23

Julia sat in silent fury propped up in bed. She had a book open on her lap and the reading light was on. She’d put on the flannel pyjamas that Bob hated and she was looking at the page without having any of the words register. Matthew was asleep. Her mother was in bed, at least for the time being, and quiet, with the door closed. Apparently Bob was finally through in the bathroom. He’d been in there for hours, it seemed, mysteriously mucking about. She didn’t know what he was up to and he wouldn’t explain. He’d been hiding from Matthew and her mother all day, hadn’t helped one iota. She could hear him coming up the stairs. One heavy foot after another. Loud enough to wake the baby. When he walked through the bedroom door she put her head down and read. She was feeling too angry to speak first.

But he didn’t speak either. He walked into the bathroom and closed the door and she thought, My God, what now? But she heard the sounds of running water, brushing teeth. Then he peed for twenty, thirty, fifty seconds, a loud, long stream. He’d flushed the downstairs toilet dozens of times. Why did he need to pee so badly now? She could hear him flush this toilet twice, then a third time, and it sounded tired, as if it was broken. When he walked out she immediately looked back down at her book.

He pulled open a drawer, took out his pyjamas, didn’t look at her. Then he walked to the door and said, lightly, as he was leaving, “I have terrible gas. I don’t want to bother you. I’ll sleep downstairs tonight.” And he gently closed the door.

Bad gas? She hadn’t heard him, hadn’t smelled him. She listened now to his heavy feet descending the stairs, heard him rummage in the main-floor linen closet then tread into his office and close the door. The house settled uneasily, unbelievably into silence. So that was it? A few muttered words of explanation, not a glance in her direction?

She was fuming but she wouldn’t go down and give him the satisfaction of seeing her lose her temper. Yet she couldn’t sleep either, not like this, so she decided to do something useful, something that would hurt him rather effectively, in a completely different way. She’d sort through her clothes, gather together for donation everything that she had no hope of fitting into again.

She opened her closet and immediately found a beautiful linen skirt that no longer easily zipped up the back – she didn’t even have to try it on. The mauve suede pants that Bob had misguidedly bought her just weeks after she’d given birth, and a size too small at that – gone. And the formerly form-fitting green velvet Christmas dress that Bob used to salivate over. But she hadn’t worn it for two years now so out with it. She was in no mood for mercy.

Back to the drawers to root out those ridiculous bits of lingerie Bob kept buying for her. There was the pretty, skin-coloured satin camisole she could no longer pull over her shoulders, and various issues of thong underwear that became uncomfortable within seconds of donning them, an assortment of lacy bras too small to contemplate, and bodysuits that made her sweat and feel self-conscious. She hated to think how much money he’d sunk into these items, had never had the courage to just dump them before. But now was a good time.

Where was the purple silk slip? It was Bob’s absolute favourite, but it had never fit properly. She knew exactly where it ought to have been, but it wasn’t there. She hadn’t worn it in ages, it wasn’t in the laundry. Where was it?

There were so many things she wasn’t going to wear again. The more she looked, the more she found: T-shirts that were too small, or too milky; torn pantyhose; a wide-style belt that fit none of her remaining pants; the spandex tights that she used to go running in, but that showed too much of her belly now (not that she could ever imagine going running again, in her present state of maternal incarceration, joined at the hip to Matthew). Silk scarves, sweaters that needed airing. This time she pulled nearly everything out of her drawers.

Then she stopped, looked around, suddenly conscious of the absurdity of what she was doing. And just as suddenly as she had started, she left the drawers and piles as they were and turned out the light, climbed into bed. She clamped her eyes shut, willed herself to relax. In strained stillness she wondered what she was going to do, was intensely conscious that she didn’t know; she felt as if she were outside herself, watching. Would she go downstairs and give him the royal shit he deserved? Or just continue to lie here in the relative peace, though overwound, ready to explode?

Julia thought of her parents and their bitter, dark nights, her mother’s voice shattering all peace, her father angrily silent, responsive as stone, while Julia listened in the black of supposed sleep. When they fought it was usually over her father’s drinking. He wasn’t a raging, uncontrolled drunk, but a steady, purposeful imbiber who, as the years passed, slowly gave himself over to a dulled, deadened evening state, who in later life tended to push aside those things that might distract him, that would spoil the solitude of his drinking. It became a matter of resentful, eventually silent resignation for her mother. But when Julia was young, when the pattern was just beginning to establish itself, there were awful fights. Julia remembered a lamp smashing, and little Alex rushing to the stairs to peer through the banister down into the murk of the living room. Julia had urged him back.

“No, don’t worry, it’s all right,” she’d said, and it was – in the morning the debris had already been cleaned, the broken lamp was safely in the garbage and another one had been brought up from the basement to replace it.

Was tonight about Bob’s drinking? Julia wondered. She recognized some of the signs from her father. He had his bottles in certain places; no day passed when he didn’t drink. But somehow he always seemed to know when he was over the line. But what else would he have been doing in the bathroom for so long, and why did he feel he needed to hide? Then again, she hadn’t smelled a thing, and she usually could.

Julia rolled restlessly in the bed, the time dragging painfully. Finally, when she knew for certain that sleep like this was hopeless, she got up, walked in the darkness into Matthew’s room and lifted him out of his bed. How heavy he was getting! Without even opening his eyes he reached out, his mouth open. In her bedroom they snuggled into the big bed together, lying on their sides. She latched him on and held him, stroked his impossibly fine hair. He wasn’t really hungry at first. She had to coax him, wake him a bit before he began to feed in earnest. Then it was almost as if he were cleansing her, pulling the jangle out of her thoughts, slumbering her limbs; as if together they were the centre of everything, this nucleus, right now; that nothing else mattered, really; that the sweet milk of deepest sleep would soon be on its way.

It was almost, almost enough.