According to YES (24 page)

It's four a.m. An unholy time, the amber between very late and very early. The front door to the Wilder-Bingham apartment clicks gently and opens quietly. It's Glenn. She slips in stealthily. She is in her coat and stockinged feet, holding her shoes.

All is quiet, all is still. She stands motionless for a few seconds, drinking in the place she loves and misses the most. Then, in the darkness, she walks slowly down the hallway to the door of her old bedroom. As she pushes it open, her heart stops beating in anxious anticipation of finding something that will topple her. But no. There he is, big ol' daddy bear Thomas, fast asleep in their bed, sprawled over onto her side of it, and in his pyjamas. She watches him sleep. There is only the faintest half-light spilling in from the bathroom, but even in this, she can see he looks older than just a few months ago. Considerably older. Her darling man, breathing himself away.

She looks up and catches sight of herself in her dressing-table mirror, and sees that the same is true of her. Much older.
Older than a few months should rightly render her. She's whiter, more see-through than when she left here, because she has kept herself in the strict Gollum-dark ever since. Thankfully though, Thomas didn't see her a month ago, when she was at her dangerously thinnest. She at least has a layer of flesh on her brittle bones now, thanks to the endless supply of soup and noodles and spinach and chocolate milk and mashed potato Rosie has been grazing her on, all the while revealing an astonishing insight into Rosie's own comfort-eating habits. Something Glenn would like to address with her one day. But not now. Definitely not now.

Now matters more than ever, this very moment may decide so much about her future. She reaches over, and clicks the bedside light on. Thomas stirs and blinks awake, he is drowsy and ruffled like an old grizzly waking from hibernation. Slowly but surely he comes to, and realizes that she is there.

‘What time is it?' he says, with a dry mouth.

‘Do we still love each other, Tommy?' she says quietly, and in the big pause that follows, she hands him his glass of water from the bedside table, and he drinks.

He sits up properly and blinks at her. ‘Yes. Most certainly. Well, I can only speak for myself, but … YES. Because I can only be as happy as you are, and because I … only know how to
be
when I'm part of you. That's gotta be love … isn't it?'

‘Happy? I would like that very much. I haven't been for some time …'

‘I know … I'm sorry …' he says.

‘No, stop, it's up to me. I have to find it, I keep letting everything get in the way, and I've got used to thinking it's just out of my reach, like it'll be taken if I let it be here. Success is ringed by vultures, it'll be pecked at and ruined.'

‘Glennie, you're confusing success and happiness.'

‘It's nearly too late to get it right …' she says.

‘No, no it's not. Because you really don't have to be perfect, my love, in fact I think it's a bit easier when there are a few mistakes along the way. We can all relate to failure, God knows, I certainly can. Don't quote me, but I think that's called being human. Isn't it?'

‘Maybe …' she says.

‘Why don't you try it for a while? Being human.'

Thomas knows this is challenging talk, he knows her like the back of his hand, and so also knows that she respects the tough line. She sits down on the bed. Looking at her there, in the night, in her coat, he feels so tenderly towards her, and he can see how very lost she is. The toppled queen. Yet there's something else, she seems softer, more open. He has an overwhelming desire to scoop her up and protect her. He remembers the young Glenn, and how he chose her above all others because she was different, not one of those uniformed ten-a-dime preppy debs. She was independent and prickly with a hint of wild. Look at her now. She has nearly killed herself trying to be like the others, yet what he especially loves about
her, is that she isn't. He needs her to know, so he says, ‘I wish I could shrink your fear, Glennie, then you could just come home and be my wife, Kemble's mother and the boys' granma. The real true you. Not the one you try so hard to pretend to be. Christ, it's gotta be easier to let yourself off that hook. Just for the record, wife, zero fucks are given here about you being perfect, or any of us for that matter. We've got it wrong. So what?! Let's live, my darling, whatever best way we can, so long as it's together, eh? You know living? It's all the chaotic, messy stuff you do before dying. Whaddya say?'

She looks at him, ‘I say sorry. That's what I say …'

‘Hey, no …' Thomas tries to stop her,

‘Shush, Tommy, listen. You know you're my king. I always wanted the best for you, and it was so hard to find out I wasn't the best. I did the deadliest thing, I weighed myself in the balance, and boy was I found wanting, so goddam disappointing, in every department. You were, you are, so very … beautiful. Always. More now even. You bastard. Yep, I knew you were going to be a hard dog to keep on the porch … I expected that …'

‘Seriously Glenn. Do not make excuses for me. Please. I have made wrong decisions, not your fault. Me. Greedy me. All me. Not to do with you. I can't bear you would think that. It's more to do with panicking, time running out, y'know, we climb the stairs in this short life, up, up til now we're at the top of the house, that's us. High up. I have felt terror there, vertigo,
and I have been weak. And for that, I am so sorry. But I know now that I only have two choices: I can throw myself off or I can enjoy the view. And I want the latter. But I want to enjoy it with you. I can't do that unless you forgive me. Honestly forgive me, only that will do it. And I will know if it's not real, so don't try faking it.'

