Holding The Baby: Part IV

One day, all this firmness will be soft, said Nathan, resting his cheek on Iris�s flat white stomach.

Iris thought that he sounded like he wanted them to grow old together, and she didn�t know quite how she should feel about that. Her immediate future was planned around the days that remained until he left her to return to New Zealand; and after that, she had no plans except not to miss him.

His leaving party was a rowdy business of joyful drunkenness. She wore jeans and a delicate purple top, and her red hair hung like a cape around her shoulders. He kept her with him, danced with her, deliberately forgetting their weeks of careful secrecy. No regrets� he sang into her hair, and then kissed her long and hard on the mouth. It did not matter anymore.

As soon as he had gone, she understood clearly what he had been doing, but by then it was too late for her. Those last few days, for him, had had the bittersweet flavour of a love affair that he was already planning to remember as ideal: love with no promises, no expectations, and no future.

But while he had been hand-crafting his memories of her, she had simply been enjoying his company; living in the present, as she fully intended to go on doing.

For the most part, Iris found it rather nice to have her solitude back, and not have to make sure she was always wearing a matching set of underwear in case she found herself unexpectedly taking her clothes off in his presence, as had been happening so often in recent weeks. She celebrated by cooking up an enormous bowl of pasta, smothering it in garlicky sauce, and eating it in bed with her socks on.

Iris very slowly became aware that her period was overdue, although not dangerously so; she did not feel the need to worry. Her cycle varied between 26 and 32 days; a circumstance that she assumed was common, although it was a long time since she had discussed this with anyone who was qualified to confirm it. She did not nurture female friendships. Anyway, she had all the right pre-menstrual symbols: internal grumbling that she described to herself as feeling like she had swallowed an ashtray; breasts heavy as a bag of apples but far less resilient; a discreet spot on her chin.

In the very early hours of Day 36, she dipped a cardboard stick into a plastic cup of her own urine, and shivered in her shabby bathrobe while she watched the map of her future damply redefining itself in the form of two pink lines.

If Iris was a character in a weak work of fiction, there would be an omnipotent, omniscient (at least in this respect) author, who would probably have already made the decision for her, perhaps based on her own experience (if said author was a woman; and if not a woman, then said author would not be writing about Iris but about Nathan. Or about aliens).