Ricochet Baby (16 page)

‘We’ll come down and collect Roberta and Nathan straight away,’ Edith says.

‘Roberta’s with Paul and we’re not sure, exactly, where they are.’

‘Then we’ll come and get Nathan.’

‘You can’t,’ Fay says, in alarm. ‘I can’t give him to you without Paul’s say so.’

‘You’ll have to hand him over sooner or later. Roberta
obviously
needs help.’

This is altogether the wrong thing to say to Fay. ‘I don’t know how you’ve got the nerve, Edith. How many times have you seen Roberta lately?’

This causes Edith to pause. ‘Well, you have to go to work, don’t you?’ she says.

‘I can take leave.’ Nathan screams in the background, pausing only to hiccup. ‘Look, Edith, I’ll catch you later.

And then the phone rings again, and this time it is Wendy. Glass and Bernard are trying to eat lunch at the kitchen table. They all experience a rush of hope, that Roberta is found, that she is on her way to them.

‘Yes, do come, Wendy,’ Edith says. ‘I’d be glad to have you here for a while.’

‘You can’t let her come,’ says Glass, when she comes back to the table. ‘What are you thinking of?’ He means, are you drunk?

‘She’ll help,’ Edith answers, with conviction.’

‘What if Roberta brings the baby here?’

‘Then Wendy can stay with Bernard. There’s plenty of room over there.’

‘Forget it,’ says Bernard. He and his father glance at each other, suddenly united.

‘You’re not fit to drive,’ Glass tells Edith, ‘and I’m not going to town to pick her up.’

‘J
OSH
, I
DON’T
know where she is any more,’ says Marise, over the phone. I’ve been to the house again, but there’s nobody there, not even a nappy on the line.’

‘Leda says she’ll throw out the placenta. I guess I can’t really blame her.’

‘Can you stop her?’

‘She thinks I’m soft on that woman. Shit, I only saw her once. That’s crazy.’

‘Bring it round to my place. I can put it in my freezer.’

‘Are you sure about this?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘D’you believe in all that stuff?’

‘I don’t know. The Egyptians buried them too.’

‘Did they?’

‘So I’m told. It’s supposed to be the baby’s twin. We’d better be on the safe side.’

‘Yeah, I reckon,’ says Josh Thwaite, relieved.

‘Y
OU DIDN’T LEAVE
her alone in that room, Paul? How could you?’

‘She promised, Mum, she said she’d be okay.’

‘Promises, Paul. For goodness’ sake, they’re getting the
mental
patients to sign bits of paper these days, promising not to kill themselves. What’s the very first thing they do when they get out the door? Don’t shake your head at me like that, son. They kill themselves, that’s what they do, with their useless pieces of paper folded up in their pockets right next to their hearts. I thought you would have known better.’

And she does say what’s been on her mind for years. ‘I don’t know how you ever got yourself into this mess in the beginning.’

E
DITH WALKS OUT
into the garden where she can’t hear the voices of the men. She stands and surveys the central rose garden with savage distaste. Her Old Blush Chinas are planted behind pink verbena
which have developed rust in the overnight rain. She ought to do something about it, but she can’t be bothered. Instead, she tears a verbena plant from the damp soft ground, leaving a yawning gap in the garden layout. She pulls out another plant, then another, flinging them behind her as she crawls along the ground on all fours.

This is where Wendy finds her. She has hitched a ride from town on the rural delivery van.

‘Did they tell you I was drunk?’ says Edith, when she sees her.

But Edith has not been drinking; Wendy can see this. Today, although Edith looks harrowed by life, she is sober. ‘They found her,’ she says, sitting back on her heels. ‘They found Roberta.’ Because she is so tired she has forgotten that Wendy doesn’t know what’s
happened
. So, having begun this way, she has to tell her all the story as much as anything to explain the destruction she is wreaking on her garden, although at first Wendy cannot see the connection.

‘We should never have come back to the farm,’ says Edith, crouched on her heels, her hands covered with plant stains.

‘This is paradise,’ says Wendy. ‘How can you say that?’

‘Paradise, huh?’ Edith rocks backwards and forwards, her head in her arms. ‘Wendy, you’re always on about art.’

‘Ye-es?’

‘This was mine. Not books or paintings or willow baskets or paper quilling or embroidery, although each might serve as a
statement
, but a garden. Perfection among the wreckage, if you want to be literary, Wendy.’

Wendy is silent.

‘Get drunk with me, Wendy. Let’s get rotten.’

‘No,’ says Wendy.

‘Scared bitch. I thought we were supposed to be sisters.’

‘Why do you do it?’ asks Wendy.

