Tremble

by Tobsha Learner

  I vomited this morning. A great wave of nausea that had me running to the toilet before I’d even got up. I know why. As I stood there, my knees trembling, head hung over the toilet bowl, the heaving was followed by a huge surge of excitement.

  Finally my life is going to change. We’re going to change. We’re going to become real. Legitimate, open, living together; me by his side at record launches, at concerts, standing at the door of our own townhouse, each with our own cars—his BMW, my Saab with the child’s seat in the back. This will happen because I’ve decided it will happen. Vogue magazine: Step 1 of self-redefinition—take control of your image, take control of your future, visualize what you want.

  I lift my nightdress now and stare at my breasts. I’ve never seen them so heavy. Taut. The nipples are darker and more prominent. Turning sideways I think I can see a slight bulge curving above my stomach: my womb. My fruitful womb.

  The walker stands at the end of the bed like an over-grown crab waiting to hoist its legs over my body. It ages me just to look at it. Still, I should be thankful I can hobble to the toilet. I couldn’t a week ago. I’d never realized how humiliating bedpans are. I have never been this helpless in my entire life.

  Robert has had the spare bedroom converted into a sickroom. Fixed it up with a television, a table that swings over so I can eat in bed, and a stack of movies he rented so that I won’t get too bored. He’s even gone out of his way to find films that fit in with my degree, documentaries on the Dutch masters. He brought me a gift, a figurehead in the shape of a merman from some old ship they found off the Scottish coast a couple of years ago.

  Robert has a real love of anything to do with shipwrecks; he’s like one of those people who takes great delight in other people’s misery—the Germans have a word for it: Schadenfreude. He had the figurehead erected over the bed. It’s seventeenth century apparently; it must have cost him a fortune. We’ve argued about the gender. He’s convinced it’s a mermaid, but when I look at it I see a merman with a defined chest, noble suffering eyes, and a carved ponytail hanging down his back.

  Mermaids…deviant mythical creatures that conjure up the notion of cunt as a briny, slimy, cold thing. Not the most attractive vision; still, whatever it is, male or female, it’s mine and it watches over me. When I look up at it I imagine the figurehead carving a path through an uncertain future. Our future. Robert’s and mine. For the first time I’m jealous. Isn’t that unbelievable after three years? Suddenly the thought of him with her, of him kissing her, going down on her, makes me furious. I feel profoundly impotent lying here, pinned down by this great crushing weight across my pelvis.

  I know he’s taking advantage of my paralysis and spending hours over there with her. That’s why he’s so considerate, it has to be. Or this is the calm before the storm; there’s some strange legal technicality to do with divorce that’s making him invest in caring for me. God, I sound so cynical, but that’s what sixteen years of cold war does to you. So what if we had sex a month ago and it was fantastic? That doesn’t mean he’s fallen back in love with me. I’m not that much of a romantic fool. Perhaps my infirmity has jolted him into a fear of his own mortality. Whatever, I’ve started to watch him closely.

  He’s hired a private nurse, a Russian woman who’s been in Australia since she was about ten: Tania. She’s really sweet, one of those younger women who have an emotional practicality about her. More endearing is the way her own beauty seems to be an irritant to her. Strikingly tall, a brunette with piercing green eyes, she does everything she can to diminish her physical presence. It’s most amusing watching her deal with Robert, who stumbles around her completely intimidated. She’s fiercely protective and wouldn’t let him near me at first, insisting that she would be the only person to bathe me and change the dressings.

  When Tania thinks I’m sleeping she gets on her mobile phone and has long conversations in Russian. I lie there drifting in and out of sleep, my dreams peppered with a floating hum of guttural Slavic. But sometimes she breaks into English. That’s how I hear about her grandmother.

