Page 36 of Beautiful Ugly
GRADY
My past has been leaning hard on me lately. My mind keeps revisiting parts of it I would rather forget. Nobody wants to be constantly reminded of their mistakes or shortcomings, but I guess there are some we can’t ever run from. My wife and I rarely argued—it sounds far-fetched compared with most married couples I know—but it is nevertheless true. She had a rather unfortunate habit of storing up all the things that I had done to annoy her, and then letting me have it with both barrels in a fit of rage that was otherwise quite out of character. There was seldom any warning for these outbursts, but I had learned over the years that there were some topics of conversation best avoided.
If we did disagree toward the end it was often about the same subject: children. She occasionally thought she wanted them; I always knew that I didn’t. It was a topic that came up rarely because it always resulted in the sort of conflict neither of us wanted. I remember the last time we talked about it as though it were yesterday.
“You keep saying I should quit my job at the newspaper but then what would I do?” Abby said as we strolled along Brighton pierhand in hand. We’d had a night away in a posh hotel to celebrate our anniversary, and were walking off fish-and-chips. Seagulls danced in the blue sky above us, the sun was shining, Columbo was trotting along the boardwalk by our side, and I was holding hands with the love of my life. Life was good until it wasn’t.
“Be at home. Be with me,” I replied, pulling her closer and kissing her.
“You spend all day writing. What wouldIdo?” Abby asked, pulling away.
“I’m sure you’d think of something. Something less dangerous than being an investigative journalist. Something that didn’t mean us spending so much time apart.”
“Oh look, a Zoltar Machine!” she said, dragging me toward the entrance to the arcades at the end of the pier. “Do you remember this, from that film? The one where the kid wished he was big?”
“It was calledBig.”
“Okay, genius. We should ask it to tell us our fortune, and then make a wish.”
She found a coin in her purse and slotted it in the machine then closed her eyes.
“What are you wishing for?” I asked.
“Obviously I can’t tell you that or it won’t come true.”
The animated fortune teller came to life and started speaking, it sounded mostly like gobbledygook to my ears. Abby—who was normally so mature and sensible—suddenly resembled a child. She had a mind mostly ruled by logic but a soft spot for anything related to fortune-telling. Zoltar stopped speaking and a paper ticket popped out of the bottom of the machine. She snatched it, her smile vanished, and then my brave and courageous wife cried.
“What’s wrong? What did it say?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
One person’s nothing is sometimes a whole lot of something for someone else. I didn’t believe her and I was right not to; weargued all the way home. The car journey was punctuated by awkward silences or my wife listing ways in which I’d disappointed her. The subjects were all the usual suspects: I was selfish; I didn’t pull my weight around the house; I wasn’t affectionate enough; I forgot our anniversary. I confess that I did forget. That’s why I booked a last-minute night away, and I chose somewhere relatively close to home so I didn’t have to take too much time off from editing.
“You care more about your books than you do about me,” she said, and not for the first time. Then she talked aboutmaybewanting to have a baby. It wasn’t the first time she’d said that either, but just like all the other times, she offered no explanation for howushaving a child would work in reality. Abby’s job took up almost all of her time, I needed quiet to write, neither of us had family who could help with childcare. So who was going to look after our baby if we had one?
“Unless you’re going to take at least a year off—which you’ve always said you can’t because of your career—and never work full-time again, I don’t see how it is possible,” I said gently, trying to concentrate on the road ahead.
Abby folded her arms across her chest. “If it was somethingyouwanted we would find a way.”
“But Idon’twant a child. I’ve been honest about that since we met, long before we got married. Think about the world we live in. Humanity is broken, you write about that fact every day, why would you want to bring a child into this world? Children are expensive and high-maintenance and they don’t come with an off switch. None of our friends with kids are happy and they all look permanently exhausted.”
“The real reason you don’t want a child is that you still are one. I’m married to a big baby. You’re so selfish.”
“You’re right. I am. I don’t want to sign up for looking after some brat for twenty years who might not even love me. Whomight not even love you. Who we might not love. Having a baby doesn’t always mean unconditional love and happy families.” She didn’t answer straight away. She was quiet, which was always the most dangerous part of any argument we had, because it meant she was planning her next attack.
The Abby I knew could be cruel if she didn’t get her way. The rest of the world only saw an award-winning journalist, but I had a front-row seat with the best view of the real Abby Goldman. The real Abby wasn’t as tough as I think her colleagues believed. She spent Sundays in her PJs watching black-and-white films, wore fluffy bed socks, and slept with a water bottle because she always had cold feet. She couldn’t walk past a homeless person without offering them a hot drink and some food, even if it meant giving them her own lunch. She secretly donated 10 percent of everything she ever earned to charity. Secretly because she believed people who shout about their good deeds are often only doing them for themselves. Even her job seemed like a variety of atonement. What I never understood was why she felt so bad in the first place.
My wife wasn’t perfect, but she was perfect for me.
Even if she did sometimes say cruel things when she was upset.
“So because your parents didn’t love you, I don’t get to be a mother?” she said, and I had to grip the steering wheel.
They did love me, I just disappointed them.
“You didn’t have a happy childhood either,” I countered. “Look what your mother did to you: was that love?”
“So now you’re saying you think I’ll be a bad mother like my mother? You’re saying that I’m like her?” Every question was a trick question when we argued. Everything she said was a trap. She made it seem impossible for me to say the right thing, but I still tried.