The Three of Us (10 page)

As the point of the needle punctures the pale taut flesh my eyes close involuntarily for a second and I fall back heavily in my chair, exhaling loudly. When I look again the large plastic syringe is filling up with a liquid that appears to be diluted urine. It is agonizingly slow, but Joanna's eyes are still safely closed and she does not appear to be in any particular pain. Finally the plastic chamber is full, and the doctor withdraws the needle in a swift clean motion and dabs the entry wound with a cotton-wool swab.

With all the bogus bravado of the coward, I find myself enquiring nonchalantly about the technical details of the amniotic fluid. It is in fact urine, explains the doctor. He confirms that the foetus drinks and excretes it. We begin our lives drinking urine. And for that matter we spend nine months suspended in a sac of piss. It does not seem to be a particularly elegant way to arrive on this earth.

Somehow I know, even before the door is closed, that the cab ride home will be the ride from hell. The traffic is flowing strongly up Third Avenue, but even before Joanna is strapped in, the driver hurls the vehicle into the fray with only the merest flick of a derisive glance in his mirror. I lean forward, all fatherly concern.

‘My wife', I explain, ‘has just had a big operation. She is still very sick. Can you drive slowly, slowly.' He ignores me completely and turns up the Middle Eastern disco muezzin music. We begin one of those co-ordinated red-light crossings that can happen in New York if the timing is wrong. On the fourth early red he is forced to concede to a bus.

In my early days in New York I too was an exuberantly reckless cab passenger, never giving the seat-belt a second glance and urging my drivers to ever greater speeds. But, as well as Joanna's delicate condition, there is another factor which has converted me to the cause of safe cabbing. I have recently read a piece in the
New York Times Metro Section
that said that no tests have ever been conducted on the safety of the New York cab.

The problem is not with the vehicle itself. This model has been extensively tested at General Motors' crash labs. But when it arrives in Queens some contractor whacks in an armoured Plexiglass screen. No crash-test dummy has ever been put through its paces with this thick translucent husk. In the event of a crash, the human passenger's head smashes against a screen whose overriding design requirement is to stop the bullet from a handgun at close quarters. Terrible things happen to the human face when it is in unimpeded collision with such a material.

‘Please?' I implore. ‘We are not in a hurry.' I look at his New York cab licence photo, which by New York City law must be displayed in full view of the passenger. It shows a surly man, who bears an uncanny resemblance to the World Trade Center bomber. His name is Ahmet Dalliwhal, and he has, I imagine, probably picked up his driving skills on the Karachi turnpike, the most fatality-strewn stretch of road in the short but violent history of fossil fuels.

‘Please, Ahmet,' I implore. Using their actual names is a trick that sometimes works for me, it somehow bursts through the thick cocoon of rudeness they learn at cabbie school. ‘Ahmet, you go slow?'

He looks at me in the mirror with complete incomprehension and not a little disdain.

‘Oh, leave it,' says Joanna crossly, scooting right down in her seat for safety.

Thursday, 23 July

Joanna

I decide to take the doctor's advice of bedrest seriously and retire with the cordless and my address book to make some calls. I ring David Usborne, my usually chipper rival on the
Independent,
to quiz him for gossip.

‘I feel dreadful,' he says. ‘I've got a hangover and last night I was refused entry after waiting half an hour in line at Mother, that night club round the corner from you.'

‘Why?' I ask, envisaging perhaps a fight.

‘It's
SO
humiliating I can hardly bear to tell you,' he groans. ‘It was because I was wearing a cardigan.'

Friday, 24 July

Peter

Not normally given to great acts of solicitousness, I am overly attentive to Joanna, treating her as though she is an invalid or a patient who has just undergone major surgery. Whatever the risks, Joanna evidently finds my behaviour irritating. She makes it clear that she isn't interested in me talking-the-talk. She wants me to walk-the-walk. This, she makes clear, entails delivery of tea and any other required refreshments to her bedside, a general lack of personal criticism for the foreseeable future and uninterrupted possession of the TV remote control. If I comply in these, and various other ways that may make themselves known to her in due course, I will be able to prevent her from some terrible side-effect.

