If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

Chapter 28

In the bedroom of number nineteen, the mother of the twins lies awake in bed. Her husband sleeps, undisturbed, and she lies still beside him, locked inside the knowledge of absolute pleasure, thinking about the times when this was not the way of things, the times when there was a shadow over their moments together, the shadow of a thing not happened, the shadow of the family thinking badly of them, of her.

She runs her fingers across the smallness of her stomach, and she remembers when this was a painful thing, a thing to be wept over.

A thing to be prayed over.

She pulls at the slight looseness of the skin around her stomach and hips, runs the side of her thumb along the tiny ridges and turns of the marks left by what was there, by the slow swell and stretch of her body.

She remembers the weight of it, the enormousness, she remembers the miracle of it, her body changing to make room for a new body, for two bodies.

And she thinks about the years of impossibility, the unblessed years, the word her husband’s mother used, saying it is a shame that you are unblessed.

And she didn’t mean shame the way some people say it, like as a small sadness, like as when they say it is a shame it is raining, this is not how she used the word, she used it in the old way, the word shame meaning humiliation and embarrassment and wrongness. Shame meaning lower your head and do not look at me you are a bringer of shame into my son’s household.

She didn’t speak quite this clearly, but the things she said meant these things, bitter, spiteful things, and she only said them when neither of the men were in the house.

It was some years ago now, but she still finds it difficult to find excuses for her, the things she said, the way she was.

Her husband makes a noise in his sleep, moves, turns towards her, lays a blind arm across her breast and nuzzles his mouth into her shoulder. She takes his hand and twists her fingers into his, and it looks the same as when their sons were born, when they were laid down toe to toe and they moved together and tangled their legs.

And when she thinks of that moment, of looking at her two newborn sons, her heart blossoms within her, just as it did at the time. She thinks of what it took for them to be born, of all the procedures and rituals, the medicines and the special diets, the calendars and thermometers and endless tests, blood tests and urine tests, and others.

She thinks of the shame of her husband, having to spill his seed into a plastic bottle, she is glad his mother did not know about that. He was quieter for a time after that, after the doctor had talked to him about that test, he said he felt like he was a smaller man, a lesser man. But she kissed him, and she held him, and she told him he was the same to her as he always was, and after a while he believed her and he talked to her about what the doctor had said, the advice he’d been given.

Even now, seven, eight years later, it makes her smile to remember the things they had to do to make the impossible more possible, to call down their blessings. They were things that seemed too ordinary, too mundane, it felt like looking for treasure by guessing six numbers.

She thinks of the things, she kisses her husband’s hand and smiles.

Warm baths, a run in the park, less fatty food.

Looser-fitting underwear.

It had seemed so useless, such an insignificant action in the face of barrenness, like a small glass of water in the middle of the desert, like knocking on a huge iron door with the knuckle of one finger. And so their hopes had not been raised, and they had continued with everything else, the charts and the calculations, the temperatures and the weighings, the estimations of the most suitable time. Fertile windows is what the doctor had said, she said you must estimate your fertile windows and make full use of them. It had seemed a funny expression to her, it made her think of a derelict cottage with ivy and moss growing through the cracked panes of glass.

But still, they estimated their fertile windows, and they made full use of them. She smiles, and her body swells with pleasure, with the memory of pleasure, and she turns slightly and presses herself against her husband. She remembers him once, feigning reluctance, saying my love do you think perhaps we are over-estimating these so-called fertile windows? And she had said yes, I think so, and they had made full use of it.

She looks at him now, his eyes closed, his mouth open, every detail of his face lit up by the sunlight flooding back into the room. His cheeks, rough and a little loose around the bones, the day’s stubble already itching through the skin, dark points peppered with silver. She thinks of the sound her palm would make as it brushed against those tiny hairs, a rasp like the grating of a nutmeg. She touches his skin, gently, she outlines his eyes and his lips, she follows the furrows of his forehead, pinches the thick hair of his eyebrows between her finger and thumb, tugs it into little tufts. He murmurs something, frowns slightly in his sleep, turns his body away a little, his face wriggling back towards her. She whispers a shush, and trails her middle finger across his forehead, down the length of his nose and onto his lips.

She thinks of his face in that moment, remembers the way it changed so suddenly when she told him, it was like the hugest firework on the darkest night, flashing and sparkling and exploding in front of her, his eyes stretched wide, his mouth lifted open and his teeth flashing white and gold, crackles and hisses of delight bursting out from somewhere deep inside him. Oh is it true? he said, oh really? oh is it true? oh praise be he said, oh I am so happy, oh thankyou thankyou he said, and she’d realised he was saying it to her so she’d laughed and said no thankyou, thankyou Mr Baggypants, and he’d laughed, and they’d held each other, and read the letter from the doctor over and over again, talking with joy and excitement long into the night, talking of who they would tell first and when they would tell them, talking of clothes and cots and prams, of decorating the box-room, of good sleep and good food, of extra money, of names. Talking for hours of a good name, for weeks and months as her body swelled and her steps slowed, as the sickness came and went and the excitement grew, as the visits from relatives and friends increased, always thinking of a name. Writing lists, trying out favourites, looking through books for new ideas.

She remembers those last few weeks, isolated in the house, surrounded by people trying to help, surrounded by stories of how it was for them, advice piling up around her like the gifts in the corner of the room.

She remembers how uncomfortable it was, that time, the pain of moving around, the difficulty of sleep, the overwhelming feeling of such bigness, wanting it to be over and yet so fearful of the finishing. She remembers her husband spreading his broad hands across her belly, thumb against thumb and his little fingers not stretching anywhere near her hip bones. How does it feel he’d said, how does it feel to be so strange and new? and she’d said I feel like a mammal and he’d laughed and said but we are, humans are mammals you know. And she’d said no, I don’t mean, and been unable to explain what she did mean, that she felt like a damn elephant, a whale, huge and stately and balloon-like but also she meant not like a human at all, like an animal, locked into a process much bigger than herself, more than one human being, she meant that she felt part of a species, part of something that nature was doing and she had no control of.

The night before it happened, he’d spread his hands again, pressed them palm flat to her swollen skin, a skin so stretched that it seemed translucent, held his hands there and said my God this is going to be a hell of a big baby.

She remembers him saying this, she smiles and she shakes her head, she wonders how she could have had no idea, how neither of t

hem could have had the thought even pass through their minds.

She remembers his awestruck idiocy when he found out, when it was over and he was brought into the room and all he could do was look at her and say my God there is two of them.

She touches his lips with one finger again, stroking the knuckle against the chapped edges of his upper and lower lip, he moves his mouth, his eyelids lift a little, like papers rustling in a light breeze. She whispers wake up, she leans her face across to kiss his mouth, she rolls the weight of her body onto him, feeling the warmth of the sun on her back, moving her head so that her shadow bounces in and out of his eyes. He wakes up, he opens his eyes and she spreads her fingers flat across his chest, moving her hips so that his belly rolls a little from side to side.

She says have you slept enough now, are you rested?

She says the house is still empty you know.