Anybody Out There? by Marian Keyes
“Thank you for not saying that if things were different that you would have…you know…taken me up on my offer.”
“Bummer.”
“What?”
“’Cause that’s just what I was thinking.”
At work, I began living a double life. To most people I was still a Candy Grrrl, wearing my goofy clothes and purveying my goofy products. But I was also an undercover Formula Twelve girl, who had intense meetings with Devereaux, thrashing out publicity plans and fine-tuning packaging.
Any leftover time I had, I spent with Jacqui, reading baby books and saying what a prick Joey was.
I never cried and I never got tired: a pilot light of bitterness fueled me.
I didn’t reschedule with Neris Hemming, and abruptly, I stopped going to Leisl’s.
The first Sunday, Mitch rang. “We missed you today, peanut.”
“I think I’m going to give it a miss for a while.”
“How’d it go with Neris Hemming?”
“Bad, and I don’t want to talk about it.”
Silence. “They say anger is good. Another phase in the grieving process.”
“I’m not angry.” Well, I was, but not for the reasons he thought. It had nothing to do with any grieving process.
“So when am I going to see you?”
“I’ve got a lot on at work right now…”
“Sure! I totally understand. But let’s stay in touch.”
“Yes,” I lied. “Let’s.”
Then Nicholas called and we had a similar conversation, and for months afterward, they both rang regularly, but I never spoke to them and never returned their calls. I didn’t want any reminder of what an idiot I’d been, trying to talk to my dead husband. Eventually they stopped ringing and I was relieved; that part of my life was over.
I’d closed up like a flower at night, a bitter little bud, sealed tight.
But I was far from being unprofessional—on the contrary, I was probably more professional than I’d ever been before. People actually seemed slightly unnerved by me. And it appeared to be paying off because just before Thanksgiving, the first tantalizing reference to Formula Twelve appeared in the press: described as a “Quantum Leap in skin care.”
90
Anna, it’s a miracle,” Mrs. Maddox gushed. “I was dead. I was walking around, dead. And this little boy…I know he’s not Aidan, I know Aidan will never be back, but he’s like a part of Aidan.”
Dianne had completely abandoned her Thanksgiving plans to take off on a women’s retreat and dance in her pelt and paint herself blue beneath a full moon. Instead it was business as usual—turkey, best crystal, etc.—because “little Jack” was coming to visit.
“He’s beautiful, just beautiful. Please say you’ll come and meet him.”
“No.”
“But—”
“No.”
“You used to be such a sweet girl.”
“That was before I found out my dead husband had fathered a child with someone else.”
“But it was before he met you! He didn’t cheat on you!”
“Dianne, I have to go now.”
Rachel and Luke are doing Thanksgiving,” I told Jacqui. “You’re invited too. But—”
“Yes, I know, Joey will be there. So obviously I won’t be going.”
I offered to boycott it also. “We can spend it together, just the two of us.”
“No need. I’ve had another invitation.”
“Where?”
“Um…Bermuda.”
“Bermuda? Don’t tell me it’s Jessie Cheadle’s place!”
Jessie Cheadle was one of her clients; he owned a record company.
“None other.”
“How’re you getting there? Don’t tell me—he’s sending a plane?”
She nodded, roaring with laughter at my jealousy. “And there’ll be staff to unpack my LV wheelie case and a butler to run rose-petal baths. And when I leave, they’ll repack my case and put tissue paper between every layer. Scented tissue paper. D’you mind me going?”
“I’m delighted for you. You’re not crying so much now, had you noticed?”
“Yeah. It was just hormones.” Then she added, “But he’s still a prick. Look!” She pointed at herself. “What’s wrong with this picture?”
“Nothing.” She looked fantastic, all aglow and sporting a neat little bump. Then I noticed. “You’ve got a chest!”
“Yes! For the first time ever. It’s great having knockers.”
Luke opened the door. He had a needle sticking out of his forehead, like he was a unicorn. “Gaz,” he explained. “Gaz and his acupuncture. Happy Thanksgiving. Come on in.”
