"Labor doesn't make you a mother, darling," said Patrick's mother.
"If only you were born a hundred years ago, when you could have gone through days of natural labor before bleeding naturally to death," said Ellen's mother.
Of course, in the end, it hadn't mattered. She'd used self-hypnosis to help keep her blood pressure stable through the surgery and there had been no complications. "Your wife is the most calm, serene patient I've ever had," said the anesthetist to Patrick. "You should see her when she's ninja fighting," replied Patrick.
Ellen had stayed in her own peaceful little zone until the obstetrician held up her baby, at which point she'd gasped for air like she'd just been pulled from the bottom of a swimming pool, and everyone got concerned, and she couldn't speak properly to tell them she was perfectly fine, it was just that-- Oh my God, did you see, that's an actual baby!
Apparently, while her conscious mind had been reading books and setting up a nursery, her subconscious mind had been thinking she was giving birth to a fish, or a teddy bear, or something other than a baby.
"What are we going to do while Mummy is busy hypnotizing?" said Patrick now to Grace. "Do you want to go down to the beach with me and your big brother? Or just hang out and shoot the breeze?"
Grace launched into a long conversation in baby talk, her big eyes fixed on Patrick. She had inherited Ellen's mother's violet eyes. Ellen was very vain about Gracie's eyes, deliberately dressing her in colors that would make them even more startling. She had literally never been out in public without someone stopping to compliment her on them, although each time she would act surprised and flattered as if it was the first time someone had noticed. "They come from her grandma," she'd say modestly.
"Right." Patrick nodded along respectfully as Grace continued to babble. "Yep. I see. Gotcha. So you're not sure. You can't make up your mind? Well, that's because you're a woman, you see."
"Hey," said Ellen.
"Actually, it's probably because you take after your mother and you're overanalyzing the situation. You're thinking, But what does it mean if Daddy takes me to the beach? Is he subconsciously trying to say something else? Is he repressing his real desires?"
"I'm not even listening to you." Ellen stood up and stretched her arms high above her head.
Ellen had just recently started treating clients again on a part-time basis. Her mother and the godmothers took Grace every Wednesday morning. They dressed her up like a princess and took her out to restaurants where they fed her tiny morsels of smoked salmon and shaved chocolate and who knew what else. Patrick's mother minded both Jack and the baby after school every Thursday afternoon. Maureen gave Grace long, warm baths and fed her mashed pumpkin and never sent her home without a pink bow pinned to her wispy, sweet-smelling hair. Jack had found Grace of only mild interest when she was a tiny baby, but now that she was starting to respond to him, he'd made it his life mission to make her laugh with increasingly crazy versions of peekaboo. Gracie had a very specific wicked chuckle she reserved especially for Jack.
Patrick was in charge on Saturdays, when Ellen did her longest stint and saw four clients.
There was a three-month waiting list to see her at the moment, but for now she didn't want to do any more hours than this. Having a baby had been like starting a demanding new job and beginning a passionate love affair and moving to a new country with a different language and culture all at the same time. The baby filled her mind, her heart and her senses. She wanted to inhale her, to gobble her up.
The love she felt for Grace seemed to permanently hover on a knife's edge between joy and terror. "Babies are pretty resilient," Patrick's mother would say when Ellen expressed her concern about anything, and Ellen wanted to say, "Are you kidding? They can die in their sleep!"
Once, when her mother was visiting without the godmothers, Ellen came out of the nursery from checking on Grace and said, "I love her so much it's just..."
"Excruciating," supplied her mother. "I know. It doesn't really get any better. You just learn to live with it."
Ellen met her mother's eyes, which now reminded her of her daughter's eyes. She'd always known that the fierce, furious way Anne looked at her was because she was trying to hide how much she loved her, as if love was a weakness. She had always considered it one of her mother's more adorable flaws. If only she could be more like me! Open to love! Now for the first time she understood that her mother wasn't resisting love so much as bearing it. Now she knew that you could love so much it literally hurt: an actual pain in the center of her chest.
