The Decision: Lizzie's Story (7 page)

About an hour into the ruckus, Hannah and the twins appeared, all sniffles, trying to be brave. Amanda fetched out her box of treats. She worked a few hours a
week in a nail salon as part of her beauty course and like all us Carmichael girls, had a sweet tooth. She’d take the remaining wages she didn’t spend on beauty products to the penny sweet shop in the arcade, saving them all from prying eyes and fingers in a red and white spotted box under the bed. Because she shared a room with me, it had a little padlock on it and the key hung around a chain on her wrist.

“Can’t be too careful, greedy cows in this house grazin’.” She’d say. But today she shared with all of us and it was only Sal who wasn’t present. She’d stopped by at the landing when she’d heard us talking, but when offered the treasured red and white spotted box, Sal had just turned up her nose and walked out, muttering something about us all getting diabetes. “Bitch.” Amanda had called after her, but I’d felt sorry for Sal at that moment. She just wasn’t able to let her guard down, ever; not even with her own family.

A couple of hours later and my name was called from downstairs by my mother. I appeared at the top of the stairs, hesitant, expecting to see my father’s angry face peering up. Yet there was no one, so I crept down, towards the living room. Both my parents stood in the middle of the room. My father’s face was flushed red, my mother’s hair practically standing on end from the stress of the argument. But both were making an attempt to dampen down their real feelings and control their fury with each other, just for me, just for that moment.

“Your father has something to say to you.” My mother said pointedly.

I looked to Dad, expectant. After hearing the commotion downstairs, I wasn’t sure I could believe he would not go off on one at me. And he certainly looked as if he wanted to. But perhaps my mother had shamed him into it, for the many moments of our lives he had missed (or perhaps he had finally realised himself), because
instead he simply said: “It’ll all be alright, princess.” We hugged and I let myself believe his and Mum’s words. They were on my side. Everything would be okay now.

Phone calls were made and it wasn’t long before Mike and his own father Francis were seated awkwardly in our front room. Francis was an elderly man; too old to have kept the interest of his much younger wife. Mike’s mother Maria had left home abruptly when Mike was just five years old, arriving from time to time to pick him up and spirit him away with a succession of uncles. A few weeks here; a few months there, but always she would drop him off again eventually with Francis. The excuse was always same, “I just need to sort myself out” and Maria would be all kisses and cuddles, promising her little boy she would return for him. When Mike was ten, Maria came back after a particularly long absence, this time with a new brother for him: James. Far from solidifying the family unit as she had hoped – she was married now, she told Mike on a trip to MacDonald’s – Mike out-and-out rejected her, James and whoever the new husband was, telling her he never wanted to see any of them again. Of course he did (Francis was far too old-school to allow his son to live in the same town as his mother and not see her), but Mike never lived with Maria again, nor James or his stepfather.

A part of me had wanted to cry when Mike had told me that story. It had been a rare moment of intimacy for him. Usually Mike had his guard up like Sal; sure people were coming in at him from either side, just itching to have a go. The hurt on his features was so tangible, he had looked like a little boy in that moment, despite the lip ring and the tattoo on his neck that had nearly given his father a heart attack. I had hated his mother in those moments, but also Mike’s father for allowing it to continue. Mike had needed someone to step in for him, fight his corner, yet Francis had allowed a ten year old boy to make that huge decision! And it was one Mike said he tortured
himself over, every day. Should he have forgiven his mother? Was choosing Francis the right thing? Had he been wrong in not getting to know his own brother? Mike’s life had meant fleeting moments of James’ birthday parties, snatched dinners after school, the odd weekend outing. During these times, the stepfather would affect his jolly laugh and Maria would look adoringly at both her boys, yet Mike would always feel sure she must love James more and he was the outsider. So Mike stalked his way through life angrily, his shoulders hunched, his fists clenched. He was unable to believe anyone could offer anything for its own sake, without an ulterior motive. Though he had let me into his life, I was someone to hang out with, not a real person in my own right; I knew that. Sometimes I caught him looking at me, as if he couldn’t believe I was with him and he was the luckiest lad in the world. But most of the time he reserved the same lack of regard for me as one would a toothbrush, mug or flannel: handy to have, but ultimately disposable.

