by Sophie Ward
The man in her dream was real.
She retraced the moments at the theme park when Eliza and Arthur had returned from the ride. She had waited for them at a designated bench and watched as they walked down the wide path towards her, Arthur weaving between Eliza and the crowd around them. She could see Eliza quite clearly against the backdrop of the fairy-tale castle. There was a set to her jaw, an optimism, which had been missing for a while. In the early days of her illness, Rachel had watched Eliza behave as though she had always known and the doctors were simply confirming her diagnosis. Of course this was how things would turn out, Eliza seemed to say, the situation was inevitable. Rachel understood that her wife was reacting to a version of events that made sense to her, the rational explanation, and the calm resignation had allowed her to feel more volatile. Rachel only challenged Eliza’s stoicism once, after a dinner at her sister’s house when Eliza had remained tight-lipped throughout a discussion about the causes of creativity, only to dismiss Fran’s mention of the ethereal as unhelpful.
‘We don’t need to resort to the mystical to describe physical processes.’ Eliza had shaken her head. ‘Everything that happens can be known.’
‘Do you think everything about my illness, about me, can be known?’ Rachel asked on the walk home.
‘I wasn’t talking about you. But yes, we knew anyway. If we had thought of it.’
‘Who’s being ethereal now?’
‘Rachel, come on. The headaches? The hallucinations? You were ill for a long time before we went to the doctor. Hey,’ Eliza put her arm around her wife, ‘we were busy. Busy making Arthur, getting our lives together. But the symptoms were there.’
It was true that Rachel had suffered from severe headaches for years before the ant arrived. Another sign that the ant had been drawn to her because of whatever was already in her head. She had never had a hallucination.
‘I’ve never had a hallucination.’
Rachel spoke aloud as she lay in the bath with her book in her hands and her eyes closed, watching Eliza walk towards her two years ago. She remembered the change in her; how her wife had looked up from Arthur and seen her in a way that Eliza did not usually look and see. They sat together on the bench and Eliza had taken Rachel’s face in her hands and stared into her, straight into her. And the ant had stared back.
That was the only time Eliza had taken notice of her visitor and Rachel understood that the man from her dream had led Eliza back to her. They were all connected, she could see that now. Her mind folded the events together; her dream and the bite and the man watching over her, Eliza and Arthur and the same man walking away from them. The pages of her life turning over each other, all the words so full of possible combinations and all leading to this moment.
She had stopped shivering. Today was special, she had known it from the moment she had woken up and put all her most comfortable clothes on so she could go downstairs and say goodbye to Eliza. She looked at the piles of t-shirts and pyjama bottoms that lay abandoned around the bath. They seemed so far away, as though they belonged to another place altogether. The water had risen around her. She turned off the tap and opened her book. She wanted to get back to her make-believe world, back to her party for one. The warmth enveloped her as she read, her bones soft in the momentary heat. She drifted in her personal ocean. The words fell into her and swept her clean. Her head tipped toward the page. She was lying in the sun, the grass beneath her, Eliza beside her. The shadow was no longer there, the man from the theme park with her face in his eyes. A secret her mother had kept all her life. He had shown her the ant. And Arthur. And brought Eliza back to her. A good day, that day. Today. Tomorrow. The soft, soft grass below her. The hot sun, above. She could reach out and touch the yellow brightness of it. Her hand huge against the sky. The smallness of the world in her palm. Arthur growing inside her. All a question of scale. Tiny ants marching through the grass. And her head so heavy. Heavy and hot and large and small and all the same. Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow.
Her hands loosened. The book slipped into the water and lay for a moment, flat against her legs, before sliding down one thigh and landing on the warm enamel, the pages rippling in the little current created by its fall.
When Eliza returned home, she tucked Arthur on the sofa and went upstairs to check on Rachel. Finding the bedroom empty, she walked across the hall and called out her wife’s name, anticipating the pleasure on Rachel’s face when she saw Eliza. She had come to depend on such moments.
