He’d said I know what, Martha, how about we don’t talk until we get home.
I said, ‘How about we don’t talk once we’re home either,’ and turned on the heater, as high as it would go.
*
Always, when I see Ingrid’s eldest son he says, ‘Can you say about how I was born on the floor?’ He tells me his mother is too tired to and his father only saw the end part. He says his brothers don’t believe babies can happen on the floor – meaning, they will need to hear it again too, but separately, after him. On my lap, he puts one hand on each side of my face and tells me I have to do the funny version.
The last line is his. The last line is, ‘But my mum didn’t like it and that’s why sometimes everyone calls me Not Patrick.’
Before he slides off my lap, he needs me to explain one more time how Patrick wasn’t his uncle then and a bit later, he was. The fact is astonishing to him. It seems to confirm his belief that the very nature of things pivots on his existence, but he cannot fully enjoy it until he has my assurance that things can’t go back the other way. That Patrick will always be his uncle.
32
THE MORNING AFTER the party, Ingrid called to post-mortem it, she said ‘as is my wont.’ I was still on the sofa where Patrick had left me to go and buy a newspaper, believing he was and would be back soon. She told me she was in the bathroom hiding from her children, and would have to hang up if they found her. Over the sound of slopping bathwater, she rated the outfits the women wore in ascending order from worst to okayish, then talked for a while about Oliver’s new girlfriend who had got spectacularly drunk and flirted with Rowland. At the end of the night, Ingrid had seen her mine-sweeping the room for abandoned glasses, and later, being broken up with in the car park. It was so weird, she said, that it wasn’t our mother doing the mine-sweeping, insisting when she could no longer stand up that someone had spiked her drink, Ingrid would say, with ten other drinks. At the party, my sister hadn’t asked me why our mother wasn’t there and didn’t then. Her not appearing at an event thrown in celebration of someone else was not remarkable enough.
‘Did you have fun?’
I thought she meant it as a real question and said no.
‘Yes. That was obvious.’
I felt accused and told her I tried.
‘Did you? Really? Was that when you locked yourself in the toilet or when you were looking at your phone during my stupid speech?’
‘Can you please remember that I didn’t even want a party,’ I said, ‘The whole thing was Patrick’s idea. But whatever. I’m sorry.’
I heard the loud suction of water, my sister getting out of the bath. She told me to hang on for a second, then sighed heavily into the phone before she began talking again. ‘I know you and Patrick have been having a shit time for reasons I can’t work out but I wish I could understand why you can’t just backburner it for one night, and be like fuck it, it’s my birthday, my husband’s done all this, everyone is here, I’ll just have a champagne and a fucking olive and get back to my marriage problems tomorrow.’
I could not explain to Ingrid why I behaved like I hated Patrick without revealing why, by that time, I truly did. And I was so exhausted – all of a sudden – so exhausted by being the bad one, the disappointing one, the ruiner of everything again, again, again, that when I replied I was almost shouting. ‘Because it’s all false, Ingrid. All those speeches and laughing and oh Martha you look lovely, happy birthday, the big four-oh. They’re not my friends. None of them know the first thing about me, why I am the way I am. And it’s my fault because I am a fuck-up and a liar. You don’t even know me.’
‘Literally what are you talking about?’
I moved the phone to my other hand. ‘I have ——。’
‘Who said that?’
‘A new doctor.’
As though I’d complained that I was fat, Ingrid said, ‘Well that’s stupid. He’s obviously wrong.’
‘No he isn’t.’
‘What? Really?’
I said yes.
‘You have actual ——？ Fuck.’ She was quiet for a second. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t be. I’m fine with it. He gave me something that worked. I’ve been a new man for six months.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
I said, ‘I haven’t told anyone except our parents.’
‘Why not? If you’re fine with it, why wouldn’t you just tell everyone?’