Love and Other Thought Experiments Read online

  They lay on the floor for a while. This is life, Eliza thought, this is my life.

  ‘My eye hurts.’

  A vision of the future flickered before Eliza. Rachel and their baby huddled on the floor in tears and no one to take care of them except her. All the responsibility of two entirely unreasonable beings. Was she being unfair? Rachel couldn’t possibly believe an ant had gone into her eye. But then, why was she insisting it had? Eliza took a deep breath and reached for any remnants of patience she could find.

  ‘Here, let me see.’

  Rachel was an only child. If they had any babies at all, they had better have at least two. Eliza’s sister would have hit her over the head with their father’s encyclopedia if she’d woken her in the night with tall tales about insects. Standing, Eliza pulled on Rachel’s cheek and looked again.

  ‘It’s sore. Maybe you should go to the doctor tomorrow.’

  Rachel hiccuped.

  ‘I’ll sleep on your side tonight,’ Eliza said.

  They got back into bed and Eliza turned out the light. She felt Rachel’s cold toes press against her calves.

  ‘Thank you,’ Rachel said.

  ‘You’re welcome. What for?’

  ‘For believing me. About the ant.’

  (*Here the main program block starts*)

  Eliza laid the table for dinner around the box from the chemist that had stayed where she put it the day before.

  ‘So, what did the doctor say about your eye?’

  ‘She doesn’t listen to anything I say. It’s you she likes.’

  ‘I’ve only met her once.’

  ‘That’s probably why. She thinks I’m weird. Like that guy in the killing and tv shop. Staring.’ Rachel widened her eyes at Eliza and stole a salad leaf from the bowl. ‘She gave me some eye drops and told me to come back if it still hurts even though I told her it had stopped hurting.’

  ‘The pest controller.’

  ‘Yeah. Him.’

  ‘But she looked at it?’

  ‘Yes. A bit. Maybe I should see a specialist.’

  ‘An eye specialist?’

  ‘I don’t know. An eye person? Or that hospital for tropical diseases?’ Rachel looked quite happy at the thought. ‘Maybe it’s a kind of ant that we don’t know about here.’

  Eliza put the saucepan of spaghetti on the table and sat down. Images from the night before played on her mind. She had promised Rachel marriage and children but she saw their life together as a mirage, always ahead of them and just out of reach.

  ‘I don’t think there is a doctor who will know about any of this.’

  ‘Isn’t that what a specialist is for?’ Rachel said. ‘To investigate further?’

  ‘Even though your eye is fine?’

  ‘My eye feels fine now. But after what happened …’

  ‘When what happened?’

  ‘You were there.’

  The future shimmered across the table. A world of possibilities, if only Eliza could believe in them.

  ‘Eat up.’ Eliza spooned out the pasta, and refilled their glasses. ‘Let’s open that test and get to the fun stuff.’

  ‘I want to. I really do, it’s what I’ve always wanted. But I need you with me.’

  Eliza frowned. ‘I am with you. I’m excited. I said …’

  ‘Not that. I need you to know what I know. To have faith in me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  The tips of Eliza’s fingers tingled with adrenalin. Rachel wasn’t going to let it go.

  ‘An ant went into my eye. And now it’s stuck there.’

  ‘Really?’

  Rachel looked up at her girlfriend. ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you had a bad dream.’

  ‘I know the difference between sleeping and waking. I felt the ant go into my eye.’

  ‘Is that even possible?’

  ‘It must be.’

  She was so sure. Eliza watched as Rachel stroked her eye along the lash line in a delicate sweep, as if not to disturb her visitor.

  ‘But the doctor didn’t want to refer you?’

  ‘She was the same when we went to talk about getting pregnant. She didn’t hear me.’

  ‘And the specialist?’

  ‘I don’t really think I want one. I mean, it’s there, inside.’ Rachel moved her hand away from her face. ‘I don’t want to have my head cut open.’

  ‘They wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘If there’s nothing they can do, there’s no point going.’

  ‘Right.’

  Rachel reached across the table. ‘As long as you believe me.’

  The mirage of their life together pulled into focus.

