silences that long and you’re in Big Trouble. In fact, you’re a dead man.
That’s a promise xxxxx
To: Kate Reddy
From: Jack Abelhammer
Bill Gatespeare, I find, has the emotional software to fit any occasion. . As far as you’re concerned, Katharine, I’m already in Big Trouble. If killing me means I can look forward to a personal appearance from my fund manager, then I’m prepared to die like a man.
I knew you were going to Disneyland with the kids, so I figured you’d be caught up in the preparations and not welcome my msgs. I try to think of you being happy without me, without letting it make me unhappy.
You write so lovingly about the children — Emily’s reading, the way Ben tries to talk to you — that I know you’re a great mom. And you notice so much. My mom stayed home and played bridge and drank vodka martinis with her friends. She was there all day and never really around for the three of us. Don’t go romanticizing the stay- home parent — you can screw up whether you’re near or far.
Because you live in my head, you’re very portable, you know. I find myself talking to you all the time. The worst thing is, I’m starting to think you can hear me. Jack xxxxxxx
To: Jack Abelhammer
From: Kate Reddy
I can hear you.
23 Easter
SATURDAY LUNCH, TOAD HALL RESTAURANT, DISNEYLAND PARIS. Enthusiastic French kiss and passionate hug from a tall dark stranger. Regrettably, his name is Goofy. Overcome with shyness at meeting her favorite cartoon characters, Emily hides behind her mother’s legs and refuses to say hello.
Seconds later, Paula enters the restaurant like a struck gong, reverberating with resentment. She “agreed” to accompany us to EuroDisney in much the same way the British “agreed” to give back India. I just know the short-term relief of having her here to help out will not be worth it for the long-term tactical disadvantage.
I feel I have to spend the entire time apologizing profusely for things I haven’t done. Sorry Ben woke everyone up last night with his snoring, sorry room service is so slow, sorry French people don’t speak English. Oh, and I forgot to apologize for the rain. For that I am truly sorry.
Meanwhile, Paula sits back and observes my mothering skills with the fat contented air of a driving instructor guiding a know-it-all pupil towards the inevitable prang.
After fifteen minutes of queuing for lunch in Toad Hall — mock baronial, gargoyles made of gray polystyrene — we reach the counter and Paula orders chicken nuggets for herself, Emily and Ben. On the grounds that the chicken is more likely to be antibiotics in bread crumbs, I decide to take a stand. Suggest that it might be nice for children to have quiche instead, on the off-chance it will be made of ingredients from a farm rather than a test tube. “If you say so,” says Paula cheerfully.
At the table, when I present Ben with quiche, his tiny almost prim mouth contorts into a gash of grief. He starts those hiccupy sobs where he can barely take in air quick enough. French families sitting nearby, all with
(Sometimes when I’m with Paula and the kids, I get that feeling I had at school when three girls in my group got closer, apparently overnight. How had I missed it? I, who had always been allowed to link arms on the way home with the fabulous popular Geraldine — Farrah Fawcett blonde, ankle bracelet, breasts — was bumped to the outside of the line, where I was expected to take the elbow of Helga — glasses, alp-tall, Austrian. I was still a part of the group but excluded from the inner core and its giggles, whose target I increasingly, achingly, took to be me.)
“Stop that, Emily, please.”
Em is decapitating paper batons of sugar and pouring them all over the table. We do a deal: she can make a sugar mountain for her Minnie Mouse key ring to ski down, but only if she eats her quiche and three green beans. No make that
I wish I could relax more, but a buzzing in my brain tells me I’ve forgotten something.
7:16 P.M. At bedtime, an overexcited Emily wants to discuss the Easter story one more time. She has been obsessed with it since she figured out last week that the Baby Jesus she sang carols about at Christmas grew up to be the man on the cross. It’s one of those occasions when you wish you could press a button and the Fairy Godmother of Explanations would appear and wave her wisdom wand.
“Why did Jesus get killed?”
Oh, God. “Because — well, because people didn’t like the things he was saying and they wanted to make him stop.”
I can see Emily searching her mind for the worst crime she can imagine. At last, she says, “They didn’t want to do sharing?”
“In a way that’s right, they didn’t want to share.”
“After Jesus died he got better and went to Heaven.”
“That’s right.”
“How old was he when they crossed him?”
“Crucified. He was thirty-three.”
“How old are you, Mummy?”
“I’m thirty-five, darling.”
“Some people can be a hundred years old, can’t they, Mummy?”
“Yes, they can.”
“But then they die anyway?”
“Yes.” She wants me to tell her I won’t die. I know that’s what she wants: the one thing I can’t say.
“Dying is sad because you don’t get to see your friends anymore.”
“Yes, it is sad, Em, very sad, but there will always be people who love you—”
“Lots of people are in Heaven, aren’t they, Mummy? Lots and lots.”
“Yes, sweetheart. Millions.”
As Sunday lie-in agnostics, Richard and I decided that when we had children of our own we would not give them the false consolation of a guaranteed afterlife. No angels or archangels, no harps, no Elysian Fields full of those people you couldn’t stand at college in dodgy footwear. That resolve lasted — oh, approximately three seconds after my daughter first said the word “die.” How could I, who wouldn’t let her have Roald Dahl stories on the ground that they were too cruel, open a furnace door and invite her to contemplate the extinction of everyone she would ever know and love?
“And the Easter Bunny is in Heaven?”
“No, the Easter Bunny is not. Absolutely not.”
