CHAPTER 24
She changed her mind. She just went right ahead and changed her mind.
“I’m sorry, Cat.” Gemma looked across the table at Cat with wide-eyed sincerity. “I’m really, really sorry.”
Cat almost laughed because she’d known this could happen. Maybe she even knew all along that it would happen.
But she’d given her every possible chance.
“Are you sure this is what you want?” she’d asked, again and again.
And again, again, Gemma had replied, “Absolutely sure! Deep down in my heart sure.”
When Gemma had first suggested the plan, Cat had agreed in an almost lighthearted, fantastical way. It hadn’t seemed possible that Gemma could really be pregnant, sitting in Cat’s kitchen, in her cut-off shorts, looking normal and skinny. It felt like a game, an abstract distraction. It was the same as when she thought about the idea of going to a sperm bank. Yes, she was sort of serious, sort of very serious, but did sperm banks actually exist outside of comedy films? Did they have ads in the Yellow Pages?
Imagining Gemma’s baby in her arms helped her to stop thinking about Dan and Angela—and Angela’s hair and Angela’s breasts and Angela’s underwear.
It helped her to walk by parents pushing their strollers, without wanting to stop and scream with savage rage at those smug, carelessly happy women, What makes you so special? Look at you! You’re not that pretty or smart! How did you manage to have a baby? When I can’t? When I’ve somehow failed to achieve this basic boring thing!
It helped her to sleep. It helped her get up in the mornings.
And that was why the violent opposition from Maxine and Lyn was so hurtful. They reacted as if it were all Cat’s idea. As usual, evil Cat was exploiting fragile, helpless Gemma.
They never once said, We understand why you want to do this.
They didn’t seem to notice that it was a miracle that Cat was still functioning, when she felt like she’d been fragmented into a million pieces. They weren’t incredulous, like Cat still was on a daily basis, that Dan had actually gone, that he woke up in some other woman’s bed.
Her hurt gave her a petulant resolve. Why not, after all? Why shouldn’t this work, if Gemma wanted it? Why not?
She worked for hours on the second bedroom, painting the walls a buttery yellow. While she was scraping and painting, her mind was peacefully blank.
The nursery was beautiful. Everyone said so.
Just yesterday, she’d bought a white cane chair with blue cushions and put it by the window, where you could see the magnolia tree. She’d sat there in a pool of morning sunshine and imagined giving the baby its bottle and considered the possibility of happiness.
It was going to be her and the baby against the world. Just the two of them.
And now Gemma changed her mind.
All that softness and sunshine had been snatched away, and Cat was back out again in that bland wasteland of memos and office cubicles and divorce proceedings and nobody waiting for her to come home.
Better to have stayed cold all along than had this taste of warmth.
Cat sat there in the noisy restaurant with her head pounding from champagne, a huge nauseating triangle of chocolate mud cake in front of her, and for a few seconds she felt nothing, and then it came, all at once, a tumbling toxic torrent.
It was basic, childish disappointment.
It was “Ha ha! Who looks like a fool now!” humiliation.
It was the smug lift of Lyn’s eyebrows.
It was tomorrow. And the day after that.
It was because fourteen-year-old Cat Kettle would have thought she was a loser.
Whatever it was, it sucked her down into a wailing vortex and afterward she never remembered how she came to be standing up, or what she was saying, or what she was holding in her hand until she threw it, screaming, “You have both f*cking ruined my life!”
And then:
One day you’ll go too far, Maxine always said.
She’d gone too far.
The fork protruding embarrassingly and impossibly out of Gemma’s belly.
Blood!
Her first thought was, sweet Jesus, I’ve killed her.
And then, I’m going to be sick.
A roaring in her ears.
She was on the floor, with the most tremendous pain thumping down one side of her face and into her ear and something metallic filling her mouth.
Olivia was crouched down beside her, “It’s O.K. You fainted. You all right? You hit your chin pretty hard against the table.”
All around her, Cat could see the backs of people’s legs. Their table was surrounded by a frenzied group of arguing strangers.
“Be calm! Tell her to be calm! Sweetheart, be very, very calm!”
“The ambulance is coming. Shhhh! Is that the siren I hear?”
“Has anybody called the police? Because I saw it! That was assault!”
“Did you hear? They’re sisters! Unbelievable.”
“Have I killed her?” she wanted to ask, but her mouth was full of marbles.
“Everyone is freaking out!” Olivia said happily.
“Um, Lyn?” It was Gemma’s voice. She sounded perfectly alive, vaguely concerned. “I think, maybe, I just had a contraction.”
Olivia’s mouth dropped comically.
The crowd seemed to sigh and sway with the horror of it. Cat watched a pair of masculine shoes begin to shuffle discreetly away from the table. Then she heard Lyn, her voice slip-sliding into uncharacteristic panic, “Is there a doctor here?”
Cat prayed: frantically and obsequiously. Please, God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, Mother of Mary, all of you, I’m begging you, don’t let the baby die!
