Babyface

by Fiona Gibson

  I’m not sure how I feel about anything. Confetti—with its delicate veils, its lilac sugared almonds trapped in net pouches—makes me feel like some gigantic, snorting ox. The girl in the ruffled dress doesn’t look as if she’s about to get married. Too young, for one thing; let down the scooped-up hair with its lacquered crust and she’d pass as a schoolgirl like those in the changing village, all jutting collarbones and dangling arms, useful for batting off attention from boys.

  No, you wouldn’t look so poised, so serene, if your wedding was about to happen. You’d have a neck rash. I wonder whether dandy ruffles would avert attention from a blotchy décolleté.

  Eliza’s skinny knees crackle as she stands up. She heads for the kitchen in search of bread to make toast—the only food I’ve ever seen her eat, apart from sugar cubes. She seems disappointed. Maybe I’m not taking this seriously enough. The living room hums with decaying fruit, practically breathing all by itself. I feel like I’m inside a lung.

  I flick through Confetti. So many crucial aspects I haven’t considered: cars, seating plans, order of speeches. “No bread,” calls Eliza from the kitchen. “Want a gin and tonic?” I have encountered Eliza’s G&Ts: half pint of Gordons, token splash of warm tonic. No lemon or ice. She strides back with two tea glasses patterned with gold stripes and spriggy flowers. She used to collect them. She’s collected plates shaped like lettuce leaves, intricate fans, asymmetrical hats that always looked a bit dented. But she always loses interest before there’s enough to make a collection. Before it means anything.

  “I’ve met someone,” she announces, arranging herself cross-legged beside me. She gulps greedily from the tea glass.

  “Why didn’t you say? Who is it?”

  She laughs, making light of it. “It’s probably over already. And it’s embarrassing. He’s way younger. And I’m old enough to know better.”

  I have no idea of Eliza’s real age. Several years ago, she celebrated her thirtieth birthday on a riverboat decked out in “louche chic,” as she called it, with swathes of jeweled Indian fabric draped everywhere and some kind of twanging sitar music. The following year, a prissier affair in a small, blond-wood bar with waiters serving mini fish and chips in cone-shaped napkins was her real thirtieth, she claimed. She picks at a vexed-looking scab on her shin.

  “He can’t be that young,” I suggest.

  “Well, he’s twenty-four, so it’s ridiculous. Go on, slap me.”

  I laugh, testing the gin with my tongue. It feels wrong: too warm for its alcoholic strength.

  “It’s Dale,” she says. “Remember Greg’s assistant? You met at that shoot. I’m not expecting it to come to anything. It’s just, you know, a physical thing.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Mexico trip. Disaster. Models deliberately burnt themselves. Hadn’t heard of sunscreen, obviously. So we can’t use them. Have to fly in someone else whose flight’s stuck in Houston for seven hours and gets food poisoning from a chicken baguette she ate at the airport.”

  “I didn’t think models ate,” I say.

  By some open-throated trick, Eliza tips the entire glassful of gin down her neck. “That’s the thing. They pick out the fillings, leave the bread. And that’s the dangerous bit. So we’ve nothing to do but get plastered until the poison works itself through. He’s quite a laugh, you know.”

  When she’s like this, grazed and tatty looking, I remember why I like Eliza so much. Her blue nail polish is chipped at the tips. Her shins are bristly. “Can I bring him to your wedding?” she asks suddenly. “Not as a boyfriend—he’s an embryo, for God’s sake—but just so I’ve got someone to, you know, just be with. Weddings make me feel so noticeable.”

  It hadn’t occurred to me that my wedding, or any wedding, might make Eliza feel anything. I’d have thought she’d relish the opportunity to dress up. “Of course you can,” I tell her. “So long as he doesn’t bark.”

  Confetti lies open at the shoe page. Those pink, beaded objects aren’t human’s shoes. They belong in a museum or on a doll. I imagine the crystal-encrusted structures straining, eventually collapsing into sobs, if I managed to ram myself into them.

  “Great shoes,” says Eliza, “but not with your wide feet.”

  I am spending the night in Eliza’s spare room on a blow-up bed that has defied her lung capacity and is therefore only partially inflated. When I lie on my side, my hipbone crunches into the floor. A flurry of tangled underwear bursts from a battered chest of drawers, possibly trying to escape Eliza’s flat for an orderly home where it will be folded and treated respectfully.

