The Harpy

by Megan Hunter

  Sarah’s face didn’t change: she still looked at me as though she was my teacher, an infinitely more mature and discerning person. All of which was true. I had to say it.

  Well, actually, he punched Paddy in the nose, so . . .

  Her mouth pursed and I squirmed, tried to make light of it all. Boys, eh? – I couldn’t stand it when people said this. It made me feel like screaming, like tearing my eyelashes out. And here I was, saying it.

  Sarah raised her eyebrows. Well, thanks for the party. Come on, Tommy.

  I held out Tommy’s party bag, a final peace offering. The plastic was visibly heavy, well stocked, with tiny cartoon pirates climbing desperately up its sides. I could see Sarah pausing, but her son had already snatched the bag and begun to march out of the door, swinging it by its handle, humming quietly to himself. The other children left soon afterwards, a storm blowing through as quickly as it had arrived, leaving the house with a wrung-out quality, a palpable, damp atmosphere of relief. The four of us collapsed in the living room, the boys rooting in their goodies listlessly, Jake and I sighing, opening and closing our eyes.

  He was sitting so close to me: suddenly, it seemed normal to do this, to rest on his shoulder, to let my head fall gently against him. Jake leaned down and kissed the top of my head, briefly, my body still, not even flinching in response.

  From the corner of my eye, I could see Ted watching silently, chewing a sweet, dribble beginning to appear at the side of his mouth. Paddy looked up too, after a moment, his attention briefly shifted from his party bag. I kept still, kept our bodies together, let the boys see us like this. Happy.

  And maybe it could be real, this whole thing only a blip, something we’d talk about late at night, eventually, our words like dough stretching the past into different shapes, the darkness of our room making it all seem credible, necessary.

  We would stop here, just as we had not conceived a third child, had realized in time that it would be a mistake. I put my head against Jake’s chest, his heart a bumping road beneath my ear, a fractured process, contraction and relaxation, electric impulses that could stop at any time.

  Two will be enough, I whispered against the fabric of his shirt, its floral-chemical wash filling my mouth, the sound of my voice barely loud enough for him to hear.

  33

  That night, we slept in the same bed, woke in the same bed. We turned to look at each other, breathed into each other’s skin. These are things that married people do. It should not have been extraordinary. But it seemed years, not months, since I had seen this particular light on the speckled texture of his cheeks, his reddish stubble glinting up like embers.

  I grew up knowing that falling in love was the most important thing I would ever do. Every song, every film confirmed it. But when Jake kissed me for the first time, I was surprised. I could describe it as something scientific, garden-like, botanical. A blooming, a stretching, my whole chest filled with clear air. Our kisses now – gentle, tentative – seemed laced with this moment, re-enactments of a distant history.

  Jake took the children to their holiday club; he was meeting a colleague afterwards, someone he could discuss the investigation with, who would share rumours of its likely outcome. He’d shaved that morning, put on his smartest clothes. I watched him as he cajoled the boys, his shirt running smoothly to his belt. My husband. I felt a wave of pride, its contours unfamiliar, like something I hadn’t felt for years.

  •

  When they’d gone, I turned to the remaining party mess, the banner attached to the wall, the strips of wrapping behind chairs. I started with the balloons, putting a few in the boys’ room, gathering the rest for destruction. I held their bulbous bodies down – slightly slack, already – and made the stab with a pin, hearing the explosion, a surprise every time. I wondered, briefly, what the neighbours thought, whether it sounded like gunfire. In the reports from terrorist attacks, people never seemed to identify guns, at the beginning. Their first thoughts – and often their second, third, fourth thoughts – were of firecrackers, cars backfiring, the popping of balloons.

  As I cleaned, time seemed to move incredibly slowly. I would look at the clock, do half a dozen things – put a packet in a cupboard, take the recycling out, pick a toy off the floor, pick five toys off the floor – and look at the clock again. I couldn’t tell which had changed: me or time itself, if I was moving too fast for minutes to contain me as they used to. When I’d finished, there were still hours before I had to pick up the boys; I had time to myself.

