The Predictions (19 page)

“We could go to the park afterward. Or to a restaurant—we haven’t done that for ages. Zachary can sit on my lap.”

He had played on my weakness, the rascal. “Okay,” I said reluctantly. “But if it all turns to custard, I might have to leave.”

“Of course. Whatever you want.”

A smooth black car, not quite a limo, picked us up at four in the afternoon. Zachary had woken late from his nap and I had rushed his feed, pulling him off before he was finished. In the back of the car, I lifted up my shirt and tried again, much to the delight of the driver, who spent more time glancing in the rearview mirror than he did looking at the road ahead.

“You’re not going to do that in the studio, are you?” said Lukas, looking worried.

“No way. That’s why I’m doing it now—to get it out of the way.”

“I’m sure we can find somewhere private, if you really need to.”

“Thanks.”

The car swerved to avoid a pedestrian, throwing us across the slippery backseat. Zachary popped off the breast, yelped as though someone had stuck a pin in him, then searched again for the nipple and bit down hard on it. “Ouch! Fuck. Sorry,” I said, and Zachary looked at me as if to say,
Don’t even think about doing that again
.

“You know you don’t have to come,” said Lukas. “If you don’t want to.”

“Do you want us to be there?” My voice was harried, shrill.

“Of course. But I can get the driver to take you home again, if it’s too stressful.”

“Don’t be silly,” I said, brightly despairing. “I really want to hear the new record. Tell me what it’s called.”

“
Cover Me in Sugar.
”

“Cover you in sugar?”

“It’s a reference to female ejaculation.”

“Yeah, I think I get that.”

By the time we arrived at the studio, Zachary was a human milkshake. In a flash of fatherly pride, Lukas insisted on carrying him in so he could present him to his friends, but even as we made our way across the lobby, a snail trail of white goo escaped from Zachary’s mouth. He sucked it back in, miraculously, and we pressed on into the lift, which whooshed up to the eighteenth floor with rocketlike speed. It was so fast that my own stomach yawned, and I glanced at Zachary, who answered with a tiny burp.
Good—a burp is good. Air escaping.

We were late. Marlon, Serena, Vince, Alan, and Fran, their expressions anxious, and some men in suits whom I didn’t recognize and wasn’t introduced to, were seated on long leather couches, waiting for us; Spike was there too, looking, as always, fidgety and smug.

Apart from Fran, no one had met Zachary yet, and I thought at least someone might be interested in meeting him now, but I was wrong. He was ignored, and so was I. If being pregnant had rendered me embarrassing, unfunny, mute, then having the baby had granted me the cloak of invisibility. Or maybe they were just nervous about the record. It stung to be overlooked, but I was also relieved. I had been worrying about what I would say to these people
if they asked me how I was or what I had been doing all day.

I settled into the corner of the couch furthest away from the playback speakers with Zachary on my lap. He had started making the baby-lamb noise that led to his either falling asleep or working up to an almighty fuss.

We got through the first track okay, though I barely noticed the music coming from the speakers. When the track finished, instead of moving on to the next one, Marlon conferred with Lukas behind his hand, then walked over to the playback machine and switched it off. Lukas had his back to me, but I could see he was agitated, sweating. With no explanation, Marlon left the room, followed by Lukas. After they had gone, no one discussed the song we had just heard, but there was some discreet shrugging among the executives, and Zachary kept up his chorus. Then Fran and one of the executives started exchanging heated whispers, careful to keep their voices low so the rest of us wouldn’t hear.

After about five minutes, Marlon and Lukas came back into the room, big smiles on their faces—too big—and the atmosphere in the studio lifted to match.

“Guys,” said one of the suits, “we were just saying how fantastic the new stuff sounds. Love the direction you’ve taken it in. Really sharp, really fresh.”

“Let’s get on with it, shall we?” said Lukas.

