November #3
After we’d ordered and watched the initial mixing of our drinks, I asked her how she was feeling. ‘You don’t seem to be as nauseous this time?’
‘No, this one’s being good to me,’ she said, stroking the palm of her hand across her barely visible belly.
‘How long has it been?’
She took a sharp intake of air before she said, ‘Almost eighteen weeks.’
I reached out my hand and rested it on hers.
‘I am vaguely starting to relax,’ she said, breathing out a long, slow breath, then exclaiming happily as our drinks arrived, along with a shallow ceramic bowl of salted almonds.
We clinked glasses.
‘And you?’ she asked.
‘Hm, what about me?’ I took a sip, and in an instant, felt my headache fade. ‘Oh, this is delicious.’
‘So is this,’ she said, wiggling her non-alcoholic drink in front of my face.
I laughed. ‘Sorry.’
‘So?’
I took another sip, then I told her what I’d told Frank – that I was feeling more relaxed, too.
Now it was her turn to touch my hand. ‘How’s your mum?’
‘Up and down,’ I said, quickly. I paused, then added, ‘Sometimes she has moments of total lucidity, and not just in terms of what she says and remembers. I can actually see it in her eyes ; it’s like they’re brighter somehow.
At other times, there’s no way of getting through to her or making her understand.
It’s as if she isn’t in the room with me.
’ I thought but didn’t say that, when that happened, it was as if I wasn’t in the room either.
‘How’s she doing living-wise? Do you think you’ll need to get someone in full-time?’
‘At some point, yes.’ I told her that, for now, Peggy and I were managing between the two of us. I smiled as I said, ‘I think Peggy quite likes having someone to take care of again.’
‘But at some point, it will get too much for her, no?’
‘It will, but not yet.’
‘Well, if there’s anything I can do to help,’ she said, her eyes squinting into a smile. ‘You just want to have a plan in place.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I know, I’m working on it.’
The waiter was hovering by our sides. ‘Another?’ he asked.
I hadn’t realised that I was already down to the dregs of my Bellini. My eyes flashed towards Anna’s glass, and I felt myself blush when I saw that it was still half full of yellow liquid.
‘Hey, I would be drinking a lot quicker if there was booze in this.’
I laughed and turned to the waiter, whose own lips were curving upwards. ‘I’ll have the same again.’
I could tell that Anna wanted to ask me something else but was trying to work out if now was the right time. Her mouth opened, more than once. Both times, she closed it again and bit down onto her lower lip with her two front teeth. When it happened for a third time, I asked what was on her mind.
‘I’m sorry, I feel like I’m interrogating you.’
As the waiter handed me my second almond Bellini of the night, I said, ‘Don’t worry, keep these coming and I won’t even notice.’
She laughed.
Noah would be laughing, too, if he were here. He always drank more than I did and found it funny when I tried to keep up.
As if she’d read my mind, Anna asked after him. ‘Have the two of you managed to talk more this time?’ When he first left, and I’d told her the five-hour time difference made lengthy phone calls tricky, she’d said that was a crappy excuse and I knew it.
‘We have.’
She smiled, visibly relieved.
I popped an almond into my mouth and crunched it down between my molars.
‘When’s he next coming home?’
‘Quite soon, actually,’ I said, sensing a coil unfurling inside me. ‘He gets a few days off around Thanksgiving, which is in a couple of weeks.’ I drank some of my drink, trying to focus on the feeling of it slipping down my throat. ‘And then it will be December and he’ll be back for good.’
‘And that makes you happy?’
It was such a straightforward question, and yet my answer was in knots. I tried to untangle it, then realised doing so would require that I also untangle the fate of my frozen eggs.
‘Have you made a decision, Cathy?’ With her eyes, she indicated towards my stomach.
I sucked it in and glanced around the room.
The bar had filled up since we’d arrived, mostly with couples, which I assumed was partly down to space limitations.
In one corner, two small tables had been pushed together to accommodate a party of four, but other than that, the space was set up for intimate encounters.
Closest to us were a man and a woman, both of whom looked around Noah’s age.
They leant towards one another as they talked, closing the already narrow gap between their faces.
At one point, he reached forward and brushed some hair away from her eyes.
I looked away like I’d seen something I shouldn’t.
Anna must have followed my gaze, because when I turned back to her, she was still watching them.
