receiving the brunt of it--i.e., James--wasn't there. So my family, who were innocent bystanders, who, in fact, were trying to help me, ended up being shouted at and having their doors slammed instead of him.
When I first returned from London there had been a dignity to my suf- fering. I felt a bit like a Victorian heroine who had been disappointed in love and had no choice but to turn her face to the wall and die, albeit beautifully, surrounded by smelling salts, from her grief. Like Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Liaisons.
Now I was more like Christopher Walken in The Deer Hunter. Psychotic. Crazed. A danger to myself and others. Walking around the house with a mad look in my eyes. Rooms full of conversation falling silent when I entered them. Mum
71 Marian Keyes
and Dad watching me fearfully. Anna and Helen leaving rooms when I arrived.
I wasn't wearing battle camouflage and didn't have a belt of bullets slung across my chest and wasn't carrying some kind of fearsome-looking auto- matic weapon and didn't have a grenade in my pocket. My face wasn't smeared with dirt (although on reflection it might have been; the baths went by the wayside completely during this terrible time). But I felt as powerful as if I had all those weapons, and I was treated with as much fear as if I did have them.
The Great Terror started the day I watched that video with Mum. (I won't go into the details of what happened there. I'm too ashamed of myself. And anyway the video shop agreed to drop the charges. It was totally true what the assistant said. They only stock the videos. It was no reflection on their personal opinions or morals. I was just a little bit overwrought at the time.)
The Great Terror continued for several war-torn days. Anything could trigger a tantrum in me, but especially romantic scenes on the television. My head constantly played a video of James and Denise in bed together. When I saw other loving couples on television I was pushed to overload.
Luckily I saw no loving couples in real life or I might not have been re- sponsible for my actions. Mum and Dad certainly didn't behave like a loving couple. And Helen had a steady stream of young suitors through the house but she made cruel, teasing fun of them and their puppylike devotion. Which pleased me in a grim, cold kind of way. As for Anna--well, that's another story, to be told another day.
I cried an awful lot during this time. And swore. And threw things.
As I said, television usually upset me. I'd see a man lean over and kiss a woman and immediately the green fire of jealousy would rush through me, excruciating energy would fill me. I would think of James. And I would think of my James with another woman. For a second it would just be a thought in the abstract, as if he was still with me and I was being silly and imagining "worst possible" scenarios. And then I would remember that it had happened and that he was with another woman. The realization hurt just as much each time. The tenth
72 WATERMELON
time it happened it was as awful and as shocking and as sick-making as the first time.
So I might throw a book at the television, or some shoes at the wall, or Kate's bottle at the window. Or really anything handy or close by at all would be thrown at a nearby surface. Then I would swear like a fishwife and stomp from the room, slamming the door so hard that slates probably fell off the roof. It got so bad that when I thumped into the sitting room and the television was on, Anna or Helen, or whoever was there, would flick the remote control and quickly change the channel from whatever they were watching to something inoffensive like the Open University program on applied physics or a documentary about how fridges work or a game show in which all the contestants had obviously had lobotomies.
"What's on?" I would growl at them.
"Oh, err...just this," they would reply nervously, indicating the television with a flutter of their hands.
We would all sit
When I first returned from London there had been a dignity to my suf- fering. I felt a bit like a Victorian heroine who had been disappointed in love and had no choice but to turn her face to the wall and die, albeit beautifully, surrounded by smelling salts, from her grief. Like Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Liaisons.
Now I was more like Christopher Walken in The Deer Hunter. Psychotic. Crazed. A danger to myself and others. Walking around the house with a mad look in my eyes. Rooms full of conversation falling silent when I entered them. Mum
71 Marian Keyes
and Dad watching me fearfully. Anna and Helen leaving rooms when I arrived.
I wasn't wearing battle camouflage and didn't have a belt of bullets slung across my chest and wasn't carrying some kind of fearsome-looking auto- matic weapon and didn't have a grenade in my pocket. My face wasn't smeared with dirt (although on reflection it might have been; the baths went by the wayside completely during this terrible time). But I felt as powerful as if I had all those weapons, and I was treated with as much fear as if I did have them.
The Great Terror started the day I watched that video with Mum. (I won't go into the details of what happened there. I'm too ashamed of myself. And anyway the video shop agreed to drop the charges. It was totally true what the assistant said. They only stock the videos. It was no reflection on their personal opinions or morals. I was just a little bit overwrought at the time.)
The Great Terror continued for several war-torn days. Anything could trigger a tantrum in me, but especially romantic scenes on the television. My head constantly played a video of James and Denise in bed together. When I saw other loving couples on television I was pushed to overload.
Luckily I saw no loving couples in real life or I might not have been re- sponsible for my actions. Mum and Dad certainly didn't behave like a loving couple. And Helen had a steady stream of young suitors through the house but she made cruel, teasing fun of them and their puppylike devotion. Which pleased me in a grim, cold kind of way. As for Anna--well, that's another story, to be told another day.
I cried an awful lot during this time. And swore. And threw things.
As I said, television usually upset me. I'd see a man lean over and kiss a woman and immediately the green fire of jealousy would rush through me, excruciating energy would fill me. I would think of James. And I would think of my James with another woman. For a second it would just be a thought in the abstract, as if he was still with me and I was being silly and imagining "worst possible" scenarios. And then I would remember that it had happened and that he was with another woman. The realization hurt just as much each time. The tenth
72 WATERMELON
time it happened it was as awful and as shocking and as sick-making as the first time.
So I might throw a book at the television, or some shoes at the wall, or Kate's bottle at the window. Or really anything handy or close by at all would be thrown at a nearby surface. Then I would swear like a fishwife and stomp from the room, slamming the door so hard that slates probably fell off the roof. It got so bad that when I thumped into the sitting room and the television was on, Anna or Helen, or whoever was there, would flick the remote control and quickly change the channel from whatever they were watching to something inoffensive like the Open University program on applied physics or a documentary about how fridges work or a game show in which all the contestants had obviously had lobotomies.
"What's on?" I would growl at them.
"Oh, err...just this," they would reply nervously, indicating the television with a flutter of their hands.
We would all sit
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