Judith barely pauses. “Okay. I can call the cops. Do you want to talk to them?”
“No. Goddamn fuckers. Paid all my child support, regular like, and still got an order. No phone calls no texts no nothing. My goddamn kids. Bitch.”
“You want me to talk to them? The cops?”
The man stares at his rifle, wipes a hand across his mouth. Rachel catches a smell, stale sweat, something else. Something tinny and rotten sweet, like a recycling bin left too long in the sun.
“Sir? What do you want me to tell the police?”
The man takes a step forward, sways and catches himself, rocks back on his heels. There’s a squelching sound. Rachel looks at his feet. His sneakers are dirty, covered in water or mud and he’s left tracks on the floor, rusty tines smudged brighter red in places. Real sick, blood’s gone bad. Rachel feels her throat close, sees flecks of dark rising.
“Tell them they can stop looking. Tell them I’m here.”
Time changes then, becomes porous. Nobody moves for a long moment. Then Rachel is sitting on the floor with the others, her back to the wall and her hands on her knees. They’ve been herded into Judith’s office after? before? Judith calls the police. The room is airless and hot, and stinks of stale breath. Simone has her little girl cradled between her knees and is stroking her forehead and murmuring. Andrea and Peter sit silently together, and Joan stares straight ahead. Judith is the only one not on the floor. She’s at her desk, watching the open doorway. The man paces back and forth, his feet squelching and sticking. He’s muttering . . . the bitch, she never, never was my fault . . . ! and the rifle thumps against the floor for emphasis. He paces and the timber of his voice changes, becomes lower and more rhythmic. When the phone rings they all jump.
“Sir? May I answer that?”
“Answer it. Yeah.”
And Judith talks to the police, then the man. “They want you to know that they’re outside. They want to know what happens next.”
The man paces. “Tell them to wait.”
“Do you want to talk to them?”
“No.”
The man is standing in the doorway now, the rifle dangling. His mouth moves and his muddy gaze slides around the group. Rachel is aware of holding her breath; she sees Peter flinch and Andrea pull her knees tighter to belly, Simone cover her little girl’s eyes. “Tell them they need to listen. Then hang up.”
The man remains in the doorway after Judith puts down the receiver. His presence alters the room somehow; compresses the space, darkens the light without actually casting a shadow. Rachel tries to breathe without whistling. Head heart fingers tose, head heart fingers tose. The man raises the rifle and points it at Judith.
“You. Come with me.”
“What?” Judith shrinks into her chair.
“We’re going outside.”
Judith’s feet scrabble and Rachel sees that she’s trying to slide under her desk. Her palms raise. “No, no, please — I have three children, a son and two daughters, their names are Mark and Debbie and Pam, and Pam has given me a grandson, his name is Caiden and he’s the sweetest — ”
“Shut up.”
Judith’s mouth snaps shut.
The man swings the rifle at Simone, who squeals and wraps herself around her daughter.
“No! You don’t hurt kids. You said.” This is Andrea. “We’re mothers, grandmothers, you can’t — you said.”
The man pauses, then slides the rifle around the group in a slow lazy circle. Rachel feels it pass over her, its cold metal shadow. He stops at Judith. “Choose someone. You have thirty seconds.”
“Oh my God,” Peter says, “I don’t . . . ”
Andrea hisses at him to shut up.
Judith stares at the man. “I’m not, I can’t . . . ”
“Thirty seconds.”
The others are looking away; Simone cradling her child, Joan with her eyes closed, Andrea staring at Peter and Peter looking at his hands. But Rachel is watching Judith. Judith’s gaze swivels to Rachel, then back to the man.
“Her?” he asks, glancing at Rachel.
Judith’s chin dips slightly, then again.
The gun points at Rachel. She rises to her feet. It’s effortless, without thought. There’s a ringing in her head, and beneath that, some immense thing. The love in this room. She feels the strands of it, how binds these people: fierce Simone to her little girl, Joan to her absent children, Andrea to her unborn baby and to Peter, who sits with his head in his hands. All the mothers and children and partners and friends, the spiralling web, and Judith at the centre charged with keeping balance. Rachel feels the love and how she rips free of it as the man pushes her through the doorway.
