The Pile of Stuff at the Bottom of the Stairs

by Christina Hopkinson

  “Not really. It sounds ghastly.”

  Is she mocking me? “I know, I know, Joel’s wonderful and I’m so lucky.”

  “He can’t be if you feel dissatisfied.” She’s one of the few people I’ve ever heard question the wonder of Joel. I think I may cry. “He must be making you this way,” she continues. “You weren’t born this angry.”

  “Don’t you believe it.”

  “You should be happy and if you’re not, change your life. You’re an intelligent, grown-up woman, take control. I never put up with things that make me less than satisfied.”

  “I do feel like I need to change it. Thank you. I feel like I’ve been going mad. But, you know, when you get to my age, to our age, it’s not so easy. It’s not like when you’re younger and you can chuck the man, the woman, you’re with or throw in your job and go around the world. Things aren’t as easily changed. I mean, I wouldn’t unwish my boys for the world. And really, I’m so lucky. Lots of women can’t have children so I should be grateful to have them. And I am. That’s part of the problem, I think—there are so many women so sad about not being able to have children that it feels churlish to complain. And I’m not, really.” Cara shudders as she makes me another martini. It is maybe too late to tell her I think it’s an unspeakable drink and I’d really rather a glass of wine, any color. “Do you want children?” I think of Becky and then unthink of her.

  “Goodness, no.”

  “Have you always known? I mean that you didn’t want children?”

  “Yes. Absolutely. I never played with dolls and gave them those fake bottles of milk. When other girls were putting on towels and pretending they were brides, I was making perfect houses out of Legos. My future always involved me living alone.”

  But you don’t, I thought. “Funnily enough, so did mine. I used to plan to live in a grand old country house with lots of cats and a lovingly tended garden. I don’t think it really means anything.”

  “I knew, I always knew. And I was right, since I’m too old now.”

  “Really? You don’t look it.”

  “Thank you.” I must learn how to do that, to say thank you when someone compliments you, to accept it as your due. Cara is the embodiment of graciousness.

  I take a second martini and down it as I did the first. My throat rasps. I’m longing for a snack, some Bombay mix, but that would be out of character for this environment. She might have some sashimi, though; that is the snack that Cara would have. None is forthcoming. The heels are making me sway slightly so I sit myself down on a silk-covered chaise longue. It’s not made for sitting, more for lounging, so that is what I do.

  “And did you always know?” I ask.

  “What?”

  “That you weren’t going to get married?”

  “That I was gay, you mean?”

  I nod.

  “Yes, always. As far back as it is possible to know. Even perhaps before then.” How like her to miss out on the period of confusion and the awful shambolic sex with men that Becky suffered. Mind you, we all had awful shambolic sex with men, with or without the sexual confusion.

  Two drinks and I feel dizzy. This is pathetic, it’s only two drinks. Maybe they were spiked with something. Actually, I suppose the thing with a martini is that you can’t spike it because nothing is stronger than what it is in the first place. Except Rohypnol. “And what do you do?”

  “Sorry?” Again the rising eyebrow.

  “What do you actually do, you know, in bed?” I’m really drunk now.

  “You don’t know what lesbian sex is?”

  “Yes. No, I mean obviously I know what women do, in theory, but at the same time, I feel a bit like when I’m cooking a vegetarian meal and I can’t think of anything to replace the meat. I know what you do, but then I’m not exactly sure of the way it goes in reality, when I really think about it.”

  “And do you think about it a lot?”

  “No, no, never. Well not never. Not very often. Sometimes. How does it go? In what order? I’m from the country,” I offer in explanation.

  “What do I do? What do we do?” she ponders. “It depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On who I’m with, what sort of mood I’m in, where I am. Whether I want a quick fuck.” I blanch at the bald use of this word. It’s one I’m happy to use in any other context, but not that one. In fact I blanch doubly, both at it being used to describe sex and then at it being used to describe non-penetrative sex. Although is it non-penetrative? Does she use, I don’t know, some sort of strap-on thing? I really don’t think of two girls fucking. And then I find that I can think of nothing else and cross my legs with the beginnings of sweet pain. Cara continues, “A quick fuck or something more languorous.” She draws the word out onomatopoeically.

