The Helen 100 Read online

  Once or twice very late at night, I had awoken to see her creep into her shed where she kept her computer. She was wearing maximum make-up and minimum lingerie. I had asked her what she was doing and she had told me to go back to sleep. ‘Just trying out a new look for you,’ she said.

  She was almost certainly cheating on me. Which I would have known if only I had more regularly read women’s lifestyle publications.

  She was cheating on me.

  Good, I thought, which is not to say that I longed for her faithlessness. Being a wronged wife had never been a fetish and I didn’t expect to take pleasure in the role right now. But I knew being cuckolded could provide me if not with an orgasm then (a) a traditional set of behavioural guidelines in a chaotic time and (b) relief from the boredom of my just-dumped self.

  I was not consumed with jealousy. Instead I was hopeful that I would soon have something to truly whine about, some solid indignity into which to sink my rotten old fangs. I was grateful for the possibility of a real boot in the face.

  I did not wish particularly to know beyond doubt that she had failed me. But I did want a pause from the thoughts of my own dreary failings. I looked forward to humming a few verses of ‘Your Cheatin’ Heart’ as I imagined this could provide a nice break from hours of emotional self-harm, chicken and Photoshopping with phalluses. I could now loathe her and her infidelity, instead of myself and the bleak and shitty habits into which I’d certainly fallen.

  I mentioned none of my suspicions by telephone and I hung up after wishing her a ‘pigfucking day’, one of many cathartic phrases Celine had texted me for use during initial post-break-up contact.

  I picked up the dear cat, whom I encouraged to shit on the collage materials in a shed that would soon be as full of damning proof as it was of bad incense and art. Eleven had just begun to scratch a pile of doll hair when I found much of the fuel I’d need for a very righteous fire. It took me no time at all to find two carefully preserved notes handwritten by a woman, who I had met a few times, named Sandra. Arty fucking Sandra.

  The first note contained a jejune reference to Greek mythology, something or other about them being muses and artists, and how they were both each other’s inspiration and each other’s sculptor, or some shit. The second mentioned the ‘erotic charge’ of ‘total collaboration’ that had, apparently, taken place in this very shed.

  Sandra had enclosed a tasteful selfie of her tits, which was monochrome and, it irked me to concede, much more carefully composed than my own tit pic of the previous evening. It was a pretty good photo, really, and I should have kept it as a visual reference to attract tasteful suitors instead of wiping my stinking armpits on it and throwing it at a homemade candle in the ex’s collection.

  I had not come to know this Sandra person very well in the few months she had been popping by to ‘collaborate’ with the ex. This was partly because she was one of those annoying arty fuckers who always referred to rooms as ‘spaces’; exactly the sort I successfully avoid—well, everywhere except inside my most intimate relationship. It was chiefly because I strongly suspected her of wanting to lez out with my wife.

  I had voiced these concerns several times to the ex, but been assured that the collaboration was strictly creative. She had even cried and said to me in the kitchen she was outraged I could think such a thing! Sandra is married and straight, don’t you know? Why did I have to sexualise everything? This was about art.

  Well, unless the exchange of hand jobs in a backyard shed is what passes as an extended performance piece these days—and it possibly is—they hadn’t been making art. According to the note, they’d been going at some pretty standard lez adultery while I was metres away.

  ‘Helen was working just metres away when you first touched my most familiar part,’ wrote Arty Sandra. Yes, I fucking was. Metres away writing discount coupons. Discount fucking coupons for fucking frizz ensmoothenation.

  I was still not truly annoyed about the infidelity itself, but I was annoyed to learn that they had acknowledged I paid for the act with my cheerless labour. I became outraged to think that my labour had functioned as something of a stimulant. They were at it hammer and tongs in part because I was toiling in misery.

  Helen was working just metres away.

  *

  How did my working week come to operate as atmospheric; as some sort of inspiring sex doll? My labour had made their leisure not only more possible, but more pleasurable. This disgrace was the one that I chose as my boot.

