THE TRAIN RIDE FROM the hemline of London to Salisbury was three hours of rolling fields dotted with grey cities like lingering fog. Though she’d traveled this very route twenty years earlier, the landscape seemed entirely different to Belinda. Quaint thatched-roof cottages stood like dusty museum artefacts, remote and inhuman. When she was a child, the cottages were everyday fixtures as much as petrol stations. She never questioned the significance of the roofs or the little straw animals perched atop their peaks like beacons. An owl lived on one street, a squirrel and a pheasant on another, an ominous blackbird with one brown eye on the house up the hill. Only after she moved to Canada did she learn that each animal represented the thatcher’s signature — a symbol of his ability to master his medium. Belinda allowed this idea to resonate in her mind with images of swathed crop circle grasses, wondering to whose mastery they bowed.
Belinda had never wanted to be a mother. It was the men who had wanted children. With Dazhong she had agreed because it felt like the next step. She was twenty-one and couldn’t envision an alternative to motherhood. Wiley had wanted one of his own; a mini-Wiley to play with, like a doll. But Sebastian looked everything like Belinda. Even his eyes, although Wiley’s blue in colour, were the exact same walnut shape, and fringed with the same long, dark eyelashes, as Belinda’s.
Some time after Sebastian’s birth, Belinda admitted to herself that the decision to have children was almost always motivated by selfishness. Children were a way to feel useful, and she had admittedly enjoyed feeling useful for some time. It was satisfying to know that someone needed you deeply in order to survive. But the satisfaction had long since worn off, and she had become nothing more than a faceless provider.
Of course, now that she’d had children she had no regrets. Misgivings, perhaps, about how they would turn out. Jessica and Grace were so restrained and unconfident, and Sebastian wasn’t nearly restrained enough. What had she done differently? During Sebastian’s tantrum phase, Wiley preached about discipline from his high horse of inexperience. Nothing wrong with playing it rough every so often, show them who’s boss, he’d say. Belinda had outlawed spanking after the incident with Grace, and it had been a regular point of contention that simmered between herself and Wiley like a thick soup, wafting occasional reminders under their noses.
You know how I feel about spanking, she’d said, for the dozenth time. And anyway, it doesn’t work. He thinks it’s funny.
That’s because you don’t mean it, Wiley said, pointing a finger between her eyes.
So I’m supposed to batter my child with passion, is that it? Belinda said.
Well, it worked for Grace, he replied, and immediately looked sorry.
Belinda gave him a look that said watch it. That was different, she said. I told you we’re not talking about that. Ever again.
Yeah, fine, Wiley said. But remember, Jess had the same problem as you.
Belinda did remember. It had happened when Sebastian was two and Jessica was looking after him while Belinda and Wiley were out for an anniversary dinner. Sebastian had thrown one of his signature temper tantrums because Belinda wasn’t there to put him to bed. She resented Sebastian’s fixation on her as much as she resented Wiley’s unsolicited advice; as far as she could tell, she hadn’t done anything to provoke either. In those days, even going out for dinner meant dragging a train of guilt along, because conditions had to be perfect for Sebastian to go to sleep at bedtime without a fight. As the routine normally played out, the television would be turned off at eight o’clock and Sebastian would sit at the piano bench with Wiley. He was allowed to listen to Wiley play one song (usually ‘Every Rose Has Its Thorn’) while he drank his special milk, which had been warmed (not too hot) in the microwave with a dollop of vanilla extract. Then Belinda would lead him up to his room, make him climb the stairs on his own to tire him out. She’d sit on the edge of his bed and read to him from a book while he twisted his tattered blankie around and around his wrist until its tight coils spiraled all the way up his arm. When his eyelids finally drooped shut Belinda would set the book down and rub circles into his back. The circles needed to be smooth and even or Sebastian would moan, flip over, and flick his eyes wide open in defiance. To keep herself from falling asleep she made a silent game out of it, trying to draw the circles perfectly round and smooth, applying the same degree of pressure over Sebastian’s back as it rose and fell with increasingly broadened strokes. Sometimes the lower half of her body would go numb under the strain of keeping her movements exact. She counted each complete circle until she reached one hundred; only then was it safe to consider making her exit. If she lifted her hand too quickly he would jolt awake, so Belinda had developed an art of gradually lessening the pressure with each sweeping revolution until her hand just barely brushed the surface of Sebastian’s pajama shirt.
The elaborateness of this process often left Belinda feeling mournful. She’d allow her palm to drift off Sebastian’s back like a sail catching the wind, and in her drifting hand she imagined herself, untethered, white and floating in no particular direction. Nobody else could ever possibly understand this ritual; it was knitted between Belinda and Sebastian, an unseen umbilical remnant. It was a suffocating obligation.
Naturally, Jessica’s efforts to mimic the routine failed miserably. Sebastian had stood in the kitchen and screamed until his knee-locked legs trembled and his special milk was puddled between his feet. Jessica had tried to carry him up the stairs but he wriggled free and scurried back into the kitchen, his socks sopping up the milk and wiping it across the floor.
He’d gone straight for the utensil drawer and pulled out a steak knife, and when Jessica came ripping into the kitchen after him he threw the knife at her. The blade only scraped her arm, but Jessica took it personally, as she always did. She told Belinda she hadn’t known what else to do; he had an evil look on his face, as if he’d wanted to kill her. So she whapped him on the bum. And Sebastian just stood there. She spanked him again, harder, and he growled. Like a wild dog, Jessica had said. When she started to cry, he laughed.
Belinda and Wiley came home to find Sebastian watching television and Jessica on hands and knees, a teary Cinderella, mopping spilt milk with the kitchen rag. The smell of vanilla had lingered in the kitchen for days. Belinda found its scent in soaps and perfumes quite sickening ever since.
It certainly wasn’t normal. Sebastian had an imagination that blinded him to consequences. But although she worried about where this tendency would lead him, Belinda feared even more the possibility that Sebastian, that all three of her children, might someday see through her. That they might eventually come to resent her resentment, feed her the same guilt she fed to her own mother. The scenario had the potential to carry through generations like a disease.
Belinda convinced herself that the trip to England was as much for her children as it was for herself. She was setting an example: decide what you want from life, and don’t be afraid to pursue it. Dr. Longfellow had called her commitment soulful in his last letter. That kind of passion will serve you well in our line of work, he’d written. A passionate mother was better than a wholly disinterested mother. Belinda’s mother had never been soulful about anything, not even the cross-stitching projects she insisted on filling her time with. Belinda would try to rest her little chin on her mother’s shoulder and tell her how lovely the angel looked, or how expertly she’d stitched the apples on the trees, and her mother would grimace as though she were suddenly looking at a pile of vomit. Rubbish, she’d say, it’s only a lark. And yet the aida cloth was conveniently laid across her lap and the embroidery thread tangled in her fingers whenever Belinda wanted to play checkers, bake a cake, or go to the playground. A lark that flew high over Belinda’s head.
Belinda hadn’t spoken to her in eighteen years. Her mother still sent them parcels at Christmas, too big for Belinda to hide, and a card on her birthday. The card always contained three crisp Canadian $50 bills, which must have required a special trip to the bank. The price of forgiveness. Belinda kept the cash for years, in case of emergency. She slotted the bills into an envelope that she taped under the top drawer in the kitchen, where no one else would find them. It was better to pretend that ties had been severed.