by Nicole Trope
‘No, wait,’ says Molly, ‘please can we look just a little longer?’
Dr Bernstein chuckles.
‘Look, Moll, I can see little hands, can you see?’ Peter’s voice is filled with wondrous joy. Molly glances at him quickly and sees the face of the little boy she remembers from pictures his mother shared with her. She smiles at his open, unguarded amazement at what he’s watching. ‘Hands, I can see little hands,’ he repeats.
Molly nods, her tears of joy falling onto Foggy. ‘I can, I can see them.’
They both watch for another minute, stunned at the beautiful sight.
‘So,’ says Dr Bernstein, removing the wand, ‘I’m sure you’re on your vitamins and doing everything else you need to do. You need to book in for the twelve-week ultrasound and the nuchal test. They do it here at the hospital. The nurses will give you the information on the way out.’
‘But the bleeding…?’ says Peter.
‘It may just be a small blood vessel. I’m not concerned but stay off your feet for the next few days and then call me.’ He stands up and goes over to a basin in the corner of the room to wash his hands. ‘I think we may have a winner here so let’s just take it one week at a time. Call the surgery in the morning and hopefully I’ll see you in the next couple of weeks after your test and then it’s full steam ahead. Six and a bit months from now, you’ll be two very tired parents.’
‘I can’t imagine anything better,’ says Peter. Molly can see the shine of tears in his eyes and he takes off his glasses and wipes his face quickly.
‘Yes, I imagine so,’ replies the doctor, and he sweeps out of the room, dragging his machine behind him, leaving Molly and Peter to stare at each other, delight written on both of their faces.
‘Do you think something will—’
‘No, let’s not do that. Let’s just believe it will all work out this time, okay?’
‘Okay,’ she agrees, ‘okay.’
They leave the hospital with Peter supporting her elbow, holding her gently.
‘You must be exhausted,’ he says when they’re back in the car.
‘I should be but I’m not, I feel… exhilarated. He said it looks good, can you believe it?’
‘I heard him myself. It looks good.’ He laughs. ‘It looks good.’
Molly laughs as well, holding her husband’s hand. ‘If I wasn’t pregnant, I would say we should find a pub and get a drink.’
‘Straight to bed for you, but I do know of a twenty-four-hour drive-through where we can pick up some milkshakes. What about that?’
‘That,’ says Molly, ‘sounds perfect.’
Eighteen
15 January 1987
Margaret
* * *
She wipes the kitchen counter lightly with a filthy rag. It really needs a good scrub but a quick wipe will have to do. She is up and cleaning in a desultory fashion. The girls are playing in the garden, running through the sprinkler in their underwear. The grass in the garden has been browned by the sun and she can hear the roar and click of the cicadas in the few trees that line the street. Adam used to take her to the beach on Sundays in summer. He loved swimming in the waves and she remembers him holding Alice tightly as she dangled her tiny feet in the water when she was a baby. ‘She’ll be a surfer when she grows up,’ he liked to say. Margaret used to love summer.
She looks out of the window at her daughters, watching how Alice gently encourages her little sister into the water, drying Lilly’s eyes with a threadbare towel when she squeals.
She’s sure she never meant to get pregnant with Lilly.
It was an act of desperation, she knows.
She knows she made the suggestion but she’s also sure it wasn’t her choice. She’d handed her choices to him by then. In the back of her mind she knows that she had imagined she would lose the baby. If she hadn’t been able to keep the babies made with Adam, the babies made with so much love, then she was sure her body wouldn’t want to hold onto something created as she gritted her teeth and tried not to smell or feel or touch the body on top of her. Yet fear led her to make the suggestion. Fear that she would be left alone again with Alice and would somehow have to work out how to survive.
The first time he disappeared for a few days she was frantic, filled with panic that he’d never come back again and that she’d be left trying to raise Alice alone. Some small part of her felt relief, as though the air in the house had cleared of his smell and his cloying presence, making the rooms seem larger, freer. But mostly she was afraid.
She had twelve dollars in her purse and an empty fridge. She was running out of vodka. That was the worst thing, the level on the bottle going down, steadily emptying. Alice was happy he was gone. ‘I hope he never comes back,’ she said over their modest dinner of noodles and tomato sauce. ‘Then how are we going to eat, Alice?’ she snapped at her child. Her daughter’s small shoulders sagged. ‘I can get a job,’ she whispered.
‘Stupid child,’ hissed Margaret. Words her mother might have used, words designed to hurt and humiliate. Words she had never imagined she would use on her own child but words that came out of her mouth all the time since Adam’s death. She was turning into someone she barely recognised.
‘Can’t we get money from the prime minister?’ seven-year-old Alice asked, used to the sharp words of her mother stinging her by then.
‘It’s called welfare,’ said Margaret.
‘Welfare,’ repeated Alice. She was chasing her noodles around the bowl, reluctant to eat another serving of the same bland meal despite her obvious hunger.
Margaret thought about applying for welfare but was weary at just the idea. There were forms to fill in, questions to answer, people to see. She didn’t have the energy to go and wait in a queue for her number to be called so she could explain what a useless mother she was.
