by Kim Lock
He let her go.
Cautiously, she crawled onto the bed, moving the blankets slowly, desperate for Henry to stay asleep. He whimpered and she froze, holding her aching body on her hands and knees, watching his small body anxiously. He stilled, and she gingerly lowered herself to the mattress. Pain sliced behind her forehead so sharply she felt a wave of nausea.
Ark thumped onto the bed.
Henry jumped and yelped, then began to shriek.
It took Jenna an hour to settle him. An hour of pacing the dark hallway, fever flushing her flesh hot then cold, the heavy child cradled in her leaden arms. When Henry finally went to sleep, Jenna laid him in his cot in the next room. She knew it would be a matter of when – not if – he would again awaken.
She returned to the master bedroom, slipped into bed, and after half an hour succumbed to Ark’s whining. Opening her legs to him, she gazed into the dark slab of the open doorway as Ark’s hot breath filled her ear. Her reluctance fuelled her self-loathing. She tried feigning something, some feeling, for herself, but resentment churned deep and her energy suffocated. If she could get through this, maybe the Ark she loved would return. If she could stifle her fickle temper, he would comfort and spoil her again. So she chose to ignore the money, the criticisms, the entitlement to her attention and her body. She chose to let it go. Because that choice – the choice to submit – allowed her some element of control. Didn’t it?
When Ark was finished, he kissed her and rolled from her body. Down the hall Henry cried out and she was ridiculed by yet another sleepless night.
11
NOW
Fairlie grips the wheel tightly for the entire forty-minute drive.
The air-conditioner blasts chilled air from the vents but still she sweats, still her thighs quake with anxiety. Roiling violet clouds gather in the sky and the air bloats with humidity. The highway rolls beneath her car and the dense Pinus radiata plantations sweep the thunderclouds. Twice on the short journey she stops with nervous urgency to wee, squatting in an alcove made with her open passenger-side door, long dried grass poking into her crotch and piss splashing up onto her ankles. During one such stop a truckie blasts his horn and Fairlie holds up her middle finger.
As the crater lakes of Mount Gambier rise into view, Fairlie forgets about Nitrazepam. She forgets Brian Masters and fuzzy recollections of ponytails and carpet burn. Taking one hand at a time from the steering wheel, she flexes her fingers and holds clammy palms to the air-conditioner vents, surveying the skyline of Mount Gambier: a collection of limestone buildings surrounded by the waft of dairy farms and pine chips.
There, alongside a service station: 1127 Bay Road. Her right foot lifts; she gulps. It’s all she can do not to haul a U-turn over the median strip.
Fairlie pulls up in front of a squat office made of brown brick. Leaving the engine running, she surveys the lot, cool air pooling at her feet. The office building reminds her of the generic front offices of brake repairers or landscaping supply yards – stuffy boxes to hold an air-conditioner, permanently smelling of microwaved leftovers for lunch.
After a time she cuts the engine and steps from the car. She stands on the kerb, forcing her breath to slow, while thunder growls in the gunmetal sky and the air stills like a stopped clock.
A vibration from her pocket: Looking forward to tomorrow. Brian Masters has signed the text message with four Xs. Fingers trembling severely, it takes three tries to key in her response: Me, too.
Fairlie inhales, runs her fingers through her hair and steps away from the kerb.
A buzzer sounds as she enters the sparsely furnished front office. A chest-high counter runs the width of the room, laminated in dark brown vinyl and covered with a couple of faded, curled-edged posters. Behind the counter is a mirrored window and a small access door, which opens at the sound of the buzzer. A balding, middle-aged man steps out. He wears a tartan shirt and navy blue slacks and brings the stale smell of cigarette smoke.
‘Help you?’ the man asks in a gravelly voice.
‘Storage unit eight,’ she manages to say. What if he won’t let her open it? ‘I need to access it.’
What the hell is inside?
His face is impassive. ‘D’ya have the key?’