The gun presses against her jaw. She feels it digging in like a thorn, and she wants to fall but the man’s got her by the scruff of the neck. He’s whispering, but maybe that’s the ringing in her head, and Rachel thinks how much it sounds like the sea or perhaps the dolphins singing, and she’s struck by a terrible shame that this should happen to her, but it’s deserved, isn’t it? If no one would speak for her? The love of others and the lack of her own, how heavy it weighs! Rachel’s knees buckle and the man jerks her upright. They pass through the entry door and the bell tinkles, and a thought crystallises in her head: the opposite of love is not hate, never hate, the opposite of love is expulsion.
The sun hurts her eyes. She lowers her gaze and sees the litter caught in the flower pots, a crumpled beer can and a chip wrapper, the remnant of a plastic bag fluttering like a flag. A discarded nail, rusty and bent. Small things. Then the gun leaves her jaw and her head floats free, she has time to think how absence is felt more keenly than presence before her head explodes and she’s on her knees in the dirt, wetness spattering her back and belly and legs and a woman is screaming, screaming until the other voices come and the hands lift her up and shroud her in white blankets.
They give her the rest of the week off work. A week at home because she was not hurt, not really. Rachel wraps up on the sofa and watches television. The story makes the national news, along with a call for greater security in government offices. Much is made of yet another murder-suicide committed by a rejected father. Much is made of the child that was present in the office but not harmed. Judith is interviewed, and denies that her actions were heroic. “Oh, anyone would do the same,” she says in her quiet voice. “I’m a mother, a grandmother. You stay calm, you protect the children. It’s our nature, isn’t it?”
Rachel returns to work after the Easter weekend. She brings foil-wrapped eggs, intending to put them out in wicker baskets.
“Rachel?” says Simone. Her face is very white. “We didn’t know . . . I mean, we weren’t sure if you’d . . . I gave your files to Joan.”
The office is quiet and empty. No one comes to her desk and when they pass, they do so with muffled steps and eyes pressing forwards. Snippets of conversation drift by during coffee break. I knew, a night of bad dreams and I saw my grandmother standing at the foot of the bed, yes, lockdown is something we practise at home because I knew, oh I kept mine home from school that day, called them twice and the sun, something strange about the light so I knew. Judith appears and calls Andrea. Joan follows her in, then Simone. Peter is nowhere to be seen. The door shuts. Rachel looks for the file on woman with the mizerbal cats, but can’t find it. Shortly before lunch, the others leave and Judith asks Rachel to join her.
“Rachel. We all know you’ve been through a lot,” says Judith. “You know, we have some very good people on board. For when there’s been a crisis. For when you need help.”
“But I want to work. I want things back to normal.”
“Rachel,” Judith clasps her hands and leans forward. “This is not just about you. The others, they want to move on. It’s hard, well, having you here. You remind them. Simone has nightmares, about what could have happened to her little girl. Andrea’s heartbeat was all over the place right after, thank God the baby was fine, but still.”
Rachel
’s head feels hollow, a cave for Judith’s voice.
“I talked to Tom. I explained the situation.”
The ringing begins in her ears. It’s hard to concentrate, to breathe.
Judith reaches into her desk drawer and pulls out an envelope. “He’s managed a very generous offer, Rachel. A full pension, a bridging allowance. I think you should take it.”
Rachel looks at the envelope. There’s a cheque tucked underneath the flap. The sum is huge.
Judith walks her to the door. The office is empty. The sun cuts through the glass and shows the web of lines on Judith’s forehead, criss-crossing the corners of her eyes and mouth. “Oh Rachel. I’m so sorry. Can I give you a hug?” Her arms reach out, palms up, and clasp Rachel to her. Rachel smells the brackish perfume.