Outside the window, the sky was deepening purple in the late spring evening. Raindrops spattered against the glass. There was no light on in the bathroom and the air was damp with cooled steam. The figure of Rachel lay unmoving in the bath.
Eliza stood in the doorway. In the time before her next breath she remembered how often her heart had lifted as Rachel had turned to meet her. She saw the upturn of Rachel’s mouth and eyes, the creases that fanned at Rachel’s temples, the promise of being held and loved and accepted. She saw all these things as she would always see them, and she saw nothing.
The body was partially submerged, head folded forward, arms in the water. Eliza came to the side of the bath and put a hand to the un-beating heart. She brushed one damp curl away from the blue-white face and looked into the open eyes. Nobody looked back at her.
She craned forward to touch the bloodless lips and her own mouth opened and closed over Rachel’s name in silence. From a great distance she watched the drop of tears onto her wife’s breast. She saw the book Rachel was reading caught under one leg and lifted it out of the ice cold water. The sodden pages had pulled away from the binding but the plastic facing held the hardcover together. Another one of Rachel’s fairy tales, Eliza thought as she traced the silver lettering. Can You Forgive Her?
‘Mum?’ Arthur called up over his cartoon’s title music.
A postcard was stuck to the inside cover, the ink blurred into a dark smear across the back and a faded picture of a small girl in a red hat on the front.
‘I’ll be right there,’ Eliza said.
She laid the book on the mat and sat by the bath. After a little while she got up and closed the bathroom door behind her.
6
The Goldilocks Zone
The Chinese Room
John Searle imagined himself in a room where he could recieve letters with questions in Chinese and, using a book of rules and a basket of Chinese symbols, he could post out the answers. He compared himself in the room to a computer being programmed and stated that a computer could not be said to think any more than he could be said to speak Chinese. He was just following the instructions.
Formal symbols by themselves can never be enough for mental contents, because the symbols, by definition, have no meaning (or interpretation, or semantics) except insofar as someone outside the system gives it to them.
John Searle, ‘Artificial Intelligence and the Chinese Room’
He was walking fast. Already, he could see children heading towards him, their parents close behind, but he didn’t want to run. Wrong shoes, wet pavement, leaves scattered along the sidewalk. He’d look foolish, skidding into the playground, out of breath and rain spattered. He wasn’t that late.
The schoolyard was full. Clumps of children stuck to teachers’ hands and coats. Parents shouted their diaries to other parents over the tops of woolly heads, their arms full of books and bags, drawings and jumpers. Kids’ stuffing, thought Greg. He stared across the playground for Arthur. By the slide, a teacher was in conversation with a mother. Several children of what Greg calculated to be Arthur’s age were gathered about them. Greg waited for the women to acknowledge him. They would have turned around for Hal, Greg thought. Straight women loved Hal. After several minutes he took a step closer and when the teacher glanced in his direction he seized his chance.
‘I’m collecting Arthur,’ he said. ‘He’s in Laura’s class. Sorry.’ He looked to the talkative parent who nodded and adjusted the bags draped about her.
&nbs
p; ‘Arthur?’
‘Pryce. Laura’s class.’ Greg repeated the small factual knowledge in his possession.
‘You’ve just missed him. I think he left with the Carsons. Check reception.’ She turned back to the mother.
Greg got out his phone as he walked to the school building. He had never heard of the Carsons. He should call Hal. Greg’s skin felt clammy against his clothes. Their son had left the school with a family Greg had never met. He was absolutely not calling Eliza. He took a breath and pushed at the glass doors.
‘I’m looking for Arthur Pryce. I was supposed to pick him up today.’ Greg could feel the anger creep into the edges of his guilt. The teacher had been so casual. ‘I’m his stepfather.’
‘Arthur!’ The receptionist called from her desk to a room behind her.
Greg turned to see the slender form of his stepson emerge through the doorway, followed by the bearded art teacher. He put one hand on his chest and another towards the boy. ‘You okay?’
‘Yeah,’ Arthur said.
‘I couldn’t find you.’
The art teacher rubbed the boy’s head. ‘You forgot, didn’t you?’
