After the End(71)

Pip’s: That wasn’t a life.

And, louder, mine:

You’re a failure.

I turn over again, screw my eyes shut, pull the comforter tight around my head.

Forty years old and you’re in the same bedroom you slept in when you were a kid. Your marriage has failed. Your son died.

That wasn’t a life.

The band around my chest, tighter and tighter. Sweats. Stomach cramps.

You’ve got no friends.

I haven’t heard that voice since I was thirteen. Since a stupid argument with Danny Steinway that made me hide in the basement after school, convinced he’d tell all the local kids not to speak to me. Then Danny called on me the next day to walk to school, same as he always did.

Except that now, the voice is right. I don’t have friends. I have work colleagues, neighbors, people I pass the time of day with. I moved to England to be with Pip. I left my friends to have a family. Pip and Dylan were my friends, my family, my world. If we went out it was Pip who organized it; Pip who met a couple she thought I’d like, who suggested drinks, dinner, the cinema. In PICU she knew everyone’s names, knew where the nurses were going on vacation, what year the other kids were in school.

You’re a failure.

Why didn’t I do those things? My gut twists in another wave of nausea I swallow back down. My whole body aches like I have the flu. Is that what’s wrong with me? Do I have the flu?

I don’t know if it’s the same day, or the next day, when I get the email.


Since you’re not taking my calls, I guess I’m going to have to do this by email . . .



Chester.


I know things have been difficult . . . tried to be understanding . . . there is a limit . . .


Have to let you go.



It barely registers. One more bullet point to add to the list.


Lost your wife. Lost your son. Lost your job.


Failure.





thirty-two





Pip


   2015


Max kisses my neck, sweeping my hair away to find the spot behind my ear that makes my knees buckle if I’m standing. We’re lying in bed, facing each other, the covers pulled up despite the warmth of the evening.

“I’ve missed you.” The words tickle my ear.

“You’ve seen me for the last three days.” Max worked from home on Friday, giving him a long weekend to coincide with three of my four days off. I flew in from Dubai on Friday morning and we went to the café round the corner for a greasy-spoon breakfast that beat my jet lag into submission.

“I’ve missed this.”

I move my head and kiss him hard, because it’s true we don’t do this as much as we used to, and because kissing is easier than talking. He moves on top of me and holds my face in two cupped hands, and I run my own hands down his smooth back. Max is in better shape than he’s ever been, and I’m conscious of my soft belly and low-slung breasts. He dips his head and kisses each one in turn, and I think I should be making a sound, so I shut my eyes and moan softly as he moves down my body.

When he speaks again he’s inside me, moving slowly, his whole body pressed against mine, and his lips brushing my cheeks, my nose, my lashes. I lose myself in the warmth that spreads through my body, my back arched and my eyes still closed. Max is murmuring in my ear.

“Let’s have a baby.”

It’s the “a” that does it. As though we haven’t had one before. As though we’re newlyweds taking a teetering step towards parenthood.

“Another baby.”

Max stops. He props himself up on his elbows and looks at me. “Yes,” he says slowly, “another baby.”

I push him off me and roll away. “It’s too soon.”

“It’s been two years.”

I go to the bathroom and shut the door. Two years. Is there a time limit on grief? Should I be ready by now? I know I appear to be functioning normally. I work, I socialise. I don’t burst into tears at inopportune moments, and no one—not a single person—ever takes me to one side anymore to ask How are you doing, Pip?

And yet.

When I come out of the bathroom Max has put on the jogging bottoms and T-shirt that pass for his pyjamas, and is sitting on the edge of the bed. “Can we talk about this?”

I nod, although I don’t know if I can, and sit next to him. He stares at the dressing table while he talks, and I’m glad of it, because although I can’t explain why, it is easier to have this conversation without looking at each other.

“I’m not trying to replace Dylan.”

I take a sharp intake of breath.

“I want another child because I want to be a parent.”

“You are a parent,” I say, but the response is hollow, and I hear the echo of my own words to Lars, as the lift door closed. No. I don’t have any children. Max and I aren’t parents. We’re nothing. Childless by neither choice nor genetics. We had everything we wanted, and it was taken away, and now we’re just people, sitting on the edge of a bed, trying to function as two instead of three.

“I want to kick a ball around with my son, I want to teach my daughter to play golf.” He’s talking quickly, his voice getting louder with each declaration. “I want to go to school plays and host Thanksgivings, and talk to other dads about what a nightmare the teenage years are. I want to give my kids advice and have them ignore it; see them grow up, make mistakes, come good.” I feel him look at me. “I want to be a dad again, Pip.”