‘Let's take it slow, and see …' she says, letting her blood run a bit warmer in her veins again. Thomas has returned her power to her, but this time, it fits her right, she can envisage a place, a position for her that is truthful. A sense of relief floods through her.

She continues, ‘I've been lost, Tommy. I can't even walk properly, I'm just … constantly falling forward and then stepping just in time. It's no way to get anywhere.'

‘Are you home now?' he asks, tentatively.

She pauses, then, ‘I don't think so … yet …' she says.

‘OK, OK. I'll wait. Just be right here, waiting. But, my little queen, would you at least take your coat off and lie down here with me for a while? Let me keep you warm? Just a few minutes?' he says, smiling, and holding the sheets back for her to climb in next to him.

‘Sure you want to? Rosie says it's hard to cuddle a porcupine …'

They both laugh. Rosie. That girl. That trouble.

Glenn takes her coat off, and lays it neatly on the end of the bed, and she clambers in beside him. Immediately, her body
knows his and she knows this is where she needs to be. And soon.

‘That's it,' he says as he pulls her close, ‘that's where my love belongs. What a phenomenally interesting woman you are. Thank you for coming here.'

And they lie together while she thaws.

‘Don't ever die,' she whispers.

‘Promise I won't,' he whispers back.

An hour or so later, as dawn is breaking outside, Glenn silently pads back along the corridor like a guilty mistress. She glances into Thomas's office, and sees there, the portrait of herself on the easel. She gasps. Yes, it's her, his wife.

As she tiptoes to the door, Iva appears from seemingly nowhere in a dressing gown and hands her a small plastic tub.

‘Sausage in beer with cabbage. Will make you strong Mrs W. B.'

Glenn looks at her. In that moment Glenn couldn't be more grateful for the kindness.

‘Thank you, Iva,' she says. With that, Glenn slips out of 21 East 90th St, with her head up and new hope.

They both know how much a consideration like this matters when you feel like you're a million miles away from what is really important.

Rosie Kitto is a big fat beached whale.

And she doesn't mind one bit, in fact she is playing it to the hilt, sitting in the corner of the kitchen, loudly directing operations from a large comfy chair on this bright winter morning. She is barking jokey orders at the twins,

‘Get me waffles! Now! With blueberries! And peel the blueberries! Individually! Spit Spot!'

The boys are running about, answering to her every whim, her crazed slaves. Kemble, Thomas and Teddy join in the fun and add their raised voices to the orders, ‘Juice! Here! Toast! Hurry! Eggs over easy! With a side of lobster thermidor! Now! Yesterday! With iced hot water!'

It's a busy, communal affair, with everyone chipping in, interrupting and messing about.

Iva is in the centre of the lovely chaos, supervising all the actual cooking. Sitting at the end of the counter, wide-eyed, amazed and tipping into occasional bewildered laughter is
Zofia, who arrived two days ago to spend the Christmas holiday with her mother in mad New York with all these mad people being mad. Iva explains in Polish to her that this family is crazy and not to worry, no-one is shouting for real. Zofia has her hand to her mouth while she watches, delighted. She is a shy girl, the image of her mother, short and chunky with dark eyes and long dark hair brushed up into a neat, thick pony-tail. She wears a home-made blouse her auntie sewed. She embroidered the collar with bright red thread in the shapes of birds and trees, and this lovingly-made item of clothing sets the young girl apart as a foreigner, so unlike a cool fourteen-year-old native New Yorker. There is, refreshingly, no fashion to her whatsoever, except for her tell-tale cherished Beyoncé phone cover. Zofia is a bright-eyed innocent, and the twins love her. The only way they have communicated with her so far is to make her laugh, and once they discovered what a willing audience she is they doubled their efforts, which is part of their manic face-pulling clowning this morning.

The jollity is infectious, and the more Rosie laughs and laughs the more the twins show off.

In amongst the noise and the chatter and the yelling and the laughing, Rosie clutches her huge belly. She looks at Iva, the only one tuned to her from across the room. Could it be? It's a few days earlier than expected …

Then there's another pain,

And another.

Contractions.

This is it.

Now, the havoc changes into a new, different type of chaos as they all realize that this is the baby arriving, and everyone overhelps Rosie until Iva powers through and takes control.

At the same time, down in Soho, Glenn is in her apartment, finishing her breakfast banana and watering the small bay tree Rosie planted for her to have indoors, alongside the basil and rosemary she is growing in pots from cuttings Rosie has taken from the roof garden. She has a little piece of home flourishing here, something to nurture and keep alive alongside herself.

