Or something like that …?
Isaac’s Second Decision
It was early evening and the winter sun was leaving at a lick in order to honour her commitments in other warmer parts of the world. Hope was pacing around inside the flat, up and down the corridor from the front of the flat to the back. In the front she checked the street from her living room. Nothing. She rushed down the corridor.
In the back, she checked the yard from her kitchen. Nothing.
Where was Isaac? Minnie would surely be hungry again by now. Was she warm enough? Where were they? She felt a rumbling panic rising in her belly. Surely he wouldn’t run off completely with Florence? Would he? For a brief second she engaged with that thought, but found it too unpalatable to dwell on. She couldn’t cope with two losses; she was barely managing one. No, no, no. She daren’t even consider it for real.
Why didn’t Isaac have a mobile phone? Why did he resist it so strongly? Besides the fact that he couldn’t really afford one, he claimed that he simply wouldn’t use it. His parents called once a week on the landline in reception at his halls. He regularly saw Hope. That was it for him; he could communicate with those he cared most about and didn’t desire anything further. He also had regular conversations with Hope about the fact that, as an engineer, he was pretty sure the technology would change drastically, and he advised her to hang fire until mobiles were cheaper and better. He said it would be soon, and when the phones were more affordable, he would buy her one, maybe for her twenty-first birthday? For Hope, the anticipation and dreaming about it was almost better than any present itself. She was twenty. She’d had to grow up pretty quickly at home when she was younger so when she could choose, Hope fiercely protected her right to be immature and downright gleeful.
That was all right when it came to presents and romance and fashion. It wasn’t all right when it came to parenthood. She and Isaac had crossed the Rubicon into maturity right at the moment they made a baby. It was in this responsible frame of mind that she was fretting about Isaac and Minnie. Not for a moment could Hope stop to consider that the blonde woman asleep in the maternity suite that morning might be experiencing a thousand times the horror of her own worry.
Hope was anxiously peering up and down the street from the bay window in her living room when she heard the kitchen door handle go. She raced down the passage to find Isaac holding Minnie in his arms; she was wrapped up in his coat for extra warmth against the cold evening.
‘Thank God. Here, give her to me.’ Hope took the baby from him, and she was shocked to feel how stone cold Isaac was in only his shirt. With Minnie still in her arms, she rushed to the bedroom and yanked the duvet from the bed and brought it back into the kitchen where she wrapped it around him as well as she could with one hand. She manoeuvred him to sit at the narrow breakfast bar. It wasn’t easy; he was frozen. Hope went straight to the kettle and put it on, while she expertly plopped a teabag into a mug single-handed. She might have been carrying an infant for years; it seemed second nature.
Quiet Isaac was unnervingly quiet. Hope didn’t push it. She made him tea and let him warm up without a word passing between them. She sat opposite him and unravelled the baby from the coat and the batik throw. Minnie was such a little star, she gurgled at Hope and quickly latched on when Hope once again offered her breast, which was swollen and ready. The only sound was that of Isaac slurping his sweet tea and Minnie slurping her mother’s milk. Somehow, in the undoubtedly traumatic atmosphere, these three people were breathing calm oxygen. There was something about the energy of the baby that slowed them both down to her rhythm. Her little heartbeat was their main concern; she mattered the most and they could console themselves with the knowledge that she at least was content. For now.
Halfway through his body-thawing mug of tea, it was Isaac who spoke first. ‘I went back.’
‘Back where?’ she said.
‘To the hospital.’
She gasped, gathering herself, and stayed silent in fear while she waited to hear his story.
‘I knew it was the right thing to do. Perhaps the parents were still there. I thought I could make it all right. All right for everyone. I walked into the front hall bit, where the reception is, where all the seats are? I sat there for a minute. I thought I could leave her there. Someone would see her and take care of her; she wouldn’t be on her own for long. It’s the best place. Then nobody would notice me, no one would blame you and they would have their child back. It would be right again … and I would come back here and we would eat soup and we would be OK …’ He stopped talking. Hope waited. And waited … until she could tell he
