Liminal Spaces

TWO

It was Christmas morning in 1992. My father receives a phone call from an unknown area code in the middle of breakfast. He answers to hear the muffled, hysterical crying of a woman with a thick Japanese accent. He, my father, Louis Cloutier, wraps his index finger nervously around the telephone cord, for all he can do is listen. Standing in the kitchen archway, socked feet on the linoleum floor, only a breath away from a fry up of bacon, eggs, tomatoes and sausages, he stands, heart pounding as he waits for her to become audible. 

The woman, whose name I can't ever recall chokes on her breath and splutters. She tries her best to compose herself, she needs time to explain. She was calling from Osaka, she had recently completed a semester abroad at Cambridge. At an end of term party, she met an Anglo-Frenchman and let him fuck her on the bathroom sink of a multi-storey student house. Brown hair, brown eyes, a little short but with a  memorable face. 

They had both regretted their encounter, for the woman was from a strict and sexually repressed household and experienced paralysing guilt, while the man would tell me fifteen years later that he was in fact, a homosexual. I remember the day I found that out, I had come back from school and was lounging in the living room of dad's flat in Bristol, eating a sliced apple with a side of chunky peanut butter for a dip. My stepfather, who I knew at the time as 'Alex from work,' was caught by me, lingering in the kitchen, a towel tied around his waist. I ask him if, by any chance, he'd, "Had sex with my dad."

The man with the strawberry-blonde beard and a frame carved from Olympian marble replied, "No, we're both tops," before swigging from the carton of milk he'd found in our refrigerator. 

After the shenanigans of Winter, 1992, the woman went back to Osaka, the man, home to Jersey.  She had spent the morning crying over a positive pregnancy test and every accessible British phone book. It had been an expedition that occupied the last eight hours. The search concluded at seven past seven in the morning, as the telephone connected to the man who's son she carried.

Dad's ex-lover vented her frustrations as she clutched tightly at the phone. Her parents couldn't know she had premarital sex, so she couldn't have the baby. Her parents couldn't know she had an abortion, so she couldn't terminate the pregnancy. She couldn't claim she was raped because her father would have killed the man who did it. Through heavy breaths and wheezing of coughs, she begs the man on the other line for advice.

Fast forward to February 1993. The woman convinces her parents to avoid suspicion as she plans to return to England for another semester abroad. By March 3rd, she arrives on campus where she moves in with Louis immediately. The couple doesn't pursue a romantic relationship, nor do they remain friends for very long. The woman lives on Louis savings, sleeps in his bed while he is exiled to the futon, and quietly lives out her pregnancy between lectures on Renessaince art and European history.

I remember my dad telling me that she was often depressed, many a night would he notice the sound of her crying herself to sleep, or catch her staring at in the mirror with puffy eyes, as she watcher her body reshape itself. Many a night waiting desperately for the bathroom, because she was taking a bubble bath for hours on end, listening to Joy Division on a portable boombox. The light he had seen in her eyes on the night they had met was gone.

While he was studying, dad wrote for a science and technology magazine as a freelancer in order to pay for doctors appointments, supplies, equipment, anything a first-time parent may find themself needing to buy. As the last day of the semester approached, the woman collapses on the bathroom floor of my dad's apartment, sobbing through contractions and wishing her mother was with her. Her former lover tried to help her to her feet, but panic stops her from cooperating. By 3.00 am the following morning, she finds herself uncomfortably numb, soothed only by the whisper of the epidural in her spine. My dad was beside her, in a stiff wooden chair, his hands and forehead sweating under the lamplight. Gloved hands caress her legs as doctor, nurse and midwife examine the cervix. She listens to the sound of footsteps as people travel in and out of the room, the sound of her heart rate as it beats faster and faster, the sound of the booming voice of the doctor as she commands the woman to push harder before finally, the sound of life.

I was born on June 6th, 1993 at five past three in the morning. I weighed just over three kilograms and was forty-eight and a half Center meters tall, brown hair, brown eyes, just like both my parents, my father pale skin and curved nose, my mothers and thin lips and sharp chin. My time with my mother was short, in the hour I knew her, she didn't hold me.  As my father took me to pathology to get my first blood work done, my mother packed her shit and caught the next flight to Manila.

Our last correspondence was when I was three months old. She sent my father a letter, containing a cheque worth seven thousand Great British pounds. She had addressed me in her letter, wishing me the best of luck for the future. After that, we lost contact.

I often wonder if she knows who I am today? I wonder if she ever planned to send me another letter? I wonder if she still thinks about me? I never put in the resources to find her, afraid that I'd only find disappointment. Perhaps similar fears have prevented her from ever resuming contact also, perhaps she's scared I hate her. I doubt there will ever be a perfect time for us to meet again, but I just hope she's proud of me. Even is she can't bring herself to tell her children "that's your brother," when they watch my movies, I hope that deep down, she's not ashamed, but proud.