The Displaced Nation

My mother is inexhaustible. She looked so old when she arrived here a week ago, but not any more. She has a new lease of life. Unsurprising, really – she’s taken all my energy instead and become a life-sucking parasite who thrives on attention and entertainment.

It’s the first time I’ve met this version of her, but evidently this is my mother when my dad isn’t around. No wonder she always looks so downcast when she’s with him; inside that whalebone-corseted shell is a Scarlett O’Hara bursting to get out. Fiddle-de-dee.

I keep wondering if she was like this forty years ago, when they first met, and what happened to change her. Or has she just recently realised that life is passing her by while she’s nodding and kowtowing to my dad?

The first few days she was here, all I heard was ‘I didn’t come to America for [insert everyday activity she does at home without thinking about it twice]’. That included drinking instant coffee, watching TV, cooking, or even going to the supermarket. I thought she might be interested in going to Stop and Shop, because it’s so different from Sainsbury’s, but no. Apparently, “Once you’ve seen one loaf of bread, you’ve seen them all” although if that’s the case, I’m mystified why she only shops at Sainsbury’s and refuses to set foot in a Morrison’s.

Of course, her everyday activities don’t now include visits to the obstetrician’s office. Oh no. Those are classified as “Novelty Voyeuristic Entertainment” and top of her Things To Do In New England. My life, to my mother, is just another reality TV show. “At Home With The Patrickashians.”

I’m on weekly visits with Dr. Gallagher now — have been for some time, since it’s twins — and these appointments are never when Jack is at nursery. Dr. Gallagher, bless him, likes long lunch hours and eighteen holes of golf on a regular basis. So I’d been looking forward to Mum being able to babysit Jack while I’m prodded around.

“Why don’t you stay here and look after him for me,” I said on her fourth day, as Oliver waited for me outside in the car. “I’ll be less than an hour, and it’s so much quicker if just Oliver and I go.”

“Don’t be so silly! Ante-natal appointments take much longer than that. I remember when I was expecting you, I’d be at that hospital all afternoon.”

I told her that this wasn’t the NHS in the 1970s, and American obstetricians need to see as many patients as possible so they can cover their insurance premiums and do valuable networking on the golf course, but she wasn’t having it.

“Jack hardly knows me these days,” she said. She likes to trot out the guilt trip card, I’ve noticed. “I’m sure he won’t want to stay with a stranger all afternoon.”

I sighed. “I’ll take Jack with me, then.”

“And leave me all on my own, here? I didn’t come all the way to America to–”

So we had to make it a family outing to Dr Gallagher’s, and it was only with difficulty that Oliver restrained her from barging into the examining room with us. I had to have an urgent word with the nurse and get her to tell Mum that family members other than spouses weren’t allowed.

Mum started to say that if she’d wanted to sit in a doctor’s waiting room, she could have done that in her own GP’s surgery.

“Tell you what,” Oliver said, as the nurse gently ushered Mum and Jack back towards the waiting room, “you can pay the monthly bill of $500 at reception. You don’t get to do that at the GP’s back home.”

She still protested, however, mildly grumbling, so Oliver stayed with her to make sure she behaved.

The nurse came back, shut the door of the exam room, and fastened the velcro strap round my right arm to take my blood pressure.

“It’s a bit high,” she remarked, after she grudgingly returned the blood supply to my fingers.

“That’s hardly bloody surprising, is it?” I jerked my head towards the door. “Anyone’s blood pressure would be up if they had that, 24/7. She was supposed to be coming to give me a rest, not give me a stroke.”

The nurse laughed after a couple of seconds in that uncertain “Oh-you-peculiar-British-people-with-your-odd-sense-of-humour” way, and packed up the blood pressure kit.

“It is higher than usual, though,” she said. “Dr. Gallagher will have to speak with you about it.”

And she rustled out of the room, leaving me to raise my blood pressure even more by reading smug advice from childless experts in mother-and-baby magazines.

Doctor Gallagher breezed in after a few minutes, looking impatiently at his watch. Understandable. Well, it was 2:45 — barely enough time for half a round of golf that afternoon, never mind eighteen holes and a prolonged visit at the nineteenth.

“We need to watch that,” he said without any preamble. “Let’s see…you’re thirty-five weeks now. If your BP stabilises, we can induce at thirty-eight weeks.”