Fortunately, whenever her feelings threatened to become impossibly transcendent, the banalities of motherhood were there to bring her back down to earth. You couldn't be carried away by sentiment when you were dealing with an exploding nappy or trying to work out why avocado and cottage cheese were no longer acceptable, and the constant wondering: Is she tired, or hungry, or teething, and what is that monotonous "uh, uh, uh" sound she's making and how can we get her to stop?
"I think I'll take her and Jack down to the beach," said Patrick. "Get Jack away from that computer."
"OK. Gracie's hat is on the chest of drawers," said Ellen. "And the sun cream is--"
"We're all under control," said Patrick.
"Good," said Ellen. "There is a bit of a breeze, so--"
"Ellen. Respect the Dad."
"OK. Just--okey dokey."
"Oooh, it's killing her," said Patrick to the baby. "There's so much more she wants to say. So many further instructions."
Ellen rolled her eyes. "I'm going to get changed for work." She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt covered in baby food stains. "You two have fun."
Patrick lifted Grace's hand and waved it at her. "Bye, Mummy."
Ellen lingered and looked at the two pairs of eyes staring back at her. "Her eyes are the same shape as yours. Mum's color, but your shape."
"And look at our identical bald spots." Patrick lifted Grace up under her armpits and bent his own head.
She left the room, and when she got halfway down the hallway, she ran back and poked her head around the doorway. She spoke very quickly. "If-you-want-her-blue-cardigan-it's-in-the-bag-at-the-front-door-and-that's-all-I'm-going-to-say!"
As she walked up the stairs she could hear him saying, "She can't help herself, Gracie. She really can't."
Twenty minutes later she was dressed and standing at the window of her office, her hand on the curtain that Patrick had put up. She could see him walking on the beach with the baby on his hip, an umbrella under his arm, the beach bag over his shoulder. Jack was walking backward in front of them, probably trying to make Grace laugh. Ellen squinted: Patrick had dressed the baby in the blue cardigan.
She watched them stop at a spot near the water. Patrick handed over the baby to Jack, and got down on his knees and began to dig a hole for the umbrella. He always took such care setting up the beach umbrella it would probably stay put during a cyclone.
"Hurry up," she said to the window. "She's out in the sun."
Patrick stopped digging and looked up at the house as if he'd heard her. He lifted both arms and waved them high above his head as if he was waving from a mountaintop. Ellen laughed and waved back pointlessly.
Even the way Patrick inhabited his body was different now than when she'd first met him: His movements were bigger, freer, looser. It had been over a year since they'd had any contact with Saskia, and every month that had gone by Patrick had changed more: relaxed, becoming sillier, happier, more trusting, less irritable and angry. He sang country music songs with an American accent as he did stuff around the house--songs about "cheatin'" women and "stone cold hearts." It was as though Ellen hadn't known the real Patrick at all, as if she'd fallen in love with a sick person and now he was healthy. It felt like a surprise bonus: an unexpected free gift with her order.
It also made her belatedly angry with Saskia, and with herself for being so oblivious to the true extent of how much it had affected him, and how much it might alway
s affect him.
Once, when Gracie was only a few weeks old, she and Patrick were watching a documentary together about a woman who had been stalked for years by her ex-husband.
"That's what I felt like," said Patrick at one point.
Ellen had been startled. She hadn't been thinking about Patrick at all.
She was horrified with herself. She hadn't even registered that he would be thinking about his own experiences with Saskia. Her sympathies had been entirely with the woman in the documentary. How terrible for her! There was no excuse for the ex-husband's behavior; she had no interest in wondering about his motivations. He was just plain bad: a villain who should be punished to the full extent of the law. As Ellen sat there with Gracie asleep on her shoulder, while the woman on the television cried, it struck her that she'd given Patrick none of the empathy or concern she was currently giving to a woman she'd never met. Her prejudice, her blindness, had been quite breathtaking.
