by Fiona Gibson
“I shouldn’t have done it,” he babbles, “that night with Eliza. It only happened once, do you know that? In fact, it didn’t really happen. Not really. It was an accident.” He says ackshident.
There’s a hollow bellow of accordion. He’s sorry for not understanding. For not listening. He’ll change.
“Jonathan,” I say, “I’m going to bed.” He says something else, but it’s drowned by a groan, like someone trapped under the accordion.
My daughter falls into an easy pattern of feeding, sleeping and gazing at jumbled wet rooftops through the balcony window. She stares levelly when Ben, a humongous toddler, towers over her. Her name is Jane. Short and simple, like the way she slipped out of me. Beth says she’s small—even smaller than Ben was at this age—but anyone would seem miniature next to Maud, who clomps about my kitchen in terrifying boots.
Eliza says she looks like me. She has my sturdy nose, apparently, and dark, unremarkable hair. But I wonder if Eliza is seeing anything clearly. She has decided to leave her magazine to work exclusively for the photographer with an attitude. “Hector wants me to be his muse,” she says, and when I asked what a muse actually does, she explains, “I’ll stimulate him visually. We’re going to create together.”
I tell her to be careful, look at me and Jonathan and what happened when we got down to creating, but she goes dreamy and says she doesn’t have it in her to work with one more model who’s been flown to Morocco and bleats about missing her boyfriend.
Eliza says it’s different with Hector, the sex thing. It’s creative. Part of being a muse. He wants to photograph her. He is entranced by her neck, apparently, though he likes her to remove all her clothes for a photography session.
I’ve just sunk into the bath when Ben wakes. He’s babbling and rattling the bars of his cot. This is unusual; since we moved here he’s slept through the night. I warm his bottle and hold him on my lap. He drinks steady with one brown eye on me, like a raisin. The milk fails to make him drowsy. He’s fired up, kicking to get off my knee. I put him down, wrap myself in a dressing gown and open the balcony door.
There’s karaoke in the pub and a gang of girls surging in, chirping like chickens. Ben sits in the darkened living room, rattling the clear plastic sack containing the metal construction kit. Beyond the balcony are forgotten roof gardens and a sky that never gets properly dark and someone singing: I will always love yew-hew.
When I look back at Ben, he’s up on his feet. There’s no hand to hold, no solid object to grip. He totters toward me, toward the houses and the terrible singer now sounding like her molars are being removed with no anesthetic. He’s tottering on the cheap pink carpet, towards the balcony door. Here, his steps falter and he clangs his head against the door frame.
I’m expecting tears or even blood and a frantic trip to hospital but his mouth forms a smile, like you see in the ads, and nothing terrible has happened, nothing terrible at all.
“You’re walking,” I say. “You’re actually walking.”
He looks at me like this is the first sensible thing that’s ever come out of my mouth.
First North American edition July 2004
BABYFACE
A Red Dress Ink novel
ISBN: 978-1-4603-1173-8
© 2003 by Fiona Gibson.
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, incidents and places are the products of the author’s imagination, and are not to be construed as real. While the author was inspired in part by actual events, none of the characters in the book is based on an actual person. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and unintentional.
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