I go to get Daisy.
“Shall we just do it?”
“OK.” She’s resigned.
I sit her at the table.
“The water and the flake are to take the taste away,” I tell her. “And if you like, you can sniff the tissue as you take it,
so you won’t smell the smell. You do it in your own way. Just in your own time. Perhaps just a tiny sip today; that would
be fantastic.”
I sit by the window and flick through the Tuscany brochure, trying to lose myself in those sunflower fields and dazzling skies,
trying not to watch her.
She picks up the spoon, looks at it for a moment, raises it to her lips. She takes the tiniest sip. Immediately, she starts
retching. She rushes to the sink. She’s shivering with nausea. I hold her, smooth back her hair.
“We’ll leave it for today,” I tell her. “You did so well.”
She’s retching still, but nothing’s coming up. We go into the living room and I bring her duvet and wrap her up on the sofa.
It’s
Family Law
on the television. There’s always something so bleak about these daytime programs: You think of all the other people who
are watching with you, people who are old or lonely, people without purpose. I sit for a while with my arm around her. The
nausea shakes her. The medicine has triggered her retching and now it won’t be stopped.
Eventually, I go to the kitchen to make myself a coffee. It’s only one o’clock, but the light is so low it feels as though
dusk is falling. My house is drab in the raw gray light. Outside, water drips from the branches of the birch tree and the
lawn is full of worm casts. We’re stagnating here: Life is passing us by. I let myself think for a moment of how Daisy’s life
should be, of the rich, familial rhythms of primary school: choir practice and spelling tests and raw, scraped knees from
running and skidding on the playground, and noisy, rainy lunchtimes drawing extravagant cats on the backs of spare worksheets
with Megan, and squabbles and making up — not sitting wrapped in a duvet watching Oprah and feeling sick. A sense of loss
tugs at me.
The medicine bottles are lined up on the table like a reproach. The chemical sweetness of the last one I tasted is still on
my tongue. I wonder what happens now: I don’t know how to do this. Perhaps like with a baby — pinching her nose so she has
to open her mouth, forcing the spoon in, tipping her head back, holding her while she retches? Is that what I have to do?
I pile the bottles up on the polystyrene tray and shut them away in the cupboard.
W
HEN DAISY IS SLEEPING
and Sinead is on the Internet — in theory researching a project on the Weimar Republic, though almost certainly in some dubious
chat room — I go up to the attic. Richard is still not home; there’s no one I can talk to. The night sky through the skylight
is black and unforgiving, with spiky stars. I can still see Dr. McGuire’s acute, clever face, as though his eyes are on me.
I feel a child’s futile rage: I’m repelled by his voice and his coldness and the way he silenced me.
There are some narcissi that I had in a vase in the living room: They’ve faded now, and I’ve brought one here to draw. Maybe
this will calm me. It’s waiting on my table. In the dim light I can scarcely see the stem; the flower looks as if it’s floating.
I shall draw it in pen and ink, just tracing out the form, trying to capture that lightness, that lovely, effortless intricacy,
the way it moves upward like breath.
I start to work, but the light isn’t good enough, really, the overhead lightbulb’s gone and I’m using just the table lamp;
and I’m restless, full of anger, and the drawing goes all wrong. The shape that I draw is lumpen, solid: It sits squat on
the page, weighed down and bulbous. I feel disgust with what I’ve done. I draw a line straight through the drawing, then again
and again, all my anger coming out through my hand. I go on like a furious child, crossing out over and over, the feeling
moving through me like a charge — my rage that Daisy is ill, that no one seems able to help us, that no one understands.
Then suddenly the mood burns out: It starts to seem strange, excessive. I put down the pen. I look at what I’ve done, my crossings-out.
The lines are like hair being blown, like matted branches or the tendrils of vines. The misdrawn flower is hidden, only hinted
at beneath this thick, tangled texture of my crossings-out: a ghost narcissus, a shadow. I find I’m drawing again, the pen
moving over the page, adding to my drawing as though my hand is separate from my mind. The lines circle, swirl, creating tunnels
that open out into whirlpools, labyrinths. There is a space in the center of this shape, in the middle of the vortex. I need
to fill in the space: Something has to go there. I doodle, playing around, almost at peace now, curious, waiting, the anger
all out there in the lines on the page.