"I'm sorry you had to go through that," she'd said to Patrick.
"Oh, well, worse for a woman." Patrick had shrugged.
When they were driving, Patrick still automatically checked the rear-vision mirror more than the average driver, and whenever they walked into a restaurant his eyes still swept the room, as if he'd been a spy in a past life, but he did it without that furrowed brow and that wary, defensive look. His insomnia had gone and he was more energetic. He looked younger. "I feel like I'm in remission from some terrible illness," he told Ellen. "Every time I check my phone or my e-mail and I don't see Saskia's name, it's like I've won a prize."
Ellen and Patrick still hadn't got around to getting married, but they had begun idly, pleasantly talking about it again and what sort of day they'd like. Patrick was still keen on an overseas wedding, which meant, Ellen guessed, that he wasn't completely cured--he still thought there was a chance that Saskia could turn up.
Ellen wondered if Saskia had moved out of Sydney, as she'd suggested. She wondered if she was still suffering from her leg pain, and if she'd finally met someone new. These were facts she would have really liked to know, but she was too superstitious to even Google Saskia's name, in case doing so would somehow make her materialize back into their lives.
She watched as Patrick finished putting up the umbrella and took the baby from Jack. He swung her up into the air. Ellen knew how she'd be giggling, clutching at his hair. Her giggles were fat and delicious, the most edible sound Ellen had ever heard.
Jack went running across the sand near the water and did a handstand, walking on his hands for a few seconds, his legs straight and tall.
"Careful," she murmured to the glass.
This morning at breakfast he'd been talking with her about the upcoming athletics carnival. "I told everyone that you'll win the mothers' race because you'll hypnotize all the other mums! Pow, pow, pow! They'll fall to the ground!"
She'd been thrilled by the casual, unconscious way he'd referred to her as one of the mums, and she'd sent a mental note of apology to Colleen.
She thought of how it would feel if she knew she was going to die and someone else was going to be there to bring up Grace. Before she had a baby she'd taken a secret, melancholy pleasure in imagining her own funeral. Now the thought of someone else making decisions about Gracie's life was unbearable.
I'm so sorry it worked out this way, Colleen, but I promise I'm doing my best. And I love Jack. I really do love him.
Although not so much that it hurt, not the way that she loved Gracie.
But that was OK, she thought, that wasn't something to lie awake at night worrying about. There were all sorts of ways to love. She thought of the new relationship she was forming with her own father, the growing fondness and respect. Just because it wasn't the same as the relationship he had with his sons didn't mean that it wasn't something special.
Of course, Jack was a child, not an adult, and perhaps if he unconsciously sensed that Ellen didn't love him in the same painful way as she loved Gracie, it would do untold damage to his psyche. So she probably should devote a few late nights to worrying about whether or not she was an evil stepmother.
She sighed. If only she could win the mothers' race! Unfortunately, she was a terrible runner. She was seriously considering faking an injury.
Now Jack was running around the umbrella in circles, probably kicking sand onto Patrick and into the baby's eyes. Hmm. He didn't look too damaged.
The doorbell rang.
She was seeing a new client who had found her on the Internet. On the phone he'd sounded abrupt and doubtful--and desperate. He said he wanted help quitting smoking, but Ellen suspected that something else was really the problem. She knew she was his last resort.
Ellen gave her family a final glance, and turned around to go downstairs to see how she could help.
Chapter 28
"Will you please tell my daughter how much I love her?"
--Saskia's mother's last words, whispered to a nurse who
was crouched down by the side of the bed trying to
untangle a cord on the drip. "Pardon?" she said
irritably, but it was too late.
I didn't do everything the hypnotist told me, but I did see a psychiatrist, once a week for over a year.
I didn't have a choice.
After I got out of the hospital last year, in the early summer, I went to my court hearing in the city, wearing my most responsible, noncrazy clothes, and while I waited for my name to be called, I thought of the first time I'd ever seen Patrick, in Noosa. I was sitting in a workshop on "Ecologically Friendly Building Design" and he came in late, looking for a seat. I saw his eyes scan the room, and I thought, Sit next to me. And his eyes caught mine and he smiled.