  Transparent dresses dangle on hangers at the windows, hazing the streetlight. Eliza has rented her flat for over a decade, having fallen heavily in lust with its cracked lilac bathroom suite. She didn’t mind negotiating the abandoned fridge parked on the stairs. For several years she squeezed past it, bumping against the chrome handle. Then one day it was gone. A new family had moved in below, cramming their flat with ornately carved furniture, too many kids and possibly the fridge. The kids block the stairs with their intricate games involving witches’ outfits and domestic mops which they ride recklessly. But Eliza won’t move. Her flat has reached that comfortable point at which it cannot become any messier and may even begin to self-cleanse, like hair when you give up on washing it. It doesn’t get dirtier. Or perhaps you just stop noticing.

  I hear Eliza flicking off lights and clunking some bony part of her anatomy on something solid. From where I’m lying the fruit smell is worse. I investigate a glazed bowl on the chest of drawers. Bluish spheres, possibly once tangerines, fuzz uncertainly. My stomach growls, reminding me of the promised toast which never materialized. I can still taste the gin. I squirm on the bed, willing sleep to come, wondering if Eliza’s bras might tumble from the open drawer and strangle me.

  “Nina? Sorry to bother you on a Saturday morning.” The cab rattles along the main thoroughfare which joins Eliza’s neighborhood to mine. “It’s Lovely,” says the chirpy voice. “Ben has another booking, but it’s next week. I wanted you to know straight away. To check his availability.”

  I am barely awake and starving. Eliza was still semi-asleep when I left and muttered something about a croissant at the back of the fridge. I peered in there and found only a bottle of murky stuff, for detoxing.

  “You didn’t tell me,” Lovely gushes, “how amazing Ben was on the Little Squirts shoot. Marcus—you know Marcus—says he’s never seen such a natural. He comes alive, Marcus said, for the camera. You’d never think it, would you, when you see him in the flesh?” Her enthusiasm bubbles out of the phone like lemonade. “So he wants him for another job. You don’t even need to audition. It’s on Friday—I take it that’s okay? He’ll be riding in a supermarket trolley. Marcus just wants to check he can sit up.”

  “Just about,” I say. “He’s a bit wobbly, but if I—”

  “And he’s fine, isn’t he, when you wheel him round the supermarket? He’s used to that, is he?”

  The cab pulls up outside the flat. Our bedroom curtains are closed. I feel grubby in yesterday’s clothes and can detect the fruit smell, hanging about my hair. “Ben’s never been to a supermarket,” I confess. “We do all our shopping at a deli because it’s easier with the—”

  “So Friday’s good?” she cuts in. “I’m so glad. I have a feeling—and I never say this to parents—that Ben’s going to work and work. It’ll take commitment, you know. You’ll need your partner’s full support.”

  The driver drums the steering wheel, wanting me out. I could have walked from Eliza’s but felt too done in by a night on the blow-up bed. By the time I woke up, it had completely deflated.

  The bedroom curtain flutters. Jonathan holds Ben at the window and waves. “Of course,” I tell Lovely. “He couldn’t be more supportive.”

  We arrive at Constance’s just after two, although it could be any time of day or night. She keeps her curtains drawn, apparently to stop burglars peeping in. The room is
bathed in brown shadow and smells biscuity. Jonathan likes to believe that we drop in on Constance every couple of weeks but in reality it’s less often. I suspect that each time we leave he adds a mental tick to the brain compartment labeled Guilt About Mother. Certainly he is unusually buoyant after each visit.

  Constance’s living room is engulfed by a lumbering burgundy three-piece suite and glazed ornaments teetering on every horizontal surface. A cluster of shepherdesses and several porcelain birds of prey (life-size) gawk from the mantelpiece. The sofa arms are draped with peach crocheted covers, as if skin contact would damage them irreparably.

  “No need to feed us,” says Jonathan anxiously. “We’ve already eaten. A cup of tea will do fine.” He says this each time we visit, presumably to avoid ingesting anything riskier than a finger Nice biscuit. He’s scared of her food. Most of the edibles at Constance’s are considerably older than our child. That jar of Schwartz All Spice bears a label of unfamiliar design; a box of sponge biscuits, intended for trifles, was possibly purchased during the poncho era. Odd ends of things lurk in the fridge: one halved peach in a dish, a leftover egg yolk, some kind of dense, gray fat, resting in a china teacup. When Constance goes to the bathroom, Jonathan springs to the kitchen and minesweeps the pantry, burying confiscated foodstuffs at the bottom of the beige plastic bin.

