Heartstream

by Tom Pollock

  “I know,” she says. “I am serious now, Cat. I know right now the decision feels impossible: it’s too big, too permanent, just too much. Will I get sick? What will Mum say? How will the kids at school react to my bump? How will I pay for it? And on and on…”

  I stare down at her in astonishment; she smiles a little sadly.

  “Believe it or not, I’ve been where you are myself a couple of times, years ago. I made the choices I made, and I don’t regret them. But that doesn’t mean that you need to choose what I did.”

  My blood is seething in my veins and there’s a rock of panic lodged in my diaphragm. I bury my head in my hands, which means also burying it in hers. Evie’s tiny, careful fingers find the pressure points on my skull and begin to massage the tension out of them.

  “It’s just … it’s like someone’s stuck my brain in a blender. How would I even do this?”

  “The practicalities are important,” she concedes. “And they will be tricky, no doubt. But honestly, dubs? I don’t think that they are what will make the difference between the right call and the wrong one here. That’s down to how you feel. Not how you think anyone else will feel: how you feel.”

  A hopeless laugh escapes me. “I can’t even tell that, right now.”

  “Well, then, let’s try and find out,” she says. “Close your eyes.” I obey, and I feel the mattress squish down as she kneels on the bed behind me. She resumes her massage of my brow and my temples. “Breathe in,” she tells me gently, “and breathe out. Slowly. There’s no rush here tonight, and no judgement. In,” she repeats, “and out. In and out.”

  Gradually I feel the swelling of my lungs inside my chest slow to match the rhythm of her voice. I feel calmer, in the wrung-out way you do after a good cry.

  “OK, now imagine yourself going to the doctor and saying you don’t want to have the baby. There’s an operation, but you’re in and out in a day. After that you’re pretty much back to life as you have it right now. The only difference is you’ve had this experience and remember it. How do you feel?”

  I try to think about it. My hand steals to my abdomen, as though I could feel that second tiny heartbeat inside me, echoing mine. For some reason, I picture myself pulling out a plug from a wall socket, and the second heartbeat stops. My stomach flips over.

  It’s not real! I bark fiercely at myself. It’s just your hormones lying to you. It’s not alive, not conscious, not yet. It’s not like it can love you back; it…

  But then it’s too late, because I’ve already thought the word, and it’s the only word there is: love. Alive or not, conscious or not, rational or not, I love the tiny being growing inside me.

  “Sick,” I say. “I feel sick.”

  Evie’s voice is suddenly alarmed. “If you’re going to puke, do it in the bathroom; these are thousand thread-count sheets.”

  I laugh, and surprise myself at having to snort back tears. “Not like that; that’s subsided, thank God. I mean, I just – I don’t want to. But then when I try to think about actually having a baby, it’s all so big and scary.”

  “I know. And no one can make this choice except you, but I’m seven years older than you and you’re like my little sister, so let me give you some big sisterly advice, OK?”

  I nod.

  “It’s OK that you’re scared. In fact, it’s mandatory that you’re scared. If you aren’t shitting yourself at the prospect of bringing another human being into the world and having it be utterly dependent on you for everything in its tiny, helpless life, then frankly, honey, you aren’t tall enough to get on this ride, OK?”

  “OK.”

  “But the fact that it’s scary doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. It’s scary because it’s hard, and because it’s change. But hard and change don’t mean wrong. They just mean hard and change.”

  As she speaks, a little warm pool of certainty is growing in my solar plexus. “OK,” I say again quietly.

  “I don’t know what the right thing for you to do is, dubs. But I can tell you this: I’m here for whatever you need. Always. If you choose not to have it, I’m here to talk you through it. If you keep it – you need money, you got it; you need childcare while you’re at school and your mum’s at work, well, I can…” For the first time she falters as she looks around her plush surroundings. “Well, I guess I can laminate everything in here until it’s proof against the various fluids that babies emit, and learn to change nappies and stuff.”

  I feel such a warm rush of gratitude then that I cling to her.

