by Beth Miller
My heart sank when we pushed open the door to Helene’s Paris Fashions and the bell pinged. It was always so messy in there. It looked like someone had grabbed armfuls of dresses and chucked them in the air. A headless mannequin stood in the middle of the room wearing socks and nothing else.
Mum told the owner, Mr Zucker, that we wanted something special for my batmitzvah. He nodded eagerly. ‘Do wait a moment, ladies, while I peruse my most select collection.’ He disappeared into the back room.
Auntie Leila said, ‘Is this really the best we can do for Melissa?’
Mum said, ‘We get Faye’s discount, Leila. And they have some very nice traditional things. Melissa’s pretty yellow blouse and skirt came from here.’
Mr Zucker put some clothes for me to try in the changing room. I got undressed and stared at myself in the mirror. I looked okay in my bra and knickers. Perhaps I should do my batmitzvah just in them?
Mum called, ‘Show us, Melissa,’ so I threw on a bright pink dress with a flared skirt, and opened the curtains.
‘Oh, that’s sweet,’ Mum said, but Auntie Leila said, ‘Are you kidding me?’
When I reappeared in a white sailor dress with a blue ribbon round the neck, Auntie Leila barked her husky laugh. ‘Andrea, this is Melissa’s special day. The day she turns from child to woman. The day she’s been working towards for a year. She’s a beautiful girl. So why do you want her to look like an alter kocker?’
She meant an ‘old fart’. I nearly laughed out loud.
‘Excuse me, madam,’ butted in Mr Zucker. ‘I dress half the kinder in North London for their barmitzvahs.’
‘Is that so?’ said Auntie Leila, pulling out her Zippo lighter. ‘Well, half the kinder in North London are going to be mighty embarrassed looking at their barmitzvah photos a few years down the line.’
She lit a cigarette and said, ‘Andrea, let me buy Melissa’s outfit as her present. I’d soon as die as see the poor kid in these shmattes.’ She swept out of the shop in a cloud of smoke, leaving Mum apologising to a furious Mr Zucker. I got back into my jeans in double-quick time and raced outside.
Auntie Leila was waiting in the car, her cigarette dangling out of the window. I couldn’t believe she’d said I was beautiful. I jumped into the back and whispered, ‘Thank you.’
‘No problem, kid.’
After Mum had slammed into the front seat we drove to a West End shop called Maxine’s. It was very posh, with scary, thin sales assistants, but they all smiled to see Auntie Leila. She ordered them about, flicking through rails and throwing dresses over her arm. The thin ladies gave Mum a cup of tea and she sat on a golden chair.
The best dress was short-sleeved, in dark-green velvet. Auntie Leila called it a shift dress. It stopped just above my knees and fitted my body perfectly. I looked different in it. Prettier. Older. All the thin ladies gasped and clapped their hands when I came out of the fitting room. One said, ‘Oh, for a figure like that!’
It cost fifty pounds, but Auntie Leila paid without blinking. Then she took us to a shoe shop and bought me a pair of black grown-up pointy courts with a thin heel. I threw my arms round her. ‘You’re welcome, choochie-face,’ she said, and even Mum had to smile at how happy I was. In fact, we were all in a great mood on the drive home. Mum and Auntie Leila sang tunes from Cabaret while I did backing vocals.
The house was empty when we got back. I said, ‘Where’s Daddy? I want to show him my dress.’ Mum went upstairs without saying anything. Auntie Leila muttered something in French that I didn’t understand. Then she put her arms out, and I cried in them like a baby.
Melissa
27 MARCH 2003
Just for a second, when I first see Laura at the hospital, I think: She’s died and no one told me. Just for a second, before I register the tubes and monitors, the blip-blip of the heartbeat machine, I feel so bereft, so utterly and abruptly hollowed out by the shock of it, the shock of her not existing any more, that my knees give way. Huw grabs my arm and leads me to a chair. ‘She’s going to be fine. She’s lost a lot of blood, but they spent all night filling her up again.’
