They had seemed to find it quaint, the colourful paper cups, napkins instead of plates, people dropping food all over the carpet. One of the neighbours was wearing his cycling clothes. Another had brought a breastfeeding toddler who pulled up her mother’s shirt whenever she felt like it, wrapping her body around, arranging the small strawberry of her mouth into position.
I had seen Vanessa’s eyes moving over all of this: she had the quiet amusement of someone who is past certain things, has grown above them, like a tall tree. Perhaps, I thought, after all of her generation are dead, there will be no more like her, people who are able to look at everything so calmly, as though, just outside the door or ten thousand miles away, there isn’t a tornado just beginning, roaring into life.
~
Nobody thinks they will become that woman until it happens. They walk down the street, knowing it will never be them.
They have no idea how it is: like the turning of a foot on a crack in the pavement, the slip of an ankle from the kerb, a falling, a single instant, the briefest action, changing it all.
~
20
I had ample time to make arrangements for the party; work was slow at this time of year, my days unnaturally clear, full of space. I could hover around the boys, drop them off and pick them up every day. This was the ideal, I’d supposed. As a child, my mother had rarely picked me up from school: she was too busy working. Sometimes, both of them went out in the evenings, putting me to bed without saying anything. Once, I’d woken up to a babysitter I had never seen before, a teenage boy, his long legs a sharp V on our sofa. I was embarrassed in my thin nightie, no pants, my hair tangled with sleep.
I would do things differently, I’d promised myself. I would be there. But so often, my children seemed restless, bored with my company, as though they’d rather I was someone else. And when there was no work, I was left like this, a woman of leisure, the house and I staring at each other through every empty hour. At least, I’d realized, the party would give me something to do.
On the day before Christmas Eve, I cycled to the shops to buy a few extra supplies. Paddy and Jake were at home, the television murmuring into dim rooms. Ted was in his child seat behind me, singing a long and complex song about death.
Some people die of canceeeer, he intoned, his little voice lifting as we went over a bump in the road. And some die of . . . BUUUM! This last word was delivered in a triumphant, tuneless boom. A couple turned as we passed them by: from the front, you couldn’t see a child, so it looked, at first, as if I was singing these songs to myself.
Everything about the preparations reminded me of last year, of the strangeness of having one of Jake’s colleagues at our Christmas drinks: he had never invited any of them before. But Vanessa lived in the same town, she was local. She had just arrived in Jake’s department from a university in Scotland: he was being friendly, he was helping her settle in. These were the phrases he used, at the beginning, when the coffees and lunches and then evening drinks were happening. He had been perfectly transparent, open, in many ways back to his old self, the sweet-breathed, clean-underwear boy I’d met years ago.
In the supermarket, as I put the mulled wine in the basket, I remembered Vanessa’s question last year: This is lovely, Lucy. Did you make it yourself?
I had explained to her – smiling, touching my hair – the triumphant sense of having, for years, successfully thrown a party that required nothing to be made, almost no preparation, barely any tidying up. The message was clear: I am a terrible hostess! And also: I am the best hostess, the one who has overcome all the shoddy manacles of domestic enslavement. I take little care, and everything turns out perfectly. Her lines, in response, were meant to be a generalized compliment, one that acknowledged all I had achieved without even trying.
I should have known right then: at the exact moment when I held the bone of self-deprecation out to her, dangled it in the air. This was an offering, an agreement between women that she should, however falsely, take into her mouth. But she spat it out.
Oh, she said, her mouth rising in the small way that conceals repulsion. Right. The mouth again, the briefest nod of the head. I made an excuse:
I’ve got to check on something . . .
And moved away, seeing as I did the way Vanessa turned to her husband, pointed to a book on the shelf, one of Jake’s. The Development of Superior Species Characteristics, perhaps.
Such an interesting . . . I had walked away before I could hear the rest of her sentence, poured myself another glass of mulled wine in the kitchen, let its warmth flood through me like pleasure.
Now, I asked Ted to help me get four packets of mince pies down from the shelf, knowing that the assignment of a task would lower the chances of a frenzied performance of lack, the unleashing of animal instincts all over the shop floor. No matter if every young child behaved like this: these explosions always carried a sense of particular failure, of personal motherly insufficiency.
There were countries in the world, I had been told, where they loved children, appreciated their very presence in restaurants, in shops and cafes. As soon as I heard that, I knew I didn’t live in one. Ever since giving birth, I had walked through a tunnel of public expectation and disapproval, a place with particular lighting, filters that showed up every possible fault. I had become accustomed to the posture I needed to assume within the tunnel: a certain straightness of back, an avoidance of eye contact. As we packed our bags, I kept speaking to Ted, keeping my eyes trained carefully on him, or the cashier. Looking up was a mistake, I had learned: it invited comment.
I loaded the shopping into my basket, held Ted’s hand as he stepped delicately across the low wall of the supermarket, lifted him into his bike seat. As we cycled past the postbox I saw someone I recognized; I prepared to smile-and-cycle-on, perhaps to raise my hand from the handlebar in a quick greeting. But she called out my name, stepped forwards slightly towards the bike. Mary.
I stopped, balancing my legs on either side of the frame, Ted yelping in complaint behind me.
How are you? My heart was beating very quickly, I noticed: I resisted the urge to take my own pulse, to check for regularity.
We’re good thanks, you? Mary rallied without pause, without a second to consider her answer. I did the same, my voice level as a bank clerk.
We’re okay, same old, really, you know.
I had long stopped noticing the tendency to refer to ourselves in the first person plural, as though we – two women, on a windy side street – encompassed multitudes, our expansive beings filled with our husbands and children. But I noticed it now. I thought about it, as Mary gave me a brief update on each of her children, making their lives sound both challenging and worthy, as though they were international diplomats, rather than primary-school children.
So great to catch up. I was completely used to taking the bone into my mouth, however bad it tasted: I was a pro. I let a few seconds pass before I turned around to wince towards Ted, blaming his complaints for us having to leave. But he was now completely silent, sucking the strap of the bike seat, a look of severe concentration on his face.
Better get this stuff home, I said, trying again, tilting my head forwards this time, towards my basket full of shopping, as though it would melt in the freezing air.
Mary looked conflicted, pained, a near-stranger at a funeral.