The Gingerbread Man
Saturdays like this one weren’t meant for working. The sun hung between wisps of cloud on the first windless day in months. A peal of childish laughter lifted her eyes to the window. In the manicured back garden, between the lap pool she never swam in and the espaliered pear tree, the fruit of which she had never tasted, Geoff and Timmy were playing on the swing set. With each push, Timmy swooped through the air, his toddler hands clutching the chain with a combination of joy and thrill, sure in the knowledge his father would catch him before he fell, his plump-cheeked face alight with excitement. She wanted to put away the paperwork and join them, feel the grass blades prickle at her bare feet, have Timmy smile at her like that.
It wasn’t as if Sophie hadn’t tried. The spicy scent of ginger had lured her out of the office and into the kitchen earlier in the day, where she’d found them both dusted with flour and laughing as they baked.
‘What are you making?’ she’d asked.
Timmy had looked up at her and then sideways at his father. Geoff gave an imperceptible nod that could have been mistaken for encouragement in a different house.
‘We making jinga men.’ Timmy pressed a floury thumb into the dough.
‘Wow! Gingerbread men. I haven’t eaten one in ages.’
‘Run, run, as fast as you can,’ Timmy sang.
She rubbed at the goosebumps rising on her arms. She hated that song.
‘Can’t cash me, I’m jinga man.’
Three biscuits, legs and arms stubby, lay cooling on the baking tray.
‘And who are these?’ she’d asked.
Timmy pointed with a chubby finger. ‘Daddy and me. And you!’
Sophie felt the pinprick of dismissal in you, made herself ignore it. ‘Well, I might put my work away for the day and join you both. Looks like fun.’ Her tone sounded forced, even to her own ears.
‘I thought you were on a deadline.’ Without looking at her, Geoff picked up the icing bag and began to decorate.
‘It can wait.’
‘You don’t want to let things slide.’ He looked her in the eye. ‘We can’t afford it.’
‘I never intended work to be everything, Geoff. You know that. It was always supposed to be a temporary thing.’ She took a slow breath. ‘I’m part of this family too.’
The child biscuit gained stripey shorts, like Timmy’s, and a smile of powder blue.
‘We don’t need Mummy here, do we, Tim? We’re doing just fine.’
Timmy nodded his head decisively.
The daddy biscuit grew wide blue eyes and a big pink heart in the middle of his chest.
Sophie had studied Geoff then, this man who was her husband. His wide shoulders, the strength of the line of muscle in his arms beneath his T-shirt sleeves. ‘I’ve hardly seen Timmy all week.’
Geoff glanced up at her, his smile cold, before turning back to his work.
There was nothing she could say. Any words of protest had died in her throat, pushed aside by a lump, as the mummy biscuit—the you—gained a brittle pink line of a mouth.
Timmy had clung to his father’s leg all the while, setting up the chant which increasingly put her teeth on edge. ‘Daddy come play, Daddy come play.’
She’d avoided Geoff’s smug look and kneeled down beside their son, placing a firm hand on his arm and pushing for eye contact. ‘What about Mummy? Mummy can play too.’ Timmy’s blue eyes, so like his father’s, looked into hers uncertainly, before he dismissed her—‘No!’—and pushed his nose to Geoff’s crisp denim thigh.
Game over.
Now at her desk, watching the two of them, she wondered how she’d let this happen. She should have called a halt at the beginning, in that moment when she had brought Timmy into the outside world with a last desperate push and watched Geoff step forward to the gowned nurse. Right then when he’d said, ‘I’ll take him.’ Right then, she should have said, ‘No, let me hold him first’, instead of lying helpless and exhausted on the hospital bed, feeling the ache on her breast where her baby should have lain, unaware, unprepared that she had just given birth to a battlefield. Would it have made any difference, really? Looking back, Geoff’s possession of their child had begun well before the birth.
