After You (24 page)

43

B
efore we start, I’ve got to tell you something.” Sophie is tucked into her mini-bed, a safe place, perhaps a manipulative place for me to spring my news.
The Secret Garden
is open on her lap. Now that we’ve finished
A Little Princess
, which we enjoyed but it didn’t grab us by the throats, we want to go back and revisit our favorite just one more time. We’ve missed Mary and her transformation; we want to watch her unfold from her numb ugliness into full childhood glory.

I’m nervous and sweaty and my brain is spinning too fast. I’m scared that I’m about to lose my favorite person in the world. Greg and I have decided that I’ll tell Sophie I’m leaving, and then he’ll get her on board with Operation Move to the Countryside. We are throwing a lot at her, maybe too much, at once.

She looks up at me, open and trusting. Even after this year, she still retains the expectations of a child—most news is good news; parental figures will never hurt you. If you do what you are told, everything will be okay. My chest feels tight; my imminent betrayal will not be lessened by its unburdening. It will be magnified when I see the shift in those eyes. From love to anger.

“You’re not going to like what I have to say, but I need to tell you the truth. And I hope you’ll be able to understand. If not today, then one day.”

Sophie scoots down lower in the bed. Winnie-the-Pooh casts his golden light over her, and the rain drums the rooftop, a steady background beat.

“I lied to you the other day.”

An audible gasp. In her world, there are categories of people:
good, bad
. By lying, I have gone to the dark side.

“And I lied because I didn’t want to hurt you. It was stupid and I was scared and I’m sorry.”

Sophie doesn’t speak. She’s frozen in anticipation.

“I’m going home—back to the US, I mean. I want to stay here with you, I want nothing more than that, but I have responsibilities, and if I stayed it wouldn’t be right.”

No answer. My tears start now, heavy curtains around my face.

“I love you, Soph. And I will always love you, and I will always be here for you, even if I’m not here, here. You know what I mean? If you ever need me, I’ll be a phone call away, and I’ll get on that plane no matter what. No matter how small the problem is. We’ll talk every day, and we’ll see each other. Of course we’ll see each other. You’re my goddaughter, and nothing is going to change that.”

“But. But you said.” Her own tears have unleashed already, and her face is wet, just like mine. She’s furious and sad and will not pretend otherwise. She is too small, too fragile a package to hold that much in.

“I know I did. Have you ever said something you knew wasn’t true, but you said it anyway because you wanted it to be?”

“Maybe.”

“I want to be here, stay here with you. But something happened, and it means I need to go back and at least be near Phillip. See, I’m … well, I’m pregnant. I’m having a baby.”

“What? Why?” She looks disgusted.

I am not sure how to tackle that one, leave the birds-and-the-bees discussion for another day. Even with that part taken out of the equation, the answer is no more clear:
I am having a baby because I got pregnant, which seemed like a one-in-a-million shot from a round of pity sex with my soon-to-be-ex-husband, but there it is, it happened. And sometimes it feels like a miracle, like magic. And sometimes it feels like the universe is playing a cruel joke on me
.

“Well, I’m not sure how else to say it. But there’s a baby growing in here, and because of it—him or her—I need to go back. I haven’t even told Phillip yet.” I feel another stab of betrayal, the guilt just stacking up; Phillip will be the last to know information that first and foremost should be his. The sort of information that cannot be told over the phone. The longer I wait, though, the more impossible telling him seems to get.

“So there is a baby in there, right now?” Her curiosity in the
how
of everything is getting the better of her. She tilts her head, puts her ear to my belly, and I take the opportunity to smooth her hair down.

“Yup.”

“I don’t hear anything.”

“You will, eventually. It’s still pretty small. About this big.” I spread my thumb and forefinger as wide as they’ll go.

“I thought you’d just gotten fat.”

“Thanks.”

“You eat a lot of biscuits.”

“I do.”

