I told Ingrid that I had let Jonathan change my mind. As she understood it, it was a brief reversal of a life-choice.
I had never been able to tell her about my terror of pregnancy at the time I acquired it or as I got older and, instead of diminishing, my teenage fear intensified until I was a woman not just afraid of being pregnant, a damaged foetus, a damaged baby, but of babies in general, mothers and the concept of motherhood itself – one person charged with creating and keeping safe an entire human being. Ingrid would declare my fear irrational, illegitimate as the basis of an adult decision. And now, I did not want her to know that, so afraid, I’d still let Jonathan’s assured way of being and his propulsive energy overwhelm me and make me think I wasn’t scared at all. So quickly and so easily, I’d let him convince me I was someone else or that I could be simply by choosing and that I wanted a baby.
But I couldn’t compel myself into becoming someone without tendencies. Circumstances had no bearing, time wasn’t progressing me towards any other way of being. I was already at my final state. I was childless. I didn’t want children. I said, ‘So that’s good’ aloud, to no one. The women in the café were still talking when the traffic suddenly dissipated and the bus drove on.
*
At home, Oliver and Patrick were in the living room with Nicholas, watching television. Although it had been their practice for months and I’d had enough incidental conversations with Patrick to no longer feel awkward, I still didn’t join them and hadn’t meant to then. But as I passed the open door on my way to the stairs and saw them, shoulder to shoulder on the too-small sofa, loneliness collected me with such force I felt like I had been winded. I just stood there with my bag on my shoulder and my papers still in my hand, feeling the fast up and down of my chest, the in and out of my ribcage, until Oliver noticed me and said that, as I could see, they were watching competition darts and since it was the penultimate round, I needed to come in and sit down properly or continue on my way.
I saw myself, in a minute, sitting on my bed scrolling through listings for share houses in suburbs of London I only recognised as terminating destinations of various Tube lines, pretending I was still on the cusp of moving out.
I let my bag slide off my shoulder and went in. Patrick acknowledged me with a silent wave and Nicholas with the observation that I looked like shit. He asked me where I had been.
‘Town.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Divorcing.’
He said, ‘Shame’ and turned back to watch a man with a stomach that hung over his trousers aiming a dart at a red circle and punching the air when it struck the centre. After that, Nicholas got up, stretched, and told me I could have his spot because he just remembered a girl he needed to make amends with because his final act before rehab was putting a nine iron through her windscreen after taking more than his recommended daily intake of methamphetamine. ‘Which I discover is none. Back shortly.’
Patrick made a gesture of moving along to make more room, although there was none. Sitting between Patrick and Oliver, my arms pressed against theirs, all I wanted to do was stay there and watch competition darts while my cold empty body absorbed their warmth. The only thing Patrick said, turning his head but avoiding my eye, was, ‘I hope you’re okay.’
I pretended not to hear him because there was no way to bear the kindness of it, and instead asked Oliver why the men needed to wear moisture-wicking polos and sporty trousers to play a game that fat men play in pubs. He said, ‘It’s a sport, not a game,’ and we were all silent until its protracted finish and the presentation of a trophy that was so modest, I had to look away when the winner lifted it above his head with both hands as if its weight demanded it.
Oliver said, ‘Right, let’s see what else your parents’ terrestrial channels have to offer us, Martha.’ I knew he wouldn’t leave until Nicholas came back and I hoped that it would be a long time before he did. I did not want to be alone. Part way into the movie that Oliver chose for its promise of coarse language and sexual references, I felt myself falling asleep and just before I did, someone shifting so that my heavy head could rest against their shoulder.
*
The television was off and the windows black when I woke up. Only Patrick was still in the room. I was lying on my side, curled around a cushion. My head was in his lap. As soon I moved, he shot up and went over to the bookcases on the other side of the room, as though he’d been waiting for his opportunity to retrieve the Encyclopaedia of Middle English from my father’s shelves, which he did, then opened at random and stood reading. I asked him what time it was and where my cousins were. It was midnight, Nicholas had gone to bed and, he said, Oliver left a while ago.