by Sarah Moss
I woke in the night because Emma was crying. Trying to cry quietly, not to wake the girls, but her hair and pillow were wet from it. She was curled away from me so I curled around her, offered water, tissues, listening, but her back shook against me and she had nothing to say. I gave her all I had, which was my presence, and after a long time she turned into my arms and let me hold her while she sobbed. Shh, I said. Shh, it’s all right.
No, she said, no, I don’t want to lose them both, I don’t want – I don’t want – to outlive—
premonition
No ambushes with cups of tea and croissants in the morning. She was still asleep when I woke so I stroked her hair, propped myself up so I could see her hollow sleeping face. She was too thin, too tired. It was as if I had been given a premonition of her deathbed. I touched her forehead. No, I thought, this has to stop, the double secrecy of our terror. We say that we are learning from Miriam and not living in fear but it is not true; if we are protecting the girls we are not protecting ourselves, or each other. This is not how to live.
She woke up. Her eyes in mine, my eyes in hers, and without thinking about it, without reference to the story of our abstinence these past months, without telling myself that I should be full of ardour but not pushy, desirous but not demanding, I reached for her and she for me.
Afterwards, lying with my pyjamas wedged between her legs because it was so long since we’d had sex that I’d moved the bedside loo roll up to the girls’ bathroom when they ran out, Emma rubbed her cheek on my chest. That was nice, she said, we should do that more often, and Adam, I have this ridiculous idea, this very persistent desire, I know it’s quite mad but I keep wanting another baby, every time I see one at work—
I pulled the duvet up around her shoulders. It’s not mad, I said, it’s perfectly understandable, but you know it’s not the right thing to do, it’s the last thing the girls need, poor Mimi really doesn’t have to know that her parents have sex and we’ve only got three more years of having her at home, we don’t want to be distracted by a new baby, and anyway where would we put it, we’d have to move house and buy a bigger car, you’d have to take maternity leave again and it made you miserable both times—
And anyway, Em, you’re forty-two and you just discovered that your children are mortal, how could you not want another baby, a back-up baby, an insurance against childlessness. You want a third chance, the magic occasion to get it all right. But you can’t get it right, darling. With every birth, a new death comes into being. With every love, a loss. There is no back up, no alternative, no chance to change whatever plot we are living.
I know, she said, I told you it was mad, I’m not saying we should do it, I’m probably too old anyway, I don’t think it would make me miserable now but we can’t afford the maternity leave, I’d be sixty with a teenager, you’re quite right that Mim and Rose need everything we can give them and more. I know perfectly well that babies don’t solve problems. I’m just telling you I want one.
I kissed her. Thank you, I said, for telling me. Hey, do you think a cat would make a good substitute?
Not you as well, she said, don’t you start. I’m going to get up now, shall I bring you a cup of tea?
If we had another child, it might be a son.
It might be healthy.
a Christmas scene
I had made Wienerschnitzel and sauté potatoes for dinner on Christmas Eve. It was a treat in my mostly-vegetarian childhood, a dish my mother would make once in a blue moon in homage to my father’s occasional hankering for the food of his childhood. Mitteleuropa, blood attenuated by two Atlantic crossings and then the betrayal of my parents’ marriage. Meat fried in breadcrumbs, of course the girls like it.
I upended the jar of sauerkraut from the Polish deli into a colander in the sink and rinsed it with cold water; Emma has passed her love of pickles to the girls.
‘Dinner!’ I called.
At Bryher Farm we had an old brass bell, and in the closing stages of cooking a child would be sent outside to swing it back and forth, a satisfying task particularly in the winter dusk when the sound seemed to shatter the chill under the bare trees and the fading sky.
‘So,’ I said. ‘Are we doing anything differently this year? Mimi, will you come with me to the Cathedral? Midnight Mass?’
I wanted to see the angels, Hutton’s angry angels, by night, their shadows ominous on the walls. I wanted to hear the voices rise past the concrete columns and sing under Spence’s roof.
‘Nope. It’ll take more than coloured glass and old music to make me sign up to homophobia, misogyny and the grandfather of all patriarchal institutions.’
I took a mouthful of sauerkraut. Should have rinsed it again, or maybe soaked it in fresh water. ‘I wasn’t trying to sign you up to anything. I just want to see what it’s like. For the project.’
