June #5
On the bus home, the slideshow replayed on a loop in my head.
In between carefully curated images of proud parents and burbling babies, it had been filled with statistics – some comforting, others less so.
We’d learned that women are born with around a million eggs, ninety per cent of which have been lost even before we’re thirty years old ; by our mid-thirties, the quality of those remaining eggs begins to dip, and quick.
At this point, I’d heard Robyn gulp beside me.
More positive murmurings had ricocheted around the room when we were told that if a woman freezes at thirty-five, she has a seventy-five per cent success rate.
As the bus stopped at a red light, I pulled the plastic folder of extra information out of my bag and, although reading on the move makes me queasy, started to pick through the pages.
By the time I was back at the flat, I realised that I didn’t want to put it off any longer.
Noah was watching a game at the pub, so I had the place to myself.
I made a tea with fresh ginger and honey and sat on the sofa waiting for it to cool down, not watching or reading anything, just thinking.
After, I had a hot shower. I stayed in for longer than normal, enjoying the feeling of the water raining down on me.
I was in bed with the lights off when at last I heard the latch go on the door.
I glanced at my phone and saw that it was almost eleven.
Noah must have stayed on after for drinks.
The sign of a good game, usually. Still, my chest felt bruised and sore at the idea that he could have been avoiding coming home.
He went straight to the bathroom and brushed his teeth.
I listened to the whir of his electric toothbrush and then, after a few minutes, heard him swish and spit.
He didn’t turn on the light when he came into our bedroom, probably because he didn’t want to wake me.
But I wanted to see him. We had to talk.
I rolled over and flicked the switch on my bedside lamp, my eyes blinking.
‘Oh, hello you,’ he said, his voice thick from beer. ‘I thought you were asleep.’
‘How was the game?’ I asked, turning to face him, and propping myself up on one elbow.
If he was surprised by my sudden interest, he didn’t show it. ‘The game was great – we won two–nil.’
‘That is great.’ I waited until he’d taken off his clothes and climbed in to join me, his skin cool against mine, even though he was normally the one to warm me up, before I said I had something to tell him.
His mouth moved, almost imperceptibly.
I continued : ‘I went to a talk about egg freezing at the clinic this evening.’
When he didn’t respond, I carried on speaking, surprised at how confident – how certain – I sounded.
‘I’m going to go through with it.’
‘Cathy, please—’
‘I’m not saying I need a baby, Noah, I just need the option. I know it sounds stupid – crazy, even – but I feel like I owe it to myself, to us, especially after …’ I didn’t finish the sentence.
He closed his eyes. A few seconds that felt like a few minutes passed and then he asked, with open palms : ‘Is it even safe? Can we even afford it?’
He cared. Of course he did. ‘It’s safe,’ I said, a superficial warmth spreading through me like central heating. ‘You have nothing to worry about, I promise. And I have the money from Dad.’ Life from death.
He rolled onto his back and craned his neck, looking up to the ceiling. I watched his neck ripple as he swallowed. His hands, which were previously down by his sides, rested lightly on top of his chest. ‘OK.’
‘OK?’
He angled his head back towards me, and in a voice that still sounded caring, he said, ‘It’s your body, I can’t stop you.’
I reached out a hand to hold his, but he pulled away, gently. He wasn’t finished talking.
‘I love you and I’ll support you, Cathy, always. You know that.’
I nodded. I did. ‘I feel the same way.’
‘But I don’t want to be a part of it. OK?’ He paused, then added : ‘And I’m telling you again, I won’t change my mind about this.’
Relationships are about compromise, they say.
Where you live, what you have for dinner, how much money you throw at a holiday, whose family you spend Christmas with.
That last one was easy for us after Noah’s parents died, and Daniel and Griz had her extended family and the kids ; it was Noah who suggested we make spending Christmas with my parents and later my mother a tradition.
But some things lack a middle. In my head, I heard Robyn’s voice : Are you going your separate ways?
For a while, we both lay there on either side of the bed. Together but apart. Not touching. A stalemate.
Then, when I couldn’t take it any longer, I told him I understood, and I thanked him for his support. I reached out again to hold his hand.
This time he didn’t pull away.
I was able to say goodbye to my father before he died.
When my mother found him face-down on the living-room carpet, she called the emergency services, and an ambulance on its way back from a false alarm happened to be nearby.
After surgery, the doctors were able to stabilise him, but only briefly.
As the surgeon had gently told my mother, and my mother had a little less gently told me, there had been complications.
Noah and I arrived late that night. The sky was the kind of dark that, when you look at it for long enough, becomes tinged with colour.
The motorway had been quiet, and the whir of sirens and voices in front of the hospital entrance felt like the opening act of a tragedy.
It was the same hospital my mother and I had been rushed to moments after I was born.
My father was lying in bed, with my mother in a chair by his side, oddly upright and wide-eyed considering it had just gone midnight. There were drips and tubes and a round red button to push in the event of an emergency. Machines beeping in harmony.
There wasn’t enough of him ; he should have taken up more room.
He was a tall man, but tucked in beneath the stiff hospital sheets, with a spotted robe hanging loosely around his collarbones, he looked small, like he’d shrunk in on himself.
Above his pale-blue eyes, his lids were heavy.
Beneath his oxygen mask, his cheeks were sallow.
Standing before him, I felt the urge to cover up his lower neck, which was rarely exposed.
‘You must keep that on,’ my mother said, when he went to remove the mask.
He was wheezy, and his breathing made me think of a toy I’d had as a child that had eventually lost its squeak.
‘Hello Dad,’ I said, reaching for his hand, which was colder than I’d anticipated. I held it between mine and blew warm air at it. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t cry – at least not in front of him – and when I felt my eyes fill with tears, I shook my head.
Again, he went to remove his mask.
Again, my mother told him to keep it on.
This time he didn’t do as she said.
He pulled it down and let it rest on his chest, then he moved his jaw, stretching out the muscles on his face. I was still holding his right hand, and with his left, he reached for my mother on the other side of the bed. We stayed that way, three links of a chain, until quietly his link came loose.
Before it did, he looked at her, a smile on his lips, and said, ‘It’s OK.’ Looking at me, he added : ‘It’s OK because I have you.’