by Carrie Adams
“Already got them,” I replied. Her hand was the same as her mother’s. I took it. She gripped my forearm with the other and pulled me up. I saw the tin of chocolate powder as I rose. I took it off the shelf. “Is this what you were looking for?” I offered.
“Might be better than sherry,” she said.
“It’s marginal,” I said.
“I know,” she agreed.
The one nice thing about being caught red-handed is that you don’t have to exhaust yourself with lies. I stepped out of the pantry. The kitchen was Gestapo-bright.
Tessa went back to the stove. She poured more milk into the pan. It was a battered old metal thing with a warped wooden handle. I looked at the clock on the wall. It was past two but I was wide-awake.
“Is that true, what you said? Or were you just trying to get Jimmy back?”
She glanced over her shoulder. “I would never have said those—”
“But is it true?” I interrupted. “I called her a slut?”
“Yes it is. I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have to hear this from me.”
I pulled out a wooden chair and sat down on it heavily. “She didn’t tell me,” I said, mostly to myself. Tessa didn’t reply. Not an easy thing to say to your mother. Of course she didn’t tell me. I knew what it was like to have a mother you couldn’t trust. I was never sure what would come out of my mother’s mouth. Not because she was drunk. And it was never hurtful. Just bloodcurdlingly embarrassing. What I had done to Amber was far worse.
For a while the only noise was the gas, the slow scrape of a wooden spoon on aluminum, the ticking clock, and an occasional hoot of an owl on the hunt. I watched Tessa; the hem of her nightie was trembling. Was she cold or afraid? I heard Lizzie King’s voice in my head. Was any of this really Tessa’s fault?
“Won’t James come back?” I asked.
“The fact I even had to ask him,” said Tessa. She remained standing with her back to me. “He can’t just…” She stopped herself. I was not her natural confidante. But then again, who better than me? She must have a million questions she wanted to ask. I would. I did.
“Abdicate responsibility?” I ventured.
She turned. “It’s a bit weird talking to you about these things.”
“There’s no one better, if you think about it.”
“Dad and Peter packed up their worms the moment the message got through to them,” she said. “Dad I understand, but Peter? He could have stayed, but he wouldn’t hear of it. You and the girls are too important to him. James, on the other hand, their father…” Tessa rubbed her eyes. This was her second night without sleep, and I could tell the adrenaline was waning. She turned away before I could see the tears again.
“Sit down,” I said. “I’ll make the chocolate.” I could tell she didn’t want to. I wanted to think it was because she liked lording it over me, the disgusting drinker, the weak worm, but it wasn’t that. This was awkward; she was as uncomfortable as I was. But it was strangely enticing, too. I pulled out a chair. Her legs betrayed her and she slumped into it. I spooned the sweet brown powder into mugs and watched the milk fizz beneath its skin. I could hear Tessa’s brain whirring, so I decided to put her out of her misery. “I was only going to have one,” I said. “I couldn’t sleep.” She looked at me for a long time. I suppose we had reached a major crossroads. Honesty versus fantasy. I’m glad we chose honesty. Or that Tessa did, anyway.
“I don’t think that’s true. It’s what you tell yourself, but it’s not true.”
I stirred the hot chocolate. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”
“It sounds terrible. Trouble is, you can’t remember those bits. Or choose not to. I can’t decide.”
Selective amnesia, perhaps? Now that I’d been told about the night of the engagement party, emotional flashcards appeared in my brain. I couldn’t recall exactly what I had said, but there was an echo that was just loud enough to shame me. I could still taste the irrational anger. Trouble is, it hadn’t felt irrational at the time. It had felt justified and justifiable. But it is not justifiable to scare your children like that. Ever. Guilt snaked around my gut like a girdle. Suddenly I understood the meaning of “vicious circle.” Guilt and shame made me thirsty.
“I’m not an alcoholic,” I said defiantly.
“It doesn’t sound like recreational drinking to me.”
“Come on, alcoholics sleep in parks, drink strong lager at eight in the morning, and piss themselves,” I said, forcing a laugh.