O
F COURSE THEY
don’t leave Roberta in the boarding house room alone. Unasked, an assortment of people become involved in her life: Paul, his mother and father, Paul’s sister Laura, who flies down from Auckland to help with the situation, the police. They won’t leave her to eat Kentucky Fried and stare into the sweetness of silence. She cannot be allowed to abandon her son this easily. She’ll be sorry, is what they say, and, naturally, they are right.

I don’t want a mess, Paul tells his family and friends. New baby, good job, beautiful house. To this list he tentatively adds a
pretty wife who could make something of herself if she felt like it. At the moment she is not very well adjusted but he can see they will have to work on this. Life can be too perfect.

The policewoman is not unkind when she knocks on Roberta’s door. ‘I have to talk to you,’ she says. ‘There’s so much on the news about people, y’know, injuring themselves when they’re depressed.

‘I won’t,’ says Roberta.

‘People say that. You have got some pills, haven’t you?’

Roberta is silent. ‘I didn’t ask for them,’ she says, finally.

‘We can’t just ignore it when families report things like this.’

‘I explained to my parents.’

‘Well, actually, dear, it was your mother-in-law. We haven’t talked to your parents yet. Would you like us to get in touch?’

‘I don’t want to speak to them.’

‘Would you like to go to a women’s refuge?’ asks the
policewoman
.

‘No, I wouldn’t,’ says Roberta, backing away.

‘I’ll be back in the morning,’ says the policewoman, looking grim.

After she has gone, the proprietor bangs on her door. ‘You’ll have to be out in the morning,’ he says.

‘You said I could have a week.’

‘A mistake in the bookings. Sorry,’ he says. She hears the uneven tread of his limp on the stairs.

F
AY KNOWS
a counsellor. She knows several. She and her daughter Laura discuss their relative merits.

‘Stress management,’ states Laura. ‘She definitely needs that.’ Laura is a health communications officer so she has some special insight.

‘Yes, obvious. Very anxious, too. Paul says she doesn’t sleep well,’ Fay says.

‘She lacks motivation,’ Laura says. ‘I mean she hasn’t really got anywhere much, has she?’ Laura is wearing an old candlewick dressing gown of Fay’s that they have found at the back of her wardrobe. It is three o’ clock in the morning, and they have drunk several pots of tea. ‘This thing really can’t go on, Mummy, it’s too big a toll on you.’

‘One does what one has to,’ says Fay.

‘When you think what he could have had. Well, he’s messed up his life — Paul has to be responsible too.’

‘Well, you can’t blame him too much,’ Fay says. ‘She’s a deceitful girl.’

‘Really?’

‘Didn’t I tell you? Paul found a cupboard full of feeding
formula
.’

‘Oh my God, no.’ Then Laura shrugs. ‘Perhaps it’s just as well. I mean how would you have managed these last few days?’

‘Yes, but don’t you see? She’s been planning this for a while.’

T
INA AND
U
LRIC’S
rooms are situated in an elegant old house with polished wooden floors and high ceilings. The furnishings in the waiting room include glass-topped tables, bright Scandinavian rugs and leather-covered couches.

Laura crosses her legs at the ankles and bends her knees so that she sits in a graceful S-shaped line, settling herself in with a copy of
Vogue.
‘I thought you might like a woman to come with you,’ Laura says. She was waiting in the car when Paul picked her up.

‘I don’t care,’ says Roberta.

Roberta has never known exactly what Laura communicates about which aspects of health. She asked once. Laura had responded with a list of outcomes and probabilities and dividends for the future. There’s a lot of unsubstantiated claptrap around in people’s minds, Laura said, which leads Roberta to the view that she works for the government on cost-cutting measures in hospitals.

‘I don’t actually need to see anyone,’ Roberta says.

‘Well,’ says Laura, in a sweet, reasonable voice, ‘if you see Tina and Ulric and have a chat to them, you’ll make us feel better about things. You could do that for us, and then it’ll be over.’

And then I’ll be free to go, Roberta thinks. She has never realised how like her mother Laura is, and suddenly she thinks that they are equally detestable. No, it’s not sudden — she has always suspected that she doesn’t like Fay. But how can you justify not
liking
someone who is beyond reproach? She doesn’t speak to Paul and Laura again until they reach the counsellors’ rooms.

The three of them, Tina, Ulric and Roberta, sit in deep chairs in what might pass for a circle, although Roberta has the
impression
that the others have their backs towards the door.

Tina clicks her fingers at Ulric in a jazzy way. ‘Let’s go,’ she says. Roberta sees how she perceives herself as switched on,
understands
why Fay is convinced of her suitability for the task ahead. Ulric is a short, nuggety man with brushed-in dye through his hair and tobacco-stained fingers.

‘Yeah, let’s shoot,’ says Ulric, exuding a challenge that says we’ll-have-no-nonsense-here. His accent is slightly American. ‘This is a pretty funny thing to have done to your family.’ Direct approach.

