Babyface

by Fiona Gibson

  I look sideways at him. He could be my son, blagging a lift to his girlfriend’s. A softly formed girl in a white 32A bra with no porky bits under her arms. “You never grow out of trying to impress your parents,” I say.

  There are no creases even when he laughs. He’s un-lined, uneverythinged. A baby face. His mother washes his clothes, cooks his meals. He can’t even drive.

  He picks up the CD from the dashboard. It’s the one from Eliza, the soul compilation. The cover depicts a close-up of a black girl’s glossy lips. He slips in the CD, presses play.

  Now that you’re gone

  All that’s left is a band of gold

  I skip forward a track: The Temptations. “Ball of Confusion.” Christophe touches my thigh. I grip the steering wheel and stare into the rain that’s starting to pepper the windscreen. Next track: The Jackson Five. “I Want You Back.”

  I click off the CD. “Hey, Nina, what’s wrong?” Christophe asks, removing his hand from my leg.

  “Don’t feel like music,” I say.

  December 30. Snow, perfectly timed for my parents’ arrival. The front door opens stiffly, sweeping an arc through a layer of white. Ben totters out, one hand in mine, the other in Christophe’s. There is a suggestion of car shape, shrouded in snow duvet. “Do they clear the Chatillon road?” I ask.

  “Eventually, perhaps by tonight. But if more snow falls—”

  “They’ll never make it.”

  “We should dig,” he says. “If they manage to get here, they’ll have to get the car off the road.”

  We spend the morning carving a lane from the house to the road, watched by Ben, who sits squarely on his rump. He licks flakes from outsize navy mittens. Fresh snow clings to his hair like miniature feathers. Inside, we huddle at the fire, wrapped in blankets; three faces, the way I’d imagined the scene after Ben’s roadside delivery. Although one of the faces should belong to the baby’s father. What I’m doing is wrong. If she knew, that mohair lady would leap from her self-help book and slap me.

  We have lunch and make the house parent-friendly. I comb each room for Christophe objects; on an armchair, his thick, hairy socks. In the bathroom, his menthol toothpaste. On the shelf by the little bed, condoms.

  Ben falls asleep with the teat in his mouth. I carry him upstairs for his afternoon nap and tuck him into bed. When I look out, I can no longer see the track we made.

  Christophe undresses. I pull off my jeans, sweater and underwear. He lifts the bedspread over us. His feet are icy, though his lips are warm, and the fingers warmer still. Much later, Ben’s small cry comes. “I’ll get him,” says Christophe. But when he moves, it’s only to hold me tighter.

  “They said teatime,” I tell him. “They should be here by now. Something’s happened.”

  He has fixed the outside light and now digs snow in its yellowy glow. Somehow, insects have snuck into the sealed plastic cover encasing the bulb, and died there.

  “They must have stopped,” Christophe says. “Look, it’s still snowing. They’ll come tomorrow.”

  I wish he’d stop digging; it’s fruitless. His forehead is slicked with sweat, despite the cold. “You should go,” I tell him, “in case they show up.”

  “Why? It’s a problem, me being here?”

  He doesn’t understand and why should he? He’s never had to deal with someone else’s parents. That comes later: the accumulation of in-laws. A mother who’s not your own, just comes as part of the package.

  “Who will I say you are?” I ask.

  “You could say I’m a friend.”

  It’s 11:30 and still no headlamps looming toward the house. I set my mobile on the cracked wooden shelf beside the single bed and fold my arms around his back.

  It rings, some time later. “Where are you?” I say quickly.

  There’s breathing. Finally the voice says, “Nina. It’s me.” I can’t place it. It’s a man’s voice, one I should know. “She’s dead,” says the voice.

  I sit up. Christophe shuffles his limbs, aware that I’m no longer wrapped around him. “They think it happened yesterday,” the voice says. It sounds tight, in difficulty.

  “Who?” I say. Who’s dead? Who is this?

  “They found her in her chair. TV blaring. Those religious types. Jehovah’s Witnesses. She’d left the door unlocked. Like she always does—and what am I always telling her?”

  Christophe’s arm emerges from the covers, feeling the space I’ve left.

  “I’ll come home.”

  Christophe moves, propping himself up.

  “There’s no need,” Jonathan says. “I just thought you should know.”