Tessa was not in a laughing mood, and again I saw she was doing her best to hold back the tears. “I’m not James. Don’t expect complicity from me.”
Fair enough.
“I’ve been on the Internet,” she said. “It’s not about having a drink. It’s about not being able to stop. And you can’t stop. There are a million testimonials from drinkers who thought that because they lived in a nice house, kept down a job, they weren’t actually alcoholics. But it’s bollocks. Functioning alcoholic, the biggest oxymoron of them all.”
“I am functioning.”
“You might be, but the rest of us aren’t doing so well.”
“You think your problems with Amber are all my fault?”
“You’ve hardly been making it easy for her.”
“Jimmy and Amber have always been thick as thieves. You would have had a tough time with or without…” Me drinking? Am I really a drinker? It had been only a matter of weeks. Maybe months now. Since…I put a mug of hot chocolate in front of Tessa. Since…along came a spider.
“I was only trying to lose weight,” I said, and sat down beside her.
Tessa blew a small storm across the top of her cup. “Strange weight-loss program.”
“Admitted, but I’ve lost twenty-one pounds, so something’s working.”
“Not your liver,” she said. “And I’m sure your children would prefer you overweight and conscious.”
“Does it matter what I would prefer?”
Tessa studied me carefully before answering. “I don’t know. You have children. So probably not. Jesus, no one’s saying it’s easy. But neither is being single and approaching forty with no kids. You think this is my romantic ideal? Sitting alongside my fiancé’s ex-wife in the middle of the night having cocoa?”
“It’s good chocolate at least,” I said, taking a sip.
“Small mercies.”
We smiled fleetingly at each other, then sat quietly. I relished the thick, sweet taste. The clock struck three. “In the First World War the frontline troops called a mini-armistice on Christmas Day and emerged from their respective trenches to play a Germans versus British football match.”
“Who won?” asked Tessa.
“I don’t know. Neither, I guess. By Boxing Day they were killing each other again.”
She looked at me for what felt like a long time, then returned to her drink.
A minute or two later, she went to a bowl on the side, picked out two apples, fetched a knife and chopping board, and sliced them. She sat down opposite and offered me a piece. “Thank you,” I said, taking it.
“Can I ask you a question?”
I imagined a heavy, muddy ball in her hands. I nodded, and the whistle blew.
“Why did you have an affair?”
The ball sailed past me. “What?”
“James told me.”
Jimmy told you what he thought he knew, but that was not the same thing.
“I didn’t have an affair,” I said.
Tessa arched a single eyebrow. I held her gaze. I may be many things, but I’m not a liar. Well, not about that, anyway.
“I did not have an affair,” I stated, once more, for the record.
Something must have rung true in my voice, because she hesitated. I wondered what Jimmy had told her, how much.
“Why would he tell me that?”
“It’s complicated,” I replied.
“I know.” She paused again, and I knew that she knew my dark secret. “James told me about
Sophie Guest,” she said.
I bit down hard on my lip. Sophie Guest. What a sweet way of saying “abortion.” Why hadn’t I written “Minnie Mouse,” like everyone else who’d snuck in to do away with unwanted business? Sophie Guest was real. She was me. The other me. The one who’d go through a procedure like that and damn the consequences. And then, a few weeks later, leave me to live with those consequences alone. Always alone.
“Did he tell you why?”
“You got pregnant. It wasn’t his.”
There was the King directness I was so enjoying. Many responses flooded my head. I could not articulate a single one.
“I take it you’ve never had an abortion?”
Tessa shook her head.
“Well, lucky you, but be careful to judge too harshly before you know what you’re judging.”
Tessa seemed to accept this remonstration well. “Sorry,” she said.
I exhaled loudly. “It’s hard talking about this,” I said. “Hard” wasn’t the word. “Torture” was better. I’d rather swallow seven Battenburg cakes whole than put into words what I did.
“A stupid one-night stand?” asked Tessa, as gently as she could.
“I wish,” I said, before I could stop myself.
Tessa’s body language took a dramatic turn. She reared back in her chair. “Christ, Bea, you weren’t”—she swallowed—“raped?”
