I Don't Know How She Does It

by Allison Pearson

  I did enroll in a prenatal class but could never make it there for the 7:30 start. Ended up going to a birthing weekend in Stoke Newington run by Beth: oat biscuits, whale music, a pelvis made out of a coat hanger and a baby from a stocking pulled over a tennis ball. Beth invited us to have a conversation with our vaginas. I said I wasn’t on speaking terms with mine and she thought I was joking. Laugh like a moose down a well.

  Richard loathed the class. He couldn’t believe he had to take his shoes off, but he liked the bit with the stopwatch. You could swear he was going to be officiating at the Monaco Grand Prix.

  “Knowing you, Kate,” he said, “you’ll have the fastest contractions in history.”

  Beth said if you did those panting little breaths she taught us it was a way of mastering the pain. So I practiced them religiously. I practiced them secularly—at checkouts, in the bath, before bed. I didn’t know.

  My waters broke on the escalator at Bank, splashing the Burberry of a Japanese futures analyst who apologized profusely. I canceled my client lunch on the mobile and took a cab straight to the hospital. They offered me an epidural, but I didn’t take it. I was the bitch who had endangered her baby’s brain development; not having drugs was my way of showing how sorry I was, showing the baby there was something its mother would bear for it. There was an ocean of pain and I dived into it again and again. The water was as hard as wood. It smacked you like a wave hitting a deck, and each time you got to your feet it smacked you again.

  After twenty-five hours of labor, Rich put the stopwatch down and asked the midwife if we could see a consultant. Now. Down in the operating theater, during my emergency cesarean, I heard the surgeon say, “Nothing to worry about, this will feel a bit like I’m doing the washing-up in your tummy.” It didn’t. It felt like the baby was an oak being pulled up by the roots from claggy November earth: tug and wrench and tug again. Finally, one of the junior doctors climbed onto the operating table, straddled me and yanked her out by the heels. Held her up like a catch, a thing from the sea, a mermaid marbled with blood. A girl.

  Over the next few days a number of bouquets arrived, but the biggest came from Edwin Morgan Forster. It was the kind of baroque arrangement that can only be commanded by war memorials or a City expense account. There were priapic thistles, five feet high, and giant lilies that filled the air with their pepper and made the baby sneeze. A card was attached with a message written by a florist who couldn’t spell: One down, free to go!

  God, I hated those flowers: the way they stole our air, hers and mine. I gave them to the day midwife, who slung them over her shoulder and took them home to Harlesden on her scooter.

  After thirty-six hours, the night midwife—Irish, softer, more musical than her daylight counterpart—asked if she could take baby from me so I could get some rest. When I protested, she said, “Part of being a good mum, Katharine, is having enough energy to cope.” And she wheeled away my daughter, who furled and unfurled those frondlike hands in her little Perspex aquarium.

  Headlong, I fell down a mine shaft of exhaustion. It could have been hours later—it felt like seconds—that I heard her crying. Up till that moment, I didn’t know I knew my baby’s cry, but when I heard it I knew I would always know it, would be able to pick it out from any other cry in the world. From somewhere down a brown corridor, she summoned me. Hitching the catheter over one arm and guarding my stitches with the other, I started to hobble towards her, guided by that sonar which had come as a free gift with motherhood. By the time I got to the nursery, she had stopped yelling and was staring, enthralled, at a paper ceiling lantern. I have never experienced joy and fear in such a combination before: impossible to tell where the pain stopped and the love began.

  “You’ll have to name her,” the smiling midwife chided. “We can’t keep calling her baby, it’s not right.”

  I’d thought about Genevieve but it suddenly seemed too big for the intended owner. “Emily was my grandmother’s name. She always made me feel safe.”

  “Oh, Emily’s lovely—let’s try it.”

  So we tried it and she turned her head towards her name, and it was settled.

  Three weeks later, James Entwhistle rang and offered me a job in strategy, a nothing job going nowhere. I accepted it gratefully and put down the phone. I would kill him later. Later, I would kill all of them. But first I had to bathe my daughter.

