Rachel Weeping (13 page)

She clicked on the post and started to read through his interaction with someone called Anja – flirty one-liners filled with smiley faces and cute hashtags.

Michelle opened Anja's profile and began to browse through her information, her eyes scanning through the dozens of photographs this woman had online for everyone to see. She learned that she was single. And anyone could see that she was extremely attractive. Who was this Anja who was shamelessly flirting with her husband? Because that was definitely what it was. But what upset Michelle more was that Chris had clearly been flirting back, and for some time.

Suddenly Michelle felt dizzy. She closed her laptop. She didn't feel like tea anymore.

 

 

 

Rachel was standing at the sink, rinsing the last of the dishes before she finished for the day. Her heart jumped when she heard footsteps on the kitchen tiles and she looked round to see Michelle standing behind her with an empty mug.

‘Can I put this in?' Michelle asked.

Rachel, her hands deep in the hot water, nodded and waited as Michelle leaned awkwardly across her to add the mug to the rest of the dishes. Neither of the women said anything else and after a minute Michelle moved out of the way. Rachel continued rinsing the dishes and stacking them in the dishwasher. It was only when she turned the machine on that she noticed Michelle was still there, standing in the breakfast nook and staring out at the green infinity pool. Rachel dried her hands on a towel, murmured, ‘I'm finished now' to her employer's back, and picked up her keys.

Michelle had been lying in the bath for about ten minutes when she heard Chris's car in the driveway. After his run he'd spent some time at the weights section at the gym with his friend Riaan and had texted ahead to tell her not to save dinner for him. She listened as he came indoors and heard him shuffling around the house, whistling a snatch of a melody she couldn't identify. She was still hurt by what she had seen earlier on Facebook but after she had read his interaction with the woman called Anja again, she couldn't tell if she was reading something into it that wasn't there.

It was difficult to read tone on that medium.

She waited a few moments until she heard Chris's footsteps coming along the passage.

‘I'm in the bath,' she called out.

Chris appeared in the doorway. His face was red and his gym clothes were sweat soaked.

‘Hey,' he said.

‘Hey.' Michelle sat up in the bathtub. ‘How was training?'

‘Painful,' Chris replied as he kicked his gym shoes off. He sat down on the floor in the archway of the door.

‘Guess that's how you know you're doing something right,' Michelle said, smiling tentatively.

Chris closed his eyes and exhaled, grunting agreement.

‘How was work?'

‘The client decided to change their minds on the final designs, which means my workload has just doubled for the week.'

Michelle processed the information and shifted her weight, the movement sending ripples across the water. Chris shuffled closer to her and put his hand on her belly. Together they watched as the baby turned, pushing off Michelle's stomach with a foot or an elbow in order to rearrange itself. Chris grinned at the action while Michelle winced.

‘That was my bladder, baby,' she said, but she smiled too.

Chris gazed at her swollen belly, watching, waiting for her skin to move and Michelle smiled tiredly at him and put a hand on his damp hair. She considered asking him who Anja was. The only problem was that there was no way of doing this without sounding as if she was suspicious or, worse, had been spying on him.

‘Chris,' she said suddenly, ‘did you take the ultrasound photo that I stuck on the fridge?'

Chris shook his head.

‘It's not there anymore.'

‘Maybe it's underneath.'

Michelle was on the verge of pointing out sharply that she had already looked there, what did he think, but it had been a while since their conversations had lacked animosity and so she checked herself. She didn't want to start an argument this late in the evening.

‘You're probably right,' she said. ‘I'll look later.'

 

 

 

Rachel peered at the crumpled ultrasound image. The room was dark save for the light from her bedside lamp. She traced the outline of the baby's face and body with her finger. She hadn't been able to afford to get an ultrasound of Maia when she was pregnant and so had missed out on the wonder that came from seeing your unborn child for the first time. She had simply trusted that the doctor was telling her the truth when he told her everything was okay – not that she would have been able to tell any different with a photograph of her womb.

