by Kate Russo
“I wasn’t going to.” That’s all he can get out. He thinks there must be a million questions he could ask, but all he can think about is Eliza moving back to London and Kirstie sitting on the sofa in the garden with a home decor magazine and a glass of wine. Neither of which should matter in the present moment. “How long?” he manages, sitting back down on a barstool.
“I’m ten weeks,” she tells him.
We’ve only been seeing each other for that long.
“Okay.” He reaches his hand across the bar, hoping to take hers, but she pulls away. “How long have you known?”
“A while. I thought I was starting menopause,” she says, chuckling to herself, even though she clearly doesn’t find it funny.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” He holds his face in his hands.
“I was trying to make up my mind.”
Have you? He watches her, hoping that question doesn’t have to leave his mouth.
A couple of older men, regulars, walk into the bar and pull up stools annoyingly close to Bennett, considering the rest of the bar is empty. They nod at him familiarly.
“Hiya, gents,” Claire says, throwing beer mats in front of them. “Bottle of Syrah?”
“Summer’s coming, doll,” one of them says. “How about a rosé?”
“Branching out,” she says, smiling at the man wearing an oversize, khaki, button-down shirt with two enormous breast pockets, like he’s just come from a safari. “I like it when you keep me on my toes,” she adds, filling up a bucket with ice.
Bennett watches her effortlessly flirt with the old men. He remembers how she’d flirted with him the day he sketched her, thinking he could have left it at that, same as these blokes do. Come in for a flirt and then go home a little tipsy. Why hadn’t that been enough? Why did he have to go and get her pregnant?
“I’m going to keep it,” she whispers, leaning over the bar, their faces just centimeters from each other. “Who else is going to pay for my funeral, right?” This time, even Claire can’t laugh at her own morbid joke.
He nods, managing a smile, although to her it must look like the sham that it is. He doesn’t want to be a father all over again. He’s worried he’ll never be able to love anyone else even half as much as he loves Mia. Until this moment, he never thought he’d have to.
“I know it’s probably not what you want,” she tells him.
“Well, it certainly wasn’t the plan, if that’s what you mean?”
“There was a plan?” She steps back now, as if she means to include the other men in the conversation. “I’m not going to be one of those women that tells you you don’t have to be involved if you don’t want to.” She points to her stomach. “You did this and I expect you to take responsibility.”
He looks over at the other two. They seem to have heard her but are decent enough not to engage. It angers him that she’d even suggest he would abandon her, even though he hasn’t yet decided that he definitely won’t.
“We did that,” he clarifies, adding, “And of course I will.” He’s surprised to hear himself say this with such authority. “What time do you get off work?”
“I’m working a double,” Claire tells him, turning toward her regulars. “Not until eleven.”
“I’ll be back then,” he says, getting up from the stool.
“No,” she says. “I’ll be knackered.” The look in her eyes conveys the truth of this.
“I’ll call you in the morning?” he says, desperate to make a plan.
“Call me,” she says, “when you know what you want.”
* * *
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Coming in through the back gate, Bennett regards what he’s come to think of as Kirstie’s sofa. On the journey home, he’s imagined her curled up with a cup of tea and flipping through a magazine by licking the tip of her finger to turn the page—a habit that he finds repulsive when done by any other human being. He knows she won’t actually be sitting there, it’s pouring out, but his heart still sinks when she’s not. He thinks about knocking on her door but wonders if that will break what he feels is an unspoken rule between them—to commune only in the garden, their shared space. After all, she hasn’t knocked on his door yet, so maybe he shouldn’t knock on hers. Even so, he wants to tell her everything: about Eliza, about Claire, about Kirstie herself. He needs her, literally, to hold his hand through all of this.
