Free Neurotica by Sue Margolis Page B

aunts and cousins, they might have
lunch together.
    But he didn't. As Anna picked up her handbag from underneath
the drinks cart, she saw that Charlie was now over the other side
of the room talking animatedly to Bunny Wiener. With a lump in
her throat the size of a honeydew melon, Anna went over to them.
She glared at Bunny and then extended her hand formally towards
Charlie Kaplan, repeating how much she had enjoyed meeting
him.

C H A P T E R     F I V E
    R ODGERS AND HAMSTERSTEIN SAT on the pine kitchen table
transfixed as Anna belted out “Surrey with the Fringe on Top” while
doing a rising trot round the kitchen and at the same time gripping
imaginary reins with one hand and holding Amy's old pram sun canopy
over her head with the other.
    After a minute or two she segued into “I'm Just a Girl Who
Cain't Say No.” Twirling the sun canopy over her shoulder like a
parasol, she skipped over to the cupboard under the sink and took out
a new bag of fluffy white hamster bedding.
    Whenever Anna cleaned out the kids' hamster cages—which
wasn't very often, as she usually got Denise to do it—she
always felt it was somehow appropriate to familiarize them with all
those daft the-corn-is-as-high-as-an-elephant's-eye lyrics written
by their Hollywood songwriter namesakes.
    But there was more to Anna's tone-deaf outburst this morning
than a tutorial on mediocre melodies for two rodents who were
unlikely ever to hold a tune. The precise reason for all the singing,
the gallivanting around the kitchen and the performing of unnecessary
domestic tasks was that last night, just as Anna was walking away
despondently from Uncle Henry's house, Charlie Kaplan had finally
got round to asking if he could see her again. Her impromptu musical
celebration, which had begun as soon as Dan and the children left
the house at eight o'clock, opened with her leaning on the breakfast
bar, pushing an imaginary Stetson to the back of her head and
launching into “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning.”
    Anna was feeling a lightening of her spirits which she hadn't
known since a particularly significant Sunday night at a Jewish
youth club disco in Edgware when she was fourteen. That night Anna
had her first ever French kiss, with a zit-encrusted boy named
Stewart Levinson, who smelled of TCP and didn't seem to know how
to arrange his teeth when he kissed her. Against all the odds,
however, she found herself rather enjoying the experience. At the
same moment, her crush on Jane Hickling, who was a prefect in the
Upper Sixth, ended; Anna realized that her prayers had been answered,
and that God had finally decided she didn't have to be a lesbian
after all. Now, more than twenty years later, the Lord had answered another
prayer and decided to let Anna sleep with Charlie Kaplan.
    After she had shaken hands with Charlie at the end of the
prayers for Uncle Henry, Anna knew she had to get out of the house
and into her car as fast as she could, because she wasn't sure how
much longer she could stop herself from blubbing. She was in no
mood for another of Aunty Millie's hairy-lipped kisses, so she waved
a quick good-bye to her from across the room. Then she poked her
head round the kitchen door and did the same to Gloria, who barely
acknowledged her since she was giving Murraine a telling-off for
pouring out tea without using a strainer. A moment later Anna was
walking down Uncle Henry's garden path. As she turned round to close
the little wrought-iron front gate, she could see Charlie was behind
her, obviously trying to catch up with her.
    “Come on,” he said. “I'll walk you to your car.”
    She felt the melon in her throat disappear in an instant and
once again hope began to spring internal throughout her nether
regions.
    As they walked to the car, Anna could sense Charlie's unease
and that he was trying to get up the confidence to ask her something.
For a second, she thought she might have to take the upper hand by
suggesting they meet up in town one day