  Christophe grips my hand. I shake it off. “How do you feel?” I ask. No, I’ve turned into mohair lady.

  “I just wanted to let you know,” he repeats. “Jonathan, I’m coming home. There’s the funeral. I need to—”

  “It’s not important,” he says. “There’ll just be me, Beth and Matthew of course, and Billy—though I’ll try to keep him away, don’t want him causing a—”

  “I have to be there,” I protest. My voice wobbles. Christophe stands up, picks through a bundle of clothes.

  “Why?” says Jonathan. “Why do you have to be there?”

  “Because I’m your—”

  “My what?”

  I watch Christophe turn his jeans the right way out. He pulls them on, zips up. “Is someone there?” Jonathan asks.

  “Of course,” I say, “Ben’s here.”

  21

  The Settled Baby’s Routine

  Christophe says I can’t go. Not in the snow. I have a baby to think about. It’s dark.

  “I have headlamps,” I remind him.

  He says, “Come back to bed. We’ll talk tomorrow.” He paces the kitchen. He looks less fresh-faced than usual, like he’s been glossed over with weak ochre paint. I wish he’d be still. There are things to pack: just essentials, enough for a short trip. We don’t need much. Clothes, bottles, milk, nappies, wipes, food in jars. How easy it is to pack for a baby; second nature by now. I don’t need the Babycare list. But I’m distracted by Christophe’s barefoot pacing. I’ve bunged our passports into the zip-up bag and they seem to have melted away in an invisible compartment. Christophe has them. He opens mine at my photo. He’s thinking: what happened? “I feel old,” I say suddenly.

  “You’re just you,” he says, slipping the passports into an outside pouch so they’re easy to find.

  I head upstairs to lift Ben from the big bed. He’s startled by the sudden temperature switch, gulping sharp air as he’s strapped into the car. Christophe watches from the open door. I’m wearing one of his sweaters. It scratches my neck and reaches my knees and yarn has come loose at the elbows. I feel like a bird’s nest, slowly unraveling.

  The engine growls irritably, as if disturbed from hibernation. “What about your parents?” he says, shivering now. “What do you want me to tell them?”

  “Just say you’re a friend.”

  Christophe turns back to the house. But he shouts something else, something that sounds like, “I thought it was over with him.”

  Like anything is ever that simple.

  And he’s wrong. Night driving is perfectly designed for mother and infant. Babycare would recommend it for those challenging long journeys. No stops for feeding or nappy changes; no Incy Wincey Spider on a loop. Ben sleeps with the Girl Guide blanket bunched round his neck. Should he wake, startled by service station lights, the engine’s hum will send him back to warm oblivion. I stop for coffee, leaving Ben in the car, and stare wildly out of the window as the girl serves me. She has a round glassy face like a marble and can’t find a lid for the cup.

  I drink my coffee in the car and drive fast, recklessly. I play the dare-you game. Dare you to swerve: what would happen? I used to play it with Tube trains. Stand on the platform, toes over the edge. Here comes the train. Dare you.

  Snow faintly covers drab fields. Ben’s lips open and close around an invisible teat;
a milk dream. I envy him sometimes. He doesn’t upset people or have to make difficult decisions. He is provided with food, warm clothing and a driver, and I want to be him.

  We board the first ferry. The lounge feels like a party nearly everyone’s left. A woman with black crash-helmet hair draws sausage shapes on a word search puzzle. The end of her biro is gnawed to bits. A bald man sleeps, his chin occasionally dropping to his chest and bouncing up again. The woman at the till is wearing a tinsel tiara. She taps in ham salad—the plainest thing on offer—and yawns noisily, showing gray fillings.

  I feed Ben orange sludge from a jar. He pushes it out with his tongue. He refuses a warm fromage frais. I consider trying him with plain bread but realize they’re pretend rolls, heavily varnished. A break in routine can upset your child’s eating patterns. Normal mealtimes should be adhered to. The wise traveler packs her baby’s favorite foodstuffs in an insulated bag.

  I change him on the foldout table in the parents’ room. A meaty stench floods out of the nappy bin. Ben is so squirmy I’m forced to hand him my serious watch to coat with saliva while I pin him down to secure the clean nappy. He squawks helplessly, attempting to propel himself onto the wet floor.