  “Thank you, thank you, E, you’re a hero.”

  “Of course, Horse Girl.” Evie squeezes my hand. “How could I do anything else? You’re my ride or die. I tell you, when all this shit about Ryan and his secret girlfriend hit, I was a mess.” She laughs. “Couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t put on make-up because I was so angry my hand was shaking.”

  If she feels me tense, she must take it for a tightening of the embrace, and she responds in kind.

  “Almost no one else I know IRL would understand that, but you did. I called, you came. You were there for me. I’m here for you always.” She squeezes me harder, and her arms are like steel.

  “Always,” she promises.

  I do my level best to open my front door quietly, but the key in the lock still sounds like a gunshot in the quiet street. I wince, but it doesn’t matter anyway, because when it swings open I see light spilling from the kitchen, and find Mum sitting at the table with a cup of that weird potpourri stuff she drinks steaming in front of her and a bottle of her latest insomnia prescription casting a long shadow over the wood in the downlight.

  For a long moment, we just stare at each other. As always, I crack first.

  “Trouble sleeping?” I ask, trying to sound casual.

  “Indeed,” she says, quite calmly. “I often have that, as you know. Of course, having a daughter with a penchant for sneaking out at two in the morning doesn’t help.”

  She holds up the envelope with my scrawled note on that I stuck to the fridge:

  Just nipped out to Evie’s. Please don’t panic or call the police or anything, I’ll be home soon.

  Cx

  “Care to explain?”

  I start, and then freeze. I realize I’m not ready. I’d expected to have all day tomorrow to get it in order and now it tries to rush up out of me at once in a tangle and it gets stuck in my throat.

  Not that it winds up mattering, though, because before I’ve even got my mouth halfway open, Mum says, “You’re pregnant.”

  I start violently, the shock shaking my voice free. “How … how did you…?”

  “The question ought to be: how did I not know until now?” She shakes her head in quiet astonishment. “Sneaking around in the night. Weeks of projectile vomiting, odd appetites. Nervously announcing you’re just off to the loo when you’ve never felt the need to keep me informed about that before. I assume you were peeing on a stick? No, a series of sticks; you wouldn’t trust just one.”

  I flush but stay silent.

  “Honestly, Catherine, you’re a terrible liar, for which I’ve always been grateful.” She barks a short, bitter laugh. “I’m going to have to get a refund on my maternal instincts – these are seriously defective.”

  She stands, rounds the table, and sweeps me up into a hug.

  “You … you aren’t angry?” I ask incredulously.

  “Oh, Christ, love. I’m furious,” she laughs. “At myself as much as anything. Trust me, tomorrow you and I will have an excruciating conversation about the precise mechanics of when and how this happened, and don’t be alarmed if the house spontaneously combusts from my pure incandescent rage.”

  She strokes my hair. “But just because I’m angry, it doesn’t mean I haven’t been in your place. It doesn’t mean I don’t remember the fear. It doesn’t mean that I haven’t fantasized about what it would have been like to have a mother who was still alive when I found out I was pregnant. I’ve spent so much time when I
should have been sleeping, staring at the ceiling, dreaming up every detail of how I wish she would have acted.” Something warm spots onto the top of my head and I realize she’s crying, although her voice gives no sign of it.

  “I guess I’ll just have to live up to that now.” She takes a deep breath, as though drawing strength from the universe for that incredible feat. “Have you told the boy, whoever he is?”

  “Not yet.”

  “No telling how he’ll react, then. Although if he’s as much of a prick as your father was, I might find a more constructive use for my fury than involuntary arson.” She snorts, then stands back from me and wipes her own tears from my cheeks. “Not yet,” she says. “That means we’re keeping it, then.”

  We. I never thought a single syllable could mean so much to me. I nod.

  “Well,” she says. “I could give you a whole screed about how hard it is to bring up a child on your own, and I was older than you are now when I had you, mind. I could try to scare you into reconsidering, but there’d be no point, because then you’d only ask me.”

  I don’t follow. “Ask you what?”

