I Don't Know How She Does It

by Allison Pearson

  The woman who answers the door is well into middle age, with a listless pageboy haircut, although she is three years and one month younger than me, a fact I will never forget because my very first memory is of being carried into my parents’ bedroom to see her the night she was born. The wallpaper was green; the baby was red and wrapped in a white shawl I had watched my mother knit in front of the stove. She made funny snuffling sounds, and when you gave her your finger she wouldn’t let go. She was called a sister. I told Mum her name should be Valerie after my favorite TV presenter. So, thinking they might be spared some jealousy if I had an investment in the new arrival, my parents christened her Julie Valerie Reddy and she has never let me forget it.

  “You’d best come in, then,” my sister says. Spotting the car over my shoulder, she tuts and says, “They’ll have the tires off that. Do you want to bring it up the drive? I can clear this stuff.”

  “No, it’ll be fine really.”

  We squeeze through the narrow hall with its white wrought-iron stand overflowing with spider plants.

  “Plants are doing well, Julie,” I say.

  “Can’t kill them if you try.” She shrugs. “There’s tea in the pot, do you want a cup? Steven, get your feet off the settee, your Auntie Kath’s here from London.”

  A good-looking small boy trapped in the body of a lunk, Steven lollops through to greet me while his mum fetches some cups.

  I am bringing the news that my husband has left me as a gift to my sister, a peace offering. Julie, who grew up wearing my clothes, who used to overhear teachers comparing her with the other Reddy girl, the one who got to Cambridge, and who has never ever had anything nicer than I have in her whole life. Well, now her big sister has failed to keep her man and in this, the oldest contest of all, I can concede defeat.

  “Place is a tip,” Julie says by way of description, not apology, before she clears some magazines off the settee and kicks Steven’s soccer kit towards the door.

  She sits me down in the armchair next to the gas fire. “Come on, then, what’s up with you?”

  “Richard’s left me,” I say, and it’s the first time I’ve cried since Paula told me on the phone. There were no tears when I explained to Emily that Daddy would be living in a different house for a while because there was no way I wanted to share my distress with a six-year-old whose idea of men is founded on the prince in Sleeping Beauty, and no tears either when, three nights ago, Richard and I had a civilized exchange on the doorstep about arrangements for the children. We are always discussing arrangements for the children, only the conversation usually ends with me running out the door and saying I have to go; this time it was Richard who walked down the steps and away, yanking over his shoulders the gray sweater I bought him to match his eyes two birthdays ago.

  “Well, a right useless bugger he turned out to be,” Julie says. “All you’ve got on your plate, and he hops it.” Without my noticing, she has knelt down in front of me and has an arm around my neck.

  “It’s my fault.”

  “Like hell it is.”

  “No, it is, it is; he left a note for me.”

  “A note? Oh, that’s great, that is. Bloody men. Either they’re too clever to feel owt or they’re like our Neil and they’re too thick to say owt.”

  “Neil’s not thick.”

  When Julie laughs, the little girl I once knew is there in the room—full of fun and not afraid. “No, but you’d have more clue how the hamster’s doing than Neil, quite frankly. Has he got another woman, then, your Richard?”

  It hadn’t even occurred to me. “No, I don’t think so, I think it’s me that’s another woman. The one he married isn’t there anymore. He said he couldn’t get through to me, that I don’t listen to him.”

  Julie smooths my hair. “Well, you’re working too hard to keep him in pencils.”

  “He’s a very good architect.”

  “It’s you who keeps the show on the road, though, paying all the bills and whatnot.”

  “I think that’s hard for him, Jules.”

  “Aye, well if the world was run according to what men found hard to take we’d still be walking round in chastity belts, wouldn’t we? Are you having sugar?”

  No. “Yes.”

  A little later, Julie and I go for a walk up to the recreation ground at the top of the estate. The path is choked with ferns and there is a burnt-out Fiesta threaded with foxgloves. When we get to the swings, we find a couple of schoolgirl mothers sitting there on the bench. Teenage pregnancy ranks as a hobby round here. These two are pretty typical: waxy with tiredness and caked in makeup, they look like cadavers with their young jumping up and down on them, full of rude life.