Greg started to protest but it was Arthur who answered.
‘Yeah.’ The boy grinned up at the two men. ‘I forgot you were coming.’
‘We did wait,’ the teacher added to Greg.
‘I was outside. The woman I spoke to, she said he’d gone to the Carsons’.’
Paint-splashed fingers rubbed at the beard. ‘That’s another Arthur.’
Greg tugged on Arthur’s hand. ‘Right. Well. Let’s get you home.’
*
They walked side by side back to the house. Greg hadn’t planned on being a dad. He had fallen in love with Hal on a business trip to London, an international conference for new space tech. Greg was a vibrations engineer with New Frontiers and Hal owned the conference catering company. On their third date, Hal told him about Eliza and Rachel. The sperm had already been frozen.
‘That’s a lot of responsibility,’ Greg said.
‘I’ll be there for the fun stuff,’ Hal laughed. ‘The cupcake uncle.’
In the two years since Rachel died, Hal had been on standby for Eliza, and Greg had supported him. He hadn’t minded when Hal, Eliza and Arthur had gone on holiday together, he hadn’t complained about the cash-flow decline when Hal’s work slowed down with all the time off. Together, they even volunteered more financial responsibility for the boy and signed all the paperwork in case anything happened to Eliza. Greg was fine with the theory of parenting. It was the practice that confounded him.
‘Who’s the other Arthur?’ Greg imagined a copy of Arthur with short hair.
‘There’s a big one.’ Arthur’s mouth turned down in resentment at the various playground indignities of being ‘Little Arthur’.
The newsagent was on their way home.
‘You hungry?’
Arthur nodded.
At the sweet counter, they peered at the dozens of packets.
‘Chocolate or crisps. Not candy.’
‘And a drink?’
‘Juice.’ Greg felt the cloud of anxiety lifting as he established some boundaries. He grabbed a bar of chocolate for himself.
They undid the wrappers outside the shop and Greg pushed the straw into the carton for the boy. Beads of apple juice spurted on to the pavement.
‘Stupid carton.’ Arthur imitated Greg’s fading accent. Stoopid.
‘Yeah.’ Greg laughed. He forgot the kid could be funny. ‘Well, stupid me probably.’
Arthur stopped. ‘Never call yourself stupid, Greg. Mummy told me that.’
‘Sure.’ He took the boy’s hand and they crossed the street and headed to the tree-lined road opposite that Greg liked to walk down. The houses were large, with long sash windows and a dark palette of glossy front doors. If he and Hal ever moved, he’d want one of these. A statement house. He imagined friends from college visiting. ‘Why, Greg,’ they’d say, ‘you’re practically British.’
He almost was. He had a British passport and a British husband and he remembered to say ‘boot’ and ‘queue’ and to ask for the bill in restaurants. Seven years, the entire lifespan of the boy, was all it had taken to acquire this new identity. His own mother mistook him for Hal when she called. Which, since his dad passed away, was often.
They walked on for a while, Arthur taking the juice carton whenever he finished a mouthful of chocolate. Hal disapproved of processed foods but Greg had grown up on Ding-Dongs and boloney sandwiches and whatever was going in the school cafeteria. A restrictive diet was unhealthy for children. ‘I’m not taking nutritional advice from a man who likes cheese in a can,’ Hal said.
‘Stupid,’ he repeated as the boy dawdled along the pavement.
Arthur looked up at him.
‘What else does your mummy say?’ Greg asked.
‘She doesn’t say anything. She’s dead.’
He never remembered; mummy was Rachel, Eliza was mum.
‘Right. So she didn’t say I was stupid then?’
‘Nice, Greg.’
‘You’re freaking me out, kid.’
A few months after Rachel got pregnant, they all had dinner to celebrate Greg’s move to London.
‘I think you’re very brave,’ Eliza said, ‘to move all this way when you haven’t known Hal that long.’
‘Or lucky,’ Hal said.
‘I only got on a plane.’ Greg shook his head. ‘You’re the ones incubating his DNA.’
