Authors: Sarah Bilston
“Sometimes he’d send his mother over, but
she’s
one of those people who thinks you should just give babies to a nursemaid until it’s time to pack them off to boarding school. She’s from a very different generation, or maybe it’s the class thing, I don’t know. Anyway, every time she came to the house she positively
reeked
disapproval. She told me I was smothering him,
that
boys need to learn to stand alone; one day, she even said that was why he was crying. I didn’t believe her, but I—I couldn’t fail, do you see, Q? I couldn’t fail. I had to prove my way, the loving way, would work. And then when Geoffrey kept crying, on and on and on, no matter what I did, I got so angry…
“So you see, Q—” with a strange, hollow bitterness—“you don’t need to worry that I’m judging you. I wouldn’t have a leg to stand on, would I? I—I meant it when I said I wanted to—help.”
“Alison—” the words came slowly, dragged out unwillingly—“I don’t think you’re the first mother to be tempted in—in that way.”
She laughed mirthlessly. “No, maybe not. But I almost did it, Q. I actually got as far as the window.”
I thought back suddenly to a night, a few weeks ago, when Samuel was screaming and screaming in my ear, when the noise was like a blade stabbing and slashing through my brain, when every nerve inside me was flayed and raw and red—when the only thing I wanted was to be asleep, unconscious, beyond sensation. And in that mo
ment I had a flash of a thought, clear as a church bell in fog: if I killed him, I could sleep. Horrified immediately, I buried the appalling thought as deep as I could. I put it in a box, and I shut the lid, and I locked it tight, and then I put it inside another, bigger, stronger box, and I dug and dug through the deepest layers of my consciousness, and when I got to the very bottom of everything, I put it there, and I covered it up again, and I hoped it would never emerge. I didn’t actually take my son to the window, but—
“Alison, I’ve had Tom by my side, particularly these last few difficult weeks,” I said, almost apologetically. “Whereas you, and Gregory—”
“He’s never been able to do ‘the baby thing,’ as he calls it,” she remarked. “He would actually leave the room when the crying began, or go upstairs to the spare bedroom if it started during the night. And the only thing that calmed the baby was nursing, so there was nothing he could
do
anyway. There wasn’t any point in him suffering, you see, since he couldn’t really help anyway. I was—everything to Geoffrey. Well,
you
know.”
“The law doesn’t police thought,” I said. “You didn’t
do
anything, Alison.”
“Oh, darling!” Her voice was bright and hard, through tears. “Would that make
you
feel any better?”
Tom came home ten minutes later to find me lying on the floor, the phone still gripped in my hand, talking earnestly. Samuel was, for a blessed moment, clasped quietly to my breast. “Who?” he mouthed at me, curiously, and the expression on his face when I whispered back, “Alison,” was a sight to behold.
Jeanie
I
want to take you to my favorite place tomorrow,” he explained on the phone on Monday night. “It’s in the Village. I’ll pick you up outside the apartment building at seven. We’ll have cocktails first, then we’ll go for dinner.”
And then, I thought to myself. And then…
No sleep for me that night, I was too busy staring at the ceiling thinking about what Paul looked like and felt like and smelled like, trying to remember if he had a mole under his neck or if it was just behind his ear, if his eyes were brown-gold or brown-black, if he used aftershave, and for the life of me I couldn’t quite conjure up the sound of his voice in my mind’s ear. I was looking forward to getting the answers to those questions properly cleared up on our date. And I had a few more lines of inquiry to pursue.
I spent Tuesday morning choosing/washing/ironing a delectable outfit. I told Q I was seeing an old friend from school—I happened to have a friend who’d moved out to Brooklyn—although quite why this necessitated borrowing her Versace heels was somewhat unclear. She was not particularly sharp at the time, though. “Oh God, if someone can get some use out of these things, I’m pleased,” she said, inspecting the lovely black spiky things as if they were purchased in another lifetime.
“Alison and I have—reached an understanding,” she told me
then quietly. “There are some things we find we’ve shared, I can’t quite explain, but—I don’t want you to worry that you’ve made things
worse.”