  Once, I read an interview with a famous sociologist who wanted to make the point that communists were far too fanatical in ascribing all human difficulty to the conditions of labour. Why, he wanted to know, do they always make everything about money? He said something like, ‘Not every problem someone has with their girlfriend is due to the capitalist mode of production.’ Well, this girlfriend problem was, you silly sociology man. As I saw it, my labour had become her aphrodisiac and so, I became angrier than even the angriest trade unionist.

  I called Sandra at the art ‘space’ in which I knew she worked. I asked to speak with the home-wrecking scab in charge. I belted out my domestic version of the ‘Internationale’. I would not stand for this worker’s violation.

  I can’t be certain what I actually said to Arty Sandra, but I may have unfavourably mentioned her harem pants and/or fondness for the music of Amanda Palmer. I may have said something about her exchange of white liberal guilt for dangly fair-trade earrings made by foreign women who would be forever in servitude to Western micro-loans. I may have told her that her vag smelled of marinated tofu past its Best Before date, and not of the spotless pages of the Patricia Highsmith novel, which I was pretty certain she had immediately purchased following her first midlife lez-out, which had taken place in my fucking shed with the body of my fucking spouse. Ex-spouse. You scab.

  Whatever I said, it sounded at least as half as unpleasant to me as the music of Amanda Palmer as soon as I had finished saying it. Perhaps being Wronged was not a very good fit for me.

  Sandra’s two young children had names whose fashionable spelling put each of them at risk of a literacy disorder. There was no honour at all in mentioning this, but I am pretty sure I did. I felt awful poking fun at Junyper and Stellan and immediately regretted my threats to fill their biodynamic juice bottles with high fructose corn syrup at their Montessori school. Or telling her that I would secretly vaccinate both of them the next time she was at her Kundalini class. Or that I would creep into her kitchen and mix the heirloom seeds she sprouted for this indigo pair with some GMO Monsanto stock.

  I felt quite rotten about abusing Sandra and her arty family.

  As nutty and narcissistic as I had become by that second day, I understood that Sandra had probably been as deluded about the rules of the shed as me. In all likelihood, we’d both heard many falsehoods.

  I knew that the ex’s lack of scruples in her dealings with me by no means indicated an oversupply of them to Sandra. Who knows what she had told Arty Sandra to tempt her into congress. That we had an ‘open relationship’? That things had been ‘bad for a while’?

  If the correspondence was any guide, she had certainly told Arty Sandra that she was a working artist, which is a generous way to depict a life spent largely at the mouth of a beer bottle while waving a pair of scissors about and posting animal videos to Facebook.

  Having concluded this fairly shameful phone call with some crack about shoving a Jasper Johns assemblage down her awful cheesecloth top, I found in the bin a third and fourth note penned by Sandra. These had not been pressed into a scrapbook as the others were but were discarded, presumably due to their contents, which advised discontinuation of the shed-sex. Sandra didn’t want it anymore.

  Perhaps guilt had overcome desire. Perhaps Sandra hadn’t really taken to lezzing out—quite possible, as I faintly recall her saying to me ‘I didn’t even lick her vagina’. I wondered if she’d seen the vagina pre- or post-tarantula. I wondered if she knew that vagin
a had felt the pain of beauty biocide for the first time for her—a vaginal waxing into which my Eleni had been unwittingly drawn. I wondered if Sandra had come to suspect that my ex really wasn’t much of a committed artist. I’m not sure of the reason and I don’t know if Sandra was either, as she had failed to explain it over two quite long Dear John letters.

  I called for another chicken and decided to apologise to Sandra. I had said some very cruel things about the woman’s wardrobe that I believed demanded reparation. It probably wasn’t her fault that she dressed like the manager of a vegan food truck—at any rate, I think such costume was compulsory in her suburb.

  The apology to Sandra, I told myself, was for immediate action. It had to be made now and finished in time for chicken. NOW. Now.