What an odd turn of phrase the man has. I already know about the baby so I don’t ask any more questions. Now I can see Laura is breathing. Tiny shallow breaths, but undoubtedly alive. Asleep, nothing worse, in a high metal bed, lying on her back like the princess and the pea. As I stare at her I stop noticing the noises in the ward, the nurses, the other patients. I stop noticing Huw sitting next to me, his arm resting on the bed, a metal watch on his brown forearm.
Laura would be pleased to know how beautiful she looks lying there, face pale as the sheets, hair spread out black against the stark white pillow. I am miles away in my thoughts when she says, ‘Miffy, what shall we do now?’
Huw and I jump up. She looks straight at me, doesn’t seem to see Huw at all.
‘Whoops, we messed the sheets,’ she says, and falls asleep.
We wait, holding our breaths, but that’s it, that’s her waking up for the day. Huw and I sit back down and after a few minutes he starts to fidget. Clears his throat. Jiggles his knee up and down. Looks at his phone. When a nurse checks Laura’s pulse, Huw questions her about any changes, developments, deterioration. Clearly her non-committal answers satisfy him, because after she moves away, he coughs and says, ‘Uh, Melissa. Work have been texting. There’s a difficult situation come up. Slightly urgent.’
‘Oh yes?’ Who knew that History departments could have urgent situations?
‘Would you mind dreadfully if I went into the office for a bit, sorted some of this stuff out?’
‘Don’t work know what’s happened? Surely they can manage.’
‘The nurse doesn’t think Laura will stir again today. Would you stay till Olivia arrives?’
‘Okay, Huw. If you want to go, I’m happy to stay.’
So he heads off, saying, ‘If you’re quite sure,’ though not waiting for an answer, and adding, ‘Many thanks, you’re a star.’ Not very impressed. Certainly not the sort of man I’d want sperm from, thanks very much. Ha ha.
I sit for hours, leaving the bed just once, to get coffee and a sandwich. Nurses come by now and then to check Laura’s monitors, but outside of their visits I fall into the sort of meditative trance Rob tried to teach me, that night in Hargeysa. I told him I couldn’t empty my mind and he asked what I was thinking about. My big chance to say I was in love with him, but I bottled it. Said I was thinking about what we were going to have for dinner. He laughed. I’m sure he guessed that food was the last thing on my mind. My thoughts were all about him. Delicious, naughty thoughts.
There’s such an ache in my heart. A proper, physical ache that hurts when I breathe too deeply. I shallow my breath till it’s barely there at all, like Laura’s breaths. I feel like Superman grieving, pushing the world backwards so that Lois Lane was no longer dead. Wish I could do that. Wish I could have back that moment. What the hell was going on with me? I behaved like a lunatic. Knocked down a pregnant woman. Put her in hospital. Put two lives in danger.
It’s amazing to me that Laura is just the same as when we were children. Still impulsive. Still totally hopeless at guessing how other people feel. But her craziness, her spontaneity, are things I once loved about her. Things I’ve missed. Of course, I hated her, too. For a very long time. All those difficult years looking after my mother, bearing the brunt of her bitterness and pain. All those doors that closed for Danners and me when Dad fell in love with Olivia.
But when hate finally fades, what is left? I missed her, is all. Missed her intensity, her unpredictability. Once, years ago, when I was in my twenties, I saw a girl who looked like her. She was with her mother, in front of me in the supermarket queue. I didn’t realise I was crying till the checkout lady asked if I was all right.
Every time Laura says ‘Miffy’, my old nickname, I feel the past more strongly, feel my old self, the little girl who was Miffy. Names are powerful, I always tell the students working on placement with me. It’s important to
get children’s names right; names are so bound up with identity. I’ve been saying these things glibly for years, and now I’m experiencing it myself. Miffy. A girl from long ago I’d half-forgotten, assumed I’d never see again.
I’ve been noticing childhood smells a lot lately too. Smells that take me back to school, to the streets near our house, to Laura’s bedroom. Here on the ward, when a woman walks past carrying freesias, the scent conjures up the room where I had piano lessons with Olivia, the heavy floor-length curtains of dark-red velvet. Dust glittered off them in lazy clouds when you touched them.
Time passes. I watch Laura. Count her breaths. Follow the line on the monitor.