‘They’re Paul’s family,’ says Roberta. She hopes she sounds patient and respectful.

‘Roberta.’ Tina leans forward, speaking as if to a child. ‘Fay and Milton are a very loving, forgiving couple. You’re a lucky young woman to have married into a family like theirs.’

‘Am I?’ says Roberta.

‘They don’t find it easy to relate to you. I’ve heard that you don’t relate easily to people.’

‘Have you? What a bummer.’ She pulls herself up; they’re needling her and she’s walking straight into it.

‘Look, you can’t just go around leaving your baby the way you did on Tuesday.’

‘I thought they’d look after Nathan.’

‘That’s hardly the point.’

‘What is the point?’ says Roberta wearily. The enormity of her mistake is beginning to hit her. She should never have given Nathan to Fay. But who else, that’s the whole problem. She can’t explain this to them.

‘Well, don’t you think its a bit of a slap in the face?’

‘No,’ says Roberta. ‘Giving them their grandson isn’t a slap in the face. It’s hardly denying relationship, if that’s what’s important.’

‘It’s an odd idea wanting to give your baby away to anyone.’ Tina has a silly, vain face, Roberta decides.

‘Sometimes people just have to.’ But she is aware how
uncertain
she sounds.

‘And live to regret it.’ This from Ulric. Roberta sees he’s
playing
the fall guy.

‘Do you think I wanted to give him up?’ Roberta allows a note of surprise to creep into her voice.

‘Then why didn’t you give him to your parents?’ Ulric snaps. He is definitely letting her know he won’t take any bullshit.

Roberta doesn’t reply.

‘Perhaps,’ says Tina, ‘you don’t trust your parents with Nathan?’

In the silence that follows, Roberta pulls her sleeves down over her hands, and fiddles with the cuffs.

‘Perhaps you’d like to tell us a bit about your background?’

‘No, I wouldn’t. Thank you. I wouldn’t want to do that.’

‘Uh huh. Have you ever considered psychotherapy?’

‘No.’

‘Pity. You might find it helpful.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with my family,’ Roberta shouts.

‘I see.’ Ulric makes a note.

Tina pushes a box of tissues towards Roberta.

‘It’s all right, thank you.’ Her hands are trembling so violently she can hardly hold the cup of coffee they have given her, but she is not crying, will not cry, not this time.

Tina tries again. ‘Tell us about your interests, Roberta. What do you do with your spare time?’

‘I read.’

‘What sort of books?’

‘Oh, novels and things.’

‘Made-up stories, eh? What about non-fiction? Real things?’

‘No, not much. I used to be a gymnast.’

‘Ah.’ Tina sits up. ‘Gym? Aerobics, that sort of thing?’

‘Not really. Competitions. Well, you can’t keep that up
forever
, can you?’ She is trying to ingratiate herself.

‘It might be a good idea for you to join up for an aerobics class,’ says Tina, ‘get your confidence back, self-esteem. Lots of
people
to meet.’

‘I don’t want to meet people,’ says Roberta.

‘Why not?’

‘That’s the problem.’ Tina and Ulric have spoken at the same time.

‘I know enough people,’ she says too quickly.

Ulric puts down his pen. ‘So you think you’re different do you, a cut above other people?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘Thousands of people enjoy aerobics,’ says Tina. ‘Do you think there’s something wrong with enjoying aerobics?’

‘Who taught you to be a counsellor?’ Roberta asks.

Tina pushes herself back in her cushion. ‘I don’t think we’re making much progress here, Ulric’

Ulric scratches his chin. ‘So how is
your marriage, Mrs Cooksley?’ he says.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Paul says you have been rather indifferent lately. Your sex life, I’m talking about. Cold, he says you’re cold.’

Roberta’s eyes fill with unbidden tears. ‘I’m sorry about Paul,’ she says. ‘I knew it wasn’t enough. He and I talked about it.’

‘Oh, you talked about it. And when did you talk about it?’

‘At the bed and breakfast place. I woke up, and I said to him, would it be enough, the way we were. Of course, I knew it wasn’t.’

‘You actually talked about sex?’

‘I don’t think that’s any of your business.’

‘You see, Mrs Cooksley’ says Ulric, pursuing his distancing act, ‘it seems to me that you haven’t exactly told us the truth.’

‘I haven’t told you any lies, either.’

‘You have some odd distortions of what truth really is. You’re hardly a straightforward kind of person, are you?’

‘Why do you say that?’

Ulric appears to have had enough of her too. ‘Fancy
foot-work
,
young lady, I’ll give you that.’ He leans back and swivels in his chair, so that he can look out the window past her head. ‘The circumstances of Nathan’s birth were hardly, what would you say, normal?’

‘Is that what this is about?’

‘Well, were they normal or not?’

Roberta stands up. ‘If you’ll excuse me.’

