Wake Up Happy Every Day (9 page)

Sarah looks OK, of course. More than OK. If you were being picky you might say legs are a bit varicosed, breasts slightly less pillowy than they once were – we both blame Scarlett for that – but generally she’s looking good. Forty-two and she could be, oh, thirty-eight, easy.

‘Russell kept himself in trim,’ she says finally.

‘Look what happened to him,’ I say, and I smile at the accidental rhyme which is like something from Hilaire Belloc.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘Nothing. I don’t really know.’

And we pull all the blinds but this house is fifteen million dollars’ worth of too damn airy, too damn spacious, too damn everything, and we can’t keep the light out. Not really. That goddamn light gets everywhere. We lie awkwardly under a duvet on the sofa and hold each other and listen to the freeform music of the city. And Sarah talks about how the search for real fun is going to need imagination, planning, and organised thinking. What we need is proper project management.

‘Targets, goals, objectives,’ I say.

‘Absolutely,’ she says.

‘Milestones,’ I say. She nods.

She goes on about how we are going to need smart objectives to make the best of our new situation, our new lives. We are going to need goals that are specific and stretching, measurable and motivating, achievable and agreed, relevant and reinforced, timed and trackable. SMART in other words. Or SSMMAARRTT I suppose, strictly speaking. She gets quite excited. Quite passionate. There’s heat in her voice. A flush across her neck. My shy snail stirs a little. Not too much, but a little. She talks about storming, forming, norming – which are, apparently, the three necessary stages of change for any organisation, even a small one like our little family.

I tell her not to bring her filthy performance-management talk into the bedroom, not unless she’s prepared to take the consequences, and she giggles and we cuddle for a while. I don’t know about Sarah but I certainly feel unusual. Sleepy and buzzy at the same time. I guess I feel all moneyed up.

I’m in this foggy twilight world for a while – a short time? A long time? I have no idea – and then Scarlett wanders in and squirms her way between us.

‘Hello, lovely,’ I say.

And Sarah gets up, makes tea and comes back and explains to Scarlett about the game. The game that means I’m going to be called Russell from now on, rather than Daddy. If we keep it up we get to win a massive prize. Scarlett nods and gurgles. She has an extensive repertoire of nods and gurgles as you might imagine, and I’m pretty fluent in them. This, I reckon, is a
yes, I get it
kind of nod. It’s a
Daddy’s called Russell, now can we get on with breakfast and Nickelodeon please?
kind of gurgle. It’s a nod and a gurgle that says that Scarlett is impatient for some of the best kind of love.

None of this second-best shit.

Eleven

LORNA

Lorna has never really done sweat. She avoided sports at high school, her mum wearily colluding in the skiving by agreeing to pen the necessary notes until, in the end, everyone quietly accepted that during PE Lorna would just make her way to the library or the textile room.

It’s textiles she’s doing now, she supposes. Crocheting what will become a cuddly mouse for Armitage Shanks to play with while Megan does her rough games. Her silly PE. Funny how life could change so much, and also hardly at all at the same time. She can easily imagine that if she ever has a child she’ll be sitting in sports halls all over the country reading or knitting, while little Marley or little Dinah takes part in judo or Irish dancing or whatever. She could be doing what she’s doing now for years. And then there might be grandchildren. Wherever she goes, whatever she does, it might always be a simple twist on what she’s doing now.

Sitting with her wool and her thoughts Lorna is able to tune out most of the class. Despite this she’s aware that Megan is the best. Not just the fastest in the sprints, but she has the quickest reflexes in the various games they play. There’s this one game where everyone is wearing boxing gloves but instead of fighting each other, they have to slap the elbows or the shoulders or the arses of a partner without getting slapped themselves. Megan is terrific at it. She is lightning fast – in –
slap
– and out, like an otter gulping fish in a rushing stream.