As she stared at the picture she started to sing a lullaby, one that her mother had sung to her as a child and that she had in turn sung to Maia. It had been the song that would always get Maia to sleep when she was a baby. It reminded Rachel of home, the village of Inhassoro and the warm, deep ocean she used to know so well. She sang it through twice and then she tucked the ultrasound under her pillow, turned off the lamp and went to sleep.

 

 

 

 

chapter 16

It was Friday
afternoon and Rachel was doing the ironing. She pressed the wrinkles out of one of Michelle's white collared shirts, listening to the gurgle and hiss from the iron as she tilted it. Her appointment at Home Affairs to renew her visa was scheduled for Monday and she still hadn't managed to ask the Jordaans if she could leave Maia on the property while she was gone for a few hours. They were always both so busy, she scarcely ever saw them during the week.

She was just putting Michelle's shirt on a hanger when she heard footsteps in the passage. She looked up as Chris and Michelle entered the kitchen together, both of them looking down at their phones as they walked. Michelle only noticed Rachel when she was almost at the fridge.

‘Rachel!' she exclaimed, smiling. ‘What are you doing hiding in the corner? I would have thought you were done for the day.'

‘I'm just finishing up,' Rachel said, smiling back. She took a pair of Chris's jeans out of the ironing basket.

Chris had already opened the fridge and cracked open a beer, while Michelle was setting her work things and handbag down on the counter, absentmindedly chewing on her thumbnail and reading messages on her iPhone at the same time.

‘How has the day been?' Chris asked Rachel, taking a swig straight from the bottle and leaning against the counter.

‘It was good. I cleaned the windows.'

‘
That's good. Great. Thank you,' Chris said. He already had his iPad in his free hand. He ambled over to the breakfast nook where he pulled out a chair. Michelle had her back to Rachel, her fingers typing furiously into her iPhone, and the kitchen returned to silence. Rachel had never used a smartphone. It was a source of fascination to her to see how Chris and Michelle would sit next to each other in silence for ages while they interacted with their phones and tablets.

She folded Chris's jeans and put the ironing board away. Then she went across to the breakfast nook and waited for Chris to look up. Culture and custom required that important questions were always to be asked of the male in the house.

‘I was wondering if I could ask you a favour,' she began.

Michelle, who had taken a seat on one of the counter stools, looked up briefly to see what Rachel had to say, half her attention on her phone.

‘What is it?' Chris asked.

‘I really don't want to be an inconvenience, so please say no if you can't help me – '

‘Please, Rachel,' Chris said, interrupting her, ‘just tell us what it
is.'

‘I need to get my visa renewed on Monday and because I don't have anyone to look after Maia, I was wondering if I could leave her here.'

‘What about Jollyjammers?' Michelle asked without looking up from the phone. ‘Won't she be at school?'

‘The teachers are having a conference on Monday,' Rachel replied. ‘She'll stay in my room the whole time, but I just didn't want to leave her here without you knowing about it.'

Chris turned to Michelle and started speaking to her in Afrikaans, briefly excluding Rachel from the conversation. Rachel's eyes flickered anxiously between her two employers, trying to read their body language as they discussed the matter. Michelle didn't look particularly overjoyed at what Chris was saying.

‘She'll be fine in my room,' Rachel interjected in English. ‘I just wanted to let you know so you didn't get a surprise.'

‘No, no, Rachel,' Michelle said, although she looked irritable. ‘You can't leave her on her own in your room. She can stay in the house with me. I can work at home for a few hours. I just need you to be back before 1:30.'

‘Yes, of course,' Rachel said. ‘Thank you, Michelle.'

Michelle went back to her iPhone and there was a moment of not very comfortable silence.

‘Is the employment letter that I gave you still good?' Chris asked.

‘Yes, it is,' Rachel replied. ‘Thank you.'

Chris nodded. With nothing left to say, Rachel picked up the pile of still-warm ironing and went off to Chris and Michelle's bedroom to put the clothes away. She breathed a sigh of relief, grateful that she had managed to find a solution to her problem.

It was time to go and collect Maia from school. In her room Rachel hastily pulled off her uniform and grabbed a pair of jeans hanging over the back of the chair.

 

 

 

‘What's wrong,
lief
?' Chris asked.

