The Making of Us

by Lisa Jewell

  Lydia watched Dean rub the end of the spliff out against the brick wall and then tuck it into his jacket pocket. “Funny, that,” he said, pushing his hands into his pockets and stretching back against his chair, “because all this has made me feel completely the opposite. Been winging it too long.” He sniffed. “Meeting you two, both so clever and so . . . what’s the word? You know, driven and stuff . . . it’s made me wonder what else I could be doing. It’s like, no one ever let me think I should be doing anything with my life. Everyone always let me think it was okay just to drift along. The only person who ever thought I should be more than I am was Sky . . .”

  “Who’s Sky?”

  Dean winced and wriggled against the back of his chair. “She was my girlfriend. Mother of my kid. She died . . .”

  Robyn recoiled slightly and said, “Oh, no, Dean. I’m so sorry.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s life, isn’t it? I wish it hadn’t happened. Worst thing that ever happened to me. But it did, and now I’m getting on with it. You know. And I’m thinking maybe I can be the person she wanted me to be. You know, get off my skinny arse and do something. Contribute something. I mean”—he smiled—“I reckon it’s got to be there in me somewhere. In my genes. I come from a pretty bright family, after all . . .”

  “And what about your child?” said Robyn. “Tell me about your child.”

  “Little girl,” he replied. “Isadora. Izzy for short. She’s nearly four months old.”

  “Wow!” Robyn’s eyes were wide with wonder. “A baby. You’ve got a baby. And that means . . . that means that I’m an auntie!”

  “Yeah.” Dean smiled. “Yeah. That’s right—you both are.”

  “Oh my God!” She laughed and turned toward Lydia. “Did you hear that? You and me—we’ve got a niece! We’re aunties! That’s, just, like the coolest thing ever!” She turned back to Dean. “Have you got a picture of her? A picture of Izzy?”

  “As it happens”—he smiled and felt around inside his coat—“I did bring one along. My mum gave it to me before I left. Here she is—”

  He sparked up his lighter and held the flame in front of the photo. Lydia leaned in closely, her head almost touching Robyn’s. She had never seen a picture of the baby before either. And there she was, a little half-formed person with wide eyes, a plump mouth and a head of thick dark hair. “Oh, yes,” said Robyn, touching one corner of the photo with her thumb and forefinger. “Oh, yes, indeed—she is one of us. Without a doubt, she is one of us . . .”

  The three of them sat like that for a moment, three dark heads held close together around the soft flame of the lighter, staring in awe and affection at this proof of the power of their connection. This baby, much more than the man fading away in the hospice down the road, was what bound them together. Lydia stared into the child’s dark eyes and felt her own eyes dampen with tears. Suddenly she knew what babies were for. She’d never understood before what possible role a baby would ever play in her life. But now she did.

  Continuity.

  The soothing reassurance that it would all carry on, minute after minute, day after day, year after year, century after century. The knowledge that there was more to life than her own limited experience of existence; that long after she was gone, there would be others like her; that maybe one day, when all that was left of her was a granite block in a Welsh cemetery, a person somewhere might say something like: My mother’s great-aunt made a fortune out of paint, you know. Or maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe she would never be spoken of again, her headstone obliterated by moss and grime. But still, just to know it . . . just to know that there was more than just her. And to remember that without all the reproduction and continuity there was just age and decay. A big full stop. And here, in Dean’s hands, was proof that life really would go on.

  “She’s beautiful,” Robyn said, loosening her hold on the photo, “really, really beautiful.”

  “Yeah,” said Dean quietly, letting the flame of the lighter die out and slowly returning the photo to his inside pocket. “Which is pretty miraculous really, given that she looks just like me.”

  His comment lightened the mood and all three of them laughed.

  “So,” said Dean, slapping his thighs. “Who fancies a bowl of cornflakes then?”

  They ate their cornflakes, on their knees, around the coffee table. The clock said 2:30 a.m., yet still it seemed too early to call it a night.