She lay awake at night, listening for the sound of his footsteps, feeling herself flinch at every slam of a car door, her heart racing with anxiety.
Finally, he came back. When she questioned him, he was contrite. He brought bags of groceries into the house and bottles of vodka as though he’d only been to the store around the corner rather than away for days on end. Margaret understood on some level that she was being given a message. It was a warning and a test of some sort. He wanted to see her reaction when he showed her what he could do, how powerless she was, and her tears at his arrival had pleased him. It was absolutely clear to both of them then. He had control.
Vernon had only been living with them for six months. Violence had not become an entrenched part of their partnership yet. He had shoved her once or twice and given her a quick slap, not something Margaret had ever experienced before, not something she believed would become an everyday part of life.
She’d assumed the first slap had been a mistake and then she had caught the smile on his face as he waited for her to react. She had hunched her shoulders and walked away, letting him know that there would be no consequences for his actions, and later, when he came into the bedroom, where she was drifting along with her memories and the vodka, he ordered her to get him a beer. She had not said, ‘I’m tired,’ or, ‘Get it yourself,’ or, ‘Why have you come in here to tell me to get you something when you’re already up?’ Instead she had dragged herself off the bed, dizzy and weak, stumbling to the kitchen, where Alice sat at the table, colouring in a picture of a princess in front of her castle, and grabbed a beer for him. And then she had taken more vodka out of the freezer and poured herself another generous serve. She had been trying, until then, to only drink when her despair grew so wide and so deep that she felt she couldn’t breathe.
‘Can I have a snack, Mum?’ Alice had asked.
‘Get it yourself,’ Margaret had mumbled and she had dragged herself back to the bedroom and handed him the beer and then she had sat down on the bed and finished her drink in one burning gulp.
He had laughed at her then. Margaret had still been able to feel the sting on her cheek from his hand, but sh
e had laughed along with him. The vodka helped her see the funny side of it.
The violence grew after that. One slap led to another and then a slap wasn’t enough so he needed to land a punch to her stomach. And each time he did, Margaret watched him step over a line; each time she let him get away with it, he needed to get away with more. The vodka migrated from the freezer to live under her bed, and sometimes when he hit her, she didn’t even feel it.
Disappearing was a new trick for him, a new line to cross, a new test for Margaret to pass.
‘I just need to get away sometimes,’ Vernon explained that first time when he was still treating her as though she mattered. ‘You have no idea how hard it is to be raising another man’s child, especially a friend’s child. I’m sorry, Maggie, love. It won’t happen again.’
‘Don’t call me that,’ she wanted to tell him. ‘I was Adam’s Maggie and Mr Henkel’s Maggie. I am not yours and I will never be your Maggie.’ But she swallowed the words, trying to work out how to keep him tied to her, to keep him paying for everything and bringing her the sweet relief of the alcohol.
‘We could have a baby together,’ she offered in a quiet voice one day, even though the thought of another screaming, needy creature was horrifying to her. But babies tied a man to you and she needed him tied to her. Sometimes her skin crawled when he touched her but it was easy enough to close her eyes and pretend it was Adam.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ he agreed, ‘a baby that’s mine, a kid that belongs to me,’ leaping on the suggestion as though he’d just been waiting for her to make it.
Margaret watched his face light up, tried not to see seven-year-old Alice frown with understanding at the words. We really shouldn’t talk like this in front of her, she thought. Vernon wanted to start trying right away.
‘Let’s give it a go, eh?’ He smiled crookedly.
‘It’s the middle of the day and Alice needs her lunch. Let’s wait so we can really be together.’ She said it gently, trying to make him understand that she would fulfil the promise of the conversation later that night.
‘Don’t be a cock-tease, Maggie. She can watch if you want but I suggest you get that arse into the bedroom now.’
Margaret met his eyes, saw the challenge there and understood another line was being crossed right then and there. She turned the television on for Alice, turning the volume up, grateful some cartoon was on.
She studied the ceiling as he grunted and pushed. How has this happened? she thought. What have I let happen?
She prayed for the blood to arrive, for his invasion of her body not to take hold. But the little life was determined. When she showed him the test, smiling shyly, she hoped it would make him happy. She hoped things would change. She was stupid to think anything could change.
He threw away all the bottles of vodka. ‘No, no, no,’ she begged, watching the precious liquid trickle down the sink.
‘You don’t want to give birth to a monster, do you?’ he said. ‘I’ve read what happens to babies whose mothers drink. It’s fucking horrible.’
She hated that he had taken it away from her, was certain that the vomiting and the chills of the first few months were withdrawal as well as her raging hormones. She loathed him for taking away her life support but was paralysed by the vomiting and the ache in her bones so there was little she could do.
‘Don’t let them give you any rubbish to take,’ Vernon told her when she explained that the doctor thought she needed treatment for depression. ‘It’ll hurt the baby.’ And she had listened. She missed so many appointments anyway, needing to rest, unable to move. Pregnancy was hard. Her body was out of control. She ate to keep the nausea at bay, then threw up everything she consumed. This time no one brought her little treats to help, no one asked her how she was feeling. This time no one seemed to care as long as she stayed quiet.