I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this (what on earth had Alison told her?), but at least I seemed to be out of trouble. I apologized for being so horrible, feeling very contrite, then Q asked me seriously how my comparative study of Cumbria and Connecticut was coming along. This was tricky, because I hadn’t given it a second thought since Cumbria rejected my job application. So I suggested I was “narrowing my focus” and planning a study of Connecticut’s geriatric care instead. She insisted on asking me for details, which was quite wearing, although I think I got away with it by diverting her with stories about the people at Quiet Lanes.
I was not ready to open up to Q about Paul just yet. I wanted him to be my secret. As soon as I told her “I’m seeing Paul,” I knew what would happen: “You’re not at all like his last girlfriend,” or “you
are
a bit like his last girlfriend,” or “Tom, do you remember that time with Paul when we…?” or “Tom, when we had Paul over for dinner three years ago, didn’t he…” I knew she’d want to tell me about him. But for the time being, I wanted to find out about him all by myself.
Dress: gold. Hemline: fluttery. Nails: metallic. Lips: red. Undies: tiny (almost invisible, in fact. I debated the “Access All Areas” pair for comedy value, then decided uproarious laughter has not actually what I wanted to produce if we reached the underwear stage).
Q’s in-laws were coming for lunch, and in the afternoon they were taking Samuel to the doctor’s. Which would keep them delightfully out of the way. I decided to go shopping. A new pair of stockings, perhaps—?
Q
L
ucille was the first in through the door at a little after noon. “Hello and where’s my darling grandson?” she called, charging in like a predator in search of its prey, all feline grace, thrusting elbows, and pointed archness. She plucked Samuel out of my arms and cuddled him to her bony bosom with what I imagine she thought was grandmotherly fondness; he, of course, immediately began to yell.
“There, there, oh, oh, little one, what’s da matter den, cutie-pie?” she crooned to him through pursed pearly-pink lips. Samuel, no doubt appalled by the overpowering scent of Chanel, screamed, did a double back-flip, and nearly fell out of her arms.
“Now then, for God’s sake, Lucille, be careful,” Peter chided her, and I saw her thin painted cheeks flush faintly. “You were never any good with them when they were that size.” He had settled himself down on the sofa, legs crossed, hands locked behind his head. Peter was an international authority on minimally invasive coronary artery bypasses. His knowledge of the emotional workings of the heart was quite a bit less developed than Samuel’s.
Oh no. It came upon me suddenly, almost without warning. I felt sorry for her.
“It’s not your fault, Lucille,” I said kindly, “he’s a bit—um—fractious these days. Even Jeanie’s finding him tricky at the moment,” I
assured her, and I saw, a second too late, anger flash across her face.
Even
Jeanie. She drew herself up tall. “Yes, well, if
I
, his
grandmother
, had had the opportunity to spend as much time with him as your
sister
has, I’m sure he’d be perfectly used to me by now,” she returned frostily, and subsided, like the Boston debutante she once was, into our brown leather armchair.
“Anyone for some food?” Tom said helpfully into the silence that followed, and he vanished off into the kitchen and reappeared with a dish of vegetables, a plate of cheese, and some pâté on toast. Lucille attempted a carrot while Peter wolfed the minced pork with carnal delight.
“So you’re going to do some consulting?” he began, eyes watchful as Tom launched into a description of the contacts he was making and the clients he was hoping to take on. Tom was halfway through when Peter cut in impatiently. “Seriously, you need to think about the long term, Tom. I mean it’s one thing to fuck around for a few months, but what about your retirement funds? And what, are you on your
wife’s
health insurance now? I mean, c’
mon
…”
Tom was determinedly keeping his face expressionless. “Thanks for the advice. We’ve got our insurance needs all straightened out, actually. But that’s enough about me. Let’s talk about you,” he went on generously, although I heard a dangerous tightness in his voice.
Peter allowed himself the faintest, smuggest smile, and looked over at Lucille, who was smiling slightly too as she smoothed her navy skirt of its lone hair’s-breadth wrinkle. “Yeah, well, funny you should ask. Things are going very well, as it happens. My article on stented angioplasties was, as you may have heard, nominated for…” I switched off; I’d heard some version of this speech about seventy-five times, and it always ended with the words “Nobel Prize” and “possibly next year” hovering in the background. I pretended Samuel’s diaper needed changing in the other room, and excused myself.
