Bed Rest

by Sarah Bilston

  11 P.M.

  Just read an article on the Internet that claimed stretch marks are a result of the mother’s weight gain, rather than the baby’s. Aaaaaaaargh.

  62

  Saturday 9 A.M.

  Since breakfast, I’ve been doing fetal kick counts, the other bit of homework Dr. Weinberg assigned me yesterday. I’m supposed to count the number of times the baby moves in the hour after I eat, when the baby’s most active. I’m supposed to count seven kicks, rolls, swooshes, or whatever, then stop. But what’s the fun of that? I’m proud to say that my child has kicked and rolled and swooshed forty-five times in the last hour. I obviously have a professional sportsman in there.

  Noon

  Thirty-two kicks since I finished my last chocolate brownie. I will clearly be able to retire and live on my child’s earnings as a footballer. I’ll be one of those mothers in the front row with a megaphone and T-shirt emblazoned with her son’s image.

  7 P.M.

  Oh my God, is he dead? I finished dinner fifty-eight minutes ago and I’ve only felt five kicks. What should I do? What should I do?

  7:02 P.M.

  Phew—two quick kicks came in just under the wire. But I’m still anxious. I think I’ll have another cookie and see if that wakes him up a bit.

  63

  Monday 9 A.M.

  I am having a baby in a week. A WEEK! IN ONE WEEK! OH GOOD GOD.

  I AM COMPLETELY TERRIFIED.

  64

  Tuesday 7 A.M.

  Tom left at 5:30 this morning, slamming the door viciously behind him.

  I was heaving myself wearily onto the sofa a few hours later when the phone rang. “Hiya, Q, good morning,” said a chirpy voice on the other end, “This is Leanne at Crimpson Thwaite.” Ah yes, I thought to myself, Tom’s too-charming secretary, the lovely Leanne, leggy Leanne, lissome Leanne, a woman I’d have to run out of town if it wasn’t for her deep and unwavering commitment to the equally lovely Alyssa.

  “Tom just called to say that he thinks he’s left some paperwork behind, a couple of files, so I’m sending a courier over to pick them up at eight, will you be home?”

  Will I be home? Now let me think—

  “The courier has detailed instructions on how to find them, so this shouldn’t inconvenience you at all, but I just wanted to let you know to expect him, have a nice day!” Click.

  I looked around the room. Not on the radiator bench, not on the side table, not on the armchair—ah yes, over there, on the table by the entrance to the kitchen. A black box file and a slim navy envelope file, lying on top of yesterday’s Times but beneath a pile of postbaby outfits (Transitional Wear as they’re euphemistically termed, i.e., enormous knickers, capacious T-shirts, and bras with a staggeringly long list of letters on the label) that arrived yesterday afternoon. I stumbled over to get the files ready; not, of course, that I’m supposed to get out of bed, but I don’t particularly want the courier rustling around in my postpartum underwear.

  The envelope file was unmarked. The box file said, on the spine, REAL ESTATE—CURRENT CLIENTS—FOR FILING.

  I stared at the box. Real estate. Current Clients. Crimpson. I thought for a moment or two. Hmmm.

  Then I put it down, flushed and guilty. What was I thinking, for God’s sake? I’ve been through this, I’ve thought about it and reached a moral conclusion, I apostrophized myself in a serious, philosophy-teacher kind of a way. It would be both professionally unethical and a serious wifely betrayal to look through Tom’s private files.

  Ethics Schmethics, another voice answered, a bolshy riot grrrl with her hands planted firmly on her hips. Is it ethical to leave your pregnant wife at home all day and to wantonly put your career above your kid? Riot grrls kick philosophy teachers’ asses. I reached out my hands and picked up the box file, then lifted the lid and peered inside.

