by Megan Hunter
There were countries in the world, I had been told, where they loved children, appreciated their very presence in restaurants, in shops and cafes. As soon as I heard that, I knew I didn’t live in one. Ever since giving birth, I had walked through a tunnel of public expectation and disapproval, a place with particular lighting, filters that showed up every possible fault. I had become accustomed to the posture I needed to assume within the tunnel: a certain straightness of back, an avoidance of eye contact. As we packed our bags, I kept speaking to Ted, keeping my eyes trained carefully on him, or the cashier. Looking up was a mistake, I had learned: it invited comment.
I loaded the shopping into my basket, held Ted’s hand as he stepped delicately across the low wall of the supermarket, lifted him into his bike seat. As we cycled past the postbox I saw someone I recognized; I prepared to smile-and-cycle-on, perhaps to raise my hand from the handlebar in a quick greeting. But she called out my name, stepped forwards slightly towards the bike. Mary.
I stopped, balancing my legs on either side of the frame, Ted yelping in complaint behind me.
How are you? My heart was beating very quickly, I noticed: I resisted the urge to take my own pulse, to check for regularity.
We’re good thanks, you? Mary rallied without pause, without a second to consider her answer. I did the same, my voice level as a bank clerk.
We’re okay, same old, really, you know.
I had long stopped noticing the tendency to refer to ourselves in the first person plural, as though we – two women, on a windy side street – encompassed multitudes, our expansive beings filled with our husbands and children. But I noticed it now. I thought about it, as Mary gave me a brief update on each of her children, making their lives sound both challenging and worthy, as though they were international diplomats, rather than primary-school children.
So great to catch up. I was completely used to taking the bone into my mouth, however bad it tasted: I was a pro. I let a few seconds pass before I turned around to wince towards Ted, blaming his complaints for us having to leave. But he was now completely silent, sucking the strap of the bike seat, a look of severe concentration on his face.
Better get this stuff home, I said, trying again, tilting my head forwards this time, towards my basket full of shopping, as though it would melt in the freezing air.
Mary looked conflicted, pained, a near-stranger at a funeral.
Lucy, you know you can talk to me, don’t you? If there’s anything – anything wrong at all.
So she knew. Shit. Fuckity fuck. I had noticed the swearing in my head becoming very childish lately, as though I was learning how to use the words all over again. Curses had begun to spill out of my mouth, dribble-like, at ordinary moments, loading washing into the machine, pulling hairs out of the drain.
Ah, yes. Everything’s fine – but thanks. Thanks! The last few words were loud, sharply pitched, yelled over my shoulder as I pedalled away, the bike lurching to the side with the weight of the shopping, Ted calling out in surprise.
As I cycled home I could feel the humiliation filling me, moving my pedals forwards, driving me on. There was a flush, the heat that everyone talks about, but then something else, a deeper, slower removal of the self, a smooth sliding motion, like a drawer pulled completely out. In its place: a gap, a nothing, somewhere I had never been.
~
For a long time after university, I forgot all about the harpy. I buried my notebooks in boxes that were never unpacked, moved files to obscure places on my computer. It was easy, I thought, to get rid of her.
After all, so many obsessions pass like this, slide easily into oblivion. The boy bands whose faces used to cover my wall. A collection of porcelain pigs. The rows of stuffed animals: blank-eyed, certain solace.
None of them have come back. Only this.
~
21
As I tidied the living room, I felt her gaze over everything. I knew Vanessa would have noticed the teetering sub-Ikea furniture, guessed that the only good pieces – a large rug, a solid wooden table – were passed on by relatives who no longer needed them. She would have seen how dust had built up along the skirting boards, giving the house its own light grey fur, a lowering darkness. She would, without needing to think, believe that I was responsible. I had not cleaned the bathrooms while the children ate breakfast, as a mother at school told me she did.