‘Digestives,' she moans, propped up magisterially upon our California King Sized Serta Perfect Sleeper, ‘I must have digestive biscuits.'

I am soon cruising the muggy lengths of Seventh Avenue in pursuit of the elusive biscuit. It takes me some time to realize that in the United States digestives are called graham crackers.

‘Look,' says Joanna when I return triumphantly bearing her biscuits – she has apparently lost all interest in my bounty – ‘look at the picture, isn't it sweet?'

She holds out the sonogram photo of our child. I look at it for some time. It is completely indecipherable to me. I can't make out what species it is. I can't even make out which is top or bottom.

‘Look, there are its eyes, there's its nose, its little ribs just like a tiny toastrack.'

I feel as though I'm looking at one of those pointilliste games and if I stare long enough the shape of a baby will suddenly become apparent to me too. At least I should be able to clock the toastrack. But there is still nothing.

‘Aahh,' says Joanna, going all soppy. ‘I think it's smiling for the camera.'

I look and look some more and slowly a vague form does emerge. It appears to be a malevolent hamster. Then its shape changes. It is now a thin-faced, beaky bird. Whatever it is, it is definitely scowling.

Saturday, 25 July

Joanna

My friends with babies have all eagerly warned me about the pain of delivery, recommending epidurals at the first contraction. I'm sure I'll follow the path of least resistance, but I am currently obsessed by the tale of a New Jersey schoolgirl, who is awaiting trial for murder. She delivered her own baby in a college bathroom in total silence before returning to the dance floor.

According to reports, Melissa Drexler, a quiet, hardworking student hoping to study design at university, arrived at her school prom at 7.30 p.m. At 7.45 p.m., after complaining to her boyfriend of ‘women's problems' she disappeared into the loo, only to emerge half-an-hour later with fresh make-up, her delivery over.

She then danced for two hours until a cleaner, dispatched to clear up blood in a toilet cubicle, found the baby's body, which Drexler had strangled before dropping in the trash can. Finally, a teacher deduced what had happened and confronted her.

I am staggered by this story. How could Drexler have given birth so quickly and in silence and still had energy left to go dancing? I suppose her seventeen-year-old body was in better shape to attempt this feat than mine. Though I am fit, I am still thirty-six and in medical terms am now referred to as a ‘geriatric prima gravida'. However much I prepare myself and however short my labour, I can guarantee it will not be in silence.

Sunday, 26 July

Peter

We retreat to the Hamptons on Long Island to wait for the test results. Like Paris in August, New York feels deserted in the summer; many of its residents retreat from the oppressive heat by migrating to the mountains or the seaside. I tend to think of New York as a temperate northern city, when in fact it is on the same latitude as Lisbon.

We have rented a summer place in East Hampton. There is one fact about East Hampton that tells you most of what you need to know. It has no launderette. This is the place to come for a lingering death by a thousand social comparisons. This is where celebs come to breed. It's the summer home to Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Donna Karan, Lauren Bacall and Steven Spielberg. This is a place where ordinary millionaires feel poor and envious.

What on earth are we doing here?

We live in a rather grand shingled house on the Circle, close to the centre of East Hampton, the most moneyed and the most expensive of the series of manicured villages and towns that collectively make up the Hamptons. How can we afford such a desirable house? We can't. Some time ago the owner divided it into four apartments, two on the ground floor and two upstairs. And we share one of the small two-bedroom ‘garden apartments' with another couple, Dani and Michael, friends from Manhattan. The idea is that we rotate weekly with them during the summer, but often we all pile down together and squeeze into the flat.

Although we like being at the seaside, we are embarrassed by our modest digs. They are smaller than most servants' quarters in these parts. In fact we go to great lengths to conceal our minute dwelling from visiting friends. We endeavour to arrange to meet them at restaurants or at the beach. We never invite them back or entertain at home. But despite our attempts at domestic quarantine, one couple in particular, smelling a social rat, has inveigled our address and ambushes us. Through the window of our little kitchen I spot Henry and Amy, an intense Wall Street couple, who are summering here. I sound the social alarm and we rush out to head them off at the door.

