When I Ran Away

by Ilona Bannister

  I get out of the stall and strip Rocky in the sink. I use a burp cloth and the scarf I’m wearing to improvise a toga diaper for him.

  “Gigi.” Aneela appears behind me in the mirror. I didn’t notice her come in.

  I can’t help it. I say, “Oh, just fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it.”

  “Is he wearing your scarf as a nappy?” she asks my reflection.

  “Yes.”

  She takes the baby from me, holding him the way a mother with big kids does, surprised at how foreign it feels now even though she used to do this a thousand times a day. He grabs at her necklace.

  She looks at me. “You’re not alright, are you?”

  I turn to face her. “No.”

  She jostles Rocky. “What happened? Was it a rough birth?”

  “Yeah,” I say. Rocky puts a hand on her face.

  She says, “You’re not ready then—to come back?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “It’s OK. You take the time you need. Why don’t you take him to the lifts and I’ll get your buggy and bring it to the front?”

  I look at her, thinking of the wreckage in the conference room. “But can you tell everyone I’m so sorry.”

  “Of course I will. And we’ll talk about everything else some other time when you’re not so…stressed,” she says, in that way where what she’s really saying is she’s surprised at how stressed I am. Surprised at how it’s hit me. Concerned that she’s invested a lot of time in me and she thought I’d do better than this. So did I.

  “And Lara? I just don’t…” I don’t even know what to say.

  “It’s alright, Gigi, really. I’ll explain.”

  “Thank you.” I give her a half-hug and take the baby. She’s being kind. Kind so I don’t feel worse. But that sort of kindness always does the exact opposite.

  I sneak past reception when no one’s around and go wait by the elevator bank. I turn around to look for Aneela but it’s Lara coming through the glass vestibule doors instead, pushing my stroller. “Oh, I didn’t mean for you to do that, Lara, Aneela said—”

  She cuts me off. “I’m sorry this hasn’t worked out today. But you’re not the first person to have a baby at the firm.”

  “No, of course, I know that…”

  “But perhaps you need more time than the others.”

  I say, “I’m sorry. I had a babysitter. She canceled. I wasn’t going to bring—”

  She shakes her head. “No need to explain. This is how it is with children, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, but when I come back, I’ll be OK, I’ll work it out.” I sound desperate.

  “I hope so. Bye now.”

  She turns on her heel, one manicured hand waving to me as she re-enters the office. Not a wave really, a hand in the air, like when you hail a cab, or get a waiter’s attention. The hand she puts up for people to provide her with service.

  When we’re finally outside I buy some formula, diapers and a onesie and some baby sweatpants at Boots and give Rocky a bottle in the stroller. He’s calm and warm now, I watch his eyes fill up with sky and buildings and people until he falls asleep.

  A text from Charlie:

  Hey babes, sorry that was tough. Are you OK? I wanted to walk you out but Aneela said you’d already left. Let’s get a drink soon and you can tell me all about it? Everything will be OK. Don’t worry. xx

  I’m too humiliated to respond, even to Charlie. I pass a shirt shop. So English with its stacks of shirts in neat wooden cubes. I buy a classic white one for Francisco and leave it with security downstairs when I pass by the office on the way home. I ask them to call him to pick it up. Kind of like when your mom brings something you left at home and leaves it for you in the office at school. Your gym shorts or your lunch.

  If you have that kind of mom.

  11

  butter, frozen dinners

  A Wednesday in August 2016, 7:30 p.m. London, Grand Euro Star Lodge Hotel, Room 506

  Twelve hours since I left the house. Soon my phone will be dead. Soon I’ll have finished the second bottle of red. Oh. No, the first bottle still has some in there. Either way, either bottle, I’ve had too much to drink. And also not enough. I sink into the bed. I’ve barely moved today but everything aches. I feel my bones grinding against each other, trying to find the grooves they fit in before the baby grew in the space between. Feel the new length of my feet, the new thickness of my wrists, the new width of my rib cage. The curve of my lower back, the arc of an “S” where it used to be straight. I put my hands on my belly—misshapen and puckered, like an old balloon, dimpled latex, forgotten and slowly deflating behind the sofa now that the party’s over.

  Even my hands. You expect your stomach to stretch and your breasts to drop but your hands, how they change—the cracked skin, the ragged nails, burns from the oven, burns from the iron, red from the constant washing. The skin on the backs of my hands is dry and loose, no longer elastic. There was a time when he kissed the back of my hand. When his burdens fit perfectly in the hollow of my palm and mine in his. We carried our burdens for each other, in each other’s hands. I loved him and he loved me; yes. But it was more than that.

  Teresa knows. Not long now and she’ll be headed to prison to start her sentence. On the TV they’re doing a montage of clips from the past season, her voice heard over the footage of her bouncing, playing daughters: “I had a normal life and now I’m in this nightmare.” Prison is just weeks away but she sits there on the sofa with quiet dignity in a gold, floor-length, fishtail gown, shimmering like a mermaid on the Jersey Shore.

