“I think you’re ready. I think you’ll be amazing.” She lay down beside him again and inched closer, curled on her side, one leg slung over his, her hand resting lightly on his chest. After a moment he heard her breath change and realized, startled, that she had fallen heavily asleep.
When on the warpath both his parents were formidable in their own way, but his father’s love for him was vast, he knew, and could conquer cities. James would always protect him. He had not felt able to present Gwen with some home truths, as his father had instructed, nor to threaten, as his mother had commanded, but at least all the adults were in agreement and he had only to survive down this topsy-turvy rabbit hole a little longer; parents were parents and ultimately she would not be allowed to go through with it. Surely there was no need for his throat to tighten like this; no need for the tears that threatened, again, again.
The sun had moved and bright stripes now fell across Gwen’s face. As carefully as he could, he maneuvered himself from beneath her hand and sat up, leaning forward so that the shadow of his back would protect her pale, unaccustomed skin. For the sake of the imaginary film crew he dropped his head into his hands, an exquisite picture of broken, masculine despair.
28.
“Please don’t even joke about deliveries. This obviously cannot happen.”
“Well, obviously not,” Pamela snapped, her voice made tinny by the speakerphone. “Someone has to knock some sense into her. I can’t believe Nathan was such a bloody wet blanket about it, I told him what to say.”
James and Pamela had been speaking every day for the last terrible fortnight, so she was well aware that there had been no change. Gwen had moved beyond the reach of all reason, as if beneath a dome of thick glass through which nothing, no sound, no sense, could penetrate. She had the blank-eyed conviction of the religious zealot, and the zealot’s placid, maddening pity for those who didn’t see the light. She was having the baby, she could do it, she’d been reading about it on the Internet, she had an instinct, a second sense; they just needed to have faith. James found it hard to look at her. How was it possible that one spoiled, angry teenager had wrested control of all their lives?
“Anyway,” Pamela went on, “speaking of deliveries, you delivered our boy back to school. He sounds like a different child; you’d think he was at Disneyland. It’s heartbreaking. My beloved little boy. I’m driving on the freeway in the sunshine and I was feeling such lightness thinking, yes, he’s going to be okay, my baby’s going to be himself again, but now I’m questioning the wisdom of his absence. He should be processing, he’s deeply in denial. It’s dangerous. He should be fighting to prevent it before it’s too late, that’s the key here, isn’t it? You can’t do anything from a place of denial. For God’s sake, he can be home a few weeks and then go back to boarding once it’s dealt with; he’s the only one with any influence; he’s got to tell her as many times as it takes that she’s being a bloody moron. I don’t know what went wrong when they spoke on the Heath, I couldn’t have prepped him any better but when I spoke to him just now he sounded manic and was wittering on about spending his gap year volunteering in a South African clinic. It’s out of sight and utterly totally bizarrely out of mind.”
“Gotcha.”
“That’s what Gwen said. Ha, ha. Anyway, so you see. I did mention that by the time this supposed gap year rolls around he’ll have a six-month-old and won’t be gapping anywhere, but it didn’t seem to register. Total denial.” In the background James could hear the voice of the satellite navigation commanding Pamela to keep left ahead. “But between us, I will say I hated making every word of that speech to him. I don’t want to be Mean Mummy, the voice of doom and responsibility, but I was trying to scare him. Surely she’ll listen to him if he’s insistent enough, if he collapses when they talk face-to-face, then he must e-mail her from school like I’ve instructed. That is, assuming she can read. I’ve written him a draft. I want my baby traveling the world, carefree, with girlfriends in Argentina and Italy and Australia and Japan, learning his heart, expanding his horizons. I always tell him, if you call all your girlfriends ‘Darling’ it will save you the trouble of keeping their names straight. You know something, he’s having that bloody gap year if it kills me, whatever I said to him. If she wants it so much, she can look after it. What was the point of— Wait, what? One second, the road’s— I need to read the signs. The satnav’s saying North-South and the road’s saying East-West. Okay, right. What was I saying? Oh, yes. I wanted him to fly. I did not envisage him trapped in the suburbs with a sulky little teen bride and a bawling bundle. It’s not what I wanted for his soul.”
“I hope you didn’t make teen bride jokes with Nathan. We’ve had enough dumb moves.”
“Are you kidding? I told him I’d disown him for his stupidity. Luckily it hadn’t crossed his mind, he sounded suitably horrified. Why the bloody bollocks is there an exit here? One second. I’m going to call you back, I’ve gone wrong.”
? ? ?
SOMETHING HAD GONE WRONG for Pamela lately, and not simply with her navigation. Her very identity was in conflict.
Her office at the clinic was a parlor. No hierarchical furniture arrangements, no barriers of desks or intimidating swivel chairs that spoke of diplomas and educational advantages and a disconnection from the common lives of those she sought to help. Instead, soft, womanish furniture—soft sofas, pairs of matching, soft egalitarian armchairs. And in this safe, cushioned space women cried and cried about men. About what had been done to them. About what had been sown in them by men. Biology itself dictated who was taking possession of whom; that was the oldest metaphor, the oldest reality. It was there in the syntax—women were never the subject, only the object, subject to a man. And yet two brains make a sequence of decisions; two bodies unite and two people should face the consequences. With the women in her office Pamela sympathized, and raged, and helped. The men must be made to take equal responsibility. They must.