The Girl Next Door (14 page)

‘Maybe. I want a coffee and a paper anyway. Be right back.’ He’d pulled on shorts and a T‐shirt from the night before, and swept his hair back from his forehead, kissing her on the cheek and slapping a bum cheek before he left.

While he was gone, Eve looked at herself in the mirror. Something she normally avoided assiduously. His assertion that she looked different made her see things she hadn’t noticed before – there was a certain softness, quite distinct from the normal doughiness, that she hadn’t seen. She turned sideways, and stuck her stomach out. She stared at her nipples, looking for new darkness, or swelling that hadn’t been there. She linked her hands under the non‐existent bump the way pregnant women do, and wondered how she’d look. Would she be like Cath, she wondered – Moby Dick, by her own admission? Or like her mum? She’d seen pictures of their mum, pregnant with Cath and then, a few years later, with her, neat and small in her mini dresses, with regular‐sized legs and arms, and just the one chin. Or Cath’s best friend Sheila. She remembered Cath saying she’d never wanted to kill anyone as much as she wanted to kill Sheila the time she’d gone on and on about how small she’d been when pregnant – as Cath lay somnolent on the sofa at her house, moaning about chafing in her inner thighs and Discovery Channel breasts. ‘I was more of a Posh Spice,’ she had said, ‘and you’re more of a… Fergie.’ She meant the Duchess, not the Black Eyed Pea, and Cath had rolled her eyes and gurned at Eve. As loyal as she was to her big sister, Eve secretly hoped for her mother’s pregnancy genes. Although, as she turned this way and that in the mirror, looking at her thighs and her waist, she had to acknowledge that the head‐to‐toe black Lycra look so in vogue in Dr Jones’s office was probably not her.

But, oh, it was lovely to be back in the beam of Ed’s attention again. It was missing too often these days. There’d been plenty of baby‐making, in the last couple of weeks (God, men were goal‐oriented buggers) but the late evenings and early starts hadn’t changed. And unless he was making love to her, it didn’t often feel like he was really concentrating on her. Yesterday, she’d had a manicure and pedicure at her usual place around the corner. On a whim, she’d paid the extra $15 for the ten‐minute chair massage, where you knelt astride a seat and they pummelled your back, neck and shoulders for you. This time, she’d had a man. As he had worked on her, his thumbs smoothing and resmoothing the knots in her shoulders, it seemed so intimate that she was almost uncomfortable. His touch was so intense, and so focused on her. Loneliness was physical, too, she knew. Nobody but Ed touched her, from day to day. Her old life had been full of touch. That’s why Violet’s hand on hers, at the garden centre, had been so comforting. Because it was rare.

Ed came back at last, with a grey cardboard tray bearing coffee and a CVS bag. He tipped its contents out on to the bed. There were four tests.

‘I wasn’t sure what to get. They’re bloody expensive. So I got one of everything, except the generic.’

They read the boxes and she chose the one that promised it delivered the most accurate and earliest results. She looked at the other boxes, certain that they’d need them over the coming months. It wouldn’t just happen so easily. It could take months. She didn’t let herself think, not for a moment, about the possibility of it not happening at all. That wasn’t going to happen to them. It couldn’t.

‘Are we really doing this?’

‘Yeah. We’re both thinking about it now – either way, we should just do it.’

‘I don’t need to pee.’

‘Drink this.’ He proffered the latte, and then sat, grinning at her.

‘You look like the cat that got the cappuccino.’

Maybe she did need to pee.

‘You’re not coming in with me.’

‘No, thanks. I’ll pass on that particular pleasure. There’ll be quite enough time spent at the business end when this all gets going.’

‘Not if I have anything to do with it,’ she called from the bathroom. ‘I’ll be hoping labour starts while you’re on a conference call, and I can let you know when it’s all over.’

‘You wouldn’t need me there? To hold your hand?’

‘Do you think you’d be any good at it, then?’

‘Head end, maybe.’

She appeared in the bedroom again, waving the stick.

Ed raised his hands in front of his face. ‘Do you mind?’

‘Don’t get squeamish on me now. Have you got a second hand on your watch?’

They sat, and watched – watched the second hand, and watched the stick, nudging each other like kids. She felt giggly and giddy. And the pink line appeared, and grew pink enough to be beyond question or doubt.