She is also the most elegant. Some of the other women are quick and strong, but with them there is always a sense of effort, of labour. Everyone else in the group is plum-faced and soaked after a few minutes. Megan is merely slicked, glistening, tinged with just enough of a hint of colour to make a spectator think of apricots or peaches. And she keeps control of herself too. She stays nimble on her toes and her back stays straight where others begin to hunch and shuffle slightly as the class goes on – like they are becoming old in front of everyone.

And when they hit the pads or the bags the class is encouraged to vocalise, and most grunt formlessly, but Megan restricts herself to a controlled percussive
pa pa pa-pa.
Or, when jabbing, a quicker, aspirated rhythm
pha-pha-pha
. Long and short of it, Megan is good. And for a nicely brought up middle-class white girl from Berkeley, she is aces. Lorna gets that.

When the class starts sparring, Lorna puts down her needles and her wool. People trying to hit each other is always fascinating. It is gruesomely compelling outside the Ginger Goose in Bradford on a Saturday night, and it is still very watchable here now.

The way it works is that the class do two-minute circuits. Ten stations: skipping, squat thrusts, press-ups, bag work, step-ups and oh, loads of things, and one station is the ring where Linwood, the instructor, defends himself against each girl in turn. He doesn’t really fight back, though he sometimes taps the women on the forehead – gently, so gently – if he thinks they are leaving themselves too open.

It is clear to Lorna that this is what the women pay for. Ten dollars for the chance to hit a guy in the face? A total bargain. However tired the women are when they come off the bag work, they perk up significantly once they are in the ring and loosing off shots for real. And it is for real. While even an amateur onlooker like Lorna can see that not one of these try-hard soccer moms would last a minute in a real fight, and probably not survive even one decent counter-punch from Linwood – in their heads they are fighting for their lives.

Just how good Megan is can be gauged by the fact that Linwood does genuinely bop her on the nose a couple of times. Hard enough to make the watching Lorna wince. Hard enough to bring a proper flush to Megan’s face for the first time. And when Megs comes out of the ring she doesn’t go to her next station but goes straight to the showers saying, ‘I guess we better get going Lorna, my dear,’ and she’s trying to sound breezy and doing OK but Lorna can still hear angry tears in her voice. And Megan can tell that her roomie knows she’s not so blasé because she gives a wibbly-wobbly smile and says, ‘I’m OK – just need to work on my defence. Can’t be going forward all the time. Give me five minutes, ’kay?’

While she is in the shower Linwood comes over to Lorna.

‘You know, I’m hard on her because that’s how she’ll get better.’

Lorna just looks at him. Keeps right on crocheting. Linwood looks at the floor. He is handsome, sort of. A fine, well-built black man with that big-gunned, xylophone-abbed, even-featured look men aspire to over here. He has a face so sternly symmetrical, so coolly contemporary, it could win design awards. To tone this down he is wearing heavy black-rimmed specs, a transparent effort to soften the jockness.

Linwood smiles and Lorna flinches at the sudden gleam of the wall of teeth. Like the sun shining off a row of riot shields.

‘You should have joined in. The class I mean. Gotta be better than knitting.’

‘Crocheting.’

There is silence again.

‘You’re pissed at me. A little. Admit it. You are. For hitting your friend.’

‘She’s a big girl.’

Linwood is delighted. It seems he feels this meant he is exonerated in the court of Megan’s friends. It isn’t the impression Lorna means to give. Not at all.

‘That’s it.’ He nods so vigorously his head actually seems to bounce. ‘Right. She’s an adult. And she’s the best. Totally. She’s just got to learn to keep her hands up. To defend herself at all times. Come on, stand up.’

‘What?’

Linwood reaches down. He’s very tall. Like a big, black tree, only supple. A black willow maybe. He very deliberately moves the wool and the hook from Lorna’s hands and lap. Then he pulls her up to her feet. ‘You’ll like boxing,’ he says as he moulds her hands and feet into a fighting stance.

‘I don’t think so. I don’t do PE. Sorry.’ But she doesn’t attempt to move away or change position while Linwood pulls his gloves back on. Lorna feels ridiculous but also hypnotised somehow. It’s because she is so many miles from her comfort zone. When had she last been in a gym? Year ten was it? So that would be 1997. Empires have risen and fallen since then. The world has boomed and bust twice at least. There have been wars. Some of them have even finished. More or less.

