18. Magnus
MAGNUS
Iam halfway out of my chair when her second message arrives.
Ten days.
I read the number before I read anything around it. My son has been born. There is a photograph on my phone of a face I have never seen, and I am being told to wait ten days to see it.
I pick up my keys.
I am his father. For a few seconds, that seems like the beginning and end of an answer. I have people who can find out where she is, a car downstairs, the ability to be at a door before she has decided what to say to me there.
I start to open my assistant’s number. I could ask her to clear the afternoon and arrange the rest while I am driving.
Then I read the rest.
I need to be able to get up and take Kit back without help before you hold him.
My hand stops on the office door.
She isn’t asking for flowers. She isn’t asking me to say the right thing in front of her mother. She wants to be strong enough to retrieve her child from me.
I look again at the picture. Most of it is blanket. One cheek, a closed eye, a small mouth set in an expression I cannot read. Kit. The name she has given him is already there beneath the photograph, attached to someone real.
I put the keys on my desk.
Nine days ago I told her to stop being difficult in her own hall. I took my mother there because Dulcie would not accept my answer from me alone. I knew she was close to giving birth. I used that closeness as a reason she should do what I wanted.
Now she has told me what being unable to get away from me would feel like.
I sit down.
I won’t come today. Thank you for telling me. I’m glad you’re both well.
I erase a request for a photograph of Dulcie holding him before I send it.
Cressida is at my mother’s house when I arrive that afternoon.
She gets up from the sofa. “Has it happened?”
“Our son was born today.”
My mother puts down her cup. “And?”
“Dulcie says they’re both well.”
“You’ve seen him?”
“Not yet.”
Cressida exchanges a glance with her. “Then we’ll have to let her get through the first excitement. Now there’s no reason we can’t settle our date.”
The words are ordinary. She says them as she might ask when a room will be ready. I know where she learned to speak that way about my wife.
“There won’t be a date.”
Her smile remains for a moment after everything behind it has stopped.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not marrying you.”
“She’s left you.”
“I know.”
“Then what exactly are you waiting for?”
“I’m not asking you to wait. There is no future marriage. There will be no personal relationship between us.”
My mother stands. “Magnus, today is hardly the day for a scene.”
“I made promises I am not going to keep. Cressida needs to hear that from me.”
“You made them before you married her,” Cressida says. “You let me spend a year asking when you were going to do what you said.”
“Yes.”
“You gave my father’s name to that child.”
“His name is Kit.”
Her face goes still.
“That is what Dulcie named him. I had no right to promise his name to you.”
“What about everything else you promised?”
“I was wrong to promise it. I won’t do it.”
She comes closer. “You think this will get her back.”
I do think of Dulcie. Of telling her I have finally said it, of watching relief change her face. The temptation is there even now, making a reward out of the thing I should have done before I asked to enter her house.
“This stays ended whether she comes back or not.”
Cressida looks at my mother. This time my mother does not meet her eyes.
“I have your messages,” Cressida says.
“I know what I wrote.”
I cannot make myself like saying it. I can make myself stay while she looks at me with everything I have earned.
My mother waits until Cressida has gone into the hall before speaking.
“Dulcie will need practical help once the novelty wears off.”
“You will not arrange her recovery. You will not go to her house unless she invites you, or make plans for Kit.”
“I am his grandmother.”
“That doesn’t give you authority over his mother.”
“You were happy enough to have my help.”
“Yes. I brought you to her door. I was wrong.”
She looks toward the hall, offended in a way I have spent most of my life preventing. I let her remain offended.
Before I leave my mother’s street, I write to Dulcie again.
I will wait until Kit is ten days old. Tell me the time and conditions when you are ready.
There are things I could put after it about how difficult this is. I send it without them.
At the brownstone I tell the household staff that Cressida is not to be admitted on my authority again. No messages about Dulcie or Kit are to be passed to her. Anything of hers still here can be packed and returned.
In the sitting room, I take the pale-blue book from the shelf.
I remember putting it there. I remember taking it from Dulcie after Cressida refused to accept it back. Two separate choices, both of them mine.
The dedication is inside the cover. I read the promises of outings, the claim on a boy who has only just been born. I approved this. I treated Dulcie’s refusal as an inconvenience in the room.
An open packing box waits in the hall for the things being returned to her. I put the book on top and fold the flaps closed. The title disappears beneath plain cardboard.
It goes with Cressida’s things the following morning. Nothing from that collection goes to Dulcie’s house.
Her first update arrives while I am at work.
Kit is doing well. We’re home. Mom is staying tonight.
I read home twice.
I’m glad you’re settled. Thank you.
I put the phone down. Ten minutes later I pick it up again, but there is nothing else to answer.
That evening, I start a question about how she is sleeping. I delete the part that suggests a night nurse, then the part that offers a different house to put one in. What remains is a question she has already answered as far as she wants to. I close the thread.
In the kitchen I eat standing up, then move to the table because there is no reason to make a performance of being alone. I finish the meal. Tomorrow I will go to work. She will still be learning our son without me, and none of the ordinary things I do will shorten the interval.
The days acquire details I have no right to demand. A photograph of Kit with his hand against his ear. One message saying they have had a better night. Another saying Giles has discovered that the smallest socks disappear fastest.
I laugh at that one before I remember I am alone.
On the fourth evening I get into the car outside the brownstone and start the engine. Her address is still in my phone. I bring it up, look at the route to West Roxbury, then switch off the engine before I pull out.
I could bring something. Food. A new lamp for the chair. I can produce a practical reason before the car has cooled.
I leave the keys in my lap until I stop making reasons. Then I get out and go back inside.
There is work I need to learn before I hold him. I read about supporting a newborn’s head, then realize I am gripping the book as though preparation can buy back the ten days. I loosen my hands and keep reading. He will still need me to know.
I do not tell Dulcie any of this. She doesn’t need an account of every time I managed not to disregard her.
On the ninth day, her message comes in the afternoon.
Tomorrow at two. Come alone. Half an hour. Mom will be here when you arrive.
I’ll be there.
I look at the photograph she sent that morning. His eyes are open. The face is changing already, and I have missed the first version of it except for what she chose to show me.
I want to ask whether she has photographs from the delivery room. Whether she cried when she first saw him. Whether she was frightened.
I know she was frightened of having me there.
I put the time in my calendar, although I won’t need reminding, then sit with the phone until the screen goes dark.