  On the wall is a photo of a family on a ferry. The parents are healthy and toothpasty looking. They have a toddler and a baby in arms and are looking out to sea, pointing at something. I wonder if they’re from Little Lovelies. As well as individual babies and children, Lovely rents out entire families. Obviously each family member should gleam with health and vitality. The woman mustn’t have Spaniel-ear breasts. The man shouldn’t sag around the eye zone. I examine my face; it’s ashen, with spectacular pores. One eye is smaller than the other. But say I looked different—more delicately put together—and wore a peach crew-neck sweater tied loosely around my shoulders. Say Jonathan was more your mail-order catalog man, a Ranald type, with a robust jaw and the ability to look natural with one hand in a pocket. I wonder how he would react to the suggestion that we sign up with Little Lovelies as a job lot.

  When I return to the lounge the helmet hair woman stares eagerly. “Do you like puzzles?” she asks. “There’s another book in my bag.”

  “No, thanks. I don’t have the patience.”

  “Or you can have this one. If you prefer word searches to crosswords.”

  “No, you keep it.”

  She grins like a wolf. There’s a sinister hole where one of her canine teeth should be. “I’m going to write my resolutions,” she says, producing a black mock-leather notebook from her jacket pocket. “Do it every year. Drink more water. Be better with money. Use the stairs, not the lift. And deeper things.”

  Her eyes are on me like dentists’ drills. “I’m spiritual,” she declares. “And you are, I can tell. You believe in karma. What goes around comes around. Made any resolutions yourself ?”

  “Just the usual,” I say. “Must try harder.”

  Ben greets his homeland by reintroducing a wave of curdled orange. It smells like stomach lining and batters Christophe’s sweater. Ben’s schedule is to pot. He’s grizzling for milk now but isn’t due a bottle until after lunch. I give in, hoping he doesn’t bring it up in the car, which is fouled up with polystyrene coffee cartons and cellophane wrappers containing crumbs and margarine smears. It smells of bin. I wonder what Jonathan will make of it, whether he’ll charge me for valeting.

  His mother is dead. Of course he won’t care about the car.

  I press the buzzer again, longer this time. Finally, a dull fumble of key. Eliza’s skin is stretched taut across her cheekbones. “Can I stay?” I ask.

  Her arms are around me, flimsy as bendy straws. “Happy New Year,” she says into my neck.

  I semisleep the afternoon away. Eliza is kind enough to let me have the real bed, not the blow-up one. She brings me a mug of brown tea. Occasionally the door creaks open and I’m aware of her, checking on me. But I keep my eyes shut. I can smell that cream, the stuff she uses on her neck.

  And she does her best with Ben, considering she handles babies as if they might rip. “Don’t touch,” I hear her saying. “Careful, Ben. Let’s leave that corkscrew alone.” There’s a flump, like a stack of magazines tumbling from a shelf. Eliza groans, and the door squeaks as she checks on me again.

  I have no idea of the time as there’s a gap on my wrist where the serious watch should be. If I left it on the ferry, would anyone find it? Could the tiara girl have it on her wrist so it eyeballs her each time she taps in an order? It was expensive, that prewedding gift. I could tell that from the box.

  When I emerge from Eliza’s bedroom nothing terrible seems to have happened. Ben does not appear to be suffering from malnutrition and is dressed in a clean babygro, though she’s obviously had trouble with the fastenings. I don’t feel like launching into a summary of the past month, so instead I ask, “What really happened with Dale?”

  She shrugs. “Expected me to look after him. Cook meals and all that. Hands me the dirty plate. I say, ‘What am I, your mother?’ And he gives me a funny look.”

  She flings a pair of flip-flops into an open box. The living room looks like she’s just moved in, or is preparing to leave in a hurry. Cardboard boxes huddle in corners, partially filled with dented lampshades and unidentifiable garments. One contains the unfinished collections of lettuce leaf plates and asymmetrical hats. “What’s all this?” I ask.

  “For charity. I’m space clearing, sick of the clutter. Have anything you like.”

  Is this how she spent New Year’s Eve? Putting things in boxes? Her hair is pulled up clumsily, her neck longer and thinner than I remember. She looks exhausted. She sits nervously on the sofa as if it’s upholstered with glass chippings. I say, “Were you out last night? Did anyone have a party?”

