August #4
I took a breath and said the four words I’d been twirling around since I first set foot in her office : ‘Noah doesn’t want children.’ I parted my lips to say ‘at least not right now’ then changed my mind and pressed them together.
‘And you?’
‘I used to think I didn’t want them either – a part of me still thinks that. But another part – now I’m not so sure, maybe, one day?’
She either didn’t notice the rising note at the end of my sentence, turning it into a question, a question I was hoping she might answer, or she chose to ignore it. Either way, she responded with a question of her own : ‘And your mother?’
I felt my brow furrow. ‘What about my mother?’
‘Do you think the change in that dynamic has affected your feelings towards having children?’
I could feel a headache coming on and realised I was frowning. I blinked. ‘I don’t know, maybe?’
She kept quiet.
I should have realised by now that it wasn’t her job to answer my questions. ‘I miss her when I’m not with her,’ I said, pushing out a small laugh as I added, ‘I probably shouldn’t at my age.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Oh, you know.’
After a pause, she asked, ‘And do you think that might be making you crave motherhood yourself?’
I let out a long audible breath. ‘You think that – is that what you’re saying?’
‘I’m not saying anything,’ she said, her hands still comfortably clasped in her lap, ‘I’m just asking the question.’ When I didn’t respond, she asked another. ‘So, what now?’
‘Now? Now I don’t know what to do,’ I said, the words spilling out all of a sudden, unchecked. ‘I assumed that doing this would make me feel better, like I had an option,’ I added, cringing at my frequent use of that word, and the privilege tangled up with it. ‘Instead, I feel even more stuck.’
Again, she kept quiet, listening.
‘Now I have all these frozen eggs, and I feel so lucky and grateful, I do.’ I paused, blinking back more tears as I thought of Robyn and the second round she was prepared to go through, the emotional, physical and financial toll. ‘But I also feel like they’ll only ever be that – frozen.’
She waited for me to continue, and when I didn’t, she started talking. Her voice was slow and steady, the kind that would be well suited to those podcasts that are supposed to help you sleep. ‘What you’ve done here is give yourself an option, Cathy – that’s exactly what it is.’
‘Then why do I feel like this?’
This question she did answer : ‘Well, what follows an option is generally a decision.’
‘But when?’ I asked, hungry for more advice, to be told what to do. ‘How do I know which is the right choice?’
In the same slow and steady voice, she said, ‘There’s no right or wrong here. It’s just deciding.’
In the days that followed, I found myself craving Noah.
Things between us continued as normal, but I couldn’t shake the sense that we were existing within a clear, fragile bubble.
When we were in the flat, I felt myself following him, keeping physically close to wherever he stood or sat, my body shadowing his.
When I was at work, my thoughts strayed to him.
Whenever I tried to steer them away, they would turn to my mother, and in anticipation of my upcoming visit, my heart would begin to race.
By this time, the whale was fully realised, slumped on the beach, and I’d turned my attention to the overpaint shrouding the sand and the rest of the sea.
I’d always been passionate about my work, but Frank said he’d never seen me so animated – a coping mechanism, maybe.
As I unearthed the coloured pebbles in the foreground, they assumed a newfound clarity.
A similar thing happened with the old wooden fence, which Hendrick had carefully incised.
When I removed a thick layer of ochre from the shoreline, it seemed softer somehow and more receded.
Like the whale, most elements were in good condition, but every now and then I uncovered small losses and abrasions.
In restoring the work to its original condition, I discovered cracks – deeper issues that would have to be addressed before we were able to move forward.
It appeared that Hendrick had devoted more time and energy to the painting than we’d initially assumed.
These Dutch maritime scenes tended to be made quickly and with very few changes, but he’d tweaked and trimmed the composition as he went along.
Beneath patches of overpaint were pentimenti, visible traces of earlier figures and forms that he himself had added and then painted out.
They resurfaced as I worked, and Frank confirmed their presence with infrared reflectography.
There had once been a carriage, or a cart, which explained the parallel tracks disappearing into nothing in the sand ; as well as bad omens, beached whales brought with them a bounty of oils, fats and meat that would be extracted and barrelled away, the blubber boiled down.
More figures appeared among the crowd, gathered as if at a market or a fair.
The whale itself had originally been depicted on its side, long and thin, its mouth ajar ; in the final version, it was upright and firm, with that weirdly prominent fin.
The shoreline around the whale had also been repainted.
Hendrick no doubt had trouble getting right a subject he was unfamiliar with.
Ghosts of the past, these shadow-like stains taunted me as I worked. In them, I saw my own past, present and future, my mother, Noah, and our unborn child. Every day, I would return home happy with the progress I’d made, but at the same time shaken.
One evening, after an early dinner, Noah suggested we go for a walk along the canal.
It was still warm, without even a hint of a breeze, the sun winking at us as it dipped down and then reappeared in the vertical gaps between buildings.
He was wearing shorts – a sight that always made me imagine him as a young boy, tearing around a playground – and I’d purposefully put on a striped sundress he liked.
That was another thing I appreciated about him from the start, the way he showed an interest in my appearance.
‘When are you going to start running again?’ he asked, as a woman dashed past us, tinny music leaching out from the small buds poked into her ears.
‘I haven’t really thought about it,’ I replied, which, to my surprise, was true.
When Doctor Day had first told me to avoid doing any aerobic exercise during the injections, I’d told him I wasn’t sure I could.
My morning routine was about more than keeping fit ; it was a way for me to recharge, clear my head.
