The Rosie Effect

by Graeme Simsion

  ‘What are the early results?’ I asked B1.

  ‘You of all people should know that it’s inappropriate to draw conclusions based on early raw data. Don’t you have mice to dissect? Seriously, we’ve got a women’s group visiting this afternoon and it’d be nice if you weren’t hanging around.’

  B3 had been watching. ‘Can I buy you a coffee?’ she said.

  ‘It’s 3.13 p.m. Caffeine has a half-life—’

  She turned, but intercepted me again outside the front door. ‘You want to know what the early data is saying? I’ll meet you at the café.’

  Secrets, secrets, secrets. Rosie didn’t know why I was working on the project. She didn’t know about the Playground Incident, Lydia, and the Good Fathers Evaluation. Gene had deceived Claudia for years. Now B3 was sharing data that B1 would not. Once, there had been no secrets in my life. And my relationships, albeit few, had not been in danger. I suspected a correlation.

  ‘I’m taking the samples and I have to key in all the results,’ said B3. ‘The first job’s because I’m a nurse. So’s the second. So’s getting the coffee, for that matter. But you don’t need a PhD to see what’s happening. The oxytocin goes up with cuddling, doesn’t move with play. For either mother. Looks like only fathers can make the play thing happen. They’re changing the way they do the play so it’s more like cuddling. Not when you’re around, of course. They’ll find a reason to dump the early results.’

  I walked back with B3.

  ‘Maybe come back tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Briony’s a bit edgy.’ B1.

  In a social situation, I would have taken the subtle hint that I was not wanted. But this was science. Sometimes it is convenient to be immune to subtlety.

  When I returned, a group of thirteen women was being greeted. B1 and B2 ignored me, but one of the women (age approximately sixty-five, BMI twenty-six) approached me directly.

  ‘Are you the token male?’ She laughed.

  I used David Borenstein’s words. ‘I’ve been assigned by the Dean to ensure that the research is not influenced by lesbian politics.’

  She laughed again. I detected friendliness. ‘What did you do to earn that job? Sleep with the Dean’s daughter?’

  B1 interrupted and pointed to a woman with a baby beside her in a mid-quality pram. ‘When the baby wakes up, this woman is going to play with her baby, and we’re going to measure the baby’s oxytocin. She’s the non-gestational mother, and we’re finding that the baby’s oxytocin rises when she plays with the baby. Just as it did for fathers in the Israeli study.’

  I added, ‘In the Israeli study there was no control group of unrelated males or females, so there is no evidence that the men and women had to be parents or carers in order to raise the oxytocin levels.’

  B1 looked at me in a way that Rosie would look at someone if she meant ‘Shut the fuck up’. I suspected the meaning was the same. But the situation was not. Science is about honesty and transparency.

  Friendly Woman asked, ‘What would happen to the baby’s oxytocin if an unrelated man or woman played with it?’

  ‘Exactly!’ I said.

  B1 interrupted. ‘It’s not part of the study. And we can’t have strange men coming in here and touching the babies.’

  The baby in the pram began crying. I had to act quickly before any cuddling or play process commenced. I ran over to the pram.

  ‘Is it all right if I play with your baby?’ I asked the mother. ‘I’m a member of the research team and I am approved by the police for baby handling.’

  ‘I guess.’ She smiled. ‘I thought it was going to be me, but sure. If you don’t upset him.’

  I had no idea about how a baby might react to a large adult male. I had never handled one, except possibly my brother. I had a vague recollection of my mother giving Trevor to me to hold, and of handing him back to her as quickly as possible.

  I realised it was critical not to drop or threaten the baby. I solved both problems by lying on my back before the mother gave it to me. I steadied it with my hands and let it crawl over me. My human body repulsion reflex did not activate. It was great fun, and the baby was making hilarious noises. Women in the visitor group were taking photos. We continued for approximately two minutes, then I looked around for B3. I waved to her and she put down the video camera.

  ‘Test please.’ I suspected my own oxytocin levels had risen, but only the baby’s were relevant.

  ‘No,’ said B1. ‘It’s not part of the protocol.’

  ‘Incorrect,’ I said. ‘The protocol is modified so as not to exclude serendipitous data, this being an exploratory study. Or the protocol will not be approved by the medical school.’

  Friendly Woman smiled and nodded.

  B3 opened the baby’s mouth and took the swab. The mother let me play with the baby for another minute.

  The pram I had ordered arrived in my absence. Rosie had unpacked it and now insisted we return it.

  ‘Don, you know I’m not girly and I’m not into frilly baby stuff, but this is like some sort of industrial-military…tank. The Hummer of prams.’

