by Luke Allnutt
So we kept on trying, refused to give up, because that was how Anna saw the world: as a fight, your guard up, backs against the wall. It was where we converged. The kid from Essex public housing and the scholarship girl, who both felt like we had something to prove, because we didn’t have rich parents or a proud lineage.
At Anna’s suggestion, I went to a clinic and, in a toilet stall with a handrail and an emergency cord, jerked off over some ancient pornography. But there was nothing wrong with my sperm. Top notch, the doctor said. Pristine.
We were not surprised when Anna got pregnant for the third time, because conceiving had never been the problem. We approached the pregnancy with a sense of fatalism. At around the eight-week mark, we expected the same: Anna’s strange cramps, the feeling she described as an emptiness, even though both times the child had been there, living and dying inside her. But, no, there it was on the monitor: a heartbeat. And not just any heartbeat, but a strong heartbeat. There were hands and feet, the delicate outline of ribs. There were eyes, a half-formed pancreas. There were eyelids.
In the second trimester, they told us that the chances of losing the baby, even for a high-risk pregnancy, were slim. We didn’t believe them. It was inappropriate, I said to Anna, but it felt like we were on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, where the questions were getting harder and we were pushing our luck by staying in the game.
“Your analogy doesn’t work,” Anna said, “because we can’t cash out. If you could cash out with a baby, it would work.”
It was at the start of Anna’s third trimester when I noticed them. I was in the backyard one day, and there were two sunflowers that hadn’t been there before. Anna hated gardening. It was a chore, she said, and she had never planted anything in her life.
I went into the kitchen and she was standing at the sink, in her apron, washing some coffee cups.
“I like your sunflowers,” I said. “Did you do that?”
“I did,” she said, looking pleased with herself. “They’re nice, aren’t they?”
“They are. I’m just surprised. I thought you hated gardening.”
“Oh, I do, don’t worry about that... It’s just...” She swallowed and put down a coffee mug. “You’ll think me silly, but I just wanted to do something. You know, for the little ones. I know that’s not the sort of thing I do, but I thought it would be nice.” Then she turned away from me, because she didn’t want me to see her cry, and I put my arms around her, and she buried her head into my neck.
“The woman in the garden center said they were robust, good in all weathers.”
* * *
I was sitting on the floor of the bathroom, watching Anna in the bath. She was reading a book, propped up on a wire bridge that held the soap, like something I remembered from my grandmother’s house. Absentmindedly she twisted her hair around in her fingers, and I watched as the bubbles attempted to navigate her bump.
I was amazed at how much skin could stretch, her belly like a taut drum, the outer layers almost translucent. I was nervous about touching her. I wanted to, but I was worried that I would press the wrong place, that my inexpert hands would damage what was inside.
I watched as she read. Her pink razor was placed on the side of the bath and, even after all these years, there was something comforting about that. I remembered that feeling from the very beginning, when we started living together in my room in Cambridge. I used to love seeing her collection of gels and shampoos in the shower; her book on the bedside table; her earrings carefully placed in a saucer on the chest of drawers. Yes, it was a territorial advance, but one that only ever felt like a liberation.
“Oh, I was going to tell you,” Anna said, putting her book down and swishing her hands through the water. “I joined this group on Facebook—Babies & Tiny Tots.”
“What’s that?”
“The clue’s in the name, Rob. Babies and Tots. It’s some kind of mother’s group.”
“Is it useful?”
“Well, I only just joined, but, in short, no, it’s awful. Lola made me join.”
“Is she still doing her raw food thing?”
“Doing it? She is it, Rob. She has her blog, the Raw Food Mamma, and she’s working on her first cookery book.”
“God. Poor India.”
“I know. She swears India likes it, though. Says her croup has completely gone since she went raw.”
“Lola’s on Twitter, by the way,” I said. “Do you know what her bio says?”
“Mmm, let me guess...”
“Hold on.” I pulled out my phone. “Lola Bree-Hastings. Mother, daughter, sister, friend, fire dancer, yogi, raw food evangelist.”
“Goodness. That is very Lola,” Anna said, pulling on a strand of hair. “And she needs a hyphen between raw and food. In that vein, do you know what she has listed as her job on Facebook?”
“What?”
“CEO of cuddles and chief feeding assistant.”
“Oh my God,” I said, starting to laugh. “So how is this Babies and Tots thing awful?” I poured myself a glass and offered Anna some of the Bobby Bubble “kids champagne” she had been drinking.
Anna shook her head. “I’ve had enough of that stuff to last me a lifetime... Anyway, I thought it would be people, first-time mothers like myself, asking questions about breastfeeding or how the baby will sleep, but, goodness, these people are just so strange.”
“How do you mean?”
“This Miranda, one of the admins, sent me a list of the acronyms they use in this group and, really, I’d never heard of any of them.”
“Like YOLO?”
“What does that mean?”
“You only live once.”
“Oh. Why would someone say that?”
“I don’t know, if you’re going bungee jumping or something. Like, YOLO!”
Anna shook her head and narrowed her eyes. “Anyway, I just found some of these acronyms to be utterly bizarre.”