I look at what I’ve drawn. A face, young, bony, scared, with shadow patches round the eyes. A sharp face, like an alien in
a cartoon: a thin, wild child. I don’t know who she is, this child in the heart of the labyrinth.
I look at my picture and see that it is interesting — the vortex and the child. I draw another child, and another: tiny, in
the margins of the picture — but these are complete, not just faces, their bodies twisted, shadowed. I’m doodling, really,
not trying, letting it happen. The children’s arms and legs are slender, sharply angled; their limbs fly around, they are
full of movement, of energy, but there is nowhere they can go to; they are trapped, imprisoned, by the lines like tumbled
hair or forests. They surprise me, yet they are also familiar, as though I dream these children sometimes and then forget
my dreams.
These are the only people that I have ever drawn.
I sit for a while and look at what I’ve done. I think of things. The closed door, the saucepans tied to the door handle that
would rattle if you touched it. The smell of scorching dust on the flimsy electric fire. The woman in the flat next door who
sat smoking on her sofa. I feel a trace of what I felt then: the pressure on my chest. But this is tolerable; I can bear it
now. As though these thin, trapped children have begun to set me free.
I tear the page out of the sketch pad and take it downstairs and stick it up in the kitchen. I want to see if I’ll like it
in the morning.
Richard comes home at ten. I need to talk about Dr. McGuire, but I know this isn’t the time — his eyes are smudged with tiredness.
He sits down heavily at the kitchen table. I get some ice from the freezer for his whiskey, and he notices the picture. He
looks at it for a moment with a kind of concentration I find surprising.
“I didn’t think you drew people.”
“No, I don’t. Well, I never have before,” The compulsion to be self-deprecating washes through me. “It’s just a little sketch
I did. I wanted to try something new.” And, when he says nothing, “What d’you think? Don’t you like it?”
He nods, as though he’s giving some assent or recognition.
“It’s good,” he says. “In fact, it’s very good. It’s very well drawn.” He takes a long indulgent sip of whiskey; the tension
in him starts to ease away. “But to be honest, darling, it’s not my kind of thing. I liked the flowers better.”
How’s
DAISY
?” asks Nicky.
She’s ordered a plate of mussels and chips to celebrate the end of her detox diet. The shells of the mussels are shiny and
black like her clothes.
“Much the same. We’re seeing Helmut on Friday.”
“I’m sure he’ll be able to help,” she says. “He’s wacky, but it works.”
A rangy waiter lights our candle, a tea light in a tumbler. I can feel the heat of it on my skin when I lean across the table.
“Is Richard being nice?” she asks.
“He just keeps saying it’ll all be OK. Sometimes I think if he worried more, then I wouldn’t have to.”
Shadows move across the poster on the wall behind her: It shows a louche blond woman who’s wrapping herself lasciviously around
a bottle of Pernod. Little tea lights glitter in Nicky’s eyes.
“He adores you,” she says irrelevantly.
“We saw Dr. McGuire,” I tell her.
“How was it?”
“I didn’t like him.”
Nicky considers this, tearing at a mussel with her teeth; her crimson mouth looks briefly predatory.
“Some people I know went to see him,” she says. “Their son was diabetic. They said he was good — very thorough. I guess he’s
one of those guys that people either love or hate.”
“Maybe.”
“From what Kim said, I guess he sees himself as a bit of a crusader.”
“God knows. I thought he was foul. He wouldn’t listen to me.”
Her face is intense with concern, She puts her hand on my arm.
“You have to be really assertive, Cat. You’re just too nice sometimes.”
I ask about Simon. She leans toward me; her voice is hushed and secret. Things have progressed, she tells me: -They-made love
on her desk after work, while the cleaner was in the corridor. I sense her excitement, shot through with a kind of fear; her
pupils are dark and vast when she talks about him.
“What if Neil finds out?”
“He won’t,” she says. “How could he?”
I ought to tell her to stop. I know that’s the best friend’s role, to issue the warnings. But somehow I can’t do it; I wouldn’t
want to take the shine from her.