“Induce?” I squeaked.

“It’s not a big deal,” he said. Not a big deal for him, presumably is what he meant. “And if that blood pressure doesn’t come down, we’ll have to consider a C-section.

I covered my mouth with my hand. Somehow, I’d never considered the possibility of having these babies by C-section. Images of pools, dimmed lighting, and doulas swam before my eyes. The bright lights, masks, and blue drapes of an operating theatre hadn’t entered my birthing dreams.

“But —” I said, then stopped, feeling the corners of my mouth quiver as tears threatened. “But the recovery time’s much longer after a C-section.” A friend of mine had one, and she was still shuffling around like a geisha one month later.

“Your mother’s visiting, I hear.”

At this point, I was thinking that Sandra, complete with roasted salmonella, might be more help than my own mother.

“I’m not sure how much help she’s going to be, to be honest,” I said.

Dr Gallagher nodded. “I gathered that. No one else you can ask? What about our mutual friend, Maggie Sharpe?”

He gazed out of the window at the brick wall view.

“A fine woman,” he said, exhaling sharply, and scratching himself somewhere suspicious under his white coat.

I averted my eyes.

“No,” I said. “Maggie’s done enough for me already. She drives me places when Oliver can’t. She looks after Jack when I’m at the end of my tether. She’s like—”

I stopped. I was going to say, “She’s like a second mother to me.” Only that wasn’t quite accurate, was it? These days, she was my mother.

Dr Gallagher watched me, nodding.

“Take it from someone who knows,” he said, his Cork accent strengthening as his emotions ran higher than my blood pressure. “Maggie Sharpe never does anything she doesn’t want to do. If she’s doing all that for you…believe me, it’s not just out of the goodness of her heart.”

He paused.

“You remind me a lot of her daughter, you know.”

.

Next post: LIBBY’S LIFE #47 – Showered with affection

Previous post: LIBBY’S LIFE #45 – Mum’s the word

Click here to read Libby’s Life from the first episode

STAY TUNED for Friday’s post, when we look at ways to celebrate — or tolerate — Friday The Thirteenth.

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Image: Travel – Map of the World by Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigit

Can’t stop thinking about the awful story of Maggie’s daughter and Anna’s dead brother-in-law. I see why Anna told me — festering half-truths ruined Sara’s life, by all accounts — but I still haven’t figured out what to do about Oliver’s half-sister, Tania, whom I impulsively contacted and now wish I hadn’t.

Although the simplest thing would be not to reply to her message, the damage is done. I’ve opened Pandora’s box. Then again, it’s Oliver’s Pandora’s box, not mine. Might he be grateful to know that his father didn’t abandon him, as he always thought? That’s Anna’s opinion. My worry is that if he heard his father’s side of the story, he would feel differently toward his mother. Much as I don’t like Sandra, I would hate to drive a wedge between her and Oliver.

I’m going round and round in circles thinking about it. Probably the best course of action is to let sleeping dogs lie. It’s not as if I don’t have other things to do right now, what with Easter shopping, getting ready for the twins, getting the spare room ready for my mother, who’s coming today…

Yes, I haven’t told you! My mother is coming to stay! Oliver is driving to Boston tonight to meet her at the airport. I am so looking forward to having someone here to help out; someone who can take Jack off my hands in the early evening and make nice dinners that won’t give me salmonella poisoning.

My father refuses to come with her, and it took a great deal of persuasion for him to let Mum off the leash and come on her own. He has a fear of flying, and an even bigger fear of having to do anything that might qualify as a domestic duty. Honestly, he makes Shirley Valentine’s husband look like Germaine Greer. He finally and bravely concluded that with the assistance of the local pub, the fish and chip shop, some friendly neighbours, and a mammoth cooking/baking/freezing session by my mother before she abandoned him, he might be able to live on his own for a few weeks and not starve.

I don’t know how my mother puts up with it, I really don’t. Still, they’ve been married for the best part of four decades, so I assume she’s OK with her incurable case of Stockholm Syndrome.

Five hours until her plane lands. I am so excited. It’s nearly a year since I saw my mum, and that’s too long.

Plus, I am dying for some of her special steak and Guinness casserole.

* * *

10 p.m. Oliver walks into the house carrying two suitcases. He dumps them on the kitchen floor.

