Paper Chains (11 page)

Ah well, at least she’s getting out, having fun. That’ll be good for her.

Still, he was surprised that she hadn’t mentioned her plans to him that morning.

The rest of his day was absolutely packed. Staff meeting including cake for someone’s birthday. A visit to the warehouse. Going through the finances with their external accountant. It was after five by the time Liam thought he could really do with another coffee. He still had more work to do, approvals of some new marketing emails and revising last quarter’s sales figures.

He headed for the door and then paused to call out to his sales manager who was working late tonight too. ‘You need a coffee, Mick?’

‘You going downstairs, mate?’ Mick called back.

‘Yeah, just quickly.’

‘What’s wrong with the new coffee machine Laurie ordered in?’

‘What’s with the fucking inquisition? You want a coffee or not?’

‘Nah I’m good.’ Mick turned back to his computer, nonplussed by his boss’s outburst.

Liam walked briskly around the corner to the coffee shop. When he stepped inside his eyes briefly swept across the counter. It was staffed by two young guys; the blonde girl must have finished her shift already. He was surprised to note a slight feeling of disappointment that she wasn’t there. But he shook it off – obviously he was just looking for a friendly face.

It was Friday afternoon and Hannah had run late to pick Gracie up from preschool. The teacher had been unimpressed to say the least, and Hannah had the feeling she hadn’t bought her made-up excuse that she was late due to a doctor’s appointment for Ethan that had run over time. As Hannah negotiated her way back home through the peak-hour traffic, she thought back to their life before they had had Ethan. They used to live in Liam’s tiny apartment in Leichhardt together. It was a tight squeeze when Gracie was born, but it was cosy and it worked. Liam made it home from the city each night within twenty-five minutes. When Gracie was a cute, gurgling baby, Hannah would take her for walks in her stroller to Norton Street. She made friends with a sweet old Turkish woman who ran a coffee shop there and the woman would scoop Gracie out of the stroller if she cried and walk her around the café singing lullabies to her while Hannah finished her cappuccino. They had dinner out at one of the many restaurants there almost every weekend and got to know most of the waiters and waitresses. Hannah had felt at home on that street.

And then they found out she was pregnant. Liam was ecstatic – he had been trying to convince Hannah that it was time to start trying for a second baby for months. Hannah had been more apprehensive; she had only just returned to work, two days a week as an assistant at a small but friendly law firm in Rozelle – nice and close to their apartment. She had been enjoying using her brain again, didn’t want to have to quit so soon.

Liam immediately began talking about moving. It would make more sense to move further out west, he suggested, where they could afford a bigger place, with a back yard for the kids. Sure, his travel time would triple – but he didn’t mind; they simply couldn’t fit in that apartment as a family of four. Hannah hadn’t really been prepared for how different her life would become. The house was lovely: spacious and bright. But she felt cut off from the world. The nearest shops were just a grocery store and a milk bar; no coffee shops with sweet old ladies to chat to. No restaurants to walk to on a summer’s night. She felt as though she’d left her family behind in Leichhardt and Liam left for work in the morning at the crack of dawn and returned home each night after seven – if not later. Although she was used to his late arrival home now, she needed that extra time to get the house under control, to show him that she was coping – even if she knew deep down that something really wrong was going on with her . . .

‘Mummy, Mummy, Mummy, MUMMY!!’

Gracie’s voice cut through Hannah’s reminiscing and she almost jumped in her seat. How long had Gracie been yelling at her? She glanced up into the rear-view mirror. ‘Yes, honey?’

‘Look what I can do with my arms.’

‘Um, I’m sorry, Gracie, I can’t really look properly at the moment. Mummy has to concentrate on the road.’

‘Yes but look, I can stretch them right up like this. When we’re in the car and I’m all strapped in I can’t do that. I can’t reach that far. But look how far I can go now. I can touch up to the roof and the sky.’

‘Hang on, what do you mean,
when
you’re strapped in. You’re strapped in now . . . aren’t you?’ Hannah felt her stomach sway. Had she forgotten to do up Gracie’s seatbelt? She tried to twist around to take a look.