  ‘If you love me, you will trust me,’ Rachel said. ‘Don’t you?’

  A small thing. Agree and they could both move into their new relationship in which Eliza had accepted Rachel completely. A small thing and a big thing in one word.

  ‘Yes.’ She did believe. She believed in Rachel and all that would come with surrender. A future. She didn’t have to understand about the ant, only that it was part of Rachel’s story. The prickles of danger in her fingertips subsided. There was nothing to be frightened of. She had chosen.

  Rachel blinked. She reached across the table and took the bag with the test in it. ‘I’m going to do this right now. Finish your pasta,’ she nodded at Eliza’s plate. ‘I’ll be two minutes.’

  begin

  It was more than a year before Arthur was born but for Rachel and Eliza he began that evening, Friday 24 October 2003.

  ‘That was the night we conceived him, really.’ Rachel tapped her head. ‘In the best sense. The rest was like shopping at Homebase; you know you want to do some DIY but you have to buy the equipment first.’

  At this, Rachel’s friends would laugh. She was so much more relaxed since she had the baby, they said. Being a mother had really brought out the best in her.

  They said it to Rachel’s face and she would smile and blush and not mention the ant. Throughout the conception (in the end they chose IUI), house move (for reasons of space, they agreed), and civil partnership (at Westminster registry office with twenty guests and a heavily pregnant Rachel), they rarely spoke of the events that inspired their new circumstances. When they did, Eliza changed the subject as soon as possible.

  Still, by the time of Arthur’s second birthday his origins had become inextricably linked to that day in both his mothers’ minds and Eliza watched Arthur and Rachel blossom, sure in the knowledge that she had almost lost them both. She saw the time before their son as a confused and distant past. She could not have explained why it had asked so much of her to believe in Rachel’s story but since then so many extraordinary things had happened that embracing the possible existence of a single ant seemed almost sensible and while she would never admit that the ant had saved them, she acknowledged that the idea of the ant had been a start. Now she inhabited her life. It was the difference, she thought, between sitting by the side of the pool and actually swimming.

  ‘Washing up or washing Arthur?’ Rachel walked across the sitting room picking up paper plates and streamers. ‘I can’t believe Hal brought party poppers. They get everywhere.’

  ‘I think he likes scaring Greg. He jumped a foot in the air every time one went off.’

  ‘At least Greg came. This wasn’t exactly what he signed up for.’ Rachel smiled.

  The two women stood for a moment and surveyed the devastation that a room full of toddlers had wrought. The new house was carpeted, for the sake of Arthur’s knees, though little of the pale green wool showed under the tide of wrapping paper and balloons. Eliza tried not to worry about the cake and cartons of juice she had seen cascading from small fists.

  ‘Great party though.’ Rachel nodded her head in the direction of the kitchen where Arthur could be seen stacking discarded plastic cups on the floor. ‘He seemed to enjoy himself.’

  Eliza put her palm up to Rachel’s cheek and held it. The skin was soft and a little finer than befo
re Arthur, and she wore her hair shorter, surrendered to the curls.

  ‘It was a fantastic party. Thank you.’

  Rachel had organised the party, the way she organised everything now, alone and without fuss. She no longer called Eliza at work because the washing machine wouldn’t drain or her mother had been unkind.

  ‘Two years.’ Rachel lifted her free hand to Eliza’s and pressed it to her temple. ‘A wild ride.’

  Eliza took the plates from her wife and moved to collect the rest. ‘You have a bath with Arthur. I’ll clear up.’

  Rachel kept her fingers at her forehead.

  ‘I do feel it sometimes. As though it’s still there.’

  There was always the worry that Rachel would view the day as an anniversary of more than just their child. On the days when they came close to talking about the ant, Eliza would be reminded that for Rachel, the ant was real. Not some metaphor that Eliza could sweep away with an imaginative flourish. She gathered some crisp packets from the floor and hoped Rachel would stop.

  ‘It can’t be, though. Living inside me, in my head. But I feel it,’ Rachel said.

  Eliza felt the blood rush to her face.

  ‘I know you don’t like to talk about it,’ Rachel continued. ‘We should do, I think. On days like this.’