“Two hours down, Christ knows how many days to go,” he says in a low voice, jerking his head in the direction of the garage.

I’m confused. Oliver likes my mother. She supports him when he trots out his Victorian views on the place of women in the home and the workplace. As I’ve said before, when other women in the 1970s were burning their bras, she was out shopping for whalebone corsets. Oliver laps up her outmoded opinions and uses them as ammunition in any arguments we have. “Your mother would never say that” is a frequent debate closer of his.

Mum climbs the stairs from the garage into the kitchen, carrying one of her capacious Mary Poppins handbags, and when I see her, I’m shocked.

In the eight months since I last saw her, she’s aged eight years. She doesn’t look ill — I hope she doesn’t, anyway — but she’s a little shorter, more stooped, more grey…

She looks like her own mother.

“Hello, love,” she says, stopping a couple of feet away from me. She holds out her arms. “It’s so lovely to see you again.”

She still sounds the same, thank goodness, and I give her a hug. If her outward looks have changed, nothing else has. Her skin is tissue paper soft, and her trademark scent of Johnson’s Baby Powder and Chloe perfume makes me feel as if I’m eight years old again.

I hold onto her as if I never want to let go, resting my head on her shoulder, and tears sting at my eyes. She’s been in the house for only three minutes, and already I’m dreading saying goodbye to my mum.

No one warns of it you before you make the decision to become an expat, but this is the absolute worst part of living on the other side of an ocean.

* * *

I make Mum a cup of tea with lots of sugar, and tell her to sit down and put her feet up. If my feet are swollen from late pregnancy, so are hers from sitting on a plane for seven hours, and it’s past 3 in the morning by her body clock. After half an hour, during which time Oliver has taken her bags to her room and we’ve given her the nickel tour of the house, she decides she will get an early night.

“Just take it easy tomorrow,” I say. “We don’t have to be anywhere. It’s Good Friday, although Oliver has to go into work, so—”

“That’s changed,” he interrupts. “I’m working from home instead. Family time’s important, and there’s nothing I can’t deal with from a cell phone and a laptop.”

“But…” I say. I’m confused again, because the last I heard, he had a meeting with customers who were flying in from Dubai, who didn’t celebrate Easter, and couldn’t give a monkey’s for Oliver’s need for family time.

“It’s all sorted. And I want you to take it easy tomorrow,” he adds, raising his voice. “I don’t want you running around the house and exhausting yourself. You know what Dr. Gallagher told you about keeping your blood pressure down.”

Dr. Gallagher has told me nothing about my blood pressure. My blood pressure is sterling, and I am in tip-top condition for anyone, let alone for someone expecting twins in six weeks’ time. Tired, fat, and fed up, of course, but who wouldn’t be?

“Make sure you have a rest while I’m working in the study, and maybe your mum can take over looking after Jack for a couple of hours. That’ll be OK with you, won’t it, Jane?” he says, raising his voice again.“Of course it will,” Mum says. “I’m looking forward to having him around all the time.”

“It won’t be all the time,” I say. “He goes to nursery three times a week.”

Mum pouts. “Can’t he miss it? I haven’t seen little Jackie for nearly a year, and it seems a shame to make him go when we’re on holiday. I was hoping we could go to the seaside for a couple of days or something.”

“But—” I start again.

Oliver puts his hand on my arm.

“Perhaps you’ve forgotten that Libby is about to have twins. She can’t drive now, because she finds it too uncomfortable behind the steering wheel. I think she’d appreciate a quiet time here more than a couple of days at the seaside.”

He stares at Mum, and she drops her gaze.

“I’ll see you both in the morning,” she says, turning away in a huff and unsnapping the locks on the suitcase that Oliver has laid on the spare bed.

It’s our cue to leave.

* * *

“What was all that about?” I demand, as soon as Oliver and I are in our bedroom and the door is shut. “You’ve upset her. Mum knows she’s here to help out, but she’s tired and jetlagged right now. You didn’t have to be so hard on her.”

“Listen.” Oliver pulls his T-shirt off over his head. “Just listen. The whole time back from Boston? She went on and on about how she was looking forward to having a nice holiday, and you’d take her here, and you’d take her there. She’s got a whole bloody itinerary worked out. She doesn’t seem to realise that you’re delivering twins at some point during her stay, because twice she said something like, “Ah well, I expect I’ll feel better when I go back home, because Libby will be looking after me.’ She doesn’t seem to realise that you’re the one who needs looking after.”

