She stands at the edge of his crib as Jack continues to sleep, just like his father. In the darkness she can barely make out his form. From the soft sounds and the shape of the mound she knows that he’s there and breathing. She remembers Thomas in his cot. Her mother’s child. She remembers their mother’s cry of surprise when he smiled for the first time, though it was not at her or at anything of the world.
She looks at Jack now and thinks of another time, a place that has slipped away from her. She doesn’t know how long she stands there. When she leaves the room she thinks it must be possible that a lifetime could pass, and in the end it would feel like only a few hours.
Beside the child’s room is the study, and on the desk a computer sighs like a sleeping beast, a medieval dragon waiting to be called. There’s a photograph beside it, her father and mother, she and Thomas as small children in black and white, smiling blithely into the sun.
She sits in the high-backed office chair. Her right hand manipulates the mouse over wood, light on the screen and a soft breathy whine from the box beside it. She opens the email programme from the selection of icons scattered on the screen, and clicks the button to Send and Receive. Four new messages, waiting to be read. The first is an advert from Kamal’s bank, offering a financial loan for a substantial interest rate. There’s a short sympathy mail from an old school friend who received news of the memorial, and a catalogue from a national chain store selling everything from Apple computers to zebra-striped couches. Then, for a moment, nothing moves – not in her eyes or the muscles of her hands. Her mouth doesn’t open or close and her breath remains even and still. Inside her appears a vision of the past, a time when she had another name. She had the same hair and eyes though her skin was smooth then, her body more rounded, but it is a vision of a time when all of her life was different.
19 Feb 20:46 Max Adams Re:
The subject line is blank. Now, after all the years, Max returns as a message on the screen. She hates it that Thomas has again brought Max into it. She wants her own obliteration of the world to be untouchable. She thinks that she could leave now, she could go back to the bed, to her breathing husband and the time that stretches out like the dark ceiling above them. She positions the arrow over Max’s name with a small movement of the mouse. Her breath draws involuntarily inward as she clicks. The opened message is short and to the point, and more disappointing than she can imagine.
From: Max Adams
To: Rachel Naidu
Cc:
Subject:
Dear Rachel
Flying into Joburg on Wednesday. Maya has offered me accommodation. Hope that’s okay with you. See you soon.
Love
Max
Max. If she believes the words there they descend on her as a time warp, the three letters of his name negating everything that surrounds her: the chair in which she sits, the computer and the desk, the child in the next room and the man who breathes and sleeps in the bedroom beyond.
Love. What right does Max have to sign the message in such a way? He who has been gone so many years, his presence nothing but a ghost that has slipped in and out of conversation. Nothing but an idea that has lessened too, now a simple flicker of the heart, like a moth’s wing beating from time to time. Her mouth draws in, tightening the skin on her neck. Max’s idea of love was never the same as hers. Once he’d told her about a film he’d watched, featuring a high-bred woman from a wealthy family and a labourer without many prospects. They never married but over the years they saw each other repeatedly, each time falling back into that same passion despite the years, despite the husbands and wives and lovers and children and commitments that passed through their separate lives. Is that what Max has imagined for them? That they would meet again through the years, while he went on to do other things, love other women? They were not the same people. Max’s kind of love has never been her kind of love. Now, after all this time, he sends her love because perhaps his heart is bigger than hers, but her response to it is still acute.
She hates it, this intrusion. She wants her grief for herself, and to be left alone with it.
She gets up and leaves the room. In the hallway she types four digits on a control panel on the wall and waits for the long beep as the alarm demobilises. In the kitchen she flicks a switch and the darkness is banished in spasms of fluorescent light. The kettle is a quarter full and she turns it on and waits in her pyjamas for the water to boil. Through the window the soft green light of dawn spreads slowly upwards into a charcoal sky.
When the cup of black tea is warm in her hands the morning emerges. Soon Jack will be up and wanting his breakfast, and the rest of the day will be stolen from her. Only these times, the early hours, give her something for herself. She wipes her cheek and places the empty cup on the counter. She returns to the study and sinks again into the leather chair. Now she activates the browser and uses a search engine to locate the website of a local discount airline. She types in a credit card number from memory and books a single seat, one way, on a flight to Johannesburg.
She tells Kamal much later, when she’s feeding Jack his supper in the kitchen. Kamal is peeling onions over newspaper and paper towels. Rachel watches the side of his face, the movement of his hand as he rubs his eyes against the sting with the back of his bent wrist. She is dressed carefully in pale jeans and a soft jersey. Jack opens his mouth and she tries to spoon apple and blackcurrant yoghurt into him, but somehow it ends up on his chin.
‘The funeral’s a week away,’ Kamal says.
‘I know, but I need to be there now.’
‘You need to be here. With me and Jack.’ He looks at her. The knife hangs loosely from his hand. ‘We can all go together, on Friday.’
‘I need to be with Maya. She’s Thomas’s wife.’ Rachel holds the spoon out, willing Jack to take it from her and feed himself, but his hands are pulling at his small clothes.
‘We’re your family too, Rachel.’
‘You can drive up on Friday if you want to. Or Saturday early. Leave Jack with your mother.’
‘Why do you have to go so early?’
They both look at her, the child and his father.
‘Because my brother is dead,’ she says.
It is the morning of the day she is to leave. The bedroom curtains fall to the ground. Six-thirty. Kamal moves his arm to shut off the sound of the ringing alarm clock. Rachel swings her legs over the side of the bed and rises first, before him.
In the bathroom she drops a rooibos teabag into the basin with the hot tap running. When the water is the colour of jewelled amber she turns off the tap and splashes her face in a hopeful belief that some component of the tea is anti-ageing. She brushes her teeth and smooths out her skin with thick cream, and returns to the bedroom.
Kamal is upright now, on the edge of the bed, his hair at odd angles to his head. He rubs his face with large hands to clear his vision, pushes his fingers like a coarse comb backwards through his hair.
Rachel takes white underwear from the cupboard, a pale sleeved pullover and a long skirt, and goes back to the bathroom, closing the door between them.
When she is naked, she hesitates. She retrieves the bathroom scale from where it is tucked beneath a pile of towels that are waiting to be washed in the linen cupboard. The scale clunks down on the floor and she stands on it. The relief to her is immeasurable, like a cigarette to a smoker, like heroin to the addict. She knows the motion of the numbers behind the needle and it comforts her. She knows the sound as the numbers swing to find their place. She knows the excitement inside herself as the digits blur and the moment waits and it’s as though she’s a punter willing on the winning horse to cross the line. Back and forth the numbers swing, while the red needle marker decides on the verdict, and there it is. She’s failed. She’s sure it’s wrong, she bends over and aligns the red needle with zero. She steps on