Unravelled: Life as a Mother - Maria Housden

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afraid that a move might leave us both feeling even more vulnerable, and further compromise the already frayed connection between us.

       Now, though, watching Claude pick his way along the path ahead of me, moving carefully so as not to wake Hannah, the contrast between the glum, frustrated man who left the house each morning to go to a job he did not love, and the sun-tanned, smiling man ahead felt too great for me to ignore. This, I realized, was the adventuresome, curious man I had fallen in love with. Perhaps Claude was right – a change of life and scenery were exactly what we needed. And, as his wife, it was up to me to support and encourage him to make the best decision for our family.

       Running ahead to catch up, I grabbed Claude’s hand and smiled at him as he turned. ‘I think we should go for it,’ I said. ‘Your career is important, and you deserve to feel good about what you do. Besides, no matter where we move, with our kids and each other we’ll be able to make any house a home.’

       Claude’s wide grin was the only response I needed. Throwing our arms around each other, I realized that Hannah wasn’t the only one taking her first steps. I felt happy to have made such an important decision with Claude’s interests at heart, and I couldn’t help hoping that I was finally on my way to being the wife I had always wanted to be – the wife Claude had always wanted to have.

       Shades of Gray

       I waited in the silence of the examining room, listening to the sound of Claude’s footsteps pacing outside the door. I breathed deeply into my lungs, trying to collect my thoughts and steel myself for what might come next. Despite the anxiety I felt, I was thankful that I had been able to think clearly enough to ask Claude not to come in. The terrified look in his red-rimmed eyes would make it difficult for anyone to believe the story I had decided to tell.

       My thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door.

       ‘Come in,’ I said as confidently as my voice would allow. The door opened silently and a white-coated doctor entered. I felt surprised and relieved to see that she was a woman, and then a flash of panic as I wondered if a woman might sense my fear more easily than a man.

       ‘Hello, I’m Dr Martha Gray,’ she said, advancing towards me, tucking her clipboard under her arm while extending her other hand. I felt my sense of panic rising as I became aware that my hands were shaking, and my heart was thumping in my chest. Dr Gray’s expression didn’t change. She shook my hand and then glanced briefly at the notes the nurse in the triage area had written on the piece of paper fastened beneath the board’s clip.

       ‘It says here that you sustained some sort of injury and now have blood in your urine.’ She looked up from the clipboard, directly into my eyes. ‘I need you to tell me exactly what happened.’The doctor’s gaze was steady on me as I blinked twice, swallowed and then took a deep, shaking breath.

       ‘I fell. I slipped and fell on the concrete steps outside our back door.’ My voice sounded fine, stronger than I expected it to. I cleared my throat again and continued more confidently. ‘It was icy,’ I explained. ‘I caught the corner of the step as I fell, on the left side. I think the corner of the step bruised my left kidney.’

       Dr Gray continued to look at me quietly. I couldn’t tell from the look in her eyes whether she had believed me. I opened my mouth to say more and then closed it. I had said enough. She reached for her stethoscope and I willed my heartbeat to slow. I took a deep, shuddering breath. Dr Gray listened for a moment to my chest, and then gently raised my sweater to look at the left side of my back. Struggling to stay calm, I tried to erase the images in my head of what had happened in our family room less than an hour before.

       Already, it seemed as if it were only a dream. I couldn’t even remember what we had been arguing about. What I did remember was Claude ignoring me, his eyes staring straight ahead at the television, his lips pressed together, refusing to acknowledge me. I was yelling, begging him to answer me. Both of us had forgotten that Hannah was witnessing all of it, sitting halfway up on the carpeted steps.

       Even if Dr Gray had asked me to tell the truth, I could not have remembered exactly how the moment had happened. All I saw was the image of me screaming into Claude’s face, and him rising up from the couch, arms bent at the elbows, flailing. Somehow, his left elbow had slammed into the lower left side of my back. I could remember falling hard on the carpeted floor, and on my way down, seeing Hannah watching me, impassive, as if she were waiting.

       I had lain there, for the longest moment. The next thing I recalled was that Claude had helped me up, and the two of us had stood, facing each other, eyes glazed over. Both of us were stunned. Becoming aware of Hannah, without speaking I had turned away from Claude and started up the stairs. Picking Hannah up, I had carried her to her room and sat in the rocking chair with her, rocking and crying softly, apologizing over and over to her. Hannah had eventually fallen asleep. I had then put her in her crib and gone to the bathroom.

       It was at that point that I discovered my urine was pink. I went downstairs to tell Claude, who was sitting on the couch in the dark.

       ‘There’s blood in my urine,’ I told him, woodenly. ‘I think I should go to the emergency room.’

       Looking now into the doctor’s eyes, I held her gaze. I knew that the man waiting outside was not capable of the things these people might want to accuse him of. Telling the truth about what happened would only do more damage than good. Our heightened emotions, both good and bad, were undoubtedly due to the fact that in a little more than a week we were scheduled to move to our new home in New Jersey.

       More than anything, though, I was certain that what had happened was not one person’s fault or the other’s. It was a warning to Claude and me that the problems between us were more serious than we had understood. And far from wanting to run away from them, I had seen today, in Claude’s concerned, frightened eyes, a man I could love, a thoughtful man capable of caring for me.

       Tuesday

      I HELD THE BURNING MATCH CAREFULLY BETWEEN MY FINGERTIPS, and lit the three white votive candles on the altar. Sitting quietly on one of the straight-backed chairs arranged in a semicircle in the barn’s small chapel, I stared at the large wooden cross hanging from the ceiling and watched the sunrise through the stained glass window. The room was silent except for the occasional sputter of a candle flame and muffled footfalls from the floor above. Already, my third day there, I felt closer to God, not only as an idea but as a presence, a source of guidance that knew, even if I didn’t, who I was and what I needed to do.

      I was no longer alone in the barn. The night before, while Mary, Gene and I ate a dinner of homemade bread and warm stew, the sound of tyres on the gravel drive had interrupted the silence. The elderly couple had risen without speaking and gone outside to greet the visitor. I had heard the soft hum of voices, the opening and closing of a door, and footsteps on the stairs. Mary told me later, while the two of us washed the dinner dishes, that she had settled the new arrival, a writer, in a room on the barn’s top floor. The four of us would be eating lunches and dinners together in the dining room, and the silence at meals would continue to be observed.

      At the time, I had felt no curiosity about who the new arrival was. Now though, listening to the sounds from above, knowing that they were the footfalls of a writer, I began to wonder. I had always imagined myself a writer, ever since I was 12. But I had imagined myself many other things too, a pioneer woman, a painter, a world traveller, and I hadn’t become any of those things either.

      Watching the flames of the candles dance in the gusts of breeze coming in from an open window, I realized that all of those things,

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