‘Oh? Why?’
Connie continued to stare out of the taxi window. ‘She had a miscarriage last year,’ she said. ‘The baby was six months.’
‘Oh my god.’
‘It wasn’t good. Matt couldn’t handle it.’
‘What do you mean?’
Connie sighed. ‘I don’t know exactly what happened. But he wasn’t there for her.’
‘But why should he be able to handle something like that any more than she could?’
Connie was quiet for a moment. ‘True. But from what I gather, he didn’t try to understand what it did to her. Shara . . . closed down and he didn’t persist. And now I think she’s punishing him for it.’
‘You would never know, from the way she is.’
‘Guess Barbara’s not the only good actress,’ said Connie. She put her arm round Elise and Elise nestled into her shoulder.
‘Neither of them are to blame for something like that,’ said Elise.
‘No, of course not. It must have been awful. But it’s how you handle it afterwards. She’s my age, El. She’s thirty-eight. He’s got light years ahead of him. Reading between the lines, I think this pregnancy was a rare occurrence.’
Elise closed her eyes and thought about how, at dinner parties, there are always other conversations not being shared. Matt and Shara and their unseen baby, lost like a ghost inside their marriage. Elise wondered whether there was any pain left in Shara’s body now, or whether it was just in her head, an occasional guest who led her down a staircase that only she could tread.
11
The next day, Elise sat by the pool of their bungalow with her legs in the water, and thought about her mother. She was seven when Patricia Morceau had leant against their kitchen counter and told her daughter she had a funny lump in her brain. The surgeons cut it out along with the power of speech, and although Patricia did learn to speak again, it was erratically, not as her former self. She had no guard on her tongue any more. Neither Elise nor her father knew what might come tripping; poison words or sweetness.
A few weeks after the operation, the family attended a party to celebrate the end of a show for which Patricia had designed the costumes. The change in Patricia was not immediately obvious, until she looked straight at Elise. Her eyes were different. They had always been a dark blueish grey, and now they were pale, as if someone had bleached them. Her pupils were tiny, and didn’t seem level. Her mother had gone.
Elise dragged her legs back and forth in the bright blue water, remembering how Patricia had kept pinning her with those pale eyes at the party, as if she had to impress upon her daughter this change she didn’t want. Elise had not known how to respond to her mother, who now held the murk of a drained rock pool inside her skull. She had been wanting for some time to be able to say something – anything – helpful, but Patricia made it harshly clear that there was nothing to be said or done. The removal of the tumour had blown the hinges off the maternal gate. There was no small talk, all that was pointless. Elise became the one at a loss for words, and all she could do was keep her undesired sympathy to herself.
Whenever Connie asked Elise about her dead mother – and she did so quite frequently – Elise felt she could tell Connie the truth, which she had never told anyone else. She told Connie how the tumour had grown back two years later, and that the second time it was too damaging, too much, and it had killed her mother. I’m so, so sorry, Connie had said. You must miss her.
At this point, Elise had lied and said you got used to it. She said everything was OK now, these things happened. To Elise’s astonishment, Connie seemed to have accepted these statements, allowing their flimsiness to remain in place.
I must be a good liar too, she thought, kicking her legs in the water.
‘My mother would have liked it here,’ she said out loud. As soon as she said it, Elise felt her voice wobble. What was happening to her in this place?
Connie who was hiding her pale skin under a parasol and writing in a notebook at the table looked in Elise’s direction. ‘Sorry?’
‘I was just thinking about Shara,’ Elise said.
‘Poor Shara,’ said Connie.
‘Did she want the baby very much?’
‘Yes, I’m certain. Her sister has about four, I think.’
‘Do you ever think about babies?’ said Elise.
‘You mean my own babies?’ Connie put down her pen. ‘Not so much now. Once, I did. I’d quite like my periods to stop so that it can never even be an issue. Where’s all this come from?’
‘I told you,’ Elise snapped. ‘Shara.’
‘OK,’ said Connie, gently. ‘Well, seeing as you’ve asked. I don’t want to be a mother, El. I don’t have time. It seems like a lot of hard work. I’m not that interested. I never have been, really. I do like their little feet and their little ears. I like the beauty of them. But they grow up, and their whole purpose is to leave you. It’s how it has to be. Quite frankly, El, I find that devastating. To think someone might do to me as I’ve done to my own parents.’
‘So really, you’re a softie who doesn’t want her heart broken.’
‘Ha. I don’t know.’ Connie paused, as if she was thinking. ‘There’s another thing, that’s not so easy to explain.’
‘What is it?’
‘Well, from what I’ve seen of it, from the people I know who’ve had children – certainly when the children are young, it’s that one very much has to live in the present. It’s a sort of constant vigilance. You are very focused on the moment, on the matter in hand.’
‘I guess that’s right.’
‘And I’m sure they do think about the future. But the thing is, writing is sort of the opposite. I live in different temporal spaces. I live in a fabricated present, and I’m constantly making up a future as well – and reimagining the past.’
‘Don’t you think people with children do all that too?’
‘Maybe. But they do have to hop back to a mundane present. I don’t, or at least I don’t have to do it as much. And I’ve spent such a long time where I live, in my head, that I don’t know whether I’m prepared to give up my citizen’s rights.’
She is so brilliant, thought Elise. And she would be a good mother.
‘Also,’ said Connie, ‘I like the beauty of many things. The beauty of children doesn’t, for me, outweigh the beauty and reward of other things.’
‘Would you ever say any of that publicly?’
Connie pulled a face. ‘God, no. I’d never be able to talk about anything else. Same as them not knowing about me being gay. Can you imagine? Not fucking worth it.’
‘It makes sense you don’t want them.’ Elise slipped into the water and began swimming lengths. She did breast-stroke, keeping her head above the surface.
‘I don’t know whether to be offended or pleased,’ said Connie. ‘Why does it make sense?’
‘Because you’re you.’
Elise went under and opened her eyes. The world beneath was bulbous and blurred, even more bright blue. She imagined being able to breathe underwater. Would she live there if she could – not here, in a trapped chlorine rectangle, but out in the ocean like a mermaid, huge-finned, moving between reefs? Her lungs were hurting; and she came up. Connie was kneeling by the side of the pool, wearing a concerned expression. ‘Do you?’ she said.