Between Dog and Wolf

by Sokolov, Sasha; Boguslawski, Alexander;

In Helen’s house they’re having a New Year’s party. The parents have gone away for a week to a health spa and the kids are running riot. Katie invited me by group text, by accident I think. I turned up at seven, an hour early, but Katie was too nervous to chat. She was texting, and calling her friends, and trying on dresses, so I wandered up to the pink attic room and lay on the bed looking up through the skylight at the purple and black clouds.

  I haven’t spoken to Helen in months. I don’t want to bother her, but I thought she might be here. She’s moved to a flat in town, I know that from her sisters, but she hasn’t called me.

  I’ve gone off books for the year. I went back to my grandmother for a few months and wore my grandfather’s cardigan, and read books, and helped her cook. She didn’t say anything about my disappearance until two weeks after I came home. While I was helping her to sprinkle a loaf of dough with poppy seeds she said, ‘You think my life was just as I would like, Cassandra? You think there is any woman who is suited to their world, do you?’ She put her hand on mine to stop me from sprinkling the seeds on. ‘Stop. I need to do the egg.’ She looked proudly at the dough, neatly plaited into a great fat braid, and picked up the basting brush.

  ‘Your mother disappeared one day. She arrived seven months later on the doorstep with arms thin like you wouldn’t believe, and you in her belly.’ She dipped her brush in egg white and painted the dough, her eyes never meeting mine. ‘You will not disappear like that again. You go where you like, Cassandra, you do what you like, but you let me know that you are safe. You will not disappear from the world just because it is not how you would like it.’ I said nothing while we prepared the loaf. Then my grandmother covered it with a linen napkin, and left it to rise in the hot press.

  Twenty minutes later she told me to put it in the oven. She opened the door while I slid the delicately bubbling dough in, keeping it as still as I could so as not to collapse the yeast.

  ‘Good girl,’ she said, closing the door, ‘You are a good girl, Cassandra.’

  ‘But I don’t know –’ I said.

  ‘Don’t worry so much,’ she said. ‘You do know. You are a brave girl. You will be fine without me. There are beautiful things you will know. There are such beautiful things you don’t know yet. You will know what to do with them. You are brave.’

  I have a flight booked for New Year’s day. I’m going to go to Paris. I’m going to just live somewhere else for a while, I told her, but I’m going to keep in touch. I promised I would keep in touch. In Paris I will stay in Shakespeare and Co., a bookshop run by an old man who lets people stay in beds that smell like urine, with brown sheets that are never changed, beds erected between the bookshelves. The conditions under which people can stay are that they must write for three hours a day, or read a book a day, or work in his shop, or you can sell him old books in exchange for a bed. It’s out and out the falsest of false bohemian. I visited with my grandad five years ago. The other kids there are Cambridge or Harvard, interrailing through Europe for a summer – ‘backpacking’, the Americans call it – playing at being poor. Like me, I suppose.

  Downstairs, the party starts. Katie’s classmates have brought friends who have brought friends, who have brought friends, because New Year’s is a time for partying and there is nowhere for all the teenagers to go. New Beetles and pink Minis line the drive, I can see them through the front window.

  The numbers are rising and they are starting to pull up on the road at the bottom of the house. Beautiful young things, their bodies ripe and bored, teeter and strut up the gravel driveway. They are exciting to watch. Even the chubby, insecure ones in outfits that are less-brave versions of their best friends’. Especially the girls whose breasts are brand new, who still have a ring of puppy fat around their waists, spilling over the tight jeans. Their fresh pink skin, their moist lips, are all blanked with orange foundation and gelatinous lip gloss, but they can’t hide their beauty. They don’t even have to put their vodka into Coke bottles because there are no bouncers. They traipse up the drive, through the house, hordes of them. High heels and Dubes, badly applied hair gel spiking the boys’ heads, some of them gilded with bleached tips, some of them already beefed with steroids, biceps bursting through pre-distressed T-shirts. They’re going to pull tonight.