‘No. Not today. Today my arms are free and I can
dance
in the car!’

‘SHIT!’ Hannah hit the indicator and pulled over to the side of the road. Once they were safely stopped, she sat still for a minute, breathing fast. She couldn’t believe she had forgotten to do up the buckles on Gracie’s belt. What had she been thinking?

While Hannah did up the straps, Gracie said happily, ‘You said we could stop at the shops today.’

‘Did I?’ Hannah asked distractedly. Her mind was on Gracie’s small figure; she was imagining her tiny body being tossed around the car like a rag doll.
Oh God, imagine if we’d had an accident.
‘Umm, I don’t remember that. Grace, we’re already past the shops, baby; maybe we could go tomorrow instead? It’s really very late, in fact it’s already your dinner time.’

Gracie’s tantrum lasted all the way home. But Hannah wasn’t listening. She was thinking about what might have been. She hadn’t had a car accident for a long time now. In fact, she’d only had one in her entire life. It was when she was still on her P plates and it was just a small one. She had run into the back of another car at a set of lights. She had been checking her blind spot to change lanes. The owner of the car she had hit had been freakishly nice about it. She wouldn’t even take Hannah’s details, explaining that her car was so old and dented that another scratch didn’t really matter. Hannah remembered thinking at the time that this was about karma. That she was going to have to make sure she did the same for someone else one day. Although she sort of didn’t want to; after all, her car was quite nice, and wasn’t it pretty expensive to get a dent in your car repaired, even if it did seem small?

But that was beside the point. The point was – she must be due for another car crash by now. That was how these things worked. The longer you went without having an accident, the closer you came to having one. She must have been right on the verge of one. And here she was, forgetting to strap in her three year old. The thought of that delicate body flying up and hitting the roof of the car, or being crushed by torn metal, made bile creep up her oesophagus.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Liam opened his eyes slowly and lay still, enjoying the fact that it was Saturday morning. That it was 8 am instead of 5. He rolled over and reached out his hand to stroke Hannah’s arm suggestively.

‘You know we can’t have sex yet, right?’ Hannah’s voice sounded hard and she remained facing the opposite wall.

‘I know,’ Liam said quickly. ‘I was just . . . trying to be affectionate.’

He paused before asking, ‘What do you want to do today?’

Hannah’s shoulder shrugged under his touch.

‘Hey, you know what I’ve been thinking? What if I invite my parents to come up and stay for a few days? They’re desperate to meet Ethan and see Gracie again. And then maybe, while they’re here, they could look after the kids one night while we have dinner out or something?’

‘Sure, sounds good.’ Hannah still hadn’t turned to face him.

‘Han,’ he said slowly, ‘is everything okay? Are you annoyed with me or something?’

‘Just tired,’ came back the clipped voice.

Ethan began to cry from the other room then. ‘I’ll get him for you,’ Liam began, but Hannah had already thrown back the covers and sat up. ‘It’s okay,’ she said as she stood and left the room.

Liam lay back on the pillow and frowned. She seemed to be coping so well with the new baby – so why was she in such a bad mood?

Hannah sat in the darkness of the living room, the television quietly flickering at her as she gave Ethan his 3 am feed. She was mentally going over everything that needed to be done before her parents-in-law arrived. When Liam had suggested that his parents should come and stay for a few days, her reaction had been mixed. She adored Liam’s parents: Trish was like a cuddly Koala bear, while his dad, Nick, was the typical Maltese father-in-law, always telling Hannah she was too thin, offering them more food, more money, a house! But as much as Hannah loved them, the thought of having them come to stay – of having them see what her day-to-day life with the children was like – was terrifying. Surely Trish, the archetypal, perfect mother, would see right through Hannah’s charade, would instantly discover that she was a fraud as a mother. Perhaps she would want to whisk the children away at once?

As she chanted her way through her list of things to do, she noticed that her breathing was beginning to quicken again.

Make up spare bedroom.

