Maggie Gee - Where are the Snows

I wasn’t omnipotent.

I wasn’t immortal.

For nearly half a century I’d believed I was.

And so I came closer to Isaac. So I realised that something linked us. And found I could touch him, at last, without feeling he was soiled by his sickness.

His story began to move through its chapters. For what seemed like ages, but was only six months, we thought he was just HIV-positive; I’m an optimist, yes, I looked on the bright side, I kept telling Chris when he got depressed that Isaac would be one of the lucky ones, that not everyone went on to get AIDS, that Isaac would probably live till he was eighty, he’d told me so himself… but we stepped up our meetings, all the same, we tried to see Isaac every two months, and I never demurred, so perhaps I knew.

We were in Florence when he called us from a clinic in New York. ‘Not good,’ he repeated several times when we asked him how he was. He had a chest infection he couldn’t throw off, he was losing weight, he was depressed. It hadn’t been diagnosed as AIDS, not yet. ‘But it’s AIDS-related. They don’t have to tell me. I must have been infected a long time ago. My prognosis is good, this time around. Don’t bother to visit till I’m better.’

After putting the phone down, Christopher wept. ‘There must be something we can do. Something. Has to be. He’s my son … I can’t help feeling it’s all our fault.’

‘Isaac would be delighted to hear you say so, but you know it’s nonsense. He was always gay. We were too thick to notice. He didn’t turn gay because we left him. Let’s go out and buy him some wonderful presents and air-express them to the clinic. Florence is so marvellous for shopping…’ Things twisted in my hands again. I meant to be kind, but something went wrong. ‘And I need some new shoes. And a bag. And some novels. And then let’s go to a gallery. Let’s not go all mopey. Let’s get going.’

Christopher never came to terms with Isaac’s illness. I think it always puzzled him, as if he could never quite believe that each stage in the process was irrevocable, and this thinner, iller, older person was actually his clumsy, chubby son. I think he half-thought that one day the old Isaac would ring and say it was all a mistake, he wasn’t ill, he wasn’t gay. I gave up trying to educate him.

It irritated me; alienated me. We were going through a bad patch in any case. Not a patch, a tunnel, a long dark night, as month after month proved he was a failure — we were a failure; we couldn’t conceive.

— I was a failure, deep-down I knew it, but I never admitted it to Christopher, it was too hideously dangerous to show my weakness. Marriage is a battle for survival, always; be strong and win, or go to the wall. In the end it was Christopher who went under. Since one of us had to, I’m glad it was him. He sat in the dark watching endless movies, he slept badly, he drank too much.

But I didn’t let Isaac suffer alone. It was a very old debt; I hadn’t long to pay it. Now I became the one who suggested meetings, who noticed the weeks were creeping by, while Chris was absent and forgetful, and silent when I talked about Isaac. We couldn’t talk to each other about it; we talked to each other less and less. I knew we were coming to the end of the road, we were running out of life as the century did…

Yet Chris was my companion, my friend, my brother. If I lost him, I had no one else. That was the awful truth, there was no one else. We had left them all behind, you see. We had cast ourselves off into emptiness. In the middle of the night we clung dumbly together and fucked without passion, without hope; blind, wordless, regular, like moles grinding in their dark bunker (but I love the light; I’m a creature of day, and by day we couldn’t meet each other’s eyes and ate in silence like embittered pensioners).

We weren’t talking about my pregnancy either, my absent pregnancy, my vanishing babies. I dreamed about them night after night. They vanished like dolls I had dropped in drawers, getting smaller and smaller as I searched for them with growing guilt and panic. I had one, cradled it, dropped it, picked it up and found it was no longer alive, its face was hard plastic or it had no face, as I stared it slipped yet again through my fingers, the carpet was covered with broken dolls, babies I’d been given but failed to look after, failed to love, failed, failed. I started to dream about Stuart again; he was ten years younger than Christopher; in life we had never fucked unprotected, but in dreams we fucked hungrily for a baby, in dream after dream Stuart made me pregnant and I woke orgasmic, on a crest of happiness, only to feel it trickle away, slipping away between my damp thighs…

But Christopher did make me pregnant. That’s twice he did it, twenty years apart, two pregnancies ending in nothing, nothing. But no one can deny I got pregnant again; that at least they can’t take away…

Surely I can bear to think about it now, now I know I’m going to have a daughter.

— I did get pregnant. I’m not deluded. I was forty-nine; that’s quite an achievement. So fuck that rat bitch gynaecologist. I tested my urine twenty times, it made me so happy to be positive. I was positive! It was wonderful! No shadow of doubt infected my joy. I was furious with Chris when his response was muted.

‘What’s the matter with you? It’s such wonderful news! It’s a scientific test, we have to believe it. A little baby to travel with us. A little baby for us to play with. Baby, baby, baby… Oh fuck, I can’t bear to look at your miserable face.’

‘Look for God’s sake, Alex, of course I’m happy, but you’re forty-nine, and only five weeks’ pregnant, I just hope everything goes right. You haven’t got there yet, I dread disappointment…’

I admit I was unreasonable. ‘Shut up! Shut up! You’ll bring bad luck! You don’t want me to be pregnant, you’re hateful, hateful… we should tell the family. I want them to know.’

But the doubt had been sown, the little bad seed, and perhaps where it enters, disaster grows. I think I blamed Chris for what happened, though I’m wiser now, I am wiser now…

It got to ten and a half weeks. I said it was eleven, but it wasn’t. Nearly three months, I told myself, and anyone else who would listen, strangers, waitresses, whoever I could find, the fact of my pregnancy had to be shared, perhaps because I could hardly believe it, perhaps because I feared it would end…

I had a deep need to tell ‘the family’ but alas, there was no family to tell. Doubtless my family had families by now; I had never been told; we had lost each other. My great mute solid pair of sibs, left in the past, stranded in the past. Or perhaps I was stranded, for they were still together, sharing their children, I suppose, playing aunts and uncles and nephews and nieces. But not with me. Never with me…

— I wished we had friends, I remember that. I wrote to Mary, and trembled as I posted it. She was always so solid, so gloriously maternal, one might have assumed she had six children. I think I feared she would disbelieve it; I think I felt she would see straight through me.

Dear Mary,

Surprise, surprise! Your old friend Alexandra is nearly three months pregnant, and we are both so delighted about it…

Ten-and-a-half weeks isn’t nearly three months. You grow less honest when you’re mad with desire, and I longed for that baby with a monomanic love I have never felt before or since. Oh I wish the pregnancy had lasted longer, though everyone says late miscarriage is worse… if it had lasted longer it would have been more real. I would have had something, even if I lost it.

Ten-and-a-half weeks is nothing to the medics. ‘It’s a good job it didn’t go any further,’ said the doctor. ‘It’s nature’s way, you know.’