  There’s fear in the air too, as tangible as taste. No one wants to be standing alone for the New Year countdown. No one wants not to have kissed anyone.

  Katie is excited. She was afraid no one would come. She was afraid she’d be the loser who had a party that no one came to, but there are kids everywhere, even upstairs, sorting themselves out in the bathrooms, reapplying their mascara and fluffing their breasts.

  Some of the Blackrock boys have brought pills! It’s going to be brilliant!

  * * *

  He couldn’t go home to Clonmel for New Year’s, not with the baby due so soon. He wants to see his son when he’s born. He doesn’t want to come back from Clonmel and find that Helen has taken over, telling him how to hold him and what food he likes or whatever. She wanted him to go to parenting classes. As if she knew any more than him about parenting. But he’s not going to sit in like a loser on New Year’s Eve. That’s just what she’d like. He’ll go to the drama party. It’s fancy-dress again, of course. Grease is the theme. Maybe he’ll ride Sharon, maybe even ride someone new, who knows. No, not with his shaven armpits and eyeliner on. Or maybe. You never know. Drama girls are weird and there aren’t that many guys in Players.

  This time he will have to push it even further to get the same thrill. He wears eye shadow and a wig. It’s a cheap wig. Just from the joke shop. He can’t remember what hairstyle the bird from Grease wears but the wig is blonde anyway, and he knows she is blonde. There is a net inside to tuck his hair into.

  He has four beers before he leaves the flat. He has never fainted but he feels he might now. He looks like a proper tranny in the wig and high heels. He opens the front door of his flat and has to run back into the toilet urgently. When he has emptied his bowels of everything he puts his head between his knees. Is Sharon even going to shag him if he’s dressed like a woman? Of course she will. Drama girls like this sort of thing. He’s not gay. He knows that. He knows that so well he can even dress as a woman. He stands up, fixes himself back into the tights, pulls down the skirt. He can do this. He wants to.

  * * *

  You have changed into the gown like they told you. When did you do that? The calm between contractions, the bliss of those painless minutes, is incredible. But you need a drink. You need them to switch off that beeping. The baby doesn’t like it.

  There is no one at all in the hallway. It is lined with doors like yours, and behind each one a woman is starting to give birth. She is in pain, or her pelvis is contracting, or her waters have broken. There are other machines beeping too. Maybe it’s normal not to want to lie down. A warm forest would be a better place to give birth; your back against a tree and no beeping, no paper towels scrunched with blood and water.

  You peer into the room where some of the couples are still waiting. They look horrified at the sight of you. Then a scraggy-looking man. Not a doctor. Who is he?

  ‘You alright love?’

  ‘Can I have some water? Do you know where there is water?’

  ‘There’s a water-cooler by the lockers. I’ll get you some. What room?’

  Crouched on the floor again, eyes squeezed shut, you point at the room.

  ‘I’ll get you some. Go back. I’ll get you some.’

  After the contraction you make your way back to the room. You sit with your knees up and your back to the wall, swallowing to moisten your mouth. Your lips are like wounds and your throat tastes of metal. At last he comes and you take the water, surprised that you can only sip it. You ask him for a nurse and he says he will look. After the next contraction you finish the water and hide the cup behind the monitor before she arrives.

  She is frowning. ‘You need to lie down. What are you doing?’ You get up quietly
and she straps the monitor back on. She is irritated at being called. ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘Could you examine me? Could you make sure everything is okay?’

  She tells you to part your legs and shines a light in. She puts something in and it doesn’t hurt as much as it should because the other pain has started again, rising and falling like waves. You can’t lie down.

  ‘Not even three inches. We’ll bring you to the delivery room in a little while. You’ve a good bit to go yet. The head is engaged. It’s all fine. We’ll bring you down soon. Stop. Lie down. Don’t get up again.’

  * * *

  I sit at the top of the first flight of stairs, under the grandfather clock, beside the six studio photographs of the O’Brien girls, and watch the teenagers coming in.

