The Aftermath

by Gail Schimmel

  I’m about to ask for wine when I remember the baby. ‘Tea will be fine,’ I say, and my mum smiles again as she turns to the kettle.

  When she’s made the tea, she says, ‘Let’s go sit in the lounge – it’s more comfortable.’

  I just follow because this visit is feeling so different already that I don’t know how to react. And I haven’t even told her my news yet. ‘Don’t have expectations,’ I whisper to myself.

  ‘What’s that?’ says my mother, who’s walking in front of me with the tea tray.

  ‘Nothing, Mum,’ I say. ‘Talking to myself.’

  Well blow me down, she turns to put the tea down on the table and smiles again.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I ask her.

  ‘Why?’

  I can’t exactly say that she’s smiled three times and touched me on the arm and this is so unprecedented as to be a bit frightening. Put it like that, I sound crazy.

  ‘You seem a bit different today,’ I say.

  ‘I’m very pleased to see you,’ she says. ‘And you said you have news for me, so that’s exciting.’

  ‘Really?’

  Now she pulls the face I’m more familiar with, a sort of despairing, why-is-my-child-such-a-trial-to-me face. I make a mental note to tell Alice how much more comfortable I am when she’s back to sneering.

  She pours both our teas and then we do our usual thing of sipping and not talking, with my mother’s eyes glazed over like she isn’t even in the room. I don’t know how to get back to where we were. Eventually I say, ‘So,’ and watch as her eyes slowly refocus.

  ‘Your news?’ she says, taking a sip of tea. ‘Don’t keep me guessing.’

  She smiles again, and looks almost flirtatious.

  ‘So,’ I say. ‘It’s complicated.’

  My mum sighs. ‘Life is complicated, Julia.’ And then she laughs as if she sees the irony of her of all people telling me of all people that life is complicated. But that can’t be right.

  ‘So, I met this man,’ I start, and slowly, haltingly, I tell her about Daniel.

  One of the many strange dynamics between my mother and I is that we very seldom lie to each other. It’s not easy telling your mother that you’ve basically seduced a married man away from his wife and child – but not for one minute in any of this did I consider not telling her the truth.

  As expected, she doesn’t react strongly to anything I’m telling her. But she nods as I speak, and she says things like ‘Mmm,’ and, ‘I see,’ and once she even says, ‘How difficult for you.’ I can’t believe how she isn’t judging me at all.

  For once, it’s like she’s completely on my side.

  Helen

  As Julia speaks, I’m having to bite the inside of my cheeks. Because when she starts talking about this couple she’s met, this perfect couple with the perfect lives, I’m not thinking about this Claire-and-Daniel couple, I’m thinking about Helen-and-Mike. I’m thinking about my own perfect marriage and my own perfect family. And then when the story starts turning, and she’s telling me how this Claire didn’t appreciate her husband, Daniel, and never showed him any affection or support, I’m still thinking about Helen-and-Mike, and I’m thinking how I thought we had forever and we didn’t, and I’m wondering if Mike knew how much I loved him before The Accident, and I’m wondering what an interfering little hussy would have seen if she’d looked at my marriage. And then I pull up short because in the story I’m hearing, it is my daughter who is the interfering little hussy and she thinks she’s in the right.

  And I have to let her think she is too.

  But I know so much that she doesn’t know. I know that marriages are not about the affection revealed in front of people, and that support can be shown in one hundred different ways, and that a person outside a marriage can never judge what is happening inside that marriage – whether it is good or bad. And I know other things. I know that Julia’s attraction to this Daniel is not, as she thinks, because he’s different from anyone she has ever known, but because he’s like her father. Like Mike. And Julia may not have known Mike for long before The Accident, but she did have two years of his easy laugh and his silliness and his happiness and his irreverence. She is attracted to a bright, unusual, humorous man in a happy marriage. A man just like her father.