  As though the conversation were not always with them, running alongside their lives like tickertape.

  ‘What? What do you want to talk about? An ant?’ Streamers and crisps scattered between Eliza’s feet. ‘I did everything, Rachel. I believed you. I changed it all for you. We have a life. If you keep going on about the ant … people will think you’re crazy.’

  ‘Mum?’ Arthur ran through the doorway, his bare legs dripping from the dregs in the party cups.

  Eliza lifted him off the floor and squeezed him hard. ‘It’s alright, baby.’

  ‘Will they?’ Rachel said. ‘Eliza, please. Stay and talk.’

  ‘He needs a bath,’ Eliza carried their sticky son into the hallway and up the stairs, Rachel’s face staring back at her as she dropped Arthur into a few inches of lukewarm water and a trough of bubbles.

  He looked so like Rachel, dark haired and olive skinned and something else, something removed from both Hal’s family and Rachel’s, an old-fashioned far away set to his eyes and brow, as though he had waged some mythical battle with the gods and been punished with the life of a human boy. Eliza didn’t believe in anything of the sort, but having a child had rounded the edges of her cynicism. It was impossible to deny the importance of imagination when your son demanded you investigate its powers daily. And all along there had been Rachel, placing her own fantasy at the centre of her family. Their family. She rubbed a flannel along Arthur’s stocky legs. Very well. If Rachel was troubled, if she needed to talk, then it was up to Eliza to help her.

  writeln

  Dr Marshall’s front door was on the side of the house, facing away from the street. A gravel path led from the gate to the neat porch where a pair of doorbells were marked ‘House’ and ‘Dr Marshall’.

  ‘Think of all the patients who are tempted to press the other one.’ Rachel grazed her fingers over the two bells.

  ‘You included.’

  ‘I’d like to see what happened.’

  The door swung open and an older woman in a paisley wraparound dress stepped forward to greet them. She extended her arm towards the hallway. Dr Marshall didn’t do handshakes.

  It had taken six months to find a therapist they both liked and in the end it was a friend of Hal’s who recommended Sondra Marshall. Her academic background suited Eliza who was anxious about qualifications, and her modern approach impressed Rachel who did not want a Freudian analysis. She was also American, which pleased them both since it removed her from their immediate frame of reference. As though the therapist’s mind were neutral territory upon which they could meet.

  This was their first visit although they had spoken to Dr Marshall on the phone. As they walked into the consulting room, Eliza searched for clues to the personality of the doctor in whom she had placed her trust. She glanced at the bookshelves and framed certificates on the wall, and noted the way the therapist walked to the best chair and waited for her clients to sit across from her. Eliza saw she had entered a temple to which she did not belong.

  Dr Marshall sat down and smoothed the paisley dress over her bare legs. Her straightened hair fell below her jaw and a soft cleavage was visible in the deep V of her neckline. A well-kept sixty, thought Eliza, Rachel will age like that while I become gaunt. An image of their older selves flashed into her mind, the comfort of Rachel’s gentle flesh beside her own.

  ‘We spoke on the phone about a turning point in your relationship.’ Dr Marshall looked at both women. ‘Have you had any more thoughts?’

  Rachel answered first. ‘It’s different now, since Arthur.’

  ‘Arthur is your son?’

  ‘Our son. But I was the one who wanted him.’

  Dr Marshall nodded. ‘And Eliza? How did you feel?’

  ‘I supported her. And I love him. But she’s right, it wasn’t my idea, I was worried that it would be too much.’

  ‘Too much?’

  ‘For Rachel.’

  Rachel leant back in her chair and folded her arms.

  ‘Why did you think that?’ Dr Marshall’s tone was even.

  ‘She is the main carer. I’m at work all week and I can’t leave my job,’ Eliza said.

  ‘Plenty of families cope with one parent at work and one at home.’

  ‘Of course. And now she’s more confident. We both are.’

  ‘So your fears proved unfounded?’

  ‘About that. Yes.’ Eliza glanced at Rachel.

  ‘Here we go,’ Rachel said.

  ‘We’re going to have to talk about it.’

  ‘I said so.’

