"Men!" said Pip. "Who needs them? Let's get drunk."
"You'll meet someone else," said Mel.
"I never really liked him much anyway," sniffed Ellen's mother.
"He thinks I'm Saskia," said Ellen. "I'm sure it's just a mix-up."
But actually, she wasn't sure. Had she been the one stalking Patrick all along?
"You hypnotized me into moving those boxes!" shouted Patrick. "You manipulated me!"
"I'm sorry!" cried Ellen. He was breaking up with her. This relationship was going to end just like all her other relationships. She was going to have to bring up this baby on her own and it was so teeny-tiny! She closed her hand carefully around the baby-bead and began to run, but as soon as she did her legs lurched sickeningly, as if she'd run off a cliff.
She opened her eyes.
She couldn't tell if it was morning or night; the bedroom seemed to be filled with a strange, eerie orange-yellow light.
It was like there'd been a fire, except there was no smell of smoke. She could hear Patrick's rattley breathing that was not quite snoring, and the hollow, rhythmic sound of waves crashing on the beach.
And she could hear or sense something else. Something not right.
There was a long, dark shape at the end of the bed. Ellen stared, her heart hammering, waiting for her eyes to adjust and for the shape to become a familiar object, like a chair or a dressing gown hanging on a door.
It moved.
Ellen's lungs filled with air.
A woman was standing in their bedroom, at the foot of their bed, watching them sleep. Ellen scrabbled back so fast that her head banged painfully against the headboard.
Colleen. Colleen back from the dead to claim her husband.
"What is it?" said Patrick sleepily.
He sat up and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. Then suddenly he flung back the covers and crawled straight across the bed.
"Get out!" he roared. "Get out!"
It wasn't Colleen. It was Saskia. She was wearing pajama pants with a football jersey over the top. Her hair was wet and plastered to her head; her feet were bare.
"Patrick," she said. She stepped back to avoid his grasp. "I just wanted--"
Patrick fell out of the bed and onto the floor in an ungainly sprawl.
Ellen saw that Saskia was holding something in her hand. It was the ultrasound pictures that they'd left on the kitchen table.
"Hey!" She'd never heard her voice sound like that before: as if it had been scraped raw. "Give those back!"
She got out of bed and moved toward Saskia. "They're mine!"
There was a terrified shriek from down the hallway. "Daddy!"
"Jack," said Saskia. She half turned toward the door.
Patrick got to his feet and grabbed Saskia by both arms. He lifted her up into the air as if he was going to slam her against the wall. The ultrasound photos fell from her hand onto the floor. Ellen saw that Patrick was trembling all over, his eyes wild and crazed.
He's going to kill her, she thought. It's my job to stop him killing her. She grabbed for the back of Patrick's T-shirt.
"I just want to explain!" Saskia tried to drape her arms around Patrick's neck. He shoved her away and she fell to her knees.
"Dad!" screamed Jack. "Ellen! What's happening?"
"Get out!" Patrick dragged Saskia to her feet. "Get out now."
"I'm sorry," sobbed Saskia. She fell against Patrick's chest again, and with Ellen still clutching the back of his T-shirt, they shuffled out into the hallway in a strangely intimate dance.
Dawn was breaking, and through the open door of her office opposite their bedroom, where Ellen would normally see the beach and the ocean, all she could see was a haze of apocalyptic orange. Yellow light poured into the house. She let go of Patrick's T-shirt and stared.
What was going on? Was it war?
"Daddy! It's Armageddon!"
Ellen turned her eyes back in time to see Patrick shove Saskia away from him just as Jack came pounding down the hallway in his pajamas, his eyes gigantic with fear.
Saskia slipped on the hallway runner and she flung out an arm to save herself.
Her flailing hand clutched at Jack's pajama top and the two of them fell together, toppling, crashing, rolling.
Chapter 22
Careful!
--Mothers throughout the world, throughout time
For one long, endless, silent moment Ellen and Patrick stood at the top of the staircase, their hands gripped on the landing banister, their eyes fixed on Jack and Saskia below.
