An Unremarkable Body

by Elisa Lodato

  David ordered a bottle of Prosecco at the bar and had it sent up to the room but we didn’t have time for it. I kicked off my heels as soon as we were inside and took my jacket off. As I pulled my blouse from my skirt, he walked towards me, conscious perhaps that undressing me was his job. But his fingers were too slow; I didn’t want to watch them grapple with every button on my blouse. I did it myself, and stood before him in my bra and skirt, my tights still on. He didn’t know where to start or how to go about opening me. I unclasped my bra and threw it on the bed, half-expecting his eyes to follow it, but he kept them trained on me. A curious blend of desire and caution – he sensed my unpredictability.

  I cried when it was over. The tears rolled down my cheeks and into my ears as I stared at the ceiling. I thought of my mother and the first time she ever had sex with my father. How that mistake was the beginning of my life and this mistake.

  ‘I knew this was a bad idea,’ he said.

  ‘These tears aren’t for you. Or about us. It’s more complicated than that.’

  ‘Tell me what’s wrong. Is it about your mum?’

  I blinked and turned to face him. The water ran out of my ear. He stroked my face with his hand and said, ‘I love you, Laura.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I should never have married Sarah.’

  ‘That’s a big statement.’

  ‘I know. But it’s true.’

  ‘But you did. And you have a daughter.’

  ‘I’ve gone over it all a thousand times in my head. Since February.’

  ‘Don’t go over it any more.’ I pulled his hand from my face. ‘You should stay with Sarah. It was probably a blessing you were too lily-livered to ditch her.’

  ‘Post-coital Goneril. Nice.’

  ‘Just be grateful it’s not post-coital gonorrhoea.’

  ‘You see. I fucking miss this. I miss you. I’ve never had this with anyone else.’

  ‘Had what?’

  ‘This connection.’

  ‘Dave. I can’t help you. You didn’t want me enough when it mattered.’

  ‘I did, Laura. I always wanted you. I’m just a fucking dick. They were your words at the time, not mine. Remember?’

  ‘I remember. And I stand by them.’

  ‘Why did you phone me if I’m such a fucking dick?’

  ‘Because it would appear I am one too.’ He put his hand on my hip and tried to pull me towards him. ‘I’m seeing someone.’

  ‘Who?’ he said, withdrawing his hand.

  ‘His name is Tom. He’s pretty short.’

  He laughed nervously. ‘Is it serious?’

  ‘I think so. Or at least it was before I did this. Now I’m not so sure. So don’t worry, you’re off the hook. Go back to Sarah. I don’t want anything from you.’

  ‘Come on, Laura. Don’t do that. With Sarah, it’s difficult. After Bea, we found out we couldn’t have any more children and I—’

  ‘I don’t want to hear it.’

  ‘I’m just trying to explain why—’

  ‘There was a time when I cared. When I really tried to understand why you chose her over me. But that time has gone. I’m sorry I phoned you earlier – I shouldn’t have,’ I said, sitting up and swinging my legs round to hang off the bed.

  ‘So that’s it? You’re just going to say goodbye until you find yourself at a loose end again?’

  ‘No,’ I said, reaching down to pull my knickers on. ‘No more loose ends. This is already a bad memory.’

  I went downstairs and out to my car. It was around six o’clock, and the car park had begun to fill up. I thought of David up in the room I’d encouraged him to book with the bottle of Prosecco still unopened in the ice bucket. I went back into the bar and decided to pay the tab. I tried Helen again but she didn’t answer, so I started the engine and began the journey back to Balham.

  There was a diaphyseal fracture to the right ulna. Dynamic compression plate used to correct this. Hardware still present.