  And the biggest thing that I know – as she is reaching the part of the story where she finds herself alone with Daniel and things take a new direction – is that you don’t have a future with a man you’ve seduced away from a happy home. Julia’s heart is going to be broken, and I know it, and I can’t say anything, and all I can think is that this will change everything. She’s going to need me more, not less. And I want to cry.

  Then she tells me there might be a baby.

  And the hope comes flooding back.

  Daniel

  Julia is at her mother’s, telling her about us, and I’m in her flat – our flat – and I’m alone, and I’m thinking about what she’s telling her mother, and I wish I could be there with her because as angry and trapped as I feel, Julia needs me.

  I think back to the night it all started, when Claire went to one of her endless functions and I was at home alone with Mackenzie. It had been a bad day, a long day – we’d lost an important client. Their CEO said it was because our agency lacked gravitas, but we all knew it was because I didn’t take him as seriously as he took himself. When my buddy Ernst and I started the agency five years ago, we were very clear that we’d only work with people we had fun with. We’d both spent too many years licking arses and the whole point of our own agency was to break away from that mindset. For a long time we planned to call the agency ‘Arse-lickers’ in an ironic way, but our lawyer said we might have trouble registering that name. We’d also had second thoughts – it might have alienated clients. We should have known then that it’s one thing to say you’ll only work with like-minded clients, and a whole other ball game to do it. Maybe we should have stuck with ‘Arse-lickers’ just to remind ourselves where we stood.

  Anyway, that’s what was going on the day it started with Julia – I was learning the hard way that losing a wanker of a client also meant losing a couple of million in the bank. I didn’t like that so much, and neither did Ernst. We’d had a few tequila shots at the office to comfort ourselves, and yelled, ‘Arse-lickers’ really loud over our panoramic view, but it didn’t really help.

  I had to get home to relieve Thandi, our helper, because Claire was out. I phoned Claire on the way home and I was surprised that she answered and I was so pleased to hear her voice, I started telling her about the arse-lickers. But she said, in her strict voice, ‘You’ve been drinking and now you’re talking on the phone and driving.’ So I said it was worth the risk, I needed her, and she said, ‘Well, I don’t need to be a widow, and anyway I’m not at home, you idiot,’ which she normally only says when she’s joking around, but then she hung up the call. When I tried to phone back, she didn’t answer.

  Just after I got home – perfectly safely – and before I could even change, the doorbell rang, and when I answered the intercom, there was Julia. I let her in, and she was all dressed up and carrying a bottle of wine and a bunch of flowers, and the silly thing had got the night of a dinner party wrong by a whole week.

  Well, she was mortified but I was delighted. I liked Julia so much. She isn’t all blonde and thin and polished like Claire’s other friends. Her hair is long and dark and curly. Nobody has curly hair any more – I hear women talking about how much they pay to straighten their hair. But Julia’s hair is a wild mess of dark curls. And she is ditzy and messy and always looks slightly wrongly put together, like you just know there’s no way her underwear matches, and chances are that something’s on inside out. I like that. So I told Julia that since she was there anyway and I was all alone, she should stay and we could have something to eat.

  I opened some wine and made us some pasta, and Julia was impressed that I could cook, which I liked, because Claire just complains about how much me
ss I make and that it’s always pasta. I was a bit drunk from the tequila, and stressed, and disappointed that Claire hadn’t wanted to speak to me. I barely touched my pasta but I drank a lot of red wine. Julia, on the other hand, ate all her pasta and asked for more. I wouldn’t say that Claire diets, but she’s ‘careful’. I liked that Julia ate like a proper person and suddenly I was noticing her low-cut top and really generous boobs. Claire’s boobs are like the rest of her: text book. They are not too small and they are perky and they sit where they are meant to sit. Julia’s boobs look altogether less disciplined, and deep in my wine and my stress and my misery, I had an epiphany: less disciplined was the way forward for boobs.