Such a nice house, Vanessa had said to me last year, her fingers curled lightly around her ridged plastic cup, as though reluctant to touch it. Her nails were painted, a French manicure, white moons on dusty pink arcs. Her hair was coiffed – I could think of no other word to describe it – not fashionable but elegant nonetheless, a symmetrical loop around her features, a bow on the genetic gift of her face.
Something must be really wrong if he fucked an old woman. This would, surely, be what everyone was saying. But perhaps I should have been proud of Jake for so thoroughly failing to conform to the stereotype. At least she was not one of his graduate students, with a firm body and loose mind, someone I would have had to approach with an almost maternal scorn. She was so much older than either of us. She was of the generation that had it all, supposedly: the ones who were said to have taken everything for themselves, until there was nothing left.
When Vanessa had complimented the house, I had rushed to clarify, red-faced, holding a plate of mince pies: It’s only rented. Not ours. I wish!
Who was I pretending to be when I spoke like that? Stupid cunt. I whispered this under my breath as I sprayed the glass coffee table, wiping fresh streaks across its surface. I didn’t know who I was talking to but it felt good in my mouth anyway, a small wet kiss. Cunt was the best word for it, we had been told in a women’s self-defence class at university, the most feminist choice.
Ancient, meaning sheath. We should have wanted this, apparently, to be a covering for a man’s sword. At around the same time a man in a pub told me gender equality was impossible, as long as a man continued to be the active party in penetrative sex, the doer, the woman the done to. I’d tried telling him that surely a woman could just as actively cover a man, but he didn’t look convinced. Even then, it had all felt pointless, word games that changed nothing.
Jake had taken the boys out to play football in the park while I got the house ready. We had sat together on the sofa a few nights ago as he systematically deleted Vanessa from his contacts. At that moment, it had seemed to mean something, the way the screen cleared so decisively, the way her information could simply disappear.
I hung a coloured bauble from the corner of the mantelpiece, seeing an image of Vanessa’s profile picture in its colours, her face distorted, guppy-wide. Her generous mouth, big when she smiled, staggeringly large when she laughed. Good for—
I shook my head. Disgusting. I felt the sensation again: embarrassment, corrosive as acid, a sense of pitching, tipping into a forgotten emptiness. I would have no more children, but I remembered, now, exactly how pregnancy felt: like being taken over, taken up, willingly. I was – from the first positive test – happy to be inhabited, possessed, had loved having company at every second. There was someone to see the world with me, a silent, nudging companion, always there.
22
As people arrived at the party, I looked at each guest for signs of knowledge, every gesture open to interpretation. The way they reached for a glass, took off their coats. Their questions:
How are you all doing? Anything new? How was your term?
But these were normal questions, I told myself. These were the things people always said. I tried to stay busy, to focus on not burning myself as I lifted the mince pies out of the oven. Jake seemed completely at ease, at the centre of the living room, laughing with two of the men from his Thursday-night football team. He was wearing one of his best shirts, dark blue corduroy, his sleeves rolled up in the warmth from the fire.
Jake had thick, strong-looking forearms, always my favourite part of a man’s body, although the hair on his arms was spar
se and fair. My preference, not rationally, but from some other, storybook place, was for the hair to be thick and dark, hatched as a pencil sketch, like the deepest parts of a forest. I couldn’t resist this sight, whenever I saw it, in a cafe or a playground or a train. Dark hair emerging from a shirtsleeve, moving towards a watch strap. It made me understand men who cut out parts of women in their minds, separating them, breasts, lips, legs, all floating free.
One of the men Jake was talking to – Antonio, father of three – had this hair, visible at the end of his shirtsleeves, a thick softness covering his wrists. I offered them a mince pie, holding the plate forward until they had all taken one, still in their squat foil trays, too hot to be eaten. Antonio lifted his pie to his mouth, squinted, moved it away again, his eyes meeting mine. We knew each other a little better than most of the people here; there’d been a dinner party, years ago, where Antonio got drunk and started weeping, unable to stop. It was a strange, bright, summer night, dream-like, my hand on his arm, his cheeks wet with tears.
