The Dream Life I Never Had

by Terri Douglas

  ‘No I don’t think I will. Boys are stupid and they’re always being rough and pushing each other and they like Turtles and stupid comic book heroes like Iron Man and Captain America. Oliver talks about them all the time and he never wants to play Barbie or Princesses with me.’

  ‘Yes I can see how that would be annoying. Why don’t you just see how it goes, maybe by the time you’re grown up you won’t want to play Barbie’s or Princesses anymore’ I said.

  ‘No I probably won’t, you don’t play those sort of games anymore do you Mummy but Daddy still likes all the comic book people doesn’t he? Does Daddy make you play Iron Man or Turtles with him?’

  ‘Well he likes it if I watch the films with him.’

  ‘Hm . . . but what if you don’t want to? Kate asked.

  ‘If I don’t want to then he watches them on his own and I do something else.’

  ‘But if you’re married don’t you have to do whatever he says?’

  ‘No, wherever did you get that idea? When you marry someone it’s because you want to be with them all the time, you want to share stuff and . . . and be their best friend. No-one has to do what the other one says if they don’t want to, it’s about making each other happy and if you’re not happy watching Iron Man films then you don’t have to, or anything else’ I said.

  ‘But what if it’s his favourite thing?’

  ‘If it’s his favourite thing you might do whatever it is because you love him and you want him to be happy, but he should be trying to make you happy as well by doing whatever it is that you like doing. D’you see? He’s trying to make you happy and you’re trying to make him happy.’

  ‘Are you happy Mummy?’ Kate asked with no notion of how much of a million dollar question that was.

  ‘The thing is Kate when you love someone you think about them all the time, you worry about them, you want to hug them and hold their hand . . .’

  ‘Is that when you do the sex thing?’

  ‘Um . . . yes that’s when you want to do the sex thing. But it’s not just that, you can do the sex thing even if you don’t love the person but if you do love them then . . . what I’m trying to say is when you fall in love, properly in love, you’re only happy when you’re with that person. The thing you want most in all the world is for them to be happy and they should feel the same way about you. That’s why you get married so that you can be together as much as possible and share everything, it’s not about getting your own way or telling the other person what to do.’

  ‘So if I do get married one day I can still play Princesses if I want to, and the person I marry can still play Turtles or something’ Kate said thoughtfully.

  ‘Yes if that’s what you want to do, then sometimes you can play Turtles to make your husband happy and sometimes he can play Princesses to make you happy.’

  ‘Mmm’ she sighed thoughtfully weighing up all that I’d said. ‘Well I might get married then I suppose, maybe one day, but I don’t think I’ll marry Oliver.’

  ‘Okay’ I said acknowledging the seriousness of her decision. ‘Well you’ve got plenty of time to think about it you don’t have to decide right now, and you don’t know who you’re going to meet in the future do you?’

  ‘No I might end up marrying someone I don’t even know.’

  ‘You might’ I said.

  I kissed her goodnight and left her to muse on the vagaries of if or who she might marry one day. I wasn’t quite sure how I’d ended up trying to explain the mystery of love to a five year old when for centuries the most educated scholars had tried and failed to define it at all, but I hoped I’d said all the right things.

  Later that evening Paul phoned to see if I’d changed my mind about going to the Dunsfold Air Display on Sunday. I said that I hadn’t but that he should go anyway with Tyler and Caitlin as they’d enjoyed it all so much last year. We talked for a while about this and that and he asked me how the guinea pigs were doing and offered again to come and build a run for them in the garden. I declined the offer but thanked him for making it and after a bit more chit chat we said goodbye.

  He was a nice guy and it would have been all too easy to accept his offers of help or of taking us all out somewhere for the day, but . . . and there was the problem right there in that one word. If there was a ‘but’ in the equation then the answer should be no. If that little ‘but’ word crept in then sooner or later it would turn into more than just a little word and sour everything. Then I thought about Martin; our whole relationship seemed to be one big ‘but’. At that moment anyway I really missed the days when we took each other for granted and didn’t think about what sort of relationship we had or where it was going, we just got on with it. Yes he’d driven me mad sometimes and yes he could be a thoughtless idiot, but there was no question of ‘if’ or ‘but’, everything had been all a bit samey and even verged on being boring but at least it wasn’t the emotional rollercoaster it was now.

  In the dream world guys told the truth, if they said they loved you it was because they did and they weren’t afraid to show it. If they asked you to marry them it’s because they wanted to be with you more than anyone else; they didn’t change their minds five minutes later or get bored with married life a year or two down the line. If they had a best mate it was to spend guy time doing guy things but the best mate didn’t take precedence over the wife. In the dream world marriage was forever, love was forever, and sharing your life with someone meant that as each year passed you just got closer and closer.

  The real world though was not so straight forward, and what you see is not always what you get. The real world was full of compromise and settling for second best, it was reading between the lines and sifting out the bullshit from the truth if you could. It was hard and it was unfair sometimes, and I wondered how anyone ever managed to survive it all without becoming an emotional recluse never mind making a go of anything or being happy.

