Five(6)

To this, Emma gives a response, but everyone present hears her words differently, imbues them with meaning based on their own beliefs about who she is and how women—mothers—should behave. We cannot explore each interpretation in depth, as the clock is ticking and the train has just arrived at the station before this one and opened its doors and will soon be doing the same here. And there is much that still needs to be accomplished before the death.

In summary, Sonny hears her say, “Don’t be a hero, don’t try to play me.”

Mrs. Worth hears, “I can’t change him, don’t try to save me.”

Bad Back hears, “Don’t go changin’ to try and please me,” and is momentarily distracted by a brief memory of dancing with his wife on holiday last year to Billy Joel’s “Just the Way You Are,” of which this is the first line.

It is at this point, at 7:02 and forty-three seconds, that Gideon shrieks, “Mama!” his arms outstretched, his eyes fixed on the back of Liam’s head and his mother’s phone in the air.

“That’s Mama’s!” Gideon yells, as he leaps from the platform onto Liam’s back, eleven seconds before 7:03.

People who experience tragic events often say that they happened in a flash, out of the blue, in the blink of an eye. The average adult blinks fifteen to twenty times a minute. In twenty blinks of an eye, think of all that can happen, and a minute becomes a very long time.

“That’s Mama’s!” Gideon charges and grapples for the phone, wrapping his legs around the stunned Liam’s waist, digging his child’s fingers into Liam’s collar, scratching the flesh of his neck, reaching up to his arm with surprising strength.

The one thing no one hears next is Emma saying, “He never calls me Mama.”

“Well, it’s Daddy’s now!” Liam taunts Gideon, waving the phone in the air, the child flailing on his back.

“You bastard!” Emma yells.

“Bastardo!” Gideon exclaims in an Italian accent for a reason known only to him.

“Takes one to know one!” Liam retorts as Gideon bites into his neck.

“Harder!” Emma encourages her son, and Liam finally drops the phone.

One station away, at 7:03 and nine seconds, the passengers board, the train closes its doors. And the driver releases the brake.





Emma


Emma didn’t get the ring or the wedding. She never was The One and she never got The One. Now, if Emma was a different kind of girl this would have depressed her and made her journal and gain a lot of weight and then lose it all while documenting her #unfiltered #journey to #self-love on her social media accounts, where she would receive fire emojis in the comments declaring her beautiful at any size but of course most fire-emoji-worthy in the size 6 tiny gold bikini.

Or it would have hardened her and driven her to drink heavily, to lose her job, and to be disinvited to her friends’ weddings, where she would show up anyway and make inappropriate, slurring, bitter toasts and then fuck a groomsman in full hearing of the bride’s grandmother in the neighboring stall in the luxury, heated port-a-loos, followed by mornings of horrific, consuming regret.

Or it would have led her to a quiet life of work, Pilates, home decor, veganism, remembering the birthdays of all her friends’ children, and community volunteering. And really, honestly, being okay with being alone, until one day she would finally meet him at the primary school where she was a literacy mentor for underprivileged children and he was a teacher. They would have a small wedding because by that time many of their friends would already be divorced, with new awkward partners and shitty teenage children and stepkids, and they’d be happy for Emma because God knows, after all the money she’d spent on their weddings and babies all these years she deserved it, so woo-fucking-hoo, but there’d better be an open bar at this wedding because her guests would be over love.

However, Emma’s single status at age thirty-four and thirty-five and thirty-six did not lead her down any of these paths. And she doesn’t mind being the last one standing, even at thirty-seven, because she doesn’t feel things the way other people do. And she loves this about herself. The freedom that comes with not feeling. Some have described Emma as a sociopath or a narcissist. But she prefers to think of herself as a winner.

In her peak fertility years, instead of posing for engagement photos, buying a pug, enforcing a mandatory matching Christmas pajamas post including fiancé/boyfriend with said pug, choosing kitchen cupboard doors, and researching ovulation kits and school districts like her peers and their men, Emma works, and works, and works, and, undistracted by wifedom and motherhood, she makes a lot of money and becomes a Rich Bitch.

She accomplishes this in the male-dominated world of finance. Offended by nothing, she views the inevitable workplace harassment from her male peers as a challenge and accepts their salacious, disgusting offers. She surprises them by appearing in their hotel rooms in full dominatrix attire and laughs at them when they’re inevitably too scared of the electrodes and the whip and her mace to get it up. Then she takes photos of them in compromising positions, which she texts to their wives from their own phones with a winking-face emoji.

She does this three times: once with the head of derivatives, once with the head of European equities, and finally with her boss. She blackmails each of them out of their jobs and then does their jobs better than them, and now no one fucks with Emma. At least not in business. In the world of women and wives and mothers, however, Emma does not enjoy the same success.