The Three of Us

by Joanna Coles

  ‘What fantastic views,’ I say as Bob reappears, neck straight and minus the phone. He nods silently, beckoning me into his office and reaching out to boot up a large desk-top computer, which emits the triumphant fanfare heralding the imminent presence of Windows ’98.

  He swings to face me and utters his first full sentence. ‘I don’t mind telling you, Joanna, I am going to be very aggressive on your behalf. Very aggressive indeed.’

  From out of a drawer he produces a stiff pink bandage with cream Velcro straps which he proceeds to bind tightly around his right arm. ‘Too much time on this thing,’ he says gesturing at the keyboard. I commiserate as he swings back to the monitor and calls out, ‘Full name? Address? Social security number?’ As I answer, he pounds furiously at the keyboard.

  For the next ninety minutes I produce endless, carefully collated receipts for restaurants, books, batteries, tapes and other journalistic minutiae as we examine my earnings.

  My saving grace, he tells me, is the cost of setting up a household in New York, some of which I can offset against my freelance earnings, including a frenzied period of television appearances during the Louise Woodward trial.

  By the end of our session the taciturn Bob is grinning. ‘I think you can relax,’ he says, scanning a column of figures he has printed out. ‘In fact, I work out you overpaid already. The IRS owes you money. About eight hundred dollars in total.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ I ask, having earmarked my meagre fund of savings for the Revenue.

  I thank him profusely, marvelling at how much more generous the US system seems to be to the freelance income. Bob smiles briefly and with a flourish extends his bandaged arm. ‘Welcome to America, Joanna,’ he says, with no trace of irony, shaking my hand for the first time. ‘Welcome to America, land of the free.’

  Sunday, 28 June

  Peter

  As good West Village citizens, we are watching the annual spectacle of Gay Pride. The floats progress slowly south down fifth Avenue towards the Village. Crowds of curious Mid-Westerners and outer borough suburbanites, the bridge and tunnel set, press against the blue wooden police trestles, snapping at the freaks with their Sureshots.

  Behind an arch of rainbow balloons, the procession is led by a squadron of Lesbians on Harleys, dozens of them, built like beer kegs, inscrutable behind their Ray-Ban aviators. One gives a clenched-fist salute to the crowd, and is nearly unseated as her Harley hits a badly fitted manhole cover and fishtails crazily across the street before she manages to wrestle it back.

  It is an astonishingly diverse assemblage: ‘Puerto Ricans Against Anti-Gay Violence’ saunter by, their sound system perched on a wheelchair; ‘Latino Gay Men of NY’; Gay and Lesbian Arab Society; Bisexual Trekkies; one with a subsidiary banner proclaiming ‘They say we don’t fuck, We say Fuck You’; ‘Come fuck with us – free your mind and your ass will follow.’

  Dressed up as the Village People, ‘The Clit Club’ Lesbians are marching to the tune of ‘YMCA’. The Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project displays banners which entreat: ‘Hang up on Hate, Give us a ring’. Their principal dancer protrudes from a giant pink phone on the back of a flat-bed truck and the whole float threatens to be borne aloft by a flotilla of pink balloons.

  In front of me a transvestite rollerblader falls heavily on to her bum. Her companion, dressed in a sequined evening gown with a slit up one thigh all the way to her panty line and a gold bra with sharply conical revolving cups, brushes her off and helps her up. They curtsy briefly to the applauding onlookers and continue on their way.

  A man pushing a trolley piled high with a teetering tower of pretzels eases it down the kerb ramp and joins a flock of anxious black-hatted Hasidic Jews as they dart across the road between floats. And then we catch sight of the ubiquitous Mayor Giuliani marching along between two hostile groups, but grinning fit to pop and dispensing royal waves this way and that to the crowd. Most boo back, a few cheer.

  * * *

  Some hours later and the fag end of the sweaty entourage is slowly straggling into Christopher Street, the final leg and their spiritual home, where the Stonewall Riots launched Gay Pride itself in 1969. A float blaring Schubert goes by bearing a bewigged look-alike who pretends to play a mock grand piano beneath the sign: Franz Schubert, the world’s greatest melodist – one of our boys. Along the side, to ram the point home, it declares: Schubert is OUT.