  My mother woke several hours later. Her skirt and knickers were in a heap on the carpet. She got up – soundlessly – dressed and tiptoed out of the house and into a Saturday morning transformed by what had happened to her. Once home, she employed her own version of the previous evening’s stealth entry and made her way up the carpeted stairs to the sanctuary of her bedroom. She dared not shower, even though the moisture at the top of her legs felt cloying and alien. Running water at such an hour would invite questions from my grandmother. And she had no explanation for what she’d experienced. So she got into bed and pulled her knees up to her chest and tried to make sense of all her body had undergone. But the chain of events was too puzzling in its unreality and so, despite the dawning of a new day, my mother decided to bury her body beneath the blankets and sleep on until late morning. She couldn’t have known her reproductive system was alive to its first major task. As it set about hosting the event of a lifetime, my mother slept.

  She returned to work the following Monday, still stupefied by Friday and the actions of the young man who had put himself inside her. It was the day her new children’s corner was to be unveiled, the date designed to coincide with the beginning of the school holidays. A small gathering of regular visitors to the library and a representative from the local authority listened as Nicola congratulated my mother on her successful execution of the initiative. She pointed to the bright beanbags – disarmingly low upon the carpet – and told of my mother’s determination to encourage children to stay and read. My mother stood to one side and burned with shame. Not because of modesty but because my father had just tiptoed into the room and joined the small crowd at the back. He smiled at her and put his right thumb up, full of praise and pride at his secret knowledge.

  The children’s corner proved popular that first summer of 1980. My mother was busy enough to ignore the sporadic ache on the right side of her abdomen and the rising nausea whenever it was time to eat. Ignoring my father proved more difficult – he asked her out again and again. When his persistence went unrewarded he began following her around the library and then home one evening, desperate to know what he’d done wrong. Nicola saw it all: my father’s slumped shoulders and dejected expression, and then the look of determined cruelty on my mother’s face. She was freezing him out – for the first time. She tried asking my mother if anything had happened, but my mother’s silence on the matter appeared absolute. In an effort to resolve matters, she sat down at my father’s table. He looked up hopefully, his face visibly disappointed when it wasn’t my mother.

  ‘How are you?’ Nicola’s voice was a concerned whisper.

  He shrugged but didn’t reply. The pain of hoping for the junior librarian and getting the senior one was still too sharp.

  ‘What’s happened between you and Katharine? You were getting on so well.’

  ‘Ask her,’ he whispered. ‘One minute we’re going out, the next she won’t even look at me.’

  ‘Did anything happen?’

  ‘No. We just went out for a drink. Like normal people.’ He felt spiteful towards Nicola, my mother and even his own mother – women who wanted something inscrutable. And his inability to understand led to a persistent failure to deliver.

  ‘Did you hear back from the bank? About the job you went for?’

  ‘Yes. They don’t want me either.’

  By October my mother’s morning vomit had become routine. Nicola, a quiet observer, was able to piece things together. Sensing my mother’s growing unhappiness and inability to make a decision, she asked her to stay behind one evening after work. She locked the main door and told my mother to take a seat in the reading room.

  ‘Katharine, I’m very worried about you. I know, I know,’ she said, putting a hand up to my mother’s immediate open-mouthed objection, ‘you’re going to tell me nothing’s wrong. Or perhaps that it’s none of my business. But something is definitely wrong. You can tell me.’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell.’ She spoke quietly but with determination.r />
  ‘I think you’re vomiting because you’re pregnant. And I have a fairly good idea who is responsible for your condition.’

  My mother began to cry into her hand. Nicola knelt down at my mother’s side and tried to hug her. The angle was all wrong; she stretched her arms across her chest and shoulders, trying to link her fingers on the other side of my mother’s sobbing torso.

  ‘There, there. Don’t cry. We’ll work it all out.’ She gave up trying to hug her and sat back on her haunches. ‘Do you want to tell me what happened?’

  My mother shrugged her shoulders and looked down into her lap. She delivered fragments of the story: the alcohol, going back to his room, the following morning.

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘In July. Just before we opened the reading corner.’

  Nicola calculated the weeks in her head. ‘About ten weeks then. OK, we still have options. If you don’t want to have this baby, we can arrange for you to see someone. And then you won’t be pregnant any more. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

  My mother nodded her head. Nicola wrote the details of a clinic on a piece of paper and told my mother to think about it.

