The Awkward Age

by Francesca Segal

  Her mother had changed the sheets and refilled her hot water bottle and this Gwen clutched to the dull ache in her abdomen—though in truth the pain was not bad, no worse than period cramps. After a moment James knocked and came in, with two tablets and a glass of water.

  “In case you wanted something in the night. You could take one now and one after two a.m., if you wake.”

  “Will it help me sleep?”

  He nodded.

  “It’s not actually hurting that much. But can I take it anyway?”

  “Just tonight, sure. One at a time, though. Gwen”—he paused in the doorway and ran a hand through his hair, gathering the front in his fist, a mannerism she recognized in Nathan—“I’m so very sorry. I’m on call tonight but you know I won’t leave this house unless I really have to. If you need anything in the night—”

  “I know. Thanks.”

  “Good night. Your mother will come in in a minute.”

  “Wait!” She heard her own voice calling him back, and seconds later he returned and was at her bedside.

  “Can I ask—” She had no vocabulary for her question but her hand was suddenly between James’s, clasped tightly and shaken on each emphatic syllable.

  “You did not make this happen, you hear me? It is not possible. It’s not coffee or what you ate or what you didn’t eat or a heavy box you lifted or anything within your control. This happens in one in five pregnancies, even at your age, and people don’t talk about it and I have no idea why; it would spare a lot of women a lot of needless, toxic guilt. I would not bullshit you. I need you to hear me, okay?”

  He would not look away, she knew, until she nodded.

  The door closed, and she took a deep, unsteady breath. James had not understood. She had done this, not with her body but with her mind. She had wished away a baby. Overjoyed at the end of the fatigue and nausea, she hadn’t known that for days she had been celebrating death within her. She had longed for liberation and in answer a violent, unexpected liberation had come.

  Beneath her hot spread hands her abdomen was flat and unremarkable. In, out. She sank back into her pillow exhausted, washed into unconsciousness on a tide of Tramadol, and a rising steady surge of dark relief.

  40.

  Long ago on a different floor of that same hospital, Julia had cradled newborn Gwen and known her body’s work: to shield this child from harm, lifelong. The cord between them severed but her daughter pulsed in her veins and swelled her heart. Life, she promised her, would be a thing of beauty—no less was due to such unblemished perfection.

  The arrogance! Vigilance could not keep her child beyond the reach of germs or falls or playground bullies, nor from allergies or fights with friends or the teachers who found her unfocused, or petulant, who couldn’t see her unique brilliance and charm. Julia had failed so often, and then could only suffer for Gwen, suffer with Gwen, and try in the aftermath of each small calamity to make amends. And then Daniel had died and huge wet fawn eyes had looked up at Julia and pierced her, and she had read in their bewilderment, How could you let this happen?

  Far taller than all her classmates, awkward and angular and exuding toxic sadness, for that first year Gwen had repelled the other girls. At the school gates they passed her by in flocks, tiny sparrows twittering, avoiding the unsettling spectacle of her bent, trudging form. In her hands an egg of Silly Putty constantly molded and remolded, on her back a grubby purple rucksack and in it the world’s weight. She was not open or appealing but heavy browed, frowning, angry, impossible to befriend. Julia picked her up each afternoon with a lead weight in her stomach. She couldn’t make it better. Instead, she compensated.

  Now such an adult misfortune, a complex, adult sorrow. It was obscene and unbearable to feel relief, seeing Gwen’s face pale against the pale sheets, her daughter meek and bewildered, curled fetal beneath a winter duvet on long summer days. For her child’s lost innocence, Julia wept. Such knowing, now, as no grown woman ought to know!