  They were family now. Lydia knew that, and she sensed that the others knew it too. It would be surprising if they didn’t come together as a threesome again over the years to come—but this, what they were doing here tonight, this would never be repeated. The combination of factors that had brought them all here . . . the fact that they were in their father’s home waiting for him to die, the lateness of the night, the fullness of the moon . . . but more than that—the newness of it all. This was their first date and Lydia didn’t want it to end.

  They ate in silence, just the sounds of their spoons hitting china, the crunch of the cereal between their teeth, breaking the peace. When they’d finished they immediately returned to the kitchen and poured themselves second bowls, and then, when they’d finished those, they opened another bottle of wine, rolled another spliff and headed back out to the terrace. The sky was already losing its blackness and the moon had shifted out of sight. It would be dawn before too long.

  Lydia shivered slightly and Robyn pulled the blanket from around her shoulders and draped it across their knees. And then she snuggled up against Lydia and rested her head on her shoulder. Lydia stiffened slightly. The gesture was reminiscent of Dixie’s in the early days of their friendship—“touchy-feely,” Lydia had called it, and in return Dixie had laughed and called her the Tin Man. Lydia thought of those moments now with the weight of Robyn’s head against her shoulder, the tickle of her hair against her cheek, the hard points of her knees against her thigh, and she reached deep down inside herself to find something she knew was in there somewhere, something basic and human and raw, and as she did so she felt it rushing through her, from her heart to her feet to her hands. Lydia put her arm around Robyn’s small, neat shoulders and pulled her closer. And then she rested her head against Robyn’s head and breathed in the smell of her, the smell of her sister.

  “Budge up,” said Dean, rising from his seat. Lydia and Robyn moved over and he squeezed himself down next to them. He put his arms around both of them and brought their heads to his. “This has been the best night of my life,” he said softly.

  Lydia and Robyn smiled and pulled him to them, and there they sat, Dean, Lydia and Robyn, a human triangle, three lost children united at last.

  “Let’s never go to sleep,” said Robyn, yawning widely.

  “No,” said Lydia, “let’s never.”

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  They did fall asleep eventually. They grabbed armfuls of blankets from Daniel’s linen cupboard and made a campsite of his living room. At four o’clock they finally turned off all the lights and even then they did not sleep immediately. Even then there was still more to talk about, still more to laugh about (“Here,” Dean whispered dramatically into the silence, “do you reckon that Maggie woman will shack up with the twin once the other one’s dead? I mean, it’s a bit like having a spare”), still more to learn. But finally, as the sun began its ascent above the flat Suffolk skyline, Robyn and Dean fell silent and their breathing grew heavy and Lydia knew that it was just her now, awake in her father’s house. She watched them both for a while, their young, smooth faces, soft with sleep, Robyn’s beautiful black hair spread around her head, Dean’s hands tucked beneath his cheek like a child. They were safe.

  She slept.

  DANIEL

  Through the narrow opening between his eyelids Daniel can see a flicker of green, a swirl of yellow, a shiver of movement. If he turns his head to the left he can see whiteness, lines, angles, a face. The face seen from here is an abstract blob of pink with some darker bits in the middle that move in and out of focus
as he gazes at them. He knows this person is Maggie because he can hear her voice. At times he knows what she is saying. At times he is able to hold on to the substance of the noises coming from her mouth and use his strange new mind to turn them into meaningful words. Sometime earlier (today? yesterday? he doesn’t know), she had been talking about the children. The children. He had responded in some way to that. He isn’t sure if the response had been decipherable. He’d wanted to express a feeling of joy and excitement. It is possible that Maggie had taken it as an expression of discomfort. She had asked for a nurse and one had come, a warm, radiating sensation to his right-hand side as she leaned across his body, the solidity and reassurance of heavy human flesh. No one seems to touch him anymore. Not even Maggie. Just these little squeezes to his hands. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes his hands hurt, like they are open wounds. But he isn’t hurting now. He feels fine now. He feels like a jar full of honey.

