Wake Up Happy Every Day (6 page)

Russell has already set up a curt out-of-office message saying he’s going to be out of circulation. That he is going to find himself and that it might take a while. No one will think it odd when he doesn’t call. They’ll forget him soon enough. And the PAs and the flunkies and the cleaners and the drivers are all gone, all paid off. So it’s just us now baby. Just us and the money. Alone together at last.

I look at Sarah and she’s frowning.

‘All right, oh queen?’ I say. ‘The world is our bivalve mollusc. Where shall we go first?’

My tone’s all wrong though. I feel foolish.

Sarah smiles but tuts, exasperated.

‘How like a man,’ she says. ‘We can’t just go. There are things to do first.’

‘What? Packing and shit?’

‘Packing and shit,’ she says. And she then laughs. And then she kisses me on the nose. ‘I love you, Pog,’ says Sarah. ‘Can’t think why.’

Eight

LORNA

Lorna has stopped crying by the time she picks up her bike from Macarthur. More or less anyway. He’s so not worth it. Not that she’s really crying over Jez. She’s crying over all the unspeakable shits she’s been drawn to all her life. All the good-looking, self-absorbed bastards she’s wasted precious time on while ignoring all the nice sweet boys.

Twenty minutes later she is letting herself into the Emeryville apartment where she can hear some shameless movie starlet coaxing Megan into stretching and flexing, into reaching out just that little bit further than she did yesterday.

‘Tell the bitch to fuck off and die!’ Lorna shouts this from the hallway as she kicks off her boots. Megan enforces a very strict exclusion zone on outdoor footwear.

When Lorna gets to the living room both Megan and the starlet are doing the downward-facing dog, the starlet with a serenity that makes Lorna want to put her fist through the TV. Megan looks up and Lorna knows that she can tell she’s been crying. Her roomie’s welcoming grin fades. She rolls herself up into a standing position. She frowns at Lorna, hands on hips. Megan has a long, lean, straight-backed dancer’s body with broad swimmer’s shoulders. She keeps fit doing all that boxing training and lacrosse and shit, and Lorna wonders again why she wastes her time on the floor of their lounge copying bullying instructions from a dime-store hoofer on a DVD.

Megan bends at the waist, plucks the remote off the carpet and zaps the bitch into oblivion.

‘The Fuckweasel,’ she says. It’s a statement not a question. Lorna shrugs. Megan’s mouth, normally full and wide and laughing, thins to a hard straight line. Lorna says, ‘Uh-oh, it’s the boyfriend police.’ She tries her best Marilyn voice. ‘Was I doing something wrong, Officer?’ She sticks her little finger in her mouth. ‘Is there anything I can do to make you go easy on me?’

Megan isn’t playing. Just stands there waiting. She’ll make a great mum some day. Her kids are going to get away with fuck all. Lorna can see explanations are needed.

‘Oh nothing really. Jez has just been . . .’ Lorna stops.

‘Been busy being Jez,’ Megan finishes the sentence for her. ‘What a wanker.’

Lorna sometimes feels that one of the attractions she has for Megan is in providing her with an exotic vocabulary. Her room-mate enjoys Anglicisms. Collects them. Wanker is possibly her favourite, though she is also very fond of blimey, bin bag, arse, spot-on, cashpoint and snog.

She makes a point of rarely referring to Jez by name. He is usually simply The Fuckweasel. While Lorna is thinking about this, Megan crosses over to her and wraps sinewy arms around her. Lorna closes her eyes and breathes in the mixture of fruity soap and heat. Megan always smells delicious.

‘Megan,’ she chokes and swallows. ‘Megan. I love you. I love you, I love your face and all your funny little ways. And I love Armitage Shanks. But I’ve got to go home. And soon.’

Armitage Shanks is their cat, and on hearing his name, he pads into the living room to have his belly rubbed.

And later that same evening, after pasta and during Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey, Lorna explains that Jez is only part of the problem and she shows Megan the Things I Miss About England list she’d scribbled down on the BART. Megan takes her time studying it. There are thirty-two separate items on that list.

‘What are Hoglumps?’ Megan asks at last. ‘What the fuck is Mucky Fat?’