  I got ready, wore light clothes and shoes: I wanted to feel light, that my feet could lift easily from the ground. I took hardly anything with me, my hands were free: no one would know I had two children, dependent on me for everything. I walked past the field, to the meadows and river which ran behind it, turned my face to the grasses, my vision pulled to the horizon. There was a sweet, rich smell of sun on green, kayaks and swans passing by on the water. It was a moving, busy day; I turned my face to the wind, felt its smooth power against my skin.

  I walked for a long time, passing student couples holding hands, talking quietly, toddlers scooting fatly past me on balance bikes, their feet skimming the ground. At last – tired, sweating – I reached a pub on the other side of the meadows, a place we often came with the boys at the weekends, bought them cordial and soda water and crisps, enjoyed a few moments of crunching peace, surrounded by other families doing the same. It was quieter during the week. There were old men chatting in groups, one smoothing his belly down in what looked like pride, rocking on his stool, his pint floating golden in front of him. A couple about to begin their meal, the woman with her knife and fork hovering above her plate, inspecting each chip before she ate them. A number of empty tables. I would order lunch, I decided, perhaps sit in the garden. I walked towards the back, where the space narrowed, became Victorian and twisting, a series of abrupt turns, dead-end corners.

  They were there. Jake and Vanessa. Sitting on opposite sides of a table, having lunch. Vanessa had almost finished: her lasagne was streaked messily across her plate, a piece of salad dangled from her fork. I was looking at that when Jake saw me, jumped from the table. I kept focusing on the green stripe, disappearing into her mouth.

  Lucy! What are you—? V – Vanessa – we were just talking about the hearing. The investigation, I mean.

  I didn’t want – couldn’t – see his face, see the way his expressions would change, the quality of his gaze as he lied. I left fast, bumping into people: one woman spilled her drink, shouted out to me. I half-ran back over the meadows, his words beating through my steps.

  We

  were

  just

  talking

  We

  were

  just

  talking

  It might have been the truth. But why had he lied this morning, his face so close to mine? I was sure Jake had used the word he to describe the colleague, could hear the word repeated now, mocking me. And why had they chosen that pub? It was barely out of town, although away from the most dense university bustle. Safe mid-week, they must have assumed.

  Vanessa had only turned around briefly, but I’d seen her expression. There was no remorse in it, I thought, only a blank kind of non-recognition, as though she’d never seen me before. The river, previously a melting, soothing length, was now disturbed by the wind, a coolly rushing water, Vanessa’s look running through it.

  The trees blew in my face. My T-shirt stuck under my arms, was damp at my neck. A pain radiated from my chest; my heart was burning, it seemed, turning pink-orange like a saint’s on a statue. It was dripping, I could imagine, seeping into me.

  I got home, kicked my shoes off in the hallway. There was still an hour before I had to get the boys from school. I walked up and down, pressed my hands into my eyes, dug my nails into my skin. These hands: they’d always looked gentle to me, small and soft, almost like a child’s hands, more densely patterned the closer I looked. But now they looked different, la
rger somehow, the nails too long and curving. Not a writer’s hands, or an academic’s hands, as it turned out. Something else.

  I left the house again, slamming the door, not checking – as I usually did – to see if it was locked. I walked towards the shops: I’d made myself a list, some things I would need. Along the pavement, across the sky, I saw the rest of the day laid out in front of me: how pleasant I would be, how helpful and composed with the boys, with their squabbles and pains.

  I would go to my room when they were occupied, with television or each other. I would look out of the window, across the field, at the trees in their perfect lines, unchanging, the kind of witnesses I needed, signs that I was still alive.

  It is the last time. He lies down, a warm night, his T-shirt pulled up, his head turned away.

  •

  The first cut doesn’t seem to be enough. Jake continues lying still, his eyes closed peacefully, as though he hasn’t felt anything.

