The Pile of Stuff at the Bottom of the Stairs (8 page)

And Joel loved all that was masculine about me. I could read maps and put up shelves. He used to beg me to get naked but for my tool kit, said that me wielding a power drill was as sexy as it got, while at the same time useful as I did all the DIY at his place. I knew more about football and could beat him at table
tennis. He loved that, and I loved that he did—unlike previous boyfriends, he never felt threatened by my competitiveness and joy in winning.

Then Rufus came. I, much to Joel’s initial envy, got the maternity leave. He expressed jealousy at this fact and said that he was sad he’d never know what it would be like to grow a living creature in his stomach, while never offering to give up alcohol and soft cheese in sympathy. He said he wished he could feel the closeness of a breastfeeding mother to her child, but never bothered to help me arrange the bank of cushions necessary for this unromantic maneuver, or think to get me a glass of water once Rufus had finally, painfully, become plugged in.

He had a fortnight’s paternity leave, which he kept on referring to as “holiday” and treated it as such. “What are we going to do today?” he’d ask each morning. “Who’s coming to visit?” I could only sit on an undignified inflatable ring due to the macramé performed on my nether regions, while Rufus seemed to be feeding constantly and yet not putting on the requisite weight. I’d listen to Joel telling the world how much he’d never known that such a tiny creature could inspire so much love, while I was thinking about how I’d never known that such a tiny creature could create so much laundry. As Joel would proclaim how much he loved being a father, I’d think, yes, a father, I’d love being a father. He’d never known love like it and I, too, was oozing love, except mine was overwhelming me. Joel’s love for Rufus seemed fun, like a summer affair, all giddy and euphoric. Mine was anxious and exhausting, as my head filled with calculations about feed times and terrifying visions of the accidents that could happen to my darling vulnerable boy. Joel would laugh when I tried to tell him how frightening I sometimes found it to carry Rufus up and down stairs. “What if I trip and fall?” Or worse, unspoken, that some malevolent spirit would cause me to throw
him. “What if someone steals him in the buggy when I turn to reach something down from the supermarket shelves?” I asked. I didn’t understand how it could not have occurred to Joel that a baby of Rufus’s evidently exceptional beauty and intelligence was a magnet for child snatchers.

Once we had a baby, I used to wonder what I had ever found to worry or argue about before then. Having a baby had opened up huge over-stuffed cupboards of fights to be had. All the love I had felt for Joel seemed to have been transferred to this tiny creature with his little cap of already red hair. The more enchanting I found Rufus, the more irritating I found my husband. He who I’d loved so unreservedly, I loathed. I loathed the way he put on diapers, the way he wouldn’t bother to do up all the snaps on a babygro, the way he’d throw Rufus at me the minute he started crying with the words “I think he needs feeding again.”

If paternity leave was bad, life got worse when he went back to work. He was at work, I was at home and without it ever being said out loud, this meant that I was responsible for all things to do with the house. He stopped being able to wash his own shirts or go to the supermarket—after all, what else did I have to do all day? I was lucky enough to have this holiday, this protracted honeymoon of baby bonding, and so I had no right to complain about a few extra chores.

I envied him going to work, but when the time came for me to do so, I was horrified at the prospect. Only a combination of Mary Poppins and Mother Courage could be trusted with my golden child. Since she didn’t exist I put him into a nursery, which might as well have been a Romanian orphanage for the cruelty I felt in doing so. I went back part-time, because the law said it was my right. Mitzi had said she didn’t know why people had babies if they weren’t going to be with them, though she managed to have as much childcare as I did, despite not having a
job to go to. Twenty percent less money and one more day with Rufus had seemed like a favorable exchange rate, but I hadn’t realized that it represented about 100 percent of the money I had to spend on anything other than mortgage and food. Somehow, too, the fifth of the job that got reduced was all the bits that I had liked best about it and none of the boring grind I’d gladly have eschewed.