‘Oh, pork scratchings and dripping.’ And then Lorna tries to explain their appeal, but she can see that Megan doesn’t really get it. ‘And lads?’ says Megan. ‘We have lads.’

‘No you don’t. You have guys. A lad is different. Bigger, louder, cheekier. More boastful. More fun if you don’t take them too seriously.’

And Lorna thinks now about Yorkshire lads with their big shiny faces and their hair inefficiently spiked and their noisy shirts loose over wobbly ale bellies. Their efforts to impress. Their clumsiness. She thinks about the bloke she saw at Huddersfield station the day she left. A fat boy with a T-shirt that proclaimed REMEMBER MY NAME – YOU’LL BE SCREAMING IT LATER. Cocky but insecure Yorkshire lads, she really does miss them. She even sort of likes the dirty carelessness of the way they can go to the bog and come back with suspiciously dry hands but she can see why Megan looks so unconvinced.

‘Mm OK. What about drizzle? That’s like rain, right? Why would you miss that?’

Lorna looks down at the quarried tub of ice cream in her hand. Doesn’t an Inuit miss snow? Doesn’t a monkey miss the green sweat of the jungle? But Megan, clearly thinking the undesirability of drizzle is evident now that she’s pointed it out, is demolishing another item on the list. ‘And Liberal-Democrat newletters?’ Megan takes a dainty sip of her wine while she waits for an answer. Oh God. Lorna knows now is not really the time for a discussion about the British system of local government.

‘The Liberal Democrats are a political party,’ she begins.

‘I know that,’ Megan cuts in. ‘They’re the guys that come third right? But I thought you were a Green Socialist?’ Lorna blushes. She remembers a party – possibly more than one – where she had waved a bottle and berated the Americans present about how right wing they all were, about their absence of a socialist tradition. It was something guaranteed to upset any Democrats in the room, which, this close to Berkeley and to Pixar, meant practically everyone.

‘I’m not a Lib Dem, no.’ The syllables feel awkward in her mouth, like a sweet you want to crunch but can’t. Megan arches an eyebrow. ‘Stop it. I’m not a Lib Dem but they’re so
keen
about local politics. It’s like as long as they keep producing their newsletters telling us about how they have managed to get the council to repair the kids playground or improve street lighting or whatever, then it’s like we can sort of rest easy. Like England’s safe, you know?’

Megan shakes her head. It’s clear that, no, she doesn’t really know. She waggles Lorna’s notebook in the air. ‘I think this is actually a list of reasons why you left England in the first place.’ Lorna pauses, teaspoon of Chunky Monkey halfway to her mouth. Meg has said it casually but it has the weight of elemental truth. Lorna puts the spoon back in the tub. Megan grins happily. She knows she’s hit home. ‘Go me.’ She chuckles. And then, ‘I think you need a new list. A list of things you’d miss about here. And she makes Lorna get out her pen and write Great Things About the US of A on a fresh page.

Lorna writes SUNSHINE in capitals and then MEGAN and then ARMITAGE SHANKS and then pauses, sucking her pen. Seeing she is struggling Megan says, ‘You’ve got to factor in the exchange rate. This isn’t a one for one currency conversion. Our sunshine has got to be worth quite a lot of your English Liberal newspapers or whatever.’

Lorna smiles. ‘I never thought I’d say it, but sunshine gets boring after a while. I think I’ve been brought up to expect variety from my weather. Four seasons in one day that kind of thing. Am I spoilt?’

‘Totally. Jesus, girl, you’re some kind of princess.’

In the end the American list reads sunshine, Megan, Armitage Shanks, surf, hipsters, HBO, Ethiopian food, NFL, service, portion sizes, Michelle Obama and ‘a general attitude to life’. Lorna has been adamant in ruling out anything that was American but that she could get just as well in Yorkshire, and that turns out to be quite a lot of things. ‘You guys get proper squeezy mustard in England now? It’s not just tiny-weeny jars of that Colman’s crap? I’m impressed.’

When she was sixteen, Megan had toured Europe with her parents. England had been a blur of red buses, palaces, Shakespeare, surly desk clerks and shitty food served in tiny portions. And she’d loved everything except the food. Even the surly workers had had their olde worlde charm.