  I lift a piece of tissue and catch the drop of blood that is rolling down his leg, towards the bed, the white sheets. It spreads out across the thin paper, a circle, a red eye.

  Okay? This seems a stupid question, even as I am saying it. It is exactly what the anaesthetist said to me, as the surgeon split my body apart.

  But Jake nods, clearly, without opening his eyes. I take this as permission, as an invitation to continue. Surely, if it was over, he would sit up, would show me it was finished. But he does none of this. He stays, continues to be still.

  •

  It isn’t a razor for shaving your legs. It doesn’t have a plastic coating, a moisturizing strip. It is a straight, a cut-throat, an implement Jake has barely used. A fad, an Internet purchase abandoned almost at once.

  It has a wooden handle, curved and smooth as a boat. A shimmering, five-inch blade. Eco-friendly, he told me. There were videos, he said, where men shaved successfully with it, day after day, flicking the blade in the light.

  I remembered the way he’d practised with it one autumn afternoon, how we’d both winced as he cut his skin once, and again, the blood travelling in single drops, individuals landing in the sink.

  •

  He agreed to it as soon as he came home, his whole body defeated.

  One last time. The third: the one that should make all the difference.

  Do your worst, Lu. A slow, sliding movement of his mouth, the imitation of a smile. He looked at the ground, at his own fingers. He didn’t look at me.

  I could still smell beer on his breath, couldn’t stop seeing Vanessa’s back, the piece of lettuce on her fork. Other details had emerged slowly, over the hours.

  As I bought the disinfectant, I’d seen an expression – Vanessa’s – the same one I’d seen at the Christmas party, something between pity and a sneer.

  As I’d put the boys to bed, I could see her skirt, under the table. Leather, I thought. And her boots: patent, knee-high, a stout heel.

  Her legs crossed. The architectural outline of her neck, the groove of her bra strap.

  Her feet: were they tangled with Jake’s? However hard I tried, I couldn’t see.

  •

  It was Jake’s idea to do it on his thigh. A flickering unreality, as he took off his trousers, pulled up the leg of his boxers.

  I felt the power I had always witnessed in reverse: doctors, nurses, midwives, hovering over my body. Free to do as they wanted. The seconds before they made their move, a masked intimacy, a blurred lack of recognition.

  I always closed my eyes, as Jake does. I never wanted to see.

  •

  The blade presses harder. But. Something has gone wrong; instead of a drop, it is a swell. It is a wall, a wave, a tide. My fault.

  Instead of silence, there is screaming, coming from neither and both of us, surrounding our heads, his body, my hands, floating out of the window, towards the sun.

  34

  At first, I tried to stem the bleeding myself. I pressed wads of toilet paper against the cut, but the blood was coming too fast. Jake was calling out, looking down, telling me to try something, then something else.

  How hard did you press? he said at one moment, his eyes wide and slightly unsteady, as though they might roll back in his head.

  I said nothing; there was nothing I could say. The moment I had cut him was lost to me, blacked out. It seemed irrelevant now, anyway; nothing was relevant but the blood, the fact that it wouldn’t stop. You knew this would happen, a voice in my head was saying, over and over again. You did it deliberately.

  Shut up. I shouted out loud, turning as though to spit something out.

  What? Jake was panicking, moving too much.

  I’ll have to call an ambulance, I said, my voice steadier now, the old pink pyjamas I was holding against him turning maroon, blossoming out and out, endless, colours behind closed eyelids. Jake was pale, his skin glossy and bare, like new paint.

  A wave of nausea. I looked down, retched into my cupped hand. An accident. It was an accident.

  The woman on the phone seemed angry with me. She knows, I couldn’t help thinking. Somehow, she knows everything. She kept asking me questions: was he breathing? Was he bleeding from the eyes? All the questions were about Jake, about his body; none of them were about what had happened. An accident, I’d said, at the beginning of the call. An accident with a razor. Nothing else seemed to be needed.

  It’ll be there in five minutes, she said, eventually, in her strange, plain voice. Make sure the door is open. Make sure the paramedics can enter the premises.

