Happily Ever After Read online

  “Maybe I am,” he said, and he put his hand on her neck, pulled her towards him, and kissed her lightly on the lips, so she could feel his smooth chin, smell his light, lemony smell, clean, calm, and reassuring.

  On Perry Street people were sitting out on their stoops, chatting and drinking beers. The newly leafy trees arched across the road towards each other. Marcy from next door and her boyfriend, Steven, were on the steps with some friends. “Hey, Elle! Have a great trip,” Marcy called. “Don’t let your family drive you insane.”

  Elle and Marcy had had cocktails the previous week—Elle always forgot how even the most abstemious, triathlon-running New Yorkers could set about two Manhattans like they were ginger ale. Cocktails were a fast, efficient way of getting drunk, if that’s what you wanted. You could control it, two was enough if you wanted to blot everything out, just once in a while. Much more straightforward than glugging back glass after glass of rancid white wine in a vile pub surrounded by city workers in cheap Next suits.

  It pleased Elle that she couldn’t take her drink anymore, but all she remembered of the evening with Marcy was banging on the bar of the cocktail place and yelling, “Bloody brother! Bloody mother! Melissa’s an evil witch!” while Marcy applauded loudly.

  Now Elle grinned at her, grimacing slightly at the extent to which she had unburdened herself. “I’ll call you when I’m back,” she said. She liked saying that. She would be back. It was only a few days. They couldn’t make her stay, though sometimes she had dreams in which they did. She hurried Mike up the steps.

  Marc was loitering in the hallway, as if he knew she’d be coming. He was ostensibly checking his mail but when Elle opened the door, he pushed it into his pocket, raised one eyebrow, and said, “Hey, British girl. When are you flying?”

  “Tomorrow night, the red-eye,” Elle said.

  “Uh-huh?” Marc said, in the slightly evil, slightly camp way Elle found almost irresistible. They stared at each other, frozen for a second, and then the front door banged open and Mike, who had been tying his shoelace, followed her in.

  “Hey, Mike, good to see you,” Marc said. (That was another thing Elle loved about New Yorkers, they remembered people’s names and were polite. Also, they liked grammar and never said “The Republican Party are etc. etc.” It was always “The Republican Party is.”)

  They shook hands. There was an awkward pause.

  “Well, have a great trip,” Marc said. “I’ll see you guys… later.” He smiled wickedly at Elle, pushing his pink lower lip down slightly, in a tiny pout. She watched him, amused and, as ever, slightly turned on, ridiculous as it was. “Come and tell me all about it when you’re back. Oi lahve—”

  “Don’t do the accent,” Elle interjected, desperately.

  “—ah lahverlee Briddish cuhntree wodding,” Marc finished.

  “I said don’t do the accent.”

  “OK, OK. And don’t let that bitch of a sister-in-law get you down,” he said. “Screw her bony Connecticut ass! OK!”

  “She’s actually from upstate—” Elle began, but Marc held up his hand.

  “Don’t ruin the moment, honey. Be cool. Remember, you have a Kate Spade matching bag and shoe set, as you keep telling anyone who’ll listen.”

  “I don’t keep telling everyone!” Elle protested. “Shut up.”

  Mike pushed Elle towards her front door. “Night, Marc,” he said firmly, and Elle threw one last look back at her neighbor.

  “See you tomorrow,” she said.

  He blinked lazily and mouthed, I want you, as Mike went in ahead of her.

  Mike went over to the tiny kitchen, while Elle sat on the bed of the studio apartment and took off her heels, rubbing her feet. She put her earrings on the nightstand. The air-con cranked noisily in the window. She looked at Mike, leaning against the kitchen counter.

  He rubbed his eyes, looking a little tired. “I wonder if that guy is sometimes a little too much, when you’re not in the mood. You want some water?”

  Warwter. Wahdder. Warwter. If she said, “Please, could I have some warwter?” people looked at her blankly. Now Elle knew to say, “Can I get some wahdder? Thank you.”

  “He’s OK,” she said, an image of her and Marc having sex on that very same kitchen counter only two weeks ago flashing through her mind, his jeans round his ankles, his firm, biscuit-colored thighs pressed against her thighs, straining so she could open her legs wider, let him deeper inside her. Elle jumped off the bed, blinking, and went to the cupboard. She took down two glasses. “Listen, Mike—about the exclusive thing—”

  “It’s OK.” Mike held his hands up, and then ran them through his short, dark blond hair. “Let’s forget it for tonight.”

