For Once in My Life by Marianne Kavanagh

Author:Marianne Kavanagh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC044000, FIC027020
ISBN: 9781922148841
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2014-04-22T16:00:00+00:00

2008

‘As in Mia Farrow?’ said his brother on the phone from London.

‘We just liked the name,’ said George.

Stephanie liked it, he thought.

‘And how’s it going? Getting any sleep?’

‘Not much,’ said George.

But he didn’t mind. Sometimes in the early morning hours, when Mia stared at him as if trying to memorise every line and angle of his face, he had a feeling of complete calm. Her eyes anchored him to the present. This was important, this moment of communication, and nothing else really mattered. Of course, when Stephanie appeared, furious (as she always was first thing in the morning), and stomped around re-plumping cushions and crashing crockery into the dishwasher so loudly that Mia began to cry, the mood was broken. But once Stephanie had gone to work in her tailored black suit, looking surprisingly untouched by motherhood, George and Mia settled back into their long day of busy nothingness, staring at each other in mutual wonderment, falling asleep to the rhythm of each other’s breathing. Stephanie would appear again at around 7pm—a slightly shorter working day because of the new baby—and look around at the chaos with irritable disbelief, and George would try hard to think of all the small achievements and pleasing milestones they had managed, with extreme cleverness, to pull off while she’d been at the office. He wanted her, like him, to have the joy of revelling in her daughter’s astounding progress. But when it came to it, when he looked at his wife’s taut, angry face and opened his mouth to describe what this small magical person had done, there seemed nothing to say. Stephanie would snap, ‘So what have you been doing all day?’, and George, suddenly tired, would say, with deferential apology, ‘Oh nothing, really. Nothing at all.’

‘Fresh air is very good for babies,’ she said one evening. ‘It helps them sleep.’

He nodded.

‘Really, George,’ she said, ‘it must be possible to get out to the deli at least. It’s only just down the road.’

‘Yes,’ said George. ‘We’ll do that tomorrow.’

Two days later, they made it. At the deli, in the brightness of red-and-gold packets and light shining from cellophane wrapping, he was overwhelmed by kindness. Mia was admired and loved, and they wouldn’t let him pay for anything—the pasta, the pancetta, the Parmesan. Every single woman in the shop was either smothering him with advice or patting his arm and telling him what a wonderful father he was. When he staggered out into the sunshine, he felt as if he’d joined some secret society he hadn’t even known existed. Until you have children, he thought, you don’t realise they’re the focus of most people’s lives.

‘George?’ said Stephanie one evening.

‘What?’ He had been watching Mia sleeping.

‘Do you think you’re becoming a little obsessed?’

George jumped guiltily. ‘Am I?’

‘She doesn’t need you to check she’s breathing.’

‘No,’ said George.

He tried to ration himself after that. Or, at least, to stare at Mia only when he thought Stephanie wasn’t looking.

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