  Then along comes a dizzying selection of nationalities just to prove that homosexuality is a truly trans-national, multi-ethnic, inter-religious state of being. Razem, Polish Lesbians and Gays, are followed by an ambiguous troupe of thick-set, heavily stubbled men in Doc Martens and white spangled tutus. ‘The Russians are Coming’ declares their banner. I wonder if this is the climax of the Cold War.

  Along comes a woman gyrating on top of another flatbed truck, her brief white singlet straining to contain two enormous orbs of evidently unnatural composition. From time to time she releases them from captivity, one at a time, fondling them affectionately as though stroking kittens, and makes as if to offer them to the crowd. Next to me a gay boy turns to his partner and sniffs, ‘She’s got some breasts going on there.’

  Ahead the Lesbian and Gay Judges and NYPD Gay Officers are attracting thunderous applause, followed by the Gay Officers Action League, GAOL.

  Gay bagpipers are up next, blowing ‘Amazing Grace’ through bloated cheeks, and then across my line of vision stroll two men in leopard-skin bell bottoms, with leopard tails arching stiffly from their bottoms up their backs and slung over their shoulders. They both wear rough straw hats on their heads and leather chaps on their thighs, and slung low on their slim hips holsters bearing not guns but Evian bottles.

  The police are busy turning back pedestrians who have strayed off the crowded pavements on to the road. A lesbian is remonstrating loudly with a fat cop on behalf of her partner: ‘She’s having a panic attack, ya understand?’ she pleads and the baffled cop lets them through.

  NY Gay and Lesbian Physicians jostle for street space with Gay Vietnam Veterans and then things turn decidedly religious: Gay Quakers, Jewish Reform Synagogues, Presbyterians, United Reform Church, Gay and Lesbian Mormons. The Catholics’ gay organization is called Dignity, and its leader, who has a papier mâché Christian fish on his head, is flashing his panties at the cheering crowd. From time to time he drinks deeply from a jewelled chalice.

  New York Parents and Friends of Gays look predictably out of place – middle-aged straights, awkward and self-conscious but smiling bravely. They hold up a banner saying ‘We Love Our Children’.

  They are followed by a pair of identical twins, identically dressed, in neutral shorts and T-shirts, whose banner reads: ‘I love my gay/straight brother. Can you tell which is which?’

  At the end of Christopher Street the floats turn right into Greenwich Street, where a stone-faced marshal with all the efficiency of a prison warder is shutting down their sound systems and making the grumbling party animals disperse. Their grumbling is witty and restrained, though, and they are, in fact, incredibly well behaved. No one seems drunk or violent.

  I sit at home that night feeling squarer than I’ve ever felt.

  Monday, 29 June

  Joanna

  I’ve spent the last fortnight tracking down friends who have had amniocentesis. Of all the tests offered during pregnancy, this seems the most invasive, as they puncture the amniotic sac with a needle, and it carries the highest risk of miscarriage. Needless to say if I were two years younger I wouldn’t have to think about it, relying instead on various blood tests. But at thirty-six, though I have no contra-indicators, I am automatically down on the chart as ‘high risk’ and now stand a 1/150 chance of having a Down’s syndrome baby. Another disadvantage to geriatric motherhood.

  ‘Have you had a chance to think about amniocentesis?’ asks my new doctor, Dr Levy, gently, as we sit in the cubicle, trying to decipher the latest blurry photo from the twelve-week sonogram.

  ‘Oh God, is it real
ly necessary?’ I grumble. ‘It sounds awful and I feel fine.’

  ‘Well, it’s entirely up to you,’ he says smoothly. ‘We would advise you to have it, but it’s your choice. There’s only one thing you need to think about seriously. Would a handicapped baby be deleterious to your lifestyle?’

  Peter flashes me a look of alarm.

  ‘If it wouldn’t,’ Levy continues improbably, ‘then there’s no need to have amnio, though you might want to have one just so you know. Some people like to know in advance, so they can prepare themselves.’

  Prepare themselves? Ye gods, how exactly?

  ‘But it sounds so risky,’ I mumble.

  He shrugs. ‘It’s not without risk and we go through that with you beforehand. Nationally the rate of miscarriage from amniocentesis is around 1/350. Anecdotally at Beth Israel, the hospital we are affiliated to, I can tell you it’s a lot less.’

  ‘How many have you done yourself?’ demands Peter.

  ‘About a thousand.’

  ‘And how many have gone wrong?’