Saskia was on her back. One leg was bent at a sickeningly strange angle. Her head lolled; her face was obscured by her hair.
Jack was flat on his stomach, his legs straight, his palms down on the floor as if he was asleep in bed.
They're both dead, thought Ellen with certainty, and she was seized by the terrifying revelation that this actually happened, exactly like this, all the time, every day. People died, children died, in clumsy, stupid accidents that took only a few seconds, and afterward you kept breathing, and your heart kept pumping, and everything was still exactly the same. The unacceptable happened and you were expected to accept it.
Patrick made a sound like a dog's whimper.
Then Jack moved, and Patrick reacted instantly. He went clattering down the stairs so fast that as Ellen ran behind him she called out, "Careful!"
Jack sat up on his haunches cradling his arm. His face was dead white.
"I think I broke it," he said in a matter-of-fact tone, and then he turned his head and was sick all over the floor.
Ellen and Patrick fell to their knees on either side of him.
"Oh, darling," said Ellen. She lifted the sleeve of his pajamas and saw that his arm was already starting to swell and looked oddly deformed.
"You're OK, mate," said Patrick unconvincingly. He looked like he might faint.
Jack lifted his head and wiped his hand across his mouth. He stared at them with streaming, baffled eyes.
"What's happened? I don't understand. Why is Saskia here?"
"Don't worry about that," said Patrick. He went to reach for Jack as if to pick him up. "I'm going to take you to emergency."
"No, you mustn't move him," said Ellen. "He might have a back or head injury. Just lie him down and keep that arm still. I'll call an ambulance. Let me just check on Saskia."
"Forget Saskia," hissed Patrick.
"Why is she here?" said Jack again. His eyes widened as he saw her over Ellen's shoulder. "Is she all right?"
"Just forget about her," said Patrick.
"No!" yelled Jack. His voice was unexpectedly loud in the silent house.
Patrick blanched. "It's all right, mate."
Jack pulled away from him. "You can't just forget about her! Stop saying that! Just because you don't like her. It's not fair!"
"Everything is OK," said Patrick soothingly.
"Check on her!" Jack's face went from white to bright red, his small chest heaved beneath his pajama top and his eyes glittered with fury. Ellen stared; she'd never seen a small child experiencing such grown-up emotions.
She said, "I'll make sure she's OK, Jack."
There are some parts that I know I'll never forget, and some parts that I expect I'll never remember.
Like, I don't remember calling a taxi, but I do remember pulling up in front of Ellen's house and paying the driver. I gave him a ten-dollar tip and we talked about the wind. It was howling. I remember the trees swaying back and forth, like women lamenting their dead children.
I felt exhilarated and wild, a woman in the forest embracing my inner something-or-other. I remember touching my hair and realizing it was dripping wet and being confused because it wasn't raining. I must have stepped straight out of the shower and called a cab.
At least I didn't drive when I was drunk. Some rational part of my mind knew enough to call a cab.
I don't remember why I decided to go to Ellen's house, but I can guess my train of t
hought. I was probably standing in the shower and imagining Ellen and Patrick getting ready to go to bed at the same time, and how they would have been talking about their day, about how exciting it was to see the baby for the first time, and I would have thought, I wish I could see them.
And at that point I must have thought, Why not go there right now?
Or maybe I felt an overwhelming desire to tell Patrick something: that I loved him or I hated him, that I understood or I would never understand, that I was letting him go, finally, this was it, I would never go near him again, or that I would never let him go or I would love him for the rest of my life.
Who knows?
The next thing I remember is standing at the foot of their bed.
Patrick was flat on his back, his mouth open, snoring in that way of his, where each snore goes further up the scale in volume, until there is an enormous shuddery one that half wakes him up and he stops, and then a few seconds later it starts again. Ellen was lying on her side, with her hands folded in prayer under her cheek, just like you'd expect her to sleep, although she was snoring too, in a gentler, more regular rhythm than Patrick. Their snoring sounded comical, as if they were trying to play a tune together and kept getting it wrong and having to start again.
