Secrets Before Motherhood

 Secrets Before Motherhood

I parked the car in the narrow street, squeezed into a space that was only a short walk to our front door, feeling pride as I looked at the house we’d been renovating over the last twelve months, this Victorian wedding cake. We’d contrasted the rendered white walls with olive green window frames and sills and the front door had been newly painted in this lustrous hue. I turned the key first in the screen door lock, a protection against a break-in, then another key in the new lock fitted to the original but newly painted front door. Both locks were quiet, newly installed. I placed my briefcase under the hall stand, walked down the long narrow, thickly carpeted hallway, the new carpet smell redolent of change, of fortune, my footsteps muffled by the carpet’s thick pile. I heard sobbing. Jenny was crying.

We’d been living together now for two years. There were certain times that I knew to say nothing, just be present. Without warning Jenny would start crying. When it first happened, I was alarmed, tried to hug her but she pushed me away, saying that the last thing she needed was to be touched. The first time, I followed her upstairs and she went into the bathroom, locked the door and would not respond to my knocking, my concern voiced but dismissed, as she asked to be left alone, then shouted those words like an admonition.  Later, she would not want to be comforted, would either sleep on her side of our bed curled in a ball or move to the spare bedroom. The next day she was usually apologetic and would be solicitous with small things, making me morning coffee, brushing my suit down with a clothes brush before I left for work, always earlier than her departure to work at her mother’s clothes shop, and everything would return to normality by the time I got home from work, usually around seven at night. Today it was only just approaching six in the evening, a surprise for Jenny, a chance to have a more relaxed dinner.

 Jenny refused to talk about her crying jags and I just assimilated them as part of the life I had with her, so many other things a consolation: her beauty, her lithe body draped with gorgeous clothes, the amazing meals she could cook. She would be a fabulous mother, the nurturing side of her personality completely absorbed in our child, that’s what I wanted.

I was never sure if these crying episodes were hormonal sadness or if she was on the verge of some mental plunge into a world that I couldn’t understand with my ardent hope that it was the onset of menstruation that caused the drama. The regularity of this quiet sobbing had stopped recently but here it was again, a tearful outpouring.

As I listened in the hallway to the sounds she was making, this overheard crying seemed different. She was sobbing more loudly than usual. I realised she was in the kitchen and the sound had been projected down the hallway from this new part of the house, the modern extension to the heritage house with a new kitchen and polished boards that extended to a bank of windows and French doors that opened on the yet to be landscaped back garden. I moved further down the corridor until I was just on the landing before the step down into the kitchen, an area now self-contained, separate from the older part of our home. The space was wonderfully new, a light and open kitchen/dining area, my favourite part of the house, with a glass-roofed section that spilled glorious light into this part of our home, with more light coming from the glass that framed what would be a place of jasmine and other scented climbers.   

I stood very still, listening. I heard her say:

I love you too, you know that.  

She was obviously on the kitchen landline extension. Was she talking to her mother? Every muscle in my body tensed as I waited for her next words.

No, I couldn’t, I’m pregnant.

Her mother already knew that Jenny was pregnant, so who was this person on the phone? We’d agreed not to let most people know, other than very close family, until the end of the first trimester, twelve weeks.

She then kept saying: I don’t know, I don’t know, with her sobs becoming even louder. 

No, I can’t, I just can’t anymore, she said and I heard the click of the telephone. I slowly backed up, checking my pulse rate, breathing softly but forcing those breaths to be steady, knowing what I wanted and that was not an unhappy Jenny. I picked up my briefcase, walking back down the corridor, calling out:

Hello, hello, I’m home early.

I stepped down into the kitchen; she was sitting on one of the chrome stools that were set before the bar that separated the kitchen from the rest of the extension, the perfect hip height for entertaining. Jenny was now softly weeping into a soaked white handkerchief. I put down my briefcase, consciously controlling my breathing:

Jenny, what’s the matter?

She looked up, directly at me, tears still flowing, her eyes red, her cheeks flushed. She raked her fingers through her long, dark hair, slightly shaking her head.  Her white silk blouse looked damp where her tears had overflowed. Her oval face still fetching despite the tears.

Oh God James. I’m fighting this intense weariness, the need to sleep, I can’t seem to find my way out of a total exhaustion, it’s horrible. It makes me so upset.  I didn’t go to work today.  I just sat here and thought about becoming a mother, about how I’m going to give up so much of what I have. I just don’t know if that’s what I want. It’s going to change everything, everything.

I said nothing. I moved to the stool where she was sitting, took her hands and as she stood up I  held her. As we embraced I knew that having a child would make it all worthwhile, that the success I’d experienced at work was callow compared with building a family, re-building this house. Jenny would come around; she’d see that being a mother was the most worthwhile role in the entire world and that was to be her destiny, mine to be a father in this place that we’d lovingly built. Her secrets could be swallowed, her world would become a new world inhabited by our child, gilded with my devotion, unremitting devotion that couldn’t possibly be stopped.