  He puts his hands in his white pockets. ‘Two.’

  ‘What happened?’ Peter persists.

  ‘Well, one was an older mother, she was forty-two; and the other, she was about thirty-two, but there were other problems … Look, you don’t have to make your mind up now. Take a week or so and call me back. We do it at fifteen weeks, so if there is something wrong…’ He tails off, but we get the message.

  I call friends in England. None of them has had amnio, not even Louisa, who’s now at the same stage and same age.

  ‘They said it was up to me,’ she says dreamily, ‘and I didn’t feel like disturbing it.’

  Regardless of age, an informal survey of my American friends turns up that they have all had amnio, some simply to find out the sex. ‘It’s fine,’ urges Joyce, a brisk TV producer, sporting a floral sarong over her six-month belly. ‘Besides, don’t you want to know what sex it is?’

  ‘Oh, John forced me,’ cries Lisa, another friend, earnestly. ‘He needed to know if it was a boy or a girl so he could prepare himself.’

  They’re incredulous when I tell them I don’t want to know until the birth. ‘It’s like a magical riddle,’ I say, as they laugh and swap uncomprehending glances.

  Flora does at least admit she was terrified of miscarrying during the procedure. ‘Make sure you have a doctor with steady hands,’ she e-mails. I try to recall Levy’s hands, they seem plump and creamy, I don’t recall them shaking.

  Monday, 29 June

  Peter

  Joanna has insisted that I accompany her to the obstetrician to check him out. I am there to give her a second opinion. He seems a bit young, in his late thirties, with an odd guffaw. His spiel is a dizzying recitation of the odds. This business is more like the tote than the practice of medicine. Now that Joanna is thirty-six, the odds of her having a ‘normal’ baby have declined to 150:1. The odds of amnio going wrong are 350:1. In the 1000 that’s he’s done, he’s lost two babies, so his own personal odds stand at 500:1.

  Dr Levy is evidently the bookmaker of obstetricians. I wonder if he takes side bets on his births.

  As we leave he tells us that he will be away for the next two weeks.

  ‘I’m going on vacation,’ he beams.

  ‘Where to?’ I enquire pleasantly.

  ‘Las Vegas.’

  It figures.

  Tuesday, 30 June

  Joanna

  My mother, now valiantly trying to adjust to the idea of a grandchild out of wedlock, advises me to have every test available. I call my proxy mother-in-law, a doctor in Zimbabwe. She advises me to ignore the test, stressing she had Georgina, Peter’s younger sister, at forty-one and was fine. ‘If everything’s fine then my motto is “leave well alone”,’ she counsels firmly.

  ‘But even if there is something wrong, I’ll still love it,’ I say, suddenly feeling weepy.

  ‘I wouldn’t be sentimental about having a Down’s child,’ she says quickly.

  I remember something Professor Jack Scarisbrick, head of the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child, once told me during an interview. A long-standing advocate of pro-choice, I had gone to interrogate him for the Guardian during the last attempt to reduce the limit on the abortion bill in 1996.

  ‘People with Down’s syndrome bring much joy,’ he said, as we sat in his office surrounded by macabre plastic foetuses representing the various stages of embryonic development. ‘They never murder or steal, they are loving and friendly and it’s good to have people among us like that. They bring out the best in us.’

  At the time I wrote his comments down, dismissing him as naïve. Now I’m pregnant, I can see his point. What if it does have Down’s syndrome? And do we want to know in advance? Now I’ve seen it on the sonogram, could I really face a termination? What if this is my last chance and I’m too old to get pregnant again? Is this my choice, a Down’s child or nothing at all? I pull out the blurry photo for the nth time and scan it for signs that something might be wrong. Pointless. I can’t make out anything.

  JULY

  Eyelids are starting to form. The ears are developing internally and externally. The finger buds are visible and the toe buds will appear at the end of the week. The elbows have appeared, but the arms will not lengthen considerably. The spinal cord is evident, and vertebrae and ribs are beginning to grow. Muscles and two layers of skin are forming.

  BabySoon.com

  Thursday, 2 July

  Peter

  Since our visit to Dr Levy I find I have become mildly obsessed with odds and the science of chance. I have been doing my own calculations. If the national figure for amnios that go wrong is 1:350 and he’s had two go wrong in the last 1000 tests, then by my reckoning he’s due for another blooper by 1050.