‘Do you think they have children?’ I asked.
I half expected her to whip her head around and ask why I cared. Instead, she kept watching, then she slowly turned to me and said, ‘It’s hard to tell.’
‘They look happy,’ I said, feeling the emotion rising within me, like a wave.
She agreed. ‘They do.’ After a moment, she asked, ‘And you?’
I swivelled my legs around and under the piano, as if I was about to spread my fingers and play.
Anna did the same, a silent duet.
I looked down at the keys and wished my life was as black and white, then I bristled at the cliché. I thought back to how I’d felt the night before, how I’d felt happy, and why.
Anna touched her toes to mine. ‘Cathy, I know it’s hard, but you have to find a way to move forward, one way or the other.’
Gently, with my index finger, I pressed down on one key.
It made a pleasing sound, and I craned my neck to see if anyone had noticed.
As before, they were drinking and chatting, enjoying an evening out, carefree.
‘I know,’ I said, touching the same finger to the same key, but this time not exerting any pressure. ‘I know what I want, what I need.’
The last time I’d been on a plane was when Noah and I went to Florence in the spring. I’m not exactly a nervous flyer, but I do prefer to have someone with me when I’m up in the sky, especially when the metal chamber starts to tremble.
On the plane to New York, passengers were getting settled before take-off and flight attendants were sweeping up and down the aisles.
I angled my head to the left and watched as the woman beside me bent forward over her knees to unlace and remove her trainers.
With long manicured nails, she tore into the polythene bag that contained her in-flight blanket, and after shaking it loose pulled it up to her chin.
She slipped on an eye mask that replaced the features of her own face with those of a reptile.
The shiny scales shifted slightly as she ran her tongue over a crack in her lower lip.
That was the last movement I would see from her until the wheels hit the tarmac with a bump at JFK.
On my right was a man who was spilling over his own seat into mine.
When he’d first sat down, he’d given me the kind of smile that contained an apology within its creases.
The less-than-smiley flight attendant, whose arm he’d tapped as she was passing by, had brought him an extension for his belt.
He shuffled in his seat as he attached it.
Thankfully, my own slight build meant that even with his overspill our unfamiliar bodies didn’t need to come into contact.
Once he was comfortable, he turned his attention to the small screen built into the back of the seat in front of him.
I stared at my own version of a home cinema, which was pitch black, dormant.
Can’t it wait? That was Anna’s response when I’d messaged her first thing and told her I was on my way to the airport. I was on the Tube at the time, another metal chamber, with limited access to Wi-Fi, so the conversation had been stilted. It had gone something like this :
Me : I’m going to New York
Anna : What????
Me : To see Noah
Me : To talk
Anna : Didn’t you say he’s coming back in a couple of weeks?
Me : I need to tell him I’ve made up my mind
Anna : Can’t it wait?
Me : It can’t wait
I’d bought a plane ticket on my way back to the flat from the bar – and not because I’d drunk too many almond Bellinis.
I’d decided to walk rather than take the overground, and after five minutes or so on a busy stretch I found myself winding through quieter streets.
The view into most houses was blocked off with curtains, shutters, blinds.
The shadowy pavements were pricked with rays of artificial light beaming down from tall lamp-posts.
When I looked up at the sky, I could see smoke-like clouds drifting with the current through the dark.
As I walked, I turned over in my mind the questions that, over the past few months, almost the past year, had made me feel unthinkably stuck.
Whether or not I wanted to have a baby. What would happen if I decided I didn’t and then later came to regret it.
Whether Noah would ever change his mind.
What would happen if he didn’t. What it all meant for our marriage.
Like a hoover, these questions had been sucking up my time.
Time I no longer wanted to toss away. Time that wasn’t, as my mother’s condition had reminded me, in endless supply.
I was rounding the bend onto our street when I considered the one thing we all know for certain : at some point, we will die.
It wasn’t a dramatic thought, accompanied by crashing waves ; it didn’t make me feel like I was drowning, short of breath, desperate for air. Instead, it came to me calmly and rationally, and as it sank in, I felt like I was being released from a vice.
The flight attendants did one final sweep, and the plane began to roll across the tarmac, slowly at first, then faster. I felt an invisible force press my body back against my seat. I heard the rumble of the engine. A voiceover talking about safety.
Either way, there was going to be a loss. But I knew what I wanted, and I was going to tell him.