Happy Ever After

Bad tempered. Fiery. Grumpy. These weren’t the words people would usually use to describe Hannah. Sweet, mild-mannered…meek? Yes she was aware she was meek or had been meek in her past life, life before the baby but today with her seventh lap of the park and the baby still squiggling and babbling in the buggy she was ready to grab the loveable squirrel sitting over there and skin it alive. And who was that goon playing tennis? What was he so damned happy about? She’d love to take his stupid tennis racket and bash him over the head. He was pathetic in his flimsy white shorts- a joke. Hannah realised she was staring. She was a bad tempered, fiery, frump. Why wouldn’t Marty nap? It was 10.25. It was time. It was twenty five minutes past time. The man walked towards her.

‘Hey you okay?’

She nodded, back in meek mode and walked on. The anger subsided. She was sometimes really taken aback at the level of antipathy she felt towards animals, men, women, trees, cars, cafes, supermarkets, plates… the list was endless. Someone had told her this was because she couldn’t take it out on the baby. Glen got the worst of it. There were days when she had considered hiring a hit man just because he’d coughed and woken Marty up in the night.

But now it was just tiredness that crept through her limbs, making her brain go all mushy. There was a point past tiredness when legs moved up and down, the mouth could still form simple words but you were to all intents and purposes asleep. She imagined herself lying in a first class air seat. She was on her way to New York. When she awoke she’d be carried from the plane straight into a limo. But no, New York was way too busy. It was fast and tiring. So they’d take her to the South of France instead. The limo would drive to a beautiful French gite. They would carry her from the limo to a hammock and they’d prise the buggy handles from her hand and replace it with a chilled glass of rose (there were times in bed when she realised her fists were still clenched as if pushing this beast). There would be hummingbirds and the soft hum of cicadas. There would be a nurse maid with seven breasts. The breasts would do nothing but produce milk and soothe little Marty.  Hannah would sleep. She would sleep in the hammock for so long that they’d have to cover her with a quilt and in the morning she’d be greeted by the seven-breasted nursemaid bringing her a freshly baked croissant. 

But hang on. Silence! She could almost hear the swish of the squirrel’s  tail against the tree. The goon was chasing his ball as it rolled into the net.  THE BABY WAS ASLEEP!

All she had to do was race home and she could lie on the sofa (no seven-breasted nursemaid but nevermind) and she wouldn’t be able to sleep (this was cruel, this inability to sleep in the daytime since the baby was born) but she could watch some reality TV. She would probably watch a whole hour of ‘Housewives of Beverley Hills’. God she loved that show. The lives so far removed from her own and yet the women so unspeakably miserable and bitchy and horrible. It cheered her up immensely to see women who in theory had everything (in the material sense only of course) and yet were so desperately miserable and petty and constantly arguing about something… one woman thought the other women had a big chin and the other one’s hair was too shiny and inappropriate. There was an argument about a flower arrangement in the middle of the table. They were completely incapable of happiness and this cheered Hannah. She knew no feminist in her right mind would approve – it was clearly an opiate for stupid women. But she was too tired to watch The Culture Show or to open The Guardian. Her brain could only hold so much and the soft, squishy bit responded just fine to an episode of American reality TV.