  So then, the children came. He remembers that very clearly. Three beautiful humans. They had looked at him with pity and curiosity, but not with love. He had not expected love. Though he felt also at some point, either before or in between, that he had died. He was sure he had died, but then he hadn’t been dead at all and had awoken at the arrival of his children and even said some words. So, no, he had not been dead. Although maybe he was dead now. But no, he would not be able to see these outlines and hear these voices if he were dead. And the children are back again.

  The man is there now too, next to Maggie. It’s his brother. Marc. Before (today? yesterday?) his brother had held him on the bed. His brother had kissed him. And as his brother had kissed him, Daniel’s strange new mind had taken him away from this room for a while—his strange new mind is always taking him away from this room—and put him into the room in which he and his brother had slept together as children. The room had oak shutters at the windows and a tiled floor underfoot. Daniel and his brother slept there together, side by side, in a small double bed, coiled against each other just as they had been in the womb. They would awaken every morning, chest to chest, breathing in each other’s stale breath; they would open their eyes and they would smile with pleasure at the sight of each other, at the dawning of another day of being together.

  Daniel had fallen asleep like that again, with his brother’s arm around him, their hands layered over each other. Every time he falls asleep he finds himself surprised to wake again. Sleeping now feels so close to dying that he cannot imagine how he will tell the difference once the time comes. When he awoke from this sleep—he assumed it was this sleep and not a different one—his brother had not been on the bed anymore and the room had been empty. This is the only time that Daniel feels anxious about what is happening to him, when his room is empty. The more ill he becomes, the less he finds himself alone. Possibly because he sleeps for much longer but also because people do not like to leave the dying in case there is no one there to see them go. Like waiting for a bus, the more time you invest in awaiting the outcome the harder it is to walk away.

  But the room is not empty now. It is filled with Maggie and Marc and with his children. He opens his eyes another millimeter and for a moment it is like looking at a snapshot from his past; he and Maggie standing side by side in the dark, outside some restaurant, waiting for a taxi, his jacket around her bare shoulders, but not touching. Never touching. There is the same distance between Maggie and his brother now, a few inches. Daniel has grown unused to having a double. Now he looks at his twin and thinks not, That is my brother, but, That is me. His brother has become a mirror image of Daniel himself, rather than an extension. He lets his eyelids fall shut again and inhales. His breathing now, it sounds so ugly, like the raspings of a devilish beast. He feels his blood rushing around his body. Remarkably urgent. Remarkably vital.

  The children. She is talking about the children again. He tries to hold on to her words.

  He manages to expel a noise. The noise is loud and alarming, even to his own ears. Who?

  He sees them turn toward him, as one, like a choreographed movement in a dance.

  “Who?” he says again.

  Maggie is alongside him now, holding his hand, like she always does. “The children,” she says. “They’re here. They wanted to see you again.”

  “All of them?” he croaks.

  “Yes,” she says brightly. “All of them! Dean. Lydia. Robyn.”

  He strains against the pull of sleep for as long as he can but finally allows himself to be pulled back down into unconsciousness again, away from the memory that has sat like an ominous sentry inside his mind for most of his adult life.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  There is movement all around him. Through the arrow slits of his eyes he can see something flame-colored. It makes a noise as it moves, a kind of rustling sound, like a brown paper parcel being unwrapped. Atop the orange-red mass is a head, some dark hair, a pair of big eyes looking into his, the smell of sickly perfume, a glimmer of silver at the earlobes.

  “He’s opening his eyes,” says the girl in the rustling red dress.

  Daniel senses more movement, a sea of blobs suddenly propelled toward him, like satellites toward a mother ship. He sees a white top with some kind of writing on it. There is a dark head atop this too. And then another dark head, this one attached to a lithe, bendy body dressed in colors from the bottom of the sea. It is a man and a woman. He wishes he could focus more clearly. But even without seeing, he knows that these people are Dean and Lydia. He feels pain shooting through his legs; it feels like bullets being fired from his pelvis down to his toes. He wants to wince, but knows that any facial signs of his discomfort will be met by a visit from the nurse and more morphine and then he will be gone again, and right now he needs the pain to keep him awake.

