It’s Sunday afternoon, and Róisín is getting ready to leave the house. She usually avoids going to the park on Sundays, but today she has a date with a man she met online. She avoids it because of all the families—it is impossible for Róisín to forget about her own life circumstances while walking in the park at this time of the week. There are too many women who are her age, or younger, pushing buggies and calling after toddlers. These women have done the thing they were meant to do, and everyone around them is relieved, and whether this is true or not doesn’t really matter, because Róisín feels it as true, right down in her bones, that she has not succeeded in adulthood, that she has not yet fully self-actualised. When she meets her college friends, the others will talk at length about their children, connecting over shared experiences, and then as a footnote ask Róisín about work. Underneath all of it, the comparison is there, thrumming away: how her life is empty, how their lives have meaning. Back home, she knows someone who knows someone who paid a stranger €200 to come to her house and jizz in a cup so she could inseminate herself with a turkey baster. But Róisín is doing things the old-fashioned way, talking to men on Tinder and arranging to meet them in the park for a stroll and a coffee. Over text, Adrien has been courteous, quick to reply. He hasn’t requested that she send him any photos, which she takes as a plus. Her profile picture is an old one, but she thinks she still looks the same in it, and it’s one of the few photos of herself she actually likes. His profile photo is of him drinking a glass of red wine beside Canal Saint-Martin. Underneath his photo it says: Frenchman in Dublin. Data Analyst. Love nature, travel, and good conversation. Vouloir, c’est pouvoir. He messaged her the day after they’d matched.
She double-checks: keys, phone, wallet. She has an umbrella in her bag, just in case, and yes, she is wearing sunscreen also, and yes, she has her scarf in her bag, in case they end up sitting for a while, and yes, she is prepared for all actualities. It’s warmer than it looks when she steps outside, so she walks slowly, to avoid arriving looking too sweaty or ruddy-faced. At the traffic lights, a toddler is crying because someone’s dog has barked too loudly. On the other side of the road, a couple holding hands are waiting to cross, smiling secret smiles to each other. She is the only person she can see who is on their own. She doesn’t feel the need to tell anyone where she is going and what she is doing. She is not scared of being kidnapped and raped on a Sunday afternoon in a park full of buggies and kids on scooters. She is a bit nervous that Adrien will find her dull, or annoying, but she is not scared of that. She has been raped twice in her life, once digitally by a friend at a house party when she was eighteen, and the second time by her boyfriend when she was 26, when he was drunk, when she was trying to break up with him. She knows intimacy is much riskier than meeting a stranger in a park. Across the road now and the large, white gates are in her view. She foosters with her hair, pats it flat. She can see the park is already teeming with families. They have agreed to meet at the gates but she doesn’t see anyone yet who might be him. She wishes she could check a mirror quickly, fix whatever might need fixing. She could take out her phone and check herself in her camera but it would be awful for him to happen upon her doing that. Anyway, most of the things that bother her about her reflection she can’t change.
She half-considered putting 36 on her profile, but in the end decided to be honest and write 38. At some point in her mid-to-late thirties, people started speaking to her differently. She had not realised how youth had made her likeable without having to do anything at all, but now she knows, now she sees it in how people speak to young women, and she is able to observe this because she is no longer the one being spoken to. Men don’t try to garner her attention as much as they once did, and it turns out that this is a relief, mainly, aside from the slight knock to the ego. Sometimes she’ll forget her age, but then be reminded of it suddenly. In Penneys last week, she asked a staff member where the pyjama section was, and the staff member appraised her for a second before asking, ‘For adults?’ Róisín realised then that she looked like a woman who might have children, who might be buying pyjamas for them, who might be going home to a husband and small versions of herself running around, rather than someone going back to a three-bed flat she shares with strangers.
‘Róisín?’
She is snapped from her thoughts by a tall, handsome Frenchman standing in front of her. He looks better than in his profile photo, more facial hair, more rugged. His brown eyes are striking even in this dull, cloudy light. And he even pronounced her name correctly.
‘You must be Adrien!’
She hears that her voice is bright and high, full of nerves.
‘Yes.’
He smiles; it’s a cute smile.
‘I’m so used to French people calling me rosin,’ she says. ‘Or raisin.’
‘Like the grape.’
‘Yes. Your name must get butchered here too.’
‘Oh no, I’m fine with being called Ay-dree-in,’ he says, drawing out his name with an Irish accent. She laughs.
‘You’ve been here a