Part-time work had seemed to be the perfect solution and everyone told me how lucky I was. But it only further calcified the roles that had begun to form on maternity leave. I’m home, he’s work. Part-time work for me didn’t translate into part-time home for him, and my longed-for weekday with Rufus was quickly filled with fixing the washing machine and standing in the line at the post office clutching passport applications. The legislation that gives the right to part-time work for mothers is cited as a great victory for women, but I felt like I no longer fit in at the office, nor did I fit in with those mothers who didn’t have a job. I needed to be amphibious, but instead I was a fish out of water. I ruminated on going full-time or giving it all up. I’m not sure it would have made much difference if I’d gone back full-time, since Joel’s level of housework would not have risen as much as my resentment; while if I’d given up, I’d have been buried in even more dirty laundry than I already was, not to mention the disastrous effect on our finances.

So here we are. I’m not quite sure how we got here, though I suppose I must have done my fair share of the driving.

The next day over breakfast, I ask Joel, “Can you remember any of the labors of Hercules?”

“Hmm,” he answers, not at all surprised that I am asking him this random question, but eagerly searching for some trivia. “There was the lion, wasn’t there? The one whose skin
was impervious to arrows or daggers. Ursula had a brilliant illustrated book of the myths of Greece and Rome. What was its name?”

I shrug and he continues: “The best one was that he had to capture the Hound of Hades—he had three dog heads. Did that involve Medusa? I wonder if I could find my old copy. We should get a Greek myths book for Rufus, shouldn’t we?”

“Yes, that’s what I was thinking,” I say. “Just what I was thinking.”

3

Wet Towels on the Bed

Friday comes and I throw off the shackles of domesticity to prepare for the party. The party in a fancy flat with architectural details and skylights and industrial concrete floors and child-unfriendly sculptures. Cara’s party.

Cara and her flat deserve an unusual amount of care with my appearance. I put on a new dress, a claret-colored chiffon affair, which shimmies over my Spanx pants (these serve the dual purpose of squidging in my post-partum belly and being sexually repulsive to Joel. Result). The dress also requires that I plump up my cleavage, which, with the help of an extra-strength shove-up bra, can go from
National Geographic
to
Sports Illustrated
in seconds. I’ve just lost the last of those remaining pregnancy pounds and if I squint at the mirror I feel really quite pleased with the result. I don’t know if I’m the old me, the pre-children one, or a very new me, some post-breeding upgrade, but I feel good.

My makeup bag is ringed with stains, like the trunk of a tree telling of past eras. To look through its wares is to look through my history: the set of brushes I bought after a terrifying makeover in a Manhattan department store, which I went to on a trip with a previous boyfriend; the ancient lip gloss I wore on my first date with Joel in an attempt to make my thin smackers look sensual and gooey, but which instead seemed to trap locks of my
hair and then later in the evening, mission accomplished, some of his; the full eyeshadow palette that I got for my wedding day makeup, only one color of which I’ve ever used. Each item tells of a previous life of vanity. I miss my vanity, which abandoned me the day that Rufus was born. I feel like narcissism was one of those school friends you’d had since your teens, who you both loved and loathed in equal measure and long wished to be rid of, but then when she was gone you missed dreadfully. Looking in the mirror so much reminded me that I was there. Now I don’t even know that I have a reflection—I might be like a vampire and when I look, there’ll be nothing. The only time I see myself in a mirror, it feels like, is to hold up a baby to show them their reflection, providing a mocking contrast between their pudgy, non-sundamaged skin and mine.

I emerge, as glamorous as it gets, to the bathroom, where I am greeted by a husband and two wailing children, the older of whom has recently become self-conscious about nudity. They both stand up, shivering, in the bath, with Rufus cupping himself like a footballer about to defend a free kick.

37
) Never pulls the plug on the boys’ bath water, leaving me to do it later, which involves me being elbow-deep in tepid water and ensures that the stain of grime around the edge has calcified.

38
) Bathroom floor is always soaked whenever he’s been in there. Doesn’t matter if he’s had a bath or not. It’s like he’s got some sort of unique ecosystem running in there, with permanently rising sea levels.

39
) Ignores the towels hanging on the boys’ pegs and instead takes out some fresh, fluffy, special occasion towels out of what I like to refer to as the “airing cupboard,” aka one shelf squeezed above the immersion tank.