“No. Though I wish I’d thought of that. He might have been able to forgive me then.”
“Who?”
“Jimmy.”
“Forgive you for what?”
“Killing his unborn son.”
Tessa’s eyes widened.
There. I’d said it. “The baby was his. Of course it was. I’ve never been with anyone else.” I paused. “Ever.”
“I don’t understand,” she said. “James told me—”
“He wouldn’t listen to me. He does that when you’re trying to tell him something he doesn’t want to hear.” She nodded. “It was easier for him to think I had slept with someone and got rid of it than to accept the truth. He didn’t believe I could have done what I did. He insisted I was covering up some infidelity, so in the end it was easier to tell him what he wanted to hear. And keep the truth to myself.”
Tessa waited. Her lower lip hovered expectantly. The truth was what she was after. The bloody truth.
“If this made sense to me, I would tell you how it happened. But it doesn’t. So bear with me. I haven’t talked about this for a long time.” I stared into my empty mug. “What am I saying? I’ve never talked about it…”
I WAS PREGNANT WITH MADDY within weeks of Lulu being born. We were so happy that Lulu had made it, after all the ones we’d lost, and the birth was nothing like the carnage it had been with Amber. Our love knew no bounds. Leaking breasts, floppy stomach, filthy hair, the last remnants of afterbirth staining my pants, all of this was nothing to my husband. He loved me; it didn’t matter what sort of dilapidated state I was in, and he was going to show it.
It wasn’t the best sex we’d ever had, but in a strange way it meant the most. My periods never returned, but, then, I wasn’t expecting them to. I was breast-feeding. I wasn’t supposed to get pregnant. That particular old wives’ tale is a load of shit. I was too exhausted to be tired. Too fat to put on weight. Too in love to care. Piles, varicose veins, and a hernia swiftly followed. I had trembles of panic about the state I was getting into, but everyone reassured me. You’re having a third baby. Don’t worry. What do you expect?
Amber started big school, Lulu learned to crawl, and I ate to survive the days and nights. The pounds piled on. By the twelfth week of my pregnancy, I had already put twenty-eight pounds on top of the weight I’d never lost after Lulu was born. Despite his initial claims of triumph, Jimmy faded from view. I was bloated, uncomfortable, and overweight, and I literally shuffled through the last trimester. I begged to be induced at thirty-eight weeks, but the doctors wouldn’t do it. The only complication at Maddy’s birth was the look of disappointment on Jimmy’s face when they announced she was a girl. He’d denied it, but I’d seen it. When he was at home, his attention belonged to Amber. She demanded it, and since I wasn’t prepared to stamp my feet and scream, she won. Lulu wasn’t even walking when Maddy was born, and the long, broken nights started before they’d ever finished. But it wasn’t so much Maddy keeping me up as Amber.
Adjusting to big school took longer than I had bargained for. Her nights were fretful, anxious, and dream-filled. She was now six, but Jimmy let her into our bed when I had fallen asleep feeding in Maddy’s room. When I was in bed and she appeared, I took her back to her own. She would scream for Daddy, but Daddy was away more and more often, a whipping boy to some devilish talent agent. In the middle of the night, Amber hated me and I hated her right back. She didn’t think much of her new sisters, either, and sometimes I had to agree with her. Maddy made barely a sound, but she was a sucky baby and needed a lot of food. I didn’t get more than a couple of hours’ sleep at a time for about a year. Maddy was feeding, Lulu was teething, and Amber, it felt, enjoyed kicking me when I was down. Why is any of this important? Because when I look back, I realize that I was planting the seeds of madness that lay dormant until mother hormones woke them up again with a fourth pregnancy.
Maddy was one when I realized I wasn’t returning to form. I’d gone back to my old self after Amber, but I hadn’t had a chance to get into shape after Lulu. When Maddy arrived, I was sixty pounds over my normal weight. My clothes didn’t fit, and everywhere I looked mothers were skipping around in tight jeans and short skirts with babies in slings. I was a frump.
