Relativity, page 31
John stood at his bookshelf and looked at a row of Christmas cards. One of the cards was a picture of Ethan on Santa’s lap. “A brain hemorrhage,” he said quietly.
“Dad, I don’t know how it happened.” The more Mark said it, the more it felt like the truth. Perhaps his hands and arms were physically responsible, but he hadn’t done anything wrong. Mind over matter, like walking across burning coals. Numb to the scorching fire on the soles of his feet as he’d stepped on the embers. When the baby was shaken, Mark wasn’t himself. He wasn’t inside his own body. Antimatter over matter.
John turned to face him. “I’m sorry, you’re right. I can lose my temper but I’d still never hurt a baby. Of course you didn’t hurt him. You’re a good boy.” He touched his son’s shoulder and sighed.
Mark saw himself through his father’s eyes. He was a good boy. Too sensitive and emotional—but not a thug. Not tough enough to do something so severe.
Other people snapped and shook their babies—not him. Only the most evil parents physically abused their own kids. Monsters, brutes, villains—heartless creeps and lowlife scum—but Mark wasn’t psychotic, he wasn’t those things. They were bastards; he was different. He was just a normal man. Who came from a good family, went to a good school, got good grades, like good boys did.
“Of course I didn’t hurt him,” he repeated. Those words tasted better in his mouth, they matched his real identity. Mark scrubbed his mind of the unspeakable memory, re-encoded it, and reshaped it again. Let it oxidize, broke its chemical bonds, like bleaching the stains on the bathroom floor until they disappeared. “I didn’t do it.”
“What are you still doing here, then?” John sounded annoyed, but then his voice softened. “Get back to the hospital. Be with your son. Call us if you have any news.” He put the wrapped wombat in Mark’s hands. “Here, give this to Ethan.”
Ω
CLAIRE GLANCED AT THE SCREEN on her phone; she hadn’t looked at it since the previous morning. Voicemail. Flashing envelope. Maybe it was Mark. She checked yesterday’s missed call log, feeling her stomach flip when she saw it was a Victorian phone number. Now, in the wretched light of the hospital ward, her audition felt long ago. Like a day lived in another lifetime, from a life that no longer belonged to her.
Her hands shook as she held the phone to her ear.
“Claire, sorry for calling on Christmas Eve,” the message said. “It’s James Mitchell. I couldn’t wait to let you know. We were so impressed by your audition; you completely blew us away. We want to offer you the lead—you’re our new Odette. Give me a call back when you can. Merry Christmas. And congratulations. Have a glass of champagne, you deserve it.”
She listened to the message again. There was a sharp taste in her mouth, vinegary and bitter; her stale tongue was coated white. Odette, the lead. She’d actually gotten the part. Claire swayed on the spot. Ever since she was a little girl, she’d fantasized about this phone call: being told she’d finally made it, offered a starring role. Squealing and jumping, thrilled her hard work ultimately paid off—that was the reaction Claire had pictured in her head.
But beside her, her infant son was hooked to life support. Catheters, feeding tubes, mechanical ventilation. Moments ago, while he was having a turbulent seizure, Ethan’s heart had stopped for ten seconds. Doctors and nurses quickly encircled the baby, rushed to resuscitate him, while she stepped back helplessly. For ten seconds, Claire thought Ethan was dead.
She put the phone down. Her stomach muscles caved in, like there was a change in her core, some terrible instability. One of her ballet teachers once told her that ballerinas couldn’t be mothers. Both required total dedication and it was impossible to have the discipline for both. It was a comment easily dismissed as a wide-eyed dance student, when Claire thought she was immune to difficulty, a special case, exempt from the pitfalls of ordinary life. How arrogant she’d been then, how foolish and naïve.
Across the room, she caught her reflection in the window. There it was: the defeated face. Claire saw herself disintegrate, realizing there was no way she could accept that role. Never dance Swan Lake, become a star. It was over. She gulped for air.
Right now was her breaking moment, her hour to stumble. To crumple, wince, and shrink, like so many other fallen dancers before her. Dream forfeited. Ambition collapsed. All those years, all that unwavering hope, obliterated in an instant. She was another casualty to failure, forced to exit stage left.