  He concentrates on his eyes. They have to open. They have to focus. But still, all he can see is blurred outlines, a pointilliste watercolor of blobs.

  “Do you want some water?” It is the girl in the red dress. He remembers the dress from yesterday. Her name is Robyn.

  He nods and she carefully brings the straw to his lips. He has not had water for many hours, maybe days; he no longer needs water as he is about to die, but he wants to take water from this girl because she is his daughter.

  “Can you see me?” she says, putting the cup back on his tray.

  He shakes his head and smiles.

  And then: “Red dress,” he manages to say.

  “Yes!” she says, delighted, looking around her at the others. “Yes. I’m wearing a red dress!”

  She moves away and now the other one approaches, the woman, Lydia. “Hello, Daniel,” she says. Her voice is strange somehow, as though she is singing to him. And then he remembers that she is Welsh. Then the other one comes, the boy, Dean. He has very short hair, like a cap on his head. He is thin too, all his children are very thin. He approaches in a less confident manner. Daniel wishes he could reassure him. But there is nothing he can possibly do. He smiles instead. “Morning,” says the boy.

  Morning? Is it?

  Daniel can feel it rushing back. The sea of sleep closing over his head as if he is a heavy weight plummeting to the ocean bed. Then the boy touches his arm and there is a sudden terrible pain. Daniel contains it. Pain is good. While there is pain, he is still here, still present. He thinks of things he wants to say: he wants to say that he is sorry, sorry for his cowardice, only to ask to meet them when he knows he will not be asked to do anything more. He wants to say that they are beautiful, all three of them. He wants to say that he is proud of them and that now he can see what it was that he did. He wonders if the existence of these three miraculous people can in any way ever compensate for the life of the sick child that he snatched away one drowsy, unfocused day in a hospital in Dieppe. He wants to say, “There is my brother, he is yours, have him instead. He is just like me, only better. Keep him. My gift to you.” He wants to say that he has not had a good life but that now, in these fading moments, he can see that it was fine. And he wants to
say good-bye. He wants to say it to each and every one of them in turn, to take each face between his hands and hold it and kiss it and make eye contact and then to say it, loud and clear, good-bye. But there are no more words.

  His dry mouth is no longer his. It hangs flaccidly, as if someone has glued it onto his face, haphazardly. There will be no more words. There will be no good-byes or eye contact or kisses. There will just be this. This floating mass of humanity, that seems to lift from the ground as he lets his eyes close. The room tilts for a moment. He clutches the sheets with his hand to steady himself. The room tilts back again. He forces his eyes open again. The people around him stare at him. They are talking. He cannot hear what they are saying. But he can feel them, all around him, like a warm embrace. They are all there. And he can go now.

  He can hear his own breath again in his ears. It sounds horrible. He wants to stop it but he has already had his last moments of control over his body. He is trapped now and there is no way back. He smiles and lets himself be taken there.

  Later That Day

  DEAN

  Tommy was sitting at a white plastic table outside the Alliance. He had a pint in one hand and his phone in the other. When he saw Dean walking toward the pub he quickly wrapped up his conversation and turned it off.

  “All right?” he said, almost getting to his feet, and then thinking better of it.

  Dean shrugged and smiled. “Yeah,” he said, “I guess so. Want a drink?”

  “No.” He indicated his fresh pint. “I’m okay.”

  Dean brought a pint from the bar back to the table and sat down opposite his cousin. He’d come straight from the train and was still in the clothes he’d been wearing for two days and a night. He felt grimy and stale.

  “How’d it go?” said Tommy, eyeing him over the top of his pint.

  “He died,” said Dean.

  Tommy’s eyes widened. “You’re kidding?” he said.

  Dean shrugged. “No. Straight up. This morning. He died.”