  ‘World’s safest pram.’ I meant this literally. The base model had been the safest available, and I had augmented it with numerous custom enhancements. I was confident Bud would be unhurt in a rollover, and would survive a low-speed automobile encounter, particularly if he or she was wearing the helmet I had purchased as an accessory. The only negatives were an increase in size and some complexity in access to the baby. And, of course, cost.

  ‘Is appearance more important than safety?’ I asked.

  Rosie ignored the question. ‘Don, I appreciate you’re trying, I appreciate it a lot, but this just isn’t you, is it? Babies aren’t really your thing. Prams, big metal prams with rubber bumpers, are more your thing.’

  ‘I don’t know. I have limited experience with both.’

  My chances of increasing my experience through the Lesbian Mothers Project were looking poor. The protocol change I had suggested, involving each baby having a ‘crawl over Don’ experience, was subject to approval from the mothers. After my initial success, all had refused. I gave B2 and B3 my phone number in case any changed their minds.

  ‘Don’t stay up waiting for a call,’ said B2.

  But B3 sent me a text message: Oxytocin through the roof on your intervention. Highest result from play activity. And you’re not even a carer!

  The implication was that my gender had affected the result, but a single instance was of value only to prompt further investigation.

  B1 wrote to David Borenstein, and did not copy the email to me.

  ‘Just skim it,’ said the Dean, indicating his computer screen.

  I am not accustomed to skimming. Skimming involves ignoring some words. What if I ignored a not? It was a long message, but I noted the words unprofessional, disruptive and insensitive.

  ‘Basically, she wants you off the study, and she says they’re discarding the one-off result because it didn’t fit the protocol, was not serendipitous but was the outcome of a deliberate intervention, blah blah.’

  ‘Did she say what the result was?’

 
‘She implied they hadn’t tested it. Fat chance. If it had tested low, she’d have been falling over herself to include it.’

  ‘Terrible science.’

  ‘Agreed. I made a good call putting you on the job, didn’t I?’

  ‘It’s possible that a person who cared about appropriate social behaviour would have given it priority over the research objective.’

  The Dean laughed.

  ‘I have to say, Professor Tillman, you’re a fine scientist, but I sometimes wonder how Rosie copes.’

  Rosie was not coping well with me.

  One of the curious things about animals, including humans, is that we spend approximately one-third of our lives sleeping. There is no practical way around this inefficiency. In my twenties, I had conducted a series of trials to establish my minimum sleep requirement, and had settled on scheduling seven hours and eighteen minutes per night, excluding all light from the bedroom, and never using amphetamines again.

  As we age, we sleep less soundly: one evolutionary explanation is that in the ancestral environment the young hunters and warriors required undisturbed sleep, while the older members of the tribe acted as watchdogs and needed to be woken by the slightest noise.

  In sleep terms, Rosie was already a watchdog. She woke frequently, and exacerbated the problem by visiting the toilet and making herself a cup of hot chocolate, which of course began a vicious circle. Before she was pregnant Rosie would sometimes go to bed early, exhausted or intoxicated; on other occasions she would study until after 1.00 a.m. and come to bed animated and even wanting to initiate a conversation. At 1.00 a.m.! Sometimes she would also be interested in sex, in which case I accommodated the change to my routine and scheduled additional sleep for the following night.

  I had become accustomed to being woken, and generally managed to fall asleep again within a few minutes. But the aggregate effect could not be ignored and I was forced to reschedule my bedtime to thirteen minutes earlier.

  The pregnancy aggravated the problem. As predicted by The Book, the expanding baby and its associated support system had reduced Rosie’s bladder capacity. And Rosie had begun snoring, not loudly but enough to be disruptive. I had to reschedule bedtime again.

  We had a discussion about the problem at 3.14 a.m.

  ‘You shouldn’t have had the hot chocolate. It’s going to recreate the toilet problem. And then you’ll have another hot chocolate—’

  ‘The hot chocolate helps me sleep.’

  ‘Ridiculous. Chocolate contains caffeine. Caffeine is a stimulant with a four-hour half-life. It’s inadvisable to drink coffee or eat chocolate after 3.00 p.m. I never—’

  ‘You never. I know you never. But I do. It’s my body, remember?’

  ‘Caffeine is a restricted substance.’

  ‘I’m allowed two coffees. I’m off coffee, so this makes up.’

  ‘Have you calculated the caffeine in the chocolate?’

  ‘No. I’m not going to, either. How about I solve your problem? And my problem too.’

  Rosie pulled the duvet from the bed and walked out.

  Now my own body rebelled and refused to sleep. I used the time to reflect on Rosie’s departure. Was it for one night or permanently? Rationally, it was a good solution to the problem, which was at least in part temporary. After the pregnancy was over, Rosie could begin sleeping normally again. For now, we would need to purchase another bed. Then I realised that Rosie had nowhere to sleep: there was no other bed in the house. Unless she was sleeping with Gene.

