“We wanted a baby.”
He clicked on his headlights, though it was still light enough to see. I scrolled through some more photos—Melina riding a doggy, Melina in the ball pool—then I decided to explore the other parts of his phone. I looked at his text messages but could only see names I didn’t recognize.
“Your kid is adorable,” I said, as I looked for his other messaging apps. I opened Telegram, the Russian-designed one that drug dealers and adulterers use because of the end-to-end encryption. And there I saw my wife’s name beside a red marker: two new messages.
Peter glanced over now. I angled the screen away from him.
“She’s so photogenic,” I said.
The messages were only five minutes old. The first one was a picture in which Garthene was topless but that wasn’t what made it upsetting. There was a man asleep against her breasts but that wasn’t what made it upsetting. She had waited for me to leave, then sent this image to Peter from her hospital bed. What’s worse, she was smiling. I knew a whole lot about hateable smiles and had never seen one worse.
The message read: You still around? xx
I let the phone fall from my hand into the footwell.
Then what else was there to do but punch the dashboard? I punched it once and then again, punched the plastic hood that covered the stereo, and felt nothing.
Peter stopped the car in the middle of the road and peered down at the screen of his phone. Then he frowned and looked at me. Something passed his eyes, and I had a horrible feeling it was pity.
“Please,” I said. “I’m begging you. Just leave us alone.”
“I will,” he said.
“You won’t,” I said, and I thumped the dashboard again. Not easy to get a good backswing from where I was, but I found an angle.
He watched me.
I hit the dashboard again and this time my knuckle split.
“Keep going,” he said.
I kept going.
“Harder.”
I went harder, leaving a red smear on the plastic.
“Here,” he said. He offered his face toward me and closed his eyes. “Do your worst.”
I really wanted to do my worst. But I had a vision of how the bruises would work with his cheekbones, how he would drive back to the hospital, neatly three-point turning—or five-point, or seven, just to be safe—then head to obstetrics, soft-talk his way in after visiting hours, wave away any offer of treatment, get Garthene upgraded to a side room and set up a camp bed beside her, the three of them waking together, my first son’s first sunrise, witnessed in the shadow of this tall god in chinos.
“Hit me,” he said, his eyes still closed.
I let my fist move straight past his face. I had no conscious plan but was pleased with my deep brain when I reached around the steering wheel and tugged the key from the ignition.
I got out of the car and crossed the road. Only once Peter’s eyes were open did I let the key slip from my fingers into the drain, fall into Victorian darkness, a splash far below. That was all the vengeance I could summon. Those modern keys cost a lot to replace.
It was seven forty-five when I got to Dave’s. I had missed a call from Serco and I rang them back immediately.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Mr. Morris, do you know what time it is?”
“It was because of the birth of my son. A beautiful boy.”
“You should have told us.”
“I know. I’m so sorry. It was a complicated birth.”
“I do know how these things can be,” the man from Serco said.
“Thank you for being understanding.”
“I’m a father too. You’re going to love it.”
“Okay.”
“Are your wife and son still in hospital?”
“They are. They’ll be there all night without me.”
“Don’t worry. You have a good sleep while you can. You’ll need it!”
“Ha ha ha, thank you.”
“Enjoy it, pal. It’s the most beautiful thing in the world.”
“I will.”
I ended the call and stared at the phone. Serco was so friendly. I looked up and Dave was watching from the door to his room.
“Do I see a father before me?” he said.
We hugged in the living room. Then Allen appeared in the doorway and though I’d never met him before, the fact of my being a father overrode all social coolness and we hugged too. I stayed in the hug until I began to cry. I had cried more times in the last month than in the last decade. I was a crier now. The town crier.
“Are you okay?” Dave said.
“I’m fine. I’m happy.”
“You should be.”
“I am.”
