The Rosie Effect

by Graeme Simsion

  I initially had no direction in mind, and locked in to following Jerome, who kept looking back. Eventually he ducked down a side street and my thoughts began to clear. I turned north towards Queens.

  I had not travelled to Dave and Sonia’s apartment on foot before. Fortunately, navigation was straightforward as a result of the logical street numbering system, which should be mandatory in all cities. I ran hard for approximately twenty-five minutes and by the time I arrived at the building and pushed the buzzer I was hot and panting.

  My anger had evaporated during the altercation with Jerome; I was relieved that it had not driven me to punch him. My emotions had felt out of control, but my martial-arts discipline had trumped them. This was reassuring, but now I was filled with a general feeling of hopelessness. How would I explain my behaviour to Rosie? I had never mentioned the meltdown problem, for two reasons:

  1. After such a long time, and with my increased base level of happiness, I believed that it might not recur.

  2. Rosie might have rejected me.

  Rejection was now a rational choice for Rosie. She had reason to consider me violent and dangerous. And she was pregnant. To a violent and dangerous man. This would be terrible for her.

  ‘Hello?’ It was Sonia on the intercom.

  ‘It’s Don.’

  ‘Don? Are you okay?’ Sonia was apparently able to detect from my voice—and possibly the omission of my customary ‘greetings’ salutation—that there was a problem.

  ‘No. There’s been a disaster. Multiple disasters.’

  Sonia buzzed me up.

  Dave and Sonia’s apartment was larger than ours, but already cluttered with baby paraphernalia. It struck me that the term ‘ours’ might no longer be applicable.

  I was conscious of extreme agitation. Dave went to fetch beer, and Sonia insisted that I sit down, even though I was more comfortable walking around.

  ‘What happened?’ said Sonia. It was an obvious thing to ask but I was unable to formulate an answer. ‘Is Rosie all right?’

  Afterwards, I reflected on the brilliance of the question. It was not only the most logical place to begin, but it helped me gain some perspective. Rosie was all right, physically at least. I was feeling calmer. Rationality was returning to deal with the mess that emotions had created.

  ‘There is no problem with Rosie. The problem is with me.’

  ‘What happened?’ Sonia asked again.

  ‘I had a meltdown. I failed to control my emotions.’

  ‘You lost it?’

  ‘Lost what?’

  ‘You don’t say that in Australia? Did you lose your temper?’

  ‘Correct. I have some sort of psychiatric problem. I’ve never told Rosie.’

  I had never told anyone. I had never conceded that I suffered from a mental illness, other than depression in my early twenties, which was a straightforward consequence of social isolation. I accepted that I was wired differently from most people, or, more precisely, that my wiring was towards one end of a spectrum of different human configurations. My innate logical skills were significantly greater than my interpersonal skills. Without people like me, we would not have penicillin or computers. But psychiatrists had been prepared to diagnose mental illness twenty years earlier. I had always considered them wrong, and no definitive diagnosis other than depression was ever recorded, but the meltdown problem was the weak point in my argument. It was a reaction to irrationality, but the reaction itself was irrational.

  Dave returned and handed me a beer. He had also poured one for himself, and drank half of it rapidly. Dave is banned from drinking beer except on our joint nights out, due to a significant weight problem. Perhaps these were extenuating circumstances. I was still sweating despite the air conditioning, and the drink cooled me down. Sonia and Dave were excellent friends.

  Dave had been listening and had heard my admission of the psychiatric problem. ‘You never told me either,’ he said. ‘What sort of—?’

  Sonia interrupted. ‘Excuse us a minute, Don. I want to speak to Dave alone.’ She and Dave walked to the kitchen. I was aware that conventionally they would have needed to employ some form of subterfuge to disguise the fact that they wanted to talk about me without me hearing. Fortunately, I am not easily offended. Dave and Sonia know this.

  Dave returned alone. His beer glass had been refilled.

  ‘How often has this happened? The meltdown?’

  ‘This is the first time with Rosie.’

  ‘Did you hit her?’

  ‘No.’ I wanted the answer to be ‘of course not’, but nothing is certain when logical reasoning is swamped by out-of-control emotions. I had prepared an emergency plan and it had worked. That was all I could claim credit for.

  ‘Did you shove her—anything?’

  ‘No, there was no violence. Zero physical contact.’

  ‘Don, I’m supposed to say something like, “Don’t fuck with me, buddy,” but you know I can’t talk like that. You’re my friend—just tell me the truth.’

  ‘You’re also my friend and therefore aware that I am incompetent at deception.’

  Dave laughed. ‘True. But you should look me in the eye if you want to convince me.’

  I stared into Dave’s eyes. They were blue. A surprisingly light blue. I had not noticed before, doubtless as a result of failure to look him in the eye. ‘There was no violence. I may have frightened a neighbour.’