Her latest mad scheme: to try and give me a baby. Why did I react so badly? I, who pride myself on taking my time, not rushing into a response, all my years of training and practice. None of it stopped me lashing out. How many times have I explained to a client how the baggage from their past is holding them back, weighing them down? Yet I let my own baggage get in the way, so that it stopped me seeing things from Laura’s point of view. By her lights it was actually quite a logical suggestion. And generous. Why did I cry? Why did I wish her far away? Why did I push her? Why didn’t I just say, no thanks?
Or even, yes please.
I’m glad to have found you again, you crazy kid. I touch her arm. Don’t die.
My dramatics are nothing next to Olivia’s. She bursts into the room in her horrible fur coat, shrieking, ‘Ay dios mio,’ and waking up another woman in the ward. ‘It is unbearable,’ she cries, throwing herself into a chair and clutching Laura’s limp hand to her heart. ‘I am the unluckiest woman in the world. First Michael, now my daughter and her baby. What have I done to God, to deserve such punishment?’
My mind reels with answers, but I just say, ‘She’s doing really well, Olivia. She’s out of danger.’
‘She lies there like a corpse.’
‘She’s just heavily asleep. They’ve given her a sedative so her body can heal.’
‘And as for the bebé …’ Olivia buries her face in her hands.
Whenever I think about the baby, my mind slips away. It can’t stay with it; it darts off to settle on something less painful. A defence mechanism.
‘Laura and I have not spoken, Melissa, you know, since a silly, silly argument.’
Oh, you too?
‘Querido dios, I pray it is not too late for me.’
I don’t think I can stand a grief-stricken Olivia any more than I can bear her smug and selfish incarnation. She clutches my hand and says, ‘I had a terrible relationship with my own madre, you know.’
‘I remember.’
‘How can you? You never met her.’
I gently extricate my hand. ‘I did, that time we all went to Spain …’
‘I always said I would not have that coldness with my own daughter. I prided myself on our friendship. And now she is dying and we are separada.’ She dabs her eyes with a tissue.
‘Really, Olivia, she’s going to be fine.’
She looks at me as if seeing me for the first time. ‘Why are you here? Where is Huw?’
For some reason I protect him. I don’t honestly know why. ‘He’s, uh, he’ll come when I get back to the cottage. He wants one of us to stay with Evie.’
‘Well, you can go. I’m here now,’ Olivia says, her lips thin. She puts her handbag on her lap and waits for me to leave.
28 MARCH 2003
Olivia and I are keeping vigil again. Though we have a few breaks – she regularly goes upstairs, while at other times I go for a smoke in the grounds – there are still long periods when we’re stuck with each other. A typical conversation:
Me: ‘It’s quite stuffy today, isn’t it?’
Olivia: ‘I hadn’t noticed. Laura is so terribly pale.’
One of my psychiatrists back in the 1980s said I couldn’t move on till I lost my anger towards Olivia. Got me to whack a cushion and pretend it was her. It didn’t work. Olivia always put me on edge when I was a child, and it’s the same now. If you don’t like someone, well, you just don’t like them. You can’t fake it for ever. It works the other way round too. I spent so many years telling myself I hated Laura. I can still find many things to dislike about her. But you can’t help who you like. I just like her.
Hospitals are Jay’s milieu, and I miss him. He’d know how to get proper information out of the staff, keep things cheerful with flowers and treats. For the first time since I left, I wonder if I have made a mistake. I was so sure that a baby was more important than our marriage. So absolutely sure. But now I don’t feel quite so certain.
Olivia says, ‘Melissa, I have been thinking, ought I contact Laura’s father?’
‘I didn’t know you were still in touch with him.’
‘I’m not. I have hardly heard from him since he left.’ Her eyes are brimming with tears. ‘But I know how to reach him.’
‘Would Laura want to see him, after all these years?’
‘I don’t know. They never got on. He was so ardiente. Fiery. When he left us I told Laura a little white lie. I said I had sent him away.’ She smiles. ‘She was proud of me. But it was terrible to lose him. He was the love of my life.’
I want to say, I thought my father was the love of your life. But I can’t bear to get into a conversation about Dad.
At twenty past three Laura opens her eyes. In a rare moment of accord, Olivia and I both gasp, and smile at her encouragingly. Laura seems bewildered. She looks from Olivia to me, back to Olivia, her eyes great dark question marks.
