The Rabbit Girls(79)

She considers his face, like looking at oneself in the mirror: at a glance the reflection holds familiarity, but the closer she gets, the more she can see the changes, until he becomes a blur.

Abstract shapes of light and dark.

When she refocuses on him, his eyes are almost kind, open and damp at the edges. But it is an illusion, this kindness, caught like a freeze-frame in a flash of lightning, and in its wake, the thunder.

‘Forget who was there with Michael.’

At his name, she stops. Stops thinking entirely, blank.

‘You forget who cared for you, who brushed your hair for you, who dressed you, who stopped the “counsellors” from sinking their teeth into you. You forget so much. You forget him too, do you?’

She shakes her head, no. No, she doesn’t forget him at all. Axel takes her hand in his, it’s clammy and warm and he pulls her into him. He tries to get her to sit on his lap, but she pulls back so he leaves her to stand.

‘You remember his face? What we called him? You remember?’

He gives her a few minutes, and she loses herself in the memories of her son. The day she buried him. His tiny body.

He lets go of her hand and claps his together. ‘I have a proposition.’

Miriam is reeling at the change of tempo and cannot comprehend where his bright spirit came from, how he changes so fast.

‘I will sign your divorce papers now.’ He lifts the envelope she hadn’t seen in his hand and takes out the papers. ‘But you must sign yourself into the hospital, voluntarily. What do you say? That way you get treatment and I know you are safe. Compromise? That’s how all the best marriages work, right?’ He finds the right page, his pen poised. She watches him, about to give her freedom, and she cannot want him to sign it more. Please, she thinks, just sign.

‘So.’ He is quieter now. ‘What do you say?’

She goes to say something, although she’s unsure what it will be, and when she opens her mouth to speak, ‘Why?’ is all that comes out.

‘Well, let me tell you a little secret.’ He pulls on her arm again, but she withstands it. ‘Fine,’ he says as she won’t move closer. ‘I am getting tired of the caring husband ditty, think I’d do better as the husband to the mad woman in the asylum. It’s worked out all right for a lot of people before now.’

‘You are mad,’ she says so quietly it is almost to herself.

‘I could always be the grieving widower.’ He tilts his head to the side. ‘That might suit me pretty well too.’

And then, suddenly, as Miriam is trying to understand what he is saying, her heart and mind are drawn way too far into the past, to the smell of rain on fresh earth.

He continues at a completely different tempo again, enough to give her whiplash.

‘You know when I first met you I was mesmerised. Mesmerised.’

She sways and he grabs her hand, and this time the pull brings her into his lap.

‘What do you see when you look in the mirror now?’ he asks.

‘I don’t look in the mirror,’ she says honestly.

‘Why?’

‘Because I hear your voice, I hear your words.’

‘And what do I say?’

‘You say . . .’ She doesn’t need to hear the words, she knows them, she feels them. She cannot get away from the sound of rain on the umbrella and she feels completely disorientated. ‘Michael,’ she whispers.

He speaks clearly and firmly. Monotonous. ‘No, I do not say Michael, my love. You have faded away again.’ Then softly, ‘Yet I love you anyway. Can you remember how you had such bright, black hair, so long and dark? How I used to wrap my hands in it?’

She remembers the pull on her hair and on her neck.

‘It’s falling out now, Mim. You have less hair than your dad.’

And it’s true, she puts her hand to her head.

‘Do you hear anything else when you look in the mirror, any other voices?’

She shakes her head, stands and turns her back to him.

‘Turn around, my love, let me look at you.’

She does.

‘When I met you, you were perfectly slight and immaculate. Beautiful. Take off your top,’ he demands and his shift in tone has her trying hard to focus on what he is saying.

She is still under an umbrella, the rain hammering on its fabric, the white casket being placed into cold, wet, soggy earth. She cannot free herself from the image. She tries to remain with Axel.

‘You still there? Seeing him, how blue he was. They say new babies are pink, but I just can’t see it; he was almost purple, wasn’t he?’ He comes over to her and unbuttons her blouse.

‘He had eyelashes,’ she says quietly, ‘and fingernails.’ He had slipped from her body; she had never heard his heart beat.

‘It’s a shame you couldn’t have kept him longer. You know, to “term”. I think that’s what they mean when they talk about guilt.’ And he pulls her blouse over her shoulders and down her arms, the fabric feels like ice cubes and her skin goose-pimples at its touch.

‘You liked my little present, then?’ he asks, lifting her arm in his and examining the large plaster.

He kisses her on the cheek. ‘I am pleased,’ he says, dangerously quiet. He has a slight stubble, but it doesn’t scratch, or she cannot feel it if it does. Then he steps away and says louder and buoyant, ‘At least we knew I worked.’ She’s heard that before and covers her breasts with her arm. ‘But you. You couldn’t keep him, could you?’