The robins carol and trill when Rachel walks home for spring is truly here. The lawns are shot with colour, and the first of the buttercups push through the dirt. Something lifts and floats free in Rachel’s lungs. I am expelled, she thinks. I am exempt. She breathes in and a scent of rosemary fills her lungs, and she thinks of the Mediterranean, of how the Mediterranean might smell in spring. There’s a ringing in her ears, and it sounds like dolphins singing or maybe the sea, the white marble cliffs and the blue blue sea, rolling in and rolling out.
THE THINGS THAT NEVER HAPPEN
1. You die before you are born.
You never sucked air as they dragged you to light, gob-spattered and bloody. There were no photographs of your parents’ shocked white faces, of the smiles pasted all round while you raged purple. Your mother never sang husha husha through gritted teeth while you screamed your three in the morning arias and your father dreamed of drowning kittens. Neither argued about whose fault you were after lack of sleep had made them brutal.
You are more perfectly remembered as a possibility. Your father trudges through cherry blossoms and imagines a daughter with all the feminine accoutrements: a petal pink blanket, a first pair of toe shoes, a prom dress with rosy skirts. The photographs he’d take and how your exasperation would only make you prettier. Your mother pauses at the department store train sets. You’re a pudgy hand pushing cars round the track, you’re a rosebud mouth to burr the noise of the engine; oh, you’re forever six and sweetened on milk and digestives.
Both parents name you Ariel, after the angel. Privately, and with exquisite sorrow.
2. You are a child brought up in perfect love.
They never shouted. Not when you cut your sister’s hair into jagged chunks nor when you shoved a coin up her nose and told her she’ll shit gumballs. Your mother didn’t swear like a bus stop drunk, when you said you hated her because she wore a frazzled orange sweater to your dance recital. Your father never cried when you stumbled in stinking of cider and cigarettes, your eyes glazed with the gropings of the boy who said he’d love you if you did. And you did.
Your parents sit with you at the breakfast table. The sunlight sparkles off your words and blesses the porcelain, which is unchipped and hued to match the linen. Your mother serves muesli she’s made herself, with heart-healthy oats and freshly picked berries, and your father says please when he asks for the milk. They listen and nod and tell you they love you.
We trust you, they say. We know you’ll make the right choices.
3. You choose to be an artist rather than a customer support officer.
You never ended Thursday drinking with Sharon from accounts, telling her the boss has a fat bum and yes, you very much would put that in a memo. Neither did you begin Friday in the boss’s office denying all knowledge while you swallowed your sick. And that clinch with Kevin from sales who had bad breath but you’d drunk too much to care? Oh no, that didn’t happen, and you wouldn’t tell anyone but Sharon if it had.
You work as the spirit moves you. You stalk your London studio wild-eyed, gauze-skirted and braless, you swig from a bottle of absinthe and you never pass out or puke. Oh, how you flame; you hold your brush like a spear and abandon it by dawn light to smear the paint with both hands, so immediate and passionate you are.
The Saatchi courts you and you tell them to shove it up their well-padded posteriors. You’re no sell-out.
4. You meet your true love.
You never convinced yourself that Kevin’s breath was bearable, especially after a few gin and tonics. You certainly never agreed to that post-date coffee in his damp smelling basement suite. You didn’t stare over his shoulder at the stain on his ceiling telling yourself this was better than another Saturday night with that cow Sharon, who drank too much and told tales.
You meet your true love in some European city where the rain falls in a silvery Chopin patter against your bare arms. He offers you his umbrella, and holds it cupped over your head while his curls fight the onslaught. Ah, he says, an artiste? D’accord, you go naked in the rain. His eyes crinkle when he looks at you, and you want to stroke those lines, to feel his corrugations under your fingertips. Later, you do.
You cry at the airport, with your eyes luminescent and your mascara perfectly intact.
He calls you long-distance. He says he loves you too much to lose you.
