Goodnight, Beautiful: A Novel (22 page)

I
can’t look at Meredith, but I know she is shocked. I can feel it mushroom like a nuclear cloud over us, and with every word I speak, every truth I reveal, her shock grows and spreads, until it fills the room.

“Nova was our surrogate, Leo was meant to be my son.”

It started in the supermarket, of all places.

In the washing powder aisle. I thought it would be the sight of a young mum sharing a tender moment with her child that would ignite the maternal spark in me, but it was the exact opposite. It started with a little boy, in a blue anorak and green combats, throwing himself on the floor, writhing and twisting like a goldfish that had accidentally leapt out of its bowl onto the carpet, whilst screaming as though he was being murdered by a rusty hacksaw. Like all the other shoppers who had been down that aisle when the epic tantrum began, I stood, watching him, horrified at the spectacle and impressed at his freedom.

After a few seconds, my eyes, like all the other shoppers’, moved to his mother. She stood stock-still in front of the washing powder, her half-full cart beside her, her eyes fixed on the detergents, to all intents and purposes deaf to the noise her son was creating. When we looked at her, we were all surprised
because she wasn’t hastily trying to secrete about her person the rusty hacksaw with which the boy was being murdered. The only outward clue that she was with him and that she could hear him was that color sat high in her face, resting on her cheekbones like two streaks of paint, and her eyes were glossy with tears.

I realized, then, that she was trying to wait out the tantrum. Giving in, even when it was causing her immense embarrassment and every witness intense discomfort, would mean he would do this again. And again. And again. He would realize that misbehaving in public would be the quickest and most effective way to get what he wanted. Having said that, it was clear that it wasn’t working. He had tenacity, this young boy—his tantrum, its loud, insistent wail, was not abating.

My heart went out to her. I wanted to pick him up by the scruff of the neck, I wanted to put my arms around her. I wanted, I realized with a start, to be her. Because I would do it differently. I would give in, I would allow him what he wanted now, then take away something at home. I wouldn’t allow him to embarrass me in public, I would simply punish him in private. I wanted to be her.

I wanted to be a mother.

I wanted to have a child of my own.

I abandoned my cart there in the aisle and walked out of the supermarket, the sound of the stranger’s cries and his mother’s loud, silent humiliation drilling into me what I wanted and what I couldn’t have.

Everything was flat after that day.

Flat and meaningless. Dull. The shine was buffed off everything, the joy drained out of life. No matter how fast I ran at night, how far I stretched, how much weight I lifted, pushed and
pulled, it was still there. The cloud. The knowledge. The unending gray that was my life. My reality.

I have moods. Like any other person, I have moods. Sometimes mine last a bit longer, seem a bit deeper, but that’s because I feel things with a depth most people don’t allow themselves to experience. I worry, I fret, I take things to heart and I keep them there. When our dog, Duke, died when I was thirteen, everyone—my mother, my father, Mary, Peter—cried. But they all “got over it.” They could all leave it behind. I loved Duke more than them, that was obvious, because months later I still cried for him. I still missed him. I still hurt like it had only just happened. I could feel, more than most people. Now, after the incident in the supermarket, there was nothing to feel.

The landscape of reality showed me this: there was no point to it. To anything. Don’t we exist so we can create? Procreate? I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. Therefore, what was the point of me? What was the point of any of it?

I didn’t talk to Mal about it. Why would I? This was all down to me. He could have children. He wasn’t the faulty one. I was. It was all my problem, why burden him with it? When I told him originally about my history, what had happened to me, why I couldn’t have children, he had accepted it like he accepted every other thing about me. He accepted that as a teenager I had been branded a slut-whore. He accepted that I’d got pregnant at fifteen. He accepted and understood about the abortion and how, because of that, because of complications, I was unable to have children. He understood it as a part of who I was. He was unwavering in his support. But still, I could not tell him everything. Not
every
thing.

So I couldn’t share this with him. It hurt him enough that he wouldn’t be a father—he hid it, but I knew it was something he
wanted—so why burden him with something that was my fault and was only now starting to hurt?

Gray has a sound, you know that?

It has a sound and it has a texture. It sounds like a noise so loud you can only hear it when you’re quiet. It feels like huge bales of cotton wool and it smothers you. It fills up every orifice and smothers you so you drown on dry land. It deafens and drowns you.

Black is not so hard to figure out. Black isn’t as bad as people make out. Blackness is just dark. Grayness is around all the time. When it’s light out, when it’s dark out, gray is still there, waiting to slowly, carefully, gently creep over you. To make you not exist. You never know it’s happening until it’s too late. Until you can’t breathe and you can’t see and you can’t hear and you can’t feel.

My life was gray.

I had to stop it.

I had to stop the grayness from taking over.

No one understood, of course. It was happening to them, I could see the gray around the edges of their lives, but they didn’t notice. Or they didn’t want to notice. They pretended everything was fine. They would stand by the photocopier, talking and laughing, and pretend they couldn’t feel the grayness hanging over their shoulders. I could see it. I would stare at them, willing them to notice and to do something; I would stare at the grayness and will it to go away. It had already taken hold of my life, I didn’t want it to take over theirs.

I didn’t tell them, I had to help them. Show them the best way to do things. I wore red and yellow and green to work. I wore blue eyeshadow, red lipstick. I wore my red dress. I wore my
yellow shoes. I wore my green headscarf. It showed them that they didn’t have to give in to the gray. Even I, who had been invaded by it, could escape.

