Missing Joseph

The water in the bathroom began to drain, and he glanced at the door, wondering if that’s what was at the root of the diffi culty he and his wife were having. She wanted what was her due, the norm. He had long believed normality had little intrinsic value.

He pushed himself to his feet and listened to her movements. The surge of water told him she had just stood. She would be stepping out of the tub, reaching for a towel, and wrapping it round her. He tapped against the door and opened it.

She was wiping the mirror free of steam, her hair spilling tendrils against her neck from the turban she’d fashioned from a second towel. Her back was to him, and from where he stood, he could see that her back was lightly beaded with moisture. As were her legs, which looked smooth and sleek, softened by the bath oil that filled the room with the scent of lilies.

She looked at his reflection and smiled. Her expression was fond. “I suppose it’s well and truly over between us.”

“Why?”

“You didn’t join me in the bath.”

“You didn’t invite me.”

“I was sending you mental invitations all through dinner. Didn’t you get them?”

“Was that your foot under the table, then? It didn’t feel much like Tommy’s, come to think of it.”

She chuckled and uncapped her lotion. He watched her smooth it against her face. Muscles moved with the circular motion of her fingers, and he made an exercise out of identification: trapezius, levator scapulae, splenius cervicis. It was a form of discipline to keep his mind heading in the direction in which he wished it to go. The prospect of deferring conversation with Deborah till another time was always heightened by the sight of her, freshly out of her bath.

“I’m sorry about bringing the adoption papers,” he said. “We made a bargain and I didn’t keep my part of it. I was hoping to romance you into talking about the problem while we were here. Ascribe it to male ego and forgive me, if you will.”

“Forgiven,” she said. “But there isn’t a problem.”

She capped the lotion and began to towel herself off with rather more energy than the task required. Seeing this, he felt the palm of caution fl atten itself against his chest. He said nothing else until she had slid into her dressing gown and freed her hair from its towel. She was bent from the waist, combing her fi ngers through the tangles in lieu of using a brush, when he spoke again. He chose his words carefully.

“That’s an issue of semantics. What else can we call what’s been happening between us? Disagreement? Dispute? Those don’t seem to hit the mark particularly well.”

“And God knows we can’t stumble in the process of applying scientifi c labels.”

“That isn’t fair.”

“No?” She raised herself and rooted through her make-up case to produce the slender jacket of pills. She popped one from its plastic casing, held it up in presentation to him between her thumb and index finger, and put it into her mouth. She turned on the tap with such decided force that the water hit the bottom of the basin and rose up like spume.

“Deborah.”

She ignored him. She drank the pill down. “There. Now you can set your mind at rest. I’ve just eliminated the problem.”

“Taking the pills or not is going to be your decision, not mine. I can stand over you. I can attempt to force you. I choose not to do so. I choose only to make certain you understand my concern.”

“Which is?”

“Your health.”

“You’ve made that clear for two months now. So I’ve done what you wanted, and I’ve taken my pills. I won’t be getting pregnant. Aren’t you satisfi ed with that?”

Her skin was beginning to mottle, always a primary sign that she was feeling backed into a corner. Her movements were becoming clumsy as well. He didn’t want to be the cause of her panic, but at the same time he wanted to clear the air between them. He knew he was being as obstinate as she was, but still he pressed on. “You make it sound as if we don’t want the same thing.”

“We don’t. Are you asking me to pretend I don’t realise that?” She moved past him into the bedroom where she went to the electric heater and made an adjustment that took too much time and concentration. He followed her, keeping his distance by resuming his place in the wingback chair, a careful three feet away.

“It’s family,” he said. “Children. Two of them. Perhaps three. Isn’t that the goal? Wasn’t that what we wanted?”

“Our children, Simon. Not two that Social Services condescends to give us, but two that we have. That’s what I want.”

“Why?”

She looked up. Her posture stiffened and he realised he had somehow cut to the quick with a question he’d simply not thought to ask before. In their every discussion, he’d been too intent upon pressing home his own points to wonder at her single-minded determination to have a baby no matter the cost.

“Why?” he asked again, leaning towards her, his elbows on his knees. “Can’t you talk about it with me?”

She looked back at the heater, reached for one of its knobs, twisted it fi ercely. “Don’t patronise me. You know I can’t stand that.”

“I’m not patronising you.”

“You are. You psychologise everything. You probe and twist. Why can’t I just feel what I feel and want what I want without having to examine myself under one of your damned microscopes?”

“Deborah…”

“I want to have a baby. Is that some sort of crime?”

“I’m not suggesting that.”

“Does it make me a madwoman?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Am I pathetic because I want that baby to be ours? Because I want it to be the way we send down roots? Because I want to know we created it — you and I? Because I want to be connected to it? Why does this have to be such a crime?”

“It isn’t.”

“I want to be a real mother. I want to experience it. I want the child.”

“It shouldn’t be an act of ego,” he said. “And if it is for you, then I think you’ve mistaken what being a parent is all about.”

Her head turned back to him. Her face was aflame. “That’s a nasty thing to say. I hope you enjoyed it.”

“Oh God, Deborah.” He reached out to her but couldn’t manage to bridge the space between them. “I don’t mean to hurt you.”

“You’ve a fine way of hiding it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yes. Well. It’s been said.”

“No. Not everything.” He sought the words with a fair degree of desperation, walking the line between trying not to hurt her further and trying himself to understand. “It seems to me that if being a parent is more than just producing a baby, then you can have that experience with any child — one you have, one you merely take under your wing, or one you adopt. If the act of parenting and not simply producing is indeed what you want in the fi rst place. Is it?”

She didn’t reply. But she also didn’t look away. He felt it safe to go on.

“I think a great many people go into it without the slightest consideration given to what will be asked of them over the course of their children’s lives. I think they go into it without consideration given to anything at all. But seeing an infant through to adulthood and beyond takes its own special kind of toll on a person. And you have to be prepared for that. You have to want the entire experience. Not simply the act of producing a baby because you feel otherwise incomplete without having done so.”

He didn’t need to add the rest: that he’d had the experience of parenting a child to back up his words, that