“But you can’t, I mean, you can’t have a baby. No, it’s not fair.” She has drawn herself in until she is at her smallest, tightest kernel of self. “Absolutely not. You can’t go. What about me?”

“Soph—”

“No. No.” She turns away from me now, so all I can see is her pajamaed back and the hiccuping of her shoulders. She has moved from bracing, to tears, and now to full-blown anger. It’s sinking in. I’m leaving and there is nothing she can do about it. “I hate you. I fucking hate you.”

She says it in a whisper. No need to scream, since she is tasting the power of those words for the first time. There is nothing funny about them; she, unlike me, isn’t going for a cheap laugh. She turns what had before been our inside joke—my foul mouth—into a weapon.

“I fucking hate you,” she says it again, this time yelling, the repetition not lessening her sting. Her fists, her whole body, is clenched.

“Can I say something?”

“No. You’re a liar. A big fat fuck shit liar. I never want to speak to you again.”

I’m still crying, again trying and failing to be the adult. I don’t know what I’m doing, don’t know what I should be doing, and the thought that I’m hurting Sophie, that I’ve chosen to hurt Sophie, turns my fear, my confusion, into horror. I stare up at the ceiling, the closest approximation of heaven or the beyond I don’t believe in:
Lucy, what do I do? What have I done?

I am a big fat fuck shit liar—I pulled the old magician’s trick of a bait and switch on her, and I shouldn’t get away with it. I deserve her tears and her yelling. What I can’t handle, what I’ve never been able to handle, is her pain.

“Soph, it’s important you hear this. Just because I’m having a baby, that doesn’t mean I’ll love you any less. You need to know that. No matter what happens in this world, I’ll love you with all my heart. Nothing, nothing can change that.”

I’m met with dreaded silence, no noise except the desperate gulping of tears. I have lost her for now. We have regressed back to mute Sophie, back to me being more stranger than family. Any satisfaction I may have felt by doing right by her, by Lucy, has been erased; my scales have tipped now. I’ve done this family more harm than good.

“I’m sorry,” I say, my voice broken and hoarse, one hand on my stomach, already a divided loyalty, a traitor, since I whisper to it in my head, even now:
We’re okay, we’re okay, we’re okay
. “I can’t tell you how sorry.”

Sophie sits up, her back still to me, and wipes away her tears with her sleeve. And then she does the thing I least expect. She picks up
The Secret Garden
and throws it as hard as she can against the wall.

“Stupid fucking book.”

Sophie cries herself to sleep. I sit on her bed, rubbing her back, until her breathing evens out and her tears dissolve into dreams. Before I leave, I kiss her forehead and turn off the light. My movements are slow, methodical. Careful. My job so far has only been to protect, and I keep failing. I want the robustness of Susan Sowerby on the moors, able to feed and care for and love an entire brood, never making promises that are really compromises in disguise:
I’ll visit every few months; we’ll use this thing called Skype; I won’t miss a thing
. I pick up our book, take solace in the fact that the spine has not been broken, and decide to bring it to bed. I want to dip into the warm pool of fiction and let it coat me.

Before I allow myself the respite, I take my second step of the evening toward righting my upside-down world. I reach out to my husband.

To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Please
Hey. My guess is I am the last person you want to hear from right now, but I need to ask you for a favor. You owe me nothing, and I’ll understand if you’ve already stopped reading. I’ll ask anyway, though, because I have to, and I need to, and I want to, and I owe it to both of us to.

As you know, I am coming home for the wedding. Rumor has it you’ll be there, too, and I hope you will set aside some time to talk to me. I have some things that need to be said and that need to be said in person. Actually, that should only be said in person.

So here is what I am asking: Please don’t file anything. Can you believe I can’t say it, even now, the D-word? Please don’t, if you haven’t already. Please not yet. I know I’ve asked too much of you these last few months, maybe the last few years, but just one more thing. Please give me a fourteen-day reprieve.
Much love,
Ellie
PS—Yesterday I was thinking about how we used to go to Best Buy to play video games. That was fun. Why did we stop doing that?

