All the time. To anyone. Strangers, people at parties, my parents. To my sister as we gazed down at her swaddled baby in the soft darkness. To myself, looking out the window on a 94 bus. I lied to Robert. He said, ‘if you decide to become pregnant,’ and I told him I couldn’t think of anything worse. And I lied to Patrick, before we were married and every day afterwards.
My husband does not know that a child is the only thing I have ever wanted. He doesn’t know that seeing my sister become a mother, a lovely good mother, was like being cut open, and her conceiving so easily and having more babies than she wanted made it too wide to ever close. And I have hated her sunmoonstarsgreatloveofmylife for complaining about all of it, her ruined body, the newborns who exhaust her with their crying, the toddlers and their constant touching and constant need, the cost, washing washing washing always washing, and muddy shoes, the end of sex, their fingerprints on all the windows, lice again! the night terrors, sudden fevers and fighting, the endless noise, and they make her completely useless because God, these perfect perfect perfect beautiful boys. The best thing she has ever done. But you are so lucky – you probably use a basket – you probably didn’t even know they sell toilet roll in forty-eight packs!
There is nothing inside me except want for a child. It is every breath in and every breath out. The baby I lost that day by the river, I wanted her so desperately I thought I would stop being at the same time as her. I have cried for her every day since then.
And I am still lying because I wrote you a note this morning, Patrick, and I did not leave it for you. It is here in my bag. I am looking down at its folded pages. I am leaning forward and retrieving it, and the man with the tattooed neck is saying no problem and tossing it, screwed up, into the bin for me.
I didn’t give it to you because you do not deserve to know these things about me, about my desire for a baby or even about my diagnosis. Those things are mine. I have been carrying them by myself and it is like having gold inside me. I have been walking around, knowing I am better than you. That is why I smile at you like the Mona Lisa, Patrick, while you study me so closely and remain oblivious. You didn’t see it. You were not looking for it. And none of it matters anyway. If I tell you or not. It is too late.
I said, ‘No when – well, just different opportunities I guess. Things I wanted to do and didn’t.’
The man said, ‘Yeah, right. Life. What a bucket of shit. Let’s get you done.’
I thought it would hurt but it didn’t and I reached into my bag again with the hand he wasn’t holding and got out my phone. Over the sound of the needle, he said he’d never had a client scrolling Instagram at the same time as getting inked.
He was finished in a few minutes and as he wrapped my thumb in cling film I asked him if he remembered my sister, the woman who had to stop before he had finished the first letter of her eldest son’s name because she was going to pass out, so instead of their three names, she has a tattoo of a very short line.
‘If she was the one who said I should be in jail for not offering my clients epidurals, then chucked all over the floor, then yeah.’
We stood up at the same time and as I was leaving he said he’d usually suggest a couple of ibuprofens or whatever but clearly, I was pretty fucking down with pain.
*
It was late, after ten, when I got back to the Executive Home. I had been caught in the rain. My hair was dripping down my back. I wiped under my eyes and my fingertips were black with mascara. Patrick was in the living room. He had ordered takeaway, enough for one person, and was watching the news.
He did not ask where I had been. I wasn’t planning to tell him or, before that moment, speak to him at all when I got home but the fury caused by coming in and finding Patrick engaged in normal activity was so intense it felt like heat and whiteness in front of my eyes. He was not entitled to the ordinary evening he had created for himself or any content in domestic life from now on, its basic rituals and small, common pleasures. Because of what he had done, I had gone without it and I would never acquire it in however much time was still to serve out.
I went over and stood between him and the television. I held up my thumb, still wrapped in cling film, and told him I’d been in London, getting a tattoo. In silence, he moved his fork around in his plastic container, searching through the rice for a chunk of something to stab with it. When I asked him if he would like to know what it was of, Patrick said up to you and kept going with the fork.
‘It’s a map of the Hebrides. Would you like to know why I got that?’ I said, okay then, I’ll tell you. ‘It’s a reference to the Shipping News, Patrick. Cyclonic, occasionally good et cetera. That funny joke I made once, remember? About it being a metaphor for my mental state. You’re wondering, why now? It’s because I saw a new doctor who gave me an explanation for that state.’ I said, mid-May, before you ask. ‘So yes, seven months.’