  Nine weeks to the day of the cesarean, I was back in the office. That first morning my mind was so disconnected that I actually dialed a number and asked if I could speak to Kate Reddy. A man said he didn’t think Kate was back yet, and he was right. I reckon she wasn’t really back for a year, and the old Kate, the one Before Children, never returned. But she did a great impersonation of being back, and maybe only a mother could have seen through her disguise.

  Five days later, work told me I had to fly to Milan and I was still breast-feeding. All weekend, I tried to get Emily to accept a bottle. Coaxed and pleaded and finally paid a woman from Fulham a hundred quid to come and wean my daughter off me. I can remember the baby yodeling, lungs raw with fury, and Richard standing out in the garden smoking.

  “She’ll take the bottle when she’s really starving,” the woman explained and, yes, she herself would prefer cash. Sometimes I think Emily has never really forgiven me.

  On the drive to the airport, the cab radio started playing that Stevie Wonder song, “Isn’t She Lovely?” The one where you hear the baby crying at the start. And my blouse was soaked suddenly with milk.

  I didn’t know.

  33

  The Note

  11:59 P.M. SHERBOURNE HOTEL, NEW YORK. Unbelievable. Plane got in on time and I took a cab to the Herriot off Wall Street. The plan was to swot up for tomorrow’s presentation and get a decent night’s rest before strolling across the road to the World Financial Center. I should have known. The reception clerk—hopelessly young, trying to give himself a little authority in a cheap shiny blazer—was having trouble meeting my eye. Finally he said, “I’m afraid we have a problem, Ms. Reddy.” A conference. Overbooking. “I am happy to offer you free accommodation at the Sherbourne—midtown, great location, opposite our world-renowned Museum of Modern Art.”

  “Sounds delightful, but I’m here to do business, not get a headache staring at early Cubists.”

  Ended up yelling at him, of course. Totally unacceptable, frequent customer, blah blah blah....Could see his eyes darting around for a superior to save him from the crazy Brit. As though I were mad—and I’m not mad, am I? It’s these people driving you crazy with their inefficiency, wasting my precious time.

  The manager was incredibly apologetic but there was absolutely nothing he could do. So by the time I get to the new hotel, it’s nearly midnight. Called Richard, who was ready with a list of queries. Thank God Paula’s better, so we don’t have to get a temp. It’s Emily’s first day back at school tomorrow.

  Had I done the name tapes?

  Yes.

  Had I got new gym shoes?

  Yes. (In her navy gym bag on the peg under the stairs.)

  Where would he find her reading books?

  Red library folder, third shelf of bookcase.

  Had I bought a new coat? (The old one now comes up to her waist.)

  Not yet; she will have to make do with Gap raincoat till I get back.

  Then I dictated the contents of her lunch box—pita bread, tuna and corn, no cheese; she’s decided she hates cheese—and told him to remember the check for ballet, the amount’s written in the diary. And he needs to give Paula money to get Ben some new trousers, he’s just had a growth spurt. Richard tells me that Em was upset going to bed; she said she wanted Mummy to take her to school because it’s a new teacher.

  Why does he feel he needs to share that with me when there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it? Says he’s had an exhausting day.

  “Tell me about it,” I say back, and ching down the phone.

  No time to go through notes for my present
ation, so I will have to wing it. Tomorrow’s shaping up to be a total nightmare.

  To: Kate Reddy

  From: Debra Richardson

  Just got yrs to say yr canceling lunch. AGAIN. The first 49 times it was funny. I realize you have the most disgustingly demanding job on the planet, but if we don’t make time for friendship what hope is there?

  Are we next going to meet after our deaths? How is the afterlife looking for you, Kate?

  * * *

  Oh, hell. No time to reply.

  WEDNESDAY, 8:33 A.M. Been standing outside the hotel for at least fifteen minutes now. It’s impossible to get a cab and the journey downtown will take at least twenty-five. Am going to be late. Still, my senses quicken at the prospect of seeing Jack tonight; it’s months since I last saw him and I’m having trouble calling his face to mind. When I think of him all I get is a broad smile and a general impression of ease and happiness.

