“Aww, you are so cute,” Susan gushes, “but please don’t have Chinese. You don’t know what’ll be in it and you don’t want to risk the baby.”
Silence descends on the room and I hold my breath. Susan chuckles and looks around the table.
“Oh, my, god,” she says, “I’m not fucking expecting you all to walk around on eggshells. Look at the girl. That baggy top isn’t hiding anything – nice rack by the way,” she adds, “and the way you’ve been picking at your dinner, it’s so obvious.”
I can’t help laughing. “Can’t get anything past my wife.”
Then, Lily puts down her knife and fork and reaches for Susan across the table. Susan offers her hands and Lily starts crying out of nowhere.
“Babes, no,” Susan soothes, “I know how much pain you went through. If anyone can understand, it’s me. I’m so happy for you. I am so, so happy. And if the past few months have taught me anything, it’s that I’m going to be a mother. It will happen. Maybe not in the way that I want it to, but it will, I’m coming to terms with it.”
“I’m so glad he met you,” Lily sobs, “you’re alright, Suze. You really are. Now, is it okay if I go vom in your downstairs?”
“Yes,” Susan says, “if Adam agrees to clean it up. He knows I don’t do sick.”
Lily bolts for the loo and shouts over her shoulder, “I’m a clean vommer, don’t worry!”
We all try not to listen as Lily slams the door shut and then coughs into the bowl.
While she’s gone, my wife goes quiet and Theo notices it, too.
“She was vomming all the way through the journey today. I had to drive even though I’m not insured on her car,” Theo tells me, half-laughing.
“What? I thought you hadn’t even passed your test?”
“I haven’t, but I didn’t think to remind her of that. I got us here safely.”
“Theo,” Susan rebukes. “Come on now. Get it passed, you renegade.”
“I’m going to have to.”
Things go quiet, then Lily is coughing again, so Susan asks, “What is there to do, then? If your mum arranged it all.”
“I don’t know,” he muses, “I suppose, I don’t know, tell people she might have fallen out with in the past few years? She even prepared her obituary. Like she wanted it all her own way, even after she was gone.”
“How awful,” my wife says, “the one glorious thing I’ve got out of being married is that I’ve learnt to give away some control sometimes, you know? It actually really helps.”
I take her hand and squeeze it, then bring it to my lips.
“You didn’t know my mother,” Theo says, “she was… complicated, beautiful, but complicated. Did you tell Susan about what she tried to do to Lily?”
“I hear my name,” Lily bellows, between coughing again.
“Only good things, honey,” Theo shouts, and we all quietly laugh.
“No, what happened?” asks my wife, who seems interested in this thing I never thought she’d be interested in.
“My mother invited Lily over to her house one night and made Lily keep it secret. Then over dinner, she made up some elaborate story about the director I was working with on Hamlet. She said Gustav was my long-lost father, my real father, who’d allegedly arrived in my life with some altruistic intention of launching my career or something. She asked Lily not to say anything… but to make some excuse as to why she couldn’t come see my play, making out to Lily it was because she and Gustav were once so in love, if they bumped into one another again it would only bring back all those feelings.”
Susan’s eyes narrow and she doesn’t seem convinced. I wasn’t convinced, either – like, why? Why make something like that up?
“Why would she make up something like that?” Susan theorizes. “It’s just… a bit much.”
“That was my mother,” Theo admits.
“Did you ask Gustav about it? Or try to… you know. Slip it into conversation whether he had kids or not.” Susan has folded her arms, not quite sure of this whole thing.
“He tried to hit on me when we first met.” Theo’s eyes are wide. “I think if he’d arrived in my life to help his long-lost son, he wouldn’t have hit on me, knowing that. Anyway, I heard it from one of his conquests that Gustav got the snip when he was very young after a couple of accidental pregnancies with his… companions. He said they were terminated.”
“You mean his whores?” Susie states. “Come now, Theo. I’m the daughter of a lusty widower. Please.”