  “Vali, you’d never imagine what babushka had to do the other day—spinning thread from human hair. Some young woman brings in a big bag full of her lover’s hair, all gray. And you know what grandma did? She makes her a wool shirt. For what I don’t know, but you can bet it will mean mischief for someone. Bad magic…. You know Grandma, she just has to whisper your name and a tree will come crashing down…. Grandma said there was so much hair she reckons the poor guy must be bald by now…. She said the girl was young, not even thirty. Poor thing, she must have been desperate to go to babushka. Three years, she told her, there was three years’ worth of hair in that big bag.”

  My eyes flash open. Could it be? You know how it is: synchronicity. A snippet of gossip, a name that resonates, and in an instant you realize there’s a web of fate linking houses, suburbs, even whole continents. A mesh that can destroy, misinform, create paranoia, make men rich, make women weep, start world wars. Fear the imagined, not the truth, my mother always used to say. Being a plain-speaking Presbyterian she believed in absolute truths and in her day absolute truths existed. Not like now.

  That night when Robert collects my dinner tray I can’t help noticing that he’s thinning slightly on top. I haven’t combed his hair in years; frankly I hate it. I’ve always considered long hair on men a statement of their lack of emotional development.

  “Robert,” I say seductively. “Would you like me to brush your hair tonight?”

  Startled he actually blushes.

  “Thanks, love, but nowadays I’m kind of weird about other people touching it,” he says, averting his eyes.

  Liar, liar, with burning ears. Other people, except her. Determined to extend his discomfort I reach across and pluck a loose long silver hair off his shoulder.

  “Has it always fallen out this much?”

  “Georgina, you know I’ve always shed hair like an Old English sheepdog but fear not, this wolf isn’t going to go bald yet.”

  Once he’s left I wrap the long hair around and around my finger until the tip bulges out red and painful.

  The fucking bastard, I can’t believe he just hung up on me. There’s no point ringing again; he’ll have registered the new number by now. I’d used my girlfriend’s mobile because I knew he’d only pick up if he didn’t recognize the caller.

  “Robert,” I said triumphantly.

  “Madeleine, are you okay? It’s past nine. You know it’s difficult for me to talk after nine.”

  “I’m not okay. I need to see you; we need to see each other.”

  “Oh, baby, I’d love to but it’s really hard at the moment. Work’s crazy as you know and Georgina’s still housebound—”

  “Fuck Georgina. I have needs too.”

  “I know. I’ve been a real shit, I’m so sorry. But it’ll all be back to normal in a couple of weeks.”

  “And what’s normal, Robert? Me hanging around waiting for the phone to ring? Meeting twice a week for a couple of hours so you can screw me and then go back to your wife?”

  “Madeleine, I can’t talk about this now, Georgina is in the other room. How about we do lunch tomorrow?”

  “Lunch! I’ll give you lunch—”

  Bleep. The lonely sound of the hang-up.

  I squeeze my eyes shut now and count slowly as the rage curdles into a bitter grief. This can’t be good for the baby. Then, deliberately, I reach for the hair shirt.

  It was ugly, asymmetrical, red with a darker spot in the middle and raised—just like a picture in one of those pamphlets—and it appeared, bang, just like that on my cheek, itching like mad, screaming out, scratch me, scratch me. Which I did, until it started bleeding. It was then that I drove straight to my dermatologist.

  Melanoma. If you didn’t know what it meant you could just about imagine it was the name of one of those dusky beauties with old-fashioned hips and melon breasts who used to hang, immortalized in fluorescent paint on velvet, over your
bachelor uncle Jack’s vinyl couch. I tried distracting myself with this vision until I realized I was speeding down Oxford Street and had forgotten to take the handbrake off. Not great for a fifty-thousand-dollar car.

  My dermatologist stared at my face, then, sighing heavily through the gap in his front teeth, hit the phone to ask his assistant to get a biopsy slide ready immediately. By that time I’m calculating the cost of my own funeral and wondering about life insurance.

  “Mr. Tetherhook, I have to confess I’m a bit perplexed. I’ve never seen a skin cancer so advanced pop up overnight like this.”

  “How advanced?”