  The gold eye shadow above her long, fake lashes brings out a bronzy green in her eyes I’ve never noticed before. Joe, her husband, sits on a stool behind her, stoic, burly, uncomfortable in his suit, the shape of his arms visible through the expensive gabardine. He is not a man who can be contained in a suit. He is a man who made grave mistakes. It’s unclear how much Teresa understood about the fraud but it’s clear that she trusted him. She signed whatever he said to sign, and now she’ll pay for it. She’ll pay, for loving him and trusting him blindly and being a loyal wife, with a year of her life. A year of her children’s lives that she won’t see. But she shows no bitterness and betrays no anger. She stands by her man.

  They’re two people on the precipice and it’s hard to know if they’ll be holding hands when they make the jump. Who knows what it’s like between them when the camera isn’t rolling. What I know for sure, though, is that she will at least reach for him as they fall even when he tries to pull away. She will reach for him until the very end, when he lets her go. The camera closes in on her face and she says, “Oh my God,” in a low voice, to no one and to the whole world and to herself. The conversation goes on around her but the camera catches her exhaustion, her disbelief at what is about to happen. Her gold dress, an expensive, flashy, empty shell. “Oh my God,” she says, and the pain is so real, so intimate. I have to look away.

  We’re falling now, Harry. And you think you’re reaching for me but I think you’re letting me go. And I’m reaching for you too, but our hands don’t fit together like they used to.

  London, May 2014

  I’m at this party dressed as a nun and drinking a glass of wine. I’m a nun because Harry is the Pope and he got me this outfit so that I’d match him. Of all the things we could have worn he went hardcore Catholic. I think he just wanted to wear the big hat.

  The guy next to me is a giant French baguette and he’s standing with a woman in a suit and a messy blond toupee. Boris Johnson. “I like your costume,” I say to the bread, trying to be sociable.

  “Oh, thanks. I’m English, you see, and my wife is French,” he says before Boris breaks in.

  “Yes, and so I am dressed as English and he is dressed as France!” she says with her pretty accent.
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br />   I nod and smile, thinking that What the fuck are you talking about? is probably not the right thing to say to these nice people.

  It doesn’t matter because I’m quickly saved by Livvie, the hostess, dressed in a skin-tight matador outfit, standing on her coffee table and yelling, “Shots! Shots! Drink!” Two girls wearing different versions of Björk’s swan dress, you know, for Iceland, walk around with trays giving everyone shots in little plastic cups. We’re supposed to drink whenever the people on TV sing in their native language.

  Everyone turns to the huge screen and the volume goes up on the pretty blonde rapping in Polish wearing a sexy version of her national dress—an embroidered blouse, short, floral mini, corset belt, red beads, high boots, hair in braids wrapped around her head. The name of her song is “We Are Slavic.” As she yelps away two barefoot, buxom peasant versions of her perform household chores at the front of the stage—one suggestively rubs clothes on a washboard while the other pornographically churns butter. Then she breaks into the English part of her song: “Cream and butter taste so good, we will prepare for you delicious food.” The crowd goes wild on screen and in this living room. I take my shot.

  I’m not drunk enough for this.

  We’re at a Eurovision Song Contest party. Eurovision is an annual singing competition where every European country sends an entry. It’s like a combination of the Olympic opening ceremony and the Miss Universe pageant and RuPaul’s Drag Race and American Idol and SexyDanceTimeNight in the basement of that Russian nightclub I went to once in Brighton Beach. There’s pyrotechnics and flashing lights, thousands of people in the audience waving every flag of Europe. And randomly Australia and Israel, which are also contestants. They sing every genre of music, most of it in bad English. Then all the countries vote. And I guess people all over Europe have parties and get wasted and watch it. Which is why I’m here like an asshole in this nun outfit next to this loaf of bread drinking a glass of wine.

  A text from Sharon:

  Jeej, you OK? You going out tonight? How’s it going?

  She’s checking on me. We’ve lived here for only four weeks so she’s just making sure we’re alright. And we are. I am. I mean, I will be. This party, for example. Not really my scene but Livvie is one of Harry’s really old friends and she was so happy to see him. Everyone is glad he’s back in London. So I just nod and smile and take everything as a learning experience. Like tonight, now I know what people mean when they say something is Euro.

  I walk over to the Pope, who’s talking to Kurt, a massive man with startling blue eyes and platinum blond lashes that clash with his black, braided wig. He’s wearing a women’s flamenco dress, chest shaved for the occasion. He’s Dutch and he’s married to Livvie.

  “Cheers,” I say. “Nice dress.”

  “Ah, hello, a sister of the faith, with the Pope. I get it, man! You are well?” Kurt smiles and says this in his almost perfect English without an accent except for the sequence of the words that’s just slightly off.

  “Um, yeah, this is sort of an out-of-body experience, but yeah,” I say. Harry puts his arm around my waist, which feels wrong in our outfits, but actually is probably realistic.

  “Yes, I told Kurt you’ve never seen Eurovision,” Harry says.

  “No, I never heard of it,” I say, and Kurt looks astonished. “Oh, no? It is great. Greatest music party ever.”

  “Sure is,” I say, because I can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic or European.