I’m cross with Oliver.

My mum would never do that.

That would be behaving like Oliver’s mum. Wouldn’t it?

* * *

Next morning, I wake up before Oliver, still cross with him, and feeling doubly defensive towards my mother.

I get out of bed, and plod downstairs to make some tea before Jack awakes.

Mum’s in the kitchen, sitting at the table, staring into space, with a half-empty mug of instant coffee in front of her. I automatically take the mug off her. The liquid is stone cold, so she’s evidently been sitting there for a while.

We ascertain that we both slept as well as could be expected, given our respective disabilities of gestation and time zone disorientation, then I refill the kettle, and unlock the dishwasher to unload the clean dishes.

This last chore has got increasingly difficult as I’ve become bigger, especially when I have to bend down to empty the lower shelf. From today, I realise, I don’t have to struggle. I can ask Mum to do it.

“Mum, would you—” I begin.

“I thought you’d never ask!” she says. “I’d love another cup.”

Silently, I empty the cold coffee out of the mug, and reach into the cabinet for the jar of instant Folger’s.

“Have you got any real coffee? I’ve already had one of the powdered kind,” Mum says. “I didn’t come all the way to America for instant coffee.” She leans down, rummages in her Mary Poppins bag at the side of the chair, and fishes out a bumper book of word search puzzles.

I put the Folger’s jar back and pull out the grinder and coffee maker instead,. Then I go to the freezer and root around at the back of the top shelf; somewhere, I recall, we have a bag of coffee beans, last used when Anita and Charlie came round one morning.

“So,” says Mum, busily circling words in one of the puzzles. “Where are we going today? How about you driving us back into Boston? I’ve read all about the Freedom Trail. It’ll be a lovely walk for us all. Ooh, you know — I’m going to have such a lovely holiday while I’m here.”

.

Next post: LIBBY’S LIFE #46 – A tale of two mothers

Previous post: LIBBY’S LIFE #44 – Past imperfect, perfectly tense

Click here to read Libby’s Life from the first episode

STAY TUNED for Friday’s post, when we debate which side of the Pond parties harder and better.

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Image: Travel – Map of the World by Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigit

LOST: One sense of coordination. Last seen, fleetingly, Monday at 9am while driving on highway. Disappeared entirely at 9:05am at red traffic light, which I acknowledged to be a nice crimson colour but otherwise ignored and sailed straight through to the other side of the crossroads. Screeching and honking noises from other cars, and loud, choice, sexist epithets from a bloke in black F150 pickup truck.

Something similar happened four years ago, I remember; something involving a small Peugeot, a removals lorry, and my roundabout technique — the rules of which I had inexplicably forgotten, despite having learned to drive ten years before.

In the last month of gestation, it seems, coordination leaves me, and I wander along in a fog of delayed reaction. After Monday’s near miss, which left me trembling and repeating “Oh my God, oh my God,” for two hours, I have decided I’m not safe to be on the road.

Thank goodness for friendly neighbours like Maggie who don’t mind driving me places. She’s taken me shopping, she’s taken Jack to school for me — she’s my personal chauffeur whenever Oliver isn’t, in other words.

Which brings me to the subject of Oliver.

Ah. Oliver. Oh dear.

You see, I had an email this morning. And I don’t know what to do.

* * *

Ever had an idea that seemed really brilliant at the time, but 24 hours later it…wasn’t? I suppose you have; we all do. Most of the time, though, you don’t act upon those ideas. But every now and then, impulse trumps reason.

That’s what happened last week, when I was awake at two in the morning with only my nesting instinct and laptop for company. Why I didn’t just find the baby toys I was looking for, scrub them with disinfectant, and go to sleep like a normal person would — actually, a normal person wouldn’t be awake at two in the morning, disinfecting toys, but that’s beside the point — I don’t know. Instead, I am now wondering what on earth possessed me to make contact with Oliver’s long-lost father when Oliver himself has never shown any interest in doing so.

Dean Patrick, that’s his name. I’d seen it on Oliver’s birth certificate. It was easy enough to type it into Facebook and see what came up. Not many results. At least, not many results with a date of birth around the right year, a location in England, a hometown of Norwich (Oliver’s place of birth) and privacy levels set low enough that a probable daughter-in-law in Massachusetts could stalk his photo albums.