  • • •

  WITHIN A WEEK Gwen relinquished the daytime hours in bed, still rising very late but then managing to stay awake, clothed, communicative, till bedtime. She came to the supermarket with Julia, and to the post office. She waited in the car while Julia ran in to the dry cleaners. While Julia taught she lay on the sofa with magazines or her laptop or sat at the kitchen table, modeling a large, elaborate replica of the Hampstead Ladies’ Bathing Pond. She clung close and Julia was grateful. So often in the last months she had been forced to stifle the instinct to reach out and draw her nearer; now Gwen sought the touch and care that Julia had so long craved. She had her only on loan, she knew, just until Nathan came home. But for the meanwhile it was a return to a rhythm as familiar as a heartbeat, mother and daughter together except when brief circumstance parted them and one waited patiently, before a seamless return to one another. For the first week James stayed late at the hospital or did paperwork discreetly upstairs, and each evening Gwen worked on her models while Julia made dinner. At Gwen’s suggestion they spring-cleaned. They sorted out Gwen’s clothes. They cleared the drawers beneath her bed to make place for a proper archive of her models. They tidied the spice rack, the utensil drawer, the bookshelves of Julia’s crowded little music room. They made easy order from small chaos. Her child had returned, prodigal, temporary, beloved, and Julia treasured each moment she was granted like a jewel.

  For the Ponds, they packed as they always had. Towels, books, a pack of cards, warm clothes and a fleecy blanket for the moments just after an icy immersion. A picnic of peanut butter sandwiches, carrot sticks, a bag of grapes, two red apples. The same lunch she and Gwen had favored for this outing many summers ago. The weather had turned cloudy but this was England, and to wait for clear blue skies might be to wait forever.

  Safe from exhausting dissecting male eyes, the Ladies’ Pond offers tranquil safety almost impossible to capture elsewhere. Gwen had brought an old, black swimsuit from long-ago school lessons and in this she sat, comfortably cross-legged. Around them women relaxed. Stomach muscles released, shoulders hunched—flattering angles and postures abandoned. Freed. Gwen rolled onto her stomach on the towel and sprawled, facedown, forehead resting on her rolled-up T-shirt. A brief flicker of sun lit the grass, was gone again, but hinted at return. Julia unpacked sandwiches, balled up foil, struggled briefly to unscrew Gwen’s requested bottle of Coke.

  Gwen said, mumbling into the earth, “Can I ask you something?”

  “Of course.”

  Gwen raised herself to her elbows and began to pluck grass blades. “So, Katy’s the only person who knows . . . who knew I was pregnant, and Nathan’s teachers know ’cause he was still at school and stuff and so James told them but no one else, and I’ve been thinking about what to do about my followers. Online, I mean. I always said it would be everything that happened in my life, not just the bits I wanted to show off, but it just feels a bit weird.”

  Julia recoiled at the thought but said, carefully, “It seems very exposing . . . What do you want to do?”

  “I don’t think I want to say anything. I mean, what would I do? Because I was planning this big reveal, you know, like with a little bump and an announcement in those little old-school wooden baby blocks, you know? Telling everyone that way about the baby. I just wanted to wait”—she gave a sideways glance toward her mother and then looked down again—“just till you guys were a bit more used to it, and more . . . excited, and then tell everyone first on the blog, with this little stork and balloons and stuff.”

  Julia’s eyes filled. To think that Gwen had longed not only for acceptance but also enthusiasm. It would not have come, and then what? She wanted to reach out to stroke her daughter’s cheek, her hair, but Gwen went on, “But now it’s like, I’d have to explain that I was pregnant and now I’m not pregnant at the same time and it just feels . . . I dunno. Wrong.”

  “Some things are very painful to share,
very private. And maybe it’s too soon to even know how you feel yet. It’s okay to protect yourself and keep some things off the Internet. Then later you get to decide who you tell, if you want to, and who you don’t.”

  “You don’t think it’s dishonest not to put it up?”

  “I don’t,” said Julia, firmly. “I think it’s brave.”