‘It’s okay, bebita,’ Olivia says loudly. ‘You’re in the hospital.’
Laura frowns, as if that is irrelevant information. She smoothes her hands over her stomach, then turns to me.
‘Where’s the baby?’ Her voice is tiny, cracked.
I lean across the tangle of wires so she can see my face properly. ‘It’s a boy. He’s in the Special Care Baby Unit.’
‘He’s beautiful, bebita,’ Olivia says. ‘So tiny. I have seen him several times. He only weighs one pound nine ounces.’
For heaven’s sake, Olivia. That’s way too much for her to take in.
Laura struggles, looks like she is going to try and sit up. We both gently soothe her down again.
‘Is he going to be all right?’
Olivia and I glance at each other. She says, ‘I’m sure he is,’ at the same moment I say, ‘They don’t know yet, sweetie.’
Laura looks past us. ‘Huw. Not here? Gone already?’
‘He had to pop to work, bebita. He’ll be back soon.’
‘No, he won’t,’ she says. She grabs my arm, her touch surprisingly strong, and pulls my wrist up to her face. She inhales, and whispers, ‘Can I have some of your perfume, please?’
‘What’s she saying?’ Olivia says.
I find my perfume in my bag and spritz it onto her wrists. It sprays onto the needles holding the wires into her body, but I don’t suppose that matters.
Laura says, ‘That’s better,’ and goes back to sleep, her scented arm across her face.
30 MARCH 2003
Ten-thirty in the morning and I’ve already smoked nine fags. It’ll be Olivia’s fault when I die of emphysema. She’s on top form, dishing out a stream of consciousness about Laura, Michael, the baby, how everyone she loves is very ill or dies.
Nurse Canton, who trips over English because Welsh is her first language, takes Olivia up to the SCBU to watch the baby having his nappy changed. I like Nurse Canton: she’s usually the person who removes Olivia. Laura’s been asleep all morning, or so I thought, but once Olivia’s clicking heels have disappeared down the ward, Laura’s eyes open. She is far more focused than the previous times she’s woken.
‘Thought she’d never stop talking,’ she says.
I laugh. ‘Have you been awake long?’
‘About ten minutes. Have you seen the baby yet?’
‘No. They said only family.’
‘Miffy, you are family.’
Well, of course I am. She’s more lucid than me. I never think of Laura as my stepsister, but that’s what she is. Laura-sister.
She watches the realisation dawn across my face. ‘Miffy, I want you to go and see him. I need you to tell me what he’s like.’
‘Haven’t Huw and Olivia told you everything? And here are the photos, look.’
She clings to me, pulling herself higher up the pillow. ‘I don’t trust them. I want you to tell me the truth. About how ill he is. If he’s really alive.’
What doesn’t she trust? The photos, or her mother and husband?
I already know how ill the baby might be. Dr Massi says possible problems with lungs, heart, eyes, brain. They don’t know yet; he’s still too little for them to do more than try to keep him alive.
I’ve never felt such dragging guilt in my life, never felt like such a shit. I wonder if Laura remembers who put her here in the first place. I promise to arrange to see the baby right away, though it takes a little explaining to Nurse Probyn, the not-so-nice nurse. She makes me go into way too much back-story about why I’ve suddenly decided that Laura is family, having previously told the nurses she was just a good friend. Presumably she’s hoping to extract some nice gossip about our families to take to the nurses’ station, but finally she escorts me up to the SCBU.
‘You can look through the window, Mrs Jacobs. Only Mummy and Daddy can go in.’
The windows are crowded with the relatives of other babies peeping in. Olivia frowns when she sees me. ‘What are you doing here? Is Laura all right?’
‘She’s fine. She asked me to …’
‘She’s awake?’ She pushes past the parents and jabs impatiently at the lift button, muttering, ‘Come on, come on.’
The nurse points out Laura’s baby. He’s asleep in his plastic incubator, lying on his back, covered in wires. A tiny scrap, not much bigger than my hand. His body, naked but for a miniature nappy, is red and mottled. His little arms and legs are splayed across his mattress. He is beautiful.