  “Today, for instance,” she continues, “I’m feeling slow, relaxed. Definitely it’s a languorous sort of a day, isn’t it? Today, I would keep clothes on for as long as possible. Draw out the anticipation. Keep it almost innocent. Almost, but not quite.” She smiles to herself.

  My mouth has gone very dry now, but I don’t dare break the spell by getting myself some water. Cara looks as cool as ever, while I feel beads of sweat sieve through my skin.

  “Today, if I were going to do something, I would start by running my finger along their neck.” She demonstrates on herself. “Especially the clavicle. The clavicle is so underrated. Don’t you think? I would run my finger down, but not very far, just to here.” She stops in the space between her small breasts. “Then I would trace their face and put my finger across their lips and then into their mouth.” The finger in question has a perfect pale pink manicure and is long like a pianist’s. “Then I would follow this path with my tongue so that they’d know what was coming, until I’d kissed them. But only gently, I’d only graze their lips—even though they’d try to pull me near, desperate, I’d draw myself away.”

  My mobile rings. It’s Joel. I press the red button. “And then?” I rasp.

  She gives me a sly look. “I think then I’d move onto the breasts, but with the veil of clothing. I’d feel them and stroke them but only through the clothes. The friction can be so delicious. Her nipples would harden beneath the fabric of her dress, they’d snap at my fingers. Then, just as before, I’d do everything that I did with my fingers, now with my tongue. This time without the fabric between us. Slowly I’d lick the top of her breasts and as I did so I’d undo”—she glances in my direction. I am wearing a shirt dress—“the buttons. At this point, the nipples would be almost able to move toward my tongue, they’re so hungry to be touched.” She runs her hand across her own, which I can see outlined beneath the thin material.

  “Then, finally, I’d start very slowly moving down, letting them imagine, hope, where I am going, but then I’d stop.” She stops speaking. I’m scared of the sound of my own breathing, in case it should sound like panting. “And skip over, straight to the thighs, leaving them weeping with frustration.”

  I shift in my seat, aware of a wetness developing. Random thoughts jostle. She calls them breasts, like a breastfeeding counselor. My own have had their own evolution, from being tits before children to boobs afterward. Boobs: jokey, unsexual, pillowy, unthreatening. I wonder what vocabulary she’ll use when she finally gets there. Please let it be soon.

  “Stroking, stroking, stroking. So lightly. Then,” she pauses and then speaks louder and more quickly, “I’d stick my finger inside her cunt, hard.”

  I reel just as if she’d actually done it. So that’s what she calls it. I think about mine. Joel doesn’t care about vaginal topiary. He says he likes a woman natural. I used to wear bikinis and have bikini waxes. Now I wear the post-partum woman’s bikini, the tankini, with low legs and I don’t have anything waxed. Didn’t Becky once tell me that Cara liked a woman to be kempt down there? I’m not. Mitzi is. Mitzi has her Hollywood. We know that.

  “I’d thrust the finger in and out, twice. Then just as suddenly, I’d take it out and she
’d be left wondering whether it really happened or whether she’d just imagined it, but she’d be left wanting it to happen again more than she’s ever wanted anything.”

  I want it, I want these things. But I want to have a wax first and be moisturized all over and to be wearing expensive silk underwear. I don’t match this. I’m not good enough. I want it but I want to escape. Please don’t say anything else, I will explode. Please say something else, go on, please talk, please touch me, do those things. Cara stands up.

  “Then, I’d take that very same finger and start stroking the tops of her thighs and then swirling around to below her navel, making damp circles that spiral in and in, closer and closer. Until, finally, I’d get there and start flickering in exactly the right place. I always find the right place. Just a little bit higher than anyone else and a little bit lighter. I’m better even than she is herself.”

  The phone goes again. It’s Joel. I cut it off once more and am about to switch it off when it goes again immediately. “What?” I snap into it.

  “It’s Gabe. He’s all hot.”

  “Has he got a temperature?”