Now that I did think about it, I wondered whether my lack of movement might have been at least partially responsible for my inner restlessness.
‘Well, it might help,’ said Noah, as if he were reading my mind.
‘Remember the time I took you running with me?’ I asked, a smile tugging at my lips.
‘I do.’ The tone of his voice told me he was trying not to smile, too.
‘You were excellent,’ I said, ‘really.’
‘Yes, all right.’ He laughed and reached for my hand, which fitted snugly in his, like a perfectly sized shoe.
We continued walking like that for a while, hand in hand, looking left at the still water and the lined-up houseboats named after beloved wives, mothers, daughters.
Our own quiet was pierced at various intervals by happy people drinking by the water’s edge, their bare legs dangling over the side of the stone, and the squeals of children not yet back at school after the summer holidays.
‘Cathy.’
The first time he said my name, I tried to ignore it. Something in his tone had shifted. I kept walking, kept squeezing his hand tight in mine.
‘Cathy.’
When I couldn’t ignore it any more, I stopped.
The sun caught in my eyes as I turned and gazed up at him, and I looked away like I’d been blinded.
He moved a little to the left, providing me with shade, and I gazed up at him again.
That’s when I saw it. All this time I’d been thinking of him, staying close to him, but I don’t think I’d really seen him since he’d given me the trigger injection.
Now, as I did, I noticed the red in his eyes, the strained look on his cheeks.
‘I’ve accepted an exchange for next term.’
‘What?’ I heard him.
‘I’m teaching the next term in New York.’
I took a breath and said, ‘That’s wonderful.’ I think I meant it. ‘The whole term?’
‘We talked about it when I got the promotion, remember?’
I nodded. I’d forgotten, but now it came back to me.
‘Well, I have book research to do there, too, some archival diplomatic texts, so it seems like a good opportunity.’ He paused to brush a strand of hair away from my face. ‘And some space might be good for us, give us both time to think.’
‘You didn’t tell me you had book research to do there.’ That wasn’t the problem and both of us knew it. He might have been holding back, but so had I.
‘I’ll be home in just a couple of months.’
Just.
‘Cathy?’
‘But I need you here now,’ I said, feeling the sting of tears, a sensation that was becoming all too familiar. ‘I’m still trying to figure things out, what I want, what I need.’
He smiled, but it was the kind of smile that didn’t reach his eyes. ‘For that, you don’t need me here.’
He booked a flight for the end of the month, which coincided with the weekend I’d planned to visit my mother.
Though I longed for us to make more time for each other in the days leading up to it, I said nothing, for fear of making his going away into a bigger deal than it already was.
The night before, we went out for dinner, to one of the less fashionable pubs in the area that we’d always liked for precisely that reason.
We hadn’t thought to book, and it was busy ; a waitress I didn’t recognise asked if we would mind sitting at the bar.
The menu had changed, which threw me more than it should have. Still, we smiled and clinked glasses.
We walked back to the flat in silence, and when we closed the door behind us the lack of sound became more noticeable.
After a few minutes, Noah held my hands in his and said he was going upstairs to pack.
I was clinging on, trying to find the words that might make him stay, while at the same time not wanting to hold him back, when my phone rang.
I saw Peggy’s name flash up on my screen and felt a jab of guilt.
The past week had been such a blur that I’d barely spoken to my mother, despite asking Peggy to keep me updated.
We’d exchanged the odd email and a handful of texts, but that was it.
The egg freezing had taken up all my head space. And now Noah. Now this.
‘Go ahead, answer it,’ he said. I screwed up my eyes and he reassured me he wasn’t going anywhere just yet. As if to prove it, he pulled up a chair.
I did as he said. ‘Peggy, hi, how are you?’ I asked, trying to sound chipper, preparing for her to tell me it wasn’t good enough, that I needed to put in more effort.
‘Cathy, I’m sorry to call you out of the blue.’
‘That’s OK. You can call me anytime, you know that.’ When she didn’t respond, I asked, ‘Is everything all right?’
‘I’m afraid it’s not good news.’
The jab morphed into something stronger – a gash, bone-deep.
‘Don’t panic, she’s OK.’
Noah looked at me, tilting his head in question.
My mind was running away with me. I walked towards the window. I needed air. ‘What then?’
‘I think you’re right, that it’s time we take Janey to see a doctor.’
‘What’s happened?’ I lodged the phone between my cheek and shoulder and tried to open the window. When I couldn’t make it budge, Noah took over. ‘Peggy?’
I could hear her breathing at the other end of the line.
I looked across at the flats opposite. One woman was reading. Two children were playing, peeping out from behind a blind. A man was standing at a sink doing the dishes. ‘It’s got worse?’
More breathing, and then : ‘Yesterday she couldn’t figure out how to turn on the television.’
I rested my elbows on the windowsill and, like a child, fished around for an explanation that would make everything OK, that would erase the word that had presented itself to me first as a whisper.
Now, it was like someone was screaming it in my ear.
Or was it me screaming it inside my head?
Desperately, hopelessly, I tried to fight it.
‘Maybe it was on the blink?’
Dementia.
‘I know it sounds silly, but I’ve had trouble with that TV before.’
Dementia.
‘Maybe—’
‘Cathy, today she drove to the farm shop, and I got a call from the owner.’
I looked to the right and noticed the old lady who was never not lying in bed. A bed topped with a patchwork quilt, pushed up against the window to give her a nice view of the street.
‘Cathy?’
‘Why?’
‘He was concerned.’
‘ Why? ’
‘Because for a moment she couldn’t remember where she lived.’