Now Luke
Now
Luke
Self-sabotage or acts of destruction are a common response in adoptees. They will put themselves in a situation and push and push until the thing they fear most happens. We call it self-fulfilling prophecy.
Who Am I? The Adoptee’s Hidden Trauma by Joel Harris
On the outside it must look as if my life has never been better. Reborn have rejected Universal’s offer and their manager, Steve Harris, has told me Spirit is back in the race. I should be ecstatic with relief and excitement at the prospect of potentially working with one of the hottest unsigned bands in Britain.
And yet I am clenched with a feeling of doom from the moment I wake.
Ever since I came home drunk, Alice has barely spoken a word to me. I’m convinced I have offended her, but I can’t remember anything about that night other than me storming off to bed when she wouldn’t let me hold the baby. Even Hannah, my glass-half-full, twenty-four-seven optimist, thinks she is being distant.
‘Is everything OK, Alice?’ she asked one evening while Alice was packing up her things to leave.
‘Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t it be?’
‘You’ve seemed a bit quiet the last few days.’
‘Oh no, you’re imagining it.’
What I noticed was the way Alice managed to avoid eye contact with both Hannah and me; I saw how she rushed from the room the moment her bag was packed.
But as soon as she had gone, Hannah said, ‘There you are. Nothing to worry about.’
I keep up my lunch-hour surveillance, sandwiches on park benches, a little light shopping on the high street. Sometimes I see Alice and Samuel, sometimes I don’t. Even on the days when she doesn’t appear, there’s a tantalising cloud of Acqua di Parma in the air around me; I hear snatches of a lullaby she often sings to Samuel with her sweet, clear voice.
Moonlight so sweet and pale from heaven falling,
Wavelets that murmur low to us are calling.
I’ve heard it so often that the words and melody have saturated my brain. I fall asleep hearing it, I wake up anticipating it. Once, worryingly, I walked downstairs one morning and heard Alice singing in the kitchen. Of course, by the time I got there, the singing had stopped, which raises the obvious question: am I imagining things?
I haven’t told Hannah about this. But my silence is driving a wedge between us. More and more, I catch her watching me with that little stripe of anxiety between her eyebrows. Not long ago, I used to crave her concern; now I want to avoid it. I won’t let anything come between me and my lunch-hour sleuthing, my daily fix of Alice and Samuel, this flatline into my past.
I arrive home at six o’clock to find Hannah and Alice sitting at the kitchen table.
‘Tea?’ Hannah asks, gesturing at the pot.
‘Beer,’ I say, heading for the fridge.
Alice says, ‘Right, I must be off. I’m already late.’
I say, popping open my can, ‘Where do you go, Alice, when you rush off like this? Is there someone you have to visit?’
I’m not even sure where I’m heading with this, but since Ben raised the suspicion that Rick might not actually be my father, I’m wondering if someone else is going to come out of the woodwork. At this point nothing would surprise me.
I look into her eyes as I speak, just to see what’s there. Her face is expressionless, as always, but I detect a wariness.
‘I rush off to my studio, Luke. I have work to catch up on.’
‘Please stay for a few minutes. I feel like I never see you.’
‘Sure,’ Alice says, but there’s no warmth to her voice, none at all.
I join them at the kitchen table, where Samuel is in Hannah’s arms, having his bedtime bottle of milk, eyes darting from left to right like he’s reading a hymn sheet. And the instinct to self-sabotage rises within me, serpent-like, impossible to ignore.
‘What did you and Samuel get up to today, Alice?’
‘Oh, the usual. We went to the library this morning. He’s obsessed with books; I think you’ve got the makings of a real bookworm.’
‘Did you go to the park? Did you feed the ducks?’
‘Yes, how did you know?’
‘You sing to Samuel, don’t you, Alice?’
‘Sometimes. But—’
‘There’s a song you sing. “Santa Lucia”, it’s called. I looked it up. Did you sing it to me when I was a baby? It’s just, when I heard you singing it, I felt something. Perhaps it was recall, a memory. Do you think that’s possible? Do you think I might remember?’
I’m asking too many questions. I’ve stood up now and am pacing. Unable to stop.
Alice says, voice calm, ‘But when can you have heard me sing it?’
‘Today in the park.’
‘You were there today? And you saw us? Why didn’t you come and say hello?’
Hannah is staring at me, aghast, no other word for it, and Alice looks a little horrified herself. But the strange thing is, I just don’t care. I am unravelling rapidly, and I no longer mind – me, the anxious people-pleaser – who gets to see it.
‘I was in a rush.’
Alice stands up from the table, squeezes my shoulder perfunctorily and says, ‘Well, another time please join us. We’d be so thrilled to see you.’
We.
Alice and Samuel. Alice and Charlie. The mother with the interchangeable baby.
The moment the front door has closed behind Alice, Hannah says, ‘What the fuck is going on?’
I sit slumped over my beer, head in hands.
‘Why do I think you’re following Alice in your lunch hour?’
‘Because that’s what I am doing.’
‘Why? For God’s sake, Luke.’
‘I don’t know. Something about her is making me uneasy. Don’t you feel it? Can’t you tell how obsessed she is with Samuel?’
‘And that’s why you’re stalking her around the park? Your mother and your son. Can you hear how that sounds?’
I sit scrunched up, arms wrapped around myself, a primal curl.
She reaches across the table for my hand.
‘Babe,’ she says, ‘this whole Alice thing has really taken a toll on you, hasn’t it? I wish we’d never asked her to look after Samuel in the first place, but he adores her. And we feel safe with her looking after him. That counts for everything, doesn’t it?’
‘Does it?’
‘I think we need to find someone for you to talk to. I think this situation has triggered some kind of …’ she breaks off to choose her words, ‘psychological collapse.’
‘You’re not listening to me, H. Alice is taking our baby away and you can’t even see it.’