Lines

It is only when I am elbow deep in the foamy dishwater that I am reminded of how I was never really good at swimming. Through the panelled window I glimpse the lake, the moon duets in both the sky and in the silky reflection. The sink is full of filmy soap and it coats my arms and the bubbles bunch and cling to my skin as I clean plates and saucers.

Father’s voice echoes through the hallway; the baby is crying again. I imagine Madeline's tears curving across cheeks and down the baby fat around her chin. My Father is singing that same bronchial lullaby; the one he’s had since Mother died. Father is singing in a sanded sort of way, as though my mother, when she passed, took a chunk of his tongue.

Footsteps are moving down the hallway and then, Madeline's crying hushes to a stop. But something is wrong.
I scrunch my hands dry and wonder why the air has stiffened around me. I walk towards the hallway and stand in the doorframe; Father is softly humming, his song so shy that it does not reverberate off walls.

Creeping closer, as though I am a stranger witnessing the unshadowed bond between grandfather and child, I feel a wash of relief when Father’s hands reach into the cot, to pull up a blanket. It is okay.

Oh, Madeline, always with your grandmother’s eyes. Look at you. Father’s head tilts. I know there’s grin on his face because the skin of his neck creases. You will bat your eyelids at a boy, and he’ll fall flat on his face. You’re a looker like your grandmother. I can see it now.
Father’s hands fold the blanket at the baby’s chin. He rests his arms on the slender frame of the bed. He is quiet for some time, the hum gone.

She feels cold, he says. Maybe a fever is coming. I can't tell.

But he is not talking to me. He barely turns to acknowledge my presence. Folding my arms, I wonder if he thinks I am his biggest failure. Too young to realise that the growing love inside me was to become a shared burden. Or so he told me when the baby had laboured from me, leaving lines of blood on my thighs. My baby now lay curled in the midwife’s hands.  

When the midwife had left to clean the baby in the kitchen, Father had whisper: you are a failure, a pretty mess. The threshold of my bedroom still stings with his words. I am his mess. While my mother wasn’t always a failure, she was his first burden when her body caved to sickness; I was the second and Madeline the third. A consistent line of women, who my Father is loving or has loved, not because we continually fail him, but because we still can. Because he can’t; there have been too many failings in our family for him to make a mistake, and he’s the last one standing, and I think he must make an impression on his third mess.

Nobody slipped me the certificate of, ‘You are now a mother. This is your child.’ And my father didn’t have an ounce of care in him until Madeline grew and formed a face too familiar.

She’s too cold, he repeats; bringing me back into the room and into the real world.

I wish I knew what was wrong, he is saying.

One hand makes its way to his forehead and he smoothes the wrinkles up into his hairline and ruffles the old strands, as though in thought.

Your grandmother would know, she’d tell me what to give you, to warm you up, put the heat back into your baby cheeks, and make you smile. At worst the taste would make you gurgle but you’d be alright, we’d set you straight.

She’s been good tonight, he says, quietly and finally turns to me. Sleeping the whole time, I’ve not heard a peep out of her once.

But, I heard her crying.

She hasn’t cried tonight, been a good girl.

Maybe I imagined it.

I raise my hands to adjust my hair tie and let the strands fall onto my shoulders. My father watches me, perhaps still sees the child in me, even though I am edging eighteen in a few weeks. Behind the tired eyes permanently circled, he still sees me in my childhood.

He moves away from the cot, shaking his head. I don’t shift my position in the doorway, but allow him to move past me.

She won’t cry tonight, he says. His back to me, and he’s hunching into his steps and snuffling.

The threshold is still warm with his presence, but something is wrong. I can hardly breathe. It feels as though my chest is filling with water, my limbs taut with anxiety.
      
Madeline’s face is hidden; the blanket is pulled up to her crown. I reach out and pull the covers down to her little knees. Her face is soft, but it’s her eyes that trigger the feeling from before; Madeline’s still brown eyes pulling wide open. Her cardigan is undone and because I know she is too cold, I snap close the buttons and adjust the cardigan snugly around my baby’s body. I’m shaking; weeping and howling. This is our mistake. Drowning is inevitable.