Fairlie withdraws the key from her pocket and holds it up with white fingertips.
The man shrugs. ‘Second to last, down the back.’
Is that all? Fairlie realises she was hoping for more resistance, more questions, more answers. More something. So much for security. Perhaps whatever Jenna has stored isn’t worth all that much?
The buzzer yells again as she pulls open the door.
Behind the office, a narrow yard runs perpendicular to the road. Surrounded by a chain link fence topped with a sagging strand of barbed wire, a corrugated iron shed extends the length of the yard, roller doors evenly spaced along the front. Fairlie steps warily along a crushed gravel driveway that fronts the shed. Roller door number eight looks the same as all the others, but her mouth feels as though it is full of feathers.
Fairlie looks down at her fist clutched around the key. A lone dandelion grips a crack in the edge of the foundation.
A lock in the door, about waist height, small and innocuous.
As though observing someone else, Fairlie watches the slow, trembling reach of her hand. The key aimed toward the lock, the pause before it slides home, tumblers clicking. Before she can lose her nerve she twists the key.
Fairlie holds her breath, grips the door handle, and gives it a swift tug. With a clunk, the clasp releases and the door lumbers upwards with a loud metallic rattle.
12
THEN
‘It’s an illness,’ Doctor Jones was saying as he smiled at Jenna. ‘It’s quite common. It’s not your fault.’
‘Depression,’ Ark repeated. ‘That explains everything. Thank you, doctor.’
‘If it’s been going on for a while, I’d say it’s postnatal depression,’ the doctor went on. ‘But since Henry is eighteen months old now, we’ll call it plain depression. We tend to diagnose the “postnatal” part before twelve months post partum.’
Jenna was trying to name the colour of the carpet. Too light for grey, it was also too bland for silver.
‘But you definitely think this is postnatal?’ Ark asked.
‘If it’s been going on for some time, yes.’
‘It has. A long time. We should have come to see you sooner.’
Off white? she wondered. No, it wasn’t cream enough.
‘. . . medication, you should notice a difference.’
‘We know a great psychologist,’ Ark was saying. His voice had taken on a bashful, almost humbled quality. ‘We’ve been to see her as a couple. Worked wonders.’ He gave Jenna’s knee a squeeze.
Eggshell, she decided.
The room was too warm. Jenna tugged the neck of her t-shirt. Ark was bouncing Henry on his knee and the child was giggling with delight. Jenna looked away. What colour is puce? No wait, that’s pink.
‘Jenna?’
She looked up. ‘Huh?’
Ark gave the doctor an apologetic smile. ‘Doctor Jones asked if you are okay with all that.’
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Antidepressants. Counselling. Got it.’
‘I suggest you join a mother’s group, too,’ the doctor said, scribbling his signature on the prescription. ‘Get out of the house more. The support will help.’
‘Doctor Jones? What colour would you call this?’ She pointed to the carpet.
The doctor exchanged a look with Ark. ‘Take care, Jenna,’ he said.
After they left the doctor’s clinic, Jenna told Ark she wanted to stop by the hospital.
‘Why?’ Ark asked with a frown.
‘There’s a form I forgot to sign. For my resignation.’
‘You resigned ages ago,’ he pointed o
ut.
‘Hospital paperwork never processes fast.’
When he pulled into the hospital car park Ark left the engine running. Before she could open her door he grabbed her wrist. ‘Five minutes,’ he said, eyeing the building with nervous distaste. ‘We need to get Henry home.’
Jenna hesitated, her hand on the door handle. ‘I might be a bit longer. I thought I’d stop in at maternity and ask about mother’s groups.’
His eyes flickered over her face. ‘Why?’
‘Like the doctor said, I should get out more.’
Ark sighed, his jaw working. ‘We’ll talk about it later. You need to get more settled into a routine around the house before you try going out. That will just mess everything up.’ Reluctantly, he released her arm.
