Authors: Sarah Bilston
This is not to say it was easy to maintain my sweet-daughter-in-law image during the visit. Peter and Lucille came ostensibly to spend time with the baby and “help out,” actually to reinforce the idea that they did everything
right
and we were doing everything
wrong.
“The baby sleeps in a bassinet,” Lucille asked, eyebrows disappearing into her expensive blond hairline, “not a crib? It’s so tiny! I’d be worried about suffocation myself…” And later: “Do you think it’s wise to use these disposable diapers? Have you thought about chemical—er—
infloration?
” Last was the production of a small
box of rice cereal from her bag of “useful things for babies” (none of which were remotely useful for a five-week-old. She clearly viewed Samuel’s lack of interest in the spinning-top contraption she produced as evidence of dangerous developmental delay). “Give him two teaspoons of rice cereal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and he will sleep through the night,” she asserted confidently, opening the box and preparing a bowl of the stuff with cows’ milk straight from the fridge. “
Guaranteed.
It’s a little trick my mother taught me,” she added, smiling beatifically. (She only conceded defeat when he’d smeared half the bowl over her face with a single well-placed kick and thrown up the rest of it into her lap. It was almost worth the visit, I decided, watching puked cereal slowly seeping through the crotch of her beige linen trousers, for
that.
)
Then, as we restored order to the place (Peter was one of those people who seemed to imagine that tiny elves picked up towels off the floor), I casually introduced the idea of a few weeks’ vacation away. My tone was as insouciant as I could possibly manage. But for all that, my husband looked at me as if the illusion of a transformed Q was, for him at least, beginning abruptly to fade. “All through your pregnancy you accused me of not spending enough time at home,” he said as he stood in the kitchen with a dishcloth in his hand and a painfully aggrieved expression in his sea-green eyes. “‘What will happen when the baby comes?’ you said. “You need to be a better father,’ you said. ‘You need to watch your son grow up,’ you said. Now the baby’s here, I’ve cut back my night hours at Crimpson in spite of the recession, I’m nervous every time there’s a knock at my office door, and this is the moment you choose to fly out the door with Samuel and leave me behind…”
I protested, sweeping the innards of the newspaper into a box (Peter’s strategy is to disembowel the
Times,
section by section, throwing everything he doesn’t want on the floor). “It’s not that, darling. Hear me out. It’s just that after all the hospitals, the worry of pregnancy, it seems a shame to pass up the opportunity of a little
bit of time—”
“You seem confident that it
is
an opportunity,” Tom cut in acerbically, dark curly hair standing nearly on end as he rubbed furiously, exhaustedly, at his head, “but I should perhaps point out that Paul hasn’t offered us his house in a year.”
This, I admitted, as I attacked Lucille’s lipstick-stained teacups, was indeed a small problem. Last summer Paul was warmly insistent that we should go and stay in his summer place, but at the time we were both working too hard; since my pregnancy, we’d hardly seen him at all (Tom was in his office almost around the clock in order to try to make partner at his firm, while I was confined to my bed).
“Perhaps you could ask him—” I tried not to wheedle.
“Q,” Tom snapped, staring at me, green eyes narrowed, “really, I don’t understand you!”
There was a muffled yelp from our son, who was sleeping on the sofa, and we both turned hastily to look at him. His mouth was agape, drool spilling gently onto the cushions; he was a little red around the eyes still, from a bout of furious crying that afternoon. He was beautiful; and he was (everyone agreed, from bejeweled old ladies in the street to the plump cashier at the bank) the spitting image of his father. He had a shock of fine dark hair, black eyes that were turning to green, and hamster cheeks. He was warm and floppy in my arms, a little frog with bandy legs and spread-out toes, and somehow the look of too many fingers on his tiny crumpled hands. Sensing his own wrist near his face, he opened his mouth, cracked his eyes ajar, and began furiously sucking. Slowly, his eyelids turned heavy, then drooped, as his body relaxed again in sleep.
My husband and I caught each other’s gaze.
“Listen Tom,” I went on, walking over and putting my arms around him, his big comfortable chest, his wide warm shoulders, “the truth is, I was thinking. What if you
came too
? What if you said
to yourself, forget it, they’re not going to partner me-Crimpson made that perfectly clear before Samuel was born—so I’m going to use up all my long-overdue holiday entitlement and go away for a few weeks with my wife?”
