32.
Oh, Jane.”
Madeline wanted to sweep Jane into her arms and onto her lap and rock her back and forth as if she were Chloe. She wanted to find that man and hit him, kick him, yell obscenities at him.
“I guess I should have taken the morning-after pill,” said Jane. “But I never even thought about it. I had bad endometriosis when I was younger, and a doctor told me I’d have a lot of trouble getting pregnant. I can go for months without a period. When I finally realized I was pregnant, it was . . .”
She’d told her story in a low voice that Madeline had had to strain to hear, but now she lowered it even further to almost a whisper, her eyes on the hallway leading to Ziggy’s bedroom. “Much too late for an abortion. And then my grandfather died, and that was a big shock to us all. And then I went a bit strange. Depressed, maybe. I don’t know. I left uni and moved back home, and I just slept. For hours and hours. It was like I was sedated or really jet-lagged. I couldn’t bear to be awake.”
“You were probably still in shock. Oh, Jane. I’m so sorry that happened to you.”
Jane shook her head as if she’d been given something she didn’t deserve. “Well. It’s not like I got raped in an alleyway. I have to take responsibility. It wasn’t that big a deal.”
“He assaulted you! He—”
Jane lifted a hand. “Lots of women have bad sexual experiences. That was mine. The lesson is: Don’t go off with strange men you meet in bars.”
“I can assure you I went off with my share of men I met in bars,” said Madeline. She’d done it once or twice. It had never been like that. She would have poked his eyes out. “Do not for a moment think that you’re in any way to blame, Jane.”
Jane shook her head. “I know. But I do try to keep it in perspective. Some people do really like that erotic asphyxiation stuff.” Madeline saw her put a hand unconsciously to her neck. “You might be into it, for all I know.”
“Ed and I think it’s erotic if we find ourselves in bed without a wriggling child in between us,” said Madeline. “Jane, my darling girl, that wasn’t sexual experimentation. What that man did to you was not—”
“Well, don’t forget you heard the story from my perspective,” interrupted Jane. “He might remember it differently.” She shrugged. “He probably doesn’t even remember it.”
“And that was verbal abuse. Those things he said to you.” Madeline felt the fury rise again. How could she fight this creep? How could she make him pay? “Those vile things.”
When Jane had told her the story, she hadn’t needed to try to think back to remember the exact words. She’d recited his insults in a dull monotone, as if she were reciting a poem or a prayer.
“Yes,” said Jane. “Fat ugly little girl.”
Madeline winced. “You are not.”
“I was overweight,” said Jane. “Some people would probably say I was fat. I was into food.”
“A foodie,” said Madeline.
“Nothing as sophisticated as that. I just loved all food, and I especially loved fattening food. Cakes. Chocolate. Butter. I just loved butter.”
An expression of mild awe crossed her face, as if she couldn’t quite believe she was describing herself.
“I’ll show you a photo,” she said to Madeline. She flicked through her phone. “My friend Em just posted this on Facebook for Throwback Thursday. It’s me at her nineteenth birthday. Just a few months before . . . before I got pregnant.”
She held up the phone for Madeline to see. There was Jane wearing a red sheath dress with a low neckline. She was standing in between two other girls of the same age, all three of them beaming at the camera. Jane looked like a different person: softer, uninhibited, much, much younger.
“You were curvy,” said Madeline, handing back the phone. “Not fat. You look gorgeous in this photo.”
“It’s sort of interesting when you think about it,” said Jane, glancing at the photo once before she flicked it off with her thumb. “Why did I feel so weirdly violated by those two words? More than anything else that he did to me, it was those two words that hurt. ‘Fat.’ ‘Ugly.’”
She spat out the two words. Madeline wished she would stop saying them.
“I mean a fat, ugly man can still be funny and lovable and successful,” continued Jane. “But it’s like it’s the most shameful thing for a woman to be.”
“But you weren’t, you’re not—” began Madeline.
“Yes, OK, but so what if I was!” interrupted Jane. “What if I was! That’s my point. What if I was a bit overweight and not especially pretty? Why is that so terrible? So disgusting? Why is that the end of the world?”
Madeline found herself without words. To be fat and ugly actually would be the end of the world for her.
“It’s because a woman’s entire self-worth rests on her looks,” said Jane. “That’s why. It’s because we live in a beauty-obsessed society where the most important thing a woman can do is make herself attractive to men.”
Madeline had never heard Jane speak this way before, so aggressively and fluently. Normally she was so diffident and self-deprecating, so ready to let someone else have the opinions.
“Is that really true?” said Madeline. For some reason she wanted to disagree. “Because you know I often feel secretly inferior to women like Renata and Jonathan’s bloody hotshot wife. There they are, earning squillions and going to board meetings or whatever, and there’s me, with my cute little part-time marketing job.”
“Yes, but deep down you know that you win because you’re prettier,” said Jane.
“Well,” said Madeline, “I don’t know about that.” She caught herself caressing her hair and dropped her hand.