  I nodded, pointlessly, put the phone down on the bed.

  I looked at my hands, lifted them to my face, felt the rough lack of comfort in my own touch. I had done it all, but what had I done? I could feel the flight of my own mind fluttering within my skull, hitting bone as it tried to escape.

  I tried to think of something normal to say. Unbelievable! Surely we’d laugh about this, later on, in a few weeks, a few years. Wouldn’t we? But Jake’s eyes were closed again; not peacefully this time: they were screwed tight, creased shut in agony.

  ~

  Here: the third time. There is no going back now.

  Never before has she had blood like this. Under her nails. Under her tongue, somehow. From her fingers to her mouth.

  However much she spits and drinks, it will not go away. She had forgotten what it tastes like: a hot pavement, a forearm, fresh from the swimming pool. Like a birth room: like the future.

  ~

  35

  If we pulled the curtains all the way around, there was privacy. There was a rectangle of it, the bed, the drip with its hanging bag, the chair for me to sit in. Jake’s parents were still with the children, as they’d been since last night, summoned by a phone call, by a brief, false explanation. Jake was due to be released the next day; there was anaesthetic, fears of infection, a staggering number of stitches.

  He was on a high floor, in the bed closest to the window. While Jake slept, exhausted by pain and medication, I stared out of the window, over the bland fields where work had begun on another wing of the hospital, cranes and diggers bright and stark against the wash of the sky. The last times – the only times – we had been in hospital together before this, our children were being born. Time didn’t move in hospital, I had noticed back then: it pooled, gathered, got stuck.

  The one time my mother was hospitalized, we didn’t know it was happening. She’s having her wisdom teeth out, we were told, and for years – decades – afterwards I thought this was what dental surgery did to your face, that it caused swollen lumps around the eyes and mouth, that it somehow painted the colours of a storm – deep indigo, bottle green, streaks of navy – across the cheeks.

  Children can suspend their disbelief to an extraordinary degree, I was told later. Things that make absolutely no sense – the neck cast, the wrist cast – can become plausible, can be blended into the picture, be made to fit. It was a different hospital to this one, but it looked just the same. Same floor, same windows
as those I stood at now – thick, plastic, jump-proof – looking out at clouds moving across the day.

  Now, the curtains moved, awkwardly, as though someone wanted to knock. The sound of a man clearing his throat.

  Mrs Stevenson? A voice, so clear and authoritative. The curtains parted. A white coat, a pale, thin face. The doctor asked whether, despite Jake’s apparent lack of history, there was something going on they should know about.

  Does he ever talk about hurting himself? Has he ever attempted suicide? I answered no to everything, kept my eyes down. I knew he was trained to spot people like me: liars, sadists. Monsters. My hands curled over in my pockets, the nails sharp against my palms. I had wiped the razor, buried it without thinking in our household bin, under teabags and banana skins, the waste of our week.

  At any moment, I thought, I would be dragged away: I kept picturing the men who would take me, a criminal-looking gang with masks over their faces, pulling me out of the high clear light of the hospital, recoiling in revulsion as they fastened my handcuffs.

  The doctor asked his questions, and I answered them, my mouth dry and twisting, my voice coming out high, then low.

  I went into the room, and he had the razor. There was blood everywhere . . .

  The whole time we spoke, Jake slept beside us, his breath falling gently in and out of his mouth, dreaming as though nothing was wrong. Various hospital staff walked past, some turning their heads to stare through the open curtains. At one point, two nurses walked past together; I saw the look they gave me, the way they turned back to see one more time.

  The guilt – if this was what it was – lay on my back like an animal, a physical sensation of heaviness. I stared at the hospital floor, the shining squares of it, crawling with invisible disease. This was abuse, wasn’t it? It was domestic violence. I deserved the looks, and so much more. What Jake did wasn’t a crime. I almost told the doctor the truth. I wanted to be taken away, suddenly, to be led into whatever punishment they would give. But he wasn’t accusing me of anything. He was saying something else.