  She blinks at me. “That’s an interesting sweater.”

  I look down at it. One sleeve is flecked with regurgitated orange. “It’s not mine. It belongs to a—”

  “I’ve seen Jonathan,” she says. It’s unclear whether she means she saw him, as in saw him, or spied him briefly in the street. “He’s been calling me,” she continues. “It was weird, the first time. He’s always been—”

  “He doesn’t know what to make of you.”

  “And it became sort of regular, and he’d ask about you and Ben and stuff, though I never had much to tell him.” I wonder what to give Ben for lunch, whether any hot cross buns are still hanging around. “He needed a friend,” she says.

  “Of course he did.”

  “And he wants me to go to the funeral.”

  “Brilliant!” I say, ridiculously.

  “I’m sorry, Nina, but he doesn’t want you there.”

  “Yes, I know that. He made it quite clear.” There’s a tumble of unopened post, presumably Christmas cards, on the scratched coffee table. I busy myself by stacking them in a neat pile with edges aligned.

  Eliza says, “So why did you come?”

  “I thought he might need me,” I say.

  Constance is buried in a sprawling cemetery with gray gravel paths between rows of gravestones. I can make out Beth, who keeps one hand on her navy straw hat to stop it blowing away. She has swapped the rabbit knapsack for an old lady’s black handbag. Matthew wears a business suit and stares at the gravel. Billy’s black suit is set off by a flash of banana shirt. He is smoking and looking around at the graves as if sightseeing.

  From where I’m standing, in a stone-built hut strewn with wet fish and chip wrappers, I can watch Eliza in her narrow black skirt and jacket edged with fur, or possibly feathers. She has bare legs and awkward high shoes that make her wobble like she’s blowing over. Jonathan clasps his hands together, as if he’s praying, but probably to warm himself. As the coffin is lowered, Eliza puts an arm around him, like any friend would.

  Jonathan’s flat looks like a hotel suite, minus the notice pinned to the door, detailing fire escape procedures. He is paying rapt attention to his cuticles.

  I showed up without pho
ning first. Jonathan gathered up Ben in his arms but didn’t look at me. “So,” he says now, “how are we going to arrange things?” I wonder what the options are. “If you’re stuck,” he continues, “you can stay here. Until we decide how to map everything out. I’ll go to Billy’s.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” I protest. “We’ll be all right at Eliza’s.”

  He flings me a look like a dart. Ben is clinging to the sofa, and takes tentative sidesteps. I am horribly aware of my breathing. In less than an hour, my presence has rumpled the cushions and brought in a rich stench of dog muck. I look like I’ve been mining.

  Jonathan grabs Ben’s hand, coaxing him to walk. He yowls in disgust, reaching out for me. The brief outburst causes him to topple back, smacking his head on the floorboards.

  Jonathan holds him, wipes away tears with the flat of his hand, but Ben only stops crying when he’s back in my arms.

  Eliza is shopping at the sales, leaving me to put away hazardous objects and create a reasonably baby-friendly environment. Christophe calls my mobile to report that my parents are safe and well, despite the minor accident caused by Mum dreaming that they were driving the wrong way up a one-way street and shrieking so loudly that my father careened into a wooden shed full of chickens.

  I’m glad Eliza’s not home. I don’t feel like explaining the Christophe thing. “What did she say about us coming back to London?” I ask him.

  “Said you’re always taking off. Complained that you’d taken her favorite blanket. Is she very forgetful? She can’t remember my name. Calls me the handyman. Says, ‘The handyman will do it.’ She’s told me to clean the chimney, says I must bring a very long brush—”

  “Don’t listen to her,” I say.

  “And wants me to find something in Chatillon, some kind of big pill for the forehead—”

  “That’s her brain blockage.”

  “Drain?” he says.

  “It’s blocked,” I tell him.

  I clear Eliza’s bath of clammy flannels and a nailbrush embedded with gray mush. It takes ages to fill, giving me time to snoop in the bathroom cabinet. It’s jammed with mangled tubes and jars without lids. Despite being supplied with an endless stream of lotions and assorted gloop, she sticks loyally to the Dead Sea cream. I spot the unopened glittery nail polish set from Chatillon and loose tampons, like I used to use.