The Quake
Each term begins with a two-week truce during which students and teacher size each other up for the coming encounter. I entered the classroom. The group was entirely new. Twenty-eight strangers looked up at me in polite expectancy. Strangers all? No. Not really, as I suddenly spotted her. — At noon, I reported to Danielle: "Do you remember the "Penny" we saw on the bus when we went to Gerry and Penny's wedding? She is a student in one of my groups. Her name is Liliane. She seems to be jovial. We should invite her here."
At the beginning of August, Gerry had finally put the noose around his neck and Penny had pulled on the rope. Both victim and executor had seemed quite content. Danielle and I had bussed to Québec for the occasion. Half-way to Québec, a girl had boarded the bus and we nearly took to be Penny. We reasoned that it could not be so, as Penny was only hours away from her wedding. And Penny did seem to be shorter than this mysterious "Penny". Yet both had the same round face and care-free manner. Finally, reason got the better and, though we peered regularly at her because of the amusing resemblance, we concluded she was someone else. Evidently, when Gerry got to see Liliane, he never mistook her for Penny. As we ourselves got to know her more, we too wondered that we should have been taken in. But at that moment Liliane had been "Penny".
Liliane's class proved to be fun. I was never their darling teacher, but we got on quite well. Desmond Morris, I told them, has written a book on The Naked Ape, in which he tries to study man as a variant among the apes. Yet the cover of his book refutes its content: three naked humans are put beside two furry apes. The naked humans (a couple and girl-child) are tanned all over except on the strategic pants and panties area. They had to be undressed for the picture to be taken. Morris missed the main point: man is the only "ape" that is not naked but dressed. All the similarities between man and ape are dwarfed by this enormous difference. Then I joked about Morris' theory according to which Grand-Papa Naked Ape (as I called our presumed ancestor) left the cover of the trees for the plains and, accordingly stood erect and grew a brain that could use his liberated fore paws (hands) to keep up with the competition from other dangerous species. These students, specialists in biology, had no problems with such jokes and readily admitted the fact that the difference between man and animal is one of kind and not one of degree.
When we arrived at the subject of humour differentiaing man from beast, the jokes I made brought the house down and I came home that noon in mighty good spirits.
This was not to be with another class of students who had the same course with me. Fate, chance or God would have it that those students who had judged my ideas to be antiquated science last year, once again had me as their teacher. They got no pleasure out of my jokes about Grand-Papa Naked Ape. On the contrary, they considered it an insult added to injury. When I came to the part on humour, I felt the students so unreceptive that I had to force myself into uttering one joke, which resulted in a student mocking: "Hey, fellows, he's trying to make a joke."
This was acclaimed with malicious laughter. I dropped the jokes and dished them the theory of humour.
The contrast between these two groups was astounding, and Danielle had no problem knowing which class I had come from when I arrived home. I had never yet realised how much teaching is first of all an unpredictable love affair before becoming a matter of the mind. — Some people can't understand how one person can drool over another; this is fortunate, as it reduces the number of jealousies in the world. Of course, that person also cannot understand what others find in their own partners. In the same way, one group of students is unhappy with a teacher and quite happy with another; and another group will be unhappy with the second teacher and happy with the first. This is also the case with the teacher's feelings for his students. I have often heard some colleagues speak about the stupidity of certain students I had found interesting. At first, I wondered whether their judgement might be correct and a proof of my incompetence: the stupid being happy in their own company. Then, I realised that it was a matter of personalities which either caught on or repelled each other. That term, I learned this the hard way: I went from warmth to hostility and back, thanking God for the former and begging him for the strength to carry on with the latter.
All in all, the hawks had a greater influence than the doves. On the second week of the term, I began teaching an evening course. Such courses were organised for adults who took their college diploma after their day's work. But the regular students were allowed to take these courses in order to work out a better timetable during the school day. On the first evening, my class was made up half of adults and half of regular students. That evening everyone learned who was teaching the course. On the second evening, most of the regular students had dropped out.
Liliane accepted an invitation to come to our house and became a regular guest, same as Denise. There was an amusing difference. Whereas Denise revelled in talking family, household and spiritual matters with Danielle, Liliane preferred conversation on more abstract levels. I once tried to leave her in the kitchen with Danielle and retire to the living-room. Five minutes later, Liliane was in the living-room to talk with me. Another instance of personal affinities.
* * *
September 24. After supper, Danielle felt a slight contraction.
"This might be it," she warned me.