  36

  On Saturday morning Martin arrived at exactly a quarter to eight so there was no time for us to talk before I had to leave for work; not that I wanted to talk. I suspect that he’d timed it to be as late as possible without actually being late if you see what I mean, on purpose and specifically so that we didn’t have to talk. And when I got home that evening he left as I came through the front door.

  Brilliant I thought, bloody brilliant. I didn’t want to talk to him; nowadays it always seemed to end in a row and I really wasn’t up for any more of that, but he didn’t know that did he? Why didn’t Martin want to talk to me or at least try and make it up with me? I didn’t want to talk to him but I did want him to want to talk to me.

  Then late on Sunday afternoon he turned up unannounced with some wood and chicken-wire netting that he dumped in the back garden saying it was to build a guinea pig run and that the children could help him with. Of course Ben and Kate wanted to get started straight away but Martin said it would have to wait until next Saturday as it was an all-day job or at the very least an all-morning job. He stayed long enough to talk to the kids for ten minutes about how they would build the run and what it would look like when they’d finished and then he left again, still with barely a word to me. Huh I thought to myself sourly, I knew all that stuff Lindsey had told me was a pack of lies. I still couldn’t work out why she’d lied but here was the proof, not that I really needed any, and if Martin had the opportunity to talk to me and purposely chose not to . . . well that must mean he was guilty as hell, about Lindsey, about Lenny, about everything.

  On Monday Kate was due to spend the week at my mum and dad’s but as I no longer had the car my Dad had to come and pick her up. Ben was a bit put out that he wasn’t going this time but if I mucked the nursery about too much they’d get annoyed and give his place to someone else and I really couldn’t afford for that to happen. This morning though he was having a couple of hours off to go for his MMR booster jab.

  I’d been dreading him having another injection as the last time he’d shouted the place down and ev
er since had got very agitated whenever he saw anyone in a white coat that could be a nurse. Kate hadn’t really been that bothered when she’d had her jabs, she’d said ‘ow’ of course but that had been that, Ben though was a different story.

  I dithered as to whether I should tell him where we were going or not. If I told him, explained it all again about why he had to have a jab and that yes it would hurt but only for a second or two, would it stop him shouting or crying, would he be any braver? On the other hand if I didn’t tell him in advance and just sprang it on him so to speak he would almost certainly start yelling, and if we had to wait our turn for longer than two minutes I dread to think how upset he might get even before we saw the nurse never mind when she was actually sticking the needle in. Given the alternatives I decided to tell him.

  I sat him down and told him in as gentle a way as possible how sometimes people got very ill from disease and germs; I’d explained it all before but hopefully now he was a bit older he might understand a bit better. It was tricky this, I mean I didn’t want to scare him to death or make him too afraid or paranoid to go out and enjoy himself or to be friends with anyone in case he caught something. But on the other hand it had to be a bit scary, enough anyway to make you want to avoid getting ill and having the vaccination that might prevent it.

  Ben listened and although his little mouth drooped he stoically agreed that he didn’t want to get ill. ‘So you see’ I said ‘you really do need to have an injection against all those nasty germs, and I know it hurts a bit but it’s only for a minute and it’s better than being sick isn’t it?’

  ‘Okay Mummy’ he said as his head slumped forward resignedly.

  ‘Come on then let’s get it over with, and if you’re a brave boy we’ll go to McDonald’s afterwards and I’ll buy you a McFlurry ice cream.’

  ‘Kay’ he said despairingly.

  We caught the bus to the doctors and sat up on the top deck which cheered him up a bit. I usually avoided sitting upstairs if I could despite it being one of Ben’s favourite things as it was always such a long-winded palaver getting down the stairs again when we reached our stop. But today given our destination and purpose I was only too happy to put up with this small inconvenience.

  My worst nightmares were confirmed as we went through the double doors to the doctor’s reception area; the place was practically heaving with mothers and their three year olds. I told the receptionist we were here and she eventually found us on her list and told us to take a seat and wait our turn with all the other mums. Why do doctors do that? Why do they give the same appointment time to twenty different people? It was bad enough when they did it to grown-ups but doing it when small children were involved was sheer madness in my opinion, and looking round me I was proved right.

  There were a handful of children playing with some grubby outdated pathetic excuse for toys in the middle of the room, and a larger contingent of small people running round and shouting as if they were in the playground, while others sat morosely with their mothers knowing and dreading I suspect what was to come. The mothers were either trying to console their worried offspring, or were interacting with them to try and take their mind off things. Some were shouting at their children to sit down and be quiet, but there were a few that gave every appearance of disowning their noisy child and were pretending there was no noise or chaos and if there was it was nothing to do with them.

  There were no seats left so Ben and I stood off to one side and silently watched the bedlam escalate as the time ticked on and more and more people arrived. Our appointment was for nine twenty along with most of the other people waiting, and at nine thirty five the first mother and child went in to see the nurse. ‘It shouldn’t be too long now’ I said to Ben and he nodded morosely.

  Thirty minutes later I’d worked out that there were three more children to see before it was our turn, at least I think it was three. I’d done that thing you do in this sort of situation where everyone’s waiting but not in a nice orderly queue so you have to mentally clock everyone who was there before you and do a sort of countdown thing in your head to gauge when your turn was coming up.