‘Wow, that's quite a place you guys have got there,' Amy remarks admiringly over dinner later. ‘Traditional shingle like that, so central, big garden, all-year rental. That must set you back a bit?'

I shrug noncommittally, realizing that she is under the impression that we rent the entire house but doing nothing to disabuse her of her upward appraisal of our financial standing.

‘Your last book must have sold well,' she continues, with a probing laugh.

‘Not bad. Not bad at all,' I say equivocally.

That night as we lie cramped in our tiny double bed, I am overcome by cabin fever.

‘Why didn't you tell them that we just rent the flat?' Joanna asks. ‘Then we wouldn't have to keep up this ludicrous charade.'

‘I don't know,' I say miserably. ‘I knew she'd say something condescending.'

Why did I do it? Probably because she'd already sneered at our hire car, an ugly Japanese compact with a prematurely crimped tail, like buttocks defensively clenched after an unwanted pinch. It is painted in the gruesome shade of avocado green inexplicably popular in 1970s bathroom suites.

‘We journalists and writers are the court jesters to those with real money,' I complain. ‘We dance around on the social periphery, performing for their entertainment, until they tire of our company and rusticate us.' And I remind her of a story told by our friend John, a columnist for the
New York Times.
He was at dinner at the house of a wealthy banker friend, plying them with anecdotes and witticisms, when the hostess turned to him and patted him on the arm. ‘That's why we like you, John,' she tinkled. ‘You're one of our
interesting
friends.'

As opposed to one of their peers, on the same economic level.

Joanna is snoring lightly.

Wednesday, 29 July

Joanna

We are lounging listlessly on our wooden-slatted Adirondack chairs on the porch in East Hampton waiting for the phone to ring. At the hospital last Monday Elena told us it would take six to eight days to get the results of the amniocentesis and it is now exactly a week later. I have been trying to factor in the effect of a weekend on the tests. Do weekends count, or are the six to eight days only working days?

‘If the news is good,' Elena told us during the workshop, ‘then we just leave a message saying congratulations! If the news is bad we leave a message asking you to call us.'

I wonder if I should phone to check if the results are in yet, but she did say 4.30 p.m. and I should probably keep the line free. The last time I can remember feeling like this was waiting for A-level results.

I can't imagine how we will react if, instead of announcing in a jubilant tone that everything is fine, they ask us to go in and discuss the results. How exactly will they word it? I suppose they must be trained to give bad news. I will, of course, insist on knowing what the results are over the phone, but what will we do if it does have Down's? We have already decided that we would insist on a second opinion, though they told us they always grow two sets of cultures, just to be certain.

Thursday, 30 July

Peter

‘Which is it: Sean “Puffy” Combs or Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs?'

‘I dunno. And it's pronounced “Coombes”, anyway,' replies Joanna, deep in her copy of
Hamptons,
the glossy freebie that runs nothing but group pictures of society revellers.

‘God, look at us!' I bluster, startling Joanna out of her magazine. ‘Discussing the name of a rapper with all the exacting pedantry of a Debrett's sub-editor ensuring the precise honorific of an hereditary peer.'

‘Well, at least Puff Daddy worked to get where he is,' says Joanna.

It's a fair point. Puff Daddy Combs, a black rap artist who now has his own successful record label, has exploded onto the Hamptons' social scene this season with all the finesse of a cluster bomb. He has purchased a grand manor and taken up residence there with a large retinue of flunkies, quickly becoming a fixture at major Hamptons' events, to the consternation of the Old Money set, a set that has been on the decline for some time here, vanquished by Wall Street Masters of the Universe, and Hollywood Show-people on furlough.

‘Look, he's on the List,' says Joanna, once again nose in glossy.

The List is an apparently arbitrary catalogue of names of people-on-the-Hampton's-scene, selected at the whim of Jason Binn, publisher of
Hamptons.
Our fellow summer tenement dweller, Ron, who lives upstairs with his psychotherapist wife Betsy in what is probably the only apartment in East Hampton smaller than ours, has recently unsettled Joanna with the news that he has been featured on the List no fewer than three times.