  Gwen looked relieved. She rolled over and sat up, and reached for a sandwich. “Okay. Then next I’m going to do the one of us here, because the pond’s going really well; I’ve almost finished it, and then the one after can be when Nathan finishes finally, and we can do something fun instead of me like, dying on the sofa.” Here she rolled her eyes, and Julia had a glimpse of how it would be when Nathan returned—the miscarriage dismissed, cast off as embarrassing, or too much of a downer. “I’ve been planning loads of amazing stuff. I’ll meet him at Westminster so I could model that, but afterwards we’re going to Covent Garden. D’you know you can check which street performers are going to be there? So I thought I’d plan out a few that would be amazing, and then there’s this American sweet shop that Katy found so we’ll go there as a surprise and buy stuff he likes from home, and then there’s this bubble tea place that’s just opened, and then James is really into this barbecue idea which sounds cool if that’s what Nathan wants. But basically, I’ll organize the whole afternoon and then the best thing I’ll model.” She peeled apart her remaining corner of sandwich and laid a carrot stick onto the slice with peanut butter on it, rolling this into a cigar. She frowned. “It’s been a bit weird that he’s basically not been here for anything. We’ve talked on the phone but not really about what happened because he has people in his room a lot, and also he was studying and it seemed unfair to bring it up when he has to concentrate. But he keeps saying how he wished he could take care of me.” She bit the end off her rolled sandwich and said, her mouth full, “I’ve been thinking, and I think we’ll have a baby when I’m twenty-five. Or twenty-four.” Impossible not to see the flicker of challenge in her eyes. A test. Julia resolved not to fail.

  “You’ll see what feels right,” she said, neutrally.

  Gwen bit her lip. “But it won’t be this baby.”

  “No, my darling.”

  “It’s like, another baby doesn’t just make it okay about this baby, or make it like it never happened. You don’t think . . .” She paused. “You don’t think James is just saying it to make me feel better, that there was nothing we could do. If there was something that was my fault, I’d want to know.” They had covered this ground more than once before, and each time Gwen’s guilt seemed fractionally eased.

  “I don’t. He’s very straight. But if you wanted to talk to Claire again, I’m sure she’d see you.”

  “No, it’s okay. It was a girl, I think. I’m so sure it was a girl. Do you believe mothers have instincts about these things?”

  “I knew you were a girl.”

  Gwen nodded, relieved to have her instincts affirmed, pleased, also, to have to been recognized so early as herself. She wiped her hands on the grass and stood up, inelegantly. She was going to swim, she announced, and it was clear from her tone that she wished to go alone. Julia took out a book, but did not open it. She watched Gwen climbing down into the slippery green of the pond, watched her daughter’s long form move off through the murky water. A woman’s body now. A separate being, thinking her own closed, unguessable thoughts. She felt a sudden ache of longing for Gwen’s own babyhood. It took so little to call it back, the private rapture of her new daughter’s warm weight, slack and loose-jointed and slung, milk-drunk across Julia’s shoulder. Gwen in her arms had exuded an opiate. The tiny breaths against her neck, the sudden startles and then stillness and silence, the soft, urgent moans of baby dreams. Her finger gripped like a lifeline, unblinking gray eyes locked with her own in an exchange of silent promises. What would she give to start all over again, to be handed her infant daughter afresh, to file away each moment like a treasure, to do it right? She thought about the child her daughter had almost carried, and allowed the tears to come. She would listen harder. She would watch more closely. Next time she would be there to catch Gwen even before she slipped.

  41.

  On the morning of Nathan’s final exam Gwen washed and straightened her hair. He had not been home for more than two weeks and the last time they had seen one another had been just after she’d returned from the hospital when she had been curled on the sofa, barely responsive. She had been startled and touched by his devastation then, and it had shown her the right way to respond. Like a good army wife she had used her little strength to soothe him and patch him up and send him back into battle. When they’d spoken since she’d done her best to sound cheerful, and to listen when he talked about school. It became easier and easier to sound okay, for she had begun to feel okay, but there was still a conversation missing; she had comforted him, but missed her own comforting. She wanted back the concern he’d shown that first night. She wanted praise for her bravery, and coddling for her trauma. And she wanted to remind him as much as possible of her old self. His last day at Westminster was a milestone; she had needed him, and now she could tell him so and they could be together. They could reassemble their bedroom (surely now the parents would allow it) and they would feel close again, and united. He would begin to fathom the leaden weight of all she felt, the dull guilt and the piercing flashes of disbelief. Nathan’s love and admiration for her courage would lift the last sorrow from her shoulders like a cloak; he would be gallant, attentive, and she would shrug loose, would emerge poised and damaged, wiser and more beautiful, and walk free into the candlelight and music of the rest of her life. She could start to forget all she had learned about loneliness. In the darkness their fingertips would touch, and it would not be despair but safety and connection.