Ethan squirmed with discomfort. As she held the baby’s limp hand, it dawned on Claire that Mark had been right. Things were different now. She’d made a colossal mistake; she should never have left Ethan. Deserted her son, for what? To go to a stupid audition—it was selfish, she was spoiled, an entitled princess. Claire was a mother now; she couldn’t pretend it hadn’t changed her shape.
Because next to her was this child, beautiful but blue-lipped and sallow-cheeked, fighting to stay alive. She was his mother but had failed to protect him; she’d exposed him to harm. Let this happen. Exactly the opposite of what mothers should do. Ethan recoiled as a nurse adjusted the tube running down his throat—Claire recoiled with him. This happened because she put herself first. This was all her fault.
After all, Mark had asked Claire to stay, pleaded with her not to go. Why was she so stubborn? Why hadn’t she been more concerned? She still wasn’t positive Mark had hurt their son, she’d spent the night wavering between certainty and suspicion. One moment Claire was convinced he’d done it, the next she was filled with doubt. Mark wasn’t capable of this—she loved him, he loved her, he loved Ethan—but who else could it have been? His absence, right now, hurt her deeply. But his presence, at the crucial moment the baby was shaken, hurt her more.
Ethan was restless, frowning, but still too weak to cry. Claire tried to soothe him. His eyes couldn’t focus or track her movement, as she searched them for signs of background blood. Every one of her senses was heightened. Every minute dragged like an hour. She wanted someone to hold her, tell her everything would be fine. She wanted Mark.
Because even if he’d done it, Claire still secretly knew she was to blame. Mark had warned her against leaving; he’d flared a scrambled chain of beacons to signal his distress. She’d heard them and ignored him. Now she was being punished, and had to punish herself. Quit ballet. Surrender. Ethan needed her—his mother. She’d devote herself entirely to her son and master motherhood’s techniques. That was the only role she could accept now, the only lead to dance. She wasn’t a star; it was Claire’s time to fade. Ethan had to take center stage.
Trembling, she returned James Mitchell’s call.
“Merry Christmas,” Claire said, scarcely audible. Her eyes settled on Ethan. She shook her head and started to cry. “No, I’m so sorry. I can’t accept the part. My son is in the hospital. He’s really sick.”
Ω
AT THE HOSPITAL, Christmas carols played in the foyer. Mark felt like everybody was looking at him—every nurse, doctor, and patient, every visitor. He kept his eyes on the floor. Santa Claus sat in a fiberglass sleigh, surrounded by mounds of cotton snow. Sick children lined up to sit on his lap and wish for their Christmas miracle.
Mark didn’t know where to go; his son was no longer in the emergency room. Asking at reception was humiliating, but he was relieved to hear that Ethan Hall had been admitted to a ward upstairs. He wasn’t dead. Mark held his head high, and reminded himself he hadn’t done anything wrong.
Claire sat beside Ethan’s bed, stroking his cradle-capped head. The baby was still wearing an oxygen mask but he was asleep. Wisps of his fine hair were matted together and purple circles were around his eyes. Ethan was so tiny; Mark had almost forgotten how brand-new he was. Only four months old. One hundred and twenty days.
“How is he?” he asked. “Have a Christmas present for him, from Dad.” Mark put the wrapped wombat on the bedside table. He waited for her to say something. “Claire?”
The baby stirred and she patted his chest, soothing him back to sleep. Claire didn’t look up. She knew. They’d told her. What he’d supposedly done. But she’d never believe that, would she?
Her eyes were anchored on the baby. Mark felt invisible, like light diverted around him, like he was subatomic, unable to be seen with the naked eye. He didn’t know how to reach her. She was as far away as the most distant star.
“Claire?”
“Quiet, you’ll wake him,” she said firmly. There was a depth to her voice that didn’t sound right, like she was possessed. “Let’s go outside. I need to talk to you.”
Finally, she glanced up at him. And in that look, Mark knew that whatever she needed to say would annihilate him.