  My fingertips seemed suddenly charged with electricity; my face was burning with a thrilling sense of terrible guilt. But the adrenaline quickly subsided: there was nothing in here to interest me. Just the usual lawyer’s papers, court documents and case notes, shuffled together, some fastened together with large bulldog clips, others loose, in need of careful sorting. In fact, that must be why Leanne wants them, I thought to myself. She’s set aside the morning to go through Tom’s chaotic notes. Mentally I chastised my husband. Really, I thought virtuously, you need a better filing system. You have notes from about fifteen different clients, you’ll never be able to find what you need—what’s this, Fred Trask corporations, Billman & Hasselhoff Hotels, Gold-view Morgan Investments, Randalls’s Developments…

  Randalls’s Developments. I swallowed. I had the oddest sensation of a thousand tiny red ants embedded in the skin of my palms.

  I saw a bundle of notes, with a yellow Post-it on top, marked “Randalls’s Developments” in Tom’s crabbed, angular handwriting. About fifteen pages were clipped together—what are they, ah, a lease (was I relieved or not?) for a property uptown, on 128th—nothing about the building opposite, nothing at all to do with that. But wait—

  Between pages seven and eight a letter, folded tightly in two, was slipped inside. I took it out. I opened it. I saw part of a sentence that read “losing thousands in maintenance and taxes alone, that’s before you factor in the potential market-rate rental income—”

  Hastily I shut the letter. What was I doing? My heart seemed to be attempting to leap out of my chest. I wondered what the baby was making of this scalp-crisping adrenaline surge. I thought for a moment or two. Something about Randalls’s income, about its losses in a strong property market—it could be about anything, it’s not necessarily about my building (as I seem to think of it now). In fact, it’s probably about the lease to the building on 128th. Yes, that makes sense. Resolutely I slipped the letter back into the black box file, then put both files on a chair near the door, and heaved myself across the room to the sofa.

  I lay down again, pulled the wool blanket over my legs, and switched on the television. Judge Judy was laying down the law, the real law that is, the law of the people, not the fiddly stuff practiced by those of us in the trade. Judge Judy can’t do much to repair the damage wreaked by your husband’s lover to your family, your car, and your self-esteem, but she can rain down moral invective for five minutes. She can truck in words like right and wrong to make you, and all of us, feel more secure. The gavel bangs. There! Resolution without any of the tricky stuff, the who-pays-what-when and which days of the week do you see the kids, and who goes where for Christmases and New Years and birthdays.

  Don’t stare at the black box file, don’t stare at the black box file, I said to myself, but I appeared to be staring at the black box file. In fact, it seemed to have taken an unearthly hold of my consciousness. I could almost swear it was glowing on the chair by the door. “Potential market-rate rental income,” a bland enough phrase, “losing thousands in maintenance and taxes”—the letter could be about anything, I reminded myself again. The courier will be here any minute, and I’ll spend the day thinking it was about Mrs. G’s friends’ building, and it probably isn’t at all. Maybe—I thought to myself, at about 7:57 A.M.—the best thing I can do is read the letter now, discover it’s about some matter entirely unrelated to the building opposite, and then I’ll forget all about it. Yes, that’s the best plan.

  I threw off the blanket, stumbled over to the chair, opened the file, rifled the pages, and took out the letter.

  CONFIDENTIAL MEMO it said at the top, and it was written by Tom himself. In fact it was a printout of an e-mail to Phil, his senior partner, drafted four days ago. And this (as far as I recall) is the substance of the document:

  Phil—Things are out in the open with Valerie now, so you’ll be on firm ground. I think Coleman Randall (the father) talked to her himself last week. He’s arranged a meeting with John for Tuesday, but that’s apparently about litigating the shopping mall case (although knowing J. the issue of false submissions to the DHCR will almost certainly come up).

>   I recommend you take Stewart along, he’s up to speed on the background. To summarize: Randalls were hemorrhaging money on the rent-controlled units at East Eighty-third—they were losing thousands in maintenance and taxes alone, that’s before you factor in the potential market-rate rental income. Let’s be clear: CR knew the DHCR has been hostile to applications to tear down properties in the last few years and he wanted the tenants out to give little incentive for further barracking. (He keeps referencing 823 Park in his defense without much understanding of the legal issues involved.) Stewart is certain he’s outright lied about the state’s position on both the scale of the mold and the procedures the state has enacted. He’s only called us in because the tenants have got their hands on high-caliber legal counsel and he’s terrified the whole thing is going south.