Sitting around the dinner table were Gaz, Joey, and Rachel’s friends Judy and Fergal. Shake wasn’t present. He’d gone to Newport to spend Thanksgiving with Brooke Edison’s family. Apparently, Shake and Brooke were having amazing sex; he’d told Luke she was “filthy.”
Everyone had acupuncture needles sticking out of their foreheads; they were straight out of Star Trek, like an alien council of war. Gaz jumped up when he saw me, his needle at the ready. “To stimulate your endorphins.”
“Okay,” I said. “Go on. But I remember the days when we used to wear paper hats at this sort of thing.”
Gaz inserted the needle and I took my place. Dinner was just about to be served; I’d chosen my time carefully: I hadn’t wanted to be late but I didn’t want to do any of that sitting-around predinner-chatting stuff either.
Rachel emerged from the kitchen with a massive nut roast and plonked it on the table.
Immediately Gaz lunged at it.
“Oi,” Rachel said. “Wait a minute. We’ve to say grace.”
“Oh yeah, sorry.”
Rachel bowed her head (chinging her needle against a Kombucha bottle) and said a little piece about how lucky they all were, not just to be getting a yummy dinner, but for all the excellent things in their lives.
Everyone nodded in agreement, their needles flashing in the candlelight.
“It’s also timely,” Rachel said, “to remember those who are no longer with us.” She picked up her glass of sparkling apple juice and said, “To absent friends.” She paused, like she was fighting back tears, and said, “To Aidan.”
“To Aidan.” Everyone raised their glasses. Everyone but me. I sat back in my chair and folded my arms.
“Anna, it’s a toast to Aidan.” Gaz was scandalized.
“I know. I don’t care. He had a child with someone else.”
“But…”
“She’s angry with him for dying,” Rachel explained.
“Aidan couldn’t help that,” Gaz said.
“Her anger is illogical, but not invalid.”
At that point I really felt like I was in an episode of Star Trek.
“Aidan couldn’t help dying,” Gaz repeated.
“And Anna can’t help how she feels.”
“Oh, would the pair of you just shut up,” I said. “Anyway, I don’t hate Aidan for dying.”
“So why do you hate him?” Rachel said.
“I just do. Come on, Gaz. Set the curtains on fire, or something.”
Later on, Joey cornered me. “Hey, Anna.”
“Hey,” I muttered, looking at the floor. These days I did my best never to speak to him.
“How’s Jacqui doing?”
I looked up and stared in cold astonishment. I would have curled my lip if I’d been able, but when I try lifting one side of my mouth, both sides go up, so it looks like I’m being examined for gingivitis. “How’s Jacqui doing? If you want to know how Jacqui is doing, why don’t you pick up the phone and ask her yourself?”
He glared at me, a long, long one, but he was the first to look away; no one could outstare me these days. “Fine, then,” he said angrily, “I will.”
He got his cell phone out of his pocket and started punching buttons like they’d personally offended him.
“I hope you’re not trying her home phone
He stopped punching numbers. “Jessie Cheadle’s estate?”
“Yes. Why? You thought she’d be spending Thanksgiving sitting alone in her apartment? Just her and her fatherless fetus?”
“What’s her cell number?”
I closed my mouth. I didn’t want to tell him.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’ve got it at home. You can tell me now or I can get it myself later.”
Defeated, I rattled it off.
Another series of button punching, possibly less aggressive this time, and he said, like he was Alexander Graham Bell making the first-ever phone call, “It’s ringing! It’s ringing!” Then his entire body slumped with anticlimax. “Voice mail.”
“Leave a message, you moron. That’s what it’s there for.”
“Nah.” He snapped the phone shut. “She probably wouldn’t want to speak to me anyway.” He gave me a coy look but I made my face stay expressionless. I didn’t know if she would want to speak to him (she probably would, I feared) and I didn’t know just how much he’d had to drink—if this sudden interest in Jacqui’s welfare would disappear just as soon as Thanksgiving was over and his hangover had kicked in.