  ‘I’ll drive you there and wait with you. You don’t have to do this alone.’ My mother took the slip of paper and held it in her lap. She thought of the rock, paper, scissors game she used to play with Helen. It was hard to believe that a piece of paper could destroy the small unstoppable thing inside her.

  But a week later my mother, who had promised to think about an abortion, continued to avoid any discussion of her condition. Nicola tried to get her to make a decision but my mother withdrew into silence and clothing that was too big for her. Weeks passed, so that by November the pregnancy was becoming more obvious. Her window of opportunity was closing, but still I grew within her.

  On 24 November she woke without the hollow feeling that preceded her daily vomit. She had a shower and went downstairs, where she made herself some toast, chewing slowly as she stared at the lawn levelled by mist. The day was waiting for her, ready to pull her down the hill and into work, but she wouldn’t go. Not yet. For a few moments she stood still and steadfast, with her hand on her stomach, encouraging the life that had established itself. My first foetal reflex came to assure her, in that moment of private communion, that she was not alone.

  She picked up her bag and keys and went outside and unchained her bike. She began cycling down the Ewell Road full of me and the knowledge that she would be my mother. It was still very early in the morning, the mist effacing the hard white of the give-way lines. As she approached the library, with her eyes primed for a view of the war memorial, my mother neglected to see the car pulling out of the road on her left, blocking her lane in its patience to turn right. She hit the side of it and was flung over the roof and onto the road a car’s length away. As she flew through the air she pulled her legs up to cover her stomach and landed heavily on her right arm, like a badly formed question mark, causing the ulna to snap in two. The pain was extreme and unrelenting in its sudden force. The bone that had been intact and silent seconds before the impact screamed in outrage. She lay on the road absolutely still and unmoving – it was the only offering she could make to the exacting agony. The effort of perfect stasis in perfect pain threatened consciousness. She began counting to herself – anything to keep the dark edges from encroaching into her field of vision.

  The motorist, a man in his mid-thirties who had been on his way to work, sat shaken in his car. His hands still on the steering wheel, he couldn’t bring himself to look at my mother’s body. The driver’s door had been dented by her front wheel so that when he did finally emerge, it was out of the passenger door, having climbed, without dignity, over the gearstick.

  The man knelt by her side and began shouting for help. In desperation he left her and ran to the fire station twenty yards down the road and raised the alarm. My mother placed her left hand on her stomach, willing her secret occupant to take courage and stay with her. By the time the ambulance arrived, screaming its legitimacy to the other cars on the road, a crowd of curious bystanders had appeared. One of the paramedics, a woman in her late thirties, jumped down from the vehicle efficiently, inured to the sight of cyclists lying broken at junctions. Her concern was professional and capable: What’s your name? Where does it hurt? How old are you? My mother tried to answer, but the pain in her arm was getting impatient. It had become warm and wet. She couldn’t even move her head to nod. The paramedic read the position of her right arm, pinned down beneath her body, and tried to reassure my mother. She asked her if she had any pain in her back and neck. My mother wanted to mention her baby but articulating the pregnancy she’d kept secret for so long was a strain too far. She decided to close her eyes and rest in the darkness for a little while.

  Twenty minutes later, she resurfaced again briefly and discovered she was no longer outside. She’d somehow found her way into a noisy cave, held there by people who were shouting to the enraged sirens outside. Katharine. Nineteen. Suspected fracture to the right arm. She sank back under and decided to stay down for as long as she could.

  When she woke again, it was in the Accident and Emergency department of Kingston Hospital. My grandmother was standing in the corridor, talking to someone, her voice floating to my mother through the half-open curtain. My mother remembered her arm and tried to look for it but her neck wouldn’t oblige. As she attempted to move her head, she felt her chin strain against the unyielding collar.

  My grandmother pulled the curtain aside and walked back into the room. ‘Katharine,’ her voice was breathless and urgent, ‘darling. You’re awake. Thank God.’