Come seven thirty, we put each child to bed at his regular time.
Contractions, though light, kept coming regularly. At nine, we called the taxi. The house was silent. We went to the hospital. Danielle was admitted to the labour room as I filled in admission forms. When I joined her, the contractions were still regular but did not gain in intensity. Then they abated and finally stopped.
Danielle and the attending nurse agreed that I should go back home to sleep near the children pending new developments. If the baby was not born before the morning, I would have to call Carole to care for them. Carole was a young girl who had accepted the job of keeping children and home during Danielle's absence and helping Danielle during three more weeks when she returned home.
I left Danielle under the strict provision that I would be called as soon as anything serious came up. We both fell asleep wondering whether we should soon be seeing Claude or Hél ne: Helen of Troy, the world's femme fatale, or Claude, a name Danielle fancied.
At midnight, Danielle was awakened by the return of her light contractions. They were soon regular. This went on through the night. Then, at six in the morning, the strong ones took hold of her. Though she expertly reacted towards them, Danielle yearned for Georges' presence. And she felt in those spasms the certainty that the time was fast ripening. She told the nurse to phone me quickly, as I had to call Carole over before leaving the house. The nurse believed Danielle to be overreacting.
It was already six-thirty when my phone rang. Alerted, I immediately phoned Carole to come. I hurriedly dressed, woke Christine, Michel and Johanne, dressed them, made breakfast, fed the three of them, gobbled down two slices of toast, then Carole arrived. It was now seven o'clock. I hurriedly briefed Carole on what to do during my absence and rushed out of doors. I figured it would be as fast, perhaps faster, if I ran to the hospital rather than waited for a taxi to answer my call.
Danielle had been rushed to the delivery room as the nurse suddenly realised that things were coming on fast. In Georges' absence, Danielle had trouble mastering her contractions. She was nervous, alone, insecure, a bit panicky.
Upon arrival, I wanted to leap into the delivery room where I could hear Danielle moaning during one of her contractions. But "Prudence, my man!" I was forced to dress up into a green disinfected suit that covered all my clothing. I was given a green bonnet for my head and green plastic baggies for my shoes. I was finally expected to tie a mask over my face. There had been no such nonsense in Switzerland, and time was short. I was cross. I finally rushed in, mask untied and I heard baby's first clear cry.
"He's a boy," the doctor said.
I neared Danielle. Her face was covered with the sweat of her effort. She beamed with joyous pride: the joy of my presence and the pride for our son.
"Claude," she said. "He is Claude. Oh, papa, are you happy? Are you proud? We have a baby boy. We now have two boys and two girls."
And she talked and talked as I looked out of curiosity at the doctor pulling out the remains of the baby's diving suit, and cleaning everything up. Suddenly, I began to feel hot all over and weak.
My head began clouding over.
"I do not feel well," I told Danielle.
She saw me weaken. She told me to sit on the stool near her. As she kept on talking, as baby was cared for and put temprarily in an incubator, and as the doctor cared for Danielle, I sat with the sinking feeling becoming more forceful. Finally, I leaned my head against Danielle's delivery table. To no avail — I was fainting.
"It's no good," I said. "I'm really not well."
"Doctor, nurse," Danielle called out. "My husband is ill."
Instantly, everyone came to my rescue. I was helped onto the stretcher on wheels Danielle was supposed take ride to her room. I lay there, conscious of my ridiculous posture, muttering: "It's absurd. It's absurd."
I couldn't help it. It was physical. I had risen quickly, worked fast, eaten too rapidly, run to the hospital and entered an overheated room. I was fainting.
The grand finale had the husband lying on the stretcher surrounded by two nurses and one doctor with the newborn forgotten by all in his incubator while the new mother tenderly looked over towards her spouse saying: "Poor dear."
"It's absurd, it's absurd," I kept saying.
Then it was over. I had not fainted. The sichness was gone. I leaped off the stretcher, and declared all was fine. Yet, as Danielle was rolled to her room on "my" stretcher, a nurse kept following me with a wheelchair saying: "Mister Allaire, you should sit down, you really should sit down."
I kept trying to shoo her away: "I'm all right," I insisted. "I'm all right."
The government health plan and the union health insurance put together allowed Danielle a semi-private hospital room. Since there were few women giving birth, Danielle had her room all to herself. At eight o'clock, Danielle and I were there, in private. For the first time, it was she who could phone the good news to our parents.