“Yes, his whores.”
“Well, so why did your mother… why did she try to…?” Susan taps the table, as if she can’t quite put her finger on why someone would lie like that.
“No,” Susan says, looking between us with shock and horror written all over her face, “no, no.”
“What the hell did I miss?” Lily arrives back, washing her sweaty face at the kitchen sink and swilling her mouth out.
“Why she told that whole story about Gustav,” Susan cries, “I think I figured it out.”
Lily sits down to join the party and Susan says, “Okay, call him. Ask him if he knew an Allegra Richards. Go on. Or at least, tell him your mother has died. Come on, Theo. Trust me.”
Theo’s unsure as he takes his phone out. “But I’ve seen pictures of my biological father. We were very similar.”
“Where were these pictures? Who showed you them?” asks Susan, my detective wife, it seems.
“My mother showed them to me but there are more on the internet, actually.”
“And what was similar?” she asks. “Pray tell. Come now, Theo. My mind’s working here, so should yours be.”
Fucking hell, I love my crazy, sexy-as-hell clever wife.
“He had dark hair, was very tall. He had… a bit of a nose, like me. He was big, that’s all I know.”
“And your looks, those were from your mother, yes?” Susan persists.
“Yes,” Theo says, unsure.
“Go on, call him. Put it on speakerphone. Do it,” Susan demands. “You’re an artist, Theo. You know how this works… how we see what we’re presented with… how it goes when you want to see something that’s not there. You want it so much you think you see it, but truly, you don’t.”
Theo stares at her, shaken to his core. He takes a deep breath and calls Gustav, who answers in a thick accent that can’t be pinned down.
“Theodore Richards, how goes it? You find me where I usually am… at a party,” he chuckles, adding, “let me get out of this room and go somewhere quiet. Fuck, but this is Paris, there is nowhere quiet.”
“No problem, Gus,” Theo says.
After a while, the background noise fades and Gustav says, “Now what can I do for my protégé? Are you calling to say you have landed a new big role… all because of me?”
Theo chuckles light-heartedly. “You know, there are things brewing, but no. I mean, a lot has been going on. Lily and I are engaged.”
“Oh, my gods! That’s wonderful. She will suit you well, make you better. Is she there? Are you there, Lily?”
Lily colours and admits, “I’m here, Gus. I hope you’re well?”
“Much more so for hearing your beautiful tones.”
She chuckles and Theo looks among us. “Listen, there’s something I’m having trouble with.”
“Of course, yes, I’ll be your best man,” he agrees, and I have to stop myself laughing.
“No, no,” Theo quickly intercedes, “no. I’m wondering… might you have known my mother when she was young? You might have forgotten her… it might have been just a night or two.”
Gustav is quiet for such a long time, then he whispers, “Allegra? No, no,” Gustav says. “No.”
“She might have called herself Allie,” says Theo, who’s looking worried. “Almost thirty years ago… in Italy?”
Lily gulps and looks at Theo, who also gulps. We all know she used to ask to be called Allie, because she said it made her sound younger.
“Nothing
at all?” Theo says. “Doesn’t ring a bell?”
“Okay, okay. Maybe. It was a crazy time. Maybe, I don’t know, she was my lover for a night or two. Wasn’t she… yes, a model. She left me one night and I never saw her again. She was very special to me but we were a mess, or rather I was. She wasn’t… like other people. She was different.”
I make a fist of one hand and wrap the fingers of my other around it in front of my face, wondering what the hell is going on.
“She just died,” Theo murmurs.
There’s utter silence on the other end of the line. Utter, deplorable, terrible silence.
“I know,” whispers Gustav, “I know.”
“What? What… do you know?” asks Theo.
“About you… about her. I watched her from afar. I waited.”
“But when I asked you, you denied you ever knew her personally?” shrieks Lily.
“I know,” he says, “I know. But only to protect Theo. He doesn’t want me for a father. He doesn’t need me. But I knew I could help him… and trust me, nobody else… for nobody else would I have rewritten that whole thing. For nobody else would I have done that. Nobody,” he insists, his deep voice echoing down the line.