40
) Leaves used bath towels to marinate in said pools of water.

41
) Or throws them on the bed.

Joel does a proper builder’s whistle. It was one of the talents that really impressed me when we first got together. “Nice dress. Nice body, too.”

Rufus will soon reach the age where he’ll gag at this sort of remark, but instead adds, “You look really pretty, Mommy,” and I feel a flush of love along with a fearful acknowledgment that it won’t be long now before he decides that he doesn’t want to marry me after all.

“Is it chiffon?” asks Joel. “It’s gorgeously floaty.”

“Thanks.” In the litany of Joel’s faults, I cannot add a failure to notice a new haircut or outfit. He’s frighteningly in touch with that bit of his feminine side, the bit that appraises a wardrobe rather than ever tidies it. “You look smart too.” He’s put on a suit in the manner of a man who doesn’t have to wear one for work so it’s quite fun to dress up at weekends.

We make our journey to Cara’s flat, which is in an old factory in an area of town once colonized by young artists, but now populated by estate agents advertising “live-work spaces.” I know it well since it’s also infested with small television production companies, including mine.

A couple clutching a gift buzz on Cara’s entryphone system before us and we slip in with them and have one of those embarrassing “I guess you’re going where we’re going” conversations, where you hope you get to the flat quickly enough to avoid the “So how do you know Cara?” next stage. Should I have bought a present? What would I bring Cara? Some sort of bespoke olive oil?

Becky opens the door to the flat and the couple smile politely and give her their coats while waltzing past.

“God, who are they?” I whisper to Becky.

“I don’t know them and they evidently don’t know me. Do I look like the hired help?”

“Totally,” I say, checking out her ill-advised attempt at cocktail chic, which does nothing to flatter her rangy figure and generous boobs, the ones she’s always talking about getting reduced.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” says Becky and I realize she’s slightly drunk already, an impression not dispelled by the way she grabs a flute of champagne from a passing woman—one who is, in fact, the real hired help, brought in for the evening. “It’s full of Cara’s work contacts. You asked me what this was in aid of, and I can tell you: fattening Cara’s client list. So many boring financial journalists and businessy people, you wouldn’t believe it. You’ve got to come to the lav with me.”

I leave Joel, who shrugs and goes in search of a stranger to talk to with confidence, and follow Becky into the loo.

“What’s up?”

“I had an ultrasound scan yesterday.”

“Oh?” She’s pregnant? Or, oh my god, cancer?

“I was referred by my doctor. They wanted to see if I’ve got polycystic ovaries.”

I compute this. “Oh, that—thank god. I thought you were going to say polycystic fibrosis. That’s the one with the lungs, isn’t it? The one you’ve got is the one with the ovaries?”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

I dredged through a mental file index of health pages in glossy magazines. “Polycystic ovarian syndrome, isn’t it? It affects your fertility.” What else? “Is it the one where you put on weight and become hairier?” How awful would that be?

“That’s the one. Hairiness is one possible symptom, yes. Book that session at the beauticians, why don’t you—PCOS
and
I’m a lesbian. Hairlessness was never an option.”

“Becks, I’m sorry.” And I am because she doesn’t deserve any pain, ever. “What does it mean, in practical terms?” I hate not being near the Internet when faced with any medical diagnosis. My fingers itch for a consultation with Dr. Google.

“Getting pregnant might be more difficult or impossible. I don’t ovulate every month, you see. And I just thought I was lucky to have such light and irregular periods.” She gives a rueful little laugh. “It means I ought to get going on it.”

“On what?”

“Trying for a baby.”

“I never knew you wanted children. It’s not something we’ve ever talked about.”

“So if we don’t talk about something, it means I’m not allowed to think it? Or is it that I’m not allowed children, is that what you think?”

“God, no, that’s not what I meant. I just didn’t know, that’s all. You’d be a brilliant mother.” Would it be crass to ask who would be the father? “So you’d do it, like, on your own? Proverbial turkey basters and stuff?”

“Ideally not.” She sighs. “I don’t know what to do about Cara. It’s only been a year, so it seems too soon to be discussing children, but at the same time I don’t feel I can hang around waiting.”