  I jumped from the bed and tiptoed towards Gene’s room. Rosie’s study door was open and she was curled up in an armchair, covered by the duvet. She did not move. I returned to the bedroom, dragged the mattress off the bed, and manoeuvred it into Rosie’s study, which was considerably bigger than our bedroom. Rosie woke.

  ‘Don? What are you doing?’

  ‘Creating a temporary bed.’

  ‘Oh. I thought—’

  She did not complete her thought, but half-staggered from the chair to the mattress and lay down. I covered her with the duvet and returned to the bedroom, where I succeeded in sleeping on the padded bed base. It was perfectly satisfactory, and my karate teacher would doubtless regard it as good discipline. In fact, the bed had been a compromise between Rosie’s personal desire for softness and the optimum firmness as recommended by scientific studies. I had now created an arrangement more satisfactory to both of us.

  Rosie obviously agreed, as she continued to sleep in her study every night, and I reinstated my original sleeping hours.

  23

  I had the spaceship nightmare again. It was, as far as I could remember, exactly the same, with the same fatal result. Except this time, when I woke up, Rosie was not there.

  Gene was also concerned by the change in sleeping arrangements, which he noticed two days later. In his analysis, Rosie sleeping in the other room equated to a rejection of me.

  ‘Be practical, Don. Why do people sleep together?’

  ‘Sex.’ It was always likely to be the correct answer to a question from Gene about motivation. ‘Which is not required by evolution now that she is regnant.’

  ‘Too glib, my friend. Humans conceal their fertility to encourage ongoing closeness. For all sorts of reasons. We may not be monogamous, but we’re all about pair-bonding and Rosie is sending you a big message.’

  ‘What have I done wrong?’

  ‘Let me tell you, Don, you’re not the first man to ask that question. Usually after he’s come home to find the television gone.’

  ‘We don’t own a television.’

  ‘So I’ve noticed. Whose idea was that?’

  ‘There’s no requirement for a television. Higher-quality news is available from other media without advertisements; movies are available on bigger screens in theatres, and for all other requirements we have individual computer monitors.’

  ‘That’s not what I asked. Whose idea was it?’

  ‘The decision was obvious.’

  ‘Did Rosie ever mention buying a television?’

  ‘Possibly. But her arguments were flawed. You’re suggesting that our marriage is in trouble because of the lack of a television? If so, I can—’

  ‘I suspect it goes a bit deeper than that. But if you want a specific answer to the question “What did I do wrong?”, then it’s the ultrasound. You should have gone. That’s the point where Rosie started to wonder if you really wanted to be a father. Not whether you were capable, which is another matter, but whether you were even interested.’

  ‘How can you be so certain?’

  ‘I’m the head of a psychology department, you’ve already confided in me about your own doubts, which Rosie will surely have picked up on, and I’m aware that Rosie’s own background includes a problematic father situation.’

  ‘That problem was solved.’

  ‘Don, problems that originate in childhood are never solved. Psychotherapists make a living out of that.’

  ‘What if you’re wrong and there is no problem? I may create a problem by responding to an imaginary one. Like falling over
because you think there’s a step and there isn’t one.’

  Gene stood up, walked to his office door, looked out, then returned. ‘There’s a saying among wine experts: a glance at the label is worth twenty years’ experience.’

  ‘You’re being obscure.’

  ‘Rosie told me. She said the two of you were going through a rough patch and she wasn’t sure you wanted to be a father.’

  ‘She volunteered the information about the state of our marriage? Unprompted?’

  ‘I asked her. Actually, Stefan gave me a bit of a heads-up.’

  Stefan! Now Rosie was sharing critical data with him rather than the person who could make best use of it.

  Although the method of transmission was frustratingly indirect, the identification of the Ultrasound Error was excellent input into improving my competence as a prospective father and demonstrating my interest to Rosie.

  Gene’s advice was that I should have attended the examination with a knowledge of the procedure and its possible outcomes. Fortunately, I had a second chance. Rosie had agreed to an exact date for the second sonogram: Twenty-two weeks, zero days and zero hours from the nominal beginning of gestation, which had been established at the first appointment as Monday, 20 May. I calculated the date—21 October—and reserved the entire day in my schedule. This time I would be prepared.

  I studied The Book for further events that might offer similar potential for error, or for compensatory high performance. There was one obvious example—the birth. The parallels with the sonogram appointment were striking:

  1. Attendance at a specialist facility.

  2. A critical point at which problems might be identified.

  3. A low probability of problems, but high anxiety.

  4. Expected presence of the partner despite him or her having no role in the procedure.