  Dr Marshall lowered her notepad. ‘This is the time for you to talk about whatever you feel is important.’

  Eliza said, ‘Why don’t you start? It’s for you.’

  ‘No. It’s not.’ Rachel stood straight up. ‘It’s us. You and me. You promised and now you’ve changed your mind.’

  ‘I can’t keep up. I honestly don’t know what it’s going to be next,’ Eliza said.

  ‘Rachel, would you like to sit with us?’

  ‘How is that my fault?’ Rachel walked to the large window that faced on to the garden. ‘What if it had happened to you? I would have listened, you know I would.’

  Dr Marshall looked at Eliza.

  ‘We’re listening, Rachel,’ the therapist said.

  Rachel put her temple to the glass. ‘There is something living in my head. It has been for nearly three years. I have tried to ignore it but it won’t go away. It’s there when I wake up, it’s there when I go to sleep.’ She turned to Eliza. ‘You believed me.’

  Eliza watched the silhouette of her wife against the window. She saw her beyond arm’s length, without Arthur, quite alone. If I had taken care of this, she thought, that night, years ago. I could have told her then that there was no such thing as an ant that can enter your eye. Or, even better, if I had listened and got the pest man in, with his temper and his poison, none of this would be happening.

  ‘Have you felt like this all along?’ Eliza said.

  ‘Mostly.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say?’

  ‘How could I?’ Rachel took a step forward. ‘That was the bargain.’

  Dr Marshall cleared her throat. ‘It sounds as though we have a lot to talk about.’

  ‘You asked me to believe you and I did,’ Eliza said.

  ‘But you didn’t believe, did you? Not really.’

  Eliza couldn’t answer. She had accepted Rachel’s story as part of the woman she loved; a version of events that was not factual but more of a metaphor. Could she tell Rachel that now?

  ‘Why did we come here?’ Rachel looked directly at Eliza. ‘You have to decide. We can’t run away, move to another new house, start again. You have
to decide.’

  ‘Rachel,’ Dr Marshall indicated the chair again. ‘Please sit down.’

  Rachel moved to the arm of her chair and kept her eyes on Eliza.

  ‘You’ve both been dealing with change,’ Dr Marshall said. ‘Having a child can mean a couple must renegotiate their relationship, their roles within the family.’

  ‘We had a deal.’ Rachel’s voice was flat. ‘I kept up my end.’

  ‘I thought you were happy. Until Arthur’s birthday. You were happy.’

  Dr Marshall glanced from Eliza to Rachel. ‘What happened on Arthur’s birthday?’

  ‘I told the truth,’ Rachel said. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘About what’s inside your head?’

  Rachel nodded.

  ‘Is that what you heard, Eliza?’

  ‘I thought we’d finished with all that.’

  ‘Rachel told you she thinks something is living inside her head and for some time you went along with this belief.’ Dr Marshall wrote in her notepad and returned to the two women. ‘What’s changed?’

  Eliza stared at the therapist. The question was for Rachel, Eliza had not changed.

  ‘There’s no more trust,’ Rachel said.

  ‘I trust you, Rachel. It’s not about that.’

  ‘You’ve brought me here to try and talk me round. To cure me. How can I love you when you wish I was someone else?’

  A sense of panic crept over Eliza as she listened to Rachel. She struggled to answer but the words died on her lips. It was Rachel who did not trust her. Rachel who might withdraw as an animal backs away from a trap. Eliza felt the therapist watching them. The doctor’s office was not a temple, it was the opposite; a place to surrender belief.

  ‘I thought you wanted help,’ Eliza said.

  Rachel put her hands to her head. ‘For us, our family.’

  Dr Marshall leant forward. ‘Rachel, are you alright?’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Rachel said. ‘Ant music.’

  (‘Hello, World!’);

  The hospital confirmed the diagnosis by letter. A supratentorial glioma.

  ‘That’s what they’re calling it now,’ Rachel said. ‘A glioma.’

  ‘Glee-oh-ma,’ Arthur repeated.

  Eliza gave him a piece of banana. ‘When is your next appointment?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’ Rachel peered at the paper.