  To avoid telling Julia about this epiphany, because I sensed it might be inappropriate, I started telling her how humourless Claire had been about me phoning from the car. Of course, looking back on it sober and knowing what I know now, it really was the same topic – Julia’s undisciplined boobs and Claire’s failure to talk to me.

  But when I told her about the car and Claire saying that she didn’t need to be a widow, Julia suddenly went pale and her eyes filled with tears. I reached across and took her hand.

  ‘What have I said?’ I asked.

  That was when she told me the story of her childhood and The Accident that changed everything. While she was talking, she started crying, and she kept brushing away her tears, and saying she was sorry, she never cries about it. When the crying turned to sobbing, I got up from the table and led her to the sofa and I put my arms around her – I could feel her boobs pressing against my side – and I stroked her back and held her and told her that everything was okay now.

  As I was stroking her back, I kept thinking that I’d never seen Claire like that. I’ve never seen Claire out of control with misery – and I’ve been with her through the deaths of family and friends. But Claire’s grief is neat and internal – she doesn’t need me. And Julia, Julia needed me so badly that night.

  I looked down at her tear-stained face just as she pulled back and looked up at me. I reached my thumb to her cheek to wipe away her tears and suddenly we were kissing and it was like we were both drowning people clinging to life, the way we clung together. And then, because I’d been thinking about them already, my hands were on her boobs and I was pulling at her clothes, and it felt just as good as I’d imagined and I couldn’t or wouldn’t stop, and neither did she.

  Julia

  I tell my mother as much as I can. There are parts I can’t tell her – parts I can barely admit to myself. Like I knew full well Claire would be out that first time when I turned up for a dinner party on the wrong night. It’s probably the most calculated thing I’ve ever done. The worst thing I’ve ever done, if I’m honest with myself. The worst thing, but also the best thing.

  When I tell my mother that part, I gloss over what exactly happened. I don’t know if it’s because I’m feeling guilty, but I think her eyebrows raise ever so slightly, which for my mother is a major emotional reaction. But I could be wrong; maybe she was just trying to stay awake. She’s always said that nothing’s as boring as other people’s dreams and other people’s affairs. But when I stop, mid-story, and ask if I’m boring her, she says, ‘No, no, carry on,’ and it’s almost as if she’s interested.

  The part that came after that first night also doesn’t reflect well on me. The next day, Daniel came to see me at work.

  ‘That shouldn’t have happened,’ he said, and I could see he’d barely slept. ‘That’s not the sort of man I am. That’s not the sort of man Claire deserves. Or you deserve.’ His eyes were filled with tears, and I reached out to him.

  ‘You’re the best sort of man,’ I whispered. ‘You make me feel so . . . safe.’ I manufactured a little sob. Yes, I manufactured it. I might be an accountant, but you don’t have as much therapy as I’ve had without learning a thing or two about psychology, and the thing I’ve learnt about Daniel is that his drug of choice is need. He needs to be needed, and Claire doesn’t need him. I saw that chink in the armour of their marriage and God help me, I took it. Every single time he looked like he was about to back away, I played the needy card. And it lured him back to my bed again and again, until in the end he fell in love with me.

  ‘And what about Claire?’ my mother asks as I’m explaining Daniel’s deep and genuine feelings for me. ‘She was your friend.’ For a moment it feels like my mother is judging me after all, but then she says wistfully, ‘It must have been hard for you to lose her. A friend.’

  ‘It was,’ I say. ‘But it was worth it. Now I have Daniel and we’re going to have our own baby.’

  My mother barely reacts to this; maybe just another raising of her eyebrows, but it’s hard to tell.

  ‘When you meet him, you’ll see,’ I tell her, suddenly desperate for her approval, her understanding.

  ‘I’d love to meet him. I’m sure he’s wonderful,’ she says in her calm way. She shifts slightly in her chair. ‘Have you told him?’