  The TV headlines are full of the local Lotto. Its prize money has reached $250 million, the biggest prize ever in the world history of lotteries. Joanna is tempted to take the ferry over the Long Island Sound to Connecticut – this Lotto is unavailable in New York State – to buy a clutch of tickets. But I point out that the chances of winning are apparently 1:14,000,000.

  I feel if we live by the odds then we may expect to die by them too. We want 1:14,000,000 to come up in our favour, but are desperate that 150:1 go the other way. I have inherited my mother’s superstitions about these things.

  Sunday, 5 July

  Joanna

  Supper outside at Barolo, an Italian restaurant in SoHo, and one of only a handful of New York restaurants with a garden. Between courses I go to the loo and hear vomiting coming from the neighbouring cubicle. I hesitate, wondering if I should pass some paper towels under the door or at least offer to help.

  ‘Are you OK?’ I ask finally, tapping tentatively on her door.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she calls back. ‘It’s only bulimia.’

  Monday, 6 July

  Peter

  I return red-faced from the Printing House gym and check for messages. There is only one, from my indefatigable, fast-talking American agent, Amanda ‘Binky’ Urban.

  ‘Hi, Peeder. Binky here. How’s the book going? Call me.’

  I time the message with my old BBC stopwatch. It has taken her two seconds to utter ten words, eliding them together as mere syllables of one long word.

  I have been in awe of Binky Urban ever since our first encounter in her seventeenth-floor office on West 57th Street. I was ushered in by her assistant to find Binky talking into a Madonna-style headset, negotiating a deal. She wore a black sleeveless shift dress and she strode across the room, the wing of her shining blonde bob swinging in time with her pacing. She paused from time to time to squirt mineral water from a sports-top bottle into her mouth. And every time she did so the toned polyps of her biceps twitched impressively. She motioned me to sit in the mahogany armchair, from where I gazed out at her view of Central Park while she cut to the nub of the deal.

  ‘Listen,’ she said authoritatively into her headset, ‘I see no
reason to drag this out past the weekend. You know the figure that will take this off the table. Match it and we’ve got a deal. Otherwise we open it to an auction. Let me know by Friday lunch.’

  This was the sort of kick-ass agent I wanted working for me, I thought. An ultimatum-firing, hustling deal-maker, with an appetite for the fray. But I have been anxious ever since that I may not live up to my side of the relationship. I decide to put off calling her back until next week.

  Tuesday, 7 July

  Joanna

  Browsing through the New York Post I chance upon the news that Andrew Solomon, with whom we are still playing phone tag, has received a $750,000 advance for a book about depression. ‘Three-quarters of a million bucks!’ I tell Peter, who claims this news is ancient. ‘But surely such a whopping advance will make it even more difficult for him to stay in touch with his depression. I mean, it’s got to be pretty cheering news. Enough to make you skip off down the street and toss your medication into the gutter.’

  ‘Maybe the advance will block him. And he’ll get depressed all over again,’ suggests Peter. ‘It might well have that effect – he gets a big book deal and then despairs of ever delivering a manuscript good enough to warrant the advance.’

  I phone Andrew to congratulate him on his mega advance, but his machine reels off a complex African itinerary: Cape Town, Grahamstown, Johannesburg, various Zambian game parks, Victoria Falls, the Okavango Delta, Swakopmund, Ongava … I hang up before his tour destinations end.

  Sunday, 12 July

  Peter

  We are touring the newly opened Thackeray Medical Museum in Leeds, on a twenty-four-hour stopover at Joanna’s parents, part of a flying visit to England. We appear to be the only adults here but for a few harassed schoolteachers. The rest of the visitors are schoolchildren, hundreds of them in a mobile melée of screams and shouts. In such numbers they are quite frightening, and I am reminded of the terminal scenes of Lord of the Flies. The museum itself is actually quite fascinating and I am immersed in an exhibit which deals with an early Irish anaesthetist by the name of Abraham Colles who practised at St Stephen’s Hospital in Dublin, where he tried to anaesthetize patients by pumping tobacco smoke up their rectums. As I study the blueprint for his patented Special Tobacco Smoke Enema Kit, Joanna appears to tell me that there is a whole section devoted to the mysteries of pregnancy and childbirth. It would be an excellent idea, she feels, for me to spend time there, to help me understand what she is going through.