I released Allen and went to the fridge and opened it, basked in the bleak light, the cool air calming my cheeks. Expecting Everything had recommended I do a big shop before the baby was born because I wouldn’t have time afterward. I’d gone to the posh grocer’s, where the staff are truly happy and the rough wooden walls recall an alpine lodge and they pack everything into big, impractical paper bags. I’d bought three gold-foil-embossed bottles of rosé, a black-legged chicken, pink fir potatoes, heirloom onions, and a huge Amalfi lemon, which I had sniffed, handsomely, while they told me how much it would all cost.
I picked the lemon out now. It was the same size as my son’s skull. I took big breaths off its nubbin, as though breathing Entonox. There was no need to think of Peter walking all the way back to the hospital and telling my wife what I had done with his car key, or worse, not telling her—just saying, Don’t worry, everything’s fine, Ray got home safe—and she knowing by his eyes that everything wasn’t fine, that I had done something irresponsible, but that he was protecting her from it because of how much he loved her.
I halved the lemon and shoved it into the chicken’s cavity. There was some blood on my knuckles from where I’d punched the dashboard. I put butter on my fingers and pushed it under the skin of the breasts. When you pay a lot of money for a chicken they let you keep the innards. Neck, heart, liver, all pressed together in a little vacuum-sealed bag. It occurred to me that I had never even seen the placenta. By the time I woke up, they had whisked it away to be incinerated. I thought of how the Igbo consider the placenta the deceased twin of the baby and conduct full funeral rites. I thought of the hospital’s narrow smokestack exhaling carbonized offcuts. I thought of how some hospitals have a special machine that converts the burning of human remains into energy to heat the wards. The overly warm room where my child was now sleeping on my wife.
I chopped onions to legitimize my crying. While I was doing that, Dave and Allen sat on the sofa and chatted too quietly for me to hear. Dave made Allen laugh and when he laughed he threw his head back and when his head went back it revealed his elegant neck and when Dave saw that he felt compelled to kiss it and make little clucky noises, which made Allen laugh again, so on and so on, the two of them carrying each other to paradise.
I washed the potatoes and dug out the eyes. The chicken was in the oven and every so often I used Dave’s baster to slurp up and redistribute the fat at the bottom of the roasting tray. To open the oven door and feel the rush of hot air fill my nostrils and throat with the smell of cooking flesh was almost too evocative. I was well into the second bottle of rosé by the time I brought the food out.
Allen had a wonderful sitting posture. He wore a pale blue blouse and a string of low-slung pearls, his hair tied back in a stubby, Japanese-style ponytail. Dave wore a vintage French work jacket. They were dressed for a celebration.
“Well, congratulations again!” Dave said, raising his drink.
“Thank you!” I said. “My son is the most gorgeous thing in the world!”
Our glasses chimed together, each one playing a note marginally different from the others, creating a discordant, woozy ringing, like after you’ve been punched. Even as they took a sip, they watched each other through the glass. Whatever they had, I wanted it.
>
“It’s nice to finally meet you, Allen,” I said.
“You too,” he said.
I whispered to him from behind my hand, “You’re every bit as fit as Dave promised.”
“Ray, keep it civil,” Dave said.
Allen laughed, touched Dave’s arm. “Let the man speak!” he said.
“Dave said you are the most exquisite creature in the world,” I said, “and he was right.”
Allen blushed and I was glad. I took a long drink and decided that I was discovering something new about myself.
“But Dave,” I said, “you’re also very attractive.”
“Take a deep breath, Ray,” Dave said.
“What?” I said. “Are heterosexual new fathers not allowed to appreciate male beauty?”
Allen covered his mouth as he laughed.
“Just try not to be creepy,” Dave said.
I gave them drumsticks because I wanted to see them eat with their hands. The chicken was unbelievably delicious. We ate it in silence, just the chewing noises and the smell. There was a pop as I opened the third bottle. Dave looked at me.
“Slow down,” he said.
“I don’t want to.”
Dave gave me a hard stare that forced me to get up and clear the table. I stacked our plates and cutlery and went to the other side of the room, the kitchenette, put the dishes in the sink. I washed up slowly, luxuriantly, not so much scrubbing the plates as letting my hand be guided by the contours. I was working hard to keep the mood going. I liked the little squeaky noises. I gently rubbed my crotch against the cupboard below the sink.