He takes a few steps toward the main house, changes his mind, and heads instead to the studio. He tosses a plastic bag of ice trays, the ones he bought for Mia—the most useful thing he could think to do after his conversation with Claire—onto the counter. From his shoulder bag, which hangs by the door, he removes his sketchbook and an HB pencil. He’s going to make a list. When he opens the sketchbook, a folded napkin falls out, the one with the stick figure drawing that Claire made for him. He’d forgotten he tucked it in there next to that first drawing he made of her. The two sketches are paired in his mind, and he allows himself to linger on both. He hadn’t known her then as he knows her now. He’s surprised by how hopeful both sketches are, the beginning of a new chapter he didn’t even know he was writing. Taking a seat on the futon, he turns to a blank page and writes Questions at the top, underlining it several times. He’d thought Claire was on the pill. Did she forget to take it? he wonders. The answer doesn’t matter, so he doesn’t write it down, but still, how did this happen? Can he ask her that: How did this happen? No. He had sex with her, a lot. That’s how it happened. Isn’t it really hard for women over forty to get pregnant? He read something in the Guardian about how women in their forties who want children usually have to rely on expensive therapies like IVF. How has he managed to find the only fertile fortysomething on his first try? Don’t write that down.
Getting up, he puts his iPod on the speaker, thinking some music might loosen up his thinking.
Dreamy days, come what may, we feel no way
there’s gonna be fun and lots of laughter
Or maybe not.
Claire’s made it clear that she wants him to play a role, but what kind? She can barely stand his presence at the moment. Does she just want money? Does she still want him to move in with her? Does she want to be with him? Be a family?
Fuck. A family?
Why does that make him cringe? He’s been in a family before and he loved it. It nearly killed him when it all fell apart. Now, he has another chance, why should the word family feel like a synonym for prison? And what kind of mother will Claire be, anyway? He’s never even heard her mention children before, in either a good or a bad way. He can’t picture her rocking a baby, or singing one to sleep, or biting off its tiny fingernails. He’s guessing she doesn’t know about the fingernails or about the pipette and the bogeys. It probably hasn’t occurred to her yet just how fucking helpless this little person is going to be. It hadn’t occurred to him until he held Mia in his arms for the first time and she made a tiny little fist around his thumb, unable even to close it. And Mia! How will she react to having a sibling?
Jesus.
The thought of Mia having to share his love breaks his heart. She’s his whole world and he got so lucky with her. As kids go, they don’t get any better. And last night, when she called in tears . . . That never gets any easier. Can he handle twice as much of that?
And what if he doesn’t feel the same way about this kid? What if it cries and he doesn’t give a shit? What if he feels no emotions at all and to him it’s just an alien in a basket? What would it feel like to wake up every morning and admit to himself that he doesn’t love the second child as much as he loves the first? That he doesn’t love Claire the way he loved Eliza.
Fuck.
What if the second family isn’t nearly as good as the first?
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Christ, last night when he was falling asleep he thought about the Barbican flat, imagin
ing himself and Kirstie living there together.
What a bastard.
Still, maybe none of this matters. Not with Eliza coming back into town. Is it possible to feel anything for any other woman with Eliza back in the picture? It’s a crazy thought, but what if she knocks on his door tomorrow and says, “I love you. Paint my portrait.” He can’t, right? Because of Claire. Because of the baby.
Goddamnit, motherfucking, cocksucking, fuck, fuck, fuck.
He tosses the sketchbook onto the floor, immediately regrets doing so and picks it up again, checking to see that none of the drawings are creased. There must be questions he can ask. He can’t just leave that page blank, but his questions are all existential, not practical. He recalls when his guest Emma was staying at the house and the cookie jar she filled with notes to herself—more like strongly held convictions about her circumstances and the world around her. Not facts, exactly, but personal truths. What had she used them for? He can only assume she had a problem she was trying to solve and the slips of paper were the circumstantial evidence. He turns the page and writes down FACTS, underlining it several times as well. Below that, he writes, Claire is pregnant. This isn’t going to change. He has to accept it. She’s a bartender and she’s going to need money. Her flat isn’t big enough for a baby. Whether or not they end up living together, she’ll need a bigger place. He tries to picture Claire and the baby moving into the big house with him. Could he be happy with a different family in the same house? I need to sell the house, he writes.
