The Long Delirious Burning Blue, page 20
I saw at once why he was rattled, of course. SP 32534 is one of our most exciting drugs in development. It falls under the company’s programme to produce an anti-anxiety drug that doesn’t sedate people at the same time – which represents one of the holy grails of modern psychiatric drug development. It’s one that the board is watching very closely indeed: it would be a real coup for Sanderson if it came through the testing programme with all of its initial promise still intact.
‘And they’re saying it based on repeats of experiments we’ve already carried out internally,’ he continued. ‘Experiments carried out by Bob’s group – in which we found no sedation. Right, Bob?’
How interesting, I thought. How interesting that Jack felt the need to replicate those experiments outside the company.
Bob nodded wisely. ‘I agree, Tom. I think there are a lot of areas where we could do the work just as well in-house and have more control over it.’
More control over it? ‘Excuse me,’ I interrupted. Twenty heads swivelled in my direction in gleeful anticipation of another showdown. Maybe I do have a death wish, after all.
Tom looked up and sighed. ‘Catriona?’
‘The whole point of doing research externally as well as internally is to gain credibility. As a safety check. And, sometimes, as a quality check.’ I looked pointedly at Bob, who flushed and glanced away. ‘That research is the foundation of our entire business. I can’t see how it would be wise to cut down on it.’
Tom turned the full force of his flinty eyes on me. ‘I’ve been a bit concerned about the quality of some of the work that Jack’s been commissioning recently.’ Bob nodded sagely, courage boosted by Tom’s support. Smug little shit – how dared he, while Jack wasn’t here to defend himself? ‘Perhaps if funds aren’t flowing so freely there’ll be more consideration given to spending them wisely.’
My temper flared. ‘With respect, Tom, I’m not sure it’s appropriate to talk about this without Jack being present to defend his decisions. I’m sure Bob is doing his best to fill in here’ – I threw a smile at Bob that matched his own in sincerity – ‘but Jack is head of R&D and we certainly shouldn’t agree to cuts without him being here to express his views and have a say in the process.’
Tom leaned forward and slowly placed his hands flat on the table. He kept his eyes fixed on his hands, and for a few moments said nothing at all. The tension in the room was palpable. I could see that I was going to suffer for this, but somehow I couldn’t seem to find it in my heart to care.
Eventually, Tom raised his head from the table. He smiled – a deceptively mild smile. He looked around the room; he didn’t meet my eyes. ‘Of course he’ll have a say in the process; I was simply pointing out some of the issues. We’ve a long way to go before we finalise any of the details relating to these cuts.’ I allowed myself to exhale as he turned his attention back to the written proposals in front of him. ‘Now. Does anyone else have a comment on R&D, or shall we move on to marketing?’
I sat back in my squeaky clean black leather chair and I watched. I watched as Bob smiled knowingly and nodded at everything that Tom said. I looked at the faces around the table: smug faces, and self-satisfied. Faces that bore the comfortable traces of lives that were turning out exactly as they expected. I watched and I listened and my chest was hollow and my head was heavy and I wanted, very badly, to weep.
‘Hon?’
Suddenly I realise that a silence has been building on the other end of the line and that Adam has said something that I haven’t responded to. ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Sorry. I didn’t hear you.’
‘I said, I don’t see why you’re letting all this get to you all of a sudden.’
‘It’s not all of a sudden, Adam. I’ve been feeling like that for a long while. It’s a build-up, and like all build-ups, it builds up – that’s what build-ups do, you see – to a stage where you just can’t bear it any more. Sometimes I don’t know what I’m doing there – it all seems so pointless. All the bullshit, all the jargon. All the dirty corporate politics.’
‘Well, hon, that’s business for you. That’s just the way it is these days. No point in getting all hot and bothered about it.’
He sounds sleepy; probably the wine. I grit my teeth; try not to snap. ‘Never mind,’ I say. ‘Let’s not talk about it, hey?’
‘It’s just a stage you’re going through. Everyone gets frustrated with their job, sometimes. We all go through these stages.’
