As the months slipped by, he thought often of the day when Gloria had given birth in the back of that Uber. The baby’s tiny, alien feet, its unearthly cry. The feeling that had grown in his chest, strange and suffocating, too complex for him to understand.
He eventually figured it out in the queue for the tills at the Co-op one day. The woman in front of him had a toddler dragging at her hand and a baby perched on her other hip; she looked off-balance, and he wondered if he should offer to hold something for her, before realizing the only thing he could take from her was a child.
He stared at the baby, then the toddler. These small, needy people, these little agents of chaos. He thought of Gloria’s newborn with its tiny bloodstained hands, and he realized—I do not want a child.
It was something to which he had never given a great deal of thought. He was still young, midthirties; he had been in a marriage where kids weren’t in the cards, so the question had been irrelevant, and Jones never dwelled on things that weren’t relevant. As a single man, before he had met Aspen, the thought had crossed his mind—Perhaps I will end up having kids one day.
But he did not want a child. That was what that feeling was. He had looked at the tiny baby and felt sure of it, and the nasty, uneasy sensation that had followed was a sort of shame. It wasn’t that he didn’t find the baby cute. He just knew he didn’t want to be a father, in the way one knows these things—that you love someone, that you need a glass of wine, that you’ve forgotten something important. It was simply not for him.
Which was fine. No need to feel shame about it, he told himself. But still the shame persisted, and he could not say why.
—
The reason became clear a week later in a sun-bleached St. James’s Park. He and Aspen were picnicking, as she called it—overpaying for small pots of things that did not go together, ideally from Marks & Spencer. But when Aspen arrived, she was not in her trademark scrubs or loose skirt and silk top—she was wearing a baby.
“Hello,” Jones said, staring at the child in the sling on her front.
“I know,” Aspen said, already starting to laugh. “Surprise!”
An elderly couple nearby glanced over and smiled. He and Aspen looked like a perfect young family, Jones realized with a jolt.
“My sister had a childcare crisis, so we’ve got a little gate-crasher on our hands.”
“Ah. This is baby Mabel?”
“This is baby Mabel,” Aspen said, kissing her niece’s head.
“Right. Well, shall we sit? Can you sit?”
Jones did not like how much this had thrown him. Aspen looked happy—happier than usual—and she was so competent handling the baby that he could suddenly see her as a mother.
As Aspen busied herself finding a shady spot for Mabel to kick about in, Jones realized with dawning horror that the shame he felt was not because he didn’t want to be a father. It was because he suspected Aspen wanted to be a mother.
At first, he had stayed with Aspen because it was the kind thing to do. She’d been grieving; she said she needed him, and he didn’t want to hurt her. But was it still the kind thing? He watched Aspen tickle baby Mabel’s tummy and closed his eyes for a moment.
“Aspen,” he said.
Jones knew he had his faults, but he liked to believe he could tell right from wrong. And this was not right.
“Do you want to have a baby?”
She looked up at him, crouched over the baby, her necklace dangling in front of Mabel’s nose. The expression on Aspen’s face was heartbreaking. It was as if he had made some sort of beautiful announcement, had told her the best news in the world. She lookedoverjoyed.
“I mean, yeah. Yes. Do you?” she asked, sitting back on her haunches.
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
He was wrong:thisexpression was heartbreaking.
“What?” she said.
“I’m really sorry. I don’t want to have a baby.”
“Oh,” she said, putting a hand on his thigh. “God! We’re not talking about rightnow, are we? I know you don’t want a kid right now. We’ve talked about this.”
He frowned. Had they talked about this?
“Early on, before we made it official?” she said, returning her attention to baby Mabel, who was kicking her fat heels on the picnic blanket. “That night we had ramen at yours. We talked about Conor fainting when his wife was giving birth, and you said you can’t imagine yourself being a dadright now.”