She eyed me. ‘Yeah, right. You’re in no way willing to go along with an offensive ideology because you find the art and music pretty and because the whole caboodle fills you with nostalgia for the good old days of post-war socialism.’
‘Fine, don’t come. I was only offering.’
‘Caboodle,’ said Rose. ‘Can I come? I’d like to see the angels.’
I looked at Emma. ‘Maybe next year, sweetie. I won’t be back till after midnight. Father Christmas might not come if you’re not here in the middle of night.’
Rose and Miriam exchanged glances.
‘Dad,’ said Rose. ‘I’m sorry to tell you this, but the thing is, I don’t actually believe in Father Christmas. I know it’s you and Mum.’
‘She knew last year as well,’ said Miriam. ‘But she thought you’d be upset if she told you.’
I ate a potato. Good but maybe not worth the washing up. We never tried very hard with Santa. The logical flaws seemed overwhelming and Miriam at an early age decided that she objected strongly to the alleged presence of a strange man in her bedroom at night. For a while, Santa brought presents to the door once she was asleep, knocking like a normal person and asking the adult who answered kindly to put them in one of my red hiking socks left on the fake mantelpiece over the fake fireplace unconvincingly situated on an internal wall. Rose had not yet started school when Mimi told us not to bother any more. Fine, we said, but don’t tell your sister; it was more surprising that she had waited four years than that she had, in the end, told.
‘Why did you think we’d be upset, Rose?’ Emma asked.
Rose ate some meat. ‘Because Molly in my class told her parents she knew it was a lie and she said her mum actually cried. And Lily’s mum told her not to tell her dad she didn’t believe it any more because he’d be really sad.’
‘We’re not sad,’ I said. ‘It’s just part of growing up. And we want you to grow up.’
Emma pushed her potatoes around. ‘Do you mean that all the kids are pretending to believe in Santa to protect their parents?’
‘To protect their parents’ weird ideas about childhood,’ Mimi said. ‘Because even the eight-year-olds have worked out that they’re supposed to be performing some—’
‘Kind of,’ Rose said. ‘I mean, some of my class probably still thought it might be real until the rest of us said it wasn’t. School made us write letters to Santa, see, and Jack said it was silly to write to someone who didn’t exist and then Mrs Wasley tried to shut him up but you know what it’s like trying to shut Jack up and anyway they can’t stop us talking at playtime. Ellie woke up and saw her mum putting things in her stocking and Bella’s big brother told her two years ago it wasn’t true.’
‘—some creepy, profit-driven adult fantasy. It’s completely toxic, the attitude to children in this country, it’s no wonder we’re all mentally—’
‘Why “we”?’ asked Rose. ‘You keep saying you’re not a child. And you never believed in Santa, you said so.’
‘I’m legally a child. It’s really stupid, I’m a child if I want control of my own body, like for example consenting to medical treatment or having s
ex but I’m an adult if I commit—’
‘You’re not,’ I said. ‘Even in this country, the criminal justice system doesn’t treat a fifteen-year-old as adult. Not in theory, anyway.’
‘Why would you want to have sex?’ asked Rose. ‘You’re too young to make a baby.’
Pause.
‘It’s not just about babies,’ said Emma. ‘When people are grown-up and ready and in a secure relationship and over sixteen, Mimi, it feels good. Grown-ups sometimes do it for fun. Anyway, no Santa. Does that mean no stockings and we’ll do all the presents after lunch?’
I drank a glass of water and did not look at Miriam.
‘Let’s have stockings,’ said Rose. ‘So I can eat the chocolate coins before breakfast. But don’t give me a tangerine, I can always get one from the bowl if I want it, and you don’t have to put out a mince pie or any of that. Actually, don’t bother with the hiking sock, I just want the chocolate when I wake up.’
‘Mim?’
‘To be honest, I’d rather have a lie-in.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘That’s easy.’
So there was no Father Christmas, no last-minute search for wrapping paper different from the one in which we’d wrapped the other presents, no arrangement of crumbs on the plate from which Santa was said to have eaten, no carrot for the reindeer. I saw Rose into bed, read to her, looked in on Mimi who was lying on her bedroom floor because the bed was covered with books and clothes, reading a probably ill-advised text from the university library about Islamic feminism and listening to music reminiscent of hyenas enraged by a demented percussionist.