The platitude angers me. ‘Do we? Did you?’
He pauses. ‘Well, no. Not really. You know me: always wanted to be a lawyer, still love it. Can’t imagine doing anything else.’ Yes, I know Adam. Happily filling in his time-sheet at the end of every day, every ten-minute period fully accounted for and charged out to some client or other. Working Saturdays, playing golf with the other senior partners on a Sunday afternoon. Hardly taking a day’s vacation except on public holidays. That’s Adam’s life. That’s Adam. And how lovely to be so certain: so completely immune to self-doubt. The irony, of course, is that that was one of the things that attracted me to him when we first met. He seemed so simple, so straightforward – what you saw was one hundred percent of what you got. There isn’t an ounce of hypocrisy in Adam.
‘Cat, hon. I worry about you. You seem so uptight lately.’ He sighs sleepily and yawns again. ‘When are you going to get back to normal?’
Normal? I laugh abruptly. Where’s that? I want to ask him. Where is this place called Normal? And who lives there? Do you? And is that living, what you do? What any of you do? A sudden flash of anger. ‘Maybe we can talk about it when you’re sober.’
There’s a clearly audible silence on the other end of the line and I let my head fall against the back of the chair and I close my eyes. ‘I’m sorry, Adam. I’m sorry. I’m just really tired. It doesn’t matter.’ The silence lingers, heavy with hurt. ‘Look, let’s just call it a night. I’m going to have a bath before I go to bed. See you tomorrow?’
‘Sure,’ he says, and just for a moment I wish he’d fight back. I wish he’d argue; I wish for something to break. Because then I’d know whether it was possible to put it back together again. ‘Sure. I’ll be back home in time for dinner. We’ll have a day, a day and a bit before I’ve got to turn back around and fly out again.’ He pauses. ‘Love you.’
‘You too,’ I lie.
I put the telephone down in its cradle and guilt immediately sets in. I completely overreacted – I know that all too well. It’s not as if he’s in the habit of getting drunk; he’s not actually a big drinker at all.
But the reaction is instinctive, ingrained.
I know. I know as soon as I come back from school and find her at home. It’s way too early; she shouldn’t be back for another hour and a half.
A hard, cold stone sinks into the pit of my stomach.
‘Mum?’ I call quietly. But the stone disintegrates and a small spark of hope takes its place as I walk through to the kitchen and see her there, busy at the counter-top. She’s on her feet and there is a pile of potatoes ready to be peeled in front of her. She’s cooking; she must be okay.
‘Hi, darling.’ She turns and smiles brightly. Too brightly. The spark dies; another stone rolls into position. ‘Good day?’
I nod. I watch closely. She hasn’t spoken enough words yet; I still can’t tell. ‘Why are you home early?’
‘I didn’t feel well.’ She fumbles with a pan lid; it clatters loudly on the stainless steel draining board and she swears. My ears prick up and my mind is focused, concentrated; every sense alert for a sign. I look around the kitchen, scanning for a glass. Nothing.
Maybe she really didn’t feel well. Maybe she’ll just take an aspirin and go to bed early and wake up in the morning and everything will be all right. Just like a normal Saturday morning. And we can go into town, maybe. Do some window shopping. Or go for a walk along the beach. Like normal people do.
‘Good day at school?’
She’s already asked me that. ‘It was okay.’ I walk over to her casually, smelling, assessing. She turns and smiles at me, leans back against the sink. ‘What lessons did you have today?’
‘The usual. History. Maths. English.’
‘English. Your favourite. What book are you studying?’ The smile is still too bright, too careful – as if it might slip if she doesn’t hold on to it tightly – and her eyes … don’t they have the beginning of the Look?
Because that’s how I think about it: the Look. The look that her eyes get when she’s been drinking. Unfocused; glittery. Strangely hollow. But it’s more than just her eyes. Her whole face undergoes a slight shift. It loosens, somehow; the mouth slips a little, to one side.