  ‘Shit, it was better without the psycho impression.’

  I was distressed that Dave and Sonia believed I might have assaulted Rosie, but there was some comfort in realising that things could have been worse, and that their primary concern was for her.

  Sonia waved from the entrance to Dave’s office where she was talking on her phone. She gave Dave a thumbs-up signal, then jumped up and down with excitement like a child, waving her free hand in the air. Nothing was making sense.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she called out, ‘Rosie’s pregnant.’

  It was as though there were twenty people in the room. Dave clinked his glass against mine, spilling beer, and even put his arm around my shoulder. He must have felt me stiffen, so he removed it, but Sonia then repeated the action and Dave slapped me on the back. It was like the subway at rush hour. They were treating my problem as a cause for celebration.

  ‘Rosie’s still on the phone,’ said Sonia, and handed it to me.

  ‘Don, are you all right?’ she said. She was concerned about me.

  ‘Of course. The state was temporary.’

  ‘Don, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have just sprung it on you like that. Are you coming home? I really want to talk to you. But, Don, I don’t want this to be temporary.’

  Rosie must have thought that I was referring to her state—her pregnancy—but her answer gave me vital information. Riding home in Dave’s van, I concluded that Rosie had already decided that it was a feature rather than a fault. The orange juice provided further evidence. She did not want to harm the fertilised egg. There was an extraordinary amount to process, and my brain was now functioning normally, or at least in the manner that I was accustomed to. The meltdown
was perhaps the psychological equivalent of a reboot following an overload.

  Despite my growing expertise in identifying social cues, I nearly missed one from Dave.

  ‘Don, I was going to ask you a favour, but I guess with Rosie and everything…’

  Excellent was my first thought. Then I realised that the second part of Dave’s sentence, and the tone in which it was delivered, indicated that he wanted me to overrule him, to enable him to avoid feeling guilty for asking for my assistance at a time when I was occupied with other problems.

  ‘No problem.’

  Dave smiled. I was aware of a surge of pleasure. When I was ten, I had learned to catch a ball after an amount of practice far in excess of that required by my schoolmates. The satisfaction every time I completed what for others would have been a routine catch was similar to the feeling I now experienced as a result of my improved social skills.

  ‘It’s no big deal,’ Dave said. ‘I’ve finished the beer cellar for the British guy in Chelsea.’

  ‘Beer cellar?’

  ‘Like a wine cellar, except it’s for beer.’

  ‘It sounds like a conventional project. The contents should be irrelevant from a refrigeration perspective.’

  ‘Wait till you see it. It turned out pretty expensive.’

  ‘You think he may argue about the price?’

  ‘It’s a weird job and he’s a weird guy. I figure British and Australian—you guys might connect. I just want a bit of moral support. So he doesn’t walk over me.’

  Dave was silent and I took the opportunity to reflect. I had been given a reprieve. Rosie had presumably thought that my timeout request had been to consider the consequences of her announcement. The actual meltdown had been invisible to her. She seemed extremely happy with the pregnancy.

  There need be no immediate impact on me. I would jog to the Chelsea Market tomorrow, teach an aikido class at the martial-arts centre and listen to the previous week’s Scientific American podcasts. We would revisit the special exhibition of frogs at the Museum of Natural History, and I would make sushi, pumpkin gyoza, miso soup and tempura of whatever whitefish was recommended by the employees of the Lobster Place for dinner. I would use the ‘free time’ that Rosie insisted we schedule on the weekend—and which she was currently using for her thesis—to attend Dave’s client meeting. At the homewares shop, I would purchase a specialised stopper and vacuum pump to preserve the wine that Rosie would normally have consumed, and substitute juice for her share.

  Other than the amendment to beverage management, life would be unchanged. Except for Gene, of course. I still needed to deal with that problem. Given the circumstances, it seemed wise to postpone the announcement.

  It was 9.27 p.m. when I arrived home from Dave’s. Rosie flung her arms around me and began crying. I had learned that it was better not to attempt to interpret such behaviour at the time, or to seek clarification as to the specific emotion being expressed, even though such information would have been useful in formulating a response. Instead, I adopted the tactic recommended by Claudia and assumed the persona of Gregory Peck’s character in The Big Country. Strong and silent. It was not difficult for me.

  Rosie recovered quickly.

  ‘I put the scallops and stuff in the oven after I got off the phone,’ she said. ‘They should be okay.’ This was an uninformed statement, but I concluded that the damage would probably not be increased significantly by leaving them for another hour.

  I hugged Rosie again. I was feeling euphorically happy, a characteristic human reaction to the removal of a terrible threat.

  We ate the scallops an hour and seven minutes later, in our pyjamas. All scheduled tasks had been completed. Except for the Gene announcement.