Vacuum . . . everywhere.

Tidy the garden. Must get Liam to mow the lawns as well.

Grocery shopping, pantry is looking really bare at the moment. Get some of those wafer biscuits that Nick loves.

Her hands were becoming sweaty; she shifted them and tried to wipe them dry on Ethan’s wrap. The movement disturbed him and he stopped sucking for a moment, his dark eyes darting up to look at her. She froze.
Please don’t come off, Ethan, let’s just get this feed done so I can get back to bed.
He returned to sucking.

Change Ethan’s cot sheets . . . haven’t changed them since he moved to the cot from the bassinette and that’s been a few weeks now. Can’t have Trish thinking I put the baby to bed on dirty sheets.

Washing! Oh my goodness there is so much washing to do. I’ve got to make sure I catch up on that before they get here.

Hang on, do we have enough pillows for all of us? Right. Check pillows – add that to the list.

Her breathing increased again.
There’s too much
, she thought
. Far too much to do
. She kept discovering new things that needed to be done and each time a new task was added to the list, she was sure something else was slipping off at the other end. Her world was tilting dangerously sideways. The tips of her fingers tingled. She didn’t notice that she had started to shake until Ethan suddenly unlatched himself, opened his mouth and began to yell.

Please don’t cry so loudly, baby.

She lifted him up and over her shoulder, rubbing his back, trying her best to calm him down. Eventually the sobbing subsided and she returned him to her lap.
Have you fed enough? Can we go back to bed yet? Which side did you start on, have we done both sides or just one? Dammit!
Why was it so hard for her brain to keep track of these simple things?
Her chest began to feel tight and her breath started to quicken yet again. Meanwhile Ethan had closed his eyes and was beginning to breathe deeply.
You must be finished then
, she decided. And she crept down the hall to place him back in his cot. Once he was wrapped up she padded back to the kitchen, still feeling as though the air in the house seemed to be in short supply for some reason. Why couldn’t she seem to fill her lungs properly? Why was the kitchen so off balance? She tried to steady her eyes on the smoothness of the kitchen bench, but it wouldn’t work. Shouldn’t that bowl of fruit be sliding down the slippery slope and onto the floor right now? Apples bouncing and rolling, banana peel splitting. Shouldn’t the fridge be crushing her right now? How is it still standing at that tremendous angle?

She snatched up a piece of paper and a pen and began to write down everything that came to mind that needed to be completed over the next few days. Seeing each new item, right there in black ink, unable to fade away from her memory, soothed her. Her breathing slowed and the tightness in her chest slowly unravelled and vanished. The kitchen began to right itself and the fridge stopped looming over her, settling back on its haunches, no longer a predatory creature.
I can do this. As long as it’s all written down, I can get it done.
Her list completed, she headed to the pantry, moved boxes of breakfast cereals aside and reached to the back for her new supply of chocolate. She was ravenous; she supposed she had forgotten to really eat anything that day again. She stood at the cupboard and methodically ate her way through two Mars bars and a king-size Twirl. Towards the end she started to feel slightly sick, but she kept eating anyway, a strange feeling of pleasurable defiance creeping over her as she did.

A few days later, Hannah was running her eyes over her to-do list, making sure everything was set for when Liam arrived home from the airport with his parents in tow. Her eyes caught sight of the one item she hadn’t yet crossed off: change Ethan’s cot sheets. For some inane reason it had been so important to her to get everything on that list done before they arrived. And really, how hard was it to change a set of cot sheets, for goodness sake? Why hadn’t she just found a spare moment to do it? What was wrong with her? Ethan was on the rug in the living room just last night, having some tummy time – that would have been the perfect opportunity to have got it done. But what was she doing? She was sitting on the couch, just
watching
him. God, she was so lazy. Lazy and empty in fact. Because the reason she had been sitting there watching him was because she had been waiting for some kind of emotion to hit. Some remote feeling of affection for the cute little baby that was wriggling around on the floor at her feet, examining his own fingers as though they were amazing little creatures on the ends of his hands. She had sat there and watched him and become acutely aware of the fact that she was dead inside. That her limbs were logs of rotting wood. That her torso was a hollow trunk. And she had accepted this fact and simply shrugged. Oh well, I have no soul. Wonder what I should cook for dinner tonight. The realisation was kind of a relief really. Now she could stop trying to figure out why she wasn’t gushing over her adorable new baby. She could just get on with things instead.