By the time I was done, they were putting their coats on.
“I think we’re going to go out for last orders,” Dave said.
“No,” I said. “Please don’t go. We’re having fun. There’s still most of a bottle of blush.”
“You have it.”
“Please don’t leave me alone,” I said.
“Come to the pub with us,” Allen said.
“I’d love to, but I’m not allowed outside after dark because of my”—I tried to say it in a light-hearted way—“criminal conviction.”
“Oh, man,” Allen said. “I forgot about that.”
Dave’s expression was blank and I sensed he had a plan to get away from me.
“Stay for just one more drink,” I said. “I’ll be completely normal.”
“Ha ha,” Allen said. “I don’t mind staying for one—”
“We’re meeting friends,” Dave said and he held the door open.
“Right,” I said. “You better go. Don’t worry if you want to bring your friends back later.”
Dave ignored me and went out into the hallway.
Even before the door clicked shut, I was drinking another glass of crisp, cool rosé. It was ten o’clock. That was lights-out time for my wife and son in the hospital. I paced around the edges of the flat, following the walls, the limits of my freedom. I thought about calling Garthene, but I knew she needed rest. I imagined Peter there, beyond visiting hours, watching my son breathe.
The wine ran out.
I got up, went through the cupboards and found some raki, a tourist’s bottle half-wrapped in wicker. I swigged it and let some run down my chest. I stood in Dave’s room, inhaling. I lay on the mattress on the floor. On his bedside table I saw another vial of the same drugs that had fallen from his pocket at the picnic. I put nine drops into the raki. I poured out two glasses and put them on the bedside table with a note: Hope you had fun. Here’s a nightcap xxx. Spiking my friends’ drinks with an aphrodisiac was a massive aphrodisiac.
I turned off the lights and lay in the corner of the lounge with my eyes closed, but I couldn’t sleep. When I opened my laptop, the browser’s tabs held well-lit medical videos of every kind of unexpected birth—ruptures, breeches, ineffective epidurals—accompanied by all kinds of glottal-stopped throat noises and elaborate breathing, so I slammed the laptop shut. I opened Dave’s computer and searched for hard gay porn. Most videos lacked discernible narrative, but I found some that were about straight men realizing the truth about themselves, how their lives were a lie and they would have to tell their families. The straight guys generally wore baseball caps. I owned one of those. My favorite video was about this cute boy called Kevin who was paying for his traditional church wedding by sucking all available cocks. His clients came all over his face and called it a bridal veil. I took my top off. I had most of an erection. It was clear I would have to tell Garthene, explain that all my life’s mistakes stemmed from the suppression of my true sexuality, but that I was coming to terms with it. I went into the bathroom, which was a wet room. I cleaned my teeth with Dave’s electric toothbrush, brushing hard, watching the foam build at the corners of my lips.
When Allen and Dave came in at four in the morning, I’d finished all the raki but for the two glasses on their bedside table and I was lying very still and naked in the dark of the lounge, concentrating. I heard them lower their voices in the hall. They stepped shoeless into Dave’s room, activating some of the floorboards. They made sympathetic noises as they read my note. They gently clinked their glasses, then shushed each other, then laughed at their inability to be shushed. I crawled on all fours toward the strip of light at the bottom of Dave’s door, brought my face close enough to see their feet on the other side, still in socks. I felt the presence of their hard bodies, their nonreproductive love-making. The slithery noise of a belt yanked through its loops before it dropped, half coiled, on the floor.
I stood up slowly, put my hand to the door and pushed. Light repainted me. I had no muscles, but some people are into that. The room was lit by a single lamp on the floor. Dave was sitting on the edge of the mattress, his head right back, neck gorgeously exposed, squeezing the vial of sex drugs into his eyeballs, flinching slightly as the drops hit home. It was possible that the vial contained eye drops, not stimulants, but, by this point, it didn’t matter. Allen was standing, topless, with a glass of raki in his hand.
