Who Loves You Best

by Tess Stimson

  Even so, I might never have returned his calls had he not found my website and started emailing me.

  At first, his emails were the kind of casual notes you’d send a friend; I’d thought (with a surprising pang) that he’d given up on the romance idea. He sounded off about global warming (ah! his age was showing there), and debated the wisdom of remaking classic movies. Then gradually he started to tell me about his life; he discussed his five older sisters in such detail that I’d felt as if I’d stepped into an Austen novel. He told me how he’d felt when his best friend shot himself in the head at the age of seventeen, and wondered if he’d ever have a marriage as strong as his parents’. It was less what he said, of course, but that he said it at all: For a woman used to dating emotionally constipated toxic bachelors, nothing could have been more seductive than a man who told me, without asking, what he was thinking. For six months, he emailed me pieces of his life, and before I knew it, he was a part of mine.

  When he asked me to marry him, a year after we met, I still had no idea what he saw in me. I sucked in my stomach as I gazed up at the shining young knight standing beside me at the altar, and prayed he loved me for my mind.

  “Tell me,” my mother, Davina, said, “has he ever asked you what you’re thinking?”

  ———

  “She’s doing it wrong!” I wail, as Poppy squirms and screams, red-faced and hungry, in my arms. “She’s got to open her mouth more!”

  I’ve read about the difficulties of breast-feeding and latching on, of course, but nothing has prepared me for the reality of the two hot, painful, misshapen bombs strapped to my chest. The slightest brush against them is torture. Poppy’s suckling isn’t the tranquil, bonding experience I’d imagined, but a violent wrestling match with an incubus I can never satisfy.

  “Clare, you need to relax. The more upset you get, the more you upset her.”

  “She’s not getting anything! She’ll starve! Davina was right, I’m going to be a terrible mother, I can’t even feed my own baby—”

  Marc perches on the hospital bed and reaches around me, cradling us both in his arms. “She’s just getting used to it, same as you. Look, stroke her cheek, so she turns her face towards you. There, you see?”

  “I’m the one with the breasts,” I sob. “How is it you know what to do?”

  “I have five sisters, and seventeen nieces and nephews. You pick up a few things.”

  “I should be able to do it. Why can’t I do it?”

  “You are doing it,” he soothes.

  As Marc promised, Poppy soon gets the hang of it, but by then my nipples are cracked and bleeding. On the advice of one of the nurses, he brings in cold cabbage leaves for me to score and place against my engorged breasts, but nothing helps. Every time Poppy latches on, I want to scream with agony.

  But at least I’m managing to feed my daughter. I haven’t even seen my son, fighting for life in a hospital the other side of London, since he was born. Marc takes dozens of photos on his mobile phone, but I ache to hold him. He looks so tiny, though he’s putting on weight faster than Poppy. A nurse with a bottle is nurturing my son better than I can nourish my own daughter.

  In the second week of January, Rowan is unexpectedly discharged from the NICU, a healthy six pounds, and Marc is finally told he can take me home.

  “I’m not ready.” I panic. “I can’t, not yet—”

  “You’ll be fine.” Marc smiles, strapping the twins into the back of the Range Rover. “You’ll feel much better when you get home and everything goes back to normal.”

  Normal? I think. Nothing will ever be normal again.

  If I could just get a good night’s sleep. Gather my resources. But the first night home, the twins wake at midnight, at two, at three, three-thirty, four-thirty. Poppy feeds hungrily, but Rowan struggles in my arms, red-faced and frantic, wanting the familiar rubber teat of a bottle in his mouth, not this strange, warm nipple. I’m used to Poppy in my arms; when I cradle Rowan, I feel as if I’m holding someone else’s baby.

  Marc sleeps through it all. At six A.M., he leans over the bed and kisses me on the cheek. His jaw is smooth and freshly shaven.

  Blearily, I push myself up on one elbow. “You’re going to work?”

  “I have to, Clare. I’ve already taken too much time off looking after Poppy. There’s a major deal going through in the European—”

  To my shame, I start to cry.