  She doesn’t have to say more – we both know what she’s talking about. Which isn’t strange, because it has defined our lives, but it also is strange. Because we don’t talk about it, she and I. We almost never mention the giant elephant in our psyches.

  She must have told me something when it first happened – when I was two and left with my grandparents, and when she came back everything had changed. But of course I don’t remember that – I don’t remember a time before it was like this. Although Alice believes I do. Alice believes that if I really didn’t remember anything, I’d be a lot better. And my mother must’ve answered my questions because I know the answers – I know what happened and I know where that left us. Or I think I do. And there were some things she’d have to have told me, like about my dad.

  When I was about thirteen I got very depressed, and I started binge eating and vomiting. My mother sat me down one morning and said that she knew I was unhappy, and she knew it was probably her fault. She said that maybe I needed to talk to someone ‘more present’ than she was, and obviously more present than my dad was. Those were her words. And then she found me my first therapist, and she came to the first session with me. In the first session she said, ‘Julia is unhappy and I can’t help her,’ and she told the therapist about The Accident as if it was something she’d read about in a magazine.

  The therapist (who was very good – my mother had done her research and found the best) said, ‘Why do you feel that you can’t help Julia, Helen?’

  And my mother said, in this flat, bored voice, ‘Because I am profoundly, pathologically depressed. There’s nothing anyone can do for me, but maybe you can stop me from damaging Julia.’ And then she stood up and walked out as if she’d just mentioned what she was making for supper.

  For a moment the therapist looked at the door. Then she turned to me.

  ‘How does hearing that make you feel, Julia?’ she said, and we were away.

  But since then we haven’t talked about it. Not about The Accident and certainly not about my mother’s so-called depression. And not about the fact that she loves me enough to protect me from herself. Not about that either.

  ‘Did you tell him about Dad?’ she says now.

  ‘I told him,’ I say.

  She nods, as if ticking something off a list. Then she really throws a curveball. No, two.

  ‘Why don’t you bring Daniel to lunch on Sunday?’ she says. ‘The sooner I meet him, the better.’

  And as I’m reeling from that – probably the most proactive thing she’s done since I moved out – she adds the punch.

  ‘I’m going to see Dad tomorrow and I’ll tell him your news . . . but maybe we can go back together on Sunday after lunch, and Daniel can meet him too.’

  Helen

  After The Accident, after that terrible, endless, nightmarish time while we were trapped in the car – a time I can never forget as hard as I try, a time that used to make me wake several times a week with tears streaming down my cheeks – after that time, they took
me to hospital and they sedated me. I don’t blame them: I was hysterical.

  When I came around, they explained to me what had happened – like I could ever forget, like I didn’t know. And they told me that Mike was paralysed and brain damaged and that while he might survive and could possibly live without life support he was, to all intents and purposes, brain dead.

  I was barely injured – only superficially. The truck had hit the car from the front, on the driver’s side. It somehow missed me. I was badly bruised and scraped all over my body, and I had a cut on my head that necessitated shaving part of my hair and stitching me, and my muscles were very stiff from straining and not being able to move for so long. My right ankle was swollen and it would be some time before I could easily put weight on it. So they wheeled me – at my insistence – to where Mike was. And then they left me there, the nurse saying that she would be right outside the door, but maybe I needed time alone with him.

  I took his hand in mine. It was completely limp, and I held it in both my hands, leaning forward in my wheelchair. And I told him what had happened – everything the doctors had told me when I’d woken up, everything I remembered, every terrible thing inside me. And then I leant my head against his side, and I wept. And while I was crying, drenching the sheets so badly they would have to change them, I felt Mike’s hand squeeze mine. And when I looked up, his eyes were closed and his face was immobile, but his cheeks were wet with tears.

  That’s how I know Mike is alive inside that body. That’s why I insisted he be kept on life support at the beginning – despite all sorts of people telling me it might be kinder to turn it off – and that’s why, when he was finally able to live without the support, I tried to nurse him at home.