  “I don’t usually let strangers in,” Constance is telling Jonathan. “But such a nice young couple. Smartly dressed. Clean and polite for young people.”

  “Who are these people?” Jonathan asks.

  “Their church isn’t my church,” continues Constance, “but I’ll listen. Such a well-mannered man.”

  “What church?” says Jonathan irritably.

  Constance wanders to the kitchen. She steps onto a rickety stepladder to reach a carrier bag of potatoes from the shelf above the sink. “Get off that stool,” says Jonathan. “Keep your food down low where you can reach it. What church?”

  “Jehovah’s Witness, I think. They didn’t say. But they left me a color magazine and said they didn’t want money, but you know me. Always pay my way. So I gave them five pounds.”

  “You what?” splutters Jonathan.

  “They’re coming back next week,” she smiles. “It’s nice to have the company.”

  Ben squirms on my lap, itching to acquaint himself with the shepherdesses. One has an extremely fragile-looking crook. I place him on the deep-pile hearth rug which he sucks experimentally. Constance squints at me like I’m a stain. “Well,” she says, “I’d better check the meat.”

  “I told you, Mum, we don’t want lunch,” Jonathan calls after her.

  While she’s out of the room I want to hiss: why is she like this with me? Is she dreadfully disappointed in her son’s choice of woman? But I don’t know him well enough. I know him well enough to have a baby with but not to say anything even slightly controversial about his mother. Instead I stare at a porcelain falcon who eyes me suspiciously.

  Constance reappears carrying plates loaded with dark meat, gravy and gray potatoes and sets them on an oval dining table. “Brown sauce?” she asks Jonathan.

  “No thanks,” he mutters, “this looks lovely as it is.”

  She hovers over us, watching us saw at the meat.

  “Aren’t you going to sit down?” Jonathan says.

  She lowers her bottom onto a chair with a bobbly mustard seat. Perhaps Jonathan is wise to be cautious about her food. It’s poisoned. Or at least mine is. She glowers at my plate, checking that I’m tucking into the right piece, the one with the strychnine.

  “Mum, we have good news,” announces Jonathan. He seems to be having difficulty with the meat. His jaws bounce, getting nowhere. “We’ve set a date,” he says, swallowing with a gulp. Constance drags her gaze away from my plate and peers sadly at her own. Her hair fluffs limply at her cheeks. “For the wedding,” he adds.

  She dips her fork into the gravy and sucks it. “Those people are coming back, did I tell you? Monday I think. They won’t convert me, I’ve made that quite clear. But I like having visitors.” She looks up at me, wondering why I haven’t keeled over and cracked my skull on the hearth.

  Unlike Constance, my mother was keen for me to meet someone. Anyone, in fact. She would invite young males round, embarrassing boys, like the sons of my teachers or the sick-looking lad who roamed our street with a radio jammed to his ear, talking to himself. She’d heat up food to get on their good sides, like Findus Crispy Pancakes. This was pre-Ashley when she’d never have dreamed of taping horse pills to her temples. She bought cheap yellow cakes and sprinkled sugar on everything, even Ski yogurt. It gritted my teeth. By secondary school I had eleven fillings. She wore too few clothes when these boys came round (or maybe she always did, but I only noticed when we had guests). You could see her thighs through her thin skirt, her graying bra under a faded nylon blouse. She reminded me of that boys’ fantasy, the one where they’re wearing X-ray specs, allowing them to see through women’s clothes. “She’s got good legs, your mum,” said the radio boy, and he went a bit sweaty about the forehead.

  These boys and I would mooch in separate rooms. The guest would fritter about in my bedroom, finding nothing of interest apart from a shoe box of dried up felt tips and a Spirograph set. I’d hang about in the spare room, huddled under abandoned ironing boards and chairs with tarnished chrome legs. Eventually Mum stopped bothering to ask anyone over. She called me unsociable. She was right; I didn’t want anyone else in my house. I met a studious Glaswegian boy with an unstable complexion and a love of hefty literature but I didn’t bring him home. He took me to the back of the tennis court where wet bracken grazed our legs. We kissed, then he pulled out his penis and waggled it furiously. His eyes glazed. I worried that he might burst a blood vessel. “Do you mind if I jerk off ?” he asked, midwaggle.