‘Nothing,' Michelle said, looking him briefly in the eyes before returning her attention to the message she was typing. She wasn't happy but she didn't want to get into it now, especially as they were both tired. They never argued well when they were in that state.

‘I know what that means,' Chris said, laughing from across the room.

Michelle inhaled, trying, but failing, to resist the bait.

‘I just don't like it when you make decisions on my behalf,' she said. ‘I'm crazy about Maia, as you know, but I also have to work. If I had said no after what you said, I would have looked like a bitch.'

‘Come on – I just figured you'd want to help if you could.'

‘Of course I'd want to help,' Michelle said, putting the phone down and facing her husband. ‘That isn't the point. I don't like it when you don't include me in the decision, that's all.'

Fully expecting Chris to fire back at her for being inflexible, Michelle set her chin defiantly.

‘Okay,' Chris said, surprising her, and getting up to walk across the kitchen towards her. ‘I'm sorry.'

He kissed her on the shoulder and lingered for a minute. He pulled a stray hair back behind her ear. As happy as Michelle was that he had apologised, it was patronising that he had done so without any resistance. She knew her competitive nature. She never enjoyed a victory unless it was one that was won after a good fight.

‘How are you feeling?' Chris asked.

‘I'm fine,' Michelle said. ‘But I wish we hadn't gone for the test yesterday. Now we're going to have to wait all weekend until Monday to find out.'

‘The waiting makes it worse,' Chris agreed. ‘Remember the days when you got a new cellphone and had to wait 24 hours for it to charge before you could use it.'

Michelle smiled at both the memory and the odd comparison.

‘I don't know what you're talking about,' she said, ‘because I never waited.'

Chris laughed and kicked off his shoes.

Michelle went to the fridge. She took two ready-made meals out of the freezer compartment. ‘Which one do you want for supper?' she asked.

 

chapter 17

Rachel lifted the
beige sofa in the TV room and moved it out of the way, pushing the vacuum cleaner beneath it so that she could reach the dirt. She vacuumed the lounge once a week but hadn't performed a ‘deep clean' in months because the TV room was so rarely used by the Jordaans, in spite of Chris having bought such a big TV.

Out of sight, out of mind.

When Rachel had to have Maia in the house during school holidays, while the Jordaans were at work she would usually keep her in this room, the Disney channel distracting her enough to allow Rachel to complete her chores. Maia had loved the huge television screen and she'd asked Rachel when they were going to get one that size for their room, which had made Rachel laugh. Even if she had been able to afford one, a TV that size would have taken up their entire wall, a factor that hadn't occurred to Maia of course.

Rachel put the sofa down and dragged the machine across the room, feeding its hunger for dust and dirt with whatever lay in its path on the dirty floor. It was strange but she always found an incredible sense of satisfaction when she felt a large amount of dirt disappear into the vacuum cleaner. She liked to hear the particles scrape against the throat of the machine before they disappeared forever.

She walked to the other couch, the single-seater, and bent down to lift it, extending the mouth of the cleaner beneath it once she had its edge firmly in her hand. The dirt struggled against the suction and then something large entered the cleaner and blocked the flow. The motor strained as it tried to pull it through, making a gasping noise. She set the couch down on the floor and lifted the machine to see what was causing the obstruction.

It looked like a large piece of paper.

Rachel tugged it gently from the cleaner and turned it over, the motor quietening down to a steady hum now that the obstruction had been removed. It was an old piece of office paper, the surface covered in crudely drawn lines of crayon, giving a clear indication of who the artist had been.

It showed a mother and a daughter walking on a beach, the bright blue ocean rolling beside them while a group of stick figures stood to the side. Scattered on the beach were crudely drawn cowry shells and riding on top of the water were some boats, the distinct sails indicating that they were dhows. The mother and the daughter were holding hands, their stick bodies struggling to support their comical oversized heads.

Without planning to, Rachel sat down on the sofa. She stared at
the drawing as if her eyes could burn holes in it while the vacuum cleaner buzzed aimlessly in the background.

Maia had drawn it the day she passed.