Now he had been summoned to my parents’ home, with his father, for the ultimate awkward situation in any young lad’s life:
what were his intentions towards me and the baby I was carrying?
I saw anger and humiliation in Mike’s eyes and most of it was directed at me.
You stupid bitch
, his eyes said. Hurt and confusion blossomed inside me. I could not have done this on my own! I could accept only half of the blame. I had not forced him to drink all those beers, nor chase them with whiskey, with Ben and the rest of his cronies in The Foc’s’le those few short weeks ago. I had been there as Mike threw up in the pub toilets. I’d stood by and watched and not interfered as Mike had attempted to win the money back he’d lost in the earlier pool game to Ben’s mate Drew. Drew was a new guy we hadn’t seen before, who was keen on confrontation. He had spent the whole night baiting Mike. And Mike couldn’t back down, throwing good money after bad, the argument brewing
throughout, ready to erupt and end the night prematurely. I had sunk vodka after vodka waiting for Mike, then run after him when the inevitable fight had broken out that had him ejected from the premises, even though I had secretly thought the whole argument was Mike’s fault. I had been the good girlfriend! And later I had consoled him like good girlfriends do, forgetting only the condoms in his wallet pocket and the notion of “safe sex”, in my own drunken state.
But then, so had he.

Despite the unspoken blame game between Mike and I, the supposedly real grown ups droned on about responsibility and plans and contingency measures. Old and pale, Francis looked impossibly frail, his skin and white hair turned yellow with nicotine like the pages of an old book. I knew peripherally Francis could only be in his early seventies – Mike had mentioned it once – which made him barely older than my own grandfather on my mother’s side, whom the twins still called GanGan. GanGan was seventy one years old and strong as an ox, in comparison to Francis who looked as if a puff of wind would blow him over. GanGan lived a life on the move with the army, then as a landscape gardener. He chased after work and like my own father, turned up randomly, sometimes staying a few days, other times a few months. My grandmother had died from breast cancer when my mother was just twelve. GanGan and my mother were the last of their kind and wasn’t difficult to see why my mother had chosen a man like my father: he was the only type of man she had ever known. So if Francis was too elderly to have kept Mike’s mother’s interest, he was far too old to have a son as young as Mike. Listening to the old man, my heart lurched. Word after word, his out-of-date ideas and concepts poured out of him: we needed to think about what others would say. I should be kept in the house for my “confinement”. After the birth, Mike and I should get married.

“I don’t think anyone’s getting married,” my mother cut in, with cold authority. Then her eyes darted to me and then resentfully, towards Mike, “Unless of course the kids want to?”

Kids.
So typical of her to describe us like that, I thought. Though she did have a point: I didn’t feel old enough to get married. But then I didn’t exactly feel old enough to have a child, either. So I found myself shaking my head enthusiastically:
no, I did not want to get married.
I saw Mike was making the same gesture and actually felt relief. The meeting came to an abrupt, business-like conclusion about an hour later, with my father and Francis actually shaking hands whilst my mother, Mike and I watched incredulously. It was decided: Mike would continue with university as planned and complete his first year. I would stay at home with my parents and have the baby. Mike would visit when possible. The following summer, we would look at our options again. I had hoped to be able to speak to Mike on my own – this was our business after all, no one else’s! – but was thwarted when Francis spirited him away in his little Metro.

I followed them out to the car like a lost sheep. “Call me…?” I said.

Mike shrugged and said simply, “… Yeah.” I watched them both leave, feeling simultaneously lost and relieved, not understanding either.

“Thank God that’s over.” Mum declared as I trudged back inside. She poured herself a large gin, even though it was barely five in the evening.

“Funny bloke, that Francis.” My father mused.

“You’d think he’d never met a child born out of wedlock before.” Mum said.