As she lifts the small watering can, a shaft of sunlight nearly blinds her. She blinks and moves out of its way, but then, she has a thought and she steps back into it, closes her eyes, and stays there enjoying the warmth. She walks to the large window and folds back the shutters one by one, letting the golden winter sun flood into the huge room. She breathes it in, everso slightly fearful that she might just crumple to dust. But she doesn't.

She exhales and feels her heart expanding. How can light do this? It transforms everything. She turns her back to the big
glass, and feels the heat spread from her shoulders to her bum. She sees how the light embraces everything in the room, and particularly how it falls onto the small painting she took from the apartment. She has it propped up on the mantelpiece. This portrait of Glenn Wilder-Bingham, lovingly painted by her husband. She adores it, and she notices how well it loves the light. There she is, staring back at her, the resurrected Glenn, the one with a purpose and a future and a family to keep together. The woman who doesn't want to just visit her life occasionally, the one who wants to properly live it. At that moment, her phone rings, with news from the hospital …

In the waiting room of Lennox Hill Hospital's maternity ward sit three potential fathers, the twins and Zofia. The men are anxious and pacing. The children are busy with crayons and colouring books. Even the older Zofia is enjoying the careful filling-in between the lines of the endless patterns in the battered dog-eared books.

‘Will there be, like, loads of blood? 'Cause I might barf,' says Red.

‘Shush son,' says Kemble.

‘How does it get out?' asks Three.

‘Shush,' says Thomas.

‘How did it get in there?' says Red.

‘Seriously dudes. Zip it. Or know violence,' says Teddy.

They hear the distant sound of a woman's strained cry. They all look up and remain, stock still, on alert, like meercats.

In the maternity suite, Rosie has chosen Iva as her birth-partner. Iva, the wisest and most composed person Rosie has ever known. Iva the faithful. Iva the great. This is who Rosie chooses to lay eyes on as she submits to the animalistic state she is into, the searing pain that threatens to gulp her up. Iva has done it before and knows what little whispers of comfort and encouragement to give her friend.

She reminds Rosie that, ‘You not goin' to die. You just goin' to break for a little while. That baby fightin' hard. Come on, Miss Rosie, bet you sorry now that you such a slut …'

The doctor and midwives disguise their astonishment behind little giggles. But Iva's approach seems to be working. The puffing red-faced Rosie sets her jaw against each onslaught of contractions, as if England were invading Cornwall.

She girds herself with the rallying war cries of home, as she shouts at herself, ‘Get on, maid! Oggy Oggy! Come on my 'ansome! Proper job!' between each of the crushing spasms. She pants and screams, loud and hearty, railing at nature.

Come on, Rosie.

This is what you've always wanted.

You can do it.

Mighty Rosie Kitto.

Who deserves this gift.

One last push, maid …

The nurse beckons the men into the room, and with the child­ren trailing obediently behind, they all pad in quietly, keeping their voices to reverential hushed whispers.

Rosie is propped up with the lovingly wrapped-up wrinkly pink wonder in her arms. All they can see from the door are tiny fingers experimenting with the air. As they creep closer, they see the baby, eyes wide open and locked onto the mother's astonished beatific face. Mother and baby gaze at each other in stunned amazement. This is what giant love looks like. Two human beings, meeting for the first time, who will never let anyone or anything come between them. A bond even God couldn't break.

Teddy, Thomas and Kemble draw close.

‘Who is this?' Thomas asks, hardly able to speak.

‘This is Kensa. It's Cornish for first. She's the first girl in this family.'

‘Kensa,' he repeats it. They all do, like an echo around the room, they try the name out loud.

‘Kensa.'

‘Kensa.'

‘Kensa.'

‘Yes,' Rosie says, Kensa Kitto. Say hello, boys. The twins clamber up onto the bed next to her to get a better look.

‘She looks like a monkey,' says Red.

‘A pretty monkey,' says Three, making it better.

‘That's your nose,' whispers Teddy to Kemble.

‘And that's your chin,' says Thomas to Teddy.

‘Hope she doesn't have my personality,' says Kemble.

‘She's so wrinkly,' says Three.

‘Yep. That will change. For about twenty years, somewhere in the middle of her life,' says Thomas, and then, ‘she's … lovely.'

‘Yeh,' says Teddy.

‘Takes after her mom,' says Iva.

They all agree, and one by one, they all lean in and kiss Kensa.

Standing outside the door, watching this tender nativity through the glass, is Glenn. This could be everything she fears the most, but it isn't anymore, because this is the Glenn who opened the shutters, who is grateful to see the beauty of the scene, who longs to be a key part of it, who knows she has much to offer.

Who wants to love and be beloved.

This is she.

She pushes open the door, and as they all stand back and watch, she walks towards the bed.

‘May I?' she asks.

‘YES. YES. YES.' Says Rosie.

Glenn carefully lifts the baby into her arms, the first besides her mother to hold her, and with that one compassionate, gentle, gesture, the new life begins.