The Family Next Door(11)

Fran begged him to see a counselor, to get medication. She researched a retreat for men who were burnt out. She forwarded him articles from men’s health magazines about men who’d gone through depression and come out the other side. He wasn’t interested in any of it.

Eventually she took Rosie away for a week and stayed at a hotel, hoping that might shock him into taking control of his life. It did. For a few days, Nigel was on his best behavior. Then it all started again.

Fran started to worry about what he might do if he didn’t snap out of it. She started to worry about what she might do. He’d been in a slump for a year—what if something pushed him over the edge? Rosie wouldn’t have a father. She wouldn’t have a husband.

That was when she told him she was pregnant again.





6


“I love you, Daddy.”

Fran was brushing her teeth when she heard it. Nigel and Rosie were in Rosie’s bedroom, getting her ready for bed. They’d already brushed her teeth, read the story, and now she was getting tucked in.

Fran walked to the bathroom door to listen.

“I love you too, Rosie. Good night.”

She smiled. The “I love you” wasn’t a usual part of the routine, as far as Fran knew. Most of their conversations, even at bedtime, were fact based. The capital of a certain country. The number of bones in the body. An idea for an invention Rosie had had. Even this exchange, Fran realized, was matter-of-fact. They didn’t bother with nonsense like “I love you to the moon and back” or “I love you more, no I love you more.” Not Nigel and Rosie. It struck Fran that a different kind of daughter could have thrown Nigel completely. A daughter who demanded Barbies and fairies and silliness. But Rosie was a perfect fit.

Was Ava?

After a minute or two Fran heard the snap of the light switch. She put her toothbrush back in the holder. She felt a jittery feeling in her chest, behind her sternum. That had been happening to her quite a bit lately. Generalized anxiety disorder, perhaps. Or was it something else?

Her conversation with Isabelle this morning had been bugging Fran all day. (“I noticed you had a newborn” she’d said. “And her name’s Ava?”) What was that about? Fran doubted that when she was single and childless she’d ever noticed someone else’s newborn. If she had, she certainly wouldn’t have mentioned it to them. Like most normal people, she had a hearty fear of being labeled a stalker. Which begged the question … why didn’t Isabelle have that fear?

Fran washed her face, slathered on some face cream, and headed down the hall. Rosie lay on her side in bed, clutching the travel-sized telescope Nigel had brought back from a business trip to China, like it was soft toy. She crossed the hall and peeked into Ava’s room. Her head moved back and forth like she was on the verge of waking, but then she gave a huge, shuddery sigh and settled right back to sleep again.

Sweet girl.

Fran wondered where they would be if Ava hadn’t come along. Would Nigel still be depressed? Would she be? There was no doubt she had been heading in that direction, before announcing her pregnancy. Nothing she had tried had worked and … he didn’t seem to care. If something hadn’t happened to break the circuit, who knew where they’d be. Ava had saved them. And also, broken them.

When she got to the bedroom Nigel was already in bed. He’d kicked off the quilt, with only the bare sheet covering him. It was far too hot to sleep under anything else. He frowned up at the wall, where a family portrait hung of the two of them and Rosie.

“We need to get some new family portraits done,” he said, pushing his glasses up his nose. “With Ava in them.”

Fran stared at him.

Before they had children, Nigel would have been appalled at the concept of a professional family photo. “They’re all a lie anyway,” he would have said. Propaganda created to project an image of happiness that doesn’t actually exist. A false laugh at a stupid joke the photographer made, a stern word to the child who refused to look at the camera, a bribe of ice cream afterward. All lies. The only reason they’d had the first one taken was because Ange and Lucas had given them a photo shoot as a gift after Rosie was born. Fran glanced up at it. Lucas had taken it when Rosie was two or three weeks old. They were in the park next to his photography studio, nestled next to a pile of leaves. Fran had put a lot of thought into Rosie’s outfit, as she recalled, but a moment before the photo had been taken she had annihilated it with one of those newborn poops that traveled up her back as far as her neck. In the picture, Nigel was holding a newborn Rosie up and as far away from him as possible, while Fran lay back in the leaves, laughing. Lucas captured it perfectly. It was a brilliant shot. It was that shot that had changed her own mind about professional family photos. And for that reason she said: “Sure. Why not?”

Fran generally saw eye to eye with Nigel about most things. She’d always prided herself on the fact that they were a great match. For their first date Nigel invited her to a trivia night at a pub in South Melbourne. Fran decided not to tell him about her wicked trivia skills and instead let them reveal themselves, but as it turned out, her trivia knowledge paled in comparison to Nigel’s.

“Four countries in Africa starting with B?” the quizmaster called out.

“Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, and Burundi,” Nigel answered immediately.