Eight Perfect Hours by Lia Louis
Chapter Nineteen
Two Wednesdays ago, as I arranged giant yellow sunflowers in the window of Charlie and Theo’s living room, Theo sidled up to me and asked me quietly if I’d look in on Charlie on Saturday.
‘I’m not going to be here,’ he said worriedly. ‘My brother Andreas and I are going to meet some new suppliers, in Normandy. And Charlie’ll be on her own from Friday to Sunday. She hasn’t been alone with the baby overnight and – well, I’m a bit worried. I wondered if you could …’
‘Go and see her?’
‘Would you? She stresses, I think, when she’s alone with her. I don’t want to arrange a babysitter for her, but perhaps you could just be passing …’
I nodded. ‘Got it,’ I’d told him, but there was a small part of me that was reluctant. Of course I’d do it. I’d do anything for Theo, and anything for Charlie. (Well. Besides go on a date with Jet with the torso from the reiki retreat.) But I feel reluctant because I don’t want her to feel I’m checking in on her. I’d texted her after I’d seen she wasn’t in her tattoo studio and she’d seemed quite taken aback. ‘I was probably out for lunch?’ she’d replied, and when I’d asked if she was OK, she’d said, ‘fine’ and I’d felt like I’d over-stepped somehow, said too much. That she felt I didn’t trust her.
‘I can text you, when I’ve spoken to her and I know they’re awake,’ Theo had said, and he did, half an hour ago. But Charlie isn’t answering the door. And I know she must be inside, because I can see the wheel of the pushchair through the sliver of glass next to the front door. I can’t imagine she’d go anywhere without it. Plus, the windows upstairs are open. But there’s no answer – no movement. I know the code to the little secure spare key safe. But that’s overstepping, isn’t it, letting myself in? Ed’s voice chimes in my brain, as if whispering into my ear. ‘Stop fretting over other people’s lives and worry about yours, Nell.’ I shake it away.
I knock again.
Nothing. But I keep hearing a mewing – a baby crying? It is. That’s Petal, her distant wails sailing through the open windows.
‘Charlie?’ I call pointlessly. ‘Charlie?’
I take out my phone, hover a thumb over Charlie’s name. She’s probably in the shower. Yes, that makes sense. Or maybe she can’t hear the phone over the crying. Petal does have one powerful set of pipes on her, for such a small, doughy little person. I go to press call, but the screen changes in my hand, and Mum’s name bursts onto the screen. Argh. I cancel it, and call Charlie instead. It rings off as Mum texts me. ‘Could you get shower gel?’ the first message says. Then ‘What time will you be home?’ and then ‘Roughly?’
I knock frantically. ‘Charlie? Charlie?’
The crying continues.
Sticky July heat zips up my back beneath my jacket which I only wore because rain was forecast, but it’s so warm. My cold hands sweat, my heart gets faster and faster. Mum texting. The sound of Petal wailing. No sign of Charlie. The relentless hot sun on the back of my head. It’s too much all of a sudden, and as my heart bangs and bangs, my hand, as if it has a mind of its own dives into my bag and pulls out my keys. I hold the square keyring in my hand, close my eyes, run a finger along one of its hard resin sides and breathe in as I do. I trace a finger along the next side and hold my breath, and running my finger on the next, I exhale. In, hold, out. It’s just a baby crying, just text messages. Nothing awful is happening. Nothing awful is going to happen. I’m here. Feet on ground. Heart beating.
After a moment, I open my eyes, but keep the keys in my hand, which shakes. It was stupid I’d thought, when a nurse taught me that breathing technique. I was twenty-two and shaking like a leaf. ‘Whenever you feel the panic coming on, find a square,’ she’d said. ‘A window, a poster, even a wall. Inhale as you trace your eyes along one side, hold your breath along the next, then exhale tracing the next side, and just keep going around that square, in, hold, out. No matter where you are, you can usually always find a square.’ The keyring has always been my square. I’d found it on the ground in town when I was seventeen – a sprig of heather set in clear resin. It was a day or two before the time capsule was buried and I remember because I contemplated having it as ‘my item’. It’s been years since I’ve had to pull it out to calm myself, and of course, now the worry creeps in, like fog. Why now? Am I going backwards? No. No.Charlie. I need to get hold of Charlie.
