After the End(30)

“How many do you have?” Pip talks over her shoulder. She’s taken off Dylan’s onesie, careful not to dislodge the sticky pads that hold the wires to his chest. I take a ball of cotton wool and dampen it, cleaning his face and behind his ears.

“Four. Liam here’s the youngest.”

Pip squeezes the cloth out and begins gently wiping Dylan’s arms. “And how’s he doing?”

“All right, I think. They don’t tell you anything, do they?”

I wonder if Cheryl will say something, but either she isn’t listening or she’s choosing not to comment. Pip doesn’t answer, and I don’t want to, and so we talk instead to Dylan, telling him we’ll just clean this bit here, and I expect this tickles a bit.

At home, Dylan had a bath every night. It was part of his bedtime routine. Story, bath, milk, bed. Every single night. He must have had—what—seven hundred baths? Eight hundred? How many of those did I give him?

It was hard, with work. I’m gone for a week at a time, sometimes, and when I’m in the UK I’m not back till late, making up for the time spent out of the office. Most evenings I’d come home to find Dylan already in the tub, Pip kneeling beside him, soap suds to her elbows. I’d kiss them both, then go back downstairs to fix us a drink; be ready with a warm lap to read my boy a story when he came back down.

Why didn’t I take over? Why didn’t I get home earlier? Why didn’t I take every opportunity I had to kneel by that tub while my boy—my healthy, happy boy—splashed in the water? Why didn’t I realize one day I might not be able to? All those times I wished Dylan was bigger, imagined taking him fishing, teaching him to drive . . . Wishing away the future, when the present was right there. The present was perfect.

I take a clean ball of cotton and rub it across the palm of Dylan’s left hand. As I do, it tenses, curling around my finger in an echo of when he was a baby. My heart swells, with love and hope and excitement, and I stop thinking. I stop moving. I just stand there while Pip washes our boy, holding his hand, and feeling him hold mine.

Everything changes when you become a father. I didn’t know it at the time, but before Dylan came along I was treading water, taking each day as it came, and rarely thinking about the future; beyond what vacation we might take the following year, or whether I should trade in the car before it needed expensive work done on it.

Sure, I’d felt a responsibility toward Pip when it was just the two of us, but nothing like the way I felt when I drove her and our infant son home from the hospital. I stuck to five miles under the speed limit, my palms sweating on the steering wheel, convinced that, after driving for sixteen years without a wreck, today would be my first. I cursed at someone who pulled out in front of us—didn’t they know we had a baby on board?—then panicked I’d give my kid a potty mouth. What were we thinking, getting pregnant? I wasn’t ready to be a father. I didn’t know enough, I wasn’t old enough, wise enough.

I carried the car seat inside, then came back to help Pip, who was walking like she just got off a horse. I settled them both on the sofa, fetched the nursing cushion, a magazine, a snack, a drink. I hovered nearby as Pip tried to feed, trying to remember what the midwife had said about latching on, and wincing when Pip screwed up her face in pain. And as they finally got it, and Pip closed her eyes and Dylan fed, I looked at my wife and my son, and thought how it was down to me to look after them, and I felt a mix of macho pride and blind terror.

It was a steep learning curve. We had always shared the chores equally, always lived side by side like the two adults we were. Now Pip was home with the baby, and fitting in housework while he napped, and I was bringing home the bacon, like we were June and Ward Cleaver. I’d never worried about losing my job before—there were always other jobs, other opportunities—but now I worked twice as hard, twice as long, because what would we do without my monthly paycheck? I stopped goofing around at weekends and looked at repairs I needed to do around the house. I leapt to Pip’s defense, even though I knew she was more than capable of looking after herself. I turned into my father.

And now my family needs me more than ever. I look at my boy, pale and listless in his crib. I look at my wife, singing nursery rhymes under her breath as she gently washes the dried saliva from around his mouth. I force my fears down into my chest, where they sit in a hard knot. Pip and Dylan depend on me, and all over again, it’s just like that day when I drove them home from the hospital, and I feel just as out of control, just as scared.

All I know is that this is my world, and I can’t lose it.





eleven





Pip


My mother puts a large glass of wine in my hand. I shake my head. “I can’t.”

“It’s medicinal.”

“But if something happens—”

“Then your father will drive you.” Mum pulls my chin up till I’m looking at her. “You need to switch off, Pip.” She strokes my cheek gently and my eyes fill with tears. I’m bone-tired, my body aching like I have the flu. Max is at a dinner. He told Chester he’d be working from home for a few days, but he couldn’t get out of tonight.

“Surely if you explained?” I said, finding it hard to comprehend how Max could think about anything except Dylan.

Max’s response was curt. “He knows.”