They left the sleeping baby in the intensive care unit. Santa was ringing a bell in the hospital atrium; hundreds of children shrieked with glee.
Ω
OUTSIDE THE HOSPITAL, they sat at the empty bus stop. Their shadows connected on the pavement—silhouette on silhouette—but their bodies didn’t touch.
Claire looked into the distance. “Tell me it’s not true. Please.”
Before they met, Mark had seen the world in a particular way. Everything could be stripped back to basics—particles, atoms, forces—and sorted and catalogued by matter or mass. But being with Claire made another dimension of the universe open up to him, shone a light on something new. He saw it with the fiercest clarity, how everything—motion, time, space, energy, gravity—had a relationship. Particles, atoms, and forces were never absolute. Their relativity left him breathless. She showed him how everything in the universe existed in proportion to something else.
Changing one side of the equation always changed the other. Mass grew and length shortened as speed increased. Observed time between two events inside a moving body appeared greater to a stationary observer. Vector sums of forces acting on a body were equal to its mass multiplied by its acceleration.
Energy was the product of mass and the square of the speed of light—just like his new tattoo. Mark was one variable of an equation and Claire was the other. He existed in proportion to her, she to him. He wasn’t absolute: he was one piece of a single entity.
“It’s not true,” he said.
“But—”
Mark put his finger over her lips; the warmth of her mouth made him want to kiss her. “Claire Bear, you know me. Better than anyone. Do you really think I could have hurt our baby?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t. Last night Ethan almost died. Where were you? He had three seizures, one where he stopped breathing again for almost a minute. The doctors said he might have permanent brain damage. He’s been throwing up bright green vomit and he hasn’t eaten anything for a day. And I saw the bruises. I saw—”
Mark interrupted. “What bruises?”
“On his neck. And ribs. Fractures. Bleeding in his eyes too.” Claire put her arms around him and pressed her face into his chest. “Mark, how did this happen? I don’t understand.”
Could she feel how quickly his heart was beating? Her ribs under his ribs, rising and falling together. Mark rested his chin on the top of Claire’s head, smelled her hair, and touched the tangled ends. For a second, the world stopped turning—the moon stopped orbiting the Earth, the Earth stopped orbiting the sun, the universe didn’t expand. This was where he wanted to stay, where he wanted to be forever. Capture this eternity and stretch it out to infinity. But this wasn’t a static universe.
“I love you,” Mark said, lifting her chin up so their eyes met. Her eyelashes were almost white; she had the most beautiful freckle under her left eye. He didn’t know how to prove how much he really loved her, couldn’t write a thesis to support how he felt. Words weren’t enough. Mark stroked the side of Claire’s face with his thumb and they kissed. Their lips, mouths, noses, and faces still fit perfectly together. Equilibrium—there was a perfect balance to their mechanics. None of that had changed. They were still interlocking pieces of one perfect whole.
Claire pulled away. Her face was wet with tears. “This is my fault. I shouldn’t have left. I’ll never forgive myself if Ethan dies.”
Mark didn’t know what to say. If he tried to convince Claire it wasn’t her fault, reassure her that she wasn’t to blame, then he’d need to admit where the blame really lay.
“Everyone is saying you did this to him,” she continued. “That you shook him. The police told me they might press charges. They want me to make a statement.”
He kissed her again. “Tell them I didn’t do anything wrong. It’s me. Come on.”
Claire gave him a shattering look. “I want to believe you. But I don’t know what happened, and something terrible clearly happened to Ethan. So maybe I don’t know who you really are. Because the only logical explanation is . . .” She stopped, unable to finish the sentence, and suddenly walked away from him.
He chased after her up the footpath. “Claire!”
“I’m sorry, Mark. But I can’t.”
He watched her cross the road. They stared at each other for a moment from opposite sides of the street. Traffic passed between them. This was the woman Mark thought would be his partner for life, had believed was more steadfast than a constant. She was his speed of light. He could still taste her on his lips. Those words rang in his ears—I can’t—Mark wished he knew what she’d meant. Talk to him, listen, believe him? Couldn’t love him? Even if he had hurt Ethan, that awful minute was the smallest fraction of Mark’s entire life. What about every other minute? Why was that tiny instant more important to Claire than all the years they’d spent together?