My father was overjoyed. Four times over a grand-father. Also, for him, the birth of a boy would always be the reliving of my own birth. Danielle's mother could hardly believe her ears. Was it possible that Danielle's voice be so clear and happy only a half-hour after such an ordeal? Yet there Danielle seemed to be insisting that all was fine.
They were told that an eight pound fifteen ounces (4.5 kilo), twenty-one and a half inches long (55 cm) Claude Alexandre (for my father) Joseph (for the caring father of Jesus) came into the world at seven thirty that morning. As Danielle told my father of my near faint, he laughingly commented: "He'll never make it to ten."
My father-in-law insisted that this incident must be the result of my emotions, a suggestion which I strongly resented and I called on past experiences as proof to the contrary. But it was to no avail — I had been humiliated.
Claude was baptised five days later, as soon as Danielle was discharged from hospital. His godparents were Maurice, the first of our Manitoban Musketeers, and his wife Anita. The celebrant was Father Engelbert Lacasse, who had directed my Spiritual Exercises a month and a half before.
* * *
Danielle and I had played Cupid for Hél ne and Fred. They had married one year after us. Now they had overtaken us. They got their first baby on first try: he was born nine months after their honeymoon. And their fourth child came three months before ours. Fred insisted that he was not racing with us, but a common friend put things in correct order: "Whether you like it or not," he told Fred, "you are in the race, and you are winning."
Hélène and Fred had first lived in California, but were now nearer to us, in New Hampshire. As a result, Danielle had begun a regular monthly one-hour phone call with Hél ne. And Hél ne had told Danielle what breast-feeding was all about. She knew an organisation of women promoting breast-feeding with missionary zeal. This zeal was certainly understandable when the medical profession was proving to be totally ignorant of the basics in breast-feeding. That ignorance explained much of Danielle's prior "failures". In hospitals, when baby did not drink enough from the breast of the rare mother who wished to feed this way, the nurses simply gave him the bottle. If baby cried before his mother's time, he was again given some drink. Of course, the baby never developed the appetite to suck with energy and awaken his mother's milk capacities. Danielle adhered strictly to an every four-hour drinking schedule, which was correct once the milk flowed abundantly, but required shorter periods before that. Thanks to Hél ne, Claude was our first success in breast-feeding. At first, the hospital nurses generally complied with his mother's instructions and kept him his appetite for mother's milk. Then Danielle made sure that her milk flowed abundantly before putting him on a four-hour schedule. Whenever the milk tended to diminish because she was especially tired or for other reasons, Danielle shortened the time between meals so that the flow came up again to required level. It worked.
Of course, the breast-feeding missionaries overstated their case in their campaign. They insisted that it must be all breast-feeding or none during the child's first six months. The success we had got in giving more solid foods to our babies starting on their third week made us sceptical on this point. We surmised that a six-month exclusive breast-feeding regime should enslave the mother to her child's growing needs and become a strain on her own physical well-being. So we went our own way in this matter.
The baby feeding fashion would soon change within the medical profession. Doctors and nurses became converts to the breast-feeders gospel and insisted their patients exclusively breast-feed their babies during the first six months. What we foresaw happened. Many a woman we knewfound it long and difficult to recover her physical strength after the birth of her child. As her child became more demanding and her own strength did not follow, she became depressive and guilt-ridden because of her "inadequacy" as a mother and tended to drop-out of breast-feeding.
Danielle asked our family doctor: "Except for the fact that this is a fashion, is there the slightest medical reason that I should not start giving more solid food to my baby during his third week?"
The doctor thought for a while, then answered, "No."
At that time, I enjoyed teasing my students in the nursing course about their profession's prejudices in this matter. Though I could testify to fact that our baby, who was fed solid foods from his third week, was happy and healthy, they adhered with biblical faith to their revised text-books and insisted that a baby cannot digest solids before he was six months old.
Had we not lived through conflicting fashions in going to Switzerland and coming back, we undoubtedly would have believed the new medical fashion to be a scientific break-through. Luckily, we had practised our own way to feed baby in Switzerland, going against the Swiss method of "wet-feeding" till the baby was six months old. At that time, we had considered the Swiss to be backwards. It would now seem they were in advance of the North Americans fashionwise. There was nothing scientific there. We were surprised to see how fashion and gullibility are as much a part of the scientific world as they are of the ordinary world. Only, to confront the scientific world, it is rarely given to the common man to have an adequate laboratory to establish his own conclusions.