He waited in the car with Henry, and when she returned, clutching her handbag tightly and trying not to look back over her shoulder, she hoped he couldn’t hear the hammer of her heart.
*
Adrenaline sent tremors through Jenna’s limbs as she popped pills from blister sheets onto the bathroom counter. Through the locked door she could hear Ark in the kitchen, singing loudly to Henry.
Crumpling the empty boxes and blister sheets into balls, she shoved them deep into a drawer beneath a box of tampons and packets of sanitary pads. Tomorrow, when Ark left for work, she’d burn them.
Jenna sealed the ziplock bag, stuffed it up her sleeve and left the bathroom.
ii
Wails filled the dark. Miserable, angry wails that drilled into her ears and plucked like hands at her heart.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ Ark muttered from beneath the covers. ‘How long is this supposed to last?’
Jenna gritted her teeth. ‘The book said three nights.’
‘It’s been a week.’
‘I know,’ she snapped. ‘I’m not deaf.’
‘Don’t get angry at me. I’m not at fault here.’
She rolled over, her back to Ark as she faced the wall, squeezing her eyes shut.
The wails had morphed into long, drawn-out sobs. Muum-mma. Muum-mma. Tears slipped across the bridge of her nose, spreading wet into the pillow at her ears.
It was some time before Henry went quiet – an hour, maybe two, but when silence finally fell she felt Ark’s hands slide over her waist, the familiar splay of his fingers across her belly – thumb on one hipbone, little finger stroking into her pubic hair. She resisted as he tugged at her, bringing her hips back to his body, the thick of him pressing against her spine.
‘No,’ she said. But her dissent mattered not, and when he entered her it was swift and urgent, her t-shirt rucked up around the small of her back. Pressing her face into the damp of her pillow, she held her breath, stifled her useless sobs.
Afterwards, she crept from the bed and tiptoed down the hall, her fingertips trailing across the walls in the dark, trying to ignore the sting and drip of fluid from between her legs. In Henry’s room, there was enough moonlight for her to make out his sleeping form. He had grown almost too big for the cot now. She stared down at him, wondering why she felt so blank. Nothing; her mind was blank, her body a discarded carapace.
Snores filled the master bedroom when she returned. The sound jangled up her spine. On tiptoes she crept into the robe and knelt silently. She held a pill between her teeth before swallowing it dry.
Now she could lie down, and wait for the relief of a slack darkness.
iii
Jenna leaned against the kitchen counter, rubbing her temples as she watched Henry turn buttered toast into a grain-and-saliva mush on the tabletop. Curds of it littered the floor. As she stared at him, he dropped a mangled crust and, after observing it hit the tiles, he looked straight to her, his features twisting in outrage.
Heaving herself from the counter, Jenna hastened to reassure him before his cries escalated.
‘Everything’s okay,’ she told him, ‘I’ll get it.’ Wincing against the throb in her head, she knelt to retrieve the crust. Her stomach rolled as she wiped her hand against her trackpants.
Her left hand stayed curled in a fist. Returning to the sink, she opened her fingers to stare down at the minuscule tablet in her palm. Rain battered against the window, and she thought of Ark driving the muddy lengths of the vines, checking on the labourers he’d hired for pruning. His words from the early hours of the morning swam through her mind. Don’t worry, soon you’ll be all right. Back to normal.
Jenna watched glimmering rainwater chase itself down the glass. At the table behind her, Henry began to whine.
Normal. It seemed such an absurd concept. She knew that she should be longing for it, striving for contentment and happiness, but it was as though all her muscles had wilted away, as though even her mind had turned to slop, like Henry’s toast. She was an unrecognisable smear of her former self. Forever altered, forever stripped of form and purpose.
The Fluoxetine weighed nothing in her palm. It rested there, full of promise. The answer! Take this once a day. Tell this person all your woes and, like a fart in the wind, all your problems will miraculously disappear. Your life will mean something. As if tablets and a $200-an-hour stranger could erase it all.