  Jeffrey is here, who was Katie’s best friend in primary school. He’s a ‘total coke-head’ now and she doesn’t see him that often. He has some other guys with him she has never met. There’s a sound system in the living room but there’s music coming from somewhere else. Hip-hop. The arrivals have stopped now and no one knows what to do. The house is packed but people have stopped moving up and down the stairs.

  I pace the landing. I am invisible amidst all this excitement. I can see the kitchen and living room through the glass floor of the landing. They are sitting on all the couches and at the big oak table that seats twelve. They are standing in all the doorways. Katie forgot to buy paper cups so people are drinking out of glasses and mugs and bottles. She is standing talking to her school friend, who is hanging out of her new boyfriend, who is slightly shorter than her. He keeps kissing her neck and rubbing his hand over her bum. Katie keeps chewing her lip. She is nervous. She can sense the lull but she doesn’t know what to do about it. She switches on the speakers in the living room. It’s some rave thing of Laura’s. Now there are layers of sound, now there is noise and a proper sense of crowd. Rachel and the new guy start to sway and kiss and feel each other and so do a few other couples. Some of the boys start to whoop and someone is passed over their heads from the hall to the kitchen. The party is taking off again. Conor, who Katie went out with last year for a month, swoops in from behind her and grabs her around the waist and starts chatting, and all around her the party begins. There are shouts and the dog starts to bark and someone turns up the music.

  * * *

  As soon as the nurse is gone you get up. You can’t do anything else. The beeping starts again but you press a button with a picture of a bell crossed out and it stops. You shouldn’t have come here with the corridors and the metal beds and the cold strips of light. It is not what you want the baby to see first. You should give birth in the dark or the yellow sunlight, labouring together towards your separation, feeling your way. You should not be glared at like this.

  * * *

  Oisín doesn’t even feel drunk any more. He makes his way out to the corridor. The Polish woman is in the lift. She had her baby ages ago but she still has that smug look on her face. Her bump never properly went. She still looks loose around the belly. Or maybe she’s pregnant again.

  Oisín almost steps back and let the doors close. He wants to be alone in the lift. Then he thinks, fuck what that fat bitch thinks. He steps in and swings around, facing the door with his back to her so as not to see her. His face is pulsing, his fingertips. Does she recognize him? He forgets to swallow and splutters on his own spit. Can she tell from his back how nervous he is? Is he sweating?

  It’s a relief to get out onto the cold street. There is a sense of crowd and everywhere packed with people. He hasn’t walked out of the flat in the costume since the first time. He was wrong: he didn’t need to go further with the outfit to get that thrill. His head is whirling. He hardly knows where he is going. He walks as though deaf and blinkered. He doesn’t know whether he is being stared at or not. He knows, suddenly, that he can’t go to the party. He can’t bear to be recognized like this. He can’t shag a woman while he’s wearing eyeliner. He wouldn’t be able to get it up. He doesn’t want to go home yet, though. That would be defeat. He will walk up Grafton Street. He can do that.

  * * *

  At last another nurse comes in. She has a softer face. She says is it a boy or a girl and you say you don’t know. She says you’ll know soon enough and that makes you sad. You do not want it named and sexed. Will you really hang it, so soon, with the weight of all those words? You will dress it in white.

  You have to lie down so she can measure you, but as you lift yourself onto the bed another contraction starts and you push her away and squat. She’s talking to you but the force of it is too much. You want to be alone, you and your baby. You can do this alone. You both know how. When the contraction is over she says she’ll bring you to the delivery room and they’ll measure you there. You don’t see the journey because another contraction comes on the way. In the delivery room someone else measures you. Someone holds you down while they do it because you can’t lie down with the pain. You scream something at them and the nurse tells you to keep your dignity, for goodness sake.

  ‘Have you not taken anything for the pain?’

  ‘No, I don’t want to.’

  ‘There are other things than the epidural. Would you like Pethidine?’

  ‘No it’s too late anyway. It will sedate the baby. It won’t know how to be born.’