It is finally, as Megan says, a small list but full of high-quality big ticket items. Then there’s more wine and music that only they love. Music they can only play when it’s just them, when there are no guys around. The Carpenters. Grimes. Kate Bush. And then they trawl the net looking at random stuff. Megan shows her a gay porn site she’s found that specialises in very fat, very hairy men. Bears. It is as compelling as it is gross.

‘Do you have bears in England?’ asks Megan. ‘Because if not, you should add them to your list.’

And then they talk their way through a Woody Allen movie. One of the not so good ones. And just before bed they take a quick peek at some dating sites. It is very depressing. On one site six different men have described themselves as jazz-loving vegans. Megan puts her head in her hands. And then they count over thirty boys who somehow think it’s acceptable to say that the thing they most enjoy doing is ‘chilling with my xBox’.

‘Blooming heck, matey – we’re going to be single for ever.’

Lorna laughs. ‘Meg, no one in England has said blooming heck since 1955 or something.’

At some point Megan gets around to asking Lorna about her dad, about the whole reason she’d come out to America originally. And Lorna replies that it’s pretty hopeless, isn’t it? There’s hardly ever anyone in that bleeding office and when there is they won’t let her in. And in any case, even if she did see him it would probably end badly. The guy hadn’t given a shit about her for nearly thirty years, he’s hardly likely to come over all doting now, is he? Best thing is to go home and forget him, live her own life. And in any case she’ll have to go home soon when her visa runs out.

And, in the morning, when Lorna has to stagger from her bed to the living room to answer the insistent goddamn nagging of her cell-phone, which, it turns out, she’d left under her notebook, she finds that Megan has scrawled some things onto the end of her best of the US list. In the wonky scribble of someone who has consumed way too much pinot grigio, she’s written Bears, Dentists, Jazz-loving Vegans and, finally – in capitals – she’s put MEGAN’S FUNNY LITTLE WAYS underlining it many times for good measure. She’s also drawn rather a good cartoon of her own face. It’s way better than the sketches Jez does, and he fancies himself as a pro artist.

Whatever, it means that despite her hangover, Lorna is smiling as she says hello into her phone.

‘You sound cheerful,’ says her mum. And then does her unthinking best to put a stop to that.

They chat about this and that. It’s raining in Yorkshire. And the train drivers are on strike. And somebody they know has breast cancer. And they are trying to close the library. God, she misses England.

‘Mum are you sure you’re all right? You don’t normally call like this. In the morning, out of the blue.’

They usually make Skype appointments where they never quite judge the time delay, and so either speak over each other or leave unnaturally long pauses between sentences. Awkward. And also entirely fitting for the way her relationship with her mother has evolved.

‘Oh I’m fine . . . I’m just . . . you know, keeping on keeping on. But listen, are you still serious about getting in touch with your dad?’ Oh God.
‘Only I think I’ve found his address. His home address. It’s in somewhere called Russian Hill and I’ve street-viewed it and it looks very swish. Quite close to Nob Hill which might have suited him better. But not too far from where you’re staying. Lorna? Are you still there?’

‘Yes, Mum, I’m still here.’

Nine

POLLY

Irina calls Polly into the office. It’s a bit like she’s been called in to see the head teacher at school, though Polly was never one of those girls. Polly’s a good girl, but she’s pretty sure Irina wasn’t. Isn’t. You can tell by the way she looks, by the mean look in her eye. By the permanent frown mark above her nose. Her clenched bumface. She’s never said much about her life in Poland, but you can just tell she was more of a Rizzo than a Sandra Dee. Polly reminds herself that Irina isn’t a headteacher, a school bully or her boss. Polly tries to remind herself she’s just a volunteer. They can’t do anything to her.

Irina sits behind the desk and doodles for a while leaving Polly to stand, getting more and more nervous, until she’s sure she must have done something proper terrible. It’s probably only a minute, but a minute without any noise feels like ages. Polly likes to have noise around her. When she’s on her own, she likes to have both the radio and the TV on. Silence scares Polly and it’s like Irina knows that, so by the time she looks up and tells Polly that Mr Fisher’s son has died out in America and could she let him know, she’s relieved. Of course, she says, it’ll be fine, and she comes out of the office smiling because it’s turned out she’s not in any trouble. And she bumps into Daniel straight away because he’s seen her go into the office and has been waiting outside to show her this new thing he’s made.