I am an expert in the detection of the Look. I am always alert, always watching for it. But the Look is just one part of a much more sophisticated system. Throw in just a few spoken words and I can assess her accurately on a six-point rating scale:
Sober.
Happy; a little dizzy. Speech slurring just a little. Eyes slightly out of focus.
Sentences garbled, halfway there. Face slack, lips red and moist.
Nonsense sounds; eyes blinking slowly.
Lips move but no sound; eyes completely unfocused; skin grey: about to pass out.
Comatose.
That’s what happens on the way up. But on the way back down, the number two stage changes. Happy becomes angry: pursed lips, vicious tongue. Number two lasts for a long time. The only thing that gets me through the down phase is the knowledge that soon she’ll be sober again. That soon, for just a short while, I’ll be able to relax.
Right now I’d say she’s somewhere between number one and number two. ‘George Eliot,’ I say. ‘We’re studying Silas Marner.’
She grimaces. ‘Depressing.’
I like it, I want to say. But I don’t want to argue with her. She hates it when I don’t like the things that she likes. ‘What are we going to do tomorrow?’
Her eyes cloud over and she shrugs vaguely. ‘Oh, well. I hadn’t thought about that. I’ll have to see how I’m feeling.’
I persist, even though by now I already know it’s no use. I already know what we’ll be doing tomorrow. ‘I thought we could go into town.’
‘What for? What would be the point of that? You know we can’t afford to buy anything.’ Her voice is sharp and high; her mouth tenses.
‘Not to buy anything. Just to look. Just to go out for a bit. Together.’
‘Well, I don’t see the point in that.’ She turns back to the sink, mouth twisting, movements spasmodic and tightly controlled. ‘I don’t see why you want to go to the shops all the time. You know we don’t have any money.’
‘I know that. I wasn’t asking …’ Oh, but that isn’t fair. I know we don’t have much money. I never ask her for anything; she knows that.
‘You only do it to make me feel guilty. It’s not my fault. I do what I can.’
The stone in the pit of my stomach sprouts teeth and I want to suggest that if she didn’t drink all the time she’d have a better chance of holding down a job and we might have more money – but I bite my tongue.
I’m not allowed to get angry. She’s the only one who’s allowed to get angry.
‘Go and get changed out of your uniform.’
I close the kitchen door and wait. I hear a cupboard door close; hear the familiar clink of bottle against glass. Wearily, I turn away.
I close the study door behind me but it’s not so easy to close the door on the memories, or her voice in my head. It takes me by surprise, sometimes: the anger, the monster. It creeps up on me; it weighs heavily on me; it won’t let me go.
‘I’m not crazy, Ginny.’
‘I didn’t say you were, hon. It’s just – well, I’m worried about you. We all are. Adam is.’
A waiter sweeps up to the table, refills our glasses of iced tea, and just as quickly dashes away again. Olivetti’s is buzzing, just as it always is on Saturday lunchtimes. Filled with impatient people who just want to eat and be on their way again. It used to be that fast food was a novelty, a choice; now it’s become an institution. The people here have no time for contemplation. No-one sits here over a leisurely glass of wine or cup of coffee, watching the world drift by, contemplating their existence. They lurch from one experience to another, afraid to stop, afraid to slow down … What do they think is going to catch up with them?
Ginny shakes her ginger curls. ‘I declare, I don’t know what’s gotten into you. You seem so – jumpy, lately. Adam thinks you’re having a midlife crisis or something.’
‘Does he?’ I take another half-hearted bite of my goat’s cheese and grilled vegetable panini, wondering just how it is that she’s so well-informed about what Adam thinks of me. Wondering what he’s telling people. And how many people he’s telling. ‘Well, then. Maybe I am.’
‘People do all kinds of crazy things when they hit forty, Cat.’
‘Yeah, I know. But have you ever thought that maybe it’s not crazy at all, but really makes sense? That it’s because they begin to develop a sense of their own mortality? Start to question, start to wonder why they’re just chugging along, doing the same old thing, day in and day out? Is it so crazy, to reevaluate what you’re doing with your life?’