Hal laughed. ‘Even luckier.’
They toasted the genetic lottery and Eliza asked Greg how he felt about Hal being a dad.
‘I never expected to have kids,’ Greg said. ‘I’m happy for you all but I’m not going near a diaper.’
Rachel put a hand on Greg’s knee. ‘Don’t look so panicked. You guys will be like the RTG.’
‘The what?’
‘Rachel’s obsessed with spaceships now she knows a real rocket scientist,’ Eliza said.
‘A Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator?’ Rachel reminded him.
‘Generators aren’t really my area. I’m on the landing gear.’
‘Cool,’ Rachel said. ‘Well, you’re like another power supply. But we’ll only need you for emergencies.’
*
The flat was warm when Arthur and Greg got back, but Greg turned on the gas fire. He had not got used to the British weather. London kept a chill in the walls, even when the sun shone. It didn’t help that they lived in a converted warehouse with exposed brickwork and a large open plan kitchen for Hal to work in.
‘Want to play one of your math games?’
Arthur looked at the computer. ‘I can’t remember how to do it.’
‘We’ll figure it out.’
Greg pulled up an extra chair to the desk and helped Arthur log on. He felt the pleasure in defying Eliza. The boy’s screen time was restricted but she couldn’t object to homework.
‘What is this?’ Arthur stuck his finger to the screen.
A picture of pink and green marbles on a plate sat next to the words ‘likely’, ‘unlikely’, ‘probable’ and ‘impossible’.
‘I’d say “very difficult”,’ Greg said, ‘You couldn’t get all the marbles to stay still.’
‘It says, “How likely is it that you’d pick a green marble?”’
‘Unlikely.’
‘It’s a maths question, Greg.’
‘Math is different from when I used to do it.’
‘It’s your job.’
‘When we send a plate of marbles into space, I’ll get back to you. What do you want for dinner?’
‘Something dad made.’
‘Right.’
Greg went to the freezer and found the drawer with Arthur’s food. He chose pumpkin gnocchi with pea and sage puree. Step-parenting was the art of reheating someone else’s love. Not that he didn’t love Arthur, but there was so little room left once Eliza and Hal and the ghost of Rachel had had their sa
y.
After dinner, Greg ran a bath and sat on the floor while Arthur splashed about. He felt a physical weariness beyond anything the gym induced, as though the small acts of parenting were muscular devotions. Perhaps they were, Greg thought as he folded the little pile of clothes, the art of self-sacrifice.
‘Can you live in space?’ The boy peered over the side of the bath with a flannel on his head.
‘We already do. We’re on a planet spinning round in space right now.’
‘What about another planet? Could we live on another planet?’
‘If the conditions were right.’
Arthur frowned.
‘We need an atmosphere,’ Greg said, his glasses steaming over in the bathroom fug. ‘Oxygen, water, the right temperature. Not too hot, not too cold.’
‘Just right.’
‘Yup.’
The flannel head disappeared. Greg grabbed a towel and leant over.
‘Come on. You’re turning into a prune.’
The boy was under the water with his eyes open. He smiled up at Greg and blew bubbles from his nose. Greg waited for him to climb out.
‘I could live underwater then. All I need is an atmosphere.’
‘Sure.’ Greg threw the towel around the boy. ‘Like in a submarine.’
‘We can live anywhere?’
‘In the right conditions. But they have to be just right. Like in the story.’
‘With the bears?’
‘Uh-hunh.’ Greg rubbed the top of Arthur’s head with the tail of the towel.
‘Then my mummy is living somewhere.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Carry me.’
Greg lifted the warm bundle of Arthur and carried him through to the bedroom. The boy’s chin rested on his shoulder, damp hair against his cheek. He noted the full weight of the child, the wholeness of him. He dropped the boy on the bed and pulled the pyjamas from the pillow. Arthur lay where he landed and stared up at Greg.
‘I think she’s in space.’
‘Put your pyjamas on and I’ll get you a snack.’
‘Biscuits?’
‘A banana.’ Greg headed out the door.