For a bit longer than a week she’d swallowed the pill each morning. And for the past few days, there’d been nothing but nausea and headache. No signs of contentment, no glimmer of happiness. Every morning she awoke, her body stubbornly refusing to accept that there was no point to her existence. Breath kept coming in and out of her lungs; her heart kept up its useless, repetitive beating.
How hard would it be to simply hold her breath, to slip away?
Ark had only approved of her seeing Karen, with the Masters in psychology and the long silver plait. Jenna had insisted that if she was going to do this again she wanted someone completely new, but Ark was adamant: she wasn’t going to see a stranger. How could he trust someone with his precious wife if he hadn’t already vetted them? I love you, he’d implored, her hands wrapped in his. Tears gleaming in his eyes. I love you.
Acid lurched in her stomach. Jenna tilted her hand and the antidepressant rolled from her palm. It made a small ticking sound as it hit the bottom of the sink. She turned on the tap and watched it spiral down the drain. As had yesterday’s. And the day before’s.
iv
She knew.
Even before the line materialised to tell her, Jenna knew the inevitable truth of it.
It wasn’t just the antidepressants. A week of nausea, the constant headache, the sharp bite of her sense of smell.
So as she stared into her knickers, clean of blood for seven days too long now, even before the second line appeared on the pregnancy test Jenna knew.
She knew she couldn’t do this.
Dear Jenna,
So you were born. You were out, pink-skinned and thriving. And for a moment we were perfect, you and me and your father.
But.
But then.
Looking down I cooed at you, but then I frowned, and winced, as the doctor tugged between my legs. I asked him to stop; I told him it hurt.
He apologised, still pulling, eyebrows drawn together over his mask. He told me to push again, said something about reluctant afterbirth. Still the tugging, yanking on my insides. But then – pain drilled up through my body.
The doctor cried, ‘Shit.’
Barking orders, nurses flying into action. Stephen’s worried voice: ‘What’s going on?’
‘There’s another baby.’
Another baby.
Another baby.
I heard it, Jenna, but it must have been wrong. I had just had a baby. Somebody declared something about surprise twins, but the tone in the room wasn’t celebratory.
Over the years I have tried to recall events from this point, but I simply don’t remember much. I can hear frenzied cries – they must be mine? – the
copper tang of blood, the hot gush of fluid and the rough press and jerk of the doctor’s hands. I remember feeling flayed in half. Confused, frightened. Panicky. Drugged. Something about a head out. And they said there was blood – so much blood. The doctor roaring at me to push.
So I pushed again.
And the room descended into silence.
I thought it must have been death. Only death could bring the silence so swiftly, like the fall of an axe. But I wasn’t dead. I was very much alive – the aches and raw stings of my body were too furious and hot. Ragged breathing, Stephen’s hand clutching mine with numbing fierceness. From the far side of the room you screamed. Amongst it all, the steady bleep, bleep, bleep of a machine that measured the life beat of hearts. The doctor clearing his throat, his eyes looking at a place I couldn’t see behind that goddamned bloody sheet.
‘It’s a girl.’ Yet the doctor sounded uncertain; a nurse peered over his shoulder and put a hand over her mouth.
Stephen’s voice was thin as he asked, ‘Is she okay?’
I wondered who he was asking about – me? You? Who?
Eventually, the doctor looked up. He stared at me with such intensity that I wanted to look away. Then he turned to Stephen and he said: ‘There is another girl.’
In the background, you wailed. But – where was our new baby? This second girl?
Then the doctor lifted his hands. And nothing would be the same ever again.
Now, can you see how hard it would be for us?
Until next time,
Love, Mum.
13
NOW
When the roller door rattles upwards, Fairlie squeezes her eyes shut. Her heart thumps in her chest, battering at her collarbone as she draws in a shuddery breath.
