New Day no. 5642

She feels him rolling out of bed. Hears his footsteps on the stairs, quietly down, then, some time later, sometimes waking her a second time, steadily back up. She hears him approach the door, prepares herself to shrug off the shawl of darkness and softness and open ended wonderings, breathes out the musty night-time closeting of her self, and turns her face to the ingress.

“Good morning” he says, gentle, but assertive too. It is the morning, and it could be a good one if you decide that way. She rolls a noise through her throat, allows it to oscillate between the roof of her mouth and her larynx, smooth and vibrato, an echolocation for pain or distress. “How are you?” he asks, and knowing there will be something, gives her a minute to find it. It is not her fault, he tells himself. There are afflictions.

He sets down the tea he has brought, places it on the coaster on the table beside the bed, goes to the window and moves to the curtain to reveal whatever sky they must contend with. It is often grey. Regardless, this act, this steadfast offering of good-morning, and warm water carried up in his hands, of light, it is enough, and she hauls herself to a reclined upright, steep enough to drink, shallow enough that her body remains largely at rest. She is grateful, she wants him to know, for his midwifery.

“My head still hurts. I thought it was better when I was up at four, but now it’s not” she says, wishing she had started with something different. “How are you?”

“Fine thank you.” He is breezy, a gentle blowing away of the details, as if they are unimportant. Perhaps they are unimportant. “I’ve got breakfast on the go, I’d better get back down.” He kisses her on the forehead, and the pain eases for half a second, and she wants to be better for him, and then he is gone, closing the door behind him, turning the lock to softly thunk into place.

She sips at the tea, holding the heat of the mug against her lips, allowing the fluid to ease her alimentary canal into wakefulness. She can hear voices in the house, outside voices, but familiar, light and serious in turns. A woman, laughing, a man, jovial and friendly. She wonders how different he is, without her, if he is jovial, or serious, or friendly, as a matter of course. She wonders if he often jokes with women who are ready to laugh with him. She remembers laughing with him.

The voices stop, and the shift rouses her. She rises to use the ensuite, glimpsing herself in the mirror and imagining that one day, when things are better, she might be able to fix what she sees. Or at least improve it. She hears a door creak, not hers, something drop, the running of a tap. She flushes the chain. Downstairs there are tense tones, as if someone has said something that is not worth anyone losing their temper over, but… She looks at the door, thinks about reaching for the handle, but she doesn’t. What would she hope for, if she did? Instead, she slides back into bed, back into pillowy obfuscation, while somewhere beyond, someone starts to cry.

Downstairs, he braces his hands against the countertop. “Baby, you have to go.” She is crying again this morning, a piercing trill that makes the muscles of his neck and shoulder and stomach contract.

“Why can’t I stay with you?” She makes no effort to be quiet, doesn’t care, and fair enough, what impact her wailing might be having upstairs. “You promised! You promised I could stay if I really need to, and I really need to and now you’re saying I still have to go!”

He breathes deeply, deliberately, in then slowly out. Too slowly.

“Why aren’t you saying anything?”

He breathes again. “OK. Fine. I can’t make you go. But you know I have to go to work, and I can’t just leave you in the house. What do you want to do, come to work with me?”

She says nothing, but eventually, after he reminds her of the time, she leaves the kitchen and in silence starts to gather her things; a diary on the newel post, a book on the floor beside the sofa, clothes on the stairs. He flicks the radio back on, allows the moderate calibration of the voices, calmer than they should be when hundreds have died, more animated that is merited by the release of a new autobiography, to wash through his system, settling his jangling nerves. He finishes up, and gathers his things too, until they are stood together in the hall.

“You okay?” he asks.

“Yes.” Better than some mornings, he supposes.

“You want to say goodbye to Mummy?”

“Okay.”

“Be gentle though, okay?”

They walk upstairs together in their coats, and from beneath a haze of pain she hears the double tread and pulls the muscles of her face into a semblance of basic vitality. She watches the thumbturn rotate, hears the lock retract, breathes in, smiles with her eyes, holds her head up and looks at their daughter.

“Good morning my baby, how are you this morning?”