The horror of the BlackBerry. Its flattening of language and the death of reflective thought. I get a response in twenty seconds flat.

To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Please
Already filed. You’ll get the papers later this week. We stopped going to Best Buy bc you said it was stupid.

44

I
am going to see the spot where Lucy was murdered. I want to know if the ground is still red. If there are permanent cracks. With Sophie left in the capable hands of her father, I venture out into this borrowed city and take that forbidden path we have ignored every day on the school run. I draw my jacket tighter, as the city has made the shift from filmy summer to unfolding autumn; the air has turned sharper, the leaves losing their green first, soon their bearings. Palm cupped to flesh, I hold my stomach, as if to keep the baby inside, praying the jelly roll that surrounds it is enough protection for this horrible place.

A pilgrimage for a nonbeliever.

At first, I think I’ve gone the wrong way. This mews is charming, at least in the noon light under the broad blue sky. The homes are dollhouse-sized, with flower boxes and streetlamps, shared walls lining the cobblestone streets. This block could be in a guidebook—
the real London for free!
—maybe even make the cover photograph: a curve of a road, some of the stone walls decorated with a tangle of roses, the jagged roofs like English teeth, the lack of a sidewalk part of the attraction. The string of homes, converted eighteenth-century stables, are now occupied by millionaires, not horses, happy to pay the premium for living on a cobblestone street in the back alleys of a Dickens novel or perhaps Sherlock Holmes territory. A place for fictional characters and fictional crimes a good century ago. Nancy Drew would fit in as well: pint-sized houses, filled with pint-sized mystery for the pint-sized Girl Detective.

How did Lucy die here? The mere thought of it—that she was brought to her knees in a place like this—seems impossible. Too cute. Too rich. Too movie set for this to be it. I half-expect to see a chalk outline on the ground, a smug, good-looking detective measuring for some cop-show antics. The street lacks the hectic atmosphere of the market stalls on Portobello Road, where the charm is tinged with just a bit of desperation and the sheer number of people passing by suggests you might want to keep your hand on your wallet, an engagement ring turned around, diamond-shaped diamond to palm.

Lucy died here, on a beautiful street, in a beautiful neighborhood, and there is nothing to show for it. The potted plants still bloom, alive, like a splash of color in a doctored black-and-white photograph. The ground is dry, the stones old enough to make you think of horse-drawn carriages and women in gloves.

I allow the
if onlys
to taunt me. The infinitesimal increments of fate that added up to something so significant it can be described only with an absence. If only Lucy and Soph had taken a little longer getting out of the house that morning, if only the man had chosen a different street, left not right, or vice versa, if only, if only. If only these two beings had never collided on a quiet mews at eight in the morning, mass against mass, anger to passion, the hungry bottom of addiction, the hungry high of love, and how that somehow devolved into this: a cutting. The opening of flesh, and the stopping. God damn it, the infinite, inglorious permanence of the stopping.

I stand here. Long enough that I get a strange look from a guy decked out in hipster regalia—skinny jeans, a Danger Mouse T-shirt—who passes me while walking his wirehaired terrier. Paralysis has set in; I stare at the ground, hoping for a porthole that will allow me to talk to Lucy. I still have her voice in my head, though I know that, too, will go with time. Sophie has already lost it, asking me on a daily basis to remind her what Mummy sounded like.

Tired and heavy and swollen all over, my body has abandoned me wholesale and is tuned only in to its baby-manufacturing responsibilities. I am no longer important. Mere rubbery shell, expanding to fit the needs of the swimming creature within.

I eat for it. Walk for it. Hurt my goddaughter for it.

I’m going home
, I say to this bit of ground on which my feet are planted. As arbitrary a piece of land as any other, this place where Lucy died.

I’m saying good-bye and going home and trying to recover whoever I was before. You remember, right? The Old Ellie. I know I’m leaving bodies in my wake, and for that last bit, Luce, for that part, I am sorry
.