‘And is that what you’re doing?’ She picks delicately at her Caesar salad. With low-fat dressing on the side, no croutons and just a sprinkling of cheese. Ginny takes very few chances with her figure and her health.
‘I guess I am. And you know what? From where I sit my life looks pretty arid.’
She laughs and puts her fork down. ‘Come on, Cat. Look at you. What have you got to have a crisis about? You’re forty, sure, but you’re a young forty. You’re slim, you’re healthy, you’re attractive; you still have that enviable English rose complexion even after ten years in the desert. You’ve risen pretty close to the top of the ladder at Sanderson; you earn a mint. You live in a nice house in one of the most sought-after suburbs of Phoenix. You’re living with a guy who’s just as successful, who’s warm and kind and absolutely adores you. What’s the matter with you?’
What’s the matter with me? She has a point. This is the American Dream, after all, isn’t it? This is what we’re all striving for, what we all want to be?
I sigh. ‘I don’t know, Ginny. I don’t know what the matter with me is. All I know is that right now this nice comfortable safe life doesn’t seem to be what I want.’
‘Are you sure you’re quite well?’ Her voice is careful; her eyes skit away from mine. Down to her salad, where she picks out a stray crouton with a delicate moue of distaste.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Drew said …’ She has the grace to hesitate. ‘Adam told him you had some kind of … psychological problem. I don’t know … anxiety, or panic, or some such thing. You don’t think maybe that could be a part of it?’
The hastily swallowed panini settles in the pit of my stomach like a stone. How dare he? How dare he go around discussing me like that? ‘I had a few issues with anxiety.’ I put the remainder of the sandwich down and push the plate away. ‘It’s nothing. I have a bunch of relaxation exercises and breathing exercises to do. It’s under control.’
She raises a sceptical eyebrow. ‘And do you think that you’re in control?’
‘No. I feel as if everything is about to break apart. But I don’t feel that way because I have panic attacks. I have panic attacks because I feel that way.’
She blinks. ‘I don’t get it.’
Join the club, I think. Nobody gets it. I’m not even sure I really get it myself. ‘What does it matter, anyway? I’m still here; I’m still functioning. Every now and again I feel as if someone is taking hold of me by the throat and shaking me, but I’m still functioning. I’m not crazy.’ How dare he even suggest it? How dare she?
‘I know you’re not, hon. It’s just that Adam – ’
‘Adam has no right to be discussing me like this.’
Her voice is soothing now, concerned. ‘Of course he does. Drew is his closest friend. You know how they are; they tell each other everything.’
‘And then Drew tells you.’ And then suddenly I get it. ‘Did Adam ask Drew to ask you to talk to me?’
Like most redheads, Ginny finds it impossible to control her propensity to blush.
‘He did. The son of a bitch.’ I pull the napkin off my lap and throw it onto the table.
‘Cat. It’s only because he’s worried about you.’
‘No, Ginny. It’s not. It’s because I’m not conforming any more to what he expects of me.’ I clench my fists; unclench them again. Sit back in my chair; get a grip on my breathing. Slow it down. Ginny watches me from across the table as if I’m a fuse that might blow at any minute. The idea is so ludicrous – so uncharacteristic – that it almost makes me laugh. Can I really be this person? This person that has to be watched and cajoled? This person that won’t just climb back into her box and close the lid on her frustration? This person who is beginning to feel that maybe – just maybe – she has the right to a little honest anger every now and again?
The part of me that isn’t totally horrified watches with a slight smile. And says, almost conversationally, ‘You know – I’m really not too sure, most of the time, whether Adam and I are really suited to each other or not.’ Adam Fraser III. The third, for God’s sake: I’m living with a man who calls himself by a number. A number that announces proudly to the world: this is who I am; this is where I come from. Oh, it says: you can count on me. You can count on me to be just like my father and just like his father before him. I know my predestined place in the world; I agree to be bound by it.
No surprises.
Safe.
And I have always chosen the safe paths in my life. But sometimes in my dreams I walk rockier roads.