  “Whether any of that means I wish I hadn’t kept you, and of course it doesn’t. You’re the best thing in my life, always have been.” She smiles at me. “Even though you fray my nerves to tatters half the time. I can only hope my grandchild does the same to you.” The smile fades. The bags under her eyes are bruise-blue in the unforgiving kitchen light. “It will be hard, though, Cat. No kidding.”

  “Hard doesn’t mean wrong,” I say softly, echoing Evie.

  “No.” She pulls me back into the hug. “No, it doesn’t.”

  It’s only later when, throwing away some orange peel, I find a long white stick with two blue lines on it in the kitchen bin, where I definitely didn’t leave it. Mouth still full of orange segment, I perch on the kitchen counter and stare at it.

  I wonder how long she’s known, how long she’s been waiting for me to tell her. I picture her up at night, ready to storm into my little room and demand an explanation, a culprit even, not knowing his face was plastered on the wall before her, but then holding herself back, bracing herself, preparing her little speech.

  It doesn’t mean that I haven’t fantasized about what it would have been like to have a mother who was still alive when I found out I was pregnant… I guess I’ll just have to live up to that now.

  The little blue lines blur as my eyes fill with tears.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Amy

  “What are you doing?”

  I just manage to stifle the urge to clap my hands over the phone on the bed, which would pretty much guarantee giving it away. I look back over my shoulder. Polly stands in the doorway; my body will screen the handset from her as long as she doesn’t come any closer. I pray she can’t see the tension that’s entered my back. She’s ditched the down jacket, and has her sleeves rolled up under her bomb vest. Sweat’s running down her forehead like damp down a cellar wall. She’s panting, the evil little green light rising and falling with her breath.

  “Nothing as hard as what you’ve been doing by the looks of things.” I try to keep my voice light. “You look like you just ran a marathon uphill in a lead coat.”

  “Close enough.” She beckons. “I need your help.”

  She turns without waiting for me to follow, and I finally manage to exhale. I grab the phone, but then hesitate, frantically patting the sides of my funeral dress. Finally I hitch up the hem and tuck the phone into my underwear, where it digs very uncomfortably into my soft bits.

  “If I get out of this,” I mutter to myself, “I’m never again buying a single piece of clothing that doesn’t have pockets. I don’t give a shit if it’s just a scarf. Dresses? I want pockets. Shorts? Pockets. New bra, madam? Only if I can smuggle half a kilo of cocaine and a corgi puppy in a zip-up compartment in one cup, thanks.”

  “Amy!” Polly calls back up the hall. Trying to walk like I don’t have four inches of cold glass and metal shoved down my pants, I follow.

  Before she got sick, Mum was always the last to bed. At the end of every evening, she would move through the house, stacking bowls and switching off lights, straightening piles of paper. “Making right”, she called it. We used to joke that the only reason she never had another kid was that if there were more than two of us she wouldn’t be able to decide whether to get us to stand in order of age or height. Still, even though neither Charlie nor I would ever admit it, we found the ritual comforting; it felt as essential as the setting of the sun. When she got too ill, I tried to take over, but despite my best efforts, little by little, entropy had its way.

  No wonder Polly’s sweating – she’s just given entropy a huge helping hand.

  The living room looks like a hurricane hit it. Papers lie in drifts on the coffee table: tax letters, bank statements, invoices from Mum’s old digital security business, all sagging over the edge like an incipient avalanche. Dad’s box files sit upended on the floor. The old wooden bureau’s doors flap open. The painting of Chicago’s skyline has been yanked from its frame, the canvas slashed. Both Mum’s and Dad’s laptops sit open on the sofa cushions, and she doesn’t seem to have had any problems with the passwords. She’s even ripped the cushion covers and pulled out half the stuffing. Feathers are strewn over the carpet, like it’s the site of some hideous poultry massacre.

  “What did you do?” I ought to be angry at the destruction she’s visited on my house, but instead it feels weirdly … satisfying, like the violence was just sitting there, latent in my universe, and I’m almost jealous that she was the one who got to make it manifest.