My chest thumping now, I stared at the bit of my husband’s shoulder in front of my face. It was a very nice bit of shoulder, as it happened, muscly, firm, and covered in starched white cotton. I pleated a bit of it in between my fingers, and waited, hoping.
Tom craned down to look into my face, his warm breath fanning my eyelashes. “You want me to commit suicide at Crimpson?” He sounded incredulous. “In this economy? Q, do you know what’s happening out there?”
“I know how it sounds,” I admitted. “I know what the partners will say. I know what they’ll
think.
But Tom, your position is tenuous no matter what we do. If Luis didn’t think you’re the world’s best lawyer at handling bankruptcies, you’d already be out on your ass. I think
you
should take control now—ask for a few weeks off, which you’re entitled to, after all. Luis is bound to support you; he’s desperate to keep you around. And then we can use the vacation to really think through the next step.”
“I don’t want to push Luis too hard, he’s still talking about trying to get them to revisit the partner decision,” Tom fretted; and then, in response to a lift of my eyebrows, “Yeah, I know. Not realistic. But look, there’s my professional reputation at stake, Q. Skipping off for two weeks just isn’t
done.”
“People know you in town, Tom, it’s not as if you don’t have friends and associates in other firms,” I said reasonably. “Paul himself, for example. He might be willing to put in a word for you at Prince, or another Wall Street firm for that matter. Not everyone’s tanking—people say Mahon and Mackey are actually recruiting; and with your skills—well. You don’t need to impress Crimpson anymore. In fact, I think you should view their decision not to promote you as sort
of liberating. Otherwise you’d never have risked jumping ship. The stress of being at Crimpson, especially in these circumstances, is really wearing you down, Tom. I can see it in your face. I want to get you out of there. At least for a few weeks.”
My husband pulled away, sat on the window seat, and looked out into the evening. The sun was spreading its last colors across the millions of windows outside our own, a sea of orange fire engulfing the office buildings of Manhattan. Samuel sneezed in his sleep.
“We can start again, Tom,” I pressed, coming to stand in front of him.
“You were playing me last night,” Tom remarked, shaking his head at me, but the corners of his wide mouth were soft, his eyes gentle. “I see it all now. Trying to get on my good side. I
thought
it was too good to be true. ‘You’re so expert at mothering, Lucille, can you show me that burping position again?’ ‘Peter, tell me more about minimally invasive coronary bypass procedures.’ Very subtle.”
I sat beside him. “I want a vacation with you.” I took his hand in mine. “And Jeanie—”
“You know
she’s
going to want wall-to-wall cocktails and parties and stretch limousines when she gets here, that’s why she’s coming out to New York.”
“Leave Jeanie to me, I can persuade her. And she’s not really like that, you know,” I murmured reproachfully. Samuel stirred again, and opened his mouth in a cat’s yawn; this time, after a second or two, he whimpered and opened his sleep-darkened eyes. I glanced at the clock; it was time for a feed. I picked him up and curved him into the crook of my arm, lifted my T-shirt, and spilled myself into his tiny, insistent mouth. We listened to his gentle suck-swallow, suck-swallow as the window square blackened and the stars appeared to prick out the sky.
“Okay,” Tom said slowly, at last. “You win. I’ll phone Paul tomorrow.”
Jeanie
I
Love New York” (Madonna). “I Feel Safe in New York” (AC/DC). “Summer in the City” (The Lovin’ Spoonful). “Skylines and Turnstiles” (My Chemical Romance).
My iPod was brimming with New York-themed music. Before leaving London I spent two days downloading songs and even the occasional album to get myself in the mood, although I hadn’t quite gotten around to organizing it all. I’d start nodding off to Paul Simon then get woken up by Busta Rhymes. It was a little bit disorienting.
I’ve always loved flying. I love the adrenaline rush as the jet speeds down the runway. I love the little dinky dinners in square white boxes. I love sipping gin-and-tonics at eleven in the morning while watching movies of scenically catastrophic destruction. Not that flying is without its downsides, of course: I don’t like tucking my knees into my belly button (a necessary feat if someone belonging to the human race is to fit into an economy class seat), and I don’t enjoy being told off by gaunt ladies with ugly hats. But there’s always the pleasure of needling the ugly ladies through mild acts of rebellion, e.g., reading a magazine four and a half seconds after being asked to put it away.
And
the relief of leaving my problems far, far behind me.