Maybe this was why I saw it, indisputably, as he looked at me. He knew. He was looking to see how I was coping. He was wondering, perhaps, how I was standing up in our living room, wearing a nice dark red dress. I was wearing heels: I had brushed my hair. I’d put on foundation, mascara, lipstick. At a party, these things, on a woman, are usually conspicuous only by their absence. Frankie, from down the road, for example, came wearing jeans and a T-shirt she’d spent the day gardening in, filled one corner of the kitchen with a distinct smell of sweat.
But Antonio could see that I had made this effort, that I was standing upright, holding a plate of mince pies. He was wondering how I was doing it. I excused myself, went towards the downstairs toilet. In there, I would be able to fan myself with my hands. If there were tears, they could be flushed out and disguised with cold water. I could press my hands to my throat, hold it in. By the door to the bathroom, I saw a group of women, mothers from the school, already waiting.
Much older, apparently. Like in her fifties! I know . . . if John ever . . .
I tried to turn on my heel – this was the expression, wasn’t it, for a fast reversal, a quick getaway? But my heels were six inches high. There was nothing to do but wait, hold onto the wall, hope they didn’t see me.
Why did they still have the party? I don’t even know . . .
It was at this moment that Mary looked up: the words had already left her mouth, but she flattened her hand there anyway, as though to stop them getting too far. Her expression – of glee, passion, something close to arousal, her face pinking, her lips wide – moved downwards, a mime artist wiping a hand across their face, changing it entirely. All of the energy – the glow that had been making her hair shine, her eyes flicker – shifted through her features, lowering them in pity.
Lucy, we were just saying. We were just – how are you? How are you – doing?
She held out an arm, as though to wrap me in it. A mother – Mary had four – offering solace, a breast to cry on. Someone came out of the bathroom and, ignoring the queue, I went inside, calling out a reply as I pulled the door behind me.
I’m good, thanks – see you in a sec!
I let the toilet seat fall noisily, heard through the door as the group moved, muffled words, the tone of self-reproach ebbing away, top notes of scandal still echoing.
We all lived in our own version of parentworld, the place where nothing happened. We streamed TV to remind ourselves what it felt like to lead lives where things happened, where life could transform in one night. In our world, babies had happened, and they were something. But few of us had babies or even toddlers any more, and we spoke of those days with the kind of quiet reverence that elderly people use to speak about the war, our eyes misting over with the memory of the atmosphere, the breathy physicality, the murky blending of space and time.
Now most of us had careers that were still on hold or had moved, somehow, to a forever part-time, lower-waged track. We were still many years away from the trickle of divorces that would begin just as our children became teenagers, their rebellions reminding us, in bodily, unavoidable forms, of worlds where things happened. For now, families were steady. In this place, most husbands had highly paid jobs, travelled a lot. Most wives, despite their multiple degrees, did all the school runs, counted the days until their men returned from Stockholm or Singapore. When something broke through – a disease, a death, a divorce – it was like a meteorite, something cosmic landing in our lives.
I thought I could remember a similar time from my childhood, a solid sameness, every day almost identical. Even then, things struck: once, in the early years of primary school, one of my friends’ fathers shot himself in the head. He did it in his study. Somehow I knew the exact location; my mother must have told me. At school, there was hushed sympathy, poor Vicky, a sense of plunging tragedy. At home, there were dark streaks of anger, staining blurs of disbelief. Selfish bastard, someone said. I remember the kitchen tiles, and this phrase, the two things becoming one, the yellow curve of a tile’s flowers suddenly selfish, its square shape a bastard.