“Was it all DD, DS and DH?”
“What?” Anna turned toward me, mock outrage spreading across her face. “You know this?”
“Everyone knows it. Dear son, dear daughter, dear husband.”
“Well, everyone doesn’t know it,” Anna said. “Okay, clever-clogs. EBM. What’s EBM?”
I thought about it for a moment. “Expected breast manipulation?”
“That’s actually quite a good guess. You got the breast at least.”
“I always do.”
Anna raised her eyebrows. “You’re not funny, you know.”
“Not even a little bit,” I said, touching her back and tickling her arm.
“Don’t, please don’t,” she said, giggling. “It hurts when I laugh, with all this extra weight.”
“So what is it then, EBM?”
“Expressed breast milk.”
“Aha,” I said, turning away from her, surreptitiously checking the West Ham score on my phone.
“There’s this woman,” Anna said, “I think she might be one of the admins. She constantly shares all her craft ideas, all the a-maa-zing things she does with her kids. Today she posted, asking where she could find polystyrene beads because she needed to fill her handmade breastfeeding pillow. That led to a discussion about whether the chemicals in the polystyrene could infuse her breast milk.”
“What was the conclusion?”
“Lentils and dried beans. Cheaper and safer.”
“Of course.”
Anna looked down mournfully and stroked her bump with the tips of her fingers. There was a line of moisture on her top lip and brow.
I put my glass down, inching closer to her on the bathroom floor. “Shall I do your back?”
“You might have to.” She leaned forward, and I watched little drops of water scurry down her back. Her skin felt hot and smooth, like a wet waterslide in the sun.
Anna got out of the bath and walked back into the bedroom. She waddled a little: tiny, slow penguin steps, as if she was walking over pebbles. She didn’t have the careless confidence of other pregnant women. When she slept, she would only lie on her side. If she bumped her bump, she would agonize about it for days.
I understood why. Because even now, a few weeks until he was due, I felt like we were living on borrowed time. I expected his heart to stop beating. A black hole on a scan. An evacuation. We didn’t like to talk about names.
I sat next to Anna on the bed. Without warning, she started to cry and nuzzled her head into my chest.
“Are you okay, sweetheart?” I said, stroking her hair.
“Yes,” she said, wiping her eyes and sniffing a little. “I think I’m just a little hormonal. That stupid Facebook group got me all worked up.”
“How do you mean?”
“I’m just worried I won’t be good enough. Be a good enough mother, I mean. Because I’m just not like these women, and I don’t want to be like these women.”
I touched her arm, and she angled her body toward me.
“But then,” she said, “I suppose it’s nice to worry about that, instead of what we usually worry about.”
We lay next to each other in bed, her lips inches from mine, staring into each other’s eyes. That was what always drew me in. Her eyes. The soft pump of her pupils; her eyelids, as thin as sugar paper, fluttering with each beat of her heart.
“I can’t wait,” I said, my voice cracking. “I just wish Dad was here to see it.”
Anna pulled me closer and stroked the back of my neck. “I know. It’s just so unfair. He would have been so proud.”
Dad died of a heart attack two days after we told him the news. Little Steve, who had a spare key, found him in bed, as always sleeping on Mom’s side. Next to him, on the bedside table, was the ultrasound photo we had given him.
I didn’t thank him enough. All those night shifts he did in the taxi to buy me a computer so I could learn to code. All those wonderful afternoons at West Ham. All the times he stayed up late, nodding off in the living room, making sure I came safely home. All the love.
Anna looked at me, her eyes still a little damp. “I can’t wait,” she said. “To see his little face.”
“Me too.”
“I can’t believe that it’s real,” she said. “When you want something so badly, when you wait so long, and then finally—finally—it’s actually happening, I just...” She couldn’t speak, her words trailing off into tears.
* * *
I was outside in the garden, experimenting with my remote-control helicopters. My toys, Anna called them, although they were anything but. I had a new one, a trainer flyer, with coaxial blades, and I had welded a little digital camera to the underside. I managed to get the helicopter up in the air, but the camera added too much weight and it crashed into the rose trellis.
I listened, thinking I might have heard a shout. Any day now, any day. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. Anna was upstairs, resting on the bed. She was a week overdue now and, as we had been told, the waiting was the worst part.
I picked up the helicopter and tried one more time after the wind had died down. It took off and I managed to keep it steady, hovering alongside the French windows, but then a gust of wind smashed it into the glass, snapping off one of the rotors.
“Rob,” I heard Anna shouting, just as I walked back into the living room.
“Yeah?”
“Can you come up?”
I ran upstairs and found her sitting, with her legs apart, on the end of the bed.
“Shit, are you okay?”
“I think I’ve had contractions.”
“Really? Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she said, steadying herself by putting her hands on her knees. “I timed it. And it’s definitely unlike anything I’ve felt before.” She checked her watch, a chunky Casio that she praised for its night-light and accuracy.
“How long have you had them?” I said.
“I don’t know. Forty-five minutes maybe.”
“Jesus, Anna, you should have called me...”