I stepped into the doorway. “You can do whatever you want to me,” I said.
“Ray?” Allen said.
I took another step.
Dave shook his head and said: “Fuck’s sake.”
Allen slowly put down his glass of raki and, without taking his eyes off me, picked up a large red beach towel off the floor. He held it out wide and took careful steps toward me, matador-style, then wrapped the towel around my waist, tied it behind me, all without making any meaningful physical contact.
Dave blinked away moisture from his eyes.
Together, they laid me down in the middle of the mattress. I felt a waft of cool air when they lowered the sheet on top of me, as one might give decency to a corpse. They clicked off the light and I heard their footsteps retreat.
“Please don’t go,” I said.
“We’ll just be next door,” Allen said.
“Don’t leave me.”
There was a pause. “We’ll keep the door open,” Dave said.
“Just sleep beside me. You don’t need to worry. I won’t try anything.”
There was a long wait, a really long wait, enough time for them to communicate to each other with their eyes that this would soon be an amusing memory. I was their future anecdote, I knew that now.
I felt the mattress shift as they sat either side of me on the bed.
It was a mild night and they slept on top of the sheet, both in T-shirts and boxer shorts. It was a threesome, of sorts, and I completed some deep internal list and let it evaporate. I was surprised and impressed by how quickly their breathing thickened. Soon they were both snoring gently, their rhythms mismatched. I allowed myself to believe that we could live like this forever. That each night I could crawl into bed between them. Like a dog. Or a child.
PART FIVE
MEET BOBBY, MY PERFECT SON. HE HAS A COLD AND we are on a bus. He keeps inflating a small, snail-shaped bubble from his left nostril. And as it pops—it pops!—not only is it audible, the
moment of air escaping, but it changes form entirely, the snot, becoming this dense thing that could be used to seal a decree. I hereby declare my son perfect only to me.
Today is a hand-over day. Bobby and I have an hour remaining in each other’s company and I like to make sure that he is truly exhausted and tetchy before I return him to Garthene and Peter. He’s wearing a T-shirt I bought that says: Daddy doesn’t want your advice.
We get off at Leyton High Road and browse a shop that sells extortionate three-wheeled prams with disc brakes. “Hi, gorgeous,” says the beautiful shop assistant, speaking only to my nine-month-old son in his front-facing papoose. A father’s testosterone levels drop drastically after the birth of his first child. It’s a relief to be saved from my rudimentary cravings. I ask her how much the most expensive buggy costs—a design based on a 1950s Buick—then I nod, at the answer before saying that I’ll talk to my wife about it. Joke’s on her, I’m single.
After that, Bobby and I stand outside the window display of Mothercare. We come here every Thursday to see baby Lydia. Or baby Lucy. Whichever. She’s on a huge poster. Twenty times her actual size, raised to the weight and height of a grizzly bear, wearing workman’s dungarees.
“Once upon a time, your daddy was on a big poster, just like this,” I tell him. “But he didn’t get paid a penny.”
He swings an open palm at the poster in what I take for disgust. I bring our faces close to the window so that we can breathe condensation against the glass until the spoiled child disappears.
Around the corner from Peter and Garthene’s new flat, I sit on a bench in a park and help Bobby drink. Each week, Garthene hands me pouches of expressed and frozen breast milk. Nowadays, this is the most intimate part of our marriage. I like to feel the weight of them and, once they are defrosted, taste their surprising sweetness, each batch slightly different. Some are thin and watery but today’s has a clear band of cream on top.
“Hind milk,” I tell Bobby. “Hind milk.”
As Bobby drinks, I admire his scalp, which is covered in waxy, cornflaky scales. He has seborrheic dermatitis, or, to use the disturbing colloquial term, cradle cap. Nobody would wear caps if they resembled seborrheic dermatitis, yet I find it endearing. It takes effort to resist picking the flakes off and eating them. With a few drops of Garthene’s breast milk, I could make a tiny, emotional breakfast.