  “Oh, darling. You’re going to be fine.” He sits on the edge of the bed and thumbs the tears from my cheek. He looks as handsome and carefree as ever. “You’ve just got to get into the swing of things. It’s not that hard once you establish a routine. Fran said she’d pop over later this morning. She’s done this herself three times, remember. She knows what it’s like—”

  “But nothing’s organized, we need more nappies, food—”

  “Sweetheart, you’ve been organized for months.” Marc laughs. “By the way, can you get me some more razor blades? I forgot to buy some, and I’m out.”

  The moment the front door shuts behind him, Poppy wakes. Her imperious cries disturb her brother. Rowan’s sobs are anguished and desperate. I agitate beside their pram, not knowing whom to pick up first. I’ve never been alone with my son before. I don’t know what he wants. I don’t know how to please him.

  Feeling guilty, I choose Poppy.

  “I can’t,” I plead with my son. “I can’t feed both of you together.”

  I wrestle with the buttons on my maternity nightdress and unhook my nursing bra with one hand, fumbling in my haste, petrified I’m going to drop Poppy.

  Rowan’s cries redouble. He sucks in a breath, but doesn’t exhale, mouth open and eyes screwed shut in a silent scream. His face and lips turn blue. I tug Poppy off the breast, ignoring her indignant yells. Holding her under one arm, I scoop up Rowan with the other, then stand there with two screaming infants. Tears stream down my own cheeks. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know which mouth to feed.

  Somehow, I prop us all in the nursing chair, using two of the ridiculous oversized soft toys the twins have been given to protect their heads from its beautifully carved flame cherry wood arms. (Why didn’t I pick the cheap padded rocking chair? What use is carving to a baby?)

  I wedge them on each side of me, trapping their small hot bodies against the chair. I push one small face—none too gently—towards each fat brown nipple. Snuffling like a little animal, Poppy latches on immediately. Rowan twists his face away, searching again for the bottle. I yelp with frustration, and rub my milky nipple hard against his mouth. Finally, he starts to suck. I close my eyes. For the first time in my life, I feel a flicker of sympathy for my mother.

  Fran is late. My best friend is always late, which usually drives me wild—honestly, it’s just a question of planning ahead—but today I’m relieved at the reprieve. It’s midday, and I’ve barely managed to get dressed. How do other mothers do it? How do they even find time to go to the bathroom?

  “Sorry I’m late,” Fran says, kissing my cheek. “I caught Kirsty smoking on the nanny-cam, the little cow. I’d fire her, only she might go running to Rod, and this divorce is bloody enough as it is.” She unwinds her scarf and throws it over the bannister. “Darling, you look marvelous! So thin! Where are the twins, I’ve been dying to see Rowan—”

  “Upstairs. Sleeping.”

  “I’ll be quiet as a mouse!”

  She’s upstairs before I can stop her. Reluctantly, I follow her into our bedroom, where the twins are top-to-tail in the very heavy, old-fashioned pram that Marc and I lugged upstairs last night, since they refuse to settle in the expensive matching Simon Horne cribs in their newly decorated nursery. The only way I can get them to sleep is by rocking the pram until my arm aches.

  Fran leans over them, and I flinch as the oak floorboards squeak. Don’t wake don’t wake don’t wake.

  “Oh, Clare. They’re adorable,” she breathes.

  “They are now—”

  “Oh, dea
r. I remember that feeling.” Fran sighs. “I know it takes a bit of getting used to, especially with twins, but you’ll soon get the hang of it. And think of the benefits of getting the whole baby thing out of the way in one go, two for the price of one; perhaps if Rod and I had done that—”

  “It took me four hours to get us all ready this morning,” I say bleakly. “First I had to feed the twins, and then they needed changing. I put them back down for five minutes to have a shower, but Rowan screamed and screamed until he was sick all over the sheets and his clean clothes, so I had to strip the pram and change him for a second time, by which time Poppy wanted feeding again. I just can’t seem to catch up. You’ve no idea how hard it is to feed two babies at once. Rowan keeps refusing the breast, I practically have to force him—”

  I break into sudden sobs, and clamp my hand over my mouth to keep from waking the twins.