The visit from Trish and Nick ended up being, for the most part, fairly uneventful. Hannah simply played the part of the loving mother. She was a machine. She cooked, she cleaned, she fed her baby, she played with Gracie, she rocked Ethan in her arms and pretended to look down at him with dewy, loving eyes – but behind her eyes was that empty, dark space.

The one day that her world threatened to become unstuck, when she almost dropped her cool, calm and together façade was when Trish offered to take care of the kids while Hannah took a walk to the store around the corner to pick up a few things. The problem came when she arrived back home. As she was putting away the few groceries in the kitchen, she was listening to Trish chatting away about what they’d been doing while she was gone.

‘. . . and we played with Ethan together, didn’t we, Gracie? We did round and round the garden and watched him gurgle and grin at us. And then Ethan was starting to seem tired so he went down for a nap and Gracie and I have been doing some finger painting, haven’t we, sweetheart?’

Hannah was smiling politely as she listened to the blow-by-blow description of each thing her mother-in-law and children had done while she had been gone for all of twenty minutes and thinking to herself,
That’s great, Trish, but I don’t really care. I know you think that I do. Because most mums do care. Most mummies want to know everything their gorgeous little monkeys have been up to for every second of the day that they’re out of their sight. But nope, not me. You could be telling me you just took them out the back for a toke on a joint or up the road to the pub for a drink and a game on the pokies, but I’d still just smile and nod because I’m not really listening because I don’t really care
. She was just about to start reprimanding herself for thinking such awful things when something that Trish said made her pay attention and forget all of those horrifying scenarios that had been playing through her mind.

‘. . . Oh and I changed Ethan’s cot sheets for you. I noticed there was just a couple of little sickie stains on them and I thought you might like some fresh sheets in there for him. I popped the old ones in the machine with a few other things I could find. You don’t mind, do you?’

Hannah’s skin began to tingle unpleasantly. How had this woman come into her home and managed to do that one simple task? That one thing that she had been failing to do for the last couple of weeks – when she had been left alone for just twenty minutes?

Why are you reacting like this?
she thought crossly.
Why does it matter that Trish was the one to do it? You wanted it done, and now it’s done.
But she couldn’t seem to make herself see clearly. Instead her thoughts were curdling and her hands were starting to tremble. An odd sort of feeling was rising up in her chest. She seemed to be swinging between two fierce desires. On the one hand she wanted to throw herself into Trish’s arms, to thank her for doing that one thing that had been hanging over her head, to cry against her chest and let her be the mother that she no longer had. But on the other hand she felt ready to fly into a rage. She wanted to scream at Trish for interfering. She wanted to yell at her, ‘
I
was going to get that done. You didn’t
need
to do it. You shouldn’t have taken that one thing away from me. Now I’ll never be able to prove to myself that I could have got it done. I’ll never be able to prove that I’m not a failure!’ But deep down underneath it all, a voice was saying quietly, ‘But you are a failure. And you already know it. Those thoughts you were having earlier prove that. You don’t even seem to love your children any more. Either of them.’ And then suddenly a thought struck her, with complete clarity:
You don’t even
want
those children any
more.

‘Are you all right, dear? You look a bit pale.’ Trish’s voice brought Hannah hurtling back to reality. Her whole body was shaking. She turned to look at Trish, pasted a smile on her face and said quickly, ‘Actually, I forgot one thing at the shops. Butter! Would you believe it? That was the thing I went out for in the first place, wasn’t it? Do you mind? I’ll just . . .’ And without waiting for a response she rushed back out through the living room, ignoring the look of concern on Trish’s face and slamming the front door behind her. Then she began to run up the street.