“I’ve got my first-aid certificate,” offered somebody.
“She doesn’t need to be resuscitated,” said somebody else.
“Of course I’ve never had a contraction before,” continued Gemma thoughtfully. “So, how would I know?”
“Helsh me up,” mumbled Cat, tasting blood. Olivia pulled on her wrists and heaved her to her feet.
“Here comes the boss.” Olivia appeared to be having the time of her life. “Oooh! She’ll be going ape shit over this! Afterbirth all over her floorboards.”
It was the same elegant, all-in-black woman who had so graciously offered their table at the beginning of the night. She now gave Cat a look of appalled disgust and used the back of her hands to firmly flap the crowd back to their seats. “Could I ask everyone to move? The ambulance is on its way.”
The grown-ups were coming. People hurried back to their tables, looking slightly embarrassed, murmuring seriously to one another.
Ten minutes later, the paramedics walked through the restaurant radiating waves of drama and relaxed authority, like movie stars casually strolling into a press conference.
Lyn began to speak to them, but Gemma interrupted her, her tone succinct and urgent, even bossy.
“I’m due in three weeks. I saw my obstetrician just yesterday and she said I could expect to start feeling those pretend contractions. I don’t know if that’s what I just felt, or not. There’s a lot of tissue around the uterus right? The fork couldn’t have hurt my baby?
“It’s unlikely,” agreed the paramedic. “It would have to penetrate a very long way. It looks like it’s just broken the skin. Let’s take a look at your blood pressure.”
“I think you should listen to the baby’s heartbeat,” snapped Gemma. “That’s what I think you should do.”
She sounded, Cat thought, exactly like Lyn.
Or maybe it was Maxine.
She sounded like somebody’s mother.
Cat silently cradled her jaw and looked out the car window at the lights of the city. The guy who had been sitting at the table next to them, the one who had helped Gemma with her bag, was driving them to the hospital. Cat didn’t know or care what had happened to the girl who was with him.
He’d introduced himself to Cat, but she hadn’t bothered to listen. He didn’t seem quite real. Nobody did. She felt as if she were separated from the rest of the world by a blurry membrane. Nothing really mattered, except that Gemma and the baby would be O.K. The pain down the side of her face was excruciating, and she felt strangely conscious of every breath that she took.
She could hear Lyn in the front seat, talking to Maxine on her mobile.
“Yes, I know it’s our birthday. That’s why—”
“Yes, I do know how old we—”
“No, Mum, we’re not drunk—”
“O.K. Maybe a little tipsy.”
“Yes, a fork. A fondue fork.”
“A seafood fondue.”
“Well, we liked it!”
“It was just a little argument, Mum. I’ll explain—”
“O.K., maybe not so little. But—”
“Well, yes, actually. I think the whole restaurant probably saw. But—”
“Royal Prince Alfred.”
“Fine. Bye.”
Lyn pressed a button on her mobile and shifted around to look at Cat. “Mum says take care, she loves us, and she’s coming right away.”
Cat stared at her with incomprehension, and Lyn chortled. “I’m joking!”
The guy driving the car chuckled. Cat held her napkin to her mouth and looked back out the window. Now Lyn was sounding a lot like Gemma. The world had gone topsy-turvy.
At the entrance to the hospital, Cat got out of the car without speaking, slammed the door, and blinked at the bright lights and muted roar of activity: phones ringing, a child screaming relentlessly, clumps of people walking busily in different directions.
Lyn seemed to have made best friends with the man from the restaurant. Cat watched as she leaned back in the window and chatted enthusiastically, before straightening up and waving good-bye.
She held up a little fan of business cards. “He’s a landscape gardener, a wedding photographer, and a personal trainer!” she said, as if this were interesting. “He was on a blind date but apparently it wasn’t going too well.”
Cat shrugged.
Lyn put the cards away in her purse. “Right, well, let’s see what’s happening with Gemma, and we’d better get someone to look at you. I wonder if you’ve bitten your tongue.”
Cat shrugged again. Perhaps she would give up talking forever. It might make life less complicated.
“Is that you, Lyn? Um, Cat?”
They turned around. It was Charlie walking toward them. He was wearing muddy tracksuit pants, a T-shirt, and a black beanie. He looked sweaty and agitated.
“I’m on my way home from touch footie and your sister calls for the first time in six months,” he said. “She asks me how a lightbulb works. So I start to explain it; I mean that’s Gemma, right? She was always asking funny questions. But then she starts crying like her heart is going to break and says she’s calling from an ambulance on the way to have a baby, and would I like to come and help her breathe, if I’m not too busy? Are you girls strange, or what?”
“No question, we’re strange,” said Lyn.
He held both palms upward in a very Italian gesture. “Man! She dumps me, she wasn’t even going to tell me she’s pregnant, and now suddenly she wants me to help her breathe?”
“It’s quite presumptuous of her,” agreed Lyn.