‘Now try and hit me.’

‘What?’

‘Hit me. Hard as you can.’

‘Hit you?’

‘Hit me. Give me your best shot.’

‘Oh, fuck it.’

Linwood purses his lips. ‘No need to curse.’

‘I think you’ll find that there is usually every need.’

And then she swings at him, and he bats her away easily with his gloved right hand. He laughs. ‘It goes best when you don’t shut your eyes when you throw one.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘It doesn’t matter, but you so did. Come on, again.’

So she throws a few bare-knuckle punches, painfully conscious of how flappy and girlish they seem, even to her, and Linwood catches them all with no trouble. And he corrects her stance and teaches her about snapping out the jab and the difference between a hook and an uppercut, and shows her to swing her hips with the punch, and he more or less ignores the other women calling out their exhausted goodbyes to him.

And after a few minutes he says, ‘You’re actually a natural.’

To which she replies, ‘And you’re actually a bullshitter.’ And Linwood purses his lips again at the cursing. It makes her smile that this big tough guy is so prim. And she also can’t help feeling pleased at the praise, and then she notices Megan standing watching, hands on hips, eyes narrowed.

‘Ready to go, babes?’

Megan just inclines her head slightly, then turns and strides away towards the stairs that lead to the car park and, feeling weirdly caught out, obscurely naughty, Lorna trots after those big shoulders, that narrow waist, those dancers thighs – the whole package, it seems to Lorna, transmitting a disapproving haughtiness.

‘Hey, Megan!’ Linwood is calling. Megan turns. ‘Nice work today. Fast hands.’

Megan nods gravely but says nothing, just raises the hand that isn’t carrying her gym bag. She looks at him coolly for a long second. Flicks her wet hair away from her face.

There are no words in the car for ages. Megan has the radio up too loud to talk comfortably and is concentrating on the traffic in any case. It’s building up now. She is doing the thin-lip thing again. She can make it go like razor-wire when she wants. It’s such an obvious sulk that Lorna wants to laugh. It’s funny though, because she wouldn’t have thought Linwood was her usual type. Altogether too jock, despite the glasses. Maybe we’re both getting desperate, she thinks. Or maybe it is just that they had been in Megan’s space, the gym being her domain. If it’s that, well, it’s unfair because it was Megan who had insisted she should drive her to Russian Hill after class, be there to provide back-up. It wasn’t like Lorna was begging to hang at the boxing club. And she hadn’t wanted the attention from Linwood, hadn’t encouraged it. She had, in fact, been fairly abrupt with him, a bit off. Rude even.

She supposes now that the best thing would be to clear the air with a few light remarks, to make Megan laugh. It is usually easy to josh her out of a mood, but Lorna is starting to feel a bit tired and headachy and anyway, maybe Megan isn’t even thinking about Lorna’s accidental flirtation with Linwood at all, maybe she is just stressed about the traffic. Maybe she is genuinely and simply concerned about flyovers and intersections and freeways. Whether or not to take the FAIR lane, the one where you can pay ten dollars and ensure a queue-free ride. The stuff Lorna, as a permanent passenger – as one of the fourteen or so people in the state who doesn’t drive – never has to worry about.

She had already formed the impression from her mum that her father had done well in business, but even so this neighbourhood is still a bit intimidating. These have to be the most expensive houses in the city. Huge, surrounded by electronic gates and walls and looking down on everyone else. Each one like a castle busy getting on with its own fairy tale.

Uncertain of where the house is exactly, they park up to consult the scrap of paper on which Lorna has scrawled the address. The grandeur of the area makes Lorna feel drab and shy in contrast. Megan conversely seems to brighten now the drive is over. Yeah, maybe it really had been the traffic making her do the tight mouth thing. Lorna hopes so. She doesn’t want a ridiculous spat over some idiot boy to spoil what could be her last few weeks in the States.