Touchy Subjects: Stories Read online

  "You've had more than one," she pointed out neutrally.

  "And if you'll give me a minute," he shouted, "I can still fucking well get it up."

  They avoided each other's eyes.

  "Jesus," he added, "no wonder..."

  He turned to go back into the bathroom, but Sarah was on her feet. There was nothing she hated more than unfinished sentences. "No wonder what?"

  "No wonder you have to resort to this sort of carry-on."

  Her eyes stood out in her face. "You mean because no man would have me? Is that what you think?"

  "I never said that." Padraic was leaning his head against the doorjamb now. "It's just, you must admit, you come on a bit strong."

  "That's because this is my last chance," she bawled at him.

  He shifted on the spot. "Don't say that. Sure, a fine-looking woman—"

  "Getting a man is easy," she spat.

  He was taken aback. The pity in his eyes faded.

  "It's having children with one that's turned out to be impossible," she said between her teeth.

  "Why didn't you and Eamonn—"

  "Because we were divorced by the time we were thirty. Then the guy I was with for six years after that didn't happen to like children. You're welcome to all the details." Sarah's voice was shaking like a rope. "I'm thirty-eight years old. I've been paying a clinic thousands of dollars a month for fertility drugs that make me sick and frozen sperm that doesn't work. What else do you suggest I do?"

  He considered the carpet. "I was just ... I suppose I was wondering why you left it so late."

  "Oh, don't give me that. Just don't you dare." She felt breathless with rage. "How was I meant to know what I wanted at twenty-five? Men have no fucking idea. You'll still be able to make a woman pregnant when you're seventy!"

  Padraic flinched at the thought.

  After a minute, very quietly, he asked, "But sure ... why me? Couldn't you just have gone out one night and picked up a stranger?"

  Sarah sat on the edge of the bed and wept. Her elbows dug into her thighs.

  "I didn't want the child of some pickup," she said at last, very slowly, the words emerging like pebbles. "Quite apart from what else I might pick up from him." She waited till her voice had steadied enough for her to go on. "I wanted the child of a nice man, and all the nice men were taken."

  After a long minute, she felt the bed bounce as Padraic sat down beside her. "Not all, surely," he said after a minute. He sounded like a child who'd just been told the truth about Santa Claus.

  Her smile came out a bit twisted. She turned her head. "Don't worry about it, Padraic," she drawled. "I get by just fine without the husband and the SUV and the house in the suburbs."

  He didn't know how to take that. She watched him staring at his shoes.

  "All I want is a child." Sarah said it softly. She was never so sure of anything in her life.

  "OK," he said after a minute. "I'll have another bash." He stood up. "You haven't seen me at my best tonight," he added hoarsely.

  She gave a little sniff of amusement and wiped her eyes. "I suppose not."

  "You try getting an erection in a toilet without so much as a copy of Playboy. I'm not seventeen anymore, you know."

  Sarah giggled and blew her nose. "Sorry." Go on, she told herself. Make the offer. "Shall we just call the whole thing off, then?"

  She could tell he was tempted. Just for a minute. Until he thought of what Carmel would say.

  "Not at all," said Padraic. He stood up. "A man's gotta do."

  "Are you sure?"

  "I'm going back in there," he declared, "and I'm not coming back out empty-handed. You just lie down and think of Ireland."

  "No," she said, jumping up, "I'll go in the bathroom. You could do with a change of scenery."

  She handed him out his jar, then locked the door. She looked herself in the eye, then turned on the cold tap and washed the salt off her face.

  Padraic stood before the wardrobe mirror and stared down into his trousers. Not an enticing sight. Visibly tired, old before its time. He eyed his face and counted his wrinkles. Salmon couldn't eat after they mated, he remembered; they just shriveled away. What was there left for him in this life, now he had served his time, genetically speaking?

  But tonight's job wasn't quite over yet.