“And I don’t how to do this!” An expression of pure terror crossed his face. “There are classes for this sort of thing. Books. Videos. I like to know how things work!”
Lyn beamed at him. “Just hold her hand. Do what they do in the movies.”
“Jesus.” He pulled his beanie off, ran one hand over the top of his head, and took a deep breath. “And is she O.K.?”
“Well, there was a little accident but they’re looking at her now.”
For the first time Charlie looked at Cat and her blood-soaked napkin. Cat looked at the ground and tried to pretend she was somewhere else.
“An accident?”
“Let’s go inside and find out what’s happening,” said Lyn.
While Lyn and Charlie went off to find someone official, Cat sat down on a green plastic chair and began heavy negotiations with God.
All she wanted was for Gemma and the baby to be O.K. It didn’t seem like too unreasonable a request. She simply wanted one particular action to be without consequences.
And if God would do that, Cat would give up alcohol and every other potentially pleasurable activity. She would graciously accept that she was never going to have children herself and live a quiet, nunlike existence, thinking only of others.
She might even consider some very unpleasant form of volunteer work.
After a seemingly endless discussion, Charlie and Lyn came back over to where Cat was sitting. She looked up at them wordlessly.
“Someone’s coming to see us now,” explained Lyn.
Charlie looked closely at Cat. “Are you O.K.? You don’t look so good.”
Cat nodded and mumbled, “I’m fine shanks.”
“Gemma Kettle’s family?” An efficiently frowning nurse appeared. “She’s doing well. Four centimeters dilated. Who’s going to be with her for the labor?”
“Just the father,” said Lyn.
Charlie gave a little start. “I guess that would be me.”
The nurse gave Cat and Lyn a meaningful and hugely unjust “Men!” look and said, “This way, please.”
“Rightio.” Charlie handed over a sports bag to Lyn and obediently followed the nurse without looking back, his shoulders in the dirty T-shirt very square.
Lyn sat down next to Cat and shook her head. “That man is a saint. If she doesn’t hold on to him, I’ll throw a fork at her!”
At that moment Maxine marched into the hospital waiting room to find her daughters, propped up against each other’s shoulders, laughing helplessly.
She held the strap of her handbag disapprovingly against her chest. “Well, really!”
At eight o’clock the next morning Cat held her nephew for the first time. A tightly bound eight-pound bundle with a wrinkly red face, matted black hair, and long eyelashes resting mysteriously against caramel-colored skin.
Cat and Gemma were alone in the room.
Charlie had gone home to change. Lyn was coming back with Maddie and Michael later that afternoon. Maxine and Frank were buying coffee in the cafeteria.
“I’m sorry, Cat.” Gemma’s face against the pillow was blotchy, puffy, and suffused with joy. “I did a terrible thing to you.”
Cat shook her head and kept looking at the baby.
Some time last night, a doctor had informed her that her jaw was broken. Her back and front teeth were now wired together. If she tried to talk, her mouth started foaming with saliva.
She felt, fittingly, like a freak. It was her penance.
“I thought of the baby as yours,” said Gemma. “All the way along. I swear to you. And then all of a sudden, I started wanting—I wanted the baby and I wanted Charlie. I wanted everything.”
Cat placed her little finger in the palm of the baby’s hand and watched his tiny fingers curl in a miniature grip.
Soap Bubbles on the Corso
It was a lovely day today, wasn’t it? Did you have a lovely day? I bet you didn’t move from that step, eh? I caught the bus down to the Corso, you know how I like to do that. I’m sure the sea air does wonders for my arthritis.
I sat on my favorite bench there and ate my banana sandwich, and watched the families. There were some lovely young girls sitting in the shade with their children. One was a toddler—oh, she was a terror that one! They had their hands full. And there was also the dearest little newborn baby! The girls were all taking turns holding the baby. I couldn’t quite tell which was the mother but they were sisters, I’m sure of it. They each rocked the baby in exactly the same way, gently swaying their bodies. Tall, graceful girls. I always wanted to be tall.
Oh, and they had a clever way of distracting the little terror! They had one of those little bottles of detergent and they were blowing soap bubbles for her. She was running around with her hands outstretched, laughing, trying to catch them. Those bubbles looked so pretty floating and dancing in the breeze—like hundreds of tiny little rainbows. It made me cry a little. In a happy way.
But you know one of those young girls wasn’t so happy. She was really down in the dumps about something. She was doing her best to hide it but I could tell. Something about the way she held her shoulders. As if she’d lost. You know what I mean? Defeated. That’s the word.
I wanted to say to her, Oh, darling, don’t be sad. Whatever it is that’s worrying you will probably turn out to be nothing. Or eventually it just won’t matter anymore. And one day all you’ll remember is blowing soap bubbles on the Corso with your sisters. And how you were young and beautiful and didn’t even know it. But she would have just thought I was a mad old woman, wouldn’t she, Tabby? Yes, she would have.