  “I like you,” she said. “A lot.”

  He smiled kindly at her, and she wished she didn’t want him to be someone else.

  “Tell me something,” he said. “What exactly did Melissa say to you that was so awful? We never really talked about it.”

  Elle turned away from him. “Nothing. Forget it.”

  THEY’D MET AT the Algonquin for drinks. It was March. Elle was late—a conference call with someone in LA had overrun. When she’d arrived, Melissa was one martini down.

  Since their canceled wedding, Elle had seen Melissa and Rhodes three times. Once a year at Christmas. The first time, they’d met at their father’s in Brighton. Elle had been dreading it, dreading what they might say, what she might do. When they arrived, she remembered instantly how definite both of them looked. Rhodes, beefier and larger than ever, aggressive, controlled energy bursting out of him, his hands big balled fists by his sides. Melissa, wiry, poised, smooth, always polite, never giving anything out, not to them.

  In the end, it was OK: as ever with these situations, Elle hadn’t factored in the random bombshell beyond her control. And theirs was great. Melissa was pregnant. “The perfect Christmas present!” Eliza, Elle’s stepmother, had exclaimed—but it also gave everyone an excuse to avoid talking about the canceled wedding, the subsequent secret one, what had been said, and the one person who wasn’t in the room. The elephant called Mandana.

  (When her niece was born, Elle sent a toy elephant from Barney’s, and afterwards she remembered and wondered if this was some weird subconscious link-up. But Rhodes and Melissa had moved from a flat in Battersea to Primrose Hill and Elle hadn’t known. The elephant never arrived.)

  The second year, she’d seen them at her mother’s, and met little Lauren for the first time. They arrived for lunch and ate some turkey, and everyone fussed over the baby. It was so lovely to see her niece, who had curly hair like her father, and who looked like Mandana, Elle thought. They left straight after lunch, all very polite, but they clearly couldn’t wait to get away, leaving Elle and her mother to flop in front of the TV with cranberry juices and Christmas cake, being jolly together. And that was it for another year.

  The third year, Elle had seen them in Brighton again, and Lauren was eighteen months old and walking, and she said “apple” and “cheers,” and she was very cute. And they’d sat round the large oak table in the big Brighton basement and pretended they were all one big happy family, even though, Elle realized afterwards, she hadn’t had an actual conversation with either Rhodes or Melissa lasting more than fifteen seconds. They lived in London and she lived in New York, and she didn’t miss them, because she barely knew them these days, her brother included. She just wished it could be different.

  “It’s so great to see you,” Elle had greeted Melissa, sitting down in the Algonquin bar, stamping her feet to get over the cold. “How’s Lauren, is she with you? Did she get the Eloise book OK? Why are you over?” Too many questions. Her voice sounded high and nervous.

  “I’m visiting friends, and I’m having some conversations,” Melissa had said, draining the rest of her drink. “We might move back here. Just thinking about it for the moment. Lauren’s with her aunt. I’ll give her your love.”

  The bar was busy; she could hear various conv
ersations burbling around her. “I’m her aunt,” Elle said.

  “Of course. No, her other aunt. My sister.”

  Melissa was very beautiful. Elle always forgot that. She stole another glance at her. “Right,” Elle said. “That’s great, can I maybe—”

  Melissa interrupted. “Elle, I have to go at eight. I wanted to see you so we could ask you something. You see.” She was fidgeting. “We want to know how long you’re planning on staying in New York,” she’d said, waving a finger at a waiter, who’d immediately slid into place beside her. She flicked an inquiring glance at Elle. “What are you having? Martini?” Elle nodded, dumbly. “Two martinis, please. You want yours with a twist? Great. Some more olives. Thank you.”

  She turned to Elle. “It’s your mom. She needs help. We want to know when you’re coming back.”

  “Mum? She’s fine. I spoke to her yesterday. She’s—she was on her way out with Bryan.” Elle tried to divert Melissa away from the subject. “Hey, where do you think you might live if you move back?”

  Melissa said coldly, “Elle, I’m not here to talk about the move. I’m here because I need to say this to you face-to-face. This isn’t something that you can just sweep under the carpet anymore.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Oh, come on. You know when I canceled our first wedding it was because of your mother.”

  “That’s what I heard, you never actually told me why,” Elle said, biting her tongue to prevent her from saying more. She could feel a red mist of anger rising inside her. She remembered Mum’s voice on the phone the previous night when she’d told her she was seeing Melissa for a drink. “Oh, lucky you,” Mandana had said, deeply sarcastically. “That’ll be fun. Ask her to warn you before she smiles. I swear she’s had her teeth whitened again. She nearly blinded me last time I saw her.”

  Elle tried not to smile at the memory of this.

  Melissa said, “The reason I canceled is I wanted everything to be perfect and it couldn’t be, so I didn’t wanna do it. You know that.”

  “Melissa, you sent out a card a week before the bachelorette party, and that’s all you ever said. Dad was the one who told me you’d fallen out with Mum—” Elle twitched, in irritation. “God, it’s not about me, it doesn’t matter.” She looked up, suddenly desperate for her drink. “It’s just I never understood it. You were so into it, every detail was going to be perfect, it was this big expensive do, and two months to go you go totally silent and then cancel. It just didn’t seem—I never understood—we didn’t know—”

  Having started off with some purpose, Elle ran out of steam. She sat back.

  Melissa jabbed at a napkin with her cocktail stick. She said, “I won’t say I didn’t regret it, because I did, actually.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Of course. But I couldn’t go through with it after that weekend, worrying she might be like that. I’ve never—” She jabbed the stick viciously, piercing the wooden table beneath. “I never saw anyone like that. Even Daddy, when he was at his worst. She was like Mr. Hyde. Just—so angry. To me, but especially to Rhodes.” Melissa looked up then, over at the pianist, not at Elle. “You know I think she gets mixed up sometimes, and confuses Rhodes with your father?”

  Elle thought she was joking, but one look at Melissa’s face told her she wasn’t.

  “They look the same. She looks at him, sees your dad, blames him, it’s crazy. I couldn’t—I couldn’t face her doing that again, not on my wedding.” She gave a small smile. “You know, I’m a perfectionist. I wanted it how I wanted it. It was all I could think about, I started having nightmares about what she could do.”

  Melissa paused.

  “I didn’t even want to see her, to touch her, to have her there.”

  Elle shifted in her seat. She realized she was still clutching her bag, her phone. She put them down on the floor. “Melissa, I’m sorry, I—”

  Melissa’s tone grew hard. “Rhodes and I don’t want to have this conversation with you but we have to—I told him you have to tell us. When are you planning on coming home?”

  “Not in the forseeable future,” Elle had said, hoping she sounded calm. “Why do you want to know?”

  “We just don’t think we should have to look out for your mother all the time.”

  “Why?” Elle said. “Don’t, then.”

  “She’s much worse.”

  “Worse? No, she’s not,” Elle said. “She’s doing really well.”

  “Elle, for God’s sake. She’s drinking again. You must have realized that.”

  Elle tried not to sigh. “I—”

  Melissa threw up her hands. “Come on. She’s an alcoholic, Elle. You’re the one she tries to hide it from the most, and it’s killing her.” Elle shook her head. “Come on! She needs to go to a treatment center. She needs counseling, she needs to go cold turkey. She is dependent on alcohol.”

  The drinks arrived and Elle took a swig of hers, feeling the cool, thick, clear alcohol slide down her throat, hating how good it felt. She closed her eyes, briefly, marshaling herself, trying not to look at the hypocrisy of them with their vodka martinis, condemning Mandana. “Melissa—she doesn’t really drink anymore.”

  Melissa gave a snort, something between anger and disbelief. “You’re—wow, you’re just living in a fantasy land, aren’t you?” she said. “Of course she does.”

  “Melissa,” Elle said. “She and I talk about it a lot. I spent a week with her last summer when she came to visit. I know it’s been hard for her, and she’s relapsed a couple of times, but honestly. She doesn’t drink anymore.”

  “She lost her driving license in the summer,” Melissa said. Elle dropped her cocktail stick, and her mouth flew open. Melissa looked grimly satisfied. “Come on, Elle, you didn’t know that?”

  Elle blinked. “She—no, I didn’t.” She remembered some story about Mandana not being able to pick her up at Christmas, but—Elle was resigned to it, Mandana was constantly changing her mind about things.

  “She crashed the car the day after she got back from visiting you. She’s lying to you, Elle, she’s gotten really good at it. Come on! You’re the one she doesn’t want to find out. Us, she doesn’t care anymore.”

  Elle ignored this. “Has she done something, said something? She can be really vile, and I’m sorry if she’s upset you.”

  Melissa narrowed her eyes. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re running away from the truth, Elle.”

  Don’t know what you’re talking about? Elle wanted to laugh. “Look,” she said. She put her hand down on the table. “It’s not that I’ve run away to New York to get away from her. Seriously, Melissa. She stayed with me for a week last year and she was fine, more than fine. She’s got the business with Anita now, she’s got Bryan, she’s doing the library stuff, when I talk to her she seems on good form. I want to believe she’s telling me the truth.” She took a deep breath. “And I do.”

  “I’ve never met Bryan, have you? And you know how she crashed the car? You know what she did?” Melissa said urgently. Her cheeks were flushed. “She got so drunk she tried to drive to your father’s house. She crashed on some A-road. The police called us and when we got to the house there were three empty bottles of vodka. She’d drunk nonstop after she’d got back from New York. That’s how she lost the license, Elle.”

  “But—”

  Elle remembered the last night she’d had here with her mother, nearly a year ago. A few months after she’d moved permanently to New York, she’d paid an immigration lawyer to look at Mandana’s case, and he’d found three other similar cases where visas had been issued, with certain conditions, and it proved to be the case with Mandana. Funny that three years ago Elle would never have dreamed of doing something so… bold. They’d seen Henry V at Shakespeare in the Park, then they’d had dinner on the Upper West Side at a tiny restaurant Mandana had wanted to go back to ever since she’d visited it in 1969, on her way to San Francisco. They’d laugh
ed incessantly about the bohemian couple next to them at the play, who’d very obviously mouthed key lines. Mandana had been on such good form, ebullient, happy, flushed with laughter and the heat, how good a time they were having. Elle could hear her breathing next to her in the tiny double bed, and she’d listened to her that last night, watched her peaceful face, and felt that for once, her mother was, yes, OK.

  And twenty-four hours later—really? Elle’s left eye started to throb, beating a tattoo inside her head.

  “Do you wanna know what she did when we told her we were having Lauren?”

  Elle shrugged, and held it, her shoulders tense, her hands clenched in front of her, as if guarding herself from more blows.

  Melissa ran a hand over her forehead, and her blond fringe stuck up on end. “We went to see her, the weekend before Christmas, to tell her our good news. Do you know what she did?”

  “No.” Elle’s voice was small.

  “She was drunk when we got there.” Melissa breathed out deeply and closed her eyes. “She said she pitied any child born into our family. She said she’d never seen any pictures of the wedding and for all she knew it would be a bastard. And she didn’t care. She said that. Then she threw up. She’s always throwing up, she’s lost so much weight. She’s sick, Elle. She threw up and she rubbed it all—” Melissa put her hands over her face. “No. It was disgusting.”

  “What did she do?” Elle thought she might be sick herself.

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s enough. She was like—I don’t know! God, like Quasimodo? Like an ape, a monster, lumbering round the kitchen, smashing things, these hands everywhere, and she was—man, she was so nasty. So nasty, like she was thinking all the time, What’s the worst thing I can say now? And now?” Melissa paused, her face pink, her eyes wet. “I was pregnant, with her first grandchild. This is your mother. This is what she’s like. You think it’s not your problem, somehow.” Melissa breathed out, her nostrils flaring. “But it is your problem. I’m not responsible for her.” She looked down, and checked her phone and her watch. She drained her glass. “We’ve tried our best. But Rhodes is sick of it, to be honest, and she needs help.” She paused. “It’s a cunning disease. You’re the one she wants to be happy, and she’s hiding it from you, and it’s going to kill her. The doctor at the hospital after the crash told us her liver’s fucked, but she discharged herself before they could do more tests. And she’s fine now, God knows how she keeps on going.” She exhaled slowly, whistling through her lips. “Like I say, you have to talk to her. It’s your turn. She’s only going to get worse. Someone needs to intervene.”