With her blond hair saturated with summer light, Mark never forgot how Claire looked at that moment. Something about her was unreachable; they’d been contaminated. The speed of light was constant, whether they were together or apart. She didn’t believe him. What Mark believed indivisible—their quantum mechanics—had been split; that nameless force that bound them together had ripped apart. Claire had altered her side of the equation.
She rushed back to the hospital entrance, knocking into a man carrying a pile of Christmas presents. Mark lingered for a few minutes, gazing at the empty space where she’d stood, before eventually walking away.
Ω
THE BABY went to the operating theater the next morning. His condition had deteriorated—high fevers, thunderous seizures that blocked his lungs—and Ethan kept slipping in and out of consciousness. He needed surgery, to drain the blood collecting on the surface of his brain. The bleeding agitated his gray matter, it made his brain swell and shift. The problem was the pressure, a cerebral fizz. They’d give him a cranial burr hole: make an incision along his scalp, then drill an opening into the bone to release the blood.
Before surgery, Ethan wasn’t allowed to feed; he was going to have a general anesthetic. That night, Claire couldn’t even hold her baby in her arms—he smelled her milk and went berserk. All she wanted to do was comfort her child but her presence caused Ethan distress. Claire didn’t want her baby to feel like she’d abandoned him when he needed her most. She’d carried Ethan inside her for nine months; he felt like part of her body, an extension of herself. But overnight she had to keep her distance so he couldn’t pick up her lactic scent.
Anesthesiologists and surgeons checked on the baby in the morning. They took his temperature and prepped him for the operating theater. Claire watched them wheel Ethan away, his small body swathed by the blue operating gown. It went against her every instinct to allow Ethan out of her sight; she didn’t trust anyone now. But she had to trust these surgeons. Her son’s life was in their hands and without this procedure he might die. There was no other option.
While Ethan was in the operating theater, Claire went to the cinema. She couldn’t stay in the hospital—she was sick with anxiety, pacing the halls. At the movie theater, she bought herself a large tub of popcorn but didn’t eat a bite. As the lights of the projector danced over her head, Claire cried. Tears of grief, grief she’d never felt before. She cried silently, but with every fiber of her body and every sac in her lungs. Her sadness was a hellish, unstable place; she felt trapped in its center. Claire watched the screen but paid no attention to the film. The credits rolled and the lights came back on. Her popcorn had spilled on the carpet.
Back at the hospital, Ethan was brought into the postoperative recovery room. Claire wore a net over her hair and a sterile gown over her clothes. She washed her hands and sat beside his bed, waiting for him to wake up. They’d shaved his head. His fine baby hair—gone. White bandages covered his forehead. Relaxed muscles, shallow breathing; the baby’s central nervous system was still asleep. Claire put her ear up to his mouth to listen to him breathe again. Ethan was broken, but he was still perfect.
Eventually, the baby stirred. He stretched his fingers and opened his eyes. Bewildered, he slowly climbed out of the analgesic haze. His pupils were huge, dilated from the anesthesia.
Claire’s heart wouldn’t allow her to accept Mark had caused this. He said he hadn’t; she wished that were the truth. She didn’t think he wasn’t capable of it, didn’t believe it. Had there been clues? A signpost, some warning? Mark had a temper, yes, but wasn’t physically violent. Once, in the heat of the moment, he’d slapped her across the face but it wasn’t serious or scary. They’d laughed about it the next day.
The doctors and the police just needed somebody to blame, to condemn and hold liable, to make sense of this. Even though the finger was pointed at Mark, Claire knew ultimately the responsibility fell on her. After all, she was Ethan’s mother. She’d let her baby out of her sight.
But there were so many unknowns in the universe, so many unfounded beliefs. Their tiny son—product of the two of them merged together—was the only witness. This was much more than the unthinkable act of hurting an innocent child, it was a crime against the foundation of her life. There wasn’t a shoulder Claire could cry on; the shoulder she’d needed was gone.