He had always been upfront about wanting kids. At the time, his attitude seemed a refreshing change from the commitment-shy men she’d been used to dating. Seduction by a mutual desire to reproduce. And it had been a desire for her. She’d been desperate to become a mother before her biological clock ticked down. She was in white, with a ring on her finger and church bells tolling dense in the air on her thirty-second birthday. They seemed, even to her, the perfect couple. A confetti dream.
Throughout her pregnancy, he’d been attentive. Monitored her sleep patterns and diet, rubbing her feet and choosing the music to play to her swelling abdomen. It bordered on stifling at times. If he came across her resting on the couch, even late in her term, he’d insist on her going out with him for long bracing walks in the autumn air, because it would be healthy for the baby. Never mind about me, she’d thought. When any of her friends mentioned his infiltration into her life, she’d laughed with them despite her discomfort.
Three weeks before her due date, he’d come home and casually announced he’d quit his job with Soames and Partners. He had solid arguments to back himself up. He’d never been fulfilled in the corporate world. He was going to take some time out to spend time with his family, be a real father, and look after his wife and child in a way his own father never did.
‘What about me?’ she’d said, thinking of the loan for the new house he’d pushed for, the lap pool being lowered into the ground as they spoke.
‘It just means you’ll have to go back to work sooner than we planned. I can look after the baby. I’m perfectly capable. It will mean you can concentrate on your career. I’ll look after everything else. You won’t have to worry about anything.’ His stare felt cold where it landed on her shoulder.
‘Or we could both work part-time,’ she’d said. ‘Surely having a baby doesn’t have to mean we give up on our own dreams?’
‘What sort of mother are you?’
It had made her wonder at her capacity as a parent. Geoff, as promised, did everything once Timmy came home. Other than expressing the required amount of milk, she was not really needed. The baby settled for Geoff, the baby smiled for Geoff.
Sophie had gone back to work after six weeks, realising that a sleight of hand had been executed. When a senior partner offered her the opportunity to work pro bono on some of the refugee files, she’d politely declined and asked for something with more billable hours. Her first divorce case had been Shannon vs Shannon, her inner fury channelling itself into the ex–Mrs Shannon—Call me Amanda, please darling, you’ve made me a fortune—who spread the word among her wealthy friends. Her career never looked back.
‘You don’t know how lucky you are’—her mother’s refrain, unchanged to this day—‘to have a man who really cares. Your father only wanted to see you kids when you were already washed and ready for bed. Had no idea the trial it was to get you like that!’ Geoff had cultivated her mother like a farmer reaping corn.
These days, her loneliness felt absolute. Her girlfriends had fallen away, one by one, under Geoff’s withering impatience and his increasing possession of her time. The last girls’ lunch, six months ago, ended when Anna, with the sharp instincts of a friend, had leant across the table and whispered fiercely, ‘Get away from him, Sophie. You can come to me. Just get out.’
‘I can’t.’ Tears had choked her throat with a wash of shame. ‘I can’t leave him.’
Anna sat back. ‘You used to be so strong. Now you let Geoff run your whole life. I don’t understand.’
After that, the lunch had trailed away with increasingly awkward silences, their cool farewell leaving her feeling more alone than ever. Anna hadn’t tried to get in touch since.
It wasn’t something she could explain to anyone without sounding juven
ile and petty. ‘My son loves my husband more than he loves me.’ Or ‘My husband does all the housework and goes through my things.’ Or even, ‘I’m scared.’
Now, Sophie watched as Geoff pointed up at the sky, Timmy following the line of his father’s arm with his eyes. A bank of low cloud had rolled in, signalling an end to the fine weather. She sighed and turned back to the mountain of briefs waiting for her attention, the pages of print swimming before her eyes.
At the office, when she’d returned to work so soon, they hadn’t noticed the extra makeup, the way she’d walked gingerly and startled when Jimmy from accounts came quietly up behind her. Just exclaimed at the huge bunch of roses that arrived that morning by courier, saying how lucky she was. That day, the day after the night before when she’d told him she was leaving. The loving husband and his successful lawyer wife. Looking on, a stranger would not have seen the coldness between them, would not have noticed the terrible sternness in his face or the shine left by tears on hers, the swollen cheekbone. Even leaning in close, they might not have heard her whisper, ‘You scare me, Geoff.’ Might not have noticed the way his hand rose up along her spine, his thumb and forefinger grazing the nape of her neck in a caress, a warning; the bending of his face to hers, an icy kiss where the back of her head joined her vulnerable neck.
