And then she sees it.
Another bouquet of flowers, lying there in the gloom of her porch.
She reaches down and picks them up, angling them towards the streetlamp. Something’s not right. They look…
Dead.
‘Jesus, Parker. What the fuck?’
She finds her keys, opens her front door. Inside, she puts on some lights.
Yes, they’re definitely dead. All brown and crispy.
There’s a small white envelope taped to the stems. She rips it away and tears it open. The tiny card inside contains another typed message:
Without love…
…we wither and die.
Furious, she marches into the kitchen and throws the whole lot into her bin. Then she whips out her phone and calls Parker.
He answers almost immediately. ‘Hey!’ he says, all bright and breezy.
‘Parker, what the fuck are you playing at?’
‘Hello to you, too. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Don’t lie to me. In case it’s escaped your attention, we’re not a couple anymore. I don’t want your cards or your flowers, alive or dead. Dead flowers, Parker? Seriously? That’s supposed to win me over?’
‘I didn’t send you any flowers. I think you’re getting me confused with your new boyfriend.’
‘What? I don’t have a new boyfriend. And I’m not looking for one either. Right now I’m perfectly happy being single.’
‘That’s not what I hear. I hear you and Cody are an item again.’
‘Oh, fuck off, Parker. How many times have I told you that it’s all in your head? I have zero interest in going out with Cody. Now stop making up wild fantasies and stay the hell out of my life.’
She ends the call and slams the phone down on the worktop.
14
Do You Love Me?
– Chaim Topol and Norma Crane (
Fiddler on the Roof
)
Franklin B Goodman slouches in a padded armchair as he watches Fiddler on the Roof on Netflix. He finds this film fascinating rather than entertaining. So much to unpack, to analyse. Not all that Russian pogrom stuff – those shenanigans don’t interest him. It’s the various love stories he finds worthy of study. Tevye’s adoration of his daughters, and the conflict of that with the girls’ attraction to other men who enter their lives.
Right now, Tevye and his wife Golde are singing to each other. He keeps asking her if she loves him, but instead of answering directly, she keeps telling him how much she’s done for him in terms of nursing him and giving him children and looking after the house and cooking all the meals. But Tevye needs to hear the words. He needs her to say that she loves him.
Franklin has never heard anyone tell him they love him.
He gave up on girls long ago. He doesn’t think he’s unattractive, though. He is tall and has a muscular, strong figure. He exercises regularly and eats healthily. He is clean-shaven and his dark hair is always kept short and tidy. Yes, he has an ever-expanding bald spot, but isn’t that a sign of masculinity?
Whatever, he doesn’t think it’s his looks that are the problem. It’s the emotional side that causes him difficulty. In conversations he laughs in all the wrong places, mainly because he’s not sure when things are supposed to be funny. And even when he tries to be open and truthful – because that’s what he read in a book is a good inter-personal strategy – he gets the impression that his comments are often received as inappropriate or even downright rude.
So, no. No woman has ever told him she loves him.
And that includes his mother.
Never hugged him or kissed him, either. Not that he can recall. Maybe in the time before his memories began she permitted him some displays of affection. But he doubts it.
And maybe it wouldn’t have mattered if, like Golde, his mother had replaced explicit statements with a life of self-sacrifice that could be interpreted as the same thing.
But he didn’t get much of that, either.
He still remembers the countless hours he was left alone in the house, too young to look after himself. The many meals he was denied. The time he was beaten for lining his grumbling stomach with the contents of the cat’s bowl. The winter night he was forced to spend in the frosty garden for daring to switch a heater on in his room. And not to forget the occasion when he had to lick up the vomit he had carelessly heaved onto the living room carpet.
Ah, yes, those were the days. A house filled with love and laughter.
Franklin’s reminiscences are interrupted by the ringing of his phone. He pauses the film before he answers.
‘Hello, Parker,’ he says. He suspects he knows what this is about.
‘I had a call from Megan this evening,’ Parker says, his voice stern.