  This keen concern for the feelings of someone who had, after all, rogered my spouse in the shed while I was writing discount coupons seems odd to me in the present. I think it would seem odd to many persons. A free verbal hit at the wispy progressive who screwed your spouse during business hours would, I think, be generally excused by most.

  I should have permitted myself this most permissible lapse, which, I think, even Arty Sandra had felt that she deserved—she had cried and said two or three times, ‘I am sorry, but I was just so very lonely. My husband left. I am sorry. I was sorry.’ I should have ignored the drive to atone. But, at the time, redress felt urgent. As urgent as the need to be rogered or to cry or to quit my job had the night before. NOW. Now. I must act now.

  I imagine many dumped people are trodden by this parade of emotional purpose. We are marched by emotion from one ostensibly vital mission to the next. We find it impossible to stop. We convince ourselves we need sex, we need retribution, we need forgiveness THIS MINUTE, when what we actually need this minute is a nice bath and a rest.

  Public Service Announcement: Have a bath.

  When I was a teenager, I used to laugh at my grandmother, Grace, who thought that there was little that could not be cured with a sleep, a bath or an early dinner. She thought that organisation and a little care were all that it took for a life to be good. I used to tease her about this advice and insist that life, of which I’d then had no experience, was so much more complicated, and that she just didn’t understand big problems.

  But, of course, she really did. She lived through the two wars, the Great Depression and an emotionally violent marriage.

  It has taken me decades of more everyday conflict to see that a nice bath can make life easier. It doesn’t fix everything, but it can fix a fuck of a lot.

  If you have recently been called to war or given your spousal marching orders, do try at some point to have a nice bath. Also, try disabling all communications devices and/or swallowing the keys to your house and your car. Try anything to slow the procession of impulses. Particularly those that are vengeful, which are almost always best left until they shrivel. And, I’m telling you, they always will.

  This is not to say that I did not indulge revenge fantasy, or that I acted in a smooth and Christian manner. Or that I do not now remain somewhat shitty that I had been so intimately deceived. Or that I did not watch women’s divorce films on Netflix. Those whose first act sees some sassy lady set fire, for example, to her cheating husband’s Aston Martin.

  Oh, I watched them.

  ‘You go, girl,’ I probably said to the screen, and hummed along to the inevitable Aretha whose anthem of feminine selfhood heralded an hour of affecting ups-and-downs. Whoa! Respect!

  I relished the scenes that moved towards the completion of a heroine, who grows wiser and more beautiful and whose newfound blaze of independence, first sparked by arson, eventually brings her the most fulfilling kind of fire with Bradley Cooper, or whoever.

  I can’t be expected to recall the details of any film I watched back then. But I do remember that the newly dumped lady really needs a bath and a rest.

  I do not mean you should not act like a nut-loaf or even that you must forgive. I do, however, ask you to understand that real break-ups contain very few plot points, opportunities for growth or handsome men. Life contains little that films or revenge fantasies do and a good deal that they do not. As life contains things such as insurance, family law and fire safety standards, you’re really best to stay away from camera-friendly fire.

  Pyromania won’t seem like a good idea in five minutes, so please, if you are considering the destruction of a luxury sports car, or similar, get in the bath or have a short walk and take the time to calm the flip down.

  In the silence, you will recognise the likelihood that you will be arrested. You will come to know that the personal growth and independence experienced by ladies in films do not always generate a Bradley Cooper. And, if your household does boast an Aston Martin, you will remember that you are sufficiently wealthy to retain the kind of solicitor who can probably negotiate the lawful immolation of that car. Take a minute. Get a lawyer. Outsource all destruction.

  Invaluable time- and cost-saving realisations of the type aforementioned can only unfold when you take a minute. Please, take a minute.

  *

  As I had happened to hurl my phone into a heap of possum bones—which had begun to smell, as many of her ‘found objects’ did, of gingivitis and old clothes—I had a minute to take. I would not call Sandra as I had been planning—after all, there was a very good chance I’d lose my lolly again and tell her to go fuck herself with a farm gate loaf of ancient grains. As it was presently too difficult to reach my phone, which was still lying in art’s graveyard, I thought for a minute and decided that I would write Arty Sandra a letter if not of apology, then one of sober explanation.