  Julie tells me that the breathlessness and the pains in our mother’s chest date from a few months back when a couple of Dad’s creditors turned up at the door. Mum explained that Joseph Reddy didn’t live there anymore, had not in fact lived there for many years, but the men came in anyway and looked over the furniture, the carriage clock, the silver frames I’d given her for the children’s photographs.

  Younger than me and not cursed with the elder child’s desperate need for approval, Julie managed to stay outside the immediate blast area of Dad’s charm and for most of our lives has observed him coldly and without fear of side effects. I tell her about the day he came to see me at the office, and she explodes with indignation.

  “Bloody typical, that is. Not worried about embarrassing you in front of your boss. What does he think he’s playing at?”

  “He’s designed a biodegradable nappy.”

  “Him? He’s never seen a baby’s bum in his life.”

  And we both start to laugh, my sister and I, great snorts of laughter escaping through our mouths and our noses and finally running in tears down our cheeks. From a corner of my coat pocket, I produce a hanky crusty with use; Julie volunteers one in a similar condition but spotted with blood.

  “Emily’s carol concert.”

  “Steven’s rugby match.”

  We turn and look out across the town. Its ugliness is draped in a ludicrous Vivienne Westwood sunset, all knicker-pink tulle and scandalous purples. The skyline is dominated by large chimneys, but only a few are still active—they let out quick small puffs like furtive smokers. “You didn’t give Dad owt, I hope,” Julie says, and, when I don’t reply, “Oh, bloody hell, Kath, you’re a soft touch.”

  “City Ice Maiden,” I announce in my Radio 4 voice.

  “Ice Maiden that melts pretty easily,” snaps my sister. “You’ve got to get over Dad, you know. He’s not worth it. There’s millions of crap dads out there, we’re nothing special. Remember the way he used to send you to the door when they came round asking for the rent money? You remember that, don’t you?”

  “No.”

  “You do remember, I know you do. That’s no way to treat a kid, Kathy, getting them to lie for you. And he thumped Mum when things weren’t going his way.”

  “No.”

  “No? Who was it that went downstairs to distract him when they were beating the shit out of each other? Little girl name of Katharine. Ring any bells?”

  “Jules, what were those ice lollies with the hundreds and thousands on them called?”

  “Don’t change the bloody subject.”

  “Do you remember?”

  “’Course I do. Fabs. But you never had them. Always saved your pocket money and bought the Cornish Mivvi. Mum said you always had to have the best of everything from when you could stand up. ‘Champagne tastes on beer money, that’s our Kath.’ So you went and made the money for champagne, didn’t you?”

  “It’s not that great,” I say, studying my wedding band.

  “Bubbly?” Julie looks at me as though she really wants to know.

  How can I tell my sister that money has improved my life, but it hasn’t deepened it or eased it? “Oh, you spend most of your money trying to buy yourself time to make money to pay for all the things you think you need because you’ve got money.
”

  “Yes, but it’s better than that.” Julie gestures across the recreation ground to the child mothers. She speaks angrily, but when she says it again it sounds like a blessing. “It’s got to be better than that, love.”

  * * *

  THERE WAS A MR. WHIPPY VAN that used to go round our estate playing a hectic version of “Greensleeves.” One day during the summer holidays, Annette and Colin Terry were buying an ice cream from the van when their kitten ran out and got caught in the back wheel. We yelled, but the driver didn’t hear us and the van started pulling away. I remember it was boiling hot—the tarmac was rearing up in the road and it stuck in clumps on the bottom of our sandals like rabbit droppings. And I remember the way Annette screamed and I remember the music and the sense of something infinitely gentle being broken as the wheel spun round.

  The Terrys lived two doors down from us. Carol Terry was the only mother we knew who went out to work. She started off doing some bar work for pin money and soon after she got a full-time job in the accounts office of a metals factory. Dissecting their neighbors over elevenses, my mother and Mrs. Frieda Davies decided that Carol spent her wages on going to the hairdresser and other things that came under the category of “enjoying herself.” They couldn’t have been more delighted when Annette failed her Eleven-plus. Well, what can you expect with no one at home to get the poor child a cooked tea?