  Livvie, already very drunk, bounds over to us and puts her arms around me. I like her. I know we’ll be friends. “Oh, darling, I’m just so, so, so very happy for you and Harry. So happy. He’s such a good one. Aren’t you, darling?” she says, pulling Harry into a group hug. “I just am so thrilled for you both. Quite annoyed that we didn’t know about the wedding, mind you, but I’ll forgive you because it’s the most romantic story I’ve ever heard. Oh, wait, SHOTS!”

  Harry and I laugh and grab our next round of shots from one of the Björks.

  “What’s this one for?” I ask. “Big facial hair,” she says, and we look at the screen.

  “Wow,” Harry says, adjusting his conical hat. And I can see why. I do my shot and text Sharon:

  We’re good lady, thanks. I’m dressed like a nun, Harry’s the Pope, we’re doing shots and watching this Austrian drag queen with a beard sing her ass off

  Conchita, with her tiny waist in her gold gown and huge beard, belts away like Celine Dion on screen. Harry pulls me closer toward him. I look around the room, the alcohol sets in, Conchita sings something about being a phoenix and America—home—suddenly feels very far away.

  “If she shaved she’d look just like Danielle,” Harry says in my ear, making me laugh and push back the tears.

  “Oh my God, you’re right,” I say, my voice cracking, “it’s her drag double. Friggin’ beautiful. Don’t ever let Danielle sing, though.”

  But he knows. He takes me by the hand and leads us through the crowd and we find a spot off to the side away from the noise. We stand together, not talking, just watching the contest and the party for a while, his arms around my waist. I lean my head back into his chest. We stay like that. My breathing slows to his rhythm. He kisses the top of my head. A moment of just being. He’s good at that, at catching me right before I fall, at giving me a break from being strong.

  “It will get easier,” he says.

  “I know.”

  Soon the French entry bounds onto the stage. A band called Twin Twin singing their song, “Moustache.” It’s an eighties electro-pop band and they sing in French except for the refrain, “I wanna have a moustache!” The huge screens behind them show massive, flashing handlebar moustache graphics and their background dancers do a move which you can only describe as, well, the moustache.

  My phone buzzes. Sharon answers my text.

  England sounds weird. Have fun

  I take a deep breath, feel the weight of Harry behind me, and then Livvie screams, “Shots! Shots!” in the background. It’s double shots now for the French singing and the facial hair.

  I turn to face Harry, straightening my habit. He says, “Have you had enough? Do you want to go?”

  “No, I’m good. Get those shots in, John Paul, let’s do this.”

  Then we drink and jump around with his friends and yell, “Moustache!” with the crowd. I shout, “Shots!” with Livvie on her coffee table while on the TV Russian identical twins connected at the head by their ponytails start swaying on a giant seesaw. I trade outfits with Kurt. I lead a conga line with Harry’s papal staff. I throw myself in. He watches me, and loves me, and throws himself in too. And someday when I tell him that I need to go home, my first home, I know that he’ll be here when I get back.

  London, July 2016; Baby, 7½ months old

  The key turns in the lock. Harry’s home. He opens the door and steps over the pile of mail on the floor under the slot. He doesn’t pick it up. He’s been away for a few days for work. How many days has it been? Two? Three?

  The boys have been asleep for a couple hours. I must have been sitting here, on the floor by the kitchen table, for at least as long. Asleep maybe, or just staring at the wall.

  I think of a hundred things to tell him. About Johnny’s report card and how bad it is and Rocky flipping off the changing table and how I managed to renew the parking permit for the car, he’ll be impressed by that, and then I could tell him about Lorraine because I never told him about her and that I spent a half hour with Johnny tonight working on his reading so that maybe he can catch up by the end of the summer, and how it’s not fair because it’s just his focus is off because his mother is depressed and anxious, and then Harry will hug me and tell me that it’s OK, that Johnny will be OK, that I’m a good mother, I’m a good mother, I’m a good…

  “He
llo,” Harry says, taking off his tie, throwing his bag down. He steps over a pile of clothes and goes into the kitchen.

  “Hi,” I say. There’s a long silence while he roots around looking for a dinner that doesn’t exist. “I, I mean there’s a lot—” I start to say but he interrupts.

  “Any food knocking around?” he asks.

  I say, over my shoulder, “Sorry, there’s nothing ready. I didn’t have a chance. I didn’t know you were coming back today, I mean, I guess I forgot. I haven’t eaten either. You want to order something?” We’ll just figure out dinner and I can tell him, tell him about…that I’m…

  “What are these?” He holds up some frozen dinners. Ready meals, that’s the English word for them. “Can I have one of these?” He’s sharp, testy.

  “Sure,” I say. He chooses spaghetti carbonara for himself and puts the other boxes back in the freezer. He doesn’t offer to heat one up for me. I didn’t even realize I had bought that—frozen pasta. I’ve betrayed every Italian grandmother on Staten Island.

  “How do I do this? Microwave or oven?” Harry asks me, annoyed, tired.

  “I don’t know, read the instructions. Those are oven ones, I guess.”

  “What temperature?” he shoots back at me.

  “I don’t know, Harry. Read the box.” I can’t tell him anything.

  “It’s been a long day.”

  “OK, so now you can’t read?” Why is he doing this?