She grabs his hand,
squeezing it until his fingers blazoned white, as he pulls down the lever with
the other hand, adorned with a baby rattle at the end – some ironic or twisted
joke, they are not sure.
Just last week, they had
seen the Davies – Sally and Paul – come home with their baby in a bundle like
it was the new Jesus. He was
beautiful though: biblically blonde curls, translucent in the sun, and blue
eyes that blinked contently at his new surroundings, set with a row of curled
lashes. The perfect baby – the angel baby. Claudine and David were unlikely to
luck upon a baby anywhere near as delightful as the Davies’ Emmanuel (I mean,
what other name could they have gone
for?) but it was a lottery, so anyone could win a impeccable infant. Literally,
a lottery: couples heaved down the garishly gold lever – decorative rattle and
all – on the One Armed Bandit, gambling for a combination to give their child
the best genetics. Rose and Sarah next door brought home a lovely girl, with
maple-green eyes and tiny little fingers, grappling at the towelling around
her. Would Claudine and David be so lucky.
This place was designed to
be like a game show, with the big ol’ one armed bandit spot-lit in the centre –
a cosmetic-yellow light – with the rest of the room black; as if there was a
whole audience steeped behind the darkness, ready to clap – or chortle, in the
case of the Bennett’s, with their average wages and average looks. Under
average, Claudine speculated, examining David. She was not admitting her
husband was ugly per say, but she was
not holding clammy hands with a man
from a cologne advert either: dirty-blonde hair nestled on his head (which he
used to dye with bleach in his early teens – the shame) and a wide smile that could make you feel claustrophobic at
times, as if his teeth were looming towards you, engulfing the airspace with
borderline-white oppression. Not that Claudine would tell her husband that
either: he had a pert bottom (which is all
that mattered!) and could be the difference between a mildly beautiful baby,
and one that drew attention for all the wrong
reasons. (“Which parent did that take
after?” Claudine could envisage the titters now.)
The
cogs of life turned laboriously on the lottery machine, and Claudine itched to
revert back to the old habit of biting her nails (clean for thirteen whole days, ladies and
gentlemen in the seeping shadows) but fear that this may lead to the baby being
cross-eyed or another quality that bullies would pry upon. (Lucky little Emmanuel, with his doting
little face that would draw doves – look at yourself Claudine, jealous of a
bloody baby.) The Bennett’s both stood up straight, sucked in their
stomachs a little, and waited.
However, they had guessed it
was not a real lottery, a random
combination: is it a mere coincidence that the Royal Family all had children so
cute you could practically serve them on a plate and eat them up? Or the
Davies’, with their towers of money inherited from both sides of the family (the whole street were more surprised they
had not been knighted Lord and Lady yet), and they receive a son with the
destiny of a Calvin Klein model?
The first of the one armed
bandit’s categories began losing momentum. Claudine braced herself; David
needed to cough but self-consciously pushed the urge deeper into his throat.
Brown eyes! Their little baby will blink brown eyes back at their similarly
average sets. Soon, the dice of their child’s life were being thrown in swift
succession: russet hair (to match the Bennett’s living room side cabinet), pale
skin (to match their living room carpet – better
not leave the baby alone in there or we will never find them the couple thought
in unison), small lips, button nose, freckles… Claudine exhaled aggressively,
as if she had been a hot air balloon her whole life, and only now was she
beginning to let the air die down. (She briefly wondered why she had ever paid for acupuncture, when a baby
did the trick of releasing tension.)
All four hands dived for the
moronically large button, labelled ‘Boy
or Girl?’, without even entertaining a conversation. From a skinny slot at
the base of the one arm bandit, a yellow token slid out, barely touching the
bottom before Claudine swooped to retrieve it, like a crazed eagle. She turned
over her palm and both Bennett’s analysed the very simple words printed: GIRL.
Floodlights unexpectedly light
the entrance, the actual door blocked by a matronly figure (David gives a quick
shudder, as the flashback of Mrs. Norris expands in his conscious) and a metal
cot on wheels. The figure advances, the lights increasing with each dramatic
step, until the woman is in front of the couple – who were, as anyone would be,
gawping like a pair of fish. In the cot lay their new little girl, with her
russet hair and eyes as promised. Reflexively, Claudine goes to coddle her new
baby, leaning over to take the bundle in her arms. Yet, as she lifts the baby
away from the cot and its sea of supple blankets, so too does the towel she is
wrapped from head to toe in become free. All is silent. Even the matron-woman
remains rigid at the knees: before them, outstretched from Claudine’s maternal
body, dangles a baby of perfect proportion, apart from the very small and insignificant detail that she has absurdly elfish ears: elongated hearing
organs perfected into points at the top, long enough to reach the top of her
head. Claudine is horrified: like the opposite of a flashback before death, she
was experiencing a flash forward of her poor, squishy infant, now grown up and
tormented by her fellows about her ‘incredible’ ears, playing ‘Mr. Wolf’ games
with her where she must always be the
wolf, turning her into someone as mythical as Tinkerbell. David, on the other
hand, leeks a smile, which rapidly advances to a full-faced grin: “I knew your double jointed toes would do something like this."
They divorced soon afterwards.