There was only one like that. One was all it took.

Here was a man, I thought, who was either unconcerned about his online privacy, or not very savvy about it. But because of this cavalier or naive attitude, I knew I’d found the right person. I stared for ages at someone who could have been Oliver in thirty years’ time. The same fine, blond hair — receding more than Oliver’s — the same fair, sun-reddened skin, Oliver’s slightly sticking-out ears. In this picture, one of an album called “Devon 2011” Oliver’s father stood on a sandy beach, holding the hand of a small boy, a little older than Jack, from whose other hand dripped an orange ice lolly.

My favourite grandson, the photo caption read. Four people had clicked the Like button. Underneath:

You go, Grandad! commented a woman: Tania Patrick.

Sister? Mother? Daughter? Sister-in-law? My counterpart, another daughter-in-law? Another ex-wife, on friendlier terms with him than is Sandra?

No matter; I was sure all those people existed. On Dean Patrick’s friend list was a host of other Patricks: Tania Patrick, Janey Patrick. Lewis Patrick, Vince Patrick. Henry Hank Patrick. But he was “In a relationship” with Polly Owen.

I didn’t send Dean Patrick a message. Not directly. A week ago, I still had enough brain cells to be subtle, if not enough to restrain myself from being terminally stupid. I figured that in a large family like his, and with an Irish name at that, one member ought to be into genealogy. Sure enough, a search on GenesReunited turned up the same names in a family tree owned by someone called Tania. I’m no Sherlock Holmes, but I thought that might have been the same Tania who encouraged him to “You go, Grandad.”

So I sent her a message instead.

At four in the morning, sadly, the sleep-deprived brain is incapable of straightening out skewed logic such as: “Where’s the harm in it? She can only say No.”

If only she had.

* * *

A few hours and one nap later, of course, I was in a state of mild panic, asking myself what the hell I had done. This panic increased with every passing day, as I imagined relationships rocked and marriages wrecked as a result of my interference; it culminated in a full-blown anxiety attack this morning when I opened my email inbox to find a reply from Tania Patrick.

Oliver noticed my agitation when he returned from Seattle, but thankfully put it down to surging hormones, pre-birth nerve, and my close call with the F150 pickup driver. He doesn’t know about the email I received from Tania Patrick — and how can I tell him?

Yet I must tell someone. Today, when Maggie picks me and Jack up, I will unburden myself to her, in the hope that her bohemian attitude to life will lend some sense of justification to my actions.

* * *

The doorbell rings.

It’s not Maggie.

“She’s sick,” says Anna Gianni, waving a set of car keys in front of my eyes. “That sniffle she had turned into bronchitis, and she doesn’t want you anywhere near her and her germs. I’m your chauffeur today, ma’am.”  She peers more closely at me. “Is that all right? I’m quite safe. You don’t have to worry about your son being driven around by a maniac.”

I shake my head, the tears that have lapped at the surface for nearly a week now ready to spill over a carefully built dam of self-preservation.

Anna says nothing, but holds her hand out to Jack, takes his booster seat from me in the other hand, and proceeds to strap him and booster into the back seat of her black Mustang. I sit in the front seat and say nothing.

We drop Jack off at Helen Flynn’s nursery, where he rushes off to play with another little boy without a backward glance, then we get back in the Mustang.

“Home?” Anna asks, turning the ignition key. “Or time out in the restaurant? Thursday’s quiet.” She twists round to see over shoulder as she backs out of the parking space. There’s silence between us while she waits for traffic to pass so she can turn onto the main road. It gives me time to think.

“Restaurant,” I say, exhaling in a rush at the same time, and staring out of the passenger door window so Anna can’t see my eyes shining a little too brightly.

Inside the empty Maxwell Plum, Anna commands me to sit at a table. I do so, and study a watercolour painting on the wall. It’s of a young man, dark-haired, Italian-looking. I’m about to get up and take a closer look when Anna returns to join me, carrying two cups of something frothy.

“Decaffeinated,” she says, putting one in front of me.

I pick up the spoon and draw patterns in the froth. “Have you ever,” I say, “done something really, really stupid? Like, so stupid that you can’t imagine why you ever thought it was a good idea?”

Anna leans back in her chair, apparently amused. “I’d hardly have reached my forties without doing that, would I?”