I didn’t fit in, apparently. That’s what they said when they “let me go.” I had been a wonderful office manager for five years, but my interests obviously lay elsewhere so they were paying me a lump sum and wishing me luck in my future endeavors. It didn’t matter. I was losing the battle against the gray there anyway. At home, I would be able to concentrate on my battle.

I could win against the gray.

If I didn’t have to worry about other people, I could remember why the gray had started to pick on me and I could fight it. I could win if I had the time to fight back.

There was a lot of gray in the cemetery.

It stretched for miles. I walked around the place, looking at headstones. Reading them. Seeing who had lost the fight. How their battle was explained away in a few lines. A life reduced to a few lines chiseled into stone. It didn’t seem right. The headstones should be proclaiming how these people lived, how they died, how they made a difference in the world. What was the point of trying if this was all that you were reduced to in the end: meaningless words on a stone.

I always lingered over the stones that said “loving mother.” I would never be that, would I? If the gray won, they would never say that about me. What would I want them to say about me? Would I want them to even bother?

I
want normal again. I want OK again. Is that really too much to want? For everything to be normal?

Maybe it is, because the way Leo came about was not normal in the everyday sense. Maybe this is happening because Leo was never meant to be mine.

BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!

BUZZZZZZ! BUZZZZZZ! BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!

My eyes snapped open, startled awake by something. The main light was on, my sweaty cheek was pressed up against the pages of a psychology tome I’d been making notes from and half the duvet was on the floor, half of it twisted around my leg. I looked at the clock: 2:07 a.m. Had I been woken up by a sound, or a dream? Sometimes my dreams did that, forced me upwards into wakefulness, where it took me a while to get my bearings.

BUZZZZZZZZZZZ! came again and I sat up, my eyes wide with shock. I untangled myself from the duvet and, tugging on my dressing gown, I rushed out to the wide corridor of my flat and snatched up the intercom phone.

“It’s me,” Mal said.

“Oh,” I replied and pressed the key button to let him in.

Mal hadn’t visited me at 2 a.m.—actually, past midnight—in years. Rarely since he’d met Stephanie and
never
since they’d moved in together and then went on to get married. It wasn’t so much that I was dispensable, or that he wouldn’t if the mood took him and he had something pressing to tell me, but I had explained to him at length that Stephanie wouldn’t appreciate it. Keith didn’t mind if he was on night duty because it would mean I wouldn’t be alone. But Stephanie wasn’t as secure about my friendship with Mal as Keith was. Even now, I knew, she occasionally gave me sideways looks that told me she was suspicious of me; sometimes waves of doubt about my feelings for her husband would tumble off her.

Opening the door to Mal told me that it wasn’t a social visit.

He could barely stay upright. His hair stood on end, his tie was loosened and lay lopsided around his open top button. His suit jacket and trousers, although navy blue, were stiff with dark patches; his light blue shirt was also stiff and darkened. Blood. Dried blood. I reared back internally, bile gushing to my throat, my stomach spinning in on itself.

“Steph’s had an accident,” he said, his voice a fragile whisper. “She’s in the hospital.”

“I’ll make you something to eat,” I said as I brought him inside.

I knew he wasn’t going to tell me anything else because he knew nothing else. We had a shorthand for speaking about such things. From the incidents with Aunt Mer, we knew we had to give the important pieces of information as soon as possible. If he knew she was going to be OK, he would have said she was fine as soon as he told me she was in the hospital; if she wasn’t going to make it, he would have told me straightaway. He didn’t know anything more than he had told me.

I didn’t ask what had happened, why there was so much blood, if he had been there when it happened, because it wasn’t important. He needed comfort. He needed a good feeding.

While I put on the rice, he stood in the corner of my kitchen leaning against the fridge. All the while I breathed through my mouth so I wouldn’t have to inhale that sickening, dirty, metallic stench of blood. I defrosted frozen vegetables, I opened tins of tomatoes, I fried onions, I mixed in the tomatoes, I squeezed in tomato paste, and, in between, I talked. I talked about my current assignment, I talked about finishing with Keith only to get back with him hours later and start thinking of finishing with him again. I talked through my worries about who was misappropriating stock at the restaurant. I talked and talked because I talk too much. I talk too much because I had learned from a long time ago that the last thing Mal needed in times of crisis was silence.

We didn’t eat.

The plates of freshly cooked food sat on the wooden side table in the living room, while I sat on the sofa, Mal curled up with his head resting on my lap. I stroked my hand over his hair, and I talked and talked until we both fell asleep.

I
noticed his eyes first.

Clouded over, a storm of pain and agony rolling in them.

I knew then, instantly, that something had happened to his mother. Poor Mal. I moved to comfort him, to climb out of bed and into the inviting well of his lap, to wrap my arms around him and cuddle him and love him better. I couldn’t. Couldn’t move. Something was holding me back. Down.

When I looked, around my forearms leather straps were secured, holding me back, holding me down. Around my wrists, bandages, holding me together. I flopped back onto the bed, stared up at the white ceiling. Sighed. Oh. Right. That.
Here.

His eyes were still on me. I could feel them, resting gently on my profile, like he often did with his hand before he kissed me.

I don’t know why you bothered
, I thought at him. I couldn’t say it out loud, they listened to everything you said here. Listened, wrote it down, made a big deal of it. Even throwaway lines that someone would laugh at somewhere else became as important as the Holy Grail here.

I knew what he was thinking:
What?

Not why? What?

He knew
why
, he was thinking
what? What
was the trigger?
What
made me do this? He knew why I did it, but not
what
made me do it. Yup, that was what my loving husband wanted to know: not why, what?