EVENTUALLY, CARA MUST HAVE slept, because she is woken by the discomfort of two children clambering into the bed, taking their usual positions with blunt entitlement. Denise is a round-bellied thing with the uncanny ability to cover the whole bed, diagonally, with her four stocky limbs. She sleeps face down with a determined little frown; her skin is very pink and her sleep is heavy and oblivious to all but her own comfort. Megan is restless. She has a different way of mastering the space. She takes Cara’s arm and lifts it over herself and mutters, ‘My mammy.’ She shifts about, all elbows and knees and bony bum, and she snores and mumbles and throws the covers off her skinny torso and shivers. They both sleep with their plump lips a little open. They both drool. They are both too old to sleep with their parents, and too old to be satisfied the way a baby can be satisfied. They both feel things that Cara cannot know or heal, and they will both become people other than they are now. Life will do things to them that she cannot know.
She remembers her children’s early days like whole eras. She remembers the fashions; the foods she cooked. When Denise was born, whale prints were in vogue: whale-print babygrows, whale-print bibs, a hat saying ‘having a whale of a time’. Bunny rabbits and mice were the fashion when Megan was born; pink and white. Bunny ears on hoods, bunnies on her blankets. It was the same for Peig, or is it only that she didn’t buy anything new for her? This year, it’s unicorns and llamas. She has noticed llama-print baby grows, baby bags, baby blankets. A lot of indigo. The llamas are often wearing scarves and hats. This baby will be born into the year of the llama.
To think that they will love each other – that will help Cara to grow old without scraping the age spots off her thinning skin.
She remembers to lie on her left side – something she heard about only this pregnancy. You are supposed to sleep on the left. Something to do with the placenta.
Baby Peig is propped in Pat’s armpit, her head slumped to the side, her face serious in sleep. Cara tilts her on a pillow, straightens her head, puts an ear to her chest. She’s breathing. What did Cara expect?
She presses her lips to her husband’s temple, kisses him in the warm space under his ear. He was too tired to shower. There are woodchips in his hair. She can’t get near enough to the smell of his sweat and the oily, unwashed skin.
When Cara first met Pat, she felt the breath knock out of her, the way love is described in teen novels, or Grandma’s stories. These days, when he puts his arm over her in his sleep, she feels the same discomfort she felt with her babies, when they were six months old and sat gazing at her with adoration, or kicked their arms and legs with sheer joy at the sight of her, and she was struck with an impulse to violence – to make an ugly face, or wipe the snots from their noses, to teach them not to love like that. It is too much; the children, the husband – she never expected so much love. She has too much to lose.
‘Lift the girls,’ she tells Pat. ‘I can’t sleep. Lift them back to bed.’
He tries to stay asleep. ‘We’re all asleep,’ he says, ‘go ’sleep.’
‘Lift the girls. I can’t sleep with them.’
He raises himself up in the bed, his face crumpled from deep sleep. He begins to slide his hand under Denise, lifts her foot from her sister’s belly, her head from where it rests on Cara’s hip. He begins to lift her. Then he looks through the dark at the puckered lips, the long, white eyelashes, and he sighs. He straightens her a little in the bed.
‘You really want me to lift them? Poor girls. Let’s leave them be. They’re sleeping. They don’t want to sleep alone.’
Denise suckers in a loud, nasally snore, and Cara turns her face into the pillow. The foetus has started to turn again – an elbow in the lung, spine moving snakelike along her ribs. Her new black maternity dress hangs on the doorframe, a triangle of pink morning light cutting across the ruffled belly. She needed something decent to wear to court, but what a waste it was, to buy a dress she will only wear once, maybe twice.
‘They’re asleep,’ she says, ‘just lift them.’
‘Really?’
‘Fine. I’ll sleep in Den’s bed.’
‘Don’t be silly. You won’t sleep.’ He pulls Cara to his chest, a hand caged loosely over her eyes, shielding her from the sunrise already creeping in through the curtains. It’s uncomfortable. Her hips creak. She needs something between her knees. He kisses her hair; ‘Just sleep here with us, baby. No one wants to sleep alone.’
‘Pat?’
‘Mmm.’
‘Pat?’
‘What is it, baby?’
‘I’m bad. Pat, I’m not a very nice person.’
‘Shush, baby, don’t be silly. Sleep, baby. Sleep here with us. Sleep.’