  It’s a fabulous morning, one of those glittering New York days that hurt your heart. Incredible rain last night has given everything a remarkable windscreen-wiped clarity. As we reach the bottom of Fifth, I see the buildings of the financial district quiver with the slight watery shimmer that comes from the play of condensation and light and glass.

  8:59 A.M. Brokers Dickinson Bishop are on the twenty-first floor. My stomach does an Olga Korbut flick-flack in the elevator on the way up. Gerry, a beaming fellow with a broad Irish face and straggly red sideburns, meets me at the landing. I tell him I need forty-five minutes and a place to show slides.

  “Sorry, you got five, lady. Things are pretty crazy in there.”

  He heaves open a thick wooden door and unleashes the sounds of an average day at the Coliseum, plus phones. Men bawling into receivers, fighting to make themselves heard, or shouting out instructions across the room. Just as I’m wondering whether to make a run for it, a message comes over the PA: “OK, listen up, you guys, in two minutes Miss Kate Reddy of London, England, will be talking to you about international investing.”

  About seventy brokers gather round, mastiff-necked New Yorkers in those terrible shirts with the white collars and the marquee stripes. They lean back against the desks, arms crossed, legs apart, the way that kind of man stands. Some carry on trading but pull down their headpieces to lend me half an ear. There is no way I’m going to be seen or heard down here, so I take a split-second decision to stand on a desk and shout my wares.

  “Good morning, gentlemen. I’m here to tell you why you must buy my fund!”

  Cheers, whistles. The closest I’ll ever get to being a pole dancer, I guess.

  “Hey, miss, anyone ever tell you you look like Princess Di?”

  “Is your stock as good as your legs?”

  What strikes me about these Masters of the Universe is how hopelessly, helplessly boyish they are. In 1944 they would have been landing on the beaches of Normandy, and here they are gathered round me as if I were their company commander.

  I give them the big speech about the money—the way it’s awake when I’m asleep, the way it moves around the world, its amazing power.

  Then they fire questions at me. “Whaddaya think about Russia, ma’am? Isn’t Russia money the pits?” “Did you see a Euro yet?”

  It’s gone well, unbelievably well. At the lift, a grinning Gerry tells me the guys normally only get that fired up for a Knicks game. I should really go back to the hotel and pick up my messages, but I walk for a while along Wall Street, feeling plugged into the power supply. On the corner of Maiden Lane and Broadway, I hail a cab and take it uptown to Barney’s for some post-traumatic shopping.

  The store has an immediate consoling effect. I take the little lift to the top floor, where I spot an evening dress. I don’t need an evening dress. I try it on. Black and floaty with a fragile braid of diamante fixed down each side and in a plunging V under the bust, it’s the kind of dress they once danced the Charleston in. I just about have the figure for it; I just don’t have the life. My life is the wrong size; there’s no room in it for a dress this beautiful. But isn’t that part of the thrill, buying a dress and hoping the life to go with it will follow soon like a must-have accessory? When the girl at the till hands me the chit to sign, I don’t even check the amount.

  3:00 P.M. The hotel room is like a hundred I’ve stayed in before. The wallpaper is beige embossed on beige; the curtains, in bold contrast, look like an explosion in a herbaceous border. I check the minibar for emergency chocolate and then the drawer of the bedside table: there is the Gideon Bible and—a more contemporary touch—a collection of sayings from the World’s Great Religions.

  I check my watch. The time difference with England is five hours. If I call now, it should be around the kids’ bedtime. I’m expecting to hear Richard’s voice, but it’s Paula at the other end. She says Rich has asked her to stay over a couple of nights until I get back and left a note for me that he made her promise to deliver in person.

  Where the hell is he? I ask Paula to open the note and read it to me. Just look at the time. I think of all the things my husband could be doing to help out while I’m not there as our nanny starts to read his words aloud.

  “I’ve been trying to talk to you for a while now, but I find it increasingly hard to get your attention.”

  “Yes, but does it say what time he’ll be back?”

