him or...
Why is Séannie opening his arms like that?
What is Janice doing?
Why are they kissing and ...?
Oh my, oh my, oh my
I met Damien on autopilot, my mind was not present, my heart was in crumpled pieces on the floor of Marion's car. When I think hard I can see him sitting there explaining that he'd given up snooker a couple of weeks after Séannie stopped TWO YEARS AGO.
What a shame he had said that Séannie's shifts changed to evenings.
Two years ago I was in the hospital giving birth to Hilary, her 2nd birthday was three weeks ago, we had a little party with our friends and their children. I baked a cake, I am not a very good baker but I persevered and made a credible chocolate train cake. Janice ohhed and ahhed over it. I wonder if she does that for Séannie. Ohh Séannie!
Ahh Séannie!
I must stop this, imagining their coupling. I do not need to think about that. I need to focus on what to do next. I read a book once about a woman who went for a walk and just kept on walking, I couldn't do that. Elijah and Edward needed to be picked up after school and Hilary has an appointment before that with the speech therapist.
A list, I need a "What the heck do I do now?" list
- kill Séannie
- kill Janice
- tell Padraig and encourage him to kill them both
- leave Séannie
- kick Séannie out of the house
Oh that's far too dramatic. I could make his life miserable, I could do many things. The kids need a daddy, I need them to have a daddy. I wonder if, when the hurt has stopped hurting as much, I wonder if it is possible to sew this marriage back together again.
It's good to write down my thoughts. I can't verbalise all this in way that Séannie would get my point of view. I think and write in convoluting sentences, or I did.
My paragraphs were crafted in the traditional form of three good, well made sentences, my writing is fragmented now like my heart. Oh Séannie, what drove you to go there, there of all places, the fallout if we go public will keep the gossips in tea for months. What if I decide to carry on being married and he decides he wants her and not me? Oh Séannie, I don't know what to do.
Where do I turn?
Who do I ask?
Suzie Gallagher
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