Claude was the perfect baby. Within a few days of his arrival home, he was able to have a straight six hour sleeping period. Of course, he first chose to have it in the daytime. But Danielle woke him up during the day and gradually pushed his longer sleep towards the night shift.
Till he could sleep the whole night through, he slept in our room, so as not to wake Michel when Danielle fed the baby. A colleague asked how I could sleep in the same room as a cry-baby.
"But, he doesn't cry," I answered.
It was true, he rarely did. He was a happy, healthy and beautiful baby. Beautiful, for it soon became evident that he would be our first blond child. Yet he didn't have blue eyes. It was a matter of heredity Danielle said.
Claude had the same easy-going temper as his sister Christine. That is, his mother's temperament. Thus baby Claude's raising was fairly simple. I had little contact with him. It was enough that he didn't cry and bother anyone. Danielle nearly scandalised a neighbour when she explained that her baby's father never took care of him, never picked him up and waited for the child to be old enough to come to him by himself.
This was not insensitivity of my part. God knows I had cared for Christine when she was a baby and quite a bit for Michel. But, as Danielle was preoccupied with Claude's needs nearly all the time, I was in full charge of Johanne and generally quite taken up by Christine and Michel. If the parents who suggested that three children are just too much were correct, I should have been overwhelmed sharing responsibilities for a four year old daughter and a nearly three year old son and taking charge of a one and a half year old daughter. We found this sharing of tasks beneficial for the children. Johanne graduated to fatherly care and Christine and Michel graduated to independent inter-dependence as they played together. Also, the elder two took greater notice of baby Claude and felt a growing responsibility as elders in a growing family.
* * *
December 24. The pastor of our cathedral parish asked us if Christine would carry the Jesus doll to the manger at the beginning of the eight o'clock Christmas Mass, that evening. We proudly accepted.
At four that afternoon, the phone rang. I answered. Maurice was calling from Quebec. This was strange as long distance calls were full tariff until six.
"Have you heard?", he asked.
"Heard what?", I answered.
"Er, well, Carlos is dead," he said.
I wondered whether Carlos had had a heart attack, or an accident. I was not yet under the effect of the shock.
"What do you mean? what happened?"
"Carlos was murdered," Maurice told me.
The previous Sunday morning, Carlos came back from Mass in his car. His wife and seven children were with him. He stopped at a street corner. A man ran up to Carlos' window, put a pistol to his head and shot him dead. The killer simply ran off.
When I told this to Ronald, who had followed Carlos' courses with me, he summed up our revulsion: "Carlos wouldn't have hurt a fly."
But Carlos was an eminent Christian philosopher and a vocal opponent of the philosophy of Revolution. He also came from a military ancestry. All this was enough to make him into a "class enemy" and a suitable victim for a terrorist "execution".
I hazily thanked and put the receiver down. Deep inside, I wept. Outside, my face was of stone. I turned to Danielle, who sensed there was something wrong, and broke the news to her. Danielle helplessly muttered the usual unbelief before an immense disaster. We kept our calm as we told Christine what had happened.
Christine had been brought up to love her faraway godparents. We had already decided that one day she should visit them in Argentina when she turned fifteen. Together we had prayed the Lord to keep both her godparents in good health till then. God had other plans.
Our composure helped Christine through this crisis. We offered our Christmas Mass for Carlos andespecially for his bereaved wife and children who had suffered such horror and such loss. In the mystery of Faith, Carlos was now nearer to them and to us than before. But at that moment we felt far more in the darkness of Faith than in its Revelation.
At eight o'clock, Nicole kept house for us. Danielle, Christine and I went to Christmas Mass. Though our minds and hearts were in dismay, Christine pulled off her role as Jesus-bearer very well. We prayed in grief.
The pastor began his sermon. It was all about the joys of Christmas, of family reunions, of sharing with loved ones, of seeing relatives… joys we owe to the birth of Christ.
We were far from that kind of joy. We felt the loss of a loved one rather than reunion. There had to be something else in the "Good News" of Christ, something more than this sentimentalism. — In our suffering, we realised how much Christmas must be a time of torture for many people who do not have what is considered to be the normal joys of Christmas. We thought of parents whose child may have left them, of spouses abandoned by husband or wife, of children visiting separately their divorced parents. And what of those like us who were in mourning? What did baby Jesus have to say to them? to us?