I didn't feel envy or anger or pain. I felt calm and quite friendly toward them. I think it was because of the snoring. So I got a shock when they woke up and I saw their reactions. The fear on their faces! I wanted to say, "No, no, relax, it's only me!"
It was like Patrick had seen some sort of dangerous animal. As if I were a grizzly bear looming over him. Me! Just me, Saskia! I don't even kill cockroaches. He knows that.
And then Ellen was yelling at me about something in my hand, and I looked down and saw that I was holding their baby's ultrasound pictures, although I didn't remember picking them up or looking at them.
She reacted as if I was stealing her baby.
Technically, she stole my baby. I could have got pregnant with Patrick's baby if we'd kept trying. I might have.
They woke Jack up with all their noise. I heard him call out. So then I just wanted everyone to calm down. I wanted them to know that there was no need for anyone to be upset.
It was like a nightmare, where you suddenly realize you're naked in a shopping center. A tiny voice in my head said: Saskia, you've gone too far. What would Mum think?
Mum would not approve of me upsetting Jack.
Nobody would calm down. Patrick refused to listen. He was pushing me, shoving me. I noticed that everything had turned sepia, as if we were in an old photograph. It added to that nightmarish, surreal feeling.
I remember Jack running down the hallway in his pajamas, his eyes and mouth huge with terror. That voice in my head saying: This is your fault, Saskia.
And then, somehow, we were falling together, and I was trying to hold on to him, to stop him from hurting himself. It was terrible.
That was the last thing I remember before I woke up in the hospital and felt the most unbearable pain shatter the lower half of my body, as if someone was dropping bricks on me from a great height, and I saw Ellen, standing with her back to me at the hospital window. I must have made some sort of a noise, because she turned around and smiled at me. She didn't look frightened. She smiled at me, as if I was a normal person, not a grizzly bear.
She said, "There's been a big dust storm."
It was the first thing that came into her head.
"Sydney is covered in dust," she said. "It really looks quite apocalyptic out there. No wonder Jack thought it was the end of the world. I actually thought there had been a nuclear blast myself."
Saskia stared up at her blankly, as if she was speaking a foreign language.
"They can see it from space, apparently," said Ellen. She took a deep breath and sat down on the chair next to Saskia's bed. "That's why it took a while for the ambulance to come this morning. The city is in chaos."
Saskia's eyes moved slowly down the bed and the white hospital blanket covering her body.
"You've fractured your pelvis," said Ellen. "And your right ankle. You might need surgery for the ankle, but they think the pelvis should heal itself. You can press the little button here for more pain relief."
There was silence. Ellen's eyes locked with Saskia's. It felt shocking, as if the strange connection between the two of them was more intimate than that of two sexual partners.
"I don't know if you remember what happened," began Ellen.
"Jack," said Saskia clearly.
"He's broken his arm," said Ellen. "But other than that he's fine."
Saskia's face crumpled. "My fault."
"Well," said Ellen. "Yes."
Jack went through a stage when he was a toddler when he seemed to be constantly hurting himself. He'd bang his head on the coffee table, his elbow against the door frame. As soon as one bruise or graze healed he'd get another one. I'd be down the other end of the house and hear the crash, the pause and then the anguished scream that shredded my heart. I'd think, Not again.
Once Patrick was playing with him when it was past his bedtime and I was saying, "OK, that's enough now," because I knew Jack was getting overtired and he'd hurt himself soon and, sure enough, next thing Jack's yelling and spitting out blood because he'd banged his chin and bitten his tongue, and I was furious with Patrick.
I must have said it a thousand times: "Careful."
And now, because of me, Jack had a broken arm. There was no denying my responsibility. There was no way I could twist the events of the previous evening around to make it someone else's fault.
