Violet was not a “difficult baby,” but babies are difficult. The constant noise, the sudden escalations in volume, the never-ending roller coaster of needs and wants, of juggling risks and teaching lessons and pleading for just a few moments of silence in which to think. Thinking, before kids, is just something you do. Afterward, it’s a luxury.
Today’s parenting is about gentle and reasonable negotiation. When Robin and I were little, my mum would just tell us to shut up. Or if we were bickering she’d suddenly swing her arm back from the front of the car and clobber whoever’s knee was nearest. That stuff doesn’t work now. But Jim didn’t see the balancing act and the diplomatic effort. Jim went out to work and returned to a cooked meal and a bathed, fed baby whose toys were packed away. That I was exhausted was neither here nor there; we both had our roles. Mine was twenty-four-hours-a-day caregiver. Jim’s was sensible, caring dad.
And Jim is a good man. No matter how I angry I am with him today, I can still see that. From the Jim I first met to the Jim keeping our girl from me today, he’s always been a good man. He thinks he’s doing the right thing, for the right reasons.
Jim has a slight stoop, because he’s apologetic for his height, and dark brown hair that’s thinning on top and just-gray at the sides. He’s good-looking, I think, in a kind of understated way. Is that a backhanded compliment? Maybe.
I have no right to complain about any of his foibles and any of the difficulties that come from round-the-clock parenting. It’s what I wanted. It’s what I want. But I wasn’t perfect, and there were times that I slipped. Shouted. Grabbed rather than cajoled.
“Can you just get your fucking shoes on, Violet, please!”
I know I shouldn’t have said it and certainly not in front of him. Jim had rushed into the hall and ushered me off to the kitchen like some kind of bouncer.
“I’m sorry,” I’d said, looking at my feet. “I just got frustrated.”
“You’re an adult and she’s a little girl. You need to control yourself.”
And that was that. Another card marked.
ROBIN|PRESENT DAY
The apartment block that Robin’s house backs onto is a classic red-brick Mancunian monolith. It has its own rhythm, almost tidal. Hundreds of breakfasts every month, hundreds of dinners. Iron filings drawn out of the door in the morning by a big magnet just out of sight, swept back home at night. Lots of lights turning off for bed, dark blocks appearing in the place of lit windows, one after the other.
But the ones who linger in late yellow light, whose blue screens stay flickering long into the early hours, those are the ones Robin notices. Hundreds of worries, hundreds of nightmares. And as she watches them, the lone colors in a sea of dark brick, the quiet little faces at windows, those are the people Robin falls in love with and watches carefully from a distance, with concern.
Mr. Magpie is a night dweller. Last night, as Robin took slow and heavy blinks, she had watched Mr. Magpie walk out from the main room, open the door to his boy’s room slowly and then stand at the side of the bed. He’d squatted, held his hand near his son’s head but stopped short of touching him. Probably afraid to wake him; instead he’d sat down next to the bed with his back to the wall and rested his own head on the edge of the pillow until his wife had come home, teetering on pinprick heels and collapsing onto the sofa. Mr. Magpie had crept back out, stood over her drunken form. Eventually, he’d pulled her up by the arm and hustled her away. No doubt to bed.
The flat above his was occupied by a young woman who would sit hunched at her laptop every night, occasionally getting up and coming back with a bowl of cereal. Robin wondered if she was a student. She would sit with one pajamaed leg under her for hours on end, tapping away at the keys.
Below and to the right of the Watkinses/Magpies live an old couple, who often wear their coats inside for ages after returning home. Perhaps it takes a long time for the heat of their living room to thaw the Manchester chill in their bones, thinks Robin. Perhaps they just like their coats. Her coat is a kind of teal color and she wears burgundy gloves and a purple hat. When they get inside, she comes into the kitchen, where Robin can see her more clearly, takes off her hat and gloves, rubs her hands together and fills the kettle.
Later, the old lady will generally reappear in the kitchen without her coat. She’ll slip a blue tabard over her shoulders slowly, drag unyielding yellow gloves over her hands and slowly wash up with the precision of a surgeon.
For months after Robin had first moved in, Mr. and Mrs. Peacock—named for her coat—just seemed like cold, old people. Robin watched them only if there was nothing else to do, no one else to watch, all the daily steps done.
And then one evening in late spring, the sun still high in the sky and with his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow, Mr. Peacock had carried two dining chairs out to the shared garden, one by one. The couple had eased themselves into the chairs, drinking what looked like gin and tonic, clinking their glasses together. After taking his first sip, he’d placed his drink on the floor by his slipper and pulled something out of his pocket.
Mrs. Peacock had smiled girlishly as her husband played a harmonica, his hands and mouth working fast, like a zip, up and down the instrument.
Watching the Peacocks often made Robin think of her own parents and how they could never be like this. The Peacocks had grown-up children who visited them in batches. Middle-aged, they’d often be jostling together like children as they spilled out from the patio doors to help their parents with their patch of garden. Sometimes, Robin tried to imagine this kind of easy tactile moment with her own sister, Sarah. But she could barely picture Sarah’s face, let alone her shape or her presence. It had been several years since they’d spoken. Sniping words had cut through the last little threads that had bound them. And those last little threads, it turned out, had been all that tied Robin to her childhood. She was free, she supposed, but also alone. Entirely alone. Perhaps her sister was too.
—
At times, Robin’s pacing can turn to prowling. Frantically turning over ideas as she stalks the house. Memories can collide, fray, rejoin all wrong. She feels anxious, antsy, unable to settle.
This kind of itch used to get scratched in the studio or channeled into sketches of lyrics.
When Robin had moved to her current house in George Mews, she’d told herself that it was to recover from the strangling fears she’d given in to and that her recovery would be set to music. She’d do a Bon Iver, just in a three-bedroom terraced house in Chorlton instead of a log cabin. She’d ordered numerous bits of kit, most of which were still boxed. She’d searched the Internet for the perfect pen and writing pad, secondhand copies of the guitar magazines she’d first learned from. She’d written nothing, recorded nothing, had no ideas.