“Do you live here?” I ask the guy with the dog, my voice finding its way outside my head, where it had felt locked and boxed. Speaking only to steady myself.

“Yes. You another journalist?”

“No.”

“Oh, too bad. Thought I could get in the paper or on the news again.” He laughs, a short staccato spurt, as if he is sharing the fact that he is the proud owner of a chuckle-snort. His free hand goes to his heart, a
dear me, isn’t that a hoot?
gesture. It is not a hoot.

“Excuse me?”

“Well, when that lady was murdered, I got to be interviewed on BBC and ITV. Have it taped to prove it.” He motions with his thumb to one of the houses, yellow and petite, white-shuttered, almost an invitation. For some reason, the place makes me think of Goldilocks: I imagine going in and passing judgment on every room.
Too small
.

“Good for you,” I say.

“You heard all about it, didn’t you? It happened right over here, right about where you’re standing.”

“Yeah, I heard.” I curl my hands into fists, the anger coursing through me so fast, I start to shake. How dare he speak so casually? Like it was fun and exciting that Sophie was here watching the unspeakable.

“Biggest thing to happen to this neighborhood since that bloody stupid film, if you ask me.”

But I didn’t ask him, and then I can’t help it, the rage coils to the blistering surface. This man is why Lucy has morphed from person to story, a warning tale told in self-defense classes around the city. Or a piece of gossip:
You hear what happened to that pretty lady?
This man is all that is evil, all self-interest and self-glorification; a man with a cute dog but no shame. He is a surrogate, and I’m okay with that. I hate him with every molecule of my body.

I forget Lucy, and Sophie, and Phillip, and even the baby for a moment. I am rage, and rage is me, and there is no stopping it.

“Listen, you little shit, how
dare
you? Who do you think you are? Someone died here, and you think it’s okay to laugh and brag about being on television? Screw you.” I look at him again, and for a minute I pretend he’s the man in the trench coat. Here’s my chance to stop him from following me. “Her name was Lucy, by the way. L-U-C-Y. She was thirty-five years old, and she was somebody’s mother. Don’t you for a moment—not one single moment—forget that. You hear me?”

The guy looks at me, maybe a little scared. I take a step closer.

“Her daughter is only nine years old. It should have been you,” I say. “It should have been you here, dying like a dog in the street. Not Lucy. Never Lucy.”

And then, for the first time in my life, I do the exact right thing, the brave thing, the stupid thing, and it feels as good as I imagined it would. No, it feels even better.

I slap him hard against his face. Palm to cheek. My wedding ring—which I had turned around a few blocks ago, near the bottom of Portobello—cuts a thin line into his skin.

When he bleeds, he drips onto the pristine cobblestone.

Not my proudest moment when Greg picks me up from the police station. He arrives solemn and in lawyer mode, all business with the police officers, until he sees me around the corner, shamefaced and rubbing my chafed wrists, sitting next to a cuffed 250-pound man with facial tattoos of tears. His demeanor shifts in an instant. Greg tucks his chin to his chest, puts his hand up to cover his mouth, looks around the dingy, fluorescent space. Anything to hold it back until we get out of here. Still, the backs of his shoulders tremble and he covertly wipes away a tear. He can’t help it, the scene is too much, the need to keep it tamped down amplifies the need for release, and, despite his best efforts, his smile breaks through, and then the laughter comes next, booming and filling up the room. He doubles over, trying to mask the noise with a cough, until he’s able to take it down a notch into girlish giggles.

His first words to me are not
don’t worry, I know your rights
, or even
are you hurt?
Instead: “Damn it, I can’t believe I didn’t bring my camera.”

I get off easy, since this is my first offense in any country, and, let’s face it, all I did was slap a guy. I am freed after a short period of time during which I was handcuffed, which was more uncomfortable than I would have imagined, and forced to wait in a cell with an intoxicated prostitute, which, as these things go, was surprisingly pleasant. She and I chatted about her last client, a well-respected politician with two kids, who pays to be burned in his armpits and other discreet places his wife likely won’t notice.

