two hundred pounds?’ he says, holding up the bill.
‘Toys,’ I say. I look at Daniel. ‘This is all wrong.’
‘He’s crying. It’s what kids do – you always tell me that.’
But this is not what kids do. Daniel is pushing his head against my calf, and now dragging his forehead along the floor.
‘I think we should buy shares in Toys “ᴙ” Us,’ Stephen says, picking a new bill from the pile, slitting the envelope with his car key.
‘Stephen –’ I feel myself panicking a little. I know I ought to have some explanation and some sort of … what would you call it? … remedy for what is happening here, but I do not. Daniel seems to be using his head like a floor mop. What would other mothers do? They all seem so capable, so commanding; but it seems to me that all they ever argue about with their children is why the broccoli is left on the plate, or why the child can’t find his shoes. Nothing like this. Daniel is hysterical and I’m feeling not too far behind him. And now, to my horror, he is not only dragging his head across the floor but pushing it down into the carpet, as though trying to hurt himself on purpose, which only makes him cry more. ‘Stephen, look at this!’
But just then Emily appears at the bottom of the stairs, holding up her Mickey Mouse and smiling.
Stephen says, ‘Daniel has a headache, that’s all.’
But I notice he’s looking at Emily when he says this. It’s as though he cannot bring himself to see what I see. In front of me, Daniel is pushing his head into the corner of the room and pressing it there with every ounce of strength that he has.
If Stephen is away – on business, for example – I sleep with Emily on one side of me and Daniel on the other. Like this I can attend to the movements of either of them, can feel the heat of their skin, the stirrings of their dreams. It is the only time I can really sleep, huddled between them, kicked by them, occasionally woken by Daniel who cannot sleep through the night yet. I never complain about the broken night’s sleep. When I wake for those few minutes, the darkness seems a comfort. I feel my heart is a timepiece set in motion by my children’s breathing, and that the bed is our refuge, a place where nobody can touch us. As long as we stay here together, warm beneath the duvet, the darkness is velvet. Thomas the Tank Engine can stay clutched in Daniel’s hand. Dumbo’s family, in their gaudy circus blankets, can watch us from the nightstand.
Because I have been particularly high-strung of late – what Stephen calls unstable and, if I am honest with myself, what I also would call unstable – I slept last night with the children like so, one to my left and one to my right. It’s the only way I could recover after Daniel’s tantrum. I needed him close to me – quiet, peaceful, loving. I needed to feel connected to him. I don’t think Stephen understands this – I don’t think anyone understands – and so I’ve woken this morning feeling slightly ashamed of myself, as though my behaviour makes me feeble and pathetic. Stephen has spent the night in Emily’s bed, which is a proper single bed, quite comfortable, but not where he wants to be. Getting ready for work he is crabby, remote, gathering my attention now as I stretch into this new day, limp in one of his old rugby shirts, not quite able to face the morning.
‘I don’t have a babysitter for tonight, Stephen, I’m really sorry.’
‘Did you call a babysitter?’ he asks, dressing in front of me. He is crisp as a new banknote, his hair springs up from where he’s combed it wet from the shower. He pushes his leg through the elastic of his boxer shorts, gathers his suit trousers at the waist, loops the belt. Bowing his back like a sprinter at the starting block, he turns the laces of his shoes.
‘Of course I did. I called several.’ This isn’t true but I have no other excuse. He wants us to go to some sort of business dinner party thing tonight and there is no way – no way whatsoever – that I’m going with him. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. And I am sorry, too, but not because I don’t want to go out tonight. The truth is I feel self-conscious. I don’t want people to see how fretful I am, how troubled. I used to love to go out, but now it is as though I’ve lost all capacity to speak to other people at such things as dinner parties. They always seem so well adjusted and normal to me, making me feel even weirder. ‘I’m not myself lately,’ I tell Stephen.
Stephen sighs. ‘What I want to know is what this guy is doing for sixty-five pounds an hour.’
‘Who? Jacob? He listens. I talk to him,’ I say. ‘Don’t blame Jacob because I don’t want to go out tonight. It’s not his fault.’
‘See, I knew it. You don’t want to go.’
Oh damn, I’ve blown it. ‘I do,’ I say, trying to smile.
Stephen gives me a long look, then shakes his head. He works his fingers down his stiff, immaculate shirt, weaving the buttons through their holes. ‘You can talk to me for a lot less than sixty-five pounds an hour,’ he says.
‘I’m getting him to prescribe something. Maybe Valium. Maybe Prozac. I haven’t decided. They keep coming up with new drugs, it’s getting harder and harder to choose among them all.’ I try laughing, but it doesn’t work. I’m so exhausted it sounds like a grunt.
Stephen goes to the closet and extracts a tie, flipping the silk through his fingers until it forms a perfect knot. Then he goes down the short flight of stairs to where his coat hangs on the banister. I can hear him now, pushing his hands in and out of the pockets, disrupting his keys which give off tiny, musical notes as he tosses them in the satin lining of his coat. He comes back upstairs with a small brown vial.
‘I told a friend of mine at work what you’re like these days and he gave me these,’ he says, lobbing the vial on to the bedclothes. ‘Antidepressants or something. Now, are you coming out with me tonight or not?’
‘Not,’ I say, but I stash the pills in my nightstand.
The pills are long and thin and white. Just one sends my head into a fuzz and makes it so the radio song I heard five hours ago is still crystal clear across every thought, raining down into my ears. Like this I cannot play My Little Pony correctly because I cannot make up the stories Emily needs in order to use the ponies’ new kitchen and their new glittery tiaras. I keep saying, ‘They are making a pie to take to the party.’ And she keeps saying, ‘But then what?’
‘Then they make the pie?’
Emily’s big eyes turn to me, heavy under her furrowed little brow. ‘Mummmmy!’ she says impatiently.
‘OΚ, it’s not a pie. Give me a moment. It’s a … uh … it’s a cake?’
I wander off to look for Daniel, but discover I cannot find him. In my ears is a terrible girl band and I cannot make them shut up. Not only do I hear them singing, but I also see them dancing. It’s like a sound and light show inside my head. Poking my fingers into my ears makes no difference, nor does covering my eyes with my hands and spinning, which is exactly what Daniel does when he is distressed. I call for Daniel but, of course, he doesn’t answer. He never answers. I am hoping that he will reappear, drawn by my voice, but he does not. I look in my bedroom, in all the closets and cupboards. It feels as though the house has swallowed him. He is Houdini, disappearing before my eyes. Downstairs, I search behind chairs and