Tina and Ulric stand quickly with her. Tina says, ‘Roberta, we want to help. Let’s have another go at understanding each other. If the three of us could just try and all get in touch with our feelings. Do you go to church?’

‘I’ve been,’ Roberta tells Tina, her teeth gritted.

‘Then you’ll know how people turn to one another and say God be with you, and give their hands to each other. Why don’t we just try that, the three of us? Or give each other a big hug.’

‘I don’t believe you people are for real,’ Roberta says.

Tina extends a look of heavy pity. ‘Paul and his family wanted to keep this within the family They wanted to save your face.’

‘From whom?’

‘People.’

‘People. Always people. I’m not going to tell people, are you?’

‘Roberta, you don’t understand. Paul is going to take you to the doctor. This will get much worse for you before it gets better.’

Such is punishment. Tina did not offer hope with her
diagnosis
and Roberta was suddenly too weary to argue.

F
OR
I
AM
ill. In the end, I have to admit this to myself. I have made plans, carried them through, even asserted myself a little, or so I think. But the effort has worn me out. I abandon myself to sleep again, on the downstairs couch of the house in Ashton Fitchett Drive, where, when I was in my plain room under the guest house roof, I had sworn I would never go again. This time when I wake up, my doctor looks down at me. He isn’t carrying a strait-jacket, but he might as well. I decide to go quietly.

H
OW MANY PEOPLE
think about being admitted to a psychiatric hospi tal? I’ll tell you what I think; there is nobody who doesn’t say to themselves, it could as easily have been me. Somewhere, just inside our consciousness, we have this small mechanism that ticks over and over
like one of my father’s electric fences, beep beep beep, and one day somebody hits it the wrong way, and that’s it, the trigger’s gone off.

Show me the person who hasn’t seen darkness. Who hasn’t walked up to the edge and tiptoed away empty-mouthed from the sweet taste of madness and death? It could be anything: a bad-
tempered
teacher; an indifferent salesperson who refuses to allow you to return a garment you never meant to buy; the refrigerator repair man who doesn’t turn up on time and makes you late for work; your supervisor who bawls you out when you do get to work; the woman who beats you to a car park on a hot day; the mechanic who fails the car for its warrant of fitness; getting your period;
getting
your period again. I’m getting into women’s stuff here. Well, perhaps women have more reasons to go mad than men.

You might survive in the world, or again you might not. You might end up like I did, saying well, yes, that’s not such a bad option. Yes thank you, I will allow myself to be driven to hospital. Oh, take whatever you like, I don’t expect I’ll care what I wear. Can’t I just put on one of those nightgowns or something? No, don’t bother about my make-up, I know I’m ugly and nothing will never make me look right again. It’s okay, I understand. Don’t
pretend
you think any differently.

And then you will walk through the doors and see them
closing
behind you, and you won’t even think, Are they locked? Can I get out of here? Because you just won’t care. If you have never thought about these things, then you haven’t lived in the world.

I
AM ADMITTED
into an acute ward, lined by four beds made up with light yellow covers. The walls are painted cream, there is a lot of varnished wood around. The day room is a combination of dark blues and browns, colours meant to be harmonious but deliberately unexciting. The open-plan ward has windows through which the staff can observe us from the main office station at all times.

The nurse who helps me put away my things is kind. I like her right away, in spite of myself.

‘You’ve got a little boy haven’t you?’ she says.

‘I did have, but I’ve given him to my husband. Well, his mother actually. It’s much the same thing.’

‘Really,’ she says, ‘and when did you do that?’

I have trouble remembering. ‘Yesterday? Perhaps it was the day before.’

‘Was it Tuesday?’ she asks encouragingly.

‘Yes, I think it was.’

‘She’d be pleased to have a little boy?’

I’m warming to her more and more. ‘Surprised, I think.’

The nurse grins. ‘Mothers-in-law need a little tickle up now and then.’

‘They don’t get a good press,’ I say, ‘though some are better than others. I think mine’s a really capable person.’

‘What’s her name?’

I have to think about that, too. The odd thing is, I really have forgotten all sorts of things, as if my memory is a white board that’s just been wiped. ‘Fa-ay,’ I enunciate, giving it two syllables. Giving Fay heaps.

I collapse on the bed, suddenly weak round the knees. ‘I don’t want this to be happening,’ I say. ‘I wish I was dead.’

The nurse sits down beside me. ‘Do you think about dying?’

‘I don’t know.’ I feel her waiting beside me. It’s such an
enormous
fraught question and one I have been avoiding, although people seem intent on investing me with death wishes. I think of the fresh-faced policewoman and her anxiety My hands look like two rabbits sitting in my lap. I wiggle my fingers as if they are ears. I think of my father shooting rabbits. I remember a calf I reared
getting
sent off to the works.