Setting the sketchbook aside, he searches for his phone in the folds of the futon, only to realize he’s sitting on it. I am going to sell my house, he writes to Claire, pressing Send. It makes him feel a little bit proud, like at least he’s done something.
He imagines that whatever problem Emma was trying to solve was far bigger than the small conclusions she collected in the cookie jar—so big that maybe the problem she was trying to solve was What’s the problem? Maybe the same could be said for him. His small conclusions: Claire is pregnant; he needs to sell the house; he’s stopped painting; he fancies Kirstie; Eliza is coming home. What’s the problem?
Through the kitchen window, he sees Kirstie approach her kitchen sink with an empty plate and glass. She looks out to the studio and smiles, not directly at him, but at the thought of him, or so he imagines.
Claire’s text pops up: Is that what you want?
Goddamnit.
Looking down at the sketchbook he sighs, heavily, and writes down the big problem: You don’t know what the fuck you want.
* * *
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Mia calls that evening, just as Richard had told Bennett she would.
“You alright?” he asks. “Doing any better today?”
That afternoon he’d started another painting. Unable to face the big problem he’d written down, he turned back in the sketchbook to the drawing of Claire and was surprised by how vividly he remembered the palette and mood of that day. He grabbed another small canvas and placed it on the easel, with the sketchbook next to it, before covering the canvas with a light wash of raw sienna. First, he drew the shape of the bar onto the canvas in dark brown, just like he remembered doing the day he’d made the sketch. Next, he mixed a deep crimson and started to draw Claire’s flared shirt sleeve that dropped just below the bar. The same shirt she wore today.
“I don’t know,” Mia replies, slow and quiet. “I guess? Calum called a couple of times.”
Leaving the painting, he goes over the kitchen counter to fill up the kettle with water. “You didn’t answer, did you?”
“I did the first time.”
“Oh, Mia.”
“I know. I learned my lesson.”
“What did he say?”
“I don’t want to tell you. You’ll just get angry.”
“Well, I’m worried, Mia,” he says, putting the kettle on to boil. “I wonder if we need to think about a restraining order.” It’s nice, he thinks, to have a different problem to solve.
“Dad, no. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Am I?” He leans on the counter, back to the kettle. “What did he say?”
“He called me a bitch, that’s all.”
“That’s all?! That’s horrible.”
“I won’t answer again. I’ll block him.”
“How about a new phone number?”
“I like my phone number, Dad,” she tells him, sounding exasperated, which makes him exasperated.
“That’s silly. No one likes a phone number. Let’s get you a new one.” When she doesn’t respond to this, he begins to ramble. “I bought you some ice trays today. If I’d been smart I’d have bought them before I went to see Richard. Hey, when is your lease up? I bet you guys could break it if you explained the situation. I don’t like the idea of this guy coming around at night and banging on your door—”
“DAD! Stop.”
He’d like to, but he can’t. “You didn’t give him a key, did you?”
“Of course not. Fuck sake, Dad.”
“Okay.” He reaches out and taps the side of the counter a few times, attempting to slow down his brain. “Sorry.”
When the kettle starts to boil, he tosses a tea bag into his mug and pours the steaming hot water on top.
“Richard shouldn’t have told you about Mum. That’s why you’re acting crazy, right?”
Not entirely. But he’s not ready to tell her the rest of it yet.
“It was a pretty big surprise.” Not the biggest of the day, but still. He picks up the tea bag by the corner with the tips of his fingers and bobs it up and down until the hot water turns brown. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want to worry you, not until I knew for sure whether she was coming back. I wasn’t expecting you to go see Richard.”
“So, what about your trip this summer? Are you still going?”
“It’s on hold for now.”
He smiles to himself. Maybe Mia is staying put. Good.
“I think she’s planning to give Jeff an ultimatum,” she adds.
Sounds about right. Eliza loves her ultimatums. During their twenty-year marriage, Bennett was subjected to several. Most involved withholding sex, which actually didn’t bother him as much as she liked to think it did.
“Do you think she’ll come back?” he asks.