  • • •

  IN ST. JAMES’S PARK the grass had just been cut, and the warm air was filled with drowsy summer. Passing crowds of tourists stayed dutifully to the paths, studying their maps and phones and invariably in search of either the Mall and onward to Buckingham Palace, or Birdcage Walk and the Houses of Parliament. The Westminster boys lay on the freshly clipped lawns, blithe and privileged in charcoal suits and new freedom, playing a lazy, seated game of catch with a tight-crumpled ball of white paper that had once been an A-level exam sheet.

  From his inside pocket Charlie drew a bottle of vodka and a packet of cigarettes while from the same hiding place in his own wrinkled jacket Nathan produced his hip flask. The sight of it made Gwen smile to herself.

  A dark-haired boy loped over to join them and dropped his rucksack in the middle of the circle. This was Edmund, who sat next to Nathan in Pure Maths. Edmund had long ago dated Valentina, briefly, which made him an object of interest. She studied his face for signs that he’d been branded in some manner by the Demon Barber.

  “Champers?”

  “Have you got? You star!”

  “Gift from the olds. I’ve even got glasses.” Edmund unzipped his rucksack and began to flick plastic cups into their laps.

  “Mixers?” asked Charlie.

  “It’s champagne, you muppet.”

  “For the vodka.”

  “Nope. Mixers are for pussies.”

  “I’ll go to the newsagent,” Gwen offered, seeing a way to participate whilst also getting away from his friends, for a moment. She stood up, squinting in the sunshine. Her sunglasses were in her bag but she now worried they were babyish; when she bought them she’d thought the heart-shaped lenses quirky and original, here she felt uncertain.

  “Top girl. Orange juice, cranberry juice, soda.”

  Gwen looked at Nathan, waiting.

  “What?”

  “Wallet?”

  “No cash? Here.” He handed her a twenty-pound note. “Buy yourself something pretty.” His voice was hard and public, straining for cool and distance. He couldn’t help it. Later he
would coo and nuzzle her, overcompensating, anxious for reassurance that she would not hold him to the distance he himself had made.

  The shops were farther than she’d remembered. She decided to spend the rest of Nathan’s money on food, something that his friends would not have considered, and so bought cheese-and-onion crisps, Jaffa Cakes, and three large bags of Wine Gums. The drinks were heavy, and the thin plastic bags were splitting by the time she was halfway back across the field. She managed to fit one bottle into her own bag, but the others had to be tucked awkwardly into the crook of each arm, and her return progress was cumbrous and slightly sweaty in the rising heat of the afternoon. Every few yards she had to stop and readjust her burdens.

  There were ten or twelve teenagers cross-legged in a circle by the time she returned, mostly boys, as well as two girls she didn’t recognize, one of whom had her stockinged feet in, or near to, Charlie’s crotch. The champagne and vodka bottles were empty, and a large Malibu was circulating.

  “You can’t mix Malibu and cranberry juice!” snorted Nathan, when he saw her. “What were you thinking, woman?”

  “It was vodka when I left.”

  “Water into wine. Vodka into Malibu. Transubstantiation.” He widened his eyes. “It’s a miracle.”

  “Transubstantiation’s not water into wine, Fuller.” Beside him Edmund began to guffaw with tipsy laughter. “Such a fucking Jew.”

  Shocked, Gwen dropped the bottles rather heavily in the center of the circle, but Nathan had only punched his friend rather lazily in the bicep and grinned. “Well, what is it, then? It’d be fucking impressive. Imagine turning Evian into Cab Sauv.”