Later, we realised how much Christmas must have been a severance for the Son of God himself, who had to tear himself away from home to come among us. We saw the joy of Christmas as a mercy, a love and a life overcoming sin and death. We realised how our own pains, united with those of Jesus, became treasures of love for those we wished to help. We understood that Christmas is joyous because it gave meaning to the sorrows in this world. If our life was only made up of the customary Christmas joys, then the Son of God could have partied with the Father in Holy Spirit and would not have needed to come among us the way he did.
A few years later, when our pastor was grieved by the departure of his father, his Christmas sermon reflected the greater depths of the human and divine heart. But this year, he unintentionally hurt us. This may have been one of God's gifts to us by which we could partake in carrying Maria-Martha and her children's crosses.
Carlos, my brother, had died. In a letter, I reminded Maria-Martha, that it was only through the Father's pain before his Son on the cross, that we could accept such pain be brought upon us. Maria-Martha answered that she had felt no revolt; only God's tender presence and comforting peace.
* * *
There were all new faces this term as I passed from a second to a first year course. On the agenda, I was to verify the students' list in order to give everyone official existence in my class. First, a word about myself "in order to confirm or correct the rumours concerning your teacher."
"My profession is fatherhood. My hobby is teaching," I told them.
I enumerated the four birth dates of Christine, Michel, Johanne and Claude. Their proximity provoked amusement among the students. I assured them it was not a series of accidents resulting from incompetence, but rather a Machiavellian plan to arrive at the sum of ten children. Planning should be evident from the fact that there were sixteen months between each birth and that we had followed the girl-boy pattern with success. As for ten, this was the basis of the metric system and the whole world was going metric.
No one doubted there was method in the madness and many thought there was madness in the method.
* * *
"Talking about having a large family is all right, but going through that ordeal is something else. You are fine right now with young and docile children. Just you wait till they grow up to be teenagers. Then, you'll see its no fun at all. My three teenagers are putting me out of my mind."
A forty year old lady friend was lecturing Danielle, who, though twelve years younger, already had the larger family. This friend thought our children were sweet and lovely for the time being, but it was her duty to warn us of our impending doom.
A colleague of mine at college, also in the forties, a celibate priest, had already assured me that my sweet children would not turn out to be as I naively expected.
"When she gets to be a teenager, she'll bowl you over," he said of the eldest.
We already knew that the road of life would offer us some problems. We figured it was better to tackle them one at a time as they came, and take life's joys also as they came. Why forgo today's happiness because of tomorrow's possible difficulties? Why did these people take pleasure in trying to scare us? Of course, family life must have its horrible moments. Isn't that the case for every way of life? But we trusted the product was worth the investment. Philosophers share wisdom, poets breed poems, manufacturers make cars and televisions and architects construct buildings: truth for the mind, songs for the heart, machines for work and leisure and monuments for the future generations to see. We made persons for whom all these services are intended, and persons destined eternity. Everything else will fall into dust. Persons must be worth the many pains otherwise spent to make things. Until pain came with its accompanying courage, why not just be happy?
Danielle and I met a new neighbour down the street. She politely admired our children, especially our baby. Then she began explaining how she had two children of her own, but that she had come to the end of the line.
"I could not survive the ordeal of having another one. I once believed in the existence of the maternal instinct. Nothing of the kind exists. My two children are enough to put me on edge. I feel cooped up in my house, a slave to never-ending demands. There is not a moment's respite. I don't know how you can manage with four. You are courageous."
The compliment sounded more like an insult.
Another time our door-bell rang. Another new neighbour from the other end of the street was dropping in. Christine, Michel and Johanne gathered around Danielle as she greeted the lady. The neighbour had nice words for the beautiful family. Then she kindly wondered: "Don't you realise that you are contributing to the world overpopulation?"
"Have no fear," Danielle said reassuringly, "we can feed our children."
Christine, Michel, Johanne and Claude left us little time for village gossip. But we gathered we were the object of some of it. A lady friend of Danielle happened to mention that she made it a point of honour to speak out in our defence.
This meant we were offensive. After all, Claude was the living proof that we were not only bunglers, we were perverts. Christine and Michel were the usual pair of children most couples wished for. Johanne could be the unfortunate accident because contraceptives can be defective or forgotten some time. But Claude could not be another accident. Any couple in its right mind would have made double sure, after the Johanne incident, that no more mistakes would occur. After all, a woman needs only a simple operation, a slight incision, the fallopian tubes tied, and there would be safety for life. Claude must have been deliberate. Therefore, Johanne also. It must be a whole plot.
We noticed on occasions that some people were cool to us. Luckily, we only barely had time enough for the company of our own friends. The inside world was comforting and for the most part we were ignorant of the outside one.
