Sorrow and Bliss(70)

My hands were in fists, so tight they seemed to be throbbing. ‘If you knew everything, why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I was waiting for you to tell me but you didn’t. And then after a while it seemed like you weren’t going to and I had no idea why. It’s clearly right,’ he said. ‘You clearly have ——.’

As I spoke back, I felt the muscles around my mouth contorting and making me ugly. ‘Do I Patrick? Clearly? If that is so fucking clearly right, why didn’t you work it out before? Is it a competence issue? As in, does a person need to be physically bleeding for you to comprehend that they’re not well? Or is it, as a husband, you’re not interested in your wife’s wellbeing? Or is it just total passivity? Your absolute, blanket acceptance of how things are.’

He said okay. ‘This conversation isn’t going anywhere.’

‘Don’t! Don’t walk out.’ I moved as if I would block him from leaving.

Patrick didn’t stand up, leaned back in the sofa instead. ‘I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.’

I said, ‘I’m only like this because of you. I’m well. I’ve been well for months. But you make me feel insane. Wasn’t that clear too? Didn’t you wonder why instead of being better to you, I’ve been worse?’

‘Yes. No. I don’t know. Your behaviour’s always been –’ he paused ‘– all over the place.’

‘Fuck you, Patrick. Do you know why? You don’t. It’s because I’ve always wanted a baby. This whole time, my whole life, I’ve wanted to have a baby but everyone told me it would be dangerous.’

Very slowly, Patrick said, ‘Do you really think I wasn’t aware of that either? I’m not stupid Martha. Even if it’s always, how annoying they are and how much you can’t stand them and how tedious motherhood is, babies are the only thing you ever talk about. You won’t let us sit near anyone with a baby in a restaurant, then you’ll be staring at them all night. Or if we pass a pregnant woman or someone with a child, you go completely silent and whenever we go to something, you’re so incredibly rude to anyone who dares to mention their children. We’ve had to leave things early so many times, just because someone asked you if you have kids.’ Patrick stood up then. ‘And you’re obsessed with Ingrid’s boys. Obsessed with them, and you pretend you’re not jealous of her but it’s so obvious that you are, especially when she’s pregnant. You’re not a good liar Martha. A chronic one, but not a good one.’

I went around the coffee table, grabbed the front of his shirt with both hands and wrenched it and twisted it and said guess what Patrick, guess what. ‘Robert said it would be fine.’ I tried to push him. ‘He said it would have been fine.’ I tried to hit his face. ‘It wouldn’t be dangerous but you knew that too, you knew that too.’ Patrick got my wrists and would not let go until I stopped struggling against his grip. Although, then, he ordered me to sit down, I went back to the coffee table, put my heel to the edge and pushed it over. The takeaway container was upended, the liquid left in it spilt across the carpet. Patrick said for God’s sake Martha and went out to the kitchen.

I didn’t follow him. Every cell in my body felt individually paralysed except for my heart, beating hard and too fast. A moment later, he returned with a handful of kitchen roll, dropped it over the liquid that had soaked into the carpet and stamped on it. I couldn’t do anything except watch, until I stopped feeling my heart. And then I told him to stop it. ‘Just leave it. Listen to me.’

‘I am listening.’

‘Well stop cleaning up then.’

He said fine.

‘Why didn’t you say? Why did you just let me lie. If you had said something since the appointment, I could be pregnant now. You always wanted children Patrick – I could be pregnant now. Why would you do that?’

‘Because – you just said – you should have been better. You got your diagnosis finally, you got the right meds and you weren’t any better to me. I couldn’t work it out but then I realised.’ He shifted the kitchen roll with his foot. The liquid had settled darkly into the carpet, a stain that would never be got out. ‘This is who you are. It has nothing to do with ——. And,’ he said, ‘I don’t think you should be a mother.’

I opened my mouth. It wasn’t speech or screaming that came out. It was primal sound, coming from somewhere, my stomach, the bottom of my throat. Patrick went out and left me there. I sank to my knees, then my face was to the floor. I was gripping handfuls of my hair.

There is a gap after that, a blackout in my memory until, a few hours later, I am standing at one corner of the bed, dragging the sheets off it while Patrick puts things in a suitcase that is open on the floor. Sun is coming through the window. I’m compelled to the bathroom to throw up.

When I came back, Patrick had closed the suitcase and was carrying it out of the room. I called something after him, but he did not hear me. A moment later, I heard the car start and I went over to the window. He was backing out of the driveway. I tried to bring the blind down, pulled too sharply and it broke. For a long time, I just stood there with its slack cord in my hand, staring unfocused at the house on the other side where another woman had lived my life in mirror image.

Then Patrick was turning back into the driveway. I didn’t know why he had come back. I watched him park the car and get out. He had a bottle in his hand and once he had raised the bonnet he emptied it into the engine, closed the bonnet again and walked away, in the direction of the station.