‘Leave your mother alone, she’s resting,’ Vernon yelled at Alice in the morning and in the afternoon and at night. She dreamed about the clear burn of the vodka, slipping down her throat, numbing all the pain, missing its anaesthetising charm. It didn’t stop him landing a blow when he got angry, but now, she could feel the bruise flower and the sting of a split lip. He kept clear of her stomach, protecting his seed.
When her symptoms subsided, she felt a streak of determination. She wouldn’t stand for it anymore. She would get up and get away with Alice and she would try to make some sort of life for her and her children. She would save them all.
But the tiredness was part of her bones, locked into her body by her faulty brain. And on days when she felt like she had the energy to get up, she realised what she’d done. Babies tied you to a man forever. She almost laughed at the hideous irony.
She could try and walk away with Alice, could apply for welfare, could attempt to make a life for her and her children, but she would never get rid of him. He had rights. She thought about giving up the baby, about handing the child over to him and just leaving. She could leave Alice as well. She could walk her useless self right out of the door and be free.
Yet she slept instead. She grew fat with the baby, like an incubator that needed food. She wondered sometimes at the love she used to feel for Alice, at where it had gone, or whether she’d imagined it in the first place, but she never wondered for very long.
‘I can have one drink, can’t I? I’m six months along, everyone says it’s okay.’
‘Don’t you fucking touch a mouthful, you idiot. Everyone says it’s wrong. All you have to do is lie there and get fat, stop fucking complaining.’
She lay in her bed, growing bigger and bigger, and when the nausea disappeared she stopped complaining, learned to shut up. She drifted along in her dreams, living her life with Adam.
She hadn’t minded the birth because at least she felt something other than the despair. She hoped she would die as her new daughter slithered out of her.
‘We’re moving,’ he announced when she came home from the hospital. He hadn’t liked the way the social worker lectured and the doctors worried, all the questions thrown their way. He was way behind on the mortgage anyway. The bank had been sending threatening letters for months. So they moved in the middle of the night. Margaret took the beautiful blue curtains that had been hung up with such hope when she and Adam had bought the house. A tiny piece of an old life filled with hope to remind her that such a thing was possible. Their faded glory mocked her now.
After the move, she was far from even her most tenuous of acquaintances in a filthy, run-down rental house. But at least it was close to the shops and to the new school Alice went to.
‘I miss Mrs Walton,’ Alice told her.
‘Who’s that?’ Margaret asked, not caring about the answer. She was exhausted.
‘The librarian at school.’
Margaret smiled at her daughter, remembering her own safe place. ‘Tough,’ she said.
Eight-year-old Alice doted on her new baby sister, taking over for her mother whenever the tiredness struck. Vernon was delighted at first, less so after he realised the work a baby brought with it. He disappeared a lot more after that.
When he came home, he wasn’t evasive anymore, rather defiant and angry at the existence of the woman and two children he needed to support. ‘I’ve been out so don’t fucking ask where. Not everyone is a whinger like you. Some women appreciate a real man.’
He began to cross more and more lines, stepping over them like they weren’t even there.
The first punch to the face, the first kick, the first rape.
She went back to her vodka and began crossing lines too. The first time she had a drink in the afternoon, before lunch, at breakfast.
It’s all a bit of a blur when Margaret thinks back on it now.
‘Useless drunk cow,’ Vernon observed from time to time, but he kept buying bottle after bottle of vodka, making sure she was well supplied. He kept hitting her, but sometimes she felt it was simply to let her know who was in charge rather than out of any rage he felt towards her. And t
hen eventually the rapes stopped as well.
Margaret before Adam died would have worried about that. Margaret after Adam died, after Vernon moved in, after Lilly was born didn’t wonder at all why he suddenly had no interest in her sexually. All she did was enjoy the relief of not having him near her.
She sighs. It does her no good to go over all of it again and again. She looks around the kitchen, seeing the sticky dirt everywhere. The bin is overflowing and in the living room she knows the dust lies thick on top of the television. She hardly notices the dirty nappy smell in the air anymore, unless she goes outside, and she rarely does that. She stares at the sink, piled with dirty dishes. It’s no use. She would need to clean all day. She drops the cloth onto the filthy counter and goes back to her bedroom, back to her bed, back to her bottle of vodka, leaving the sound of her children behind. Leaving everything behind.
Nineteen
Now
Alice
* * *
I curl my arm, bringing the hand weight to my shoulder, feeling the burn and watching the muscles in my shoulder separate. Next to me a man strains as he lifts a heavy weight and I breathe in the smell of sweat, not minding it because at least it’s not the stench of vinegar. A country music song is blasting in my ears and I try to concentrate on the singer’s words about loving and missing his wife, but it’s not working.
Instead, even as I stare in the mirror and can see that no one is touching me, I feel his hands everywhere.
Alice is afraid. Alice is disgusted. Alice is thinking about dying.
I have hidden the stuffed green frog in the back of my closet but can’t stop myself from going back to it every few hours.
This morning I googled Vernon, just to check, just to be sure. I thought I would find nothing but there are two newspaper articles. One, dated 2002, talks about what he did, and the other, from 2003, is about his sentence.