The Rosie Effect (3 page)

Rosie and I worked three nights per week at The Alchemist, a cocktail bar on West 19th Street in the Flatiron neighbourhood, so drink-making equipment and ingredients were tools of trade (although I had not been able to convince our accountant of this). I located vodka, Galliano and ice cubes, added these to the orange juices and stirred. Rather than commence my drink before Rosie, I poured myself a shot of vodka on ice, added a squeeze of lime, and drank it rapidly. Almost instantly, I felt my stress level returning to its default state.

Finally Rosie emerged from the bathroom. Other than the change in direction of travel, the only difference in her appearance was that her red hair was now wet. But her mood appeared to have elevated: she was almost dancing towards the bedroom. Obviously the scallops had been a good choice.

It was possible that her emotional state would make her
more receptive to the Gene Sabbatical, but it seemed advisable to defer the news until the next morning, after we had had sex. Of course, if she realised that I had withheld data for that purpose, I would be criticised. Marriage was complex.

As Rosie reached the bedroom door, she spun around: ‘I’ll be five minutes getting dressed and then I’m expecting the world’s best scallops.’ Her use of the words ‘world’s best’ was an appropriation of one of my own expressions—a definite indication of a positive mood.

‘Five minutes?’ An underestimate would have a disastrous impact on scallop preparation.

‘Give me fifteen. No hurry to eat. We can have a drink and a chat, Captain Mallory.’

The Gregory Peck character’s name was a further good sign. The only problem was the chat. ‘Anything happen in your day?’ she would say, and I would be obliged to mention the Gene Sabbatical. I decided to make myself unavailable by undertaking cooking tasks. In the meantime, I put the Harvey Wallbangers in the freezer, as they were in danger of warming above optimum temperature when the ice melted. Cooling would also reduce the rate of deterioration of the orange juice.

I returned to dinner preparation. I had not used this recipe before and it was only after commencing that I discovered that the vegetables needed to be chopped into quarter-inch cubes. The list of ingredients made no mention of a ruler. I was able to download a measuring application to my phone, but had barely finished production of the reference cube when Rosie re-emerged. She was now wearing
a dress—highly unusual for dinner at home. It was white and contrasted dramatically with her red hair. The effect was stunning. I decided to delay the Gene news only slightly, until later in the evening. Rosie could hardly complain about that. I would reschedule aikido practice for the next morning. That would leave time for sex after dinner. Or before. I was prepared to be flexible.

Rosie sat in one of the two armchairs that occupied a significant percentage of the living room.

‘Come and talk to me,’ she said.

‘I’m chopping vegetables. I can talk from here.’

‘What happened to the orange juices?’

I retrieved the modified orange juices from the freezer, gave one to Rosie, and sat opposite. The vodka and Rosie’s friendliness had relaxed me, although I suspected the effect was superficial. The Gene, Jerome and juice problems were still running as background processes.

Rosie raised her glass as if proposing a toast. This turned out to be exactly what she was doing.

‘We’ve got something to celebrate, Captain,’ she said. She looked at me for a few seconds. She knows that I am not fond of surprises. I assumed that she had achieved some important milestone with her thesis. Or perhaps she had been offered a place in the psychiatry-training program on completion of the medical course. This would be extremely good news, and I estimated the probability of sex at greater than ninety per cent.

She smiled—then, presumably to increase the suspense, drank from her glass. Disaster! It was as if it contained poison.
She spat it out, over her white dress, and ran to the bathroom. I followed her as she removed the dress and ran water over it.

Standing in her half-purple underwear, pumping water in and out of the dress, she turned back to me. Her expression was far too complex to analyse.

‘We’re pregnant,’ she said.

3

I struggled to process Rosie’s statement. Reviewing my response later, I realised that my brain had been assaulted with information that appeared to defy logic on three counts.