  I thought he said: “Do you mind if I Chekov?”

  Jonathan is in his usual post-Constance mood (Visited Mother: tick!). “She has to get out,” he says, glancing sideways from the driver’s seat to check that I’m listening. “Those houses were new when she moved in. People cut their hedges. Talked to each other. Now look at them. No wonder she keeps the curtains shut.”

  “Aren’t there lunch clubs and whist drives and stuff ?” I suggest.

  “She should move. She needs people around. We’ll have to do something.”

  I picture Constance living with us, banging our pans and cooking her meat, and decide not to go there. “She didn’t seem happy about our wedding,” I say carefully.

  He laughs. “I can’t imagine Mum being happy about anyone I chose to marry.”

  Why do grown women wish to cling on to their off-spring? Will I be that way with Ben, glaring at girlfriends, scaring them off with my cooking? Beth told me her mother cried for a week, constantly hurtling off into other rooms, splashing her face with cold water, when she announced her engagement to Matthew. Well, I can understand that. But I can’t imagine feeling quite so cross, as if I’ve been burgled, when Ben leaves home.

  My parents barely flinched when I moved out. They drove me south, becoming trapped on the M25, my mother flapping the map, saying, “It doesn’t show individual streets. We’ll be going round and round forever.” Dad dived off at a random junction and we trundled around East London, passing the Museum of Childhood five times. A policeman glared suspiciously. On each occasion, Mum piped up, “That building looks jolly. What is it?” Finally Dad pulled up at a rickety house with a club called Jingles below it. I had landed a job as a reader of unsolicited stories sent to a women’s magazine, most of which turned out to be written illegibly in blobby green biro. My new boss had told me about a vacant flat owned by her friend. One living room wall was painted gloss black and the whole place stank of drains. “This looks nice,” remarked Mum. “You’ll soon freshen it up.”

  Dad carried in grocery boxes stuffed with my rubble and looked like he might hug me, but didn’t. “We’ll be off,” he announced. “We need to find something
to eat before everywhere shuts.”

  Jonathan raps the horn as a cyclist zips in front of us. “We should get Mum and your parents together,” he says. “I’m due holiday. Why don’t I take Friday off, do a barbecue?”

  Friday: Ben’s maiden voyage in a supermarket trolley. “Friday’s not good,” I tell him.

  He flicks his eyes at me, surprised that I might have a prior engagement. “The coffee morning crew,” I babble. “Teddy bears’ picnic in the park. As long as the weather’s okay.”

  He pats my knee. “I’m glad you’ve made a life, Nina. I worried that you might not…adapt.” I try to relax with his hand now plonked on my thigh, but I can’t. My fib hums round the car. I wonder if he can hear it. “Some other time then,” he says. “But it’ll have to be soon. We can’t have them sitting together at the registry office, not knowing each other from Adam.”

  I shudder to think how my mother will behave before Constance. In the presence of strangers, Mum regresses to girlhood, fiddling with her kirby grips, not hearing anything properly. She’ll complain that she can’t stomach Jonathan’s barbecued food. When did eating become so problematic?

  Jonathan stops at an amber light although he could have sneaked through. When the lights turn green, we can’t move. A white Transit van has blocked the box junction. A horn blares. Ben wakes from his nap, disgusted to find himself confined to the car. “We’ve got to get out of this,” says Jonathan. “This traffic, the violence—look at Mum’s street.”

  “We don’t live on your mum’s street.”

  “We should move out. Why not? There’s nothing to keep us here.”

  “There’s Beth and Matthew,” I said, desperately.

  “We’d still see them, invite them over. They’re good friends. They won’t drop us because we live in the country.”

  This is moving too fast. One minute he’s cross about traffic; next thing we’re holed up in a low-ceilinged cottage with exposed beams, setting places for Beth and Matthew. “But I like where we are,” I protest. And I mean it. I have surprised myself by settling into Jonathan’s flat. The novelty of living in a reasonably clean, well-functioning environment has yet to wear off. I’ve even bought the odd small item—picture frame, candlestick, from those useless shops near Beth’s—to mark my territory.