When the next track started, I paid more attention, but I couldn’t believe I was listening to the same thing as everyone else. Underneath the usual screeching guitars and driving bass was some kind of acid house beat. I didn’t know rave
music very well but I’d seen a news item on illegal dance parties and what reporters had been calling the Second Summer of Love. I listened more carefully, glancing at the drummer, Alan. He was staring at his shoes, looking shifty. Clearly, the acid house had not been his idea. Zachary didn’t like it either. He curled up his fists, screwed up his face, and as the track reached what I supposed was the bridge, he opened his mouth, not to scream, but to let a torrent of curdled milk and saliva pour from his mouth. There was perhaps a cupful and it went all over him, all over me, all over the shiny red leather couch. When I tried to clean it up with the burp cloth, it came away in long, viscous threads.

No noise had accompanied the reflux but in a matter of seconds we switched from invisibility to the focus of everyone’s horrified attention. Five or six adults jettisoned themselves off the couch to get away from us, away from the sick, while others checked their clothing for trails of white slime.

None of these adults helped us or followed us out of the studio, and we had made it down to the lobby and called a mini cab before even Lukas arrived at our side. “What just happened?” he said, looking flustered.

“You didn’t see? Zachary spewed his guts out. I should never have fed him in the cab.”

“You fed him in the cab?”

“Yes. You were there.”

Lukas rubbed his cheek absentmindedly. He had been like that so often lately—present in body but not in mind, his brain down the road, having a pint.

I said, “Darling, what’s wrong? Is it the record?”

“We worked so hard on this one.” He looked down at his feet. “I really thought we had nailed it.”

Rid of the milkshake, Zachary had fallen asleep in my arms, his head at a wonky angle, his cheek and mouth squashed together. Lukas was waiting for me to reassure him but all I could think of was that if Zachary slept now, in the cab, he wouldn’t sleep later, at home, and I would spend the next four or five hours listening to him grizzling and squawking unhappily.

“It sounded great,” I said, reaching for a compliment, and hopelessly paraphrasing one of the executives. “I love the new direction—it’s so sharp, so fresh. I’ve never heard anything like it before.” That last part, at least, was from the heart.

“I’m sure you’re right,” said Lukas, but I could tell that he didn’t believe me, that he didn’t trust my opinion.

The record came out three weeks later and it was an even bigger hit across Northern Europe than the last one. In West Germany it went straight to number one. Teenage girls queued up around the block the morning it was released, and some stores sold out within hours of opening. But in England, the album tanked. Not only that, the reviews were savage—so bad that I had to start hiding newspapers and magazines from Lukas, because each one plunged him into a cataclysmic funk. Even hard rock magazine
Kerrang!
had been unkind. The worst was in the
Guardian,
read by millions, not just music fans. Lukas got me to scan it first to see how terrible it was, and reading it in front of him, I felt sick.

When I got to the end of the column, I went back to the
beginning, hoping to find something positive. But the second read was worse. I had missed some of the sarcasm.

“Well?” said Lukas.

Was there anything I could say that wouldn’t make it worse?

“The guy who wrote this is a jerk,” I offered. “He’s more interested in sounding clever than in reviewing your record. Don’t even read it.” I tossed the thing aside, to emphasize it wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on.

Lukas retrieved it immediately, flipped straight to the review. I couldn’t watch him read it and got up to make a coffee. When I came back, he was staring grimly ahead of him, eyes flickering with murderous thoughts.

He said, “Listen to this: ‘If the Eurovision Song Contest had a Hair Metal Rave category, then this lot would take out the prize . . .’”

“Isn’t that sort of a compliment?”

He continued. “‘ . . . but because it doesn’t, it’s hard to know what the audience is for this abomination of an album, which satisfies neither the appetite for destruction of the leather and lace set, nor the baggy trouser brigade’s craving for beats without bombast.’”

There was nothing safe left to say, so I said nothing.

Lukas went into the bathroom, locked the door, punched it, cussed his head off, then fell silent. I thought about going in, trying to console him, but his anger frightened me. Wasn’t it wiser to leave a rattlesnake alone? I would wait until he had cooled down. Besides, any minute, Zachary would wake from his morning nap, interrupting any headway I’d made
with Lukas. I could already hear him bouncing his legs on the mattress and snuffling.

When Lukas came out of the bathroom ten minutes later, I was stuck in a chair, feeding the baby. He looked defeated, and hunted around for his keys and wallet, preparing to go out.

“Can you wait,” I said, “until Zachary’s finished?”