  He felt utterly exhausted. Nerves, alcohol, and a fight to round it all off. But he had to rise to the occasion now. Noblesse oblige. He thought of Carmel's last birthday. He'd been knackered from work, and half a bottle of champagne hadn't helped, but he knew she wanted to be ravished, he could almost smell it off her. So he had claimed to be full of beans, and though it took an enormous effort, it was all right in the end. He'd known it would work. It always worked in the end, him and Carmel.

  Padraic lay down on the bed. He wanted to be home in her arms.

  This room had no more resources than the bathroom, really. He flicked through the TV channels (with the sound down, so Sarah wouldn't think he was time wasting). Not a drop of titillation. After five minutes of Dirty Dancing, he realized he was finding Patrick Swayze far more appealing than the girl, and that raised such disturbance in the back of his head that he switched off the telly.

  He lay down again and scanned the room. The prints were garish abstracts; nothing doing there. There was the phone, of course. If only he had memorized a number for one of those chat lines. He'd rung one once, in a hotel room much nastier than this one, somewhere in the North of England. All he remembered was that the woman on the line had a terribly royal-family accent, and spoke very, very slowly to bump up his bill.

  If he rang downstairs and asked for the number of a chat line, he was sure to get Máire. She'd tell her mother. She'd probably tell his mother.

  Padraic shut his eyes and tried out a couple of trusty old fantasies. Only they weren't working anymore. He wondered whether one traumatic evening had rendered him permanently impotent. He felt exhausted. Somehow the idea of having a voluntary sexual impulse seemed like a remnant of his youth. Maybe that was it, his lot.

  All at once he knew what number to ring.

  "Hello there," said Carmel, and her voice was so warm he thought he could slip right into it and sleep. "Are you coming home soon?"

  "Any minute now. I just need a bit of help," he admitted.

  "Are you still at it?"

  "She spilt the first lot."

  Carmel let out a roar of laughter. "I should have warned you," she said. "When we shared a flat, Sarah was always knocking over cups of tea."

  "Are you comparing my precious seed to a beverage, woman?"

  "The comparison is entirely in your favour." Her voice changed for a minute; her mouth moved away from the phone and he heard her say, "You go and brush your teeth, love. I'll be up as soon as I've finished talking to Daddy."

  He wanted to tell her to say good night from him, but he wasn't meant to be thinking like a daddy now.

  Carmel's voice was all his again now, going low like only she could do. For a respectable wife and mother she could sound like a shocking wee slut. "Are you ready for round two, big boy?" she asked.

  "I don't think I can."

  "Can't means won't," she said in her best schoolmistress voice.

  He laughed into the phone, very softly.

  "All right now," she crooned. "Enough of this nonsense. Shut your eyes."

  "I just want to come home."

  "You are home."

  "I am?"

  "You're home in your bed with me. Nothing fancy."

  "Not a seedy motel?"

  "Not Finbar's Hotel, either. We could never afford it. You're home in bed with me and the kids are fast asleep and you're flat on your back, with your hands above your head."

  "Surrendering, like?"

  "Exactly."

  Carmel, he thought a few minutes later with the part of his mind that was overseeing the rest, should consider a career move. She could make a mint on one of those chat lines. And to think of all this lewdness be
ing saved up for a big eejit like him. He kept his eyes squeezed shut and pretended his hands were hers. She always knew what to do. She was working him into a lather. She was going to make it all right.

  Sarah was leaning against the sink, praying. It had been so long, she hardly remembered what to say. She got the words of the Hail Mary all arseways, she knew that much. Blessed is the fruit? Mostly what she said was please.

  The bathroom door opening made the loudest noise. Padraic's grin split his face like a pumpkin. She seized the jar. Half as much as last time, but still, there must be a few million ambitious little wrigglers in there. She rushed over and lay down on the carpet.

  "Will you be all right now?" he asked.

  "Yeah, yeah," she said, "you go on home."

  He gathered up the pile of presents for his boys. When he was at the door, he turned to give a little finger wave. She had already filled the syringe.

  "See you at Christmas, I suppose," he said. And then, "Fingers crossed."