I coffee-doodle some more. I tell her about contacting Oliver’s father’s family. I tell her about my email this morning from Oliver’s half-sister, who claims to be over the moon that her half-brother has finally got in touch, because it was always a source of regret to her father that his only son never wanted to see him.

Anna smiles, but she looks sad.

“You need some perspective on this,” she says. “Let me tell you about my brother-in-law. Max Gianni. It might help.”

I listen.

.

Next post: LIBBY’S LIFE #45: Mum’s the word

Previous post: LIBBY’S LIFE #43 – Alone again – naturally

Click here to read Libby’s Life from the first episode

STAY TUNED for Friday’s post.

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Image: Travel – Map of the World by Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigit

“Four days. That’s all. I’ll be back before you know it.”

Oliver drags his black leather carry-on down the garden path and onto the driveway, unlocks the doors of the rented Ford Taurus, and heaves the case into the boot.

Carefully, I lumber after him, even though we’ve already said our goodbyes in the house.

“Do you have to go?” I sound whiny and pathetic, even to myself, but I can’t help it. It’s better than lying on the floor and having a luxurious Jack-like tantrum, though, which is what I really want to do.

“I wish I didn’t, love. But it’s the last trip before the babies come. Promise. After that, I’m grounding myself.”

He drops a last kiss on my cheek, then opens the driver’s door and sits behind the wheel, peering at the rental car’s unfamiliar dials and levers.

“I’ll text you when I get to Seattle. You’ll probably be asleep, though. Look after the four of you,” he says.

With a wave and a beep of the car horn, he’s off to Logan Airport.

And here I am, again. On my own.

* * *

Evenings are long when Oliver’s gone. Anita says she loves it when her husband’s away, but I must be very needy or something, because I detest having only my own company plus that of a three-year-old who isn’t yet fluent in the English language. Jack, exhausted by a busy day of Lightning McQueen role-play (I really should start charging Pixar for advertising) is in bed by seven, so, rather than watch hours of TV commercials interspersed with the odd five minutes of American Idol, at eight o’clock I’m in bed with a cup of tea and the eReader Jack gave me for Christmas.

The great thing about eReaders is that there are lots of cheap books to be had, all without venturing from the comfort of your armchair. There are even free ones, if you care to read the classics. Now, I’ve read and enjoyed my share of Tolstoy and Dickens, but as my due date gets nearer, I can feel my brain turning to incoherent mush, so any reading material now is light, romantic frippery. All light, romantic frippery involves tall heroic men (in touch with their feminine sides of course) and women who pretend to be modern and feisty, but usually show their true colours by shagging the bad boys from their high school days who used to torment them for being fat. You know your brain is mush when you’re not outraged by this scenario.

It doesn’t really matter what I read, though, because after ten minutes, I feel my eyelids drooping, and I shuffle down under the duvet with an assortment of strategically placed pillows.

Just for once, the babies aren’t having a private rave party. The full moon is under cover of cloud, and the dark outdoor silence is only enhanced by the chirruping of crickets, who arrived early this year.

I shut my eyes. The world fades.

* * *

Four hours later, I am awake again, with a burning desire to listen to a 70s disco playlist, clean out all the cupboards in the junk room, and scrub the bathroom grouting with a toothbrush.

This phenomenon is known as “The nesting instinct” and is a bald reminder that humans are, in fact, animals, however sophisticated and evolved we pretend to be.

It’s also happening too soon. I’m about 32 weeks along now, and pretty sure I didn’t hit this stage with Jack for another month or so. Could it be that Megan and Sam are going to arrive even earlier than Dr. Gallagher predicted?

The thought gets me both excited and nervous at the same time. The twins sense this, and start hacking at each other’s shins.

Sleep is impossible now.

* * *

American houses have wonderful cupboards — sorry, closets. They’re the size of English spare bedrooms. They hoard clothes you won’t admit will never fit again; started-and-abandoned craft projects; paperback books you will never reread, but Brits just love hanging onto their books; lightly used sports equipment; and outgrown, slightly chewed baby toys.

