You needed a license to drive a car, but with a baby you were expected to pick it up as you went along. Becoming a parent was like trying to build a boat while you were at sea.
What the hospital did give us was a thin booklet in a blue plastic binder with several cartoons to the page, each starring two stick-figure parents. There were stick-figure parents tentatively dipping their angular elbows into baths or trying out the temperature of milk on the back of their stick hands. There was a feeding timetable, tips on the transfer from formula to solids and, or so I seem to recall, a list of common rashes. But there was definitely no word on how to prepare your child for the fact of your own death.
As I look down at Em’s face, at once radiant and perplexed, I get that breathless feeling you get every so often as a mother, the pressure of hundreds of millions of mothers before you, all fighting tears as the child poses the most ancient of questions.
“Are you going to die, Mummy?”
“One day I will. But not for a very very long time.”
“How long?”
“Not for as long as you need a mummy.”
“How long?”
“Not until you’re a mummy yourself. Quick now, Em. Eyes shut.”
“Mu-um?”
“Go to sleep, love. Sleep now. Exciting day tomorrow.”
Well, did I handle it right? Is that how you tell them? Is it?
SUNDAY, 3:14 P.M. Em and I together on the Circus Roller Coaster, our screams riding shotgun with our stomachs. I close my eyes and take a Polaroid for my memory: I am having fun with my wonderful child. Her hair in the wind, her hand tight in mine. But even here I can’t escape: there’s something about this ride that says work. Equity markets going up, up, up, then whump! the trapdoor in your belly opens.
Oh, Kate, you stupid, stupid, unbelievably brainless woman…. God, no…. Forgot to place trades on Thursday. Needed to sell 5 percent of fund — Edwin Morgan Forster house policy is to have more cash, less equities with the markets melting down. As we crest the hill, northern France and my entire career flash before my eyes. EMF already has a recruitment freeze. Redundancies next. And who will be prime candidate? Step forward the fund manager who forgot to sell her clients’ shares because she was buying chocolate bloody Easter ducklings in Thorntons.
“I’m sacked.”
“What?” Richard is there to meet us as we clamber out of the little train.
“I’m fired. I forgot. I was trying to remember everything and I forgot.”
“Katie, slow down. Just tell me slowly.”
“Daddy, why is Mummy crying?”
“Mummy’s not crying,” says Paula, who has appeared out of the crowd and picked Emily up. “Mummy’s having such a great time she laughed till the tears fell out by themselves. All right, who wants to get a crepe? Do you want jam or lemon? I’m having jam.
“OK if I take them, Kate?” Paula says quickly. And I nod because, obviously, I can’t speak. And with Ben in the buggy and Emily skipping along beside her, Paula takes the children away. How would I manage without her?
4:40 P.M. Calmer now. The calm of the condemned woman. Absolutely nothing to be done. It’s a Bank Holiday tomorrow; can’t sell anything till Tuesday. No use spoiling the rest of our trip. I am climbing out of one of the Mad Hatter’s Dancing Teacups when I notice a man in the queue trying to place me. It’s Martin, an old boyfriend. You know that weird sensation seeing an ex can induce? I feel it now. The ghost of a passion, a silk handkerchief being pulled out of the heart. I turn away quickly and secure Ben’s already tight buggy straps.
a. Am wearing yellow plastic rain poncho, purchased from Disneyland Universal Stores, which is decorated with Mickey Mouse logo and smells of lightly rolled condom.
b. My hair, dried this morning with gnat’s buzz of a hair dryer in the hotel bathroom, lies basted to my skull like threadbare helmet of old lady in retirement home.
c. Am about to be fired, therefore poorly placed to show how sensationally well my life has gone without him.
a. He doesn’t recognize me. He doesn’t even recognize me. Am hideously changed and shriveled and no longer desirable to man once sexually obsessed with me.
Across the pastel blur of spinning teacups, I meet the eyes of the man. He smiles at me. It’s not Martin.
8:58 P.M. We take the Eurostar home to London. Ben is lying on his back across me. His eyelashes are long, his hands still chubby baby hands; the dimples along the knuckle are like air bubbles in batter. When he’s big, I won’t be able to tell him how much I loved his hands. Maybe I won’t remember. I stretch to reach my laptop, but baby turns and sighs as if to wake. Don’t want to check e-mail, anyway: probably nuclear bollocking from Rod and gloating “commiserations” from the ghastly Guy. Will prepare for my fate as penniless stay-at-home mother, purchase penitential Gap sweatshirts in khaki, try to remember the words to “Eency Weency Spider.”
So you see that was why I didn’t pick up the e-mail from Rod that evening, the one that told me everything was OK. The one that told me things were much much better than OK.
To: Kate Reddy
From: Rod Task
Kate, WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU? Fed cut the rate again. Rest of team liquid up to their necks. You the only one who didn’t sell. What’s your secret, genius? Are you shagging Greenspan?
Push the old guy off you and come back. Buy you a beer.
Cheers, Rod
24 Kate Triumphant
TUESDAY, 9:27 A.M. OFFICES OF EDWIN MORGAN FORSTER. Hallelujah! I am a guru. My superb market timing — otherwise known as forgetting to place several trades and being saved by a surprise rate cut — has granted me temporary office goddess status. I hang around at the coffee machine receiving tributes from grudgingly awed colleagues.
“You must be the only person to have anticipated the Fed cut and the market recovery, Kate,” marvels Dandruff Gavin. I compose my features into what I hope is an impersonation of humility and quiet pride.
“Shit, I was 6 percent liquid. That cost us a few basis points,” groans pink-faced Ian. “And Brian was 15 percent liquid. That’s another nail in his coffin, poor sod.” I nod in sympathetic condescension and say casually, “I only had 1 percent cash, actually.” Tasting success, enjoying its champagne tang on my tongue.
Chris Bunce walks past on the way to the Gents and can hardly bear to meet my eye. Momo comes up and gives me a dry little kiss which lands on my cheek around the same time that Guy’s dagger look harpoons into my shoulder blades. Across the office, I see Robin Cooper-Clark approaching with an amused smile as if he were a bishop and I a jammy young curate.
“And on the third day she rose again,” says Robin. “Well, well, Miss Reddy, who says Easter is drained of all meaning?”
He knows. He knows. Of course, he bloody knows. Brightest man in the solar system.
“I was extremely fortunate, Robin. Alan Greenspan rolled the rock from the tomb.”
“You were very fortunate, Kate, and you’re very good. Good people deserve their good fortune. By the way, did Rod tell you we need you to go to Frankfurt?”
When I sit down at my desk, am so buoyant I practically don’t need a chair. Scan the currencies, check the markets, then call up my e-mails. Smile when I see that at the top of the Inbox are two from my dearest friends.