Broken Harbour

dropping things and swearing to herself, for me it was the most restful thing life had to offer, like watching a cat put the world in order by washing itself. It always seemed to me that a girl like that, a girl who worked that hard at being what she was supposed to be, was likely to want what she was supposed to want: flowers, good jewelry, a nice house, holidays in the sun, and a man who would love her and put his heart into taking care of her for the rest of their lives. Girls like Fiona Rafferty are complete mysteries to me; I can’t imagine where you would start trying to figure them out, and that makes me nervous. With Laura, it seemed to me that I had a chance at making her happy. It was moronic of me to be taken by surprise when she, with whom I had felt safe for exactly that reason, turned out to want precisely what women are supposed to want.

Dina said, without looking at me, “Was it because of me? That Laura dumped you?”

“No,” I said, instantly. It was true. Laura found out about Dina early on, in much the way you would expect. She never once said or hinted, I believe she never once thought, that Dina wasn’t my responsibility, that I should keep her crazy out of our home. When I came to bed, late on nights when Dina was finally asleep in our spare room, Laura would stroke my hair. That was all.

Dina said, “Nobody wants to deal with this shit. I don’t want to deal with this shit.”

“Maybe some women wouldn’t. They’re not women I’d marry.”

She snorted. “I said I liked Laura. I didn’t say I thought she was a saint. How stupid do you think I am? I know she didn’t want some crazy bitch showing up on her doorstep, fucking up her whole week. That one time, candles, music, wineglasses, both of your hair all messed up? She must have hated my guts.”

“She didn’t. She never has.”

“You wouldn’t tell me if she did. Why else would she have dumped you? Laura was mad about you. And it’s not like it was your fault, like you hit her or called her a slag, I know how you treated her, like some kind of princess. You’d have brought her the moon. Her or me, did she say that? I want my life back, get that loony out of here?”

She was starting to wind tight, her back pressed against the arm of the sofa. There was a flare of fear in her eyes.

I said, “Laura left me because she wants children.”

Dina stopped in mid-breath and stared, open-mouthed. “Oh, shit, Mikey. Can you not have kids?”

“I don’t know. We didn’t try.”

“Then…?”

“I don’t want to have children. I never have.”

Dina thought about that in silence, sucking her granola bar absently. After a while she said, “Laura would probably chill out a lot if she had kids.”

“Maybe. I hope she gets the chance to find out. But it was never going to be with me. Laura knew that when she married me. I made sure she did. I never misled her.”

“Why don’t you want kids?”

“Some people don’t. It doesn’t make me a freak.”

“I didn’t call you a freak. Did I call you a freak? I just asked why.”

I said, “I don’t believe in Murder Ds having kids. They turn you soft: you can’t take the heat any more, and you end up making a bollix of the job and probably the kids too. You can’t have both. I’ll take the job.”

“Oh my God, great big bullshit. Nobody doesn’t have kids because they don’t believe in it. You always blame everything on your job, it’s so boring, you have no idea. Why don’t you want kids?”

“I don’t blame things on my job. I take it seriously. If that’s boring, I apologize.”

Dina rolled her eyes and did a huge fake-patient sigh. “OK,” she said, slowing down so that the idiot could keep up. “I’d bet everything I’ve got, which is fuck-all but there you go, that your entire squad doesn’t get sterilized their first day on the job. You work with guys who have kids. They do the exact same job you do. They can’t be letting murderers go all the time, or they’d get fired. Right? Am I right?”

“Some of the guys have families. Yeah.”

“Then why don’t you want kids?”

The coffee was kicking in. The apartment felt small and ugly, harsh with artificial light; the urge to get out, start driving too fast back to Broken Harbor, nearly launched me right out of my chair. I said, “Because the risk is too big. It’s so enormous that just thinking about it makes me want to puke my guts. That’s why.”

“The risk,” Dina said, after a moment’s silence. She turned the wrapper of the granola bar inside out, carefully, and examined the shiny side. “Not from the job. You mean me. That they’d turn out like me.”

I said, “You’re not who I’m worried about.”

“Then who?”

“Me.”

Dina watched me, the lightbulb reflecting tiny twin will-o’-the-wisps in those inscrutable milky blue eyes. She said, “You’d make a good father.”

“I think I probably would. But probably’s not good enough. Because if we’re both wrong and I turned out to be a terrible father, what then? There would be absolutely nothing I could do. Once you find out, it’s too late: the kids are there, you can’t send them back. All you can do is keep on fucking them up, day after day, and watch while these perfect babies turn into wrecks in front of your eyes. I can’t do it, Dina. Either I’m not stupid enough or I’m not brave enough, but I can’t take that risk.”

“Geri’s doing OK.”

“Geri’s doing great,” I said. Geri is cheerful, easygoing, and a natural at motherhood. After each of her kids was born, I rang her every day for a year-stakeouts, interrogations, fights with Laura, everything else in the world got put on hold for that phone call-to make sure she was all right. Once she sounded hoarse and subdued enough that I made Phil leave work and check on her. She had a cold and obviously thought I should feel like an idiot, which I didn’t. Better safe, always.

“I want kids someday,” Dina said. She balled up the wrapper, threw it in the general direction of the bin and missed. “I bet you think that’s a really shit idea.”

The thought of her showing up pregnant next time made my scalp freeze. “You don’t need my permission.”

“But you think it anyway.”

I asked, “How’s Fabio?”

“His name’s Francesco. I don’t think it’s going to work out. I don’t know.”

“I think it would be a better idea to wait to have kids until you’re with someone you can rely on. Call me old- fashioned.”

“You mean, in case I lose it. In case I’m minding this little tiny three-week-old baby and my head starts to explode. Someone should be there to watch me.”

“That’s not what I said.”

Dina stretched out her legs on the sofa and inspected her toenail polish, which was pearly pale blue. She said, “I can tell when I’m going, you know. Do you want to know how?”

I don’t want to know anything, ever, about the inner workings of Dina’s mind. I said, “How?”

“Things start sounding all wrong.” A quick glance at me, under cover of her hair. “Like I take off my top at night and drop it on the floor, and it goes plop, like a rock falling into a pond. Or once I was walking home from work and my boots, every time my boots hit the ground they squealed, like a mouse in a trap. It was horrible. In the end I had to sit down on the footpath and take them off, to make sure there wasn’t a mouse stuck inside-I did know there wasn’t, I’m not stupid, but just to make sure. I figured it out then; what was happening, I mean. But I still had to take a taxi home. I couldn’t stand hearing that, all the way. It sounded like it was in agony.”

“Dina. You should go to someone about it. As soon as it happens.”

“I do go to someone. Today I was in work and I opened one of the big freezers to get more bagels, and it crackled; like a fire, like there was a forest fire in there. So I walked out and came to you.”

“Which is great. I’m delighted you did. But I’m talking about a professional.”

“Doctors,” Dina said, with her lip curling. “I’ve lost count. And how much use have they ever been?”