Eve couldn’t believe it. It couldn’t be true. The first time, the very first month. This didn’t happen. It happened to Catherine Cookson heroines, after they were seduced by the master, and it happened to silly girls after school dances. It didn’t happen in real life. To sensible, measured grown‐ups. That you should decide you wanted a baby, make love, and be pregnant. Just like that. She was flooded with delight and surprise, and, along with those emotions, with sudden, sharp fear. She felt herself clenching, as though holding herself tight was the only way to stay pregnant.

She looked at Ed, savouring the expression on his face. All the shock and joy she felt was reflected back at her in his eyes, but none of the awful fear. She latched on to the simplicity of his reaction and let it wash over her, pushing the negativity away, for now…

‘Oh, my God. Oh, my God. We’ve done it. We’ve gone and done it.’

He jumped up, picked her up and swung her around. ‘We’re having a baby.’

‘We’re having a baby.’

He must have done a good job hiding his panic, Ed reflected, as he took Eve in his arms. So much for a few months. It must have been first go. Normally, he’d have felt rather proud of himself, but now he felt a little sick. Big gamble. He hoped that it would pay off, and make Eve as happy as she had promised it would.

He wasn’t used to this new, needy Eve. He was mystified by her. And, if he was totally honest with himself, a little irritated. This was all going so brilliantly. Why wasn’t she making more of an effort? That night out he’d arranged, for example. They’d been nice people. It had been a nice evening. She’d blindsided him, on the way home, with her attack. She hadn’t given them a chance – she’d judged on appearances, and judged harshly. That wasn’t who she was. He was loving work. He’d stay longer if he could – there was always more to do, and he was desperate to attract the right attention from the right people – to earn his relocation quickly. But she would call, sometimes as early as 4.30 p.m. or 5 p.m., and ask when he was coming home – whether he wanted to stay in, or eat out. And then that would sit there between him and his work – he would start watching the clock – feeling the pressure to get back to her.

Now, as she clung to him, he offered a silent prayer that this pregnancy would make her a little more independent again.

Not just more needy.

Kim

Avery was asleep. She lay on her back with her arms and legs splayed, one hand resting on her curls. It was hot, and she’d kicked the sheet back. Sometimes Kim just sat beside her while she slept. The nursing chair she’d bought when she was pregnant sat right beside the crib, and she would sit, and rock, and watch.

Avery was her prize. She’d never wanted anything so much in her life, or worked so hard to get something.

Because Kim had never gotten pregnant except with Avery, she didn’t have any idea how it would feel, to just… get pregnant. For it to happen easily, quickly, without medical intervention. She told herself she would have been different, that she’d be different now. Avery was special.

The IVF had been hideous. Investigations, probes, tests, shots, months of surging hormones making her feel like someone else. The feeling of inadequacy, the awful, awful rollercoaster of hope and failure and disappointment. Kim was a private person – she hated the invasiveness of it all, hated discussing those things with strangers. She never stopped feeling embarrassed, and she never really became comfortable with the conversations, or the investigations – with any of it. Every day was difficult. She couldn’t do it again. She knew people did, but she didn’t know how. When the sonogram had found the first heartbeat, the first proof that something had taken, had stuck, was growing inside her, she’d crossed her fingers and prayed for a second heartbeat. New York was full of IVF twins – you couldn’t walk down Park Avenue without seeing double buggies. Babies built to order. She knew there were women in the waiting room with her at the ob/gyn who didn’t need the IVF – who were doing it because they wanted complete control over their bodies and the timing of their pregnancies. They wanted to be pregnant only once, to take only one maternity leave, to have to regain their pre‐pregnancy body just one time. She felt huge resentment towards them. How dare they? She couldn’t control one thing about it, except by walking away and giving up. And she couldn’t do that. What would become of her life? Of her marriage? She longed for them to say it was twins. Twins would mean she would never have to do it again. But there’d only been one. Just Avery. Avery would have to be enough. The guilt of her ingratitude hit her like a sledgehammer that night.

