There are some parts that I know I’ll never forget, and some parts that I expect I’ll never remember.
Like, I don’t remember calling a taxi, but I do remember pulling up in front of Ellen’s house and paying the driver. I gave him a ten-dollar tip and we talked about the wind. It was howling. I remember the trees swaying back and forth, like women lamenting their dead children.
I felt exhilarated and wild, a woman in the forest embracing my inner something-or-other. I remember touching my hair and realizing it was dripping wet and being confused because it wasn’t raining. I must have stepped straight out of the shower and called a cab.
At least I didn’t drive when I was drunk. Some rational part of my mind knew enough to call a cab.
I don’t remember why I decided to go to Ellen’s house, but I can guess my train of thought. I was probably standing in the shower and imagining Ellen and Patrick getting ready to go to bed at the same time, and how they would have been talking about their day, about how exciting it was to see the baby for the first time, and I would have thought, I wish I could see them.
And at that point I must have thought, Why not go there right now?
Or maybe I felt an overwhelming desire to tell Patrick something: that I loved him or I hated him, that I understood or I would never understand, that I was letting him go, finally, this was it, I would never go near him again, or that I would never let him go or I would love him for the rest of my life.
Who knows?
The next thing I remember is standing at the foot of their bed.
Patrick was flat on his back, his mouth open, snoring in that way of his, where each snore goes further up the scale in volume, until there is an enormous shuddery one that half wakes him up and he stops, and then a few seconds later it starts again. Ellen was lying on her side, with her hands folded in prayer under her cheek, just like you’d expect her to sleep, although she was snoring too, in a gentler, more regular rhythm than Patrick. Their snoring sounded comical, as if they were trying to play a tune together and kept getting it wrong and having to start again.
I didn’t feel envy or anger or pain. I felt calm and quite friendly toward them. I think it was because of the snoring. So I got a shock when they woke up and I saw their reactions. The fear on their faces! I wanted to say, “No, no, relax, it’s only me!”
It was like Patrick had seen some sort of dangerous animal. As if I were a grizzly bear looming over him. Me! Just me, Saskia! I don’t even kill cockroaches. He knows that.
And then Ellen was yelling at me about something in my hand, and I looked down and saw that I was holding their baby’s ultrasound pictures, although I didn’t remember picking them up or looking at them.
She reacted as if I was stealing her baby.
Technically, she stole my baby. I could have got pregnant with Patrick’s baby if we’d kept trying. I might have.
They woke Jack up with all their noise. I heard him call out. So then I just wanted everyone to calm down. I wanted them to know that there was no need for anyone to be upset.
It was like a nightmare, where you suddenly realize you’re naked in a shopping center. A tiny voice in my head said: Saskia, you’ve gone too far. What would Mum think?
Mum would not approve of me upsetting Jack.
Nobody would calm down. Patrick refused to listen. He was pushing me, shoving me. I noticed that everything had turned sepia, as if we were in an old photograph. It added to that nightmarish, surreal feeling.
I remember Jack running down the hallway in his pajamas, his eyes and mouth huge with terror. That voice in my head saying: This is your fault, Saskia.
And then, somehow, we were falling together, and I was trying to hold on to him, to stop him from hurting himself. It was terrible.
That was the last thing I remember before I woke up in the hospital and felt the most unbearable pain shatter the lower half of my body, as if someone was dropping bricks on me from a great height, and I saw Ellen, standing with her back to me at the hospital window. I must have made some sort of a noise, because she turned around and smiled at me. She didn’t look frightened. She smiled at me, as if I was a normal person, not a grizzly bear.
She said, “There’s been a big dust storm.”
It was the first thing that came into her head.
“Sydney is covered in dust,” she said. “It really looks quite apocalyptic out there. No wonder Jack thought it was the end of the world. I actually thought there had been a nuclear blast myself.”
Saskia stared up at her blankly, as if she was speaking a foreign language.
“They can see it from space, apparently,” said Ellen. She took a deep breath and sat down on the chair next to Saskia’s bed. “That’s why it took a while for the ambulance to come this morning. The city is in chaos.”
Saskia’s eyes moved slowly down the bed and the white hospital blanket covering her body.
“You’ve fractured your pelvis,” said Ellen. “And your right ankle. You might need surgery for the ankle, but they think the pelvis should heal itself. You can press the little button here for more pain relief.”
There was silence. Ellen’s eyes locked with Saskia’s. It felt shocking, as if the strange connection between the two of them was more intimate than that of two sexual partners.
“I don’t know if you remember what happened,” began Ellen.
“Jack,” said Saskia clearly.
“He’s broken his arm,” said Ellen. “But other than that he’s fine.”
Saskia’s face crumpled. “My fault.”
“Well,” said Ellen. “Yes.”
Jack went through a stage when he was a toddler when he seemed to be constantly hurting himself. He’d bang his head on the coffee table, his elbow against the door frame. As soon as one bruise or graze healed he’d get another one. I’d be down the other end of the house and hear the crash, the pause and then the anguished scream that shredded my heart. I’d think, Not again.
Once Patrick was playing with him when it was past his bedtime and I was saying, “OK, that’s enough now,” because I knew Jack was getting overtired and he’d hurt himself soon and, sure enough, next thing Jack’s yelling and spitting out blood because he’d banged his chin and bitten his tongue, and I was furious with Patrick.
I must have said it a thousand times: “Careful.”
And now, because of me, Jack had a broken arm. There was no denying my responsibility. There was no way I could twist the events of the previous evening around to make it someone else’s fault.