Allison Pearson - I Don't Know How She Does It

I can’t believe it. Have forgotten Mother’s Day. Mum will never forgive me. Dial Reception. “Can you get me a number for Interflora?”

To: Kate Reddy

From: Jack Abelhammer

Will you come to NYC? Or should I. Stop.

Thinking about you. Stop.

To: Jack Abelhammer

From: Kate ReddyDon’t.

Stop.

Get dishwasher fixed. Stair carpet? Fund transitions to be arranged — no fuck-ups! Call Jill. Application form for nursery for Ben? Emily schools NOW! Remind Rich to get cash out for baby-sitter. Pay JUANITA! Change computer password. Paula’s birthday, damn! George Michael tickets? Book spa treatment. Call Dad and tackle about his debts. Visit Mum! Buy Sinatra CD. Ginseng for better memory or ginko thingy?

3:39 A.M.Woken by the doorbell. It’s Rob, our neighbor from three doors down. Says he heard a noise and saw a group of lads by our car, but he shouted and they ran off. Richard goes out to inspect the damage. Side window completely smashed in, forked-lightning crack across the back one. Of course, the car alarm didn’t go off. The car alarm, usually triggered by a cat’s breath, is hopelessly mute when actual burglary is taking place.

Rich goes out to tape up the windows while I get on the phone to Prontoglass 24-Hour Service.

“Sorry, your call is held in a queue. Due to demand. Please hold while we try to connect you.”

Demand? What demand? It’s four o’clock in the bloody morning.

“If you know the extension you require, please press one. If you wish to speak to an operator, please press two.”

I press 2.

“Please hold while we try to connect you; your call will be answered shortly. Thank you for choosing Prontoglass! If you wish to speak to an operator, please press three.”

I press 3.

“Sorry, your call cannot be taken at the moment. Please try later!”

Think of all the time that must be wasted every day in those echoing antechambers where calls wait. Hell, contrary to what Sartre said, is not other people, hell is trying to get through to other people while listening to seven minutes of Vivaldi played on panpipes. I decide to get dressed and crack in early to some work. This is a good time of day to talk to Tokyo. But as I’m fumbling with my blouse buttons in the still-dark bedroom, there is a yell from above. When I go up, the baby is standing in his cot remonstrating with the monster who has dragged him from sleep. He jabs a debater’s accusing forefinger at his invisible assailant.

“I know, sweetheart, I know. Some bad men have woken us all up.”

Ben is so spooked he won’t go back to sleep. I lift him onto the sofa bed which is just next to the cot and lie down beside him.

“Roo,” he moans. “Roo.” So I get up and fetch the scruffy little kangaroo and tuck it under his arm.

Babies have this magic spot between their brows. If you stroke your finger down over it, and along the ridge of the nose, their eyes close automatically like a human roller blind. My boy hates sleep; it separates him from the life he relishes, but he starts to drift off, the indigo eyes emptying of thought. I lie there contemplating the cracks on the ceiling around the light fitting where bits of plaster are starting to peel off. Even my ceiling has stress eczema. I imagine a finger stroking my own brow and, clothes wrinkling around me, I tumble into a crowded dream.

6:07 A.M.Richard comes into Ben’s room to relieve me. Baby is splayed flat out like a puppy. We talk in whispers.

“I did say buying the Volvo was a bad idea, Kate.”

“Some little bastards break into our car and it’s my fault?”

“No, just that round here it’s clearly a provocation, isn’t it?”

“Come off it, Rich, even Tony Benn doesn’t think property’s theft anymore.”

He laughs. “And who was it who once said crime is the just punishment for an unjust society?”

“I never said that. When did I say that?”

“Shortly before taking possession of your first open-top Golf, Mrs. Engels.”

My turn to laugh. Encouraged, Rich starts kissing my hair and puts an exploratory hand down my front. Even when you’re not in the mood, startling how quickly nipples stiffen to iced gems. Rich is just pulling me down onto the Winnie the Pooh rug when Ben sits bolt upright, gives his parents a how-could-you look and then points to himself. (Did I mention that babies are antisex too? You’d think they’d have some nostalgia for the act that made them; instead they appear to have an alarm to see off the threat of rivals, wailing on cue as though their cry was wired up to your bra clasp.) Rueful Rich sweeps up his son and goes down to an early breakfast.

TRY TO DOZE OFF AGAIN, but I can’t sleep for thinking how Richard and I have changed. First time we met was fifteen years ago at university; I was picketing Barclays Bank and he was opening an account there. I shouted something about South Africa — How dare you invest in brutality? — and Rich walked over to our righteous huddle and I handed him a leaflet, which he studied politely.

“My, that does sound bad,” he said, before inviting me for coffee.

Richard Shattock was the poshest man I had ever met. When he spoke, he sounded as though Kenneth Branagh had swallowed Kenneth More. Forearmed with the knowledge that all public schoolboys were emotionally stunted berks, I was unclear what to do when it became clear that this one was capable of more affection than I had ever known. Rich didn’t want to save the world like my idealistic friends; he just made it a better place simply by being in it.

We made love for the first time six days later in his college room under the eaves. The sun was falling in a dusty gold column through the skylight as he solemnly unpinned my Cyclists Against the Bomb badge and said, “I’m sure the Russians will sleep more soundly, Kate, for knowing you have passed your Cycling Proficiency Test.”

Had I ever laughed at myself before? Certainly the sound that came out that night was rusty with lack of use, a stopped-up spring gurgling into life. “Your Bournville chocolate laugh,” Richard called it, “because it’s dark and bitter and northern and it makes me want to eat you.” It’s the sound I still like best: the sound of when we were us.

I remember how much I loved his body, but even more I loved the way my body felt in relation to his — for every straight edge a curve — the vertebrae down his back like rocky steps down into a cave of pleasure. By day we cycled across the Fens and shouted “Hill!” whenever we felt the slightest incline, but at night we explored another terrain.

When Rich and I first started sleeping together — I mean actually sleeping, not having sex — we would lie in the middle of the bed face-to-face, close enough to feel the gusts of each other’s warm nighttime breath. My breasts would be pushed against his chest and my legs — I still can’t figure this out — disappeared over and under his like a mermaid’s tail. When I think of us in bed back then, I think of the shape of a sea horse.

Over time we began to face outwards. You could probably date that, our first separation, to the purchase of a king-size bed in the late eighties. And then, with the arrival of our first child, the battle for sleep began. Bed became a place you sank into rather than dived into. We who had slipped in and out of consciousness as easily as we slipped in and out of each other — entrances and exits blurred by kissing — were now jealously guarding our place of rest. My body shocked me by bristling at anything that threatened to take away its remaining strength. A stray knee or elbow was enough to spark a boundary war. I remember starting to notice how loud Rich’s sneezes were, how eccentrically articulated. Har- chew! he went. Har-c hew!