First, the formulation ‘
we’re
pregnant’ contradicted basic biology. It implied that
my
state had somehow changed as well as Rosie’s. Rosie would surely not have said, ‘Dave’s pregnant’. Yet, according to the definition implicit in her statement, he was.

Second, pregnancy was not scheduled. Rosie had mentioned it as a factor in her decision to cease smoking, but I assumed that she had simply used the eventual possibility of pregnancy as motivation. Furthermore, we had discussed the matter explicitly. We were having dinner at Jimmy Watson’s Restaurant in Lygon Street, Carlton, Victoria, Australia,
on 2 August of the previous year, nine days before our wedding, and a couple had placed a baby container on the floor between our tables. Rosie mentioned the possibility of us reproducing.

We had by then decided to move to New York, and I argued that we should wait until she had finished her medical course and specialisation. Rosie disagreed—she thought that would be leaving it too late. She would be thirty-seven by the time she qualified as a psychiatrist. I suggested that, at a minimum, we wait until the completion of the MD program. The psychiatric qualification was not essential to her planned role as a clinical researcher in mental illness, so if the baby permanently derailed her studies, the impact would not be disastrous. My recollection is that she did not disagree. In any case, a major life decision requires:

1. Articulation of the options, e.g. have zero children; have a specific number of children; sponsor one or more children via a charity.

2. Enumeration of the advantages and disadvantages of each option, e.g. freedom to travel; ability to devote time to work; risk of disruption or grief due to actions of child. Each factor needs to be assigned an agreed weight.

3. Objective comparison of the options using the above.

4. An implementation plan, which may reveal new factors, requiring revision of (1), (2) and (3).

A spreadsheet is the obvious tool for (1) through to (3), and if (4) is complex, as it would be in preparing for the existence of a new human being and providing for its needs over many years, project-planning software is appropriate. I was unaware of any spreadsheet and Gantt chart for a baby project.

The third apparent violation of logic was that Rosie was using the combined oral contraceptive pill, which has a failure rate of less than 0.5 per cent per annum when used ‘perfectly’. In this context, ‘perfectly’ means ‘correct pill taken daily’. I could not see how even Rosie could be so disorganised as to make an error with such a simple routine.

I am aware that not everyone shares my view of the value of planning rather than allowing our lives to be tossed in unpredictable directions by random events. In Rosie’s world,
which I had chosen to share
, it was possible to use the language of popular psychology rather than biology, to welcome the unexpected, and to forget to take vital medication. All three of these events had occurred, culminating in a change of circumstances that made the Orange Juice Problem and even the Gene Sabbatical appear minor.

This analysis, of course, did not happen until much later. The situation as I stood in the bathroom could not have been worse in terms of mental stress. I had been taken to the edge of an unstable equilibrium, and then struck with the maximum conceivable force. The result was inevitable.

Meltdown.

It was the first occurrence since Rosie and I had met—in fact the first time since my sister Michelle’s death from an undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy.

Perhaps because I was now older and more stable, or because my unconscious mind wanted to protect my relationship with Rosie, I had a few seconds to respond rationally.

‘Are you okay, Don?’ said Rosie.

The answer was a definite no, but I did not attempt to voice it. All mental resources were diverted to implementing my emergency plan.

I made the timeout sign with my hands and ran. The elevator was at our floor, but the doors seemed to take forever to open and then to close again after I stepped inside. Finally I could release my emotions in a space that had no object to break or people to injure.

I doubtless appeared crazy, banging my fists against the elevator walls and shouting. I say doubtless, because I had forgotten to push the button for street level, and the elevator went all the way to the basement. Jerome was waiting with a washing basket when the doors opened. He was wearing a purple t-shirt.

Although my anger was not directed towards him, he did not appear to discern this subtlety. He pushed his hand against my chest, probably in an attempt at pre-emptive self-defence. I reacted automatically, grabbing his arm and spinning him around. He crashed against the elevator wall, then came at me again, this time throwing a punch. I was now responding according to my martial-arts training rather than my emotions. I avoided his punch, and opened him up so he was undefended. It was obvious he understood his situation and was expecting me to strike him. There was no reason to do so, and I released him. He ran up the stairs,
leaving his washing basket behind. I needed to escape the confined space, and followed him. We both ran out onto the street.