  “For reasons of litigation I wouldn’t like to hazard a guess. Are you sure you saw me last year?” he asked.

  “Check your records if you doubt me.”

  “It’s not entirely unheard of; sometimes extreme stress can manifest in strange ways, like lesions on the skin.”

  “Doctor, cut the polite subtext. Will I live?”

  “Again, for reasons of potential litigation I can’t really answer that, but it is safe to say that if the cancer is contained and hasn’t spread to the lymph nodes you have an excellent chance of survival. Of course, if the cancer has spread it’s an entirely different scenario…. I’ll ring you by tonight to let you know whether you will need further tests.”

  Terror is not a fast-moving animal; it is a slow creep through the entrails up to the back of the throat where it repeats like bile through the waking day, eventually accumulating to a series of high-speed flashes of the phrase “I’m going to die,” blinking on and off like an epileptic fluorescent bulb.

  By the time I got back to the car I was ready either to cry or to crawl into a snug, warm, wet place where I could forget my own mortality.

  “Hello? Madeleine?”

  Pause; self-pity rattling down the line as I choke on my own grief.

  “Can I come over?”

  Cock, cunt, the thickness of him pounding inside me, wet tightness engulfing both of us, filling my very pores, as he loosens the fibers of my flesh. Oh yes, over and over, everything swelling, my labia, my lips, my nipples, my clit, deliciously shooting down the whole length of him as he, with the confidence of love, of time spent together, of knowing, enters me over and over until both of us scream out, first me and then him, shuddering together as life roars across us like a huge jet intent on its ascent.

  “I love you,” I whisper afterward into his chest. Robert says nothing, then hiccups loudly. A strange whimper from somewhere deep inside reverberates in the room. At first I think it might be the cat from next door, but as I lift my head I realize it is the sound of Robert weeping. I pull myself up and wrap my arms around him, cradling him to my breasts. My swollen, aching breasts.

  “It’s going to be all right. You’re not going to die yet, Robert. Robert? Come back to me, baby….”

  “Sorry. Just give me a minute to pull myself together.” He sits up and turns his back to me, ashamed.

  “It’s not that simple, Maddy, they’re going to have to test the lymph nodes. The weird thing is, I didn’t have the fucking thing yesterday morning. It just sprang up overnight. Funny how your whole life perspective can just change like that.”

  “What do you mean overnight?”

  “Just after you rang last night my face began to itch, then when I looked in the mirror…bang! Right there on my cheek.”

  The hair shirt was slung over the back of a chair at the end of the bed. It hung innocently, rippling slightly in the last of the evening sun. How powerful was it exactly? How much control did I have over whom it affected with its magic?

  I was distracted by Robert cupping my breasts.

  “You’re larger, have you changed your pill or something?”

  “Well, there have been some hormonal changes, but not quite the ones you might be expecting,” I said, smiling.

  Robert fingered my nipples thoughtfully. “You’re not pregnant, are you?” he asked, almost casually.

  I’ve just had the ten shittiest days of my life. One of those windows of time when God throws everything he’s got at you, like your life is a skittle in some funfair sideshow, and the best you can hope for is that when the Supreme Clown Upstairs stops pelting you’ll bounce back, preferably upright. Am I upright? I don’t know anymore. All that defined me, Robert Tetherhook, married man, successful record producer, has been bashed, shattered, and finally softened beyond recognition.

  I’m lying on a hospital trolley in a consultation room in the cancer ward of St. Vincent’s hospital. At this point in history I don’t feel well. I am hoping this is psychological not physical, but frankly in the last few weeks the lines have completely blurred. In about five minutes the specialist is going to come in and tell me whether the cancer has spread to my lymph nodes. If it has, I have a 40 percent chance of surviving—with the help of radiation and any other treatment they can think of. Believe me, with my recent luck I’m not feeling very confident.

  Georgina’s with me. Ever since I had the biopsy she’s developed this irritating optimism that reminds me of a born-again Christian and has taken to smiling banally 24/7. Which makes me feel like a dying child who’s being lied to. Not a great sensation.