  They both crossed their fingers and held them in the air.

  Sarah started laughing before the door shut behind him. She was still laughing when she pressed the plunger.

  Expecting

  I thought I saw him last Friday, stooping over the grapefruits in my local supermarket. Without stopping to make sure, I put my half-full basket down beside the carrot shelf and walked out the door marked ENTRANCE ONLY.

  It might not have been him, of course. One round silver head is pretty much like another. If I'd seen his face, if the strip of mirror over the fruit counter had been angled the right way, I'd have known for sure: soft as a plum, as my mother would have said, if she'd ever met him. But it was probably someone else, because he never shopped on a Friday, and why would he come all this way across town to a perfectly unremarkable new supermarket? Besides, I never told him where I lived.

  We had only ever met on Saturdays, in the windswept shopping centre I had to go to before the supermarket opened down the road. That first time, I was toying with an angora jumper on the second floor of the department store when I caught his eye. I figure they're safe to smile at if they're over sixty. He moved away with something long and green over his arm; I shifted over and browsed through five kinds of silk dresses before realizing I was in the maternity section. Not that it mattered much, of course, since anyone can wear any old shape nowadays.

  The elderly gentleman held the heavy swing door open for me to go through first. "Best to take things easy," he commented, and I smiled, trying to think of something original to do with pasta for dinner. As we emerged into the shopping centre he asked a question that was half drowned out by the clamour of the crowd. I said "Mmm," rather robotic as usual among strangers. Thinking back, later that afternoon, I did remember hearing the word expecting, but I presumed he meant rain.

  I bumped into him again in the charity furniture shop ten minutes later. Gallant, he insisted on lifting a table for me to look at the price. I only clicked when he said, "The dress is for my daughter; she's due in July. And yourself?"

  I shook my head.

  He must have thought I was rebuking his curiosity; his face went pink from the nose out. "Pardon me."

  "No no, it's all right," I flustered.

  "Early days yet, then," he said confidentially.

  It suddenly seemed like far too much trouble to explain; we could be standing here all day. Besides, this garrulous stranger would think me a fool, or worse, a wistful spinster type given to browsing through maternity dresses. So I said nothing, simply grinned like a bashful mum-to-be, as the magazines would say.

  It's not the first mistake, but the first cowardice, that gets us into trouble. Why was it so hard to say that I hadn't heard his original question, as we came out of the department store? If only I'd said, "I'm afraid I'm not expecting anything!" and made an awkward joke of the old-world euphemism.

  And of course when the following Saturday, cup in hand, he edged over to my table in the shopping centre's single faded cafe, it was impossible to go back to the beginning. He told me all about his daughter's special high-calcium diet. I saw now that clearing up that first misunderstanding would have been child's play compared to this: How could I admit to having lied? I tucked my knees under the table, nodding over the pros and cons of disposable nappies.

  He was lonely, that much was clear. I was a Saturday shopper because it was the only day I had free, whereas since his retirement he had developed a taste for the weekend bustle at his local shopping centre. But not a weirdo, I thought, watching him swallow his tea. All he wanted was to chat about this cyclone of excitement that had hit the year his only daughter got pregnant at thirty-three. "Me too," I said without thinking. Thirty-three, really? He thought that was a wonderful coincidence. And from amniocentesis we slipped on to living wills and the judicial system, his small mobile face shifting with every turn of conversation.

  For a few weeks the office was a bag of cats, and I forgot all about him. Then one Saturday, rushing by with a baguette under my arm, I saw him staring bleakly into the window of what used to be the Christmas Shop. For the first time, it was I who said hello. When, after pleasantries about crocus pots, he began telling me about his daughter, and how the hospital said it was nothing she'd done or not done, she hadn't overstrained or failed to eat, just one of these things that happen in most women's lives, I wished I had followed my first impulse and walked right by. I didn't want to spare the time to sit beside him, making fork marks in an almond slice.