Downstairs, Emma was taping up the last few presents and arranging them under the tree, which although barely shoulder-high on Rose seemed to take up half the floorspace. I held down paper points while she taped them: books, knitting wool and some expensive-looking makeup for Miriam, books, craft supplies and a reprinted early-twentieth-century book of paper dolls and paper villages to cut out and assemble for Rose.
‘Will she play with those?’ I asked. I could see the appeal – rose-wreathed cottages and frilled pinafores, even a paper kitten on a patchwork cushion – but not necessarily the appeal to Rose.
‘I think she’ll enjoy the cutting out and assemblage.’
Yeah, I thought, and then they’ll sit in her room not being played with but being hand-made and pretty and therefore too precious to throw away. It doesn’t matter. They bring pleasure. One of the cottages opened to display a Christmas scene, a tree decorated with candy sticks and candles, cards over a mantelpiece where a log fire grew flames in autumn shades.
‘I thought I’d make that fig and poppy-seed challah,’ I said. ‘For tomorrow’s breakfast. And we can take the rest of it on our walk for when Rose needs a snack.’
Which is usually about fifteen minutes after leaving the car.
‘How perfectly appropriate. You can leave it to rise while you go to Midnight Mass.’
The challah dough did indeed prove while I stood in the Cathedral contemplating the dark shadows of Hutton’s angels huge on the walls, while I rose to my feet and sang with the congregation and the organ. Yea, Lord, we greet thee, born this happy morning. Before I went to bed I plaited the loaf, following the photos in the book because I had never seen my mother do it, because I had never seen the Shabbat candles lit on a Friday night or heard the blessing said. Did you ever think of converting, I would have asked my mother, did you ever think that raising me Jewish could have mollified Dad’s ancestral voices? Did you – perhaps as the sense of doom became a wall rushing towards you and the waters closed over your head – understand that without you, the rest of Dad’s life would be passed in exile from the diaspora, in double alienation? I covered the loaf with a clean tea towel and left it to rise again; you cannot mend history by cooking.
I did not then steal into the girls’ rooms to fill their stockings as parents all over Britain were doing at that moment, and I did not wake early to butter a turkey and put it in the oven. We slept late, breakfasted slowly, and Rose, it turned out, knew enough of the art of deferred gratification to tolerate at least the first three-quarters of a walk along the canal before we returned to presents, to a modest lunch and later a dinner requiring no outrageous labours of anyone. We lit the pudding three times because the blue flames, really, were the point; no-one wanted to eat more than a token spoonful, a secular communion with everyone else in these isles gathered around their tables with the curtains drawn and wrapping paper littering the floor.
simile for fudge ice-cream
Miriam and her friends were too old to be excited by the fact of staying awake until midnight on New Year’s Eve and not interested in, or maybe just not invited to, the kind of parties they would be attending in two years’ time. (Take your epipen, Mimi, and wear your medic-alert bracelet whether it goes with your outfit or not, call me at any hour of the night rather than get into a minicab or a car driven by someone who’s been drinking, or walking home when you’re drunk and it’s cold, or staying somewhere you wouldn’t stay if you were either sober or old enough to pay for a proper taxi. Don’t take drugs, not even the ones your mother and I took when we were your age, don’t incapacitate yourself with drink, but if you do, call me and I will come and I will never be angry, only grateful for the opportunity to keep you safe.) Ask your friends round here, we said, you can make pizzas, watch a film, if their parents agree you can have champagne at midnight. Are you going to be here, she asked, as if our being in our own house were an unusual and embarrassing course of action, as if we were likely to pay for babysitting on New Year’s Eve. As if we might still be the kind of people who would voluntarily relinquish hours in the company of our children, of a girl who in the best case would be leaving us in three years’ time. It crossed my mind now sometimes to wonder how Emma told herself the story of the girls’ pre-school years, whether she ever wished she had not hurried back to work before either of them sat up, ate solid food, pronounced their first words. (Not, in either case, a flattering ‘dada’ but, in both cases, ‘no’ which is all a baby really needs, and the basis of every useful utterance for weeks to come. No coat, no pushchair, no bath, no seatbelt, no.) I wondered whether she ever wished she had understood then what I believe she saw now: the clichés that turn out, in the face of death, to be the truth.