“Someone told you she’d died?” asks Theo.
“Your mother asked for the carer to call me… I found out earlier today. That’s why I am partying on a Sunday night. That’s why you don’t need me, Theo. You’re all hers. All hers.”
“No,” says Theo, sounding tormented, “no. You don’t know what she was like.”
“Oh yes, I do know boy, oh I do,” he growls down the phone. “I knew every corner of her, every crevice. I knew her inside and out. How? She was my other self, my better self. She did the right thing to take you. She was better than me. But how it must have hurt her to see me in you… to be reminded of the pain I caused her. She was extremely fragile, you know. She was very, very delicate and breakable. I saw that. I ignored it. I hated myself enough to make her hate me, too. You’re not like me, Theo. You’re hers. The person she should have been. If I hadn’t broken her, she might have been able to go on. She might have married someone she loved instead of that fat Italian. She might not have died bitter and alone, though I think she was not totally lost. She finally told you about me, then?”
“No,” groans Theo, “she entrusted it to Lily. But we didn’t believe her. She threatened to cut me off because we didn’t believe her story.”
“I wouldn’t want to believe it either,” admits Gustav, “and maybe you feel shit right now for not believing her, but truly, I understand and I don’t think there is anything to forgive. She took what she had left. She took you. If she couldn’t love you completely, trust that it was nothing to do with you or her own deficiency, but mine. It was a crazy time, Theo. A strange time. One you look back on and don’t seem to recognise you ever took part in. She wasn’t perfect. She hurt me, too. We were like two feral children sometimes, seeking only a good time. It was a love that I’ve never forgotten but wouldn’t ever want to relive. It had its place, in its own time. She was broken before I met her, and then, I broke her some more. I’m sorry for that. I’ll carry it with me to the end. But I take some comfort from knowing I brought you out into the world and gave you that spotlight. I hope she saw that I was trying to repair… and maybe, I hope, it eased her passing somehow to know her son will be okay.”
I’m crying and I look up and find Theo and Lily and Susan all crying, too.
“Will you come? To the funeral, Gustav? Please?” asks Lily.
“No,” he says. “Lovers never say goodbye. They just farewell. They are frozen together in some other time, one that could never be gotten back. Perfectly archived for always.”
“Then what about your grandchild?” Lily exclaims. “What about that?”
We hear a slight cough, perhaps a shortness of breath on the other end of the line.
“Yes,” chokes Theo, “your grandchild.”
We hear Gustav cry down the phone and after a while, he says, “Will you… could I…?” he begins to ask, and Lily chimes in, “Yes, of course. When the baby is born, we will let you know.”
“Let me know, then. And if you need anything, anything, just ask. Please. Okay?”
“We will,” Lily says, and he hangs up the phone.
We all sit around the table like we just performed a séance or something and the spirits are still in attendance… we’re just waiting for them to go.
“Are you okay?” I ask Theo, who is staring into space.
“She did love me,” he whispers.
“Of course, she did, Theo. Of course, she did,” says Susan beside me, flush with emotion and amazement. “Who wouldn’t? Perhaps, she just loved you too much, you know? She expected you to hurt her, just like everyone else had. It wasn’t anything to do with you. She couldn’t bear to have you get too close to that kind of pain, you know?”
He breaks down and Lily pulls him into her arms. Susan pulls on my arm and we leave them together, giving Theo the privacy and space to grieve.
Susan and I undress and climb into bed upstairs, naked in each other’s arms. I hold her close and feel lucky that we have what we have.
“You see things others don’t,” I tell her.
“I know.”
“How do you do that?”
“When you’ve been there, it’s obvious.”
“What do you mean?”
“How she was with Theo. It seemed obvious, to me. She was sparing him from her true self, like I was trying to spare you and carry this alone. This… infertility… this disease… this hurt in my past. My grief over my mother… my pain over a failed relationship that wasn’t even good for me in the first place. I was trying not to get you involved. Because I love you.”