  Ben sat silently watching as one child after another walked down the corridor of doom with their mum to the nurse’s room. He also watched closely when they came back out again a few minutes later; some were fine and just holding their arm, but others were a bit tearful and every time a crying child left I could feel Bens anxiety go up a notch. I’d tried getting him to do one of the ancient puzzles but he wasn’t interested, I’d tried reading him one of the battered reading books but I knew he wasn’t listening. I’d kept up a running monologue about anything and everything I could think of to take his mind off things but I was wasting my time and now we’d lapsed into silence again.

  Ben was only just managing to keep a lid on his fear, and I was doing my positive reinforcement best by telling him what a good boy he was and how brave he was being, when disaster struck. It was the turn of an obnoxious little tyke called Aaron who during our long wait had been the noisiest and bossiest of all the children. But now that it was time for his injection his bolshiness deserted him and he turned into a cry-baby with attitude; that is to say the tears flowed along with his nose and his mother had to grab him as he tried to leg it out the door and drag him down the corridor while he fought like mad to get away.

  I said quietly to Ben ‘that little boy wasn’t being very brave was he, not like you?’ hoping this would negate the effect of Aaron’s cowardice. But Ben’s already sad face took on an even more worried look and his little lip trembled; if the bolshie and swaggering Aaron was scared then there must really be something terrible to be scared about.

  Five minutes later Aaron and his mother came back down the corridor and Aaron was weeping copiously while his mother told him in no uncertain terms not to be such a big baby. I could feel my Ben going rigid as he watched them leave, and then to make matters worse the nurse who’d given Ben his last injection marched from the nurse’s room down the corridor to see the receptionist whilst still bellowing over her shoulder to an unseen colleague how much she hated the little brats. I could empathise with this sentiment but surely she could have kept such gems of insight to herself, at least until there were no children around to hear her.

  The next mother and child followed the anti-Florence-Nightingale back down the corridor and I knew we only had one more person to go before it was our turn. Ben started rocking in his chair while hanging on tightly to the arms of it and shaking his head chanting ‘no-no-no’ over and over again.

  ‘Not long now and then it will all be over with and we can go and get our ice cream’ I said trying to sound positive.

  ‘No-no-no’ Ben said emphatically while shaking his head.

  ‘I know its scary Ben but we talked about this remember, and it only hurts for a very quick minute I promise. By the time you’ve said ‘ow’ it’ll all be over with.’

  ‘Not doing jections no-no-no’ Ben said gripping the chair arms even tighter.

  The little girl and her mum who’d just gone in came out again and thankfully there were no tears. ‘You see’ I said. ‘That little girl didn’t cry did she?’

  Ben hesitated for moment to watch the little girl and study her face to see if there was any evidence of crying. He looked at me hopefully silently pleading that I was telling the truth or that I might let him off having injections altogether. ‘What flavour ice cream are you going to have?’ I asked.

  The last child before us went in and I resisted the temptation to say we’re next, but I think Ben had already worked that out. We waited in tense anticipation for him and his mother to come out again and I had my fingers, toes, and anything else that would co-operate, crossed that he wouldn’t be crying. It was a close thing as when he did come out there were a few tears but they were of the suffering in silence sort.

  ‘Come on Ben’ I said encouragingly as I stood up and held out my hand for him to hold.

  For a moment he froze sti
ll tightly clutching the arms of the chair as rigid as a marble statue. ‘Don’t want to Mummy’ he said sorrowfully.

  ‘I know Darling but you don’t want get ill do you?’

  He sighed deeply and rested his chin on his chest. ‘Kay’ he said and very slowly took my hand.

  We walked along the corridor and it felt like I was leading my son down death row. As I opened the door to the nurses office the anti-Florence-Nightingale, a big Japanese wrestler of a woman, laughed menacingly as she turned to look at us and said sneeringly ‘not another cry-baby. What do mothers teach their children nowadays?’

  At this remark even her colleague looked slightly embarrassed but diplomatically avoiding comment as presumably she’d heard it all before asked me for Ben’s name so that she could check it off on her list.

  ‘Ben Cromby’ I said.

  ‘Come on Benny stop that snivelling now’ the female wrestler said aggressively.

  ‘He’s a little bit nervous’ I said knowing even as I said it that with this woman it wasn’t going to make the slightest bit of difference.

  ‘It’s just a little prick’ the wrestler said chuckling at her own joke. ‘Can you get him to sit down Mrs Cromby?’

  I guided Ben over to the waiting chair and stood next to him still holding his hand. He looked absolutely terrified as the huge woman loomed over him, and I have to say I was a bit terrified myself looking at the size of her and seeing her maniacal grin.

  ‘I need an arm’ she said sardonically to me and then sighed at how stupid she thought I was not to have thought of that.

  I quickly took Bens hoodie off and pushed his tee-shirt sleeve up and Ben started to shake. The wrestler then slowly picked up the injection needle and stuck it forcefully and with gusto into the small bottle of vaccine right before Bens ever widening eyes. I swear she did it on purpose to increase his fear, the sadistic cow.