“I don’t know. Possibly.”
“Where would she live?” He pulls the milk from the fridge and adds a dollop to his mug. Looking around for a spoon and not finding one, he gives up and stirs it with his paint-coated index finger. The tea is scalding and he pulls it right out.
“She was talking about renting something on AirBed,” Mia tells him, acknowledging the irony with a little snicker.
“Is that so?” He, too, lets out a little laugh, wiping his finger on his jeans. “Well, tell her I know a bloke.”
“Ha. No way.”
“Seriously, though, you will tell me if she’s coming back?”
“Of course.”
“Maybe I’ll send her a little housewarming gift.” A dead rat.
“Dad . . .”
“What?” he asks, smiling into his cup of tea. “I’m just trying to be nice.”
“No, you’re not. I can tell by the tone of your voice.”
“Who knows, maybe Jeff will come through at the eleventh hour?”
“Is that what you want?” Mia asks. “For Mum not to come back?”
“She’s not coming back for me, darling.”
“I know, but what if she decides to come back for me?”
He sets his mug on the counter, stung by the painful realization that he, on his own, might not be enough for his daughter.
Of course she needs her mother, of course she does.
“I can’t think of a better reason for her to
come home. I hope she does.”
He can sense she is blushing on the other end of the line. Compliments always make her go quiet.
“How’s Claire?” she asks, keen to change the subject.
Bugger.
“Yeah, she’s alright.”
“Don’t tell me you’re having relationship trouble, too? Jesus, what a family . . .”
“No,” he assures her, unconvincingly. “Everything’s fine.”
“Does she work tomorrow tonight? Maybe you and I can go for a drink at her bar?”
Fuck.
“Let me find out if she’s working. Her schedule has changed recently and I can’t remember if she’s on.” Not a total lie.
“Well, if she’s not working, maybe she can join us for a drink somewhere else?”
Fuuuuuuck.
“I’ll find out. You and I should go for a drink and dinner, either way,” he says. “I miss you. How long until your end-of-year show?”
“A couple weeks.”
“You going to be ready?”
“Barely. I decided to do four smaller paintings rather than one large one.”
“Any subject matter you want to warn me about this time?”
“I’ll tell you all about them tomorrow night. No surprises.”
He wishes he could promise her the same.
* * *
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Wide awake, he continues painting until two in the morning. He brings the sketchbook to bed with him, laying it on the floor next to the futon, open to the FACTS page. That way, when he wakes up in the morning, he won’t wonder whether it’s all been a dream. Claire is pregnant.
Tomorrow he has to drop off his small Claire painting at the Royal Academy. That, at least, will keep him busy. He looks over at the new painting of Claire. It pleases him that he and Mia have both started making small paintings at the same time. It feels like they’re inextricably linked, working from the same genetic paint box. This new one is coming along nicely. A mixture of memory and imagination, Claire fits perfectly into the background of the Claret. He’s spent a lot of the evening thinking about what makes the sketch so different from his earlier figure work. Even though she was unaware of him making it, the drawing was still on her terms. Like the other small painting, he didn’t pose her. He didn’t stage the backdrop. He remembers what she told him at Townhouse—how the woman in the painting there looked uncomfortable. In the sketch, Claire doesn’t look uncomfortable at all. She looks in control. It was all Claire, all Claret. This concept, he suspects, is what’s been missing all along, the blending of figure and ground. People cannot really be understood without understanding the space they occupy. How had he not realized that? Maybe this is why his old work feels “classical,” as Emma called it. The word still haunts him even after abandoning his first Claire painting. It’s the reason that painting is currently facing against the wall, unfinished. Furthermore, maybe this is why he’s always had such a hard time reading his models’ expressions. He was treating them as props instead of people. Maybe his preoccupation with capturing Claire’s expression has been all wrong. What if her expression doesn’t matter? She can make any face she wants. It doesn’t change where she’s standing, what she’s doing, who she is. Claire is the Claret and the Claret is her, both richer for the presence of the other. A figure in her ground.