  Me, I remember Carol wearing lipstick and laughing a lot and seeming younger than my mother, whose birthday she shared.

  The day of the accident, Mum heard our screams and ran out and took us all inside while the Mr. Whippy man tried to clear up the mess. I had dropped my strawberry Cornish Mivvi on the road. Mum calmed Annette down, made orange squash for everyone and found Colin a plaster (he had no graze or cut, but he needed a plaster). And then she gave the Terrys their tea while we all waited for their mum to get home from work.

  Carol arrived late and flustered with shopping bags. She had got Mum’s phone message, but she had been unable to get away any quicker. When I think back to how it was when Carol came into the kitchen, and us all sitting at the Formica table, I can remember the heat hanging there like wet towels and Colin spilling his squash and how Annette wouldn’t look at her mum, but I can’t remember if it went unsaid, the thing everyone was thinking.

  Did anyone say it? “But if you’d been here, the kitten wouldn’t be dead.”

  35

  No Answers

  6:35 P.M. “And, furthermore, there is a good deal of evidence that mixed gender teams are critical to effective team functioning.”

  “Jesus, Katie, I never thought I’d hear you say anything like that.” Rod Task is unimpressed, and he’s not the only one; the place is full of people who’d rather be in the wine bar than being addressed by me in my new capacity as diversity coordinator. I feel like a vegan at an abbatoir.

  Chris Bunce lies back in his chair with his feet up on the conference table. “I’m all for mixing genders,” he says, stifling a yawn.

  “Can we get the hell out of here now?” asks Rod.

  “No,” says Celia Harmsworth. “We need to produce a mission statement.”

  As the room groans, there is an answering thrum from the phone in my pocket. A text message from Paula.

  Ben ill come now

  “I’ve got to go,” I say. “Urgent call coming in from the States. Don’t wait for me.”

  I call Paula from the cab on the way home. She fills me in. Ben fell downstairs. “You know that dodgy bit of carpet near the top of the stairs by his room, Kate?”

  Please God, no. “Yes, I do.”

  “Well, he caught his foot somehow and he fell and bumped his head this morning. It came up a bit, but he seemed as right as rain. Then he was sick a bit ago and he went all limp.”

  I tell Paula to keep him warm. Or should she be keeping him cool? Numb, my fingers feel like stumps as I dial Richard’s mobile number. I pray for it to be him, but it’s the voice of that damned announcer, saying please leave a message.

  “Hello. I don’t want to leave a message. I want you to be here. It’s me, Kate. Ben’s had a fall and I’m going to take him to the hospital. I’ll have my phone with me.”

  Next, I call Pegasus Cars and ask for Winston to be waiting when I get home. Need to get Ben to hospital.

  * * *

  8:23 P.M. How long is too long to wait for your child to be seen? Ben and I are told to take a seat in the rows of gray plastic chairs. Next to us are a couple of public schoolboys who are off their heads on something. Ecstasy, probably. “I’ve got no feelin’ in my fingers,” wails one over and over, pretending he has no idea why. I don’t care: I want to tell him to get back to whatever overprivileged swamp he came from and expire quietly. The idea that this kind of jerk is wasting hospital time is so disgusting I want to slap him.

  Winston, who has gone to park Pegasus, returns and approaches the reception desk. Seeing me drained, he stands in and becomes the pushy one. “Excuse me, miss, we got a baby here needs some attention. Thank you kindly.”

  After an eternity—maybe five minutes—Ben and I are ushered in to see the doctor. Half-slept and unshaven since last Thursday, the young houseman is seated in a cubicle cut off from the busy corridor by a thin apricot curtain. I start to explain Ben’s symptoms, but he silences me with a hand while he studies the notes on the desk in front of him.

  “Hmmm, I see, I see. And how long has the little boy had a temperature, Mrs. Shattock?”