  Clearly the tenants’ lawyers will advise them to aim high, probably for punitive damages. This—and let’s be frank here—is, after all, appalling behavior. I read CR the riot act about communicating with counsel and I broached the subject of correcting false submissions to the DHCR, which amount to—

  And then the doorbell went. With hands that seemed suddenly stubbed and numb and fat, I refolded the letter and slipped it back inside the lease, but in which order—where did the lease go?—there’s the doorbell again, shit, shit—I hastily shoved the bundle inside the black box file and snapped it shut, then opened the door, pinning my most charming and innocent smile to my face. The courier had the bored, bland expression of a man who risks his life every day on the West Side Highway. I gave him the files without meeting his eyes. He grunted at me incoherently, then disappeared into the stairwell.

  And now I’m here in the apartment on my own—Mum’s out hunting for a yoga class—and for the past hour I’ve been thinking to myself: what, precisely, have I found out, what do I know now that I didn’t know before? The cogs of my brain seem to be turning with treacly slowness. First, that Randalls is on the run; the letter I told Fay to send seems to have worked, it sounds as if the tenants are about to start receiving the buyout offers to which they’re entitled. But there’s something else about the letter that interests me even more. Tom “read the riot act” to Coleman Randall. He advised him of his ethical obligations. He thinks Randall’s behavior is “appalling.”

  This sounds like the man I thought I married. The Tom of the memo seems like a lawyer who thinks Alexis and Mrs. G have a point, that there’s a battle to be won, and they’re on the right side. And me too, of course. The only problem is, I shouldn’t have read the file. I shouldn’t know any of this, because I shouldn’t have read the file. If Tom finds out I’ve looked through his confidential documents in order to find information to help my friends, he’ll never trust me again. How have I ended up in the wrong here?

  9:25 A.M.

  Only one thing to do—

  9:27 A.M.

  I just called Tom. I picked up the phone and dialed the number with very little idea of what I was actually going to say to him. Beep, beep. “Hello?”

  “Tom,” I said urgently, and then stopped.

  “Oh, it’s you, Q,” he replied, coolly. “What do you want?”

  “I—er—just wanted to check that your files arrived. The courier came to pick them up at eight. They were on the table, by the kitchen,” I babbled. “Beneath some of my stuff. Undies and things. Anyway I—ah—thought I’d check up on them,” I finished, lamely.

  “Yes, they’re here, thanks,” he replied, shortly.

  There was a long, long silence.

  “So—um—will you be home in time for dinner?” I offered at last, desperately.

  “No, I won’t be home,” he said, flatly, “at least, I don’t think I will. Look, Q, I’m incredibly busy right now, I’m under a deadline, I don’t have the time to talk properly. I’ll speak to you later, okay?” He put down the phone.

  I’ve spent my entire adult life—hell, my life since I was thirteen—determined to have a strong, happy, successful marriage. I know what it’s like to grow up in a house with an empty chair at the end of the dinner table. I know what it’s like to absentmindedly set a place at that chair and then, with a sickening sense of horror and embarrassment, tidy it away again, hoping that no one else in the family has noticed. I know what it’s like to catch a parent looking palely out the window with a look on her face that suggests, in an ideal world, she’d prefer to be swinging from a lamppost. I won’t do that to a child of mine, I thought to myself as a teenager, digging my nails into the skin on the side of my hand, deep, deep, deep. The only thing my children will have to complain about is that their parents insist on kissing in front of them (“eeuuuu, gross!”). But as it turns out I seem to be handling this marriage about as badly as my parents before me—in different ways, and for different reasons, but just as badly.

  65

  My father was a short man, not much more than five feet eight. He had ginger hair (his legacy to me) and skin so pale that you could see the delicate blue veins in his wrists. I remember tracing them with my finger as a child, snuggled into the crook of his arm. He smelled of aftershave and Benson & Hedges.