I initially had no direction in mind, and locked in to following Jerome, who kept looking back. Eventually he ducked down a side street and my thoughts began to clear. I turned north towards Queens.

I had not travelled to Dave and Sonia’s apartment on foot before. Fortunately, navigation was straightforward as a result of the logical street numbering system, which should be mandatory in all cities. I ran hard for approximately twenty-five minutes and by the time I arrived at the building and pushed the buzzer I was hot and panting.

My anger had evaporated during the altercation with Jerome; I was relieved that it had not driven me to punch him. My emotions had felt out of control, but my martial-arts discipline had trumped them. This was reassuring, but now I was filled with a general feeling of hopelessness. How would I explain my behaviour to Rosie? I had never mentioned the meltdown problem, for two reasons:

1. After such a long time, and with my increased base level of happiness, I believed that it might not recur.

2. Rosie might have rejected me.

Rejection was now a rational choice for Rosie. She had reason to consider me violent and dangerous. And she was
pregnant. To a violent and dangerous man. This would be terrible for her.

‘Hello?’ It was Sonia on the intercom.

‘It’s Don.’

‘Don? Are you okay?’ Sonia was apparently able to detect from my voice—and possibly the omission of my customary ‘greetings’ salutation—that there was a problem.

‘No. There’s been a disaster. Multiple disasters.’

Sonia buzzed me up.

Dave and Sonia’s apartment was larger than ours, but already cluttered with baby paraphernalia. It struck me that the term ‘ours’ might no longer be applicable.

I was conscious of extreme agitation. Dave went to fetch beer, and Sonia insisted that I sit down, even though I was more comfortable walking around.

‘What happened?’ said Sonia. It was an obvious thing to ask but I was unable to formulate an answer. ‘Is Rosie all right?’

Afterwards, I reflected on the brilliance of the question. It was not only the most logical place to begin, but it helped me gain some perspective. Rosie was all right, physically at least. I was feeling calmer. Rationality was returning to deal with the mess that emotions had created.

‘There is no problem with Rosie. The problem is with me.’

‘What happened?’ Sonia asked again.

‘I had a meltdown. I failed to control my emotions.’

‘You lost it?’

‘Lost what?’

‘You don’t say that in Australia? Did you lose your temper?’

‘Correct. I have some sort of psychiatric problem. I’ve never told Rosie.’

I had never told anyone. I had never conceded that I suffered from a mental illness, other than depression in my early twenties, which was a straightforward consequence of social isolation. I accepted that I was wired differently from most people, or, more precisely, that my wiring was towards one end of a spectrum of different human configurations. My innate logical skills were significantly greater than my interpersonal skills. Without people like me, we would not have penicillin or computers. But psychiatrists had been prepared to diagnose mental illness twenty years earlier. I had always considered them wrong, and no definitive diagnosis other than depression was ever recorded, but the meltdown problem was the weak point in my argument. It was a reaction to irrationality, but the reaction itself was irrational.

Dave returned and handed me a beer. He had also poured one for himself, and drank half of it rapidly. Dave is banned from drinking beer except on our joint nights out, due to a significant weight problem. Perhaps these were extenuating circumstances. I was still sweating despite the air conditioning, and the drink cooled me down. Sonia and Dave were excellent friends.

Dave had been listening and had heard my admission of the psychiatric problem. ‘You never told me either,’ he said. ‘What sort of—?’

Sonia interrupted. ‘Excuse us a minute, Don. I want to speak to Dave alone.’ She and Dave walked to the kitchen. I was aware that conventionally they would have needed to
employ some form of subterfuge to disguise the fact that they wanted to talk about me without me hearing. Fortunately, I am not easily offended. Dave and Sonia know this.