I bristled at the inference. I was only too aware of my parents’ lack of marriage and for some reason, it had always bothered me. I was never concerned with the tag “illegitimate”, which I felt was hopelessly out of date. Besides, it was not an
accusation that had ever been levied at me or my sisters. There were plenty of other people at school whose parents were not married, too. But there were no wedding photographs of my parents when they were young, standing on church or register office steps, their faces hopeful for the future. There were no celebrations of milestones achieved in the relationship. Instead they trudged onwards grimly, together only sometimes. My mother wore a ring on her engagement finger: the only thing my Dad had ever given her besides us girls, she’d say when she had had one too many. Mum always answered to “Carmichael” too, even though technically her surname was still Dale, the same as GanGan’s. Perhaps it was because I felt my father’s rejection of marriage to my mother was ultimately a rejection of us, which was in turn backed up by his long absences from our lives. I wondered now if history was repeating itself and I was destined to have the same kind of relationship with Mike for the next twenty years: together and yet not? I shuddered at the thought.

My mother called the university as promised and before I knew it, I was out of the running. A few days later, they wrote to me: did I want to defer my place? I had no idea. Perhaps I wouldn’t even want to do that course anymore once the baby got here? Maybe I would want to do something else. Or perhaps I wouldn’t even want to go to university! Mum’s words came back to me a second time, “When in doubt, do without.” With a heavy heart, I ticked “no” on the reply slip and returned it in the enclosed SAE.

Just three weeks after news of my pregnancy broke, there had been only two more fleeting meetings between Mike and I, before he needed to leave for uni. We tried to be as “normal” as possible, pretending our thoughts in that initial meeting had never happened. All of a sudden, we were at the train station saying goodbye. Things were strained between us and I wondered if it was the moment I would look back on
as losing him forever, even though he handed me a card with I LOVE YOU printed on the front. Inside, was merely scrawled, “Forever, Mike x”, but I couldn’t believe the spidery handwriting any more than my own heart. Could he? I wondered how long we would limp on, then pushed the unwanted thought to the bottom of my brain and concentrated on the positive instead.

We could make it. We had to. We were having a baby.

Before long I was throwing up every day like clockwork between the hours of seven and eight am, causing the other girls to whinge I was hogging the cottage’s only bathroom. Even Hannah and the twins’ initial enthusiasm about my pregnancy was forgotten as they found the toilet occupied at the exact time they needed to use it before going to school. But Mum held my hair back and batted their complaints away. She even took to waking them early, but even that didn’t diffuse the situation, for Hannah in particular was not a morning person. She would sit at the kitchen table in pyjamas, legs crossed, a face like thunder, eating dry cornflakes out the box and sulking. True to form, Sal was amused by the state I found myself in, smiling and tutting in mock sympathy at the grey pallor of my face, delighted at the prospect that I would soon be larger than her.

Snatched phone calls, wall posts on Facebook and text messages kept mine and Mike’s relationship alive, as did his neverending flow of cards through the post. I was touched as each one arrived, my name and address always enveloped by a wonky heart he’d drawn in biro, a SWALK on the back. Yet a selection of thoughtfully chosen stationery could not a relationship make. Despite this, I told myself that army families could survive a spouse’s absences of up to a year, or that Asian couples sometimes found themselves thrown together in arranged marriages, with little in common other than their parents’ business connections. Yet they still made it work!
In comparison, Mike and I had the biggest connection anyone could ever have: a child. We had as good a chance as anyone… Didn’t we?

My twelve week scan soon came however and Mike was nowhere to be seen, for he had first year exams. Mum accompanied me instead and she cried as she regarded the blurry blob on screen. For a moment I thought she was sad or ashamed, but moments later she was enveloping me in her bony embrace and telling me how proud she was of me. A little non-plussed by the sight of my baby on screen, hardly able to relate to the image, I accepted her words gladly, sure the same sense of love and belonging my mother had for us would come to me later.

More time passed and Mike became just a voice at the end of the phone, as my parents took it upon themselves to be there for me, instead. My usually small frame expanded rapidly. I was carrying the baby high and felt bent over backwards by the weight of the pregnancy. The twenty week scan rolled around and it was confirmed I was carrying a boy. My Dad beamed from ear to ear, telling everyone he knew the first Carmichael boy was on his way. My sisters all cooed over the scan pictures and Hannah even tried crocheting a blue cardigan for the baby, though all she managed in the end was a wonky over-sized square, which she wrapped up for me anyway. I watched them all get excited and wondered when I would. All I felt was despair, clutching at my insides as I contemplated the future. What would become of me and Mike? What would become of this child?
What would become of me?