‘You know I don’t mean to.’ His breath had felt sticky on her chilled flesh. ‘You just make me so angry sometimes. Timmy is my son. Mine.’ The baby shifted in his sleep, tiny hands making starfish shapes, clutching at nothing. ‘We spend so much time together, he and I. All you ever do is work. You’re a terrible mother, Sophie. The courts would never let you have him.’
Was that a chuckle? Was he laughing at her? She heard the distant sound of an anchor dragging the tide.
‘Besides,’ he’d continued, ‘if you ever left, I’d hunt you down. I’d find you both, and I’d be angry. So angry.’
Outside, the gathering weather blew a sudden squall through the garden, sending both Geoff and Timmy laughing for the safety of the house. A distant door slammed, and she heard a voice singing faintly through the walls.
Run, run, as fast as you can
You can’t catch me
I’m the gingerbread man.
Conversation
The 109 bus wheezed through the wet streets. Lines of rain slid across the glass, the fusty smell of damp clothes in the crowded air, heads bowed to phones. He’d be glad to get off and gain the comfort of home. As the bus turned into his street, he gathered his things and weaved through the standing crowd to wait by the doors for his stop. Another day gone, one day closer to the weekend. He stepped from the bus, relieved to be out in the cold air, and walked head down towards his gate. The hedge needed trimming again, the neglected shrubs bowing their heads, heavy with droplets.
Inside, he hung his hat on the rack by the door and headed for the kitchen. The warm smell of chicken casserole filled the room. He was relieved to see Lila had turned on the slow cooker as he’d asked her to when she came home from school. It would be one less friction to navigate. Everything was tidy; the clock ticked loudly on the wall. Coming home from work used to be a rush of talk, the after-school sitter filling him in on the afternoon, and Lila competing for his attention with drawings and tales of school-day dramas. He had longed for peace when he walked in the door, even for a few moments.
He hadn’t seen it coming, never thought about how fast his daughter would change while he remained the same. One moment she was his little Lila with her hair in messy plaits and a permanently tangled ribbon, and now, overnight, she had become someone else altogether. He missed the bright paintings of rainbows and butterflies on the fridge door. He missed a lot of things.
He showered, changing into old slacks and a cardigan, gratefully leaving the workday behind with his briefcase in the hallway. Lila’s door was closed. It was always closed now. He stopped in the passage but could hear nothing from within.
He knocked. No response. He knocked again.
‘What?’ she said.
‘Dinner in five.’
‘Okay.’
He paused, his hand halfway to the doorknob. No, better not.
He went back to the kitchen, a mixture of loneliness and rejection, and put out forks and knives, salt and pepper, a serving spoon. He retrieved two of the clean plates from the dishwasher, and wondered if any of the dishes even made it into the overhead cupboards anymore. He thought about getting a tablecloth out from the linen press, but there didn’t seem much point. When Lila was younger, they’d always dressed the table. It was her little job, setting it up; a patterned cloth, cutlery, sometimes even a posy from the garden in a glass. They were out of the habit now. He didn’t have the heart to bring it up. She was so quick to sneer at him these days, and he was defenceless against her scorn. He turned off the cooker.
‘Lila?’ His voice rang on the tiles.
‘Yes. All right. I’m COMING.’
What was he to do? Reprimand her for coming when called? He served the steaming casserole onto the plates, placed them on the table, sat down. Now, he would be sitting and she would be standing. He would be at a disadvantage from the start. He pushed his chair back and stood, one hand casually on the chair rail, long enough to feel cartoonish.
‘Lila?’ Louder this time. Her bedroom door snapped, her feet in the corridor and she was there. His daughter. ‘Dinner’s ready.’