She takes a long swig of cabernet sauvignon.
“It’s the old story, how it happens,” she says. “I mean, once you’ve been there, you start to see it everywhere. You have
these babies and slob around in tracksuits and you think you’re anesthetized, you just don’t get why anyone bothers with sex.
Then your youngest starts at nursery, and you up your hours at work and buy yourself a lipstick. And you’re chatting to some
guy about the October spreadsheets, and you’re very aware of the way he pushes up his shirtsleeves, you can’t take your eyes
off his skin.” She’s leaning across the table, her dark hair swinging above the flame of the candle. For a brief, wild moment,
I fear she will catch fire. “And then the libido you thought had gone AWOL forever sneaks up behind you and hits you over
the head…. It’s danger time for marriage when your little one starts nursery. Good thing the guys don’t know.”
I refill her glass for her. Her lips have left a crimson stain on the rim.
The rangy waiter puts some music on: a singer I know but can’t name, a low voice, smoky with sadness. We listen for a while.
“It’s different for you and Richard, of course,” she says then, responding perhaps to some hesitancy in me. “You’re just so
good together. You’re made for each other.”
I shrug a little; I don’t know how to respond. Sometimes I wish she wouldn’t say these things, about how good my marriage
is. It’s a superstitious fear, maybe — as though even to put these thoughts into words might make something start to unravel.
Nobody’s marriage is perfect.
She puts her hand on my wrist.
“Hell, I’ve been going on and on. I’m such a selfish pig. When you’ve got so much to cope with — you know, with Daisy and
everything.” She forages in her handbag. “I’ve brought you a book,” she says.
She hands it to me. It’s called
You Can Heal Your Life
and on the cover it has a rainbow heart.
“The woman who wrote this is a healer,” she says. “She believes that we create whatever happens to us. By the way we think.
I know it sounds mad, but I’m sure she’s onto something.”
I leaf through the book. It’s full of words like
vibrant
and
abundant
. When I look at it, I feel tired suddenly.
She’s watching me. “I mean, it could be it won’t mean anything to you. But I found it great when I kept on having those migraines,
and I did some work on myself — you know, about my dependency issues and stuff — and I think it really helped.”
“I thought it was Helmut who helped.”
She grins. “Well, maybe a bit of both….”
At the back there’s a list of symptoms and their causes. I look up nausea. It says nausea is caused by “Fear. Rejecting an
Idea or Experience.” I wonder what Idea or Experience Daisy is rejecting.
“It’s sweet of you,” I tell her. I put it in my handbag.
Outside on the pavement, car headlights sweep across us, and there’s a sudden smell of spring and a lemon moon that hangs
low in the indigo sky. You can see the blotches on the moon, like features on some far-off face whose expression is unguessable.
“Give Daisy a kiss from me,” she says. And goes, all thrilled and shiny, leaving me alone.
T
HE NEXT DAY
, Daisy goes to school, walks straight in without crying. Hope surges through me as I watch; just for a moment, I can believe
that all our troubles are over.
At half-three I wait anxiously for her. She is pale but smiling. She has a woven friendship bracelet that Megan has given
her, and a parents’ invitation to a karoake
Sound of Music
organized by the PSA, and a letter about a sponsored matchbox competition, in aid of a school in Africa, which she thrusts
at me. They have to see how many things they can fit into a matchbox — no body parts, medicines, or animals allowed — and
there will be a prize for the child who has the biggest collection.
“This’ll be fun. We’ll start tonight,” I tell her.
She shakes her head; she says her stomach hurts. When we get home, she goes to her room and lies in bed watching television.
I take her some toast and a hot-water bottle to hold against her stomach. She’s watching a program on organ donation.
“This looks depressing,” I tell her.
“It’s interesting, Mum.” Her face is serious, composed. “There was a woman whose little girl died of cancer and she had the
little girl’s corneas donated, and she worried that she might not be able to see when she gets up to Heaven. I worry about
that too. But you probably would be able to, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course you would,” I say brightly. But I hate this conversation.
In the evening, her stomachache gets worse.