“The secrets I see,” she said. “You’d be amazed how little people actually know each other.” Her voice was so casual—this is her life, indulging other people’s demons—that part of me admired this sad woman. I almost wished I was still wearing my cast, so I could ask her to sign it.

After my time
behind bars
—an expression I will definitely use when I tell this story to my mother, who, no doubt, will be very proud—I am given a stern lecture about assault and battery before I’m released into Greg’s custody.

Apparently it’s illegal to go around slapping people. No matter that the wound was superficial and the guy didn’t need a single stitch. No matter that the asshole deserved it.

The officer is merely putting on a show, though, since it’s clear there will be no charges. We both know I won’t do this again. This was a one-time-only, a freak occurrence, something I can check off my list of things to do before I die. I don’t hesitate to use the tadpole here, when it seems I am a little too unrepentant for the police officer’s taste. I plead pregnant insanity, which means one more person knows I’m having a baby before Phillip does.

“Sorry,” I say. “It was the grief and the hormones talking.”

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” I told the guy, too, once our scuffle was over, which wasn’t much of a scuffle at all. I slapped him, he called me a “twat” and other beautiful and elaborate and British swear words, and the fight pretty much ended when he stepped out of arm’s reach and called the police from his cell phone.

“I can’t believe you did that. Just slapped some guy off the street,” Greg says on the car ride home, after we sit for ten minutes in the police-station parking lot because he is laughing too hard to drive. He laughs the way I used to—instinctual and guttural, no reservations, no posturing—so different from how I’ve been laughing lately—tired and resigned. His is contagious, though, and I start to laugh, too, deep and with my whole body, until we both have tears rolling down our faces.

For some reason, it’s hilarious that I just got arrested.

“Yeah.”

“And you made him bleed.”

“Apparently. But it wasn’t a big deal. Just a small cut.”

“And after you slapped him, he called the police?”

“Yes.”

“What a wuss.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Out loud?”

“What?”

“You called him a wuss out loud
after
you slapped him?”

“Um. Yeah.”

“You are out of your bloody mind. You could have been hurt.”

He’s right. We’ve seen where false bravery can get you. Then again, he didn’t get a look at the guy. You can’t really be afraid of a schmuck in a Danger Mouse T-shirt, walking a tiny terrier, no less.

“Sorry about you having to pick me up from jail, Greg.” I feel bad about dragging him out of the house with yet another emergency phone call, forcing him to come to my rescue.

“Are you kidding?” Greg says, his shoulders starting to heave again, and then mine do too. The giggles once more taking their hold and rising to the top. “This is the most fun I’ve had in years.”

The first thing I want to do when I get back to the house is call Phillip and tell him about the way the handcuffs cut into my skin and about the cell I got locked in, albeit for less than twenty minutes. I want to tell him about the baby, and how I am coming home for good, and that I miss him, and that I slapped a stranger. I want to tell him I won’t teach our tidy little swimmer to hit, and I promise to never even tell about my criminal record; nonetheless, I know I will be secretly proud for the rest of my life. That was the messy, dirty guts of real existence—hand-to-hand combat—which has given me new appreciation for why some people, usually men, enjoy watching boxing and Ultimate Fighting Championship. Less than twelve hours ago, I found organized fighting abhorrent.

I feel high and light, released. Absolution through a damn good palm-to-cheek slap. I feel brave for the first time in my life. Bigger than I actually am. Bigger than I ever thought I could be. And a little bit more like the old me.

Phillip is too far out of reach. My big announcement will be made in person, face-to-face, and so the phone and e-mail are not options right now. I’ve waited this long to tell him, I can wait one more week, seven more days, until I flash a passport and get on a plane and watch my parents get married in the backyard and ask my estranged husband:
What do we do now?