Daniel Isn’t Talking. Marti Leimbach
here is something I want to read,’ she says, studying the titles. ‘Statistically speaking, that is.’
‘I’m only pencilled onto the family tree,’ I tell her. ‘Though I notice the children are in ink. Are they expecting an annulment, do you think?’
Cath laughs. ‘I don’t know how anyone stays married to my wretched brothers. If I were Tricia I’d have more than a migraine, I can tell you. I’d have a settlement by now. You’re better off with Stephen. At least he speaks.’
‘It’s not even dark pencil. It’s as though they got some feather-light lead and just scratched in the suggestion of my name.’
From behind us comes Daphne’s voice. ‘I heard that!’ she says, tottering through the narrow hall with Raymond trailing behind. ‘And the reason for pencil is that you were written in at the time of your engagement. Very simple explanation. You make such a fuss without understanding the why of things.’
‘The why of things, Mother?’ says Cath, coming to my defence as she always does. At the wedding she slipped me a Valium and told me her prescription pad was available to me at any time. Perhaps I ought to use the opportunity of this family lunch to mooch some Prozac, those small wonder pills. But I’ve grown suddenly shy of any sort of drug, having been traumatised by the mystery pills Stephen gave me. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ says Cath. ‘They’ve been married five years.’
‘Yes, but if you remember, they had a very brief engagement and there had been that long-standing girlfriend, Penelope, and it caused us to wonder if Stephen might just change his mind.’
‘Oh, for Godsakes, Mother,’ Cath snorts.
Daphne draws her chin back, lifts her finger as though testing the wind. ‘You don’t know how many times he changed his mind before, dear. Your brother can be dead set for one thing, then suddenly turn. So rather than ruin Uncle Raymond’s lovely tree we pencilled in Melanie’s name.’
‘How ridiculous,’ says Cath.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I say.
‘We’ll put your name in ink right away,’ says Raymond. He takes a handkerchief from his trouser pocket, wiping his brow in a flustered manner. ‘I do apologise.’
‘I thought you didn’t go in for family trees and tradition,’ says Daphne, sizing me up with her cloudy grey eyes. ‘But I suppose people change.’
Bernard, having heard the argument, arrives in his slow, faltering gait, with something he feels needs to be said. ‘Stephen was with Penelope for many years. She was practically one of the family,’ he tells me with authority. He suffers from a lung condition so that his speaking voice is filled with wheezy sighs, but he means business. ‘Not that you aren’t one of the family,’ he adds quickly. ‘Don’t be silly.’
‘Daddy, sit down,’ urges Cath.
‘Are you happy now?’ Daphne asks me.
Meanwhile, Stephen and David watch the cricket. Emily draws heads for the game hens, cuts them out and sticks them into the opposite cavity to where the head goes, announcing to anyone who cares to hear that we will wake her brother if we keep arguing like this, and that he will scream.
* * *
In the car, on the way back to London, I say, ‘Once more, just so I remember, how long were you with Penelope?’
‘Six years,’ says Stephen. ‘God, I hope we aren’t going to go into all that again.’
He takes a long breath, one of his warning signs that we could have a big argument if I carry on.
‘That’s one more year than we’ve been married,’ I say. ‘Not that I’m counting.’
He says nothing.
‘You were supposed to smile,’ I tell him. But he doesn’t smile. And I know why, too. It isn’t that the joke is old – though of course it is. It’s a variation of a Jewish mother joke that my father told my mother and my mother told me. But I can’t pull off the humour any more. Along with everything else, I am losing my lightness, my wit, the thing that always got me through. Inside me I feel as though I am losing a battle in a war that hasn’t even been declared. As for Penelope, I know that Stephen still talks to her, that they are friends. Occasionally she sends us postcards from the faraway places she studies, reporting the concerts she has heard done on instruments made from stones and reeds. But this has always been the case, and no reason for concern.
In a traffic jam on the M40, just outside of London, Daniel wakes up. He wails, angry at the confinement of his car seat.
‘Oh great,’ says Stephen.
‘He can’t help it,’ I say. ‘He hates car seats.’
Stephen doesn’t say anything, not to me, not to Daniel. I tell myself this is only because Daniel is crying so loudly and because Stephen is tired, that’s all. How can he be expected to talk over this noise?
‘All right, I’ll do something,’ I say. I can’t bear it when Daniel screams like this either; there’s no point in pretending it’s only Stephen who is riled. Daniel is knocking his fists into the sides of his car seat. Emily and I name his tantrums the way that meteorologists name hurricanes. Tantrum Annabel, Tantrum Betty, Tantrum Caroline. If I don’t want Tantrum Louise, I have to move fast. So I slip out of my seat belt and go to sit with him in the back.
‘Can I have the front seat now?’ asks Emily.
‘Of course you can!’ Stephen says, patting the empty seat beside him. Emily climbs into the front seat, a smile on her face. ‘Hello, Pretty,’ Stephen greets her. Crouched in the back now with only Daniel, I roll Thomas the Tank Engine around the edges of the car door, on to Daniel’s legs and up to his chin. He screams, bangs his head against the back of the car seat, kicks his feet violently and spills so many tears that he makes his shirt wet. Finally, I unlock the seat belt. While Stephen and Emily discuss what exactly a grandparent is and how Stephen is Granny’s little boy from a long time ago, I quietly lift my shirt and let Daniel find whatever milk might be left in my breasts. He is nearly weaned, but not quite. I have tried – believe me, I have – but among my weaknesses are children’s tears.
‘Oh, come on, Mel,’ says Stephen. He’s watching me through the rear-view mirror. ‘You aren’t breastfeeding him, are you?’
‘I can’t get him to settle.’ In a manner as though I am striking a bargain, I say, ‘Please, let’s just get home.’
‘Are you going to be breastfeeding him when he’s fourteen?’
Cath would say, ‘Oh, shut up, Stephen, you sod. The chap is only a baby, let him be.’ Penelope, whom I have met from time to time, would laugh at him, whisper in his ear that he is only jealous. ‘You’ll just have to wait for yours,’ she’d say, tossing back the fringe of dark hair that decorates her forehead. But I don’t say anything. Daniel has stopped crying, which is what matters to me. And Emily is laughing at the thought of Granny being young and Stephen being a little boy. And that is the only other thing that matters to me.
Stephen dated me at the same time his girlfriend, Penelope, was having an affair with her university professor. I would have learned a great deal about Penelope if Stephen had taken me to his flat, a large floor-through at the top of a Victorian conversion in Belsize Park, as all of her clothes were strewn across the floor’s oak-wood planks, along with various bizarre musical instruments – most of which looked like elaborate sticks or pots. Balingbings and bamboo xylophones, African gourd drums and Romanian pan pipes shared space with a grand piano from 1926, which aged gracefully on one side of the room. Penelope is an ethnomusicologist, which means she studies music such as Manchurian shamanic drumming, Brazilian death metal, Scots pipe music and even some Continental street busking. I wish I