14. Dulcie
DULCIE
Cressida looks at my door as though it has answered her badly.
“I wasn’t certain this was the place.”
“Who gave you the address?”
“Dorothea.”
She wears a cream coat with a belt that falls exactly where she wants it. The dark blue dress I wore to that lunch pulls against my ribs whenever I breathe deeply. I put it on this morning because it was clean.
Now I wish I had chosen anything else.
“Magnus isn’t here,” I say.
“I know. I’ve come to speak to you.”
“About what?”
“What happens next. May I come in?”
The sensible thing would be to close the door. But she is looking at me with the patience of someone waiting for a slow person to understand the first step. I want to hear the next one. I want to know exactly what she thinks she has come here to collect.
“For a few minutes.”
I step back. She enters without touching me and pauses at the sight of the sofa. My phone is on the table beside it. Before I sit, I send Mom a message.
Cressida is here. I’ve let her in to talk. I’ll call when she leaves.
Mom replies almost at once.
I’m home. Two streets away.
I turn the phone faceup on the table.
Cressida takes the chair. I remain on the sofa, with the cushion I keep behind my back. She notices the folded blanket, the books, the mug I haven’t carried to the sink. Her gaze moves neatly from one thing to another.
“Magnus says you’ve refused the apartment.”
“Did he ask you to come?”
“No. I don’t need him to arrange every conversation.”
“Then speak for yourself.”
Her mouth tightens. “I’m trying to prevent this becoming uglier than it needs to be.”
“For whom?”
“For everyone. There’s a child involved.”
I rest my hands on my belly. She looks at them, then deliberately at my face.
“You will be comfortable, Dulcie. Nobody has suggested otherwise. You’ll have a home, help, everything you need to care for him. You could stop working if you wanted.”
“I don’t.”
“Then work. That needn’t be an issue.”
How easily she gives me permission. My own job, offered back like the chair she has decided not to take.
“And you?” I ask.
“What about me?”
“What do you have?”
“The life Magnus and I discussed.”
“With my husband.”
“He was in my life before he was in yours.”
I have heard this often enough that for a moment I feel late to my own marriage.
Then I look at the place where my wedding band used to sit.
“He asked me to marry him.”
“Yes. I know.”
She says it without discomfort. That hurts more than any satisfaction she could have shown.
“Did he ever tell you he intended to stay married to me?”
“No.”
The room becomes very quiet. A car passes outside. I can hear water traveling through a pipe somewhere behind the wall.
“Not once?”
“He told me why he was marrying you. He made promises to me before he asked you.”
“And you thought that was all right.”
“I thought he knew how to manage his own affairs.”
I feel an abrupt pressure behind my eyes. I look at the seam of the cushion until the threads come sharply into focus.
She leans forward. “You need to stop treating the practical part as an insult. You’re good with children. You want to be a mother. You can have that. It doesn’t have to mean you and Magnus live under the same roof.”
“And you’ll live there.”
“Yes.”
“While I come when somebody needs me?”
“That isn’t what I said.”
“Then tell me what being his mother would look like to you.”
She smooths one cuff. “Obviously you would feed him and look after him. You would have time with him. Magnus and I would take responsibility for the family side. Occasions, introductions, the people he needs to know.”
“His mother’s people?”
“Dulcie.”
There it is. The small correction, spoken as though my name itself is an excessive demand.
She glances at my belly again. This time she does not disguise it.
“I chose not to become pregnant. I didn’t want what it would do to my body, or to spend years organizing my life around it. I was honest with him.”
“You could both have been honest with me.”
“He believed you would accept it when you understood what you were being offered.”
“Did you?”
“I didn’t know you.”
“But I was suitable.”
“You wanted a child. He wanted one. I was willing to accept the situation.”
I think of the nursery chair. Her hand smoothing its pale green seat. Me down the hall, asking.
My son presses beneath my ribs. I move my palm over him, and for the first time since she entered, Cressida looks away.
“You don’t have to want pregnancy,” I say. “You don’t get to use mine.”
“I haven’t used anything. You and Magnus made a baby together.”
I almost answer that. Almost explain the difference between what I agreed to and what he concealed. But she knows the difference. She has been living on her side of it all along.
“How long have you been asking for him to leave me?”
“I’ve been asking him to set a date for a year.”
“While you came to dinner.”
“He kept saying it wasn’t time.”
“While you asked how I was feeling.”
“I have been very patient.”
My stomach seems to drop around the baby. There is nowhere for the feeling to go.
“The cup,” I say.
She lifts her chin.
“And the book. Those were things you asked for while you waited.”
“I wanted him to show some commitment to what he promised.”
“So he put your father’s name on my son.”
“Our families knew my father. It means something to them.”
“My family means something to me.”
“You can call him what you like here. My father’s name will still be the one he carries in the family.”
I stare at her. She is sitting in my house, telling me the distance my son’s name will be allowed to travel.
“No.”
“The announcement was already made.”
“He lied to get me to that lunch.”
“You came because you wanted to believe him.”
The accuracy is so cruel that I lose my next breath.
She sees it. Her voice grows softer.
“That’s the difficulty, isn’t it? You keep expecting him to want what you want. You love him, so you think the arrangement must mean something else.”
I put my feet flat on the floor. I have to lean forward before I can stand, and I hate that she has time to watch me do it.
“Leave.”
“I haven’t finished.”
“I have.”
I pick up my phone and walk to the door. She stays seated for another moment, then rises with an irritated movement of her coat.
“You can make things very hard for yourself.”
“You have no place in this house. You have no role with my child. Don’t come here again.”
She stops in front of me. “Magnus may have something to say about that.”
“He can say it to me.”
I hold the door until she has walked down the path. Then I close it and put the chain across.
Upstairs, I pull the blue dress over my head. It catches at my shoulders. For a moment I am tangled in the fabric, unable to see, and I begin to cry with a rage that frightens me in its size.
I get it off. I leave it on the floor.
In a loose shirt and soft pants, I sit on the bed and call Mom first. I tell her Cressida has gone. She asks whether I want company. I say yes, soon.
Then I call Magnus.
When he answers, I don’t let him ask how I am.
“She was here. She says you promised her my place. She says your family will use her father’s name whatever I call my baby. I want you to tell me what you’ve promised her, and why your mother has my address.”