  She’s looking at me now, seriously overdressed in Chanel and the string of pearls I gave her for our anniversary that look incongruous with the walker. What is this—a funeral? But when I look closer I can see that she’s scared too and just for a second I love her for it. Can I leave her? I don’t know anymore. All I know is that I’ve needed her more than anything the past few days and she’s been there. I’ve even reached for her in the night and fallen asleep in her arms a few times; something I haven’t done in years.

  What the fuck am I going to do? I always thought it was an emotional cliché to say you could love two women, but here I am in that very predicament. For so long I’ve kept the two compartmentalized, neither impacting on the other. There was Georgina: the house, consistency, domestic intimacy. Then there was Madeleine: excitement, lust, youth, the clandestine. Like running two simultaneous acts, both so different they require entirely different skills. But then Madeleine had to go and get pregnant. More than four months pregnant.

  God, I was furious when she told me. Shouting, jabbing my finger at her, furious, until I saw her face shrivel with grief and the sight of it brought back a picture of my father screaming at my mother. I stopped instantly, deflating with regret.

  Four months. Me, a father. Inconceivable a month ago. Me, dead at forty-seven? Also inconceivable a month ago. If I were honest I’d tell you that a kernel of excitement flares up at the base of my belly when I say the word Daddy. What am I going to do? Will Georgina survive without me? Of course she will, she might even thrive, but will I? Am I ready to take on the responsibility of a child and a much younger wife? What about the divorce? I love my house; I love the life my wife has made for me. Madeleine is so gauche, so raw. But she’s having my baby. My baby.

  Okay, here it is: the verdict. Life or death? Father or corpse? The door’s opening, the specialist steps inside, file in hand, and he’s not smiling. And I decide there and then: if it’s life, I will leave Georgina and parent my child properly. If it’s death, I’ll stay with Georgina until the end. Let fate and the schmuck upstairs with the bowling ball choose for me.

  I’ve been thinking a lot about DNA recently, how vulnerable we all are if it gets into the wrong hands. I don’t mean film stars worrying about being cloned from fragments left on a napkin in a restaurant; I’m talking about far more devious practices. You see, I believe that we leave particles of ourselves everywhere. Invisible shimmering dust paths that stretch through our days like undiscovered galaxies. And should someone want to harm us, or manipulate a piece of information to their own advantage, all they have to do is access a particle of our DNA. That’s why we have to be very careful about who we let into our beds and into our hearts, and about where we leave fingernail clippings, flakes of dead skin and strands of hair. The n
aïveté of love is no protection.

  Naturally I’ve never bothered to explain my hypothesis to Robert. He thinks I’m mad as it is, but I’m a great believer in mixing feminine intuition with a smattering of scientific knowledge to make the kind of lateral leap that would, in another era, simply be labeled good sense. Don’t get me wrong; I am protective of my husband. You don’t live with someone for sixteen years without developing a strong sense of when they’re in danger. The challenge is to make them discover that for themselves before it is too late.

  Bizarre things have begun to happen to us and our marriage. Steering wheels don’t just suddenly twist out of control and cancers don’t just appear overnight without some external manipulation of the malevolent kind.

  The door clicks open and I jolt back to the reality of clutching Robert’s hand as he lies in a stunned paralysis that I suppose must set in when waiting to hear whether one is to live or die. The specialist is a smug man in jeans and Cuban heels who informs us that he was dragged away from his third honeymoon to operate on Robert. With the practiced eye of the womanizer he assesses my face, cleavage, and legs before he turns back to Robert who is now two shades paler than the wall behind him.

  “Well, Mr. Tetherhook, it looks as if you’ll live to cause at least a few more decades of mischief,” the specialist announces as flippantly as if offering a coffee with milk and two sugars. Much to my amazement, Robert bursts into tears and collapses into my arms. Like I said—DNA.

  “You look so ripe. It’s kind of hard to believe—my child hiding in there.”