“I have to be somewhere,” he said vaguely. “A photo shoot.”

“When will you be home?”

“I don’t know. Later.”

When he left the flat, taking the tense atmosphere with him, part of me was glad. It was easier to focus on the needs of one human, not two. I gazed at Zachary, his tiny mouth slurping away, demanding nothing more from me than milk on tap and around-the-clock devotion.

For the first time since Zachary’s birth, I thought about the way we had been brought up on the commune, passed from lap to lap, our parents giving up their rights to care for their own children. I didn’t understand how they could have done that, how they could stand it, as though it was no more complicated than sharing clothes or food. The feelings I had toward Zachary were fiercely possessive and exclusive. I did not feel disposed to sharing him with anyone, not even Lukas.

Cheatah were booked to appear at the summer rock festivals across Europe—headlining the German ones, novelty side act in England—and the band had started rehearsing to play the new album live. Lukas was depressed about the
whole enterprise. As the first tour date approached I saw less and less of him, and it was difficult to map the terrain of his moods. Sometimes he just seemed exhausted, physically wrung out from the effort of learning to play so many new songs. I would ask him a question—“How was rehearsal?” or “Do you think Zachary has put on weight?”—and he would carry on mouthing lyrics or practicing a pose in the mirror, unaware that I had spoken. As time went on, I got better at recognizing when he was distracted, and stopped trying to communicate with him. Whole days went by without a conversation between us, let alone hugs or kisses or any form of touch.

In high summer, something happened that brought us closer together, and for a few brief moments I had hope. It was a week or so before Lukas was due to go off on tour, and Zachary came down with a rogue fever, his temperature so high that the GP took one look at him and dispatched us to the hospital emergency room. His breathing was labored, a grunting noise, not babyish at all, and he alternated this with bouts of distressed, high-pitched screaming. He was admitted immediately, his symptoms closely monitored while they tried to work out what was wrong. Two or three baffled doctors examined him before one of them finally suggested a chest X-ray. I had called Lukas from a pay phone in the lobby, Zachary drooping from my hip. The phone receiver was warm and smelled of other people’s spittle. I held it far from my ear, making it hard to hear Lukas on the other end. “Saint Mary’s Hospital children’s ward, third floor,” I repeated, my voice loud and unhinged.

“Got that,” said Lukas, or maybe, “What’s that?” and I hung up. Zachary had started screaming again.

In the emergency ward, Zachary was placed in a cot with steel bars, a tiny jail cell. He looked small and forlorn and I picked him up, drawing him to my chest, where he whimpered, continuously, even in sleep. The doctors said I shouldn’t hold him all the time—it would only raise his temperature—but I couldn’t stand putting him down, letting go of him for even a few minutes. He wasn’t hungry, wouldn’t feed, and milk leaked from my breasts and pooled in the folds of my bra.

How long had we been waiting? I had lost all sense of time or of anything existing outside the hospital. Under my breath, I began praying, cutting deals with all the gods I did not normally believe in to please save my child. I was ready to trade anything to reverse the prediction, to avoid the sorrow that was heading our way.

Lukas, every bit as sick with worry as I was, arrived just as we were about to be taken in to have the X-ray. We clutched each other’s hands for the first time in months, and when I met his gaze I saw, for a second, the old Lukas,
my
Lukas, the one I had grown up with, eager and warm and loving.

“He’s going to be all right, isn’t he?” I said, leaning my face against his.

“He survived a fall down the stairs—he’s a fighter.”

The nurse took Zachary and stripped off his clothes. Still in his nappy, she placed him in a plastic weighing bowl, where he curled up his legs and whined, trying to keep himself warm. Then she picked him up and placed him upright
on a metal plate. He was too young to sit up on his own, and she had to prop him up while the doctor buckled him into a medieval torture device—two clear plastic plates that molded around his torso and the tops of his legs, and cupped the rolls of his chin. He squirmed and kicked to get out, and then when he couldn’t he started screaming, a noise that was heart wrenching to listen to.

I lurched across the linoleum toward him but the nurse ordered me back behind the safety screen, where Lukas had to restrain me. “It breaks my heart too,” he whispered, “but they’re trying to help him.”