  I sat down at the ex’s PC to compose a De Profundis and Eleven the cat looked at me and said, ‘I give you about fifteen seconds before you give up on that and go and hack her Facebook.’

  He was right.

  Yes, I know. This is not a very defensible act. I am myself strongly opposed to data surveillance, and once I even sent Edward Snowden’s people a donation. However, I am prepared to bet that even the most ardent privacy activist is wont to dig when she starts reading a story about herself.

  I should never have started, of course, but once I did, it was very difficult to stop. I partook of the Helen is an Unfeeling Cow narrative for an hour or two. It was a real page-turner.

  I first found a months-long message chain with a vile writer friend of hers in which she had described me as a ‘necessary bank account’ and, more lately, Sandra as ‘a clit tease’.

  I never liked this guy. He had too much money, far too many recovered memories, and once at dinner had told my ex to follow his example and not to bother reading books by any of the great philosophers. Which was, in my view, a bit like one bad dog telling another not to bother pissing outdoors. She hardly needed the discouragement.

  ‘Helen is totally a controlling total night mare who you should leave,’ wrote the vile writer, giving weight to my longstanding doubt that his popular memoirs were not substantially improved by an editor.

  I did totally feel a bit like a total, controlling nightmare. With every deceit of hers that I discovered, I became more deceitful.

  It is deceitful to snoop, even on a deceiver. But it’s also tremendously cathartic—especially if it turns out that there’s something to find. Personally, I found myself progressing through grief at a very good clip and I can’t say that I wouldn’t recommend the practice to those of you blessed with a dodgy ex who has neglected to change any of their passwords. I’ll leave you to work out the ethics of ends versus means out on your own.

  Things were moving very fast. Another chicken had arrived.

  ‘Here’s a tasty chook for a tasty lady!’ lied the chicken man again. I gave Eleven the better part of a breast and retained a wing for myself. It was the first morsel in twenty-four hours for which my stomach had a chamber and, as I ate, sugars briefly reignited my search-rage.

  I read and comprehended the details of her deceit quickly. I also became bo
red quickly. After all, there’s only so much arty midlife adultery the average reader can take.

  Having read three accounts of a first kiss with Sandra outside Junyper’s archery class, and a few more of a first tiff endured on the drive home from a farmers’ market, where they’d resolved their differences over a terrine made of humanely raised duck, I found it was pretty dull reading. And not just because accounts of affairs, especially those between conspicuously liberal, arty fuckers who press flowers and letters and seek to ban the use of trans fats from local eating establishments, are dull to everyone but the participants.

  I stopped reading not only because this love, or whatever they had, followed a fairly standard course but because I came to see that nothing, not even surveillance, could ever really upturn an answer to a complicated question like loss. I could spend hours gathering intelligence, but I saw that I would learn nothing of real emotional value.

  It struck me then that no one can really elaborate on ‘It’s over.’ It’s just over. And it doesn’t matter why. Here, the history of disaster is not at all useful. History, as Mr Dean had taught me, is invaluable in understanding war. But it’s of little utility in understanding love. Not every problem you have with your girlfriend, etc.

  She broke my heart by leaving me that evening. Then, she broke it again the next day by betrayal. This wasn’t fate, nor was it determined by the movements of history or of capital. It didn’t have to be this way—as the shopping list for our next week of dinners still stuck on the fridge continued to remind me. She’d been making plans for us, even if she had also been making plans for herself. She still loved us a little, until yesterday. It didn’t have to be this way, but this was the way that it was.

  5

  Twenty-four hours, one infidelity and one therapy appointment since she left

  This Way of Zen attitude I took to the whole shemozzle didn’t last very long. I was all go-with-the-flow for, maybe, seven seconds, and then, just before an hour of suicidal ideation so unpleasant I would call upon Cheap Gerard, I began to take pictures of my vagina.