I knock on the door again now, knuckles stinging with how hard, and my tired heart slows.
‘Charlie?’ I curl my hand into a crescent on the frosted glass sliver, rest my forehead against it to see inside. Is that – is that a leg? No. No, it can’t be. It is. It is.
I glance at the key-box. I punch in the code Theo told me ages ago, in case of emergencies (Charlie’s birthday with an extra nine) and release the key. I turn it in the door and push it open. Immediately I’m hit with the sound of Petal’s hysterical screams.
Charlie looks up at me from the floor. Her skinny pink knees up to her chin, her face tear-streaked and grey. ‘Oh my God, Charlie, what’s happened?’
She looks at me, wide-eyed, her lips quivering.
I crouch to the ground, my shoes squeaking on the polished wooden floor. ‘Charlie? Charlie, talk to me.’
‘I can’t,’ she says, her voice wobbling.
‘Take some deep breaths––’
‘I can’t do it, Noelle,’ she says. ‘I can’t. I don’t think I can do this. I don’t love her. I don’t love my baby.’
Charlie looks at me over her black-rimmed glasses, the rings under her eyes the colour of bruises, the whites of her eyes a map of pink veins. Petal is still on my chest, a warm weight, and I lean down to smell her spiky tuft of hair. Petal always smells like soft towels and vanilla beans. Babies just do, don’t they, without even trying? I look up at Charlie from the floor, cross-legged. She’s in a ball, in the corner of her sofa, a blanket up to her chin, odd socks poking out of the bottom. She looks frail and small and totally defeated.
‘I don’t know what to do, Noelle,’ she says thickly. ‘I dread coming home to her.’ Charlie puts the tips of her fingers under her glasses and rubs at her swollen eyes. ‘God, what a fucking terrible thing to say.’
‘It’s not.’
‘All day, I feel like I’m fighting this battle. I get up in the morning and my first thought is “I can do this, of course I can, I’m a parent, I’m her mum.” And then she cries and instantly I think I can’t. I can’t do this. And I lie there sometimes, just listening to her, waiting for Theo because he’s always so good with her and – I just seem to make her worse––’
‘Oh, Charlie, you don’t make her worse.’
‘It feels like that, Elle.’
Petal snuffles on my chest. The flat is a mess, the coffee table strewn with muslin cloths and bottles and colic drops and pacifiers. An iPad still plays, quietly, with the sound of white noise. An artistic representation of a parent who’s tried everything.
‘Charlie, you’re exhausted. Tiredness is torture, it’s enough to make anyone feel like this––’
‘But what about everyone else, Noelle?’ Charlie cuts in, her large, tired eyes wide behind her glasses. ‘I see them. Every day, I see them pushing their strollers along and they look – fine. Like, totally fine. And they just cope. They just get on with it. They post beaming selfies of them and their kids on Instagram and they look so fucking happy.’
I reach out and put a hand on her cold, bony knee. ‘Charlie, nobody ever broadcasts the bad bits of their lives. You don’t ever sign onto Facebook or Instagram and see a photo of – I don’t know, someone shouting at their husband because he’s been a tosser. You just see the flowers he bought her as an apology and some sickly bloody hashtag––’
‘I spoke to this woman in the supermarket,’ Charlie barges in again, ‘and I said I was tired and finding it hard, and she said, “Ah, you wouldn’t change it though, would you?” and I had to of course say no. But I wanted to say yes. I wanted to say, actually,Brenda, I would. I want to go back sometimes. And I do, Noelle. I don’t want to be Charlie of right now. I want to be Charlie of then.’ Charlie bursts into sobs.
‘Oh, Char.’ I shift forward, put my arm on her back as she hides behind a tissue, hiccupping with tears. I stay like that for a while, one hand on Petal, her tiny strawberry-sized heart beating beneath my fingertips, and one hand on Charlie, shuddering beneath my hand.
‘I’m so sorry, Noelle,’ says Charlie.
‘No, don’t be sorry. Please don’t be sorry.’