The minute Jacqui got home I reported the entire episode verbatim and she put it down to the goodwill and overindulgence of the season. Her exact words were, “Pissed fool.”
91
Anna, this new ‘quantum leap’ skin care? What do you know about it? I coulda sworn you said something last time we had lunch.”
My phone was ringing off the hook: beauty journos, their curiosity piqued.
“What have you heard about it?” I asked.
“That it’s like nothing we’ve ever seen before.”
“Yes, I heard that, too.”
All through December the buzz around Formula Twelve built. Amid the craziness of Christmas drinks and parties and shopping, the whispers intensified. “I heard it was from the Brazilian rain forest.” “Is it true that Devereaux is doing it?” “They say it’s a supercream, like Crème de la Mer, to the power of ten.”
The time had almost arrived. I’d decided that Harper’s was the magazine we were going for and I set up a lunch with their beauty editor, Blythe Crisp, for early in the new year. “A very special lunch,” I promised her.
“End of January,” I told Devereaux. “That’s when we break it.”
The nurse moved the scanner over Jacqui’s gel-covered bump, paused, and said, “Looks like you’re having a little girl.”
“Cool!” Jacqui punched the air from her prone position, nearly braining the woman. “A girl! Much better clothes. What’ll we call her, Anna?”
“Joella? Jodi? Joanne? Jo?”
In a sappy voice Jacqui said, “So Narky Joey will know how much I stiiilll love him. Or better still! How about Nark-Ann? Or Narketta? Or Narkella?”
“Narkella!” The thought of calling the little girl Narkella struck us as so funny that we collapsed into convulsions; the more we laughed, the funnier it became, until we were clutching each other and apologizing weakly to the nurse for our unseemly behavior. Every time we thought we’d stopped, one of us would say, “Narkella, tidy your room,” or “Narkella, eat up your carrots,” and we’d explode again. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a belly laugh like it and it felt great, like two ten-pound weights had been lifted from my shoulders.
In the cab home, I said, “What if Rachel and Luke ask about the scan?”
“What do you—oh, you mean, they might tell Joey?”
“Mmm.”
She thought about it, then said, almost impatiently, “I suppose he’ll have to know at some stage that he’s having a girl. Yeah.” She was becoming defiant now. “I don’t care what he knows. Tell them what you like. Tell them all about Narkella.”
“Grand. Fine. I just didn’t want to do the wrong thing…” I let a little time elapse, then said, “In all fairness, though, Jacqui, no stupid names.”
“How d’you mean?”
“Foofoo, Pom-pom, Jiggy, that sort of thing. Call your baby something normal.”
“Like what?”
“I dunno. Normal. Jacqui. Rachel. Brigit. No Honey, Sugar, Treacle—”
“Treacle! That’s so cute. We could spell it with a K. And an il. Treakil. Ikkil Treakil.”
“Jacqui, no, that’s terrible, please…”
92
Where’s that invitation?” Mum shrieked. “Where’s that fecking invitation?”
In the dining room, over the remains of our Christmas dinner, I exchanged perplexed looks with Rachel, Helen, and Dad. A moment ago Mum had been on the phone to Auntie Imelda, and now she was screeching and flinging things about in the kitchen.
She flung open the dining-room door and paused at the threshold, breathing heavily, like a rhinoceros. In her hand she held the twig-and-papyrus wedding invitation. Her eyes sought Rachel’s.
“You’re not getting married in a church,” she said thickly.
“No,” Rachel said calmly. “Like it says on the invitation, Luke and I are having a blessing in a Quaker hall.”
“You made me think it was a church and I have to find out from my own sister—who incidentally got a Lexus for her Christmas box; I get a trousers press, she gets a Lexus—that you’re not getting married in a church.”
“I never said it was a church. You simply chose to assume it.”
“And who’ll be carrying out this so-called”—she almost spat the word—“blessing? Any chance it might be a Catholic priest?”