“I wanted to be sure.” She looked terrified, ashen-gray. “I think we should go.”
“I’ll get the bag.”
“It’s the day one.”
“Okay, sweetheart,” I said. “Shall we go down?”
Anna had two separate bags packed and they were both sitting in the hall with luggage labels tied to their handles. One said “Day,” the other said “Night.”
“Right,” I said as we stood at the door, me holding the bags, Anna going through a mental checklist in her head. Just as we were leaving, I reached for my camera bag from the side table.
“Don’t even think about taking that, Rob.”
I looked at her face. Now definitely wasn’t the time to argue.
* * *
The doctor had just left when Anna screamed and my first thought was that she had lost the baby. I pressed the emergency bell, but already a tuft of hair, the beginning of Jack’s head, had begun to emerge. The doctor came running back and called for a nurse but she was elsewhere, on her break.
Anna was still screaming, so the doctor shoved her legs into the stirrups and then thrust a tray of instruments into my hands. She barked something at me but I didn’t know what, so I just stood at the end of the bed, holding on to the tray for dear life, as Anna screamed out her pain and screamed out Jack.
We joked at first that he wasn’t human—our little alien, we called him. Because even when I saw his slick dark hair emerge, his tiny body encased in gunk; even when I heard his screams pierce the cold matronly air, as he lay on the antique mechanical scale, I could not believe that he was real.
I would never forget the way that Anna smiled at him, when she held that little snuffling body in her arms and put him to her breast, so naturally, as if she had been taught by a heavenly midwife. Her smile was so natural, so unguarded, and I didn’t think I had ever seen her smile like that at anyone before.
“Do you want to hold him, while I stitch Mom back together?” the doctor said.
I cradled him in my arms, gently, afraid I would crush him. He was wrapped up as tight as he was in the womb, straitjacketed, his eyes swollen slits. I was glad he was now getting some comfort away from the cold scale, the doctor’s coarse hands.
In the baby books I read, they said it would take time to develop a bond, that while Anna would feel it, with me it would take time. It wasn’t true. I felt it instantly, and it was like a lightning bolt down my neck, my spine, a feeling that everything, everything had been for this.
That we could produce this—this—a little bundle who squawked and cooed; no, it couldn’t be true. That the two of us could create another person, with fingers and toes, a brain, a soul. That we could create a life. That we could create Jack.
4
It was hot for spring, and Hampstead Heath was full of runners, day-trippers, families with strollers. The grass was a patchwork of picnic blankets and hampers. The regulars, the elderly men who came up here every day, sat on their usual benches holding up small radios to their ears. A girl and boy kicked a football around with their mother: big run-ups, little kicks, the ball pinging around in the wind.
Jack had just got a new Spider-Man bike, with a windshield and cannons on the side, and he wanted to try it out. It was difficult to find somewhere flat around Parliament Hill, somewhere without a busy road, so, as we always did, we came up to the heath.
I watched Jack as he marched up the hill, the bike still too big for him. How quickly the contours of our world had changed. He was five, a proper little boy, as my dad would have said. Gone was the bow of his toddler’s legs, the babyish lilt of his speech. Now our world was library books and parents’ evening and trying to persuade Jack
that the after-school drama club was cool.
“How about here?” I said, as we got to some flat ground.
“Okay,” Jack said, putting his leg over the crossbar.
“Boys, no,” Anna said. “It’s far too steep here. I thought we were going to the flat bit.”
“This is the flat bit,” I offered.
“It’s okay here, Mom,” Jack added.
Anna thought about it, looking up and down the path. “No, I don’t think so. It’s too steep.”
Jack sighed and rolled his eyes, something he had learned in kindergarten.
“C’mon, Jack,” I said, “let’s go to that bit up there.”
“Okay,” Jack said, starting to push his bike up the hill.
When we got to the top, to the plateau of flat ground, we watched a boy on a tricycle, his father anxiously running behind him.
“Should be okay here,” I said.
Anna looked perturbed, a little flustered, as if she thought she was somewhere else. “Okay,” she said, checking out the terrain, “but you go carefully, Jack.”
He secured the strap on his helmet like a fighter pilot and then pushed himself down the path, weaving in and out of the walkers. I ran alongside him, smiling, brimming with pride, and it was like an old home movie shot on Super 8, the trees whizzing by, the lens-flare in the blinding light.
I felt something touch my arm and realized that Anna was by my side. At first I thought it was out of nerves, that she was ready to swoop in and save Jack, until I realized she was smiling, happily letting him trundle down the hill.
Jack slowed a little, now facing a gentle incline, and I ran behind him and gave him a push, my hands on the back of his saddle. I remembered the feel of my father’s hands, the powerful thrust as he pushed me, his cheers of pride as I rode my bike for the first time on our street.
“There is one more present,” Dad said that Christmas, and I remembered Mom smiling, her cheeks flushed with wine. “But you gotta close your eyes, son.”
That December, I thought Dad was working a lot on his car. After I had gone to bed, I could hear him, tinkering in the garage, the radio on low, the occasional ptush as he cracked open a can.