  She barely seems to hear me. “Nothing,” she mutters. “Nothing. I’ve looked and I’ve looked and I’ve looked, but there’s nothing!” The last word rises to a strangled shout. She stands in the middle of the devastation, but it’s like she can’t even see it. One hand kneads the fuzzy hair on the back of her head, the other holds Mum’s phone. She scrolls feverishly, her eyes flicking back and forth.

  “Ach!” She throws the handset down in disgust and it bounces off the carpet. I swallow, uncomfortably aware of its secret cousin chilling my privates.

  “There’s no time,” she mutters, shooting a look at the blinded windows like she’s waiting for something to come crashing through them. “No time, no time, but it must be here, it must. She kept records of everything; she never threw anything away.”

  I look up at her sharply. “How do you know that?”

  “What?”

  “How do you know she never threw anything away?”

  She snorts and points to where she’s tipped the contents of the bureau drawer in a brightly coloured sprawl all over the floor. “It seems like a fair conclusion to draw from the fact that she kept forty years of old birthday cards.” She licks her lips and her eyes flick around her.

  “They’re get-well cards,” I say quietly.

  “What?”

  “Most of them are get-well cards.”

  She ignores me. With her cropped, streamlined head she looks like a cornered snake. “It must be here,” she says again. “It must.”

  “What must?”

  Her eyes land on me, and I can see white all the way around the iris. I take a step back from that gaze, and as I do, I feel the treacherous slide of metal against the skin in my nether regions. My stomach flips over as the elastic in my knickers gives just that bit too much and my illicit package slips half out. I drop into a semi-squat, just managing to catch the offending device on my thigh, aware all the time of Polly’s jaundiced gaze on me.

  “What was that?” she asks.

  In a blast of panicked invention, I clutch my hands to my lower abdomen, just managing to pin the top edge of the phone to myself through my dress.

  “I’ve been locked in there for hours: I’m bursting.”

  Polly starts like I’ve slapped her. “Oh, good Lord, so you have!” She claps a hand to her forehead. “I’m so sorry! You must think I’m some
kind of kidnapper!”

  The irony of this statement – massive enough to stun a raging hippopotamus though it is – leaves her untouched. “Of course, of course you must go. Go!”

  Her voice rises to a shout, and for a split second I’m tempted to relax my bladder and piss myself in front of her to see what she’d do – I wonder if she’d understand what kind of kidnapper she is then – but now she’s got her arm around me, physically ushering me towards the downstairs loo, and I’m crabbing my way along the hallway, clutching the phone through my dress, a cartoon of incontinence, and feeling a genuine spasm in my bowel every time she threatens to brush up against the damn thing.

  I bustle into the loo, slam the door, shoot the bolt and set my forehead against the wood. Trembling, I slip the phone from its hiding place. I listen out for her footsteps retreating back up the hallway, but they don’t come. Fuck, is she still there? Ear pressed to the door just inches from my own, listening out for my pee?

  I scramble to the toilet, throw the seat down as loudly as I can, bunch up my dress and pull down my underwear. I strain and think of the endless cups of tea people make you drink when you’re bereaved. I think of waterfalls, and singing in the rain, but just when I need it, my bladder lets me down. Come on, bladder, I think desperately, you and me, we’ve been places; landmark toilets on four continents, but nope, it’s a desert in there. I cast around. My eye lands on the tap – but no, idiot, that sounds nothing like the same. I need a tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, tinkle … the mouthwash!

  There’s a bottle of the bright blue liquid sat on the edge of the sink. Mum brushed her teeth downstairs for the last few weeks, and we must have left it here. I unscrew the cap and, thumb over the neck, I let a drizzle, then another, then a steady stream into the bowl between my legs. There’s a creak from the door, and I imagine Polly easing back from the wood, satisfied.

  I still don’t hear her walking away, though. No matter how quietly I whisper, I don’t dare risk a voice call. No 999 for me. I lift the phone, and—