A Trifle

“You will be back this afternoon, right James? For your birthday?” Rachel reminds her husband, placing two slices of Marmite-slathered toast in front of him.

He lifts his head, smiles weakly. “Uh, I’ve just got to finish this chapter, Rach,” he says. “I’m so close…” He takes a reluctant bite, then another, more out of necessity than hunger. She can’t recall the last time he has requested a particular food, let alone helped himself to something. He’s become paler, smaller, his hair thinning.

She has heard it all before. Too many times. The words no longer inspire hope, more like the opposite of hope. Some days it takes all her resolve not to resent him.

Just give up! she wants to scream. Do the chivalrous thing. Admit defeat, move on… Then all of us can move on.

Instead she says, “Just be back by two. Please. Alex and I are making a surprise for your—”

“Don’t,” he interrupts, as if by not saying the word—thirtieth—he could perpetuate the illusion he has so painstakingly woven. In his head, a vibrant tapestry of father-mother-child, rich with the symbolism of academic prowess and domestic happiness. In hers, a frayed, faded, forgotten thing. He gets up and grabs her hands, squeezes them limply. “I know I said I’d be finished by now. I’m nearly there, I promise…”

“No.” She retracts her hands from his grasp. “You need to come home. Alex is expecting a party. We’re making a surprise. It’s Saturday, for Christ’s sake… and it’s your birthday. A few hours aren’t going to make any difference. You’ve been working on this thing for eight years. It’s not like you’re going to finish it today.” She pauses. “Or maybe ever…”

She knows how much her words must sting. How pointless, how cruel it is to say this on his birthday, of all days. But she doesn’t apologize, she can’t. His body slumps. He turns and leaves, muttering a small, “I’m sorry,” as his crumpled form retreats down the hall to the stairs.

What have I done? The question swirls around her mind as she stands at the window of their fourth-floor graduate flat watching him unlock his bike, pump up his front tire, and ride away, brakes screeching. She cringes, regret turning to worry at the thought of him trusting that rickety bike with his life—their lives. Couldn’t he at least oil the chain? Fix the slow leak? Would he ever think of anything other than the exploits of English crusader knights?

Her gaze lingers as another grad student—Alistair, a chemistry post-doc—loads his toddler onto a child’s seat on the back of his bike. Not far behind is his smiling wife—Natasha, doctorate in medieval literature. As the three pedal away, Rachel eyes the desiccated yellow carnations on the windowsill that she bought for their anniversary a couple weeks ago. Frowns at their drooping heads. She gathers them up and shoves them in the overfull kitchen bin. Then she ties up the bag and hauls it out the door, hurling it into the garbage chute. When she returns, she picks a stray brown-fringed flower off the floor. She pulls her well-thumbed Oxford English Dictionary from the shelf, opens it at random, and lays the flower on the page. Before she shuts it—hard—she registers the headwords “correlate | corrode.”

She washes her hands, wrenching the tap as hard as she can to minimize the leak he promised he’d fix—when he has time. A sporadic trickle escapes, an arrhythmic drip that beats in tune with her weary heart.

“Mom, when are we gonna make Daddy’s cake?” her five-year-old, Alex, asks, sleepy-eyed, emerging from the tiny box room that somehow passes as a second bedroom. Her studio apartment in New York was roomier than their cramped Cambridge family accommodation. It’s not even big enough for a wardrobe, was her thought when she found out she was pregnant with Alex. How can we put a child in there? It was only a temporary solution, James reassured her. “As soon as I finish my thesis…”

“Can we make it now?” Alex adds in a whine. For the past week she has been building up this moment—Daddy’s thirtieth birthday—and Alex has talked of nothing but the cake, promising “It’s gonna be epic!”

“First you need to have breakfast, sweetie,” she says, and heats some porridge on the stove. She dishes it out into two bowls, adds a dollop of honey, and they eat together. For Rachel this is her favorite time of day, sitting with her son, savoring the simple act of watching him spoon porridge into his mouth as they chat about small, inconsequential things. His friend Seb next door. His snail shell collection. Buzz Lightyear. His first trip on a punt down the river Cam. Why Mommy drinks coffee and Daddy drinks tea.

It reminds her of a former life, of meals out with James, of the joking and the laughter. The endless conversation. Of the fun they had as they were getting to know each other, two promising academics, when he spent a year studying in New York. She loved his accent—still loves it—and now their son has the same soft lilt.

They linger over their breakfast, Alex talking excitedly about the day ahead. “We’re gonna have a party, aren’t we Mom? And Dad’s gonna come home early, isn’t he?”

She nods, willing herself to enter into the fantasy that for once James would be back on time. That he would be true to his word. “Hey, why don’t you make Dad a card, then we’ll work on the cake?”