I did everything. The cabbage diet, the grape diet, the grapefruit diet, the Atkins diet, the other one that isn’t Atkins, with a long name, that cost a fortune. I managed for a few days, four, five at the most, then something would happen. Amber had a tantrum, Maddy was sick, or Lulu was back in urgent care with another hard-to-explain bump. And Jimmy would have to go away again, just when we were beginning to find each other, and I would reach for food. I didn’t realize it was comfort eating, because I always had an excuse. Children’s leftovers were my downfall. And so began a long year of yo-yoing.
As a last resort, I joined Weight Watchers secretly. Maddy started nursery, and I had time to go to the gym. I cannot tell you what it took to shift that weight, but finally I was on to something permanent. I felt a flicker of recognition when I looked at myself in the mirror. It wasn’t just the weight; it was me. I was on my way back. I had always liked myself. It was good to see myself again.
Jimmy said he’d have a vasectomy. Then he bailed out. I was furious. After everything I’d been through, the miscarriages, the endless pregnancies, single parenthood in every way but on paper, he wouldn’t do that one simple thing for me. To me, it crystallized everything that was wrong with our relationship. I’d done everything to provide him with his precious family, while he did as he liked. I longed for him to come home, but when he was there, it was more fraught than ever. Everyone wanted him. The time he spent with the little ones was cursory, which made them uncharacteristically fractious. He would look at me and ask, “What’s wrong with them?” It would have hurt me less if I’d caught him banging our next-door neighbor on the kitchen table. As usual, Amber got his best, but even that wasn’t a patch on what she was used to, so she took it out on me. I got the dog ends from him, and he got nothing in return from me.
I didn’t notice I’d skipped a period, because life was hectic and time was flying by. Then I started to feel ill. I thought I had the flu and took DayQuil to survive. Finally, I worked out why the medicine wasn’t working. I was horrified; it took me another three weeks to pluck up courage to do the test. Every time I went to the loo, I checked my pants, waiting for the miscarriage, but, of course, Murphy’s Law, now that I wouldn’t have minded Mother Nature taking her curious course, she left me be. Jimmy was away more than ever—Cannes TV festival, Edinburgh festival—having a terrible time, poor thing. I f
elt sicker than I ever had and cried every day. I told no one. Not even Jimmy. The solution, when it came to me, seemed perfect. We couldn’t afford a fourth child, anyway. As it was, my mother was paying for the first three. She still is. One weekend I told Honor and Peter my mother was going into a hospital, left the kids with them, checked into Meadowlands, and had it taken out.
I STARED AT THE GRAIN of the wooden table. I had to stop talking to control my breathing. I might have sounded matter-of-fact as I continued my monologue to a silent, wide-eyed Tessa, but my heart was pounding. These were feelings I’d never put into cogent thoughts, and thoughts I’d never put into words. “I thought I was doing the best thing,” I said eventually. “It turned out to be the worst. As soon as the pregnancy hormones leached out of my system, I woke up to what I had done. And then that letter arrived. In my state, I’d checked a box about being informed, donating the fetus to medical research, I don’t know, I still can’t remember doing it. I had killed our perfect, healthy son. I was eighteen weeks pregnant. I had no idea I was as far along as that. Trouble was, you couldn’t tell bump from bulge since my weight had fluctuated. A hole opened up…”
I’d thought that another child would kill me. But not having one was a slow death by guilt and self-loathing. The soul of that child sat heavily on my shoulders and accompanied me wherever I went. The eating that I had finally brought under control spiraled rapidly out of control again. Within six months, I had put on what had taken two and a half years to lose. I know now I should have tried harder, but at the time, the words had lodged in my throat, creating a dam, and though I could hear my own silent screech, like a hideous tinnitus, Jimmy heard nothing. The loneliness ate me up, but I wouldn’t let Jimmy touch me. I repulsed myself and hated him. How could I make love to him knowing what I knew? How could I make love to him and risk another child? I wouldn’t have had another abortion, ever, ever, ever, but how could I explain that to the ghost of the child I had killed? Jimmy was adamant. He didn’t want a vasectomy, and in the end, it wasn’t necessary. We had stopped touching each other, and slowly our marriage turned to dust.