“It’s a friend of mine, a minister.”
“What kind of minister?”
“A freelance one.”
“And this would be one of your ‘recovery’ friends?” Mum sneered. “Well, I’ve heard it all now. Between that and the sugar-snap peas, no one at all belonging to me will come. Not that I want them to be there.”
Mum’s fury set the tone for what remained of the Christmas period. What made her even more angry was that she didn’t have the option of bending Rachel’s will to hers by threatening to withdraw funding, because Luke and Rachel were paying most of the costs themselves.
“It’s a joke,” she raged impotently. “It’s not a wedding, it’s a travesty. A ‘blessing’ no less! Well, she can count me out. And there was me worried about the color of her dress. If she’s not getting married in a church, she can wear any color she shagging well likes.”
But not everyone was upset by Rachel’s not-getting-married-in-a-church news. Dad was secretly thrilled because he thought that if it wasn’t a “proper” wedding he wouldn’t have to make a speech. Rachel, too, was serene and unflappable.
“Aren’t you upset?” I asked. “Do you mind getting married without Mum and Dad being there?”
“She’ll be there. Do you honestly think she’d miss it? It would kill her.”
I hunkered down and hid in soppy films and chocolate Kimberley biscuits and counted the days until I got back to New York. I’d never been that keen on Christmas, it always seemed to involve more fights than usual, but I was finding this one particularly tough.
Janie had sent me a Christmas card, which was a photo of “little Jack” in a Santa hat—she kept writing and sending photos and saying we could meet whenever I wanted. The Maddoxes were also badgering me to meet “little Jack” and I was still stonewalling them. I would never meet him.
93
Chopper’s taken off,” the man with the walkie-talkie said. “Blythe Crisp on board. ETA twenty-seven after twelve.”
To create the necessary air of drama around Formula Twelve, I was having Blythe Crisp helicoptered from the roof of the Harper’s building to a hundred-and-twenty-foot yacht, moored in New York Harbor. (Hired for only four hours, unfortunately, and four very expensive hours at that.)
Even though the weather was freezing—it was January 4—and the water was choppy, I thought the yacht was a nice touch; it smacked a little of drug smuggling.
I got up and paced the cabin—just because I could. I had never before been on a yacht that was big enough to pace in. In fact, I don’t think I’d ever been on a yacht at all.
After some good, enjoyable pacing, I thought I could hear a helicopter. “Is that it?” I strained to listen.
Walkie-talkie man checked his big, black, waterproof, nuclear-bomb-proof watch. “Right on time.”
“Stations, everyone,” I said. “Don’t let her get wet,” I called after him. “Don’t do anything to annoy her.”
Inside a minute, a bone-dry Blythe was click-clicking down the parquet hallway in high leather boots, to where I was waiting in the main salon, champagne already poured. “Anna, my God, what’s all this about? The chopper, this…boat?”
“Confidentiality. I couldn’t risk our conversation being overheard.”
“Why? What’s going on?”
“Sit down, Blythe. Champagne? Gummi Bears?” I’d done my research; she loved Gummi Bears. “Okay, I’ve got something for you but I want it in the March issue.” The March issue was due to come out at the end of January.
She shook her head. “Oh, Anna, you know I can’t. It’s too late, we’ve put March to bed. It’s about to go to the printers.”
“Let me show you what this is about.” I clapped my hands (I really enjoyed that bit, I felt like a baddie in a James Bond movie) and a white-gloved waiter brought in a small heavy box on a tray and presented it to her. (We’d rehearsed it several times earlier.)
Wide-eyed, Blythe took it, opened it up, stared into it for a long moment, and whispered, “Oh my God, this is it. The supercream of supercreams. It’s real.”
All right, so it wasn’t a cure for cancer, so it was only face cream, but it was still a proud moment.
“I’ll just go wake March up,” she said.
After the chopper had whisked her back uptown, I rang Leonard Daly at Devereaux. “It’s a go.”