“All the Critics Love U in New York” (Prince). “City of Blind
ing Lights” (U2). “Streets of New York” (Alicia Keys). “Big Apple Dreamin’” (Alice Cooper).
Somewhere back in Heathrow the morning I flew out, Dave was left yelling at the oil-soaked gaskets and widgets (or whatever they’re called) in the engine of “Betty,” his Morris Minor, as I soared overhead. I could see him in my mind’s eye, fussing under the dented bonnet, rubbing his dirty hands distractedly on his graying T-shirt, swearing furiously at Betty for her remarkable unwillingness to start whenever she’s away from home. (Betty was consistent in nothing but this.) Eventually, after an hour or so, after much hammering and yanking and bashing, Betty would (if the past was anything to go by) splutter apologetically back to life, and Dave would hop into the driver’s seat and roar back down the North Circular Road into London. Settling back into my seat, I hoped he was all right. I hoped he would manage without me. Perhaps Alison would drop by his flat sometimes, check how he’s getting on, I thought to myself, ripping apart my third bag of pretzels. She’d been quite good with him recently.
“Manhattan Skyline” (a-ha). “New York” (Ja Rule). “New York Fever” (The Toasters). “JFK to LAX” (Gang Starr). “I Run New York” (50 Cent).
I saw the skyline unfolding out of the dirty coach window with delight, the mad futuristic buildings thrusting through the yellow-gray haze. The city never looked quite real, more like a Hollywood production. (If you looked carefully I was sure you could see the ticky-tacky tape, holding it all together.) All the way into Manhattan I dreamed about the weeks and months I would spend getting to know the place properly. I would become the sort of person who could go back to England and begin sentences for the rest of her life with the phrase, “When I lived in New York.” The sort of person who could throw phrases like “uptown” and “downtown” casually into conversation, and “Broadway” and “Central Park West.”
Dave would be fine without me. Really.
“Times Square” (Marianne Faithfull). “To the Five Boroughs” (The Beastie Boys). “Lighters Up (Welcome to Brooklyn)” (Lil’ Kim). “Central Park” (Pete Miser). “Manhattan Avenue” (Nellie McKay). “Cabbies on Crack” (Ramones).
I could buy very cool clothes that nobody at home would have. I could take home magazines that nobody I knew had read. I could buy not-very-expensive Christmas presents, write on the label “a little something from New York,” and get away with it. I could procure a stunning haircut, then grouse about the fact that “no one styles like that at home.” (As long as I could afford the stylist, of course. What, I wondered, could you get for $40 in New York?)
I hoped Dave could hold out until I got back. His mother’s Alzheimer’s had been advancing fast and his dad’s moods had been getting blacker and blacker. Sometimes I wondered how one family could take it all, the illness and the hurt and the loss. If the worst came to the worst, I supposed I could always jump on an airplane and fly home again. I was sure Q would understand. And Dave would be so pleased…Perhaps he’d come to meet me at the airport with flowers! I briefly fantasized a reunion involving tears and people clapping, then sighed and shook myself. This was Dave, after all. Dave’s idea of a romantic occasion was watching Spurs on the big-screen TV at our local pub-with a glass of wine.
“Englishman in New York” (Sting). “Lonely in New York” (Sophie Milman). “I Can’t See New York” (Tori Amos). “Lightning Strikes (Not Once But Twice)” (The Clash).
W
e need a change of scenery.” “We need a break.”
Too bad, really; that was what I thought I was getting by going to the States.
Now, I discovered, we were going to Connecticut. I didn’t even know where that was. I looked on a map. Turned out it was one of those states so small its name was written out in the Ocean.
“The important thing is that I’m here to see
you,”
I said at last, coming to sit beside her, getting my priorities straight, dumping my Top Shop shoulder bag on the floor. My sister and I hugged each other. “It’s so long since we’ve lived in the same house,” I added thoughtfully, “and you know, my visa says “six months.” Now listen, Q, where’s this baby of yours? I’m so excited to meet him, I wish you hadn’t put him in bed already. Does he look anything like me?”
“A little,” Q offered, laughing, and then she described her new son’s manifold attractions while I sipped at my hot black tea. Samuel was, I was given to understand, a paragon of a baby, the most beautiful, most advanced, most well-behaved child ever to be born—apart from the fact that he happened not to sleep at night and screamed himself into a fit if she so much as stepped outside the front door. Small flaws, clearly. I cooed in the right places, fingered his tiny clothes, and marveled at the fact that my sister had a child of her very own.