“So that’s why, if you’re in bed with a man, and you’re naked and vulnerable, and you’re assuming that he finds you at least mildly attractive, and then he says something like that, well it’s . . .” She gave Madeline a wry look. “It’s kind of devastating.” She paused. “And, Madeline, it infuriates me that I found it so devastating. It infuriates me that he had that power over me. I look in the mirror each day, and I think, ‘I’m not overweight anymore,’ but he’s right, I’m still ugly. Intellectually I know I’m not ugly, I’m perfectly acceptable. But I feel ugly, because one man said it was so, and that made it so. It’s pathetic.”
“He was a prick,” said Madeline helplessly. “He was just a stupid prick.” It occurred to her that the more Jane expounded on ugliness, the more beautiful she looked, with her hair coming loose, her cheeks flushed and eyes shining. “You’re beautiful,” she began.
“No!” said Jane angrily. “I’m not! And that’s OK that I’m not. We’re not all beautiful, just like we’re not all musical, and that’s fine. And don’t give me that inner beauty shining through crap either.”
Madeline, who had been about to give her that inner beauty shining through crap, closed her mouth.
“I didn’t mean to lose so much weight,” said Jane. “It makes me angry that I lost weight, as if I were doing it for him, but I got all weird about food after that. Every time I went to eat it was like I could see myself eating. I could see myself the way he’d seen me: slovenly fat girl eating. And my throat would just . . .” She tapped a hand to her throat and swallowed. “Anyway! So it was quite effective! Like a gastric bypass. I should market it. The Saxon Banks Diet. One quick, only slightly painful session in a hotel room and there you go: lifelong eating disorder. Cost-effective!”
“Oh, Jane,” said Madeline.
She thought of Jane’s mother and her comment on the beach about “no one wants to see this in a bikini.” It seemed to her that Jane’s mother had probably helped lay the groundwork for Jane’s mixed-up feelings about food. The media had done its bit, and women in general, with their willingness to feel bad about themselves, and then Saxon Banks had finished the job.
“Anyway,” said Jane. “Sorry for that little tirade.”
“Don’t be sorry.”
“Also, I don’t have bad breath,” said Jane. “I’ve checked with my dentist. Many times. But we’d been out for pizza beforehand. I had garlic breath.”
So that was the reason for the gum obsession.
“Your breath smells like daisies,” said Madeline. “I have an acute sense of smell.”
“I think it was the shock of it more than anything,” said Jane. “The way he changed. He seemed so nice, and I’d always thought I was a pretty good judge of character. After that, I felt like I couldn’t really trust my own instincts.”
“I’m not surprised,” said Madeline. Could she have picked him? Would she have fallen for his Mary Poppins song?
“I don’t regret it,” said Jane. “Because I got Ziggy. My miracle baby. It was like I woke up when he was born. It was like he had nothing to do with that night. This beautiful tiny baby. It’s only as he’s started to turn into a little person with his own personality that it even occurred to me, that he might, that he might have, you know, inherited something from his . . . his father.”
For the first time, her voice broke.
“Whenever Ziggy behaves in a way that seems out of character, I worry. Like on orientation day, when Amabella said he choked her. Of all the things to happen. Choking. I couldn’t believe it. And sometimes I feel like I can see something in his eyes that reminds me of, of him, and I think, ‘What if my beautiful Ziggy has a secret cruel streak? What if my son does that to a girl one day?’”
“Ziggy does not have a cruel streak,” said Madeline. Her desperate need to comfort Jane cemented her belief in Ziggy’s goodness. “He’s a lovely, sweet boy. I’m sure your mother is right, he’s your grandfather reincarnated.”
Jane laughed. She picked up her mobile phone and looked at the time on the screen. “It’s so late! You should go home to your family. I’ve kept you here this long, blathering on about myself.”
“You weren’t blathering.”
Jane stood up. She stretched her arms high above her head so that her T-shirt rose and Madeline could see her skinny, white, vulnerable stomach. “Thank you so much for helping me get this damned project done.”
“My pleasure.” Madeline stood as well. She looked at where Ziggy had written “Ziggy’s dad.” “Will you ever tell him his name?”
“Oh, God, I don’t know,” said Jane. “Maybe when he’s twenty-one, when he’s old enough for me to tell him the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”
“He might be dead,” said Madeline hopefully. “Karma might have gotten him in the end. Have you ever Googled him?”
“No,” said Jane. There was a complicated expression on her face. Madeline couldn’t tell if it meant that she was lying or that even the thought of Googling him was too painful.
“I’ll Google the awful creep,” said Madeline. “What was his name again? Saxon Banks, right? I’ll find him and then I’ll put out a hit on him. There must be some kind of online murder-a-bastard service these days.”
Jane didn’t laugh. “Please don’t Google him, Madeline. Please don’t. I don’t know why I hate the thought of your looking him up, but I just do.”
“Of course I won’t if you don’t want me to, I was being flippant. Stupid. I shouldn’t make light of it. Ignore me.”
She held her arms out and gave Jane a hug.
To her surprise, Jane, who always presented a stiff cheek for a kiss, stepped forward and held her tightly.
“Thank you for bringing over the cardboard,” she said.
Madeline patted Jane’s clean-smelling hair. She’d nearly said, You’re welcome, my beautiful girl, like she did to Chloe, but the word “beautiful” seemed so complicated and fraught right now. Instead she said, “You’re welcome, my lovely girl.”