‘I know. I told you I was coming.’
‘I didn’t want it to get cold.’
She gave him a withering stare, said nothing.
They sat, plates before them on the table, like a tableau. The silence between them unbearable.
He cleared his throat. ‘How was school?’
‘Fine.’
‘What did you get up to?’
‘Nothing.’
‘How is your French coming along?’ Surely he was on safe ground here. She struggled with languages.
‘I don’t do French anymore.’
‘No, that’s right. Sorry. I forgot. German. How’s that going?’
‘Fine.’
‘You want me to help you after dinner?’ He still felt at a disadvantage.
‘No. I’m good.’
Silence descended amid the slide of steel on plates, the hum of the fridge, the trickle of rain in the downpipes. The damn clock.
‘Raining out. I got soaked walking from the bus stop.’
‘Hmm.’
He gave in to her stonewalling, stopped trying. With her head down, he took the chance to study her. Hair long and dark, glossy as a pony. So like her mother, though he daren’t say. He tried to remain silent, to wait her out, but his words formed of themselves and fell from his mouth like stones, bouncing on the lino before he could reel them back in.
‘You look so much like your mother these days.’
‘I know. You’ve told me. I’m trying to eat. Will you stop with the comments?’
He opened his mouth to argue, thought better of it. She could sulk for days.
Lila had been only two when his wife died. A chubby, bright toddler whose world, along with his own, turned dark and unknowable in the aftermath of crumpled steel. Blood and shattered glass and the screeching sound of the world ending. One day they were a family of three buckling up to go feed the ducks, the next they were just him and her. Father and daughter. Both as lost as each other in a broken jar of grief.
She had stopped talking overnight. Selective mutism. At the end of exhaustive testing, that’s all they could tell him. No telling how long it would last, no physical reason. An internal scar. He rejected drug treatment for her, tried a multitude of therapies, and still she would not speak. Not to him. Not to anyone.
In the end he’d let her be. This tiny girl-child, self-possessed and tidy. Sitting most often with her hands quietly in her lap. Unnaturally still, staring. At the park, other children threw tantrums around her silence, all skinned knees and squeals of delight. Who knew a person could feel jealous watching
a three-year-old throw a screaming wobbly at the supermarket checkout?
He had taken to communicating non-verbally. Conversation between them a series of pantomimes, each more elaborate than the last, ending with a flourish or a bow, two hands cupped as a heart. I love you. In the silence of their home, they talked endlessly with hands and body. Made the beds, vacuumed the carpet. She set the table, he made dinner. They ate. Like this. In silence. But without the weight.
One evening, when she was nearly five, he’d put the plates on the table before it was set. No. Like this, she’d said. Clear and bell-like in the room. Like this, Daddy. Knives and forks first. And it seemed she hadn’t stopped talking until a few months shy of her fifteenth birthday. That was six months ago now.
He had no idea how to navigate her burgeoning womanhood with its attendant spitfire and ice emotions. In a millisecond, she had become as tall as he, slender as a reed. Willowy. For the first time in a long time, he felt completely out of his depth.
After the meal, they tidied the kitchen. He wiped down counters; she loaded the dishwasher, turned to go back to her room as soon as it started up.
‘Do you feel like a game of Scrabble with your old dad?’ he ventured.
‘No. I have to study.’
‘We could talk.’
Her shoulders tensed. ‘About what?’
‘Anything you like.’
‘Dad. Maybe you should get out more. Maybe you need friends.’
Her words stung. He had friends, an active social life. He was involved in the local historical society and had recently mapped the cemetery for them. He was on first-name terms with the staff at the library and attended the book club and garden club. He wasn’t lonely for people. He was lonely for her.
‘I have you.’
She shot him a look. ‘I’m busy.’
The slap of her door, silence.
He filled the kettle, switched it on, and spooned Milo into two mugs. Poured, stirred. He thought about taking both and sitting in her room until she gave in and spoke to him. In the end, he took just one. Knocked gently on the door.
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