  4

  It was fortunate that sex had been brought forward to Friday evening. When I returned from my market jog the following morning, Rosie was feeling nauseated. I knew that this was a common symptom in the first trimester of pregnancy, and, thanks to my father, I knew the correct word for it. ‘If you describe yourself as nauseous, Don, you’re saying you make people sick.’ My father is meticulous about correct use of language.

  There is a good evolutionary explanation for morning sickness in early pregnancy. In this critical stage of foetal development, with the mother’s immune system depressed, it is essential that she does not ingest any harmful substances. Hence the stomach is more highly tuned to reject unsuitable food. I recommended that Rosie not take any drugs to interfere with the natural process.

  ‘I hear you,’ said Rosie. She was in the bathroom, steadying herself with both hands on the vanity unit. ‘I’ll leave the thalidomide in the cupboard.’

  ‘You’ve got thalidomide?’

  ‘Kidding, Don, kidding.’

  I explained to Rosie that many drugs could cross the placental wall, and cited a number of examples, along with descriptions of the deformities they could cause. I did not think Rosie was likely to take any of them, and was really only sharing some interesting information that I had read many years earlier, but she closed the door. At that point, I realised that there was one drug that she had definitely taken. I opened the door.

  ‘What about alcohol? How long have you been pregnant?’

  ‘About three weeks, I guess. I’m going to stop now, okay?’

  Her tone suggested that answering in the negative would not be a good idea. But here was a stunning example of the consequences of failing to plan. Those consequences were important enough to have their own special pejorative term, even in a world that does not value planning as much as it should. We were dealing with an unplanned pregnancy. If the pregnancy had been planned, Rosie could have stopped drinking in advance. She could also have arranged for a medical assessment to identify any risks, and we could have acted on research indicating that the DNA quality of sperm can be improved by daily sex.

  ‘Have you smoked any cigarettes? Or marijuana?’ Rosie had given up smoking less than a year ago, and had occasionally relapsed, typically in conjunction with alcohol consumption.

  ‘Hey, stop freaking me out. No. You know what you should be worried about? Steroids.’

  ‘You’ve been taking steroids?’

  ‘No, I haven’t been taking steroids. But you’re making me stressed. Stress creates cortisol, which is a steroid hormone; cortisol crosses the placental wall; high levels of cortisol in babies are associated with depression in later life.’

  ‘Have you researched this?’

  ‘Only for the last five years. What do you think my PhD’s about?’ Rosie emerged from the bathroom and stuck her tongue out, a gesture that seemed inconsistent with scientific authority. ‘So your job for the next nine months is to make sure I don’t get stressed. Say it: Rosie must not get stressed. Go on.’

  I repeated the instruction. ‘Rosie must not get stressed.’

  ‘Actually, I’m a bit stressed now. I can feel the cortisol. I think I might need a massage to relax me.’

  There was another critical question. I tried to ask it in a non-stress-inducing tone as I warmed the massage oil.

  ‘Are you sure you’re pregnant? Have you consulted a doctor?’

  ‘I’m a medical student, remember? I did the test twice. Yesterday morning and just before I told you. Two false positives are highly unlikely, Professor.’

&
nbsp; ‘Correct. But you were taking contraceptive pills.’

  ‘I must’ve forgotten. Maybe you’re just super potent.’

  ‘Did you forget once or multiple times?’

  ‘How can I remember what I forgot?’

  I had seen the pill packet. It was one of the numerous female things that had appeared in my world when Rosie moved in. It had little bubbles labelled according to the day of the week. The system seemed good, although a mapping to actual dates would have been useful. I envisaged some sort of digital dispenser with an alarm. Even in its current form, it was obviously designed to prevent errors by women who were far less intelligent than Rosie. It should have been easy for her to notice an oversight. But she changed the subject.

  ‘I thought you were happy about having a baby.’

  I was happy in the way that I would be happy if the captain of an aircraft in which I was travelling announced that he had succeeded in restarting one engine after both had failed. Pleased that I would now probably survive, but shocked that the situation had arisen in the first place, and expecting a thorough investigation into the circumstances.

  Apparently, I waited too long to respond. Rosie repeated her statement.

  ‘You said you were happy last night.’

  Since the day Rosie and I participated in a wedding ceremony in a church in memory of Rosie’s atheist mother’s Irish ancestry—with her father, Phil, performing a ‘giving away’ ritual that surely violated Rosie’s feminist philosophy, Rosie wearing an extraordinary white dress and veil that she planned never to use again, and escaping having chopped-up coloured paper thrown over us only because of a (sensible) regulation—I had learned that, in marriage, reason frequently had to take second place to harmony. I would have agreed to the confetti if it had been permitted.