5. You marry your true love.
You never sat in a dingy bar with your belly rounding under an elastic waistband, telling him you didn’t expect anything except the child support payments. He never tore his beer mat to bits and said you might as well get married, you got along all right, didn’t you? Mr. and Mrs. Kevin. Awesome excuse for a few days off work and a shindig.
Your true love proposes in a Parisian cafe, his voice curling over the croissants and cream. You bite into a sugar-sweet strawberry, the first one of spring. You make him wait for your answer.
A cathedral or a country house? Fiji or the Bahamas? You fret, and drop a dress size without trying.
Don’t worry, he says. Paint. I’ll arrange everything.
You wear a weightless white dress and your mother something muted, and everyone is elegant and thrilled and sober in the photos.
6. Your youngest child survives.
You never hit an icy patch with one hand on the wheel and the other thwacking your oldest boy, who pestered and poked despite your best threats. You never sat through the did you and did you not while the police officer took notes and your husband took the children. Time didn’t stop when the cot was dismantled and the playsuits bagged for charity.
Your little one bounces when your foot hits the brake, cosseted by the car-seat belt that you have so methodically fastened that morning. You always listen for that safe solid click, no matter your headache or the rain or the mummy mummy mummy. You pull over, and you soothe his shocked cries.
Your baby grows up, three steps behind the others and running to catch them, through summer sand and first snow, through packed lunches and birthdays and sports day heroics. So quick.
You place the track and field trophies on the mantelpiece, next to the oldest child’s graduation photo and the middle one’s ballet certificates.
7. You fear the good life’s left you complacent and you travel to Nepal.
You never took your first shot of vodka before the afternoon soaps, with the laundry undone and the cheese growing mould. Your husband never left work on a hunch, never found you sprawled in a puddle of pills and vomit. He didn’t stroke your wrists in the cold light of the emergency room and promise that you’ll both get through this.
Your children all graduate from university and find promising jobs and pleasant partners. Your youngest comes out as gay and how your friends talk, but what do you care? He’s better-looking than their children and your paintings are selling for thousands.
But you find yourself unsatisfied.
You book with a reputable company and spend a tedious month in Kathmandu acclimatising to the altitude while posting witty updates on Facebook. The climb is long and hard, but you make sure to take pictures of the view and the tattered prayer flags, of a bundle of rags the guide says is someone not so fortunate.
You show
your photos over spring Beaujolais in the conservatory while your guests flutter and exclaim. Oh, how changed you must be. You agree and your husband holds his glass aloft.
To change, he says. Il est nécessaire.
8. Your husband leaves you for the intern he’s rescued in the rain.
Your husband never held you when you were unwashed and full of hate, when you shrank from your children and wanted nothing but sleep. He didn’t bring you the first of the snowdrops and place them on the windowsill when you said their smell hurt your head. He wasn’t there when the sun caught the petals and you thought you might live. You never noticed the flawless kindness in his eyes, despite the balding head and terrible sweaters, and you never fell in love with him years after you’d married.
Your true love holds your hand over the smoked pigeon breast in your favourite eatery. He tells you publicly, so you cannot make a scene. You do so anyway, and take a special joy in the Bordeaux two hundred bucks a bottle and dripping from his forehead.
You will paint this later, in stormy grey and bilious yellow. The Saatchi offers six figures and you accept. Divorce is so costly.
9. You live longer than you could imagine, longer than you could want.
You never found perfection once removed, in the children of your children. You never fed them candy before bedtime nor let them run wild in the summer night, smirking at your daughter’s protests. Your husband didn’t pale and clutch at his chest while you prayed to the God you never believed in. He didn’t live to tell you the lump you found in your left breast was probably nothing, but you should get it checked anyway, and he’s not there to help you choose the verses you’ll be remembered by.
You never have time to say thank you for the snowdrops and the way they catch the light.
You live alone in a magnolia-painted condo. You lunch with friends, you paint, and you think you might do Cambodia next year. Your children visit, as polite and perfect as you’ve demanded they be, and you wonder if they ever tore your flesh and grappled at your breast.
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