  He fell silent at one point, and as some kind of strange compensation I began to rhapsodize about my own phantom pregnancy. I'd never felt better; it was true what they said about the sense of blooming. Instead of wincing, his face lit up. He said he would bring me a cutting from last Sunday's paper about prenatal musical appreciation. I promised him I was drinking lots of milk.

  Walking home with a box of groceries on my hip, I began to count weeks. If I had met him just after payday, which was the fifth of the month ... I realized with a spasm of nausea that I should be beginning to show.

  At this point the ludicrousness of the whole charade hit home. Since it was clearly impossible to explain to this nice old man that I had been playing such a bizarre, unintentional, and (in light of his daughter's miscarriage) tasteless joke, I would just have to make sure I never saw him again.

  But I didn't manage to make it to the huge supermarket in the town centre after work any day that week. Come Saturday I crawled out of bed late and pulled on baggy trousers. His steel-wool head was before me in the queue at the flower stall; when he looked around, I waved. Yes, his daughter was back at work, these daffs were for her, and wasn't a bit of sunshine wonderful? Only when he had walked away did I realize that I had my hand on the small of my back, my belly slumped over my loose waistband.

  The next Saturday I did my hand washing and baked scones with the end of the cheddar, then sat knotted up in an armchair and read some papers I'd brought home from work. My mother dropped by; when I offered her some tea, there wasn't any milk or sugar, so I had to justify the empty shelves by claiming not to have felt well enough to go out.

  Afterwards, I lay on the sofa with the blanket she'd put over me, watching the sky drain. I was heavy with a lie I couldn't begin to explain. If I'd made a joke of it to my mother, she'd probably have called him a nosy parker.

  My ribs were stiff; I shifted to face the rough woolen back of the sofa. If it were true, would I be throwing up in the mornings? Would I be feeling angry, or doubtful, or (that old pun) fulfilled? I grinned at myself and went to put on my makeup for a night out dancing.

  The following Friday I managed to sneak away from work early enough to shop in town. I had packed my briefcase full of papers, then shoved them back in the in-tray.

  Saturday I spent hoeing the waking flower beds outside my basement flat. Some friends arrived with Alien and popcorn. One of them noticed me holding my stomach after a particularly tense scene and raised a laugh by warning me not to throw up on
the sofa.

  Truth was, I'd been trying to remember at what point it would start kicking. For a few seconds I'd believed in it.

  It was time to call a halt. The next Saturday I trailed up and down the shopping centre for an hour and a half in the spring chill. Every time I went into the library or the pet shop, I was sure he had just left. When the tap on the shoulder did come, as I was reading the list of prices in the window of the hair salon, I jerked so fast he had to apologize. But looking shocked and pinched did suit my story, I supposed.

  As we neared the top of the café queue, his bare tray shuffling along behind mine, I rehearsed my opening line: "I'm afraid I lost the baby." It sounded absentminded and cruel. I tried it again, moving my lips silently. The beverages lady cocked her ear, thinking she'd missed my order; I cleared my throat and asked for a strong coffee. It was all my fault for having let a tiny lie swell into this monstrosity.

  Before I could begin, he placed his shopping bag on the chair between us. "I'm glad I caught you today," he said pleasurably. "I brought it along last week, but I didn't run into you. I was going to return it, but then I thought, who do I know who'd make good use of it?"

  Under his bashful eyes, I drew out the folds of green silk. "Wouldn't your daughter wear it anyway?" I asked.

  He shook his head hastily.

  "You shouldn't have," I said. "It's beautiful." I slumped in the plastic seat, my stomach bulging.

  He folded the dress back in its tissue paper and slipped it into the bag.

  Though I didn't even know his surname, I felt like I was saying good-bye to a lifelong friend, one who had no idea that this was good-bye. I insisted he have a third of my lemon tart. We talked of Montessori schools and wipeable bibs, of our best and worst childhood memories, of how much had stayed the same between his generation and mine but would be different for my baby. We decided it was just as well I was due in August as the weather might be mild enough to nurse in the garden. When I looked at my watch it was half two, the coffee cold in the pot.