I find her lips and kiss her smoothly, pushing her mouth open with my tongue and pressing my erection against her belly. She rolls on top of me because it’s less painful for her that way and we merge, sinking together, her tight little pussy wet and greedy.
“It’s more than that,” I say, kissing her throat, “it’s because you have a lot of good things inside you. Gifts from her. All the good things… they’re from your mother.”
She sheds a tear as we make love and gives her soul up to me completely, all the layers of her defence shedding away as we crawl inside one another, totally lost in our passion and desire.
“I love you,” she says as we pant in each other’s ears afterwards, “and because of you, I now see that no matter how our baby is born, that bit doesn’t matter, just that we love it. Because I have faith now. Faith that whatever happens, we will be together. And I know it’s not my fault that my body has let me down and I know that you don’t love me any less because of it.”
“Precisely.” I kiss her fiercely and stroke her hair away from her neck, kissing her some more. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”
“How about less talking and a little more action, hmm?”
“Always up for that.”
We fuck again, from behind this time, and I find something I never even thought I needed.
I find that I have her wellbeing in my thoughts the entire time… and I find that I feel more whole because of it.
Chapter Nine
I wake the next morning with a fright, wondering what day it is, where I am, who I am. I slept so deeply, I jerk myself awake and it all starts to come back to me, like I’ve been hit on the head or something. If I remember right, Susie woke me up in the middle of the night with her lips wrapped around my knob and then we went at it again, bouncing her up and down my length until she milked me dry all over again. No wonder I’m exhausted. The woman has drained me.
She’s not in bed and I reach for my phone, checking the time. It’s only 7.30. I’m not late for work or anything. I’m just groggy as shit. I pull my glasses on and some boxers and walk down the corridor.
“Susie, where are you?” I walk towards the sound of the shower running.
“I’m
in here, but—”
I walk in before I have time to hear the rest.
I hear my wife’s laughter peel from her belly as she warns, “Lily’s in here with me.”
Lily is covered in bubbles and is swimming in the bath. Though I can’t see anything, one of my oldest friends is still naked in the same room as my wife. I can see the outline of Lily’s big breasts and not the nipples, but… I’m so tongue-tied and shocked, I can’t find words. My gorgeous Susie is taking a shower in the large corner cubicle as if she couldn’t care less someone else is sharing the same space she’s naked in.
I back out of the room and shut the door. “Sorry!”
I hear Susie mumble something to Lily and then the pair of them are laughing like banshees.
Theo trudges down the corridor with a toothbrush hanging out of his mouth and groans, “Where do I spit this? They’re hogging the bathroom.”
“Kitchen sink, I suppose.”
I throw on a t-shirt and then follow him downstairs. We’re both in boxers and t-shirts, roaming around like zombiefied gorillas, arms heaving and heads hung low. Somehow our senses guide us to the coffee and then I fill the toaster with bread.
Theo’s hair is crazy-messy and he plops himself down on the dining bench, staring at the morning fog.
“What is it about grief?” he mumbles.
“Uh, what do you mean?”
“Makes the womenfolk randy as fuck.”
I laugh so hard, the room warbles back. “You as well?”
“She’s full of hormones but oh my god, I thought I was dead when I woke up this morning.”
“I thought I’d entered a porn movie to be honest. They’re in the nude… together.”
Theo throws his head back laughing. “Poor, innocent Adam. Corrupted so easily.”
I sling his toast at him and bring out all the condiments I can find. “How the fuck does she carry those jugs around, dude?”
Theo sniffs back a laugh. “Don’t know, don’t care. Not complaining, though.”
I sit opposite him and wait for my toast to go cold and chewy – how I like it. I spread marmite over one slice and then chocolate spread over another. Theo regards me like I’m a teenage freak, with his toast carefully buttered and then covered in strawberry jam on top – all posh and everything.
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