  Fran pulls me into a sympathetic hug. “Clare, sweetheart, you’re doing a wonderful job,” she says firmly. “Everyone feels like this at first. You should have seen me when Hector was born. Every time he had a temperature, I was rushing off to Casualty, convinced it was meningitis or worse.”

  “I feel—I feel so hopeless—”

  “You’re not hopeless,” Fran says, misunderstanding. “Darling, you’ve had a terribly rough start. I can’t believe how marvellously you’ve coped with it all. First having the babies in the street—I still can’t believe it!—and then getting so ill, and not even being able to see poor Rowan for two weeks—”

  “I don’t think,” I say, “he likes me. He cries every time I pick him up.”

  “Of course he likes you! He’s just getting used to you, that’s all. Look,” she adds, steering me back downstairs into the sitting room, and handing me a tissue, “would you like to borrow Kirsty to help out for a few hours a day, just till you find your feet? Now that Imogen’s at kindergarten, she’s got time on her hands, and as long as you frisk her for cigarettes on the way in, she’s marvellously organized. You could have her for a couple of hours after she’s done the school run—”

  “That’s very sweet of you, but we’ll be fine,” I say quickly. “You’re right. We just need to get ourselves into a routine.”

  “If you change your mind—”

  “I won’t,” I say firmly.

  But, over the next weeks, there are times I long to swallow my pride and take Fran up on her offer. I’d crawl over broken glass and stick shards in my eyeballs for a single good night’s sleep.

  Rowan never takes milk from me without a fight. He twists and turns in my arms, arching his back and kicking his legs as if he’s trying to get away from me. Poppy nurses contentedly till she falls asleep with a smile on her milky lips. Rowan is sick after every feed; my clothes and hair permanently smell of vomit. I’m ashamed to admit it, even to myself, but there are times when I find it very difficult to summon even a shred of affection for my son.

  Then, when he’s three weeks old, he develops colic.

  I’ve read about it, of course, but the first time Rowan shrieks in agony, cramps twisting his tiny stomach, his little legs pulled up tight against his frail body, I have no idea what is wrong. Marc and I are frantic with worry, imagining twisted bowels, peritonitis or worse. When the pediatrician tells us the next day it’s colic—“hundred-day colic,” he says cheerfully; “never lasts longer than that”—I cry again, this time with relief.

  But that night, Rowan screams solidly from eleven till four. I give him his useless medicine, rub his back, massage his tummy, stroke his bare toes. He doesn’t stop screaming. I take him downstairs so he doesn’t keep Poppy and Marc awake, too; we eventually collapse into an exhausted sleep on the sofa together, both of us cried out. I never even hear Marc leave for work the next morning. The next night, at Fran’s suggestion, Marc takes him for a drive; Rowan falls asleep when the car is moving, and wakes up the second Marc steps back inside.

  Marc and I are both shattered, but, as he says, he has a full-time job to hold down. One mistake could cost his company billions. I tell him to sleep in the spare room to get some rest, and then resent him furiously when he agrees.

  By the time the twins are six weeks old, I’m a zombie. I’m dizzy from lack of sleep and weak from having no time to eat. I cry all the time. All I care about is the next pocket of time in the day when I can snatch a few moments of sleep. The second the twins close their eyes, I close mine. I wake when they wake. I have no life outside their needs.

  There’s no one I can talk to. Everyone thinks I’m coping marvellously; they have no idea that inside I’m falling apart. Marc’s mother had six children in seven years; how can I admit to him I can’t handle two? Fran’s sympathetic, but she’s got her own life. I can’t burden her with my problems.