It was supposed to get better, after they found the heartbeat. She meant to join the ranks of the ‘normal’ pregnant women, the ones for whom it had been easy, and instantaneous. But she couldn’t. Kim couldn’t relax, and she couldn’t believe. She knew she’d been unbearable all the way through. Everything scared her and the whole world represented a potential threat to the baby. She was neurotic about what to eat, paranoid about strangers, terrified of public transport, wary of cellphones and rinsed salads. She’d driven Jason crazy, she knew, fussing in restaurants. When the doctors had put her on bed rest at six months, she and Jason had both been relieved. She slept more than she could ever have imagined possible, and read. The complete Henry James, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edith Wharton. She lost herself in those other worlds, and tried to fight the panic. She spent hours writing in a pregnancy journal one day intended for Avery. Except that it was full of anxiety and fear, not the simple joy of anticipation. She might never be brave enough to show it to Avery. And she moved the goalposts for herself. So she couldn’t calm down during the pregnancy. She wasn’t the first woman to feel that way. She would relax when the baby was born safe and healthy. Then, then she would at last be able to join the world of the normal mothers. People would see her, with the baby in the stroller, shopping, wandering in the park, watching the baby turtles in the lake in Central Park, and they wouldn’t know any of it – they wouldn’t be able to tell.

Avery was born by planned Caesarean section. They told her that there was no reason she couldn’t deliver vaginally, but that seemed too volatile to her – too much margin for error. Ironically, after hating all the intervention of the previous years, Kim wanted her delivery to be as medical as possible. The green scrubs were comforting to her, and the calm, sing‐song voices of the nursing staff lulled her. Jason had found it all very difficult. She knew he felt left out. All he could do was perch on the stool, up by her head, staring at the makeshift green curtain they’d erected above her stomach. Kim couldn’t think about him, or even really look at him and see how he was feeling. She was concentrating too hard. This was an end and it was a beginning. Were there any other moments like this in your life?

She was still concentrating, two years later. She still couldn’t deal with how Jason was feeling. She still couldn’t really look at him or think about him. She knew it, but she didn’t know how to change it. Wife and mother. Why was it too hard for her to be both? She read all the books. Jason had laughed, once, at the teetering pile of textbooks she kept in the apartment. There’d been a phase when he’d stopped laughing, and eyed them hopefully, but now he didn’t even do that. The books had let him down, just as she had. They didn’t have the answers, and even the comfort they offered in the way of shared experience was short‐lived. The solutions didn’t work. She knew that men sometimes struggled to see their wives as other than mothers, after they’d watched them deliver and nurse their children. She knew that women worried about getting their figures back, about low sex drives, about being too tired to be good wives. That wasn’t it. That was all true. But that wasn’t it.

She didn’t want it to be different. The women she read about in the books, they did want to change.

Jackson

If you could get fit spending money, Jackson would already be in tip‐top condition. This bike had cost more than the Pontiac Firebird he’d bought when he was seventeen. And that had an engine. And a comfortable seat. This seat was so spectacularly uncomfortable that he had been forced to purchase a Tour de France‐esque Lycra suit with a built‐in pad that made him feel like John Wayne or a giant baby. Or a giant baby John Wayne. His legs looked ridiculously spindly in this getup. And the stuff only came in lurid colours. Or black and white. He’d gone for all black, on the basis that he looked like a giant sperm in the all white get‐up, but he feared that his costume was writing cheques his body would not be able to cash. The guy at the bike shop had come across as a real stoner, and said ‘cool, man’ about everything. He’d asked for the top of the range. They worked on commission. Of course it was ‘cool, man’. He’d just earned his month’s rent. It might have been helpful if he’d explained that the old story – the one about riding a bike – it
wasn’t true
. This was not riding a bike as he knew it. And he’d had bikes. All his life. A red tricycle with a huge bell and training wheels. A chopper. A BMX. This was completely different from those.

He’d fallen first about 100 yards from the store. A couple of kids on the sidewalk had actually laughed out loud. He must have looked like such a fool. His feet, he’d discovered, were locked into the pedals. Which meant that if he didn’t begin at breakneck speed, the bicycle wobbled dangerously and he fell straight off. That time he’d skinned his elbows. By the third time he was bleeding from each limb, and he was quite sure that when he stripped off later, he’d see that he’d pretty much skinned his entire left side. He’d been laughed at by kids, a homeless guy and a middle‐aged matron in a Lexus. And sworn at by two taxi drivers. He was done with the cycling thing.