  “Well, I’m not entirely sure. He was very hot up till an hour ago.”

  “And earlier today?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The doctor moves to put his hand on Ben’s forehead, who mews slightly as I relax my grip on him. “Sickness, vomiting in the past twenty-four hours?”

  “I think he was sick yesterday afternoon, but Paula thought—she’s my nanny—we thought it was just a bad tummy.”

  “Bowel movement since then?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know.”

  “So you didn’t see him at all yesterday?”

  “Yes. No. I mean, I try to get home in time to put him in bed, but not last night, no.”

  “And not the night before.”

  “No, I had to go to Frankfurt. You see, Ben fell down the stairs this morning and he seemed to be fine, but then Paula got really worried and he became limp, so—”

  “Yes, I see.” I don’t think he sees. I must try to talk calmly and slowly so he sees.

  “Can you undress baby for me?”

  I slip him out of his Thomas the Tank sleep suit, undo the poppers at the crotch of his vest and pull it over his head. The skin is so fair it’s almost translucent and through the rack of ribs you can see the tiny bellows of his lungs.

  “And the baby’s weight. What does he weigh now, Mrs. Shattock?”

  “I’m not entirely sure. He must be about twenty-eight or thirty pounds, I think.”

  “When did you last have him weighed?”

  “Well, he had his eighteen-month check, but you know he’s my second and you’re not as worried about things like weight with the second so long as they’re—”

  “And at the eighteen-month check, his weight was?”

  “As I said, I’m not sure, but Paula said he was absolutely fine.”

  “And Benjamin’s date of birth—you are familiar with that, I presume?”

  The insult is so biting that the tears jump to my eyes as if I had walked out into snow. I do really well in tests. I know the answers, but I don’t know these answers and I should know. I know I should know.

  Ben was born on the twenty-fifth of January. He is very strong and very happy and he never cries. Only if he is tired or if his teeth hurt. And his favorite book is Owl Babies and his favorite song is “The Wheels on the Bus” and he is my dearest sweetest only son and if anything happens to him I will kill you and then I will burn down your hospital and then I will kill myself. “The twenty-fifth of January.”

 
“Thank you, Mrs. Shattock. Now, little man, let’s take a look at that chest.”

  12:17 A.M. I don’t know how I would have managed without Winston. He stayed all the time with us at the hospital, fetching sweet tea for me from the machine, holding Ben when I had to go to the loo and only showing any sign of upset when I offered to pay him for his time. As he helps me and the sleeping baby out of the cab, I can just make out a figure on the steps of our house. I think that if it’s a mugger I won’t be responsible for my actions, but a few steps nearer and I realize that it’s Momo. Can’t bear to see anyone from work. Not now.

  “Whatever it is, surely it could have waited till morning?” I say, stabbing the key in the lock.

  “I’m sorry, Kate.”

  “Sorry doesn’t really cover it, I’m afraid. I’ve just got back with Ben from the hospital. He’s been under observation. It’s been a long night. If the Hang Seng fell 10 percent, I don’t give a shit, frankly, and you can tell Rod that in those precise words....Oh, God, what is it?”

  In the blade of light that the opening door casts into the street, I suddenly see that Momo has been crying. It’s a shock to find that perfect face puffed up with misery.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, and can say nothing else because speaking has triggered a fresh bout of crying. I get her inside and sit her in the kitchen while I take Ben up to his cot. A viral rash, the doctor called it. Unconnected to his fall; we just have to be sure to keep baby’s fluids up for the next twenty-four hours and keep an eye on his temperature. Turning the corner to the flight of stairs that leads up to the kids’ rooms, I see the patch of worn carpet where Ben tripped. I hate that carpet, I hate the fact I didn’t get a quote for a new one, I hate the fact that finding the time to call someone out to measure my stairs seemed like an impossible luxury when it was a necessity all along. Triage—the order of urgency—I got it wrong. Things that could harm the children come first; everything else can wait. Looking in on Emily, I find her curled around Paula, who has fallen asleep on the bed. I go in and switch off the Cinderella light and cover them both with the duvet.