“I just don’t know what you want me to do with this.”
“You don’t have to do anything,” she said. “It’s not going to make any difference. The thing is the thing.”
“But the thing is twins?” said Nick. “Who has twins? Fucking twins!”
“My mother had twins,” said Clara, and what this meant exactly suddenly dawned on her for the first time. Family history meant that twins were genetically more likely, and Clara also couldn’t help but consider what the news must have meant to her mother, and her father too. By the time Clara was born, her twin sisters were an established fact, a unique quirk of their family, but eventually it had ceased to matter much because the girls didn’t look alike, even less so as they grew into women. Had this news, all those years ago, also blown her parents’ minds?
“It’s not going to happen,” Nick said. “It’s just not possible.”
“I’m not sure we get much say regardless.”
“You mean me,” he said. “Idon’t get much say, do I?” When she said nothing in response, he continued. “Clare, Idon’t think we can do this. I mean, I don’t think I can. And you—” He shook his hand at her, as though she were already a lost cause. “I mean, it’s not just the twins. It’s the money. Kids cost money.”
“Not necessarily,” she said, realizing that he was going to make her fight for this. She was going to talk herself into it, and then she’d have to bring him along with her. She hoped she could, because the other possibility was that he would walk away from her forever. So she told him, “You could leave. Rather than us having it out like this. Rather than you holding it over my head. I’d even understand.” She wasn’t bluffing. She didn’t want Nick bound to her because he thought he had to be. The last thing she wanted was that.
“But I can’t,” he said.
“You could,” she told him.
“Don’t you know me at all?”
The baby was still suckling, and Clara tried to relax. She couldn’t carry all this tension with her. What if stress was a chemical that got passed on in mother’s milk? She knew there was some truth to this. She closed her eyes, just like the baby.
But Nick was suddenly there in front of her, flapping his arms. “No, no, no!” he was shouting. “You can’t do this now. You can’t deliver news like that and then just disappear. We’ve got to deal with it.”
She said, “I’m here.” Eyes open.
“You’re not at all,” he said. “Clare, what’s happening to you?”
She said, “I’m having twins.”
He said, “What, like a side effect?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Sometimes Clara felt as though language had become incomprehensible, as well as human behaviour. It was probably a natural consequence of never leaving the house, but she wasn’t sure thiswas a bad thing. Ever read a newspaper? Why would anyone ever leave the house if they didn’t have to?
“I feel like we’ve been here before,” she said, closing her eyes again. She was so tired. “So are you in or are you in?”
“What kind of a person do you think I am?” Nick didn’t sound angry anymore, even when he said, “I notice that you didn’t give me any other option.”
She pulled herself awake. Lucinda was slowing down, nearly done. “It’s not like this is a tragedy,” she told him. “Like an earthquake, or a genocide. An airplane disappearing from the sky. Or an erupting volcano, with ash that sweeps an entire city away. Those are the sorts of things we should spend our shock on. The rest of it, it’s just life. This news, twins, is agift, if you look at it.”
“I’m looking,” he said. Lucinda shat her diaper, and they both tried to pretend it hadn’t happened. He said, “How are we going to make it work?”
“With some planning,” she said. “The rest we could play by ear. I don’t know. People manage. It’s what people do. The trouble with now is that everybody thinks too much.”
“But what about the money?” said Nick. She knew she was trampling on his dreams. He hadn’t given up on the idea of opening his own business, a bar or a bistro. The work he was doing now was soulless, and the only people he spoke to were brides’ parents looking for deals, and the people who cleaned those gaudy floral carpets. Stacks of chairs being wheeled in, set up, then stacked and wheeled out again. Once a mother-of-the-bride had slapped him because of a foul-up with the head table’s floral arrangements. Other people his age were close to retirement, but for him it got further away every year.
“I don’t know about the money,” she said. “But we can make it work. Kids don’t need competitive gymnastics and chess lessons. I mean, does anyone?” She thought about Jess and Adam, their whole life so carefully structured. Absolutely nothing grew wild. “We could live on love.” She knew she sounded stupid.
“You can’t eat love,” said Nick.
“Then we’d live on lentils.” He smiled, and she smiled back. “It doesn’t make sense, I know, any of it—the pregnancy, twins, that I didn’t tell you. But eventhisdoesn’t make sense.” She nodded her head towards Lucinda. “That she’s here. That she’s real. Do you see why I’m confused?” Nick nodded. “For so long, I wanted this. All of this. And wanting became my reason, the whole point. But to want and then to get—it’s mind-bending. What do you do when you don’t have to want anymore? And then to get and get. It’s like praying for rain, but then the creeks burst.”
“But this is not a tragedy,” said Nick.
Clara said, “I really don’t think it is. I mean, it’s shocking. And it’s going to be hard. But imagine if two years ago someone had told us I’d be pregnant and we’d be waffling. Nick, I was crazy. You remember. And now, it’s just that I’m a bit stunned. How are we going to make it work? I don’t know. But we’ll do something.”
She added, “I’m sorry, though. You didn’t know what you were in for.Ididn’t know what you were in for.”
