Anne said, “Just promise me you’ll be careful. You always see the good in people, Ellen, which is all very adorable but also naïve.”
Ellen smiled at her. “I must get that adorable tendency from my father.”
Anne didn’t smile back. “You certainly didn’t get it from me.”
“Too right,” said Phillipa and giggled so hard she snorted.
I couldn’t decide where to wait for them.
Patrick’s place or hers. I knew it would depend on what they were doing with Jack for the night. Mostly Patrick’s mum seems to go over to his place and mind Jack, but sometimes Jack goes to her place, and I guess he stays in their spare room. It’s not very fair to Maureen. I remember she used to get exhausted when we left him with her as a toddler. He had her wrapped around his little finger. Although of course it would be different now that he’s eight. I guess he probably just does his own thing—watches TV or whatever. I hope Patrick doesn’t let him watch too much TV. I hope he reads. He used to love his books. I remember once I decided to see how many times I could read him The Very Hungry Caterpillar before he got sick of it. I had to give up after I’d read it to him fifteen times. Every time I finished he’d say “Again?” with the same enthusiasm. I can still see his little fat, flushed cheeks as he sat there on my lap in his red Thomas the Tank Engine pajamas, his lips pursed in concentration as he poked his fingers through the holes where the caterpillar had bitten through the apples.
I could have babysat Jack tonight, while Patrick and Ellen went wherever they went. That would have been fine. “Bye!” I could have said cheerily, like a teenage babysitter snuggled up on the couch with Jack under a duvet, sharing a bag of chips.
Maybe I should text Patrick and offer. Ha ha.
I could have been babysitting for years. I sometimes think that would have made all the difference—if Patrick hadn’t decided to rip Jack out of my life, my little boy, my darling little boy.
I remember one of the mothers I knew from Jack’s preschool ringing me up when she heard and saying, “He can’t do this to you, Saskia. It’s got to be illegal. You must have rights. You’re Jack’s mother.”
Except I wasn’t his real mother. Just his dad’s girlfriend. What court would care about that? A relationship that lasted three years. I didn’t even officially live with them for the first year. Not all that long.
Long enough to see him get out of nappies, learn to swim and tell knock knock jokes and use a knife and fork. Long enough for his hair to go from curly to straight. Long enough for him to call for me whenever he had a bad dream. Me. Not Daddy. He always called for me.
A sudden shriek slicing through my sleep and I’d be halfway down the hallway before I even woke up properly. I remember once I went to him and he was sitting up in bed rubbing his eyes and sobbing his heart out. “I just wanted to blow out the candles!” he said to me. And I said, “It’s OK, you can blow them out,” and held out an imaginary cake. He puffed out his cheeks and blew, and that was it, problem solved; he smiled at me with his eyes still full of tears and then put his head back on the pillow and fell straight asleep. Patrick didn’t know anything about it until the next day.
I guess Jack’s nightmares aren’t so sweet and simple these days.
This is the thing. When do you cross the line from babysitter to mother? If you look after a child for a night, you obviously don’t suddenly become his mother just because you bathed him and fed him for a few hours. The same goes for a week. Or a month. But what about after a year? Two years? Three years? Is there some point where you cross an invisible line? Or is there no line except the legal one, the one you sign on the adoption papers? Foster children can be claimed back by their real parents at any time, even after years.
I should have adopted Jack. That was my mistake.
But it never even occurred to me.
I saw looking after Jack as a privilege, a gift. It was just another wonderful part of being in a relationship with Patrick.
So when he broke up with me, I knew that I’d have to lose Jack like I’d have to lose everything else that I loved about Patrick, like the veiny tops of his hands, I loved his hands; and his handwriting, he had such beautiful handwriting for a man; and the particular way he smiled at me after sex; and his singing, he sang country music songs quietly to himself when he did stuff around the house. I hate country music, but I loved hearing that quiet singing. It was the sound track to my life.
I never found out if I did have rights to Jack. Maybe I did.
But I went into shock when Patrick said he didn’t love me anymore.
I couldn’t get out of bed. I couldn’t talk. Couldn’t eat. It was like I’d been hit with a terrible illness. It was like a bomb had exploded through my life, shattering everything I thought I knew.
If Patrick had just let me see Jack on weekends. Like a divorced dad. That might have been enough.
Maybe then I wouldn’t be doing this thing, this whatever it is, that I cannot seem to stop doing no matter how hard I try. And I have tried. I have. I never understood alcoholics or gambling addicts before. Just stop it, I always thought when I heard about somebody wrecking their life because of a stupid addiction. But now I get it. It’s like telling someone to stop breathing. Just stop breathing and you’ll get your life back on track. So you hold your breath for as long as you can, but it doesn’t take long before you’re gasping for air. I know it’s humiliating. I know I’m pathetic. I don’t care. It’s just not physically possible to stop.
And so I sat there in my car outside Ellen’s house. She told me her grandmother left it to her when she died, which sort of sums up the differences between us. My grandmother left me a fruit bowl. I had the window down and I could hear the sounds of the waves breaking on the beach. That’s what Ellen must hear when she goes to sleep. That’s what Patrick must hear when he stays over.
I fell asleep, eventually, and when I awoke my back had seized up and the sun was rising and I couldn’t see Patrick’s car. So that meant they’d stayed at his place.
I thought of them asleep in the bed that was once mine, probably lying on sheets that I’d chosen, and I wondered if he was reaching out for her now in the dawn light, running a fingertip so delicately down her arm she wasn’t sure if she was dreaming it. Dreamy, half-asleep lovemaking at dawn was his thing.