  “I can’t find the thermometer.”

  “It’s in the bathroom cupboard.”

  “I looked there, but I couldn’t find the plasters or anything. Just the tape measure.”

  “The tape measure? Why don’t you try looking for the thermometer where the tape measure goes, then?”

  “Where’s that?”

  “In the cupboard above the washing machine. Call me back.”

  I look at Cara and see a look of disappointment. Not her own, but disappointment in me. Like I’ve let myself down. “Sorry about this. I’m sure we’ll be able to sort it out. He’s just going to phone back.” We sit in silence. I feel myself desiccating inside and out. The phone goes.

  “Did you find it? What is it?”

  “Forty. What’s that in the other one?”

  “Double it and add 30. A hundred and ten. That can’t be right. Change the button on it to Fahrenheit.” Come on, come on. “A hundred and four? That’s not good. Have you given him some Calpol?”

  “I tried.” His voice is rising in panic. “It wouldn’t stay in. He’s sort of listless.”

  “Does he have any rash or anything?” Please god say no.

  “I don’t know, not that I can see. Let me look. He’s got a rash on his tummy.”

  “Do the glass thing,” I say, trying to keep my voice calm. “You roll it over.”

  “Then what?”

  “It disappears.”

  “The glass?”

  “No, the rash. It’s good if it disappears. I think. Oh shit, Joel. Look in one of the baby books. Or on the Net?”

  “I tried. It didn’t make sense.”

  “Have you rung NHS Direct? Use your instinct, do you think he’s really ill?” There’s silence. “Do you?”

  “Yes.”

  I breathe in. I must stay calm. There is no point in not being calm. I must be, for Gabe’s sake. “Call a taxi. Take Rufus to the neighbor’s and then take the taxi to the ER. I’ll see you there. Try to get some more Calpol down him. Take your phone with you. Get there as soon as you can.”

  I grab my bag and mutter something to Cara. I don’t know what. I cannot even bear to look at her. It’s my fault. Gabe has meningitis or septicemia or something and it’s all my fault. I am a bad mother. I am being punished for drinking martinis and listening to a seductive woman talk sex to me. I am being punished for liking it so much.

  “There you are.” I run toward Joel and Gabe, who are sitting on a bed in the children’s section of the Emergency unit.

  “How is he?” Gabe is asleep across Joel’s lap. I want to rip him away from Joel and hold him close to me. It’s me that looks after the children when they’re sick, it’s me that they fall asleep on.

  “He’s asleep. He shouldn’t be asleep, should he?” Joel’s voice is cracking and his eyes are filled with tears. I want to be able to cry, but I can’t and I envy him his ability to weep.

  “It’s eight o’clock, he’d normally be asleep. Has a doctor seen him? Have they seen his rash? Where is everyone?”

  “A nurse did triage on him and said she’d get someone.”

  At that moment a young woman walks in. She has that natural, glossy-hair-scraped-back-into-a-ponytail look of a beautiful actress playing a doctor in a busy ER, which makes her a completely implausible real doctor in a real ER.

  “I’m Dr. Harcourt, the pediatrician. This must be Gabriel.”

  “Have you seen his rash? He’s got a rash,” I say. “Did you tell them about the rash?” I ask Joel.

  He gapes wordlessly.

  Dr. Harcourt takes my sleeping boy’s temperature and then looks at his rash.

  “Is it meningitis?”

  “Possible but not probable,” she says and I feel patronized. “We need to rule it out, though, so we’ll take a lumbar puncture and do some blood tests.”

  “Lumbar puncture?” I feel sick.

  “It’s not as bad as it sounds. I’ll be back shortly.”

  “Was that good or bad?” asks Joel.

  “I don’t know. Possibly good. Probably good.”

  “Ursula says that meningitis is the most common falsely self-diagnosed illness that hospitals see.”

  “What does that mean? Why were you talking to Ursula about it?”

  “I rang her.”

  “Why the hell did you ring her?”

  “When I couldn’t get hold of you. Where were you, anyway?”

  “Out.”

  “Not answering your phone.”

  “So this is my fault, is it?”