  ‘My arm. Where is it?’

  My grandmother smiled and stroked her left hand. ‘It’s still where it should be. But it’s a bad break. I’ve just spoken to the senior registrar and he thinks you might need a metal plate.’ My mother wanted to ask about her baby but any conversation with the doctor was impossible with my grandmother hard by. Surrounding her with close, suffocating concern.

  ‘Nicola.’

  ‘It’s OK. Everything’s OK. She’s outside. With a young man who says he knows you from the library?’

  ‘Where’s Dad?’

  ‘He’s on his way.’

  The only other person unaccounted for was me. She closed her eyes, hoping I’d held on.

  ‘What shall I say to Nicola and the chap she’s with? I didn’t ask his name.’

  ‘Richard.’

  ‘Richard. What shall I say to them?’

  ‘Tell them to go home.’

  My grandmother walked alongside my mother as she was wheeled to a waiting room in the Radiology department where an X-ray had been scheduled. The radiologist knocked quietly on the door and entered. My grandmother greeted her with a wide and predatory smile.

  ‘Katharine Lambton, is it?’ she asked, as she opened her folder.

  ‘It is,’ confirmed my grandmother.

  ‘Before we proceed to X-ray, I need to ask you if there is any reason to believe you might be pregnant?’

  ‘I should think not,’ my grandmother chortled, full of middle-class certainty.

  ‘I take it you’re her mother?’

  ‘Yes. I most certainly am.’

  ‘Mrs Lambton. Can I ask you to step outside, please? I need to speak to Katharine alone.’

  ‘Anything you need to say to my daughter you can say to me.’

  My mother saw her opportunity. ‘Mum. Please. Can you wait outside?’

  ‘Kathy, I’m here to look after you.’

  ‘Please. Let me speak to her alone.’

  My mother confirmed her pregnancy to the radiologist, who arranged for her to be transferred to the maternity ward, where she was examined by an obstetrician. He went about his task with sprightly efficiency, bending down to my mother’s small bump with a Pinard stethoscope. He smiled when he heard my heartbeat.

  ‘Is she OK?’

  ‘She?’

  ‘Is my baby O
K?’ she almost shouted.

  ‘Yes. Nice strong heartbeat. She’s been shaken but not stirred.’ And in response to a crappy James Bond joke, my mother began to cry. The obstetrician thought they were tears of happiness, natural to a mother who has just learnt that her foetus is still alive. But the truth was something she could never hope to articulate. She cried because there was no longer any alternative to the fate that awaited her. She was going to mother the baby that had survived within her and, as soon as her own mother discovered how that baby had come to be, she’d be compelled to share a life with my father. Her accident, her flight through the air, was really the end of any other possible life. The obstetrician had confirmed more than just a heartbeat: he’d told her of my strength and determined grip on her body, and that my existence would require her to concede a significant chunk of her own.

  My grandmother absorbed the news of her daughter’s pregnancy with a disbelief that quickly gave way to anger. She surmised immediately that the young man waiting downstairs in Accident and Emergency was the father. Nicola had returned to the library, but my father remained in the waiting room; he was midway through a crossword. My grandmother sat beside him and asked him what he planned to do.

  ‘What can I do?’

  ‘About the baby,’ she mouthed, keeping her voice low to maintain the entre nous.

  ‘What baby?’

  ‘Don’t play the fool with me, young man. My daughter is pregnant. And I suspect you had a hand in it.’

  My father stood up and looked down on my grandmother in bewilderment. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘She’s being examined in the Maternity unit,’ my grandmother whispered with venom. ‘I know what maternity means!’

  ‘So she hasn’t told you?’

  ‘What does that have to do with anything?’

  ‘I’m just trying to understand,’ he said, sitting down again. ‘Katharine hasn’t actually said that she’s pregnant?’

  ‘I haven’t had a chance to speak to her yet,’ my grandmother conceded, ‘but I will. And when I do, I expect you to be available. You’ve caused this problem, and I’m going to make sure you’re part of the solution.’