That was the beginning and this was the end.
It was over and done with in a remarkably short time. I didn't contest the AVO, and I pleaded guilty to the criminal charge of break and enter. I was given a one-year good behavior bond on the condition that I undertook psychological counseling.
My psychiatrist never said much, just let me drone on and on, but when she did talk, I felt like I was a butterfly being pinned to a page. In the beginning it was always about Patrick.
"How do you think Patrick felt when you kept ringing him?"
"What do you think was going through Patrick's mind when you turned up that day?"
"Do you think Patrick was frightened that night?"
It was ironic that I'd spent the last three years doing nothing but thinking about Patrick, and yet I hadn't really thought about him at all.
"I was never violent," I'd say.
"Violence isn't just physical," she'd say. "You took away all his power."
"It was never about power. I loved him. I just wanted to get back together."
"Think about it, Saskia."
She wouldn't let me get away with anything. It was like she was making me stand in front of a mirror, and I'd keep trying to turn around and look the other way, and each time I did she would take me by the shoulders and turn me back around to face the mirror again. And when I put my hands over my eyes, she'd gently remove them and put them back by my side.
And finally, I stood still and looked.
It wasn't very enjoyable.
She listed, in a dry, clinical voice, the possible impact of my behavior on Patrick: anxiety, depression, posttraumatic stress.
"I really don't think--" I said, and then I stopped.
"It's very well documented," she said.
"Fancy that," I said.
"You knew this," she said. "I think a part of you knew exactly what you were doing to him."
"I could send him a card to apologize," I said finally, in a stupid, silly voice.
It was such a bad joke she didn't even bother to react. She just looked at me, driving that pin straight through my heart again, so I fluttered and squirmed and finally grew still.
I was only joking about the card. After I came home from the hospital, I never tried to see or contact Patrick
again. I stopped going to Jack's games. I wasn't even tempted. Not really. It was like a particular food I'd once loved had made me violently ill. So although I could remember how good it tasted, whenever I thought of it or automatically reached for it, I remembered how sick it made me, so the desire was outweighed by the revulsion.
We talked a lot about grief: for the loss of my mother and Patrick and Jack and the children I wouldn't ever have. We talked about how I'd taken my grief and used it like a weapon against Patrick, how I'd turned the pain and the rage outward, away from me, as if I'd been handed a flaming sword and I'd turned it on Patrick in a desperate, frenzied and ultimately useless attempt to avoid being burned myself.
I used up a lot of her tissues.
We talked about how Patrick's decision to break up really wasn't anything to do with me at all; it was about him and his own grief for Colleen. "If Ellen had met him at that conference he probably would have broken up with her in exactly the same way," said my psychiatrist.
"No, they're soul mates," I said. "It was true love for them."
"It was timing," she said.
We talked about friendship and how I'd let myself slip out of a social network. We talked about hobbies, other than stalking your ex-boyfriend. We talked about ways to deal with future relationships and future rejections.
I stopped using quite so many tissues.
Then one day I turned up and we chatted about a movie I'd seen on the weekend, and a new fish recipe I'd tried, and how we both wanted to eat more fish, and at the end of the session my psychiatrist said that she thought I probably didn't need to make an appointment for the following week, and so I didn't. I had a pedicure instead.
Ellen told me that I should leave Sydney, but I haven't.
I'd miss my friends too much.
Tammy is living in the townhouse with me now, and we see a lot of our neighbors, Janet and Pete. Their kids are in and out of our place all the time. Tammy and I looked after them last weekend so Janet and Pete could go away for a weekend.
I did end up going out with Janet's brother for a few months. The boogie-boarding guy. Toby. He was fun and it was a good distraction for a while, but he'd just come out of a relationship and in a strange way I had too, so we were both weird and fragile, and the relationship amiably petered out.