The Harpy. Megan Hunter

if we could continue like this forever, spend a lifetime never quite looking each other in the face.

      ~

       Sometimes I question whether anyone can know what it’s like before it happens. Marriage and motherhood are like death in this way, and others too: no one comes back unchanged.

       Even now, it is hard to look at that woman (myself), at those boys (my sons), with anything like a clear lens. My sight is still coloured, infused by the blood we shared, by their journeys through my lightless body.

      ~

      9

      After dinner, while the boys played on the floor, Jake came and sat next to me. To this day, I think he was going to suggest that we watch a TV series or a film when the kids were in bed, as we had done almost every night since I was pregnant with Ted. I have often wondered what would have happened if we had done that. I can see that imaginary possibility – which surely exists in some other dimension – almost as clearly as I can see the actual events that have taken place.

      I would have put my feet in Jake’s lap: a true act of forgiveness. He would have allowed me to have the remote – the first of so many small allowances, over so many months – and we would have turned our faces to the fire of the screen, let it absolve us, a living presence, an endless alternative. One evening – not that evening, but on some night not too far away – he would have put his hands on my feet, the first touch, and we could have started again.

      But as soon as the boys were asleep, I put myself to bed. I carried out my skincare routine, the adult version of childhood prayers, rubbing my face in precise circles, my own touch gentle on my cheeks. Before I turned off the light, I rubbed cream over my hands, an expensive product with all-­organic ingredients blended to create the illusion of calm, the impression of the desire to sleep. This could be a normal night, I told myself. I have done the usual things. I am sticking to a routine.

      I was not even close to sleep when I heard his footsteps; I was looping around a curve in my mind, falling down the slopes of a particular feeling. I tried to stay there, to feign sleep, make my breath as regular and slow as I could. But he sat on the edge of the bed, tilting the mattress sideways with his body.

      It seemed to be up to me to put the bedside light on, but I didn’t do it. At that moment, any movement felt like a capitulation, an agreement that he could be there.

       What do you want?

      This came out as more of a whisper than I intended, the lack of light lowering my voice naturally, making it seem more like a question than an accusation, a soft noise between us.

      His shape changed in the darkness, a collection of rocks moving with geological slowness. He had his hand on his forehead, I thought, from what I could see from the edge of my vision. The image was fuzzy: he could easily have had his hand anywhere else.

      Just as I was dragging my arm out from under the pillow, turning my weight on my side, his shape changed, came much closer, his hand stretching for the cord of the light. I moved my own hand forward as he did it, set on stopping him. One of my nails caught the underside of his forearm: there must have been a tiny jagged edge, no bigger than the end of a pin.

       Shit! What was—? Put the light on.

      I fumbled for it, the small click, light over us at last, Jake’s head bent, examining his arm, eyes narrowed.

      I moved forward instinctively, as I would move to the children when they had hurt themselves, to reassure, apply the soothing balm of motherliness. The scratch was superficial, pale pink, but there nonetheless. I moved to touch it, and Jake’s whole body startled, as though he was being woken from a brief, deep sleep.

      His voice was wounded, little-­boy tender.

       What did you do that for?

       It was an accident, Jake. I couldn’t see.

      It was becoming difficult to speak again, I noticed. There was something in my throat preventing it, rising up like an Adam’s apple, blocking the way. I wanted something from him, but if he said it, I thought I might actually vomit, right there on the bed. The blockage would come out, I imagined. The talk-­stopper. I would not be able to stop screaming.

      I came to talk to you, Jake was saying now. He was saying something else.

       I’m sorry, Luce. I don’t know how else to say it. I shouldn’t have done it. It was just sex, I swear. So stupid.

      I realized my hands were creeping up, past my neck, towards the sides of my head. I felt the softness of my hair, pushed it to one side. I put the flats of my fingers against my ears. Shook myself from side to side, felt the heaviness of my skull, this weight that I carried around, day after day.

      No, no no, no, I seemed to be saying. I was the child now, my body curled and soft in my nightdress, my feet soles up, moist under the warmth of the covers. I clenched my teeth. A tantrum.

      Please shut up. Get out. Single syllables were all that could get through, mangled, barely complete.

      I just want to help you, he was saying, somewhere in the room. He was off the bed now. I could feel him, tall and oppressive, by the bookshelves or the dressing table. A shifting space, a ghost.

       Help me? Help me?

      The sensation – gathering needles, an eviscerating sting – was almost overwhelming. But I was still within it: it had not taken me over. Not yet. I heard him exhale, walk towards the door. I thought of a surfer on the biggest wave in the world, staying upright against a mountain of water. That is how I could be, surely. Not getting carried away.

      But when he left, I felt it rush through every part of my body. I threw myself on the closed door as though it was his chest, hitting the wood again and again until my hands ached. I expected Jake to come back upstairs, but I heard nothing. I expected that I would pass out on the floor, but at some point I must have crawled back into bed, and fallen asleep.

      ~

       Sometimes, as a child, I would get the book out just to look at the harpies, to trace the way the wings grew out of their backs, easy extensions of their shoulders, lifting into the air.

       I wanted to know why their faces were like that: sunken, creased by hate. I wanted to ask my mother more questions, but the words dried in my mouth, sat sour under my tongue, unspoken.

      ~

      10

      The rest of the weekend passed in a haze of routine. I was struck by how easy it was to barely speak to Jake, let alone touch him. Sunday was slow, its minutes thick and draining, the children grumpy and unsettled by its end. But by Monday something had changed. We were quicker in our movements, it seemed, as though the backing track of our lives had been moved up tempo, into some other realm, a fast-­forward reality.

      The memory of Saturday night was still strong, raising my stomach as I spooned coffee into a glass jug, infusing the grounds with its flavour. I poured hot water from the kettle, seeing again the way Jake had looked at me, for a second, as though he had never seen me before. In that moment, we were strangers again. We had not slept beside each other, over and over, thousands of times. He had not watched me give birth to his children.

      The Jake of Saturday was, it seemed, an entirely different man to the one who sat at the kitchen table in the Monday sun, his hair filled with light, flattened on one side from the sofa bed. He was making silly faces at the boys, getting Ted to eat an extra three bites of cereal. Paddy found him hilarious, was howling, rocking back and forth on his chair until Jake switched to serious mode, told him to stop rocking, to sit up straight.

      I had always observed this as a kind of wonder: the way Jake knew how to pretend to be normal in front of the children. It was something my parents never managed; every dispute was aired completely openly, as though they had never been told that this was bad for children. As I grew up, I used to wonder