  When he left I cried every night for two weeks. I had my own room by then, so there was no reason to check my tears, no scared little sister to hear my sobs. I remember giving myself up to paroxysms of grief under the covers. How could he leave me with her? How was I going to live up to her standards? My father never had any standards for me, I suppose because he never had any for himself, and it made life a great deal easier. He was easily pleased with Bs. Hell, he barely noticed when I failed religious studies.

  About three days after he’d gone I opened the laundry cupboard and found one of his shirts, yellow and brown checks, freshly washed, patiently awaiting its owner. I stared at that shirt for about twenty minutes. I actually sat down on the cork-tiled bathroom floor and gazed at it. I couldn’t get my head around the fact that my father wasn’t here and his shirt was. The following day I went back to the laundry cupboard, the secret shrine to my dad, only to discover that the shirt had silently vanished. But the wire coat hanger remained, bare, swinging backward and forward gently in the warm draft of air.

  The first letter was incoherent. Dear Q, I’m writing this to say I’m very sorry indeed and I miss you and Julie sends lots of love. I had to leave you know I did actually. I will come and see you very soon. Love Dad. xxxxxxxxx. I put it into the pink velvet jewelery box given to me by my uncle one Christmas and now the repository of all my most treasured possessions. Contents: one charm bracelet, a free gift on the cover of some weekly girls’ magazine; one silver thimble, a family “heirloom” according to my father; and every Christmas and birthday card my parents ever gave me.

  These precious objects were soon joined by a second letter. Dear Q, your daddy asked me to write and say hello. We are doing fine. I have eight guitar pupils now and he has joined a new band. It is going very well, although they recently lost their bass player and the saxophonist may be moving back to Belgium. We have just bought a dog called Cassie, you would love her. You must come down to Brighton and play with her. Your father says he’ll phone or write soon. Love Julie. xx.

  I wasn’t thrilled that Julie was writing his letters for him, but I dreamed about Cassie for months. Imagine what fun we’d have romping on Brighton beach! Cassie, in my mind, was a long-haired Afghan, or maybe a pure white sheepdog, and she was the very acme of fidelity—people who saw us together would be moved to tears by the deep and obvious bond between us. She would walk at my heel without a lead. She would save small children from drowning in response to my short expressive whistle. In the evenings I would comb her hair, and she would lick my hand and look lovingly up into my eyes.

  My mother would never let us have a dog (“Too much mess, and I’m not coming home from work to walk the damn thing”).

  Needless to say, I never met Cassie. My father never invited me down. He rarely wrote to me, or to my sisters. Julie sent the odd card—uncomfortable, stilted, brief�
��and that was basically that. I used to wait in a state of anguished tension each December for their Christmas card, every year hoping to hear something new, to discover a change of heart on his part, something along the lines of: Q, I’m sending this to you because you’re the oldest and you’ll understand. I had to leave because [some terribly good reason followed here] but I love you desperately and I really want to be a part of your life again. I can’t stop thinking about you, imagining how you must have grown. I want to be a real father to you again.

  But each year I’d read something infinitely more anodyne. Dear kids, Season’s Greetings and a Happy New Year, lots of love, Dad and Julie. Hope you’re all doing well. Band doing great, look out for the album!!!! xxxxxxxx. As my teenage years passed I found myself fantasizing about bumping into him accidentally—say on a train; I’d see Cassie first, then I’d look up and see Julie (not that I was sure I’d recognize her, but I had a photo Dad sent us, which I retrieved from the bin my mother threw it into), and then at last—my father. He’d see me and his face would lighten—Q, my God! I don’t believe it!—and he’d obviously be uncomfortable and embarrassed at first, but then—

  The fantasy had two different conclusions. In the first, we’d get talking, and we’d soon discover we had all these points of contact. We liked the same kinds of music. We had a similar sense of humor. We both had flaming tempers (“to match the hair”). Julie would sit opposite us, watching us talk and talk, and she’d feel left out and nonplussed in the face of our renewed intimacy. By the end of the journey a whole new relationship would have kindled and we’d vow that nothing should part us again.