Coming Clean Read Online Free Page A

Ben’s latest school science project. I’d like to stop finding shoes in the middle of the living room, coats on the backs of chairs, Greg’s beard shavings in the sink, his tarry turds mixed with loo roll blocking the toilet. But none of this will happen while my husband carries on being a slob and teaching our kids to be slobs.
    He says that my mind should be more like his, focused on life’s “big issues” instead of a bit of grease and rank underpants. Just because Greg reads the
Economist
and knows what the Large Hadron Collider is (does it also come in medium and small?), he thinks he exists on a higher intellectual plane than the rest of us and should be excused housework detail.
    For Greg, life’s big issues include soccer. Therein lies another of his exit strategies. If I ask him to help with some chore or other—often while he is sprawled on the sofa, scratching his balls and watching soccer on TV—his response is: “OK, give me a couple of minutes. The game’s just gone into extra time.” I’m happy to give him a couple of minutes. It’s when he hasn’t shifted his backside off the sofa after an hour that I get pissed off.
    By the time he appears, the task I wanted him to perform has been completed—by me. “Why couldn’t you have waited five minutes?” he protests. “I would have done it. But you can’t resist making a martyr of yourself. You’re not right in the head. You do know that, don’t you?”
    When I go upstairs, I discover the toilet is blocked. I shout at him to get the hell up here and deal with it, only to be told he has a sudden work emergency and needs to make a load of calls.
    From time to time, I force myself to hold out until he’s done in the loo. Then I hand him the pile of laundry—or whatever—that needs putting away. On these occasions, he starts out looking enthusiastic, but it’s clearly a pose. I know he’s thinking, “How do I sabotage this so that she won’t ask me to do it again?” And sabotage it he does—by running downstairs every five minutes, demanding to know, “Whose sock is this?” or “Is this underwear yours or Amy’s?” Yeah, Greg, like I’m really into briefs with pink ballet shoes appliquéd to the crotch.
    •   •   •
    V irginia Pruitt’s is indeed a “nice” house. It’s a large, imposing Edwardian villa: red brick, original porch and lead pane glass. It’s been freshly painted white. The old wood-paneled front door is an understated subfusc gray.
    “They call that color lamp room gray,” I announce to Greg, nodding towards the front door.
    “And you know that how?”
    “Annie. She’s got it on one of the walls in her living room. The rest is Wimborne white.”
    “Riveting.” That’s the reaction I recognize.
    We continue up the garden path. It’s early evening, but the sun is warm on my neck and bare arms. I can’t help getting cross as I watch Greg taking in the terra-cotta tubs full of lavender, the sweet peas on their canes, the honeysuckle climbing Virginia Pruitt’s red brick. He’s clearly appreciating the pretty cottage garden, but whenever I suggest we clear ours of the weeds and rocks, the rusting garden furniture, the kids’ ancient toy tricycles and tractors, the red plastic faded from the sun, he says it’s fine as it is. He takes the view that there’s no point tarting up the garden while the kids are young and still using it for soccer, trampolining and camping purposes.
    I want Virginia Pruitt to be plump and mothering, with a huge bosom. Most of all, I want her to make it better.
    “What I hate about therapists,” Greg says, “is all the psychobabble.” He thinks he’s an expert on shrinks because of the handful of sessions he had with one during his second term at university. He’d been experiencing a listlessness and lassitude, which—by his own later admission—was nothing more than a touch of freshman-year miseries. “I’ll never forget that Tina woman I saw on campus,” he