I assumed that Peter’s litany of marvelous success would still be ongoing when I returned. Somehow, though, in my absence, the conversation had moved from Peter’s account of his own brilliance back to Tom’s failings. I stood outside the sitting room door, electrified by the sound of raised voices, Samuel tight in my arms. We looked nervously at each other.
“I didn’t get
my wife pregnant,
Dad, what the hell kind of language is that? It was a joint decision, we’re a team, for God’s sake!” Tom was shouting. “And shut the fuck up about the firm, what, you think I’d still be working at Crimpson if it wasn’t for Samuel? Even if that’s true—which it isn’t—it’s a trade I’d make again in a heartbeat. I don’t care about the money—not as long as we’re covering the bills. And as for our decision to start a family, that was ours, nothing to do with you. So butt the hell out of our lives…”
He paused for air. I wanted to run into the room and hug him, but something stopped me.
“How can I ‘butt out of your life,’ as you so charmingly put it, when you’re
fucking it up?”
yelled Peter, and then came the loud bang of his hand meeting a table.
“When
are you going to move back to New York properly? A holiday’s one thing. But this—!”
“Not yet,” Tom replied, his tones now pointed and icy. “We’re not coming back yet. In fact, I’m not sure if we’ll ever move back here. Q has got us involved in this case—”
“What are you talking about? ‘Involved?’ What do you mean? What case?”
“It’s—just something local to the area.”
“The Long Island Pipeline case?” Peter sounded hopeful for a moment. “There’s a lot of money at stake in that. Look, I’m not saying it’s
impossible
to find good work in Connecticut—”
“That’s not what I’m talking about, Dad. It’s much more small-scale: a young woman’s custody battle, actually.”
“Do you mean that young Hollywood actress—what’s her name—
the one living in Fairfield County?” It was Lucille’s turn to sound hopeful. “Isn’t she fighting with some young drug addict over her twins—”
“No, Mom,” Tom sounded torn between frustration and laughter, “really, it’s nothing like that. We’ve agreed to help a small-town lawyer with a very simple domestic case, out of good will. Although—” I could visualize his expression—“we are using the opportunity to sort of
feel out
what small-town law might be like. As a lifestyle for us, I mean.”
“Feel it out? Why would you need to
feel it out?”
Peter howled. “You don’t need to feel it with a ten-foot pole, young man! You’ve got a whole damn city here of opportunities to feel out first, and if that isn’t enough for you, there’s Washington, D.C., just a few hours away. And I can help you there, Tom,” he went on (the cajoling was starting now), “a couple of boys from the club have offered to introduce you to some real important people. There’s a whole new career out there for you, Tom; you just have to grasp it.”
“And you would make such a wonderful politician, Tom; you’re so polished, so articulate. And just think: you could serve the interests of the people. At times like these—well! It’s truly a noble calling. Surely a little self-sacrifice is called for…” Lucille’s voice, as she picked up the argument, was like chocolate: smooth, sweet, and nearly irresistible.
There was a pause. Samuel, tucked under my chin, muttered something. “What’s your daddy going to say now?” I whispered to him, holding him a little bit away as I spoke. His head wobbled backward as he tried to look into my eyes.
“That’s kind of you, Mom,” Tom replied, at last, quietly. “I appreciate it. Really, I do. And you’re quite right, times have changed; these days we need to think about helping people, not just servicing our own needs. But I can’t see myself doing that by becoming a politician. Maybe one day in the future—when my kids have grown up—who knows? But I want to
watch
them grow up first, and it’s hard
to do that in politics. As a small-town lawyer, on the other hand, I can help people who are struggling in the face of the recession
and
spend time with my family. For a while I wasn’t sure about it—this firm we’ve discovered in Cheasford—but now I’m really starting to see the advantages. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think this is a real opportunity for us. The firm has a large client base, you see, and an excellent reputation.”
I couldn’t see him, so I don’t know if he crossed his fingers. Just in case, I did it for him.
“It would be a very different life for us, obviously. In a good way. We would be able to buy a reasonably sized house, send Samuel to public school—”