  “Kate, can you hear me? Are you listening?”

  “Of course I can hear you, Paula.”

  “No, that’s Richard. In the note. He says, Kate, can you hear me? Are you listening?”

  “Oh, right, sorry. Go on.”

  “I am so sorry, my darling, that we have reached this terrible imp—”

  “What imp?”

  “—ass.”

  Oh, for heaven’s sake. “How do you spell it?”

  Paula announces each letter carefully: “I-m-p-a-s-s-e.”

  “Oh, impasse. I see. It’s, you know, it’s French for...well, anyway, what else?”

  Paula sounds dubious. “I’m not sure I should be doing this, Kate.”

  “No, please carry on. I have to know what his plans are.”

  “He says, If you need to get hold of me I will be staying at David and Maria’s for a few nights until I find a place of my own. He says, Don’t worry, I’ll still go and pick Emily up from school.”

  So it really can happen, then. In real life. A thing you’ve seen in bad TV drama and turned over because it’s so implausible. Only this time there is no turning over and maybe no turning back. One moment the world is pretty much as it should be—rocky and a little barren, perhaps, but still the world as you know it—and then suddenly you have the sensation of the ground giving way beneath your feet. My husband, Richard the rational, Richard the reliable, Richard the rock, has left me. Rich—who in the letter he gave me the day before our wedding wrote I’m Ever and you’re Reddy; here’s to long life, my darling—has walked out and I have been paying so little attention that our nanny has ended up breaking the news.

  During the long pause, Paula’s breathing has got heavier; there is a wheeze of anxiety coming down the line. “Kate,” she asks, “are you OK?”

  “Yes, I’m fine. Please, Paula, sleep in our bed”—as I say the words it occurs to me that it may be my bed now, not ours—“the children go there first in the morning. I know this is asking an awful lot, Paula, but if you could just hold the fort. And if you can please tell Emily and Ben that Mummy will be back as soon as she can tomorrow.”

  Paula doesn’t reply at once, and I think if she lets me down now I don’t know what I’ll do.

  “Is that all right, Paula?”

  “Oh—sorry, Kate, I’ve just seen there’s a PS on the other side. Richard says, I know I can never stop loving you because, believe me, I’ve tried.

  There is no possible reply to that, and into my silence Paula murmurs, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything here. Ben and Em will be fine. It’s going to be all right, Kate, really it is.”

  After I’ve
put the phone down, I forget how to breathe for a few seconds. Suddenly the mechanics of taking in air seem complicated and strenuous; I have to heave my diaphragm up and then pump my chest out, heave and pump again.

  When I’m a little steadier, I call Jack and leave a message on his mobile canceling dinner. Then I get undressed and take a shower. The towels are that hopeless Italian kind; thin and frugal as an altar cloth, they pat the water round your skin rather than absorbing it. I need a towel that can hug me.

  Catching sight of myself in the bathroom mirror, I am startled to see that I look much as I did the last time I looked. Why isn’t my hair falling out? Why aren’t my eyes weeping blood? I think of my children asleep in their beds and of how far I am from them, how unbelievably far. From this distance, I see my little family as a small encampment on a hillside and the winds are lashing round them and I have to be there to tie everything down. I have to be there.

  The water is wide, I cannot get o’er,

  And neither have I wings to fly.

  I climb into bed, between the stiff white sheets, and move my hand over my body. My body and, for so long, Richard’s body. With this body I thee worship. I try to think of the last time I saw him. Saw him properly, I mean, not just the way you see a blur in the rearview mirror. In the past few months, I go out and he takes over or he leaves and I take over. We swap instructions in the hall. We say Emily has eaten a good lunch, so don’t worry too much about her tea. We say Ben needs an early night because he wouldn’t take a nap this afternoon. We say bowel movements have been successful or are still pending and perhaps some prunes would help. Or else we leave notes. Sometimes we barely meet each other’s eyes. Kate and Richard, like a relay team where each runner suspects the other of being the weaker link, but the main thing is to keep running round the track so the baton can be exchanged and the race can go on and on.