This last category is what I’m looking for. Somewhere in this cavern of a closet lurks a baby bouncer, a mobile, an activity centre, one of those little horseshoe beanbag cushions, and all sorts of goodies for the frugal second-time mother. When Maggie and I went shopping the other week, I picked out two of everything to be fair to the babies, but was so horrified by the total at the checkout that I returned much of it a few days later. I figured that newborns aren’t likely to get a lifelong complex if one has a brand new, wind-up, musical, Peter Rabbit mobile and the other has a few moth-eaten dangling teddy bears.

I find the boxes quite easily, and begin to haul them into the bedroom where I can sort through them in comfort. As I shuffle the first one across the floor, side to side, it knocks something over, and I squat down to prop the object back up again.

A badminton racquet cover. I remember unpacking it in July, looking inside, and finding something that, unbeknownst to me, Oliver has treasured for nearly thirty years: a 6th birthday card from his absent father, who at that point had supposedly run off with a local librarian, with never a thought for his wife or 6-year-old son.

Once again, I unzip the racquet cover, take out the birthday card.

“Dear Oliver — so sorry I can’t be with you on your big day. See you very soon, Tiger. All my love, Dad.”

Nope. It still doesn’t sound like a message from a father who has run off with a local librarian and doesn’t intend to come back.

Far more likely that Sandra has told Oliver a surgically enhanced version of the story; the truth, though, is probably vastly different. It sounds, I think with a sudden chill, as if her husband was away for a short time that coincided with Oliver’s birthday.

A business trip, perhaps.

Pondering this, I push the box of Jack’s baby toys into the bedroom and sit down on the bed before pulling back the packing tape to open the box.

Inside is a time capsule of nearly four years ago: the blanket we wrapped Jack in to bring him home from the hospital, the plastic identity bracelets, now cut, that encircled newborn Jack’s wrist and ankle. A pair of bootees, knitted by my mum for her first grandchild. A pristine copy of The Times, dated May 13, 2008. I remember hearing, later that day, that China had had its worst earthquake for thirty years, with thousands feared dead, and I’d felt guilty for being so happy while so many were suffering.

And Oliver. What had he felt that day, I wonder? Had I bothered to ask, in my post-birth euphoria?

Happiness, of course, that he was able to be with his new son as he began life; determination, I hope, that he would stay with him until it was Jack’s decision for him not to do so; sadness, I imagine, that his father was not around to share in this family event.

My mobile phone trills a blues scale: a text from Oliver.

Just arrived at hotel, it says. Miss you.

Miss you too, I text back, and within half a minute, the phone rings again.

“You not in bed yet, babe?” Oliver’s voice is comforting in the silence of the night.

I explain about the cupboards and 70s disco music cravings. He laughs.

“I remember this bit,” he says. “Which is it getting the nesting instinct treatment? Pantry or utility room?”

“Spare bedroom closet,” I reply.

A missed beat at the end of the phone, as he recalls what is in that closet. “You’re not throwing any of my stuff away, I hope.”

I hide a smile, even though I know he can’t see me. “Not even the box of squashed ping pong balls. Don’t worry.”

“That’s good. Having a clearout is fine, but you can go too far with these things. Look, why don’t you get back to bed now? You need your rest, and if I’m honest, I need mine, because it’s been a sod of a day. Nearly missed my connection in Salt Lake City, and—”

“Oliver,” I interrupt. “Do you ever think about your dad?” There’s something surreal about a conversation that crosses time zones in the wee hours; it makes you say thing you ordinarily wouldn’t. If there’s a no-go area in our marriage, it’s Oliver’s father.

Another pause — surprise? Anger? I wait. Would Oliver answer?

“Never.” Oliver’s voice is casual, cool. “Not since the day he left.”

You know, I’ve heard that casual, cool tone before. I’ve used it myself as a child, after a slap on the legs from my mum. “Didn’t hurt,” I’d say, bracing myself for another slap that would sting twice as much.

It’s the tone of defiance, of buried hurt feelings. A lie, in other words.

“Go to bed, Libs.” He sounds gentle now. “You must be tired.”

“I am. I think I will…Love you too,” I say, and click to end the call.

But against my better judgment and Oliver’s exhortations, I don’t go to bed right away.

Instead, I head for the computer. I log into Facebook, click Search, and type a name I’ve seen many times over the last year, on Oliver’s birth certificate.

Dean Patrick, I type.

It’s four a.m. before I eventually get back to bed.

.

Next post: LIBBY’S LIFE #44 – Past imperfect, perfectly tense

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Image: Travel – Map of the World by Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigit