Infidelity Quartet: 4

Jerry sat by the bedside constantly, holding vigil as an almost religious observance. The coma lasted more than a week. He was not there at the start -- under the circumstances he forgave himself that, granting one tiny and irrelevant absolution in the face of the greater guilt that would define the rest of his life -- but after he learned of Eleanor's plight he was there day after day, by her side. The woman he loved was hospitalized, crippled -- what else could he do but wait, dutifully, for some sign of recovery?

"Jesus, Billy! What the fuck...?"

He got to know the hospital ward much better than he ever expected -- than anyone ever wanted. That flecked grey linoleum, the slack nylon curtains and pastel walls. All meant, in some ghastly, shallow way, to be calming -- to somehow mitigate the gaping terrors of immanent mortality on every side. While the nurses shuttled to and fro with their charts and trolleys and little plastic cups of pills, briskly sympathetic, smoothly efficient, Jerry sat quiet, dwarfed by the enormity of the situation, the concrete implacability of the place, the desperate, inescapable knowledge that it was all

his

fault...

"Sofia? Who the hell is...?"

He'd met Millie in the most mundane circumstances, outside the supermarket, in December. She was fundraising for Help the Aged, in a scarf and festive Santa hat, rattling her collection tin.

"Would you want to be alone at Christmas?" she demanded. "With no-one left to care for you? No-one to even notice whether you live or die?"

Jerry was a sucker for that kind of thing. Misery had an almost supernatural claim on him, especially the misery of women. Millie's leaflets about the unremembered elderly could have catalyzed a monsoon of tears. He gave her everything he had.

Including, eventually, love.

He made sure there were fresh flowers by the bed, from the stall in the lobby, and grapes, in case Eleanor should suddenly wake and need them to moisten her dry -- beautiful, kissable -- dry mouth. He ate them himself, most days, but always left a few just in case. Each morning, returning with a new bunch, he would cast a doleful eye over the wilted remnants of the previous lot and either eat the leftovers or, if they were too limp and shrivelled, throw them away.

The affair was -- like so many others before -- brief and passionate, just an uncomplicated diversion from the single, intense focus of Jerry's life. He was fascinated by Millie, and sexually enticed, and excited. To be folded in her arms, surrounded by her flesh, was exhilarating -- a taste of freedom, a communication, a thrill of contact with someone new and invigorating. Just as it was with Billy, but different, a new taste sensation, innocence in place of artfulness, uncertainty rather than confidence and guile.

"Where did you get the gun?"

When she regained consciousness, it was almost worse. Jerry knew his Eleanor was in there somewhere, but she didn't seem to be able to get out. There was the physical injury, of course -- the fall had caused severe spinal damage and Eleanor was essentially paralyzed from the neck down -- but the doctors all agreed there was something more than that, something that couldn't be explained on a purely physical level. She ought to be able to speak -- to interact, to scream, to make demands -- but she didn't. Her brain was undamaged, she was active and alive, she was not a vegetable -- and yet somehow, she was. No-one would ever say so, but secretly they agreed it was deliberate. A conscious decision. A choice.

Where did Billy get the gun? Jerry never found out. For all the hand-wringing in the popular press about the rise of firearm crime, it wasn't the sort of thing you just casually acquired on the streets of London. Billy lived a slightly shady, demi-monde existence, but Jerry was sure he never moved in gangster circles, never associated with people for whom toting a pistol was a familiar habit. A gun was something one saw on TV shows and movies, not in real life.

When Billy crashed into the hotel room that night, Jerry barely even noticed the gun, didn't really register what it was, not then. What he noticed was the wetness on Billy's cheeks, the red eyes, the crack in his voice as he bellowed that alien fury. Suave, sexy, confident Billy, the consummate professional, unflappable agent of pleasure, stood there shaking, snot-nosed and screaming like a character from a cheap melodrama.

After that, things got messy.

Jerry hired a nurse to look after Eleanor and tried to go back to work, but his face had been splashed across the covers of tabloids and his career was in tatters. When the company offered him a quiet redundancy settlement, after a grisly week of gossip and scandal, of pretending to be unperturbed by the looks and the whispers, of wishing he was somewhere, anywhere, else -- when the offer came, he accepted gratefully.

He no longer cared about work anyway, wasn't willing to delude himself that any of it mattered. His life had changed, and everything else was thrown into terrible perspective. He saw now what a poor excuse for a man he was, how thin and feeble and compromised he'd become. His tawdry pleasures and vapid achievements, his shallow little life. None of it mattered anymore; nothing but Eleanor.

He kept the nurse on for a while, as long as he could afford it. He wanted to tend to Eleanor himself, to never leave her side again, but that wasn't possible. He was the principal eyewitness to a murder -- Eleanor was another, of course, but was in no fit state to testify. There were endless rounds of police interviews, and then court appearances. The defending barrister tried, for form's sake, to cast doubt on Jerry's evidence, to destroy his character, to drag him repeatedly through the events of that night, confronting him with his sins and their terrible consequences. Not that it would help anyone -- Billy never made much effort to deny his guilt -- but it was the done thing. Justice had to be served.

Through those days in the witness stand, Jerry gazed constantly at Billy, sat in the dock, looking beautiful and vacant and numb. Everything that had been so vital about him before was gone; what remained was an empty, hardened shell. Jerry tried to hate him, but couldn't; that emotion he reserved entirely for himself. All he could feel for Billy was a distant, unsympathetic sorrow. He gazed across the courtroom and remembered all their times together, the feel of that hair between his fingers, his silky skin, the taste of Billy's cock in his mouth; and it was as if it had happened to another person. Two other people: he no longer knew Billy -- and he knew the reverse was equally true.

The revelations about Millie -- about Emily -- were bewildering, but somehow less shocking. Jerry had known her only a few months and everything had still been provisional. He'd recognized there were aspects of her life that were hidden from him, things yet undiscovered; had fantasized answers to those unasked questions, creating a whole world for her in his head. The clues she'd given him, the stories she'd told, all fed into that -- just as she'd intended them to.

Jerry never felt the least bit betrayed by Millie -- he knew she'd only ever given him what he wanted, that he was complicit in the fiction she had built. Her other lives were just as false, and just as true.

He missed her. Her presence, her company, her compliance. He missed being able to think of her without having to think of blood and horror and guilt. Without the screams and the deafening report in that little room and the choking nausea and the stench. Without the fall.

No-one to even notice whether you live or die.

Gradually, the notoriety faded. The press no longer hounded him, the hate mail tailed off. Other cases came and went, other stories had their brief spell in the limelight. His face and name were forgotten, and only his life went on.

When the money began to run out, Jerry got rid of the nurse. He put their large suburban house on the market, and found somewhere smaller and more accessible, a bungalow with wide doorways. His life became a routine of caring, of trying, ineptly, to imagine what the unspeaking Eleanor might want and trying, ineptly, to provide it.

He got used to nearly everything.

Simply getting Eleanor in and out of bed, keeping her clean and fed, took all his effort. At first he didn't think it would even be possible, that he simply wouldn't have the strength or will to do it. But love and guilt drove him on, and after awhile he stopped noticing the hard work and the frustration and despair, and just did it. It was a career, a vocation. A labour of love.

He got used to nearly everything, but not to Eleanor's silence. He was certain she was there, seeing, listening -- judging -- but she gave nothing back, no clue, no hint of anger or sorrow or bitterness. In the early days he would beg and plead with her to forgive him, or not to forgive him, to hate him and punish him, but to do it out loud; to spare him the silent treatment. She watched and listened to these outbursts, eyes clear and focused, alert, attentive -- and said nothing, did nothing, in response.

Before long Jerry admitted defeat: Eleanor was implacable. He stopped trying to win her over, but he talked to her all the time, holding long, unilateral conversations, debating the latest news and gossip, discussing the day to day business, reminiscing about their lives together. Always trying to create the illusion of her participation, leaving spaces for her to inhabit.

In the morning he would read selected stories to her from the newspaper; in the evening he worked through books he thought she'd like to hear. During the day he had the radio on while he worked around the house, and there was always something on it to chat about. He began to see the silence as an affirmation, a way for Eleanor to encourage him without stooping to forgiveness. If she wanted him to shut up, she had only to say so.

As the years passed, Jerry became almost comfortable with this routine. His life had a purpose, and he got to spend every waking hour with his dearest love. The drudgery and repetition didn't bother him anymore; Eleanor's unresponsiveness seemed entirely just. She had every reason to ignore him; he had no grounds for complaint.

Periodically the health visitors and social workers would try to persuade Jerry that he should take a break. There were hospices that could look after Eleanor for a few days to allow him some respite. But what would he do with those days? Where would he go? All he could imagine doing without the anchor of Eleanor's presence was to lie in the dark and burn in the unquenchable fire of his self-loathing. He needed her blame, her weight, her dependence. Respite? Nothing could be less respite than her absence.

Their wedding anniversary came around, and Jerry remembered the summit conferences Eleanor had instituted all that time ago.

He polished the best silver, and ironed the lace tablecloth and napkins some aunt of Eleanor's had given them as a wedding present. Cooked an exquisite meal, and chilled a bottle of vintage champagne. Dressed Eleanor in her finest dress; inexpertly did her make-up, and pinned up her hair. Bought flowers. Wore a tie.

Perched beside her wheelchair, he delicately fed her little mouthfuls of salmon, interspersed with sips of the wine. She chewed and swallowed as she always did, but perhaps -- Jerry thought -- with a little more relish than usual. Not with a smile, nor any expression of approval, but still, he imagined he could detect the faint air of enjoyment. Another bite. Another sip.

Dessert was creamy and unctuous, coffee bitter and black, just as Eleanor had always preferred it. Not too hot.

The summit was inevitably rather one-sided, but Jerry did his best to play Eleanor's part, subjecting himself to the full force of her disdain as he poured out his heart.

He told her she had always been the one. He had lost sight of that for a time, taken her for granted, taken himself for granted too. He had let the marriage become a habit, forgotten to tend it. He wanted her to know that his devotion had never wavered, but it had been clouded and obscured by other passing fancies, with terrible consequences for them both. But all that was in the past. They were together again, and he understood now that nothing else mattered. She had always been the one, now more than ever. She was his reason to live and he would never leave her side again.

Later that night, silently and without regret, she left him.
Posted by matt at March 3, 2004 04:49 PM