  She smiles, ‘You’ve a while to go yet, pet. You’re not even four inches. It’ll help. Stay steady.’

  ‘No I don’t want it. Just let me stand. It’s fine.’

  They let you squat for the next contraction and you ask the soft-faced nurse for water.

  ‘You can’t drink. But I’ll get you ice. You can suck on ice. Here. I’ll put a damp cloth on your neck. That will help.’

  On the next contraction you need to push and someone starts to shout at you, ‘Don’t push yet, it’s not time, don’t push yet!’ But you can’t do anything else.

  After the contraction they make you lie down again and the other woman starts to explain it to you. ‘You’ll feel like pushing, but don’t. If you do you’ll be too tired by the end.’

  ‘Then why does it feel like I should?’

  When the next one comes you scream and the nurse comes up to your face. ‘Like this – don’t waste energy on screaming. Keep it in, keep your mouth quiet. Squeeze your lips. Don’t push.’

  She squeezes her lips shut to show you what you should do. ‘Bite down on your lip. And don’t push.’ You bite your lips and there is a release of blood into your mouth, which eases the thirst a little. You try not to make a sound. You will have to do this in secret.

  ‘Are you pushing? Stop pushing! Stop pushing! We need to measure her.’

  ‘It’s coming!’

  ‘Believe me pet – you’d know all about it if it was coming! You wouldn’t be talking to me if it was coming!’

  ‘It’s coming!’

  ‘Get her onto the bed, I need to measure her.’

  ‘Don’t make me lie down …’

  The soft-faced nurse is not soft at all. She holds you down. Are you strapped? Surely they haven’t strapped you?

  ‘I need to measure you. Stop. Don’t push.’

  She doesn’t measure you. She takes one look and starts to shout at you. ‘Push! Push! Push!’ You try to get up but someone is holding you down.

  ‘We need to see. You need to lie down. Push! Push! Push!’

  She turns to a young blonde in white overalls with a notepad, who you hadn’t noticed before.

  ‘Now that’s very unusual. I had no idea that would happen …’

  The blonde looks at you and disregards you at the same time, and writes something on her chart, frowning.

  thirty-three

  They have been following him since Tara Street. He knows it. He recognized them because one of them looks like Kev. He nearly said hi, only when they got closer he saw it wasn’t the lads. Just a group of lads very like the lads. One of them even has a bald patch like Denny. It was stupid to wal
k to such a secluded place when he knew they were following. But he didn’t want to be seen. He couldn’t stand to be seen suddenly. What was he thinking? Why did he do this in the first place?

  * * *

  At Helen’s house, there are people in the hot press. Donna and some boy, fucking in the hot press. I saw them going in. I heard her say ‘Get the condom then,’ and she sounded older than her sixteen years. If one of Katie’s sisters comes home there’ll be war, but Katie doesn’t know. She’s out back with Conor, who I can see through the window of the floral bedroom, who is touching her elbow, imploring. On the windowsill is a little tube of paste called ‘Fat Lip’. I go back up to the attic and look out through the bathroom window at the garden.

  On the lawn, Jeffrey, off his face, is opening champagne that must be the parents’. He has a collection of expensive bottles that Katie should have locked away, and he is opening them and taking a swig, opening the next and taking a swig, and Conor, who hopes that he might be one of the few to get more than a kiss from an O’Brien girl, shouts ‘What the fuck?’ and takes a bottle off him, as though to tidy up, put them back, save Katie from the shit she’ll get for this.

  Inside something smashes.

  I peer over the banisters from the top floor and down through the two glass ceilings. In the kitchen one of the French doors has just shattered, miraculously, into a million little cubes of glass. It causes a sudden moment of silence, and whoever smashed it – the guy who was pushed or the girl who threw a glass – is horrified and delighted at the shock of it. Kids start to hurl themselves at the second glass door until that smashes too – not as completely, not as deliciously – and then they stomp the glass, and kick the remaining shards from the door frame, shout and laugh and keep stomping, fuck you fuck you fuck you, to the French doors, crushing it into the antique oak floor.