Mike knew they would have to talk about it. Martha would ask him. She always dragged everything through such unnecessary scrutiny. He had already begun to prepare his thoughts. He envied Arnold, who would now be sitting on a train, alone. There would be no one countering him, prodding him. What did Martha need to discuss, anyway? They had performed their lives for Arnold as well as they could.
Of course, Arnold was never going to be impressed by anything as conventional as their lives. But Mike had inadvertently managed to impress himself. He and Arnold had stepped from the tidy living room into the garden, with its sun-singed lawn, strewn with relics of family life: a rusty swing set, totem tennis, the homemade tree swing that Ada had painted sky-blue, PJ panting in the shade of the elm. This wasn’t just his life’s backdrop, it was inscribed with his existence, it proved him. His children’s lives were worn into this patch of earth. His bones knew this place. Even the house’s atmosphere was alive in him. He had a life worth holding onto. His gaze roved so possessively over the garden that he was almost oblivious to Arnold, and the quiet rapture that came from the perceived sense of his own life entirely absorbed him.
But later, he clapped Arnold on the back as he got on the train more with a sense of relief than triumph. He realised he no longer needed Arnold’s approval. At one point in his life, to have proved something to Arnold Buch was everything.
Martha was already doing the dishes when he got back from dropping Arnold at the station. She was wearing an old dress.
‘You’ve changed,’ he said. The dress had been for Arnold, not for him. She hardly ever dressed up for him. His happiness rushed out of him.
‘Yes,’ she sighed. ‘I didn’t want to get it dirty.’
He knew that sigh, that tone of voice. Like a north wind it came, full of hot, silent reproach. For what this time? Had he said the wrong thing? Maybe he shouldn’t have boasted about Tilly playing the piano. Had he embarrassed Martha by revealing their little failures as parents? Martha was difficult. His family, the warm little rosy unit he had just folded into his heart, was already dissipating. He leaned against the bench, folded his arms. Could he be bothered trying to rally her? He could put his arms around her. She would probably prefer he get the tea towel.
‘Where are the girls?’ he said, doing neither.
‘I don’t know. Tilly is probably in her room. She’s obsessed with her John Lennon record now. She’s playing it over and over.’ Martha didn’t turn from the sink.
‘Have you got a headache?’ His voice was weary, full of sighs too. Martha’s despair was always contagious.
‘No, I’m all right.’ At least she turned. She looked at him, while wiping her hair off her face with her forearm, her hands deep in yellow rubber gloves.
‘Arnold seemed well,’ he offered. One of them had to say something. Arnold Buch had always been a silence between them. Mike had expected her to prod him. Anything she said would feel like a prod because of what he had buried in the unstable terrain of memory. It was bound up tight, but waiting for an innocent footstep to dislodge it. Now that Arnold had come and gone without incident, he could relax again.
‘I guess so.’ She turned to face him, leaning her back against the sink.
‘It was a shock seeing him as a middle-aged man. We must have looked old to him too. Old and boring.’
So that was it. She felt the opposite of what he had felt. He had wanted to come home, to the room with his family in it, his lovely wife who made cake, his daughters who had accomplishments, and his son who was athletic like him. But Martha had changed into an old dress, had got herself in a sour mood, and his children were nowhere to be seen.
‘Honey, you still look young,’ he said. He wasn’t lying, even though he felt as if he was. He had got so accustomed to lies, sometimes the truth felt more awkward.
‘No, it’s not that, it’s what I feel…I feel like I…failed…I don’t know…’
At least she wasn’t questioning him about Arnold Buch. At least she was, as usual, thinking about herself. She pulled the yellow gloves off and came towards him. She leaned into him and began to cry.
‘What is it?’ he said. He did love her after all. He did. He held her head as if it was a precious thing.
She turned her face to the side, resting it against his chest as she hugged him close.