Outside the bathroom door I could hear someone changing the music, putting on a Christmas album. Mary was asking loudly if they should reheat the mulled wine. She called my name, once, then stopped, interrupted by a murmur. I had brought my wine into the toilet with me; it was cool enough to glug now; I drained the cup. I peed, even though I didn’t really need to, just to do something, to feel relief pass through my body. I stood up, looked into the mirror. If I splashed my face, my foundation would come off. My mascara would run. I put my fingers under the cold water, and laid them under my eyes, the coolness calming, complete.
I realized that I was acting as though I had been crying. This is what I – and everyone else – had assumed I would be doing in here, away from them. But I felt more like taking my clothes off, having a shower, for hours and hours, coming out wrapped in a towel, my skin as soft and wrinkled as wet paper. By then, everyone would be gone.
23
When I emerged from the bathroom – maybe half an hour later – it seemed to be a completely different party. The people that were left – no Mary, I noted, and no Antonio – were all drunk. Someone had turned the Christmas music off, put a nineties playlist on, and now the rooms were draped with nostalgia, with a wave of bittersweet, irretrievable emotion.
In the garden, there were groups smoking, talking with the high-reaching voices of children. They had forgotten, maybe, that they had babysitters to go back to, that in the middle of the night their five-year-olds would climb into their beds with hot cheeks. They thought they were still in the standing-around part of their lives, when time had no particular boundaries, no absolute restrictions.
Jake was not there. I scanned the groups over and over, making sure, even though it was obvious. I didn’t speak to anyone; they were too drunk and loud to notice. I walked to the bottom of the garden, sat down on the rotting picnic bench, heard it creak beneath me. I took off my heels, felt the grass moist through the feet of my tights. The field was completely black in front of me, the sky infested with stars. The house was only half-lit, its upstairs windows dark and closed. From the wall beside the kitchen, steam blew in clouds out of the vents, as though frustrated, waiting for it all to end.
There were some small noises behind me, something like a rodent at first, then unmistakable. Moans, words stuttered out. A regular, rhythmical rustling. I walked to the back of the shed, certain, in those three seconds, of what I would find. Somehow, he had smuggled her into our home, our garden, was fucking her metres away from where our children were sleeping. I was filled with a soaring rage, a mile-high surge of energy. I bent my hands over into tight arcs, tried to stand up as straight as I could. My mind moved faster than ever, skidding from thought to thought, no brakes, only an incredible speed, a readiness to pounce.
But the jumble of clothes behind the shed was nothing to do with us. Mary’s silk dress was pulled up around her waist, moving in des
ultory waves as her husband struggled to hold onto her and thrust at the same time. He looked more like he was attempting a difficult DIY task than making love, but still they carried on, Mary’s head buried in his neck, making small, obedient noises of pleasure.
I stumbled away, holding my hand over my mouth. It wasn’t that funny, without anyone to share it with. But the urge was there nonetheless: gleeful, little-girl giddy. As I got near to the house I saw the dark outline of someone breaking free of the smoking groups, walking towards me.
What’s so funny? It was Antonio, his hands in his jeans pockets, sleeves rolled up. I felt an involuntary tightening, a lifting inside; I lowered my eyes, as though this would hide it.
Nothing. I shook my head. Just – don’t go near the shed.
Most people wouldn’t let that lie, would keep asking until you told them the secret. But Antonio just shifted his eyebrows, pushed his lips out, as though he could guess what was going on, was vaguely impressed. He held out a packet of cigarettes and I took one, leaned forward for him to light it for me.
I didn’t know you smoked.
I don’t, I said, taking a deep drag.
He nodded, smiling, and we turned together, without speaking, away from the house, towards the sky. Our arms brushed in a friendly way, fellow spectators at the light show. Could this be it? I wondered. Another man, a friend of Jake’s. A simple way to hurt him. A pleasurable one, probably. I imagined pulling Antonio to the side alley, where no one could see us, wrapping my hands around his neck. I could almost feel his fingers moving down my body, reaching inside me. When we moved back, we would be against the bin, the recycling bin, the blue one . . .
I let out a small laugh, without meaning to, some smoke coming with it, a splutter in the cold air.