  I could manage, if it was just Poppy. She sleeps through the night already. If it was just Poppy, I wouldn’t be so tired; I could catch up with things, pick up the reins at work (Craig’s stopped bothering to leave messages, since I never return them). I’d be a better mother, a good mother: the kind of mother who plays peek-a-boo with her new baby and blows raspberries on her tummy, instead of slumming around the house in a stained nightdress at three in the afternoon. If I didn’t have Rowan, I could enjoy Poppy. She’s such an easy baby. She goes four hours between feeds; she gurgles with pleasure whenever I walk into the room. But I’m so tired and anxious, I’m a nervous wreck. I’m shortchanging them both.

  If something should—happen—to Rowan—

  Not that I’d ever want it to. He’s my son. Of course I don’t want anything to happen to him. But … but if it did—

  For a brief moment, as I pace the floor in the soulless small hours one night with my screaming son, shivering with tiredness, I give in and allow myself to picture life without him. Just me and Marc and Poppy, a perfect little family. Going on outings, feeding the ducks, walking in the park. Simple, ordinary things that are beyond us now.

  Poppy deserves better. It’s not that I don’t care about Rowan. But I have to think what’s best for Poppy. It’s only because I love her so much I’m thinking such unnatural, terrible thoughts.

  The clock in the hall chimes twice. I stare at the wailing infant in my arms with curious detachment. I feel nothing: sadness or pleasure, grief or anger. I’m at the bottom of an abyss deep below the dark ocean. Nothing reaches me. I sit on the sofa and place him carefully next to me, wedging a cushion on either side of him so that he doesn’t fall. I know even as I do it that it’s pointless. Unless I pace with him in my arms, he’ll scream himself sick.

  Within seconds, his cries are deafening.

  Instead of picking him up, I sit and watch him scream, his face scarlet. If I left him, would he literally cry himself to death? Or would he realize it was hopeless and give up?

  He’ll wake Marc and Poppy. They need their sleep.

  You wouldn’t think his lungs were big enough to make this much noise.

  The streetlight outside casts orange Halloween shadows across the floor. It’s never truly dark in the city. Never truly quiet.

  The room is filled with screaming. My head vibrates with sound, the way it does when a car has stopped next to you at a traffic light, the bass so loud you feel rather than hear it. My knuckles are white from gripping the arms of the sofa, but I can’t feel my hands.

  “I’m sorry,” I say calmly. “I can’t do this anymore. It’s too much. It’s not fair to Poppy. You do understand, don’t you? It’s not fair to Poppy.”

  And then I pick up a cushion to smother my son.

  114 Essex Road

  Islington

  London N1 8LX

  (0207) 714 7885

  March 1, 2009

  Mrs. C. Elias

  97 Cheyne Walk

  Chelsea

  London SW3 5TS

  Dear Mrs. Elias,

  I confirm that Jenna Kemeny worked for our family as a nanny for two years, until her abrupt departure last month, with sole responsibility for our two childre
n, Tatiana, 2, and Galen, 3. She fulfilled her general duties adequately for the most part, although she was not as flexible in her hours as we would have liked. She also took a rather relaxed attitude towards punctuality. The children’s immediate physical needs were usually met, but Jenna did not always grasp the additional demands required when caring for gifted children. She struggled to cope without imposing rigid, structured routines in the nursery. She also demonstrated a rather uncompromising streak and ignored our requests to let the children express their creativity in their own way. As a qualified psychologist, I can tell you that cars may, after all, be repainted, but a child’s imagination, once caged, will never soar again.

  I believe Jenna would prove an adequate baby-sitter for your child. However, if you require a more nurturing environment for your baby, you may wish to broaden your search.

  If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.

  Yours sincerely,

  Margaret Hasselbach, Ph.D.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Jenna

  Best cure for a bad hangover is a good fuck.

  Looks like I’m in for a monster headache, then.

  I curl against Jamie, wrapping my arms around his stiff back. I know better than to tell him it doesn’t matter.

  He pries my fingers away. “You’re going to be late for work.”

  “Jamie—”

  “Try to get home on time.”

  The room swims when I get out of bed. I lean my forehead against the cool bathroom tile, wondering queasily if I’m going to puke again. Maybe I’d feel better if I did. I’m certainly in no state to take on two spoiled brats whose fucked-up parents should never have been allowed to reproduce.