* * *
Claude was now in his fifth month. As breast-feeding was going well, Danielle kept it on. It was easier than preparing a bottle, it was healthy nourishment for the child and allowed a warm relationship between mother and babe even when mother was called upon unceasingly by the other members of the family.
The day was full. Early to rise (six thirty), Danielle gave Claude breast-feeding and breakfast, made breakfast — with Georges' help — for all the family, changed Claude's diapers, then Johanne's as father had gone off to college. She did the household chores, kept a vigilant on the children and was a friendly company for them, fed Claude at eleven, fed everyone at noon, put the children and herself to bed for a siesta, got everybody up, fed Claude, made and had supper and put the children to bed — with Georges' help — at seven thirty. At eight, Danielle was physically tired out, her eyes deep in their sockets. She was ready for bed. At eight, the television prime time programs were on, so I watched them alone till ten or eleven, then put myself to bed.
There was no time to talk in the morning, as I cared for Johanne, Danielle for Claude, and we both for Christine and Michel. There was no time at noon, as we fed the whole bunch and I went off back to work. There was no time at supper till eight, and then Danielle was tired out. During the other moments of the day, I was at college.
So we gradually became estranged. Danielle had been used to sharing her load of family responsibility by talking over the daily problems with me. I had been used to sharing my load of (studying and) teaching responsibility by reading her off my class notes and giving her my opinions on philosophical matters. Neither could now share with the other.
Danielle made a few attempts at striking conversation at eight o'clock, when the children were in bed. But she had no energy left and soon had to cut it short. The only tangible result was that I missed the beginning of the television program I was condemned to watch when she left me.
Our loneliness grew. For Danielle, I became only a fleeting image in her life, a husband she could no longer reach out to, feel, communicate with, be united to. I saw Danielle as a ghost, a tired out, empty shell of the woman I once knew. She left me totally dispassionate. Television with its monotony was my only faithful mistress. There was life outside the home. All was dying inside.
The children felt us going adrift. They lost their security. They began quarrelling with each other for flimsy reasons, they lost all interest in games. Disturbed and helpless, they clung to Danielle.
Then one of Danielle's most cherished girlfriends from her schooldays came along with her husband and two children. She was fresh as a daisy, neat, sweet and tidy. Her family was a happy lot. And Danielle could only confide she was worn out.
"That is your fault," her friend told her. "You have too many children. You do not have any time for yourself nor to care for each of your children or for your husband. And your pregnancies are wearing you down. We have had our two boys, and we have stopped. A hired woman keeps the house for us and baby-sits during the day, while I work with my husband. And we care for our children on evenings, on week-ends and during holidays. We can even afford time, energy and money to take trips. Poor Danielle, you are destroying yourself and your family. You should be more reasonable."
It seemed so true. Danielle realised that she had lost all feminine charm before her husband. She sensed her husband and children's growing unhappiness. She was a failure. Gone were the passionate days of yesteryear. Gone were the sweet tender moments of togetherness.
One evening, Danielle came down from the children's rooms. It was eight o'clock. She moved near her husband. The television was already on. I saw a worn out ghost approaching.
"Get to bed," I ordered her as I noticed her obvious need for rest — and as I feared to be needlessly deprived of the beginning of my program.
Danielle retreated to the staircase and went up to our room. I watched the movie.
Danielle lay haplessly on our bed, tears streaming from her eyes. She took in the full extent of her failure as a wife and as a mother. Then she decided there was only one thing left for her to do: drop everything and those for whom she could do nothing and go home to her own mother.
Downstairs, the television was playing.
Danielle got up and thought of packing her bags.
That practical necessity abruptly awakened her. If there was ever one thing she had sworn never to do, it was to pack her bags and leave. Previously, such an act had appeared to be utterly inconceivable. As it threatened to become a fact, Danielle recoiled.
"No, this is not a solution", she thought. "I may have failed as a wife and a mother, but running away is not an answer."
Instead she prayed. She prayed and changed her fortnightly confession to a weekly one. She told God through his priest how she was unworthy of those who depended upon her, how she was incapable of making them happy and asked the Lord for his mercy and help to bring about a change for the better.
* * *
How I would have loved to be in love, to feel moments of tenderness and flirtation, to get some zest back into my life. My lawfully-wedded wife was evidently not up to this. She was a dead partner. I realised that these wishes were futile, but I longed to escape from my awful solitude.
