Rain Must Fall

Serenity Now

"How could I possibly expect my husband to understand all the bizarre things that happen to a woman in spirit and flesh when a friendly alien takes over her body? He still couldn't figure out why Laurie and I wanted to fly all the way to Hawai'i just to spend a week lounging around the pool, comparing underarm flab, when we could stay home and have the same conversation over the phone for a lot less money."
― Robin Jones Gunn, Sisterchicks Do the Hula

I stuck my head in the guest toilet of the May house and threw up for the second time that morning. The acid scraped and clawed at my throat as it made its way out, burning. Chrissie rubbed my back and held my hair, looking away in case it would force her to join me. She stayed silent as I came up for air, wiping my mouth with a wad of toilet paper and flushed it all down, slouching myself over to rest my face in my hands, groaning.

"Is it something you ate? Should I go tell the boys to stop eating?" She asked, helping sit me up against the wall and giving me the plastic cup from the sink with fresh water in it.

"No. I don't think it is. I've been off the injection for a while now. Roger and I were trying for a second kid before Live Aid. I think we might have succeeded." I sighed, power-skilling the tap water. Chrissie looked at me with a concerned mothering face.

"Luce, maybe having two kids at 24 is a bit much for your body. I mean, it's been through all the stuff before you got here and everything happening since you got with Roger. Maybe your body is telling you to slow down?"

"I know. But my biggest concern is him. Roger is 11 years older than me. My fertility still has decades but I don't know when getting pregnant with him will start being a health risk to the kid. There's gonna be a time when his sperm can't do what they need to do and my eggs will still be fine. I just want us to be happy and done when that comes." I explained, rolling my head side to side to fix my muscle aches.

"Why did you pick Roger even though he was older?"

"Because I've never felt so safe around someone."

In the kitchen, Brian, Roger, and Henry sat along the bench on high stools, eating fish and chips. Claudia sat in Henry's old jumper and played with the stuffed elephants that hung above her on bungee cord next to Brian on the bench. Roger was telling Henry about how Claudia was his auntie, which confused him because Claudia was a baby and he was a 'big boy'. Roger couldn't help but smile as he watched Henry squirt tomato sauce onto his chip plate in a triangle-shaped puddle. His new favourite activity was making shapes with his sauce and he had inherited that from me, as I had a habit for drawing dinosaurs with my condiments for entertainment.

"Where did Lucy and Chrissie go?" Roger asked, picking up his piece of fish and biting into it.

"I dunno. I'm not going to check, either. Henry, are you excited about starting school next year?" Brian asked, looking beside him at the four year old who shook his head.

"Why not?"

"I don't have any friends and mummy can't come with me."

"I didn't know anyone when I started school and neither did anybody else. Your mum moved from a different country to be here and she only knew me and Bomma. She made a new friend at a new school."

"Who?"

"Auntie Vivienne."

Henry took this in and continued with his eyebrows furrowed, looking exactly like Roger when he was thinking. Chrissie and I walked back into the kitchen and returned to the other side of the bench, taking our seats. Roger looked at me with curiosity and concern, to which half-smiled at and went back to my chips. Chrissie passed me the metal jug of mushroom gravy and I poured it onto my food until it was soaking my chips. I used a plastic fork from the chip pile and dug in, trying to pretend nothing was wrong when really I wanted to throw up again, but this time from anxiety.

Roger saw straight through me, as always, but didn't do anything because he knew I wanted to seem like nothing was out of the ordinary. He let me absolutely power through my lunch, taking the occasional break to drink. I let everyone else make conversation around me, but didn't invest myself. My mind was on other things.

The drive home was punctuated by me asking Roger to stop at the pharmacy on the way and him asking questions about what I got, only answered by head shakes and glares. We got home and I dashed straight to our bathroom, locking myself inside and ripping open the paper bag.

As a sat on the bath and waited for the test to activate, Roger jimmied the lock with a butter knife and let himself in. He said nothing as he sat next to me, putting his arm around me to push my head gently towards himself, kissing the side of my face.

"Together. For better or for worse." He whispered, letting me rest my head on his shoulder. I got up eventually and checked the test, but I didn't know if I could believe the results.

"It's positive. And that scares me."

I sat down on the lid of the toilet, my head in my hands.

"Luce. We knew this was coming. This is what we went off contraception for, yeah?"

"Now it's real, honey. I need you to reassure me that you're gonna keep me sane. I've had to deal with my mother's suicide being a result of pain caused by my ex spiking her cocaine. I don't want to think of this baby as a result of rape."

Roger came over to my and sat in front of me, resting his head on my knees.

"You are the strongest woman I know. I'll support you no matter what." He promised. I wanted to tell him about my conversation with Chrissie, but it would only get him riled. We went through it with George at Winifred's house and Roger hated it when someone commented on our age difference. I would just reply with 'love is love' and be poetic about it. Roger didn't feel like it was something he could defend without flying off the handle, and that made him feel weak.

I didn't want to tell him that I had been considering going back to university and becoming a General Practitioner and that this now put a lengthy hold on that dream. I had pictured Henry going to school and then me going to uni, having our hours work perfectly, and now I had to axe it for another five years. Instead, we both just breathed as I ran my fingers through his hair, feeling his silky slightly-greying locks on my skin and listening to the sound of my nails gently scraping his scalp. Serenity now.