Charlie looks at me then, doe-eyed, like someone about to confess to something. ‘Noelle, I can’t stop thinking about Daisy. About what you said, about what you think she’d have expected of me––’
‘Oh don’t listen to me––’
‘But what have I even done?’ She shrugs, looks around the messy flat, a thick stripe of sunlight streaming through a crack in the heavy drapes like a stage spotlight, lighting up the three of us. ‘My life has started. I’m in it. It’s not something I’m waiting for any more. I’m here. And whatever I wanted for my life, was it this? I doubt it, Noelle, I really do …’
‘Charlie, you’ve had a baby––’
‘Who hates me. And all I do all day is – oh, God, it’s so dull. I just … clock watch. Until I can go to work. Until Theo can take her. And everything in my mind is taken up by her and I’m not even with her all day. How awful is that? I change nappies and I’m worried. I hold her, and I’m worried. Has she had enough milk, is she going to be sick in her sleep and choke or, has she taken a fucking shit. All I talk and think about is shit sometimes. Shit shit shit.’
Petal wriggles, and I stand, start to sway like I see Theo do behind Buff’s counter. ‘Have you spoken to Theo?’
‘No,’ she says. ‘No, I can’t. How can I? I’ve started seeing someone.’ My heart stops. ‘A counsellor,’ she adds, and it starts beating again, relieved. Of course. Of course she wouldn’t have a bloody affair. ‘Once a week. I go during work time so Theo doesn’t know.’ So, that’s where she’s been going, that’s probably why she wasn’t in the shop, and where she was driving to the other day. ‘But he’ll want me to go to the GP and I’m – I’m worried they’ll put me on meds and the meds will numb me. And I already feel so numb, Noelle. And I’m scared. Of being that mother who needs pills to get through what’s supposed to be one of the best things that ever happened to her. I’m a shit mother.’
‘No, Charlie. No.’ I shake my head, cross the floor, and crouch on the carpet. ‘Charlie, you’re crying because you care about her. And that makes you a good parent. The best. You’re just exhausted. Plus, you can’t prepare for this, nobody knows how to do this at first.’
‘But Theo does.’
‘But it’s like anything – it’s like … bowling. You know?’ I say, nodding eagerly, dying for her to get on board with my weird analogy. ‘Two people who have never bowled before. You stick them in front of a lane, chuck them some balls and you’ll find one of them’s like you – strikes within minutes. Bowling prodigy. They can’t explain how, they just find it easy. And then you get people like me. Who chuck it and hit one pin and end up sitting on the side with a tray of nachos because it’s all too fucking hard. Some people find things easier, and some people find things harder. There’s no right or wrong. Look at Mum. Look at – me.’
Charlie gives a watery smile, then bursts into tears again. I hug her then, and Charlie puts her arms around me tightly, as if holding on for dear life. Sandwiched between us, Petal sleeps obliviously and Charlie’s tears dot her little head like rain drops.
‘I can’t tell Theo,’ sniffs Charlie. ‘That I can’t be this mum he thought I’d be. That I’m no good at this.’
I shake my head. ‘You don’t need to do or say anything right now. You need rest. Look, why don’t I take Petal out for a bit? Tell me what I need, when she’s due her next feed and we’ll – I dunno, we’ll go on a bit of an adventure or something. I’ve got things to get for Mum. Plus. I can take her to the park, show her the flowers, the ducks …’
‘No. No, I can’t––’
‘I insist on it. Have a bath, sleep. I’ll let myself in later.’
Charlie hesitates, unblinking, looking from me to her daughter, to the sun beckoning through the drapes. Then she swallows, swipes away a stray tear. ‘She’s due a feed in two hours. But can you wind her after every ounce or so? If you don’t give her the colic drops and burp her a lot, she gets so windy and her stomach hurts her.’
‘Of course.’
‘And if she gets too hungry she gets so angry, she can’t feed––’
‘Oh, same,’ I say and Charlie laughs through her tears, reaches up and touches Petal’s little fluffy head. ‘She’ll be fine, Charlie. And so will you. Trust me. Auntie Noelle’s got this.’