  “No.”

  “You could have brought him here sooner.”

  “So it’s my fault, is it?”

  “I didn’t say that. But you could have taken his temperature.”

  “Not if I couldn’t find the thermometer.”

  “This is why I’m always telling you to put things back where you found them. So we can find them again later.”

  “And you always put things back, do you?”

  “Mostly, yes.”

  We sit in silence with poor Gabriel still lying floppily across Joel’s lap. His lashes flutter against his cheeks. He must be OK. Of course he’ll be OK. Things always are. He moans slightly.

  “He kept on saying his head hurt. He wanted it to be dark,” Joel says.

  Finally we are ushered into a room where Gabriel wakes up and seems embarrassingly perky, though his mood is soon spoiled by the lumbar puncture and the blood tests. As I hold his arm tightly to be leeched by the needles, I am reminded of the last time I clasped him this hard and feel another geyser of shame. When the needle goes in, his beautiful eyes water with hurt, the look that silently says “How could you do this to me?” while his full lips make a moue. His body is spatchcocked across an examination table as they prod the now almost disappeared rash and shine torches into his eyes. The scream is no longer silent, it’s echoing around the wards. It’s all my fault, I think again, it’s all my fault.

  Eventually the doctor says that oft-repeated medical phrase: “It’s just a virus,” followed by that other mantra: “Give him lots of fluids, Calpol every four hours and keep an eye on him for any behavior that’s out of the ordinary.”

  “It’s definitely not meningitis?” I ask.

  “As far as we can tell. It would seem highly unlikely,” Dr. Harcourt says.

  “But don’t you think you should keep him here overnight? For observation?”

  “I really think you’d all be better off at home than in a hospital. You live nearby and can come back if you see anything to worry about.”

  “But what about all those stories in the newspapers? The ones where the parents go to the doctor and the doctor says it’s just a cold and they keep coming back and then it turns out to be meningitis all along.”

  “My wife is obsessed with those stories,” adds Joel. I really hate him now.

&n
bsp; “Like I say,” says the doctor, who has let down her hair now, to full flicky effect, “you must come in if you have any concerns, but we are as certain as it is possible to be that Gabriel has a virus that will right itself.”

  “Thank you,” says Joel.

  “Yes,” I repeat, dazed. “Thank you.”

  Gabriel is settled in our bed and we’re sitting in the kitchen. My head hurts and I feel like I have a premature hangover. I’m desperately tired yet feel like I’ve been mainlining espressos and will never be able to sleep again. I look at my phone. There are no messages. I think about Cara and then I feel ashamed that my thoughts can drift in her direction after what has happened. I know I shall never hear from her again. I have disappointed her.

  “He’s fine, Maz. We’d both better get some sleep.”

  I shake my head. “We need to check him every few hours.”

  “OK, we’ll check him. I’ll set the alarm if you’re worried.”

  “Of course I’m worried. We had a son who went floppy with suspected meningitis this evening.”

  “But he’s fine. You heard the doctor. I don’t know why you can’t let it go.”

  I’m about to make some smart answer to this, but the words don’t come out. Instead I hear an unfamiliar sound and my eyes begin to itch. I begin to cry, to sob like I haven’t for as long as I can remember. Great wracking, snot-inducing sobs. I want to say something to counteract these tears, but I can’t speak. I don’t cry, I scream inside, I am not a crier. But clearly I am, I am crying and I am not speaking. This is not me.

  The tears continue. I don’t know where all the water comes from. How can I have been wet with my own bodily fluids twice in one day in such different ways? Joel looks momentarily shocked and then stands up and puts his arms around me. They are so enveloping. I feel as small and helpless as Gabe looked when he lay with his head in Joel’s lap at the hospital.

  It is as if all the tears unshed from the last 20 years have finally found an outlet. I’m an over-filled water butt, a flooded river, a tube of yogurt squeezed by Rufus. I am so tired, I have six years of cumulative tiredness catching up with me and I shall never feel rested again. This makes me cry some more. Joel holds me, then leads me upstairs and lies me down next to my son, where we will both sleep fitfully until morning.