Before her son can protest, she retrieves the shoebox repurposed for craft items: dull-tipped pencils, broken crayons, spilled glitter, lidless glue sticks. A strip of smiley-face stickers beam at her, the remnants of her half-hearted attempt at a reward chart: You did it! Brilliant work! Keep it up! they mock. She grabs a sheet of scrap paper from the pile of her husband’s latest draft. She turns it over and reads:

… the Dominican custodians agreed to open Lord Mowbray’s tomb and gather up the content in a jar for shipping home with an agent of Nottingham…

Should be ‘contents,’ she reflexively corrects, though she has long stopped offering to proofread his work.

Dutifully her son has cleared some space at the table, pushing away the breakfast bowls crusted with porridge that will harden to a cement-like consistency if she leaves them too long, making them impossible to scrape clean.

“I’m ready,” he says, grabbing a red pencil from the box. She places the paper in front of him. He folds it in half and frowns. “But there’s writing on the back.”

She rifles through the pages: all of them full of words. So many words. “Why not just make him a picture?” she instructs gently.

A frown washes over her son’s face. “But I wanna make a card.”

“Well, I can’t find any blank paper, so let’s just go with a picture.” Before the situation can escalate any further, she adds, “Daddy would prefer a picture anyway—to hang in his office.” Never mind that his office space has long ago had to be sacrificed to a much younger, more promising graduate student—one due to finish on time. He still has his little corner in the library, as far as she knows.

He considers the offer, then brightens. “Yeah! I’ll make the best picture ever—for Daddy’s office!” he exclaims, and gets to work.

Tears sting her eyes at her son’s intensity. So like his father used to be. She gathers him in a hug, wrapping her arms around him in the chair, irresistible in his dinosaur pjs.

“Mo-om!” he protests. “You made me mess up.” He throws his pencil down, crosses his arms.

“I’m sorry sweetie. I’ll get you another sheet. Here.”

He resumes his drawing and Rachel collects the bowls from the table and rinses off the vestiges of porridge. She opens the fridge and removes a few beers and takeaway containers, behind which she has hidden the custard, raspberries, cream, and jam so as not to ruin the surprise. She humors herself with the thought that James would have the time, or the inclination, to take notice of the contents of their half-sized fridge.

“Mom, is this okay?” Alex asks, reminding her of the task at hand. He lifts up the paper.

“Let’s see…” she begins, scrutinizing the red stick-figure daddy, hunched and bespectacled, balding, a crooked grin reaching beyond the outline of his face. Next to it, a rough-hewn square twice the size of the man. A house?

“This is Daddy’s present,” he says before she can ask.

“Oh… and what’s inside?”

He screws up his face in thought. “A GINORMOUS clock,” he answers decisively. “When I asked Daddy what he wants, he said more time.”

She feels a sudden twinge, a desire to have James there, next to her. “It’s lovely,” she eventually says, and reaches to give him a hug.

He wriggles out of her grasp and gets up from the table. “Now can we make the cake?”

“Yes. Actually, the surprise is that it’s not a cake—it’s a trifle, Daddy’s favorite. I’ve made all the different parts, we just have to put it together.”

A serious look clouds his face. He shakes his head. “That’s not right… We’re supposed to have birthday cake!”

“But Daddy always says how much he likes Granny’s trifle, so I thought we’d make our own. It’s more fun than a cake.” She places the different components on the table next to a big glass bowl. “We can layer it up however you want. I’ll whip up the cream and we can spread it on top. I’ve got candles too—”

“It’s a birthday cake, not a birthday trifle!” he screams, cheeks red with fury. He is nothing if not stubborn, like his father. She berates herself for her foolishness. Of course he would be upset with the change in plan. It isn’t what he was expecting. His wants are so simple, so fixable, and she risks so much disappointment. Just as she is about to offer him a conciliatory spoonful of custard, the ludicrous irony hits her: of all things, they are arguing about a trifle. About nothing at all. But for him, everything. She laughs, unable to stifle the giggles that trickle, then pour out of her as if from some ancient untapped reservoir.

“Stop laughing at me!” he shouts, scowling.

She takes a deep breath, trying, failing, trying again, to compose herself. It has been so long since she has laughed like this. “I’m sorry, honey. I’m not laughing at you. It’s me… I just… just… can’t believe we’re arguing over this... this trifle."

Her son stares blankly, brow furrowed. There is a note of fear in his expression, as if he doesn’t know what she’s going to do next—this stranger before him.

The wave passes and the laughter subsides. She is steady again, familiar. Lighter. She sees a solution, a way forward, in the arrangement of a few basic ingredients. But not the ones in front of them. They'll need to start again.

“Let’s forget about the trifle, okay?” She opens the fridge and does a quick inventory. Butter, eggs. Flour and sugar in the cupboard. “We have everything we need to make Daddy a proper birthday cake.”

A smile spreads across her son’s face, then the shadow returns. “Do we have enough time?” he asks.

She doesn’t bother checking the clock. “Of course we do. We have all the time in the world.”