Rose and I made another chocolate cake and tried to ice it before it had fully cooled so that some of the icing ran off the edge, like a mudslide, and some soaked into the cake, and then Mimi tried to redeem it with hundreds-and-thousands and then Emma tried to redeem that with buttercream until Sophie observed that the overall effect resembled a cow-pat from a cow that had been eating polystyrene balls. A cow wouldn’t eat polystyrene balls, Rose said, and if it did they wouldn’t make it through four stomachs with the pretty colours intact, not that she’d ever seen polystyrene in pretty colours, and Sophie said she didn’t mean it literally and Rose said they’d done similes at school and a simile should still make sense. I suggested fudge ice-cream to go with the cake and caught Mimi’s eye while she was still putting together a bovine and/or digestive simile for fudge ice-cream. Rose fell asleep on the sofa before eleven and couldn’t be fully woken an hour later, Sophie said something that made Charlotte cry while they were all up in Mimi’s room and since Charlotte’s parents didn’t want her to have even a very weak Buck’s Fizz, we left the champagne in the fridge rather than upset her again. Ordinariness. Ordinary children having ordinary feelings about ordinary things. Normal life very nearly indistinguishable from the version of normality in which people keep breathing as a matter of course.
But not quite.
clinical observation
Some days later, Emma returned to work and I took the girls to the Respiratory Medicine Clinic, where they had appointments two months earlier than originally offered because Emma had told me to phone every Monday and Thursday to ask about cancellations. Familiar now with hospital canteens, I packed lunches. Familiar now with outpatient clinic
s, where they order several patients to arrive at the same time and then see them in an order that cannot be as arbitrary as it appears, I packed books and paper and pens for the girls, assembling a small bag for each of them so that they could feel ownership and control of some discrete thing, and all this reminded me of plane journeys. We would fly again, I thought, maybe even, with my income this year, this summer.
They started with Miriam, two nurses taking her weight and height and shouting the numbers across the corridor, past the chairs where people waited. Don’t you think, Mimi said, that for some girls actually having your weight announced like that might be quite upsetting? Especially if you’re weighing people with their coats and shoes on so the numbers are going to be high? Well, said the nurse, now someone’s not backward about coming forward, no lack of confidence there. Mimi looked to me. No, I should have said, we’re lucky, she’s assertive and straightforward and not, by the way, rude; we’re blessed with a girl who will speak on behalf of those who don’t share her confidence and she’s also, on this occasion, right. Oh, I said, hey, you’ve grown, you’ll be overtaking me before long. A manifestation of the miraculous resurrection of the cells in her body that had stopped and begun to die a few weeks earlier. Me too, said Rose, I’ve grown, I know because I need new school shoes for tomorrow. Right, I said, OK, I suppose we’d better go to the shoe shop on the way home, would have been helpful if you’d mentioned that earlier.
We waited. I watched the other families, mostly of course mothers and children because mostly of course the dads were at work. Or had never been around, or had stopped being around, would never know the daytime world of children and women. The waiting, the passing of the time, the knowledge that children and women can always wait, have nothing better to do, not until the school run. Most of the mums were in rapt communion with their phones, either immersed in the lives of people more active than themselves or reporting on their own passivity. Still waiting, over an hour, kids fretful. Who would care for second-hand boredom? The children fiddled with their bodies, as pent-up children will, picked their noses, fingered their ears, bit their nails. Sit still, will you. Can you not just sit there, just for a minute. Just let me do this and then I’ll—The smaller children pressed the buttons on plastic toys that made strange exclamations in American accents and sang in synthesised voices that became more sinister with repetition. There were no windows, not even a view of brick walls and sky. It was too hot, and there was a heaviness in the air, a smell of bleach and putrefaction, that made it seem a different gas from the one outside, as if hospitals had their own elements. Boredom, for example, and fear. Come on, I wanted to say to the girls as I grabbed their hands, let’s run for the airport, let’s go see some big skies in Wyoming and Montana, let’s hop on a train to London and hang out under the great dome at the British Museum, let’s get in the car and follow signs for The North. I’ll buy you lobster and chips, knickerbocker glories, candyfloss in purple and green. I’ll buy you rainbow-striped jumpers and T-shirts with swearing on the front, patent boots and blue hair dye.