Ellen sat there, just looking at me steadily. She looked exhausted: gray shadows under her eyes, pale lips. No makeup. Messy hair. Her face plain. Ordinary even. Except that there was something so pristine about her. Looking at her was like looking at something natural and true.
I caused Jack to break his arm.
It was like someone was holding a screen right up close to my face, and it was playing a movie of everything I'd done for the last three years: every text message, every phone call, every letter I knew he'd never read, leading up to the final sepia-colored moment when Jack and I crashed down the stairs.
I closed my eyes to try and escape from it, but I could still see it. It was unflinching and unrelenting.
I was being suffocated by shame.
"Breathe," said Ellen. "Just concentrate on your breathing. Inhale and exhale. Inhale and exhale." The sound of her voice was like an old familiar tune. It took me straight back to her little glass room overlooking the ocean. I listened greedily, as if her voice were oxygen.
"That's it. In. And out."
I opened my eyes and saw that she'd leaned in closer, so that her face was only inches from mine. She took my hand. Her hands were cold. My mother always had cold hands. "Cold hands, warm heart," she used to say.
"Have you heard the phrase 'hitting rock bottom'?" she said.
She didn't wait for an answer. I noticed her voice had changed subtly. She was speaking in her "professional" voice.
"It's something that happens to addicts when they finally break down in every way possible: physically, spiritually, emotionally. I think that's sort of what's happening to you right now, Saskia. And I don't know, but I think it probably feels terrible. I think it probably feels like the end of the world."
I felt a wild, flapping sensation in my chest, like a trapped bird.
Ellen kept talking. "But it's good, it's a good thing, it's even a great thing, because it's the turning point. It's the beginning of getting better. It's the beginning of getting your life back. I think you've probably tried to stop before, haven't you?"
Again, she didn't wait for me to reply.
"But this time it's going to work. For one thing you're going to be stuck." Ellen's eyes sparkled, as if it was all a great joke. "They tell me you won't be walking for six to eight weeks, and after that you'll be on crutches."
I didn't react to that at all. My future didn't seem p
ossible. It had no relevance.
"And during that time you'll get counseling," continued Ellen confidently, happily, as if we were discussing shared holiday plans that were already in place. "It will be a good way to pass the time. And then once you're back on your feet, I think you should move."
She smiled. "That might seem a bit presumptuous of me, but, well, I've got the right to be presumptuous. I think you need to move somewhere far away from Sydney. So you won't be tempted."
Her hand tightened around mine. "I expect Patrick will finally take out a restraining order against you. So legally, you won't be able to come near us. He's going to need to do that, but what I need is a promise from you, a promise right now, that this is it, that last night was the end and today is the beginning. The end of your old life and the beginning of your new life. Can you promise me that?"
I felt my head jerk up and down, as if I were a puppet and she was pulling the strings. I said, "I promise."
She patted my hand and said, "Good."
I became aware of the pain again; it gripped and viciously squeezed the lower half of my body, and it felt personal, as if someone was doing it on purpose. I tried not to resist it, to accept it as my punishment, but frankly, it hurt too much.
"Give yourself a hit," said Ellen. She put something like a light switch in my hand. I pressed the button. A few seconds later I felt a sensation of fuzzy warmth, like pins and needles creeping up my legs, and the pain receded. I said, "Why are you here? Why are you being nice to me?"
My mouth felt as if it was full of marbles, as if I hadn't spoken for a very long time.
Ellen went to speak and then she stopped, as if she was reconsidering.
She said, "I don't really know. You frightened me, but at the same time you intrigued me. I even found it strangely validating. You watching us made my life seem more interesting." She shook her head. "I was sort of addicted to you."
"You should hate me," I said. My voice sounded unfamiliar: slurred, like a stroke victim. "Patrick hates me."
"That's because I don't have the emotional connection that Patrick has to you. Patrick hates you because he once loved you."
"That's nice of you to say that," I said. My nose was running. I went to wipe it with the back of my hand and saw I had the drip attached. I sniffed noisily. I didn't even care. I had no dignity left to lose.