Читать книгу The Harpy - Megan Hunter - Страница 17

8

The feelings didn’t start all at once. They came slowly, gradually. We went to the supermarket, and I planned meals in my head, dishes that I would cook and serve to all of them, that Jake would insert into his mouth. Jake would sit there and chew my food and swallow it: I assessed this information for cracks, for gaps that I might slip through. It seemed very important that I could tolerate this exact thought: the meat tenderized by me, stirred by me, being chewed by him, digested by him, becoming part of his body.

I thought that I could tolerate it, but I noticed another feeling beginning in my belly button, or perhaps lower, in my C-­section scar. The feeling spread over my abdomen, like a menstrual cramp, an early contraction. It tightened me up. When Jake came back towards me, pushing the trolley, I noticed that he was smiling, telling some joke to Ted, leaning close to the trolley, where Ted’s bottom spilled around the child seat, his plump hands paling as they gripped tightly onto the handle.

The boys were hungry, having left most of the food at the party, and as we shopped they began to throw themselves around as though their muscles were failing, becoming loose beings, grabbing things from the shelves. Jake and I presented ourselves for duty, emergency workers at the same crisis, speaking sharply to our children, replacing chocolate bars in their places. Our lack of eye contact, of touch, counted for very little. As we had been for years, we were teammates now, classmates. We were learning – or unlearning – the same things.

I was startled by how much the new reality was like the old reality: how we could still buddy up and parcel out the duties so smoothly. Jake cooked that night, making burgers with Paddy, letting him flatten them with his fists. And we did bath time, as usual, Jake sitting beside the boys, containing their wildness in the water as I scurried around finding pyjamas, tidying bedrooms, setting out reading books. I wondered if we could continue like this forever, spend a lifetime never quite looking each other in the face.

~

Sometimes I question whether anyone can know what it’s like before it happens. Marriage and motherhood are like death in this way, and others too: no one comes back unchanged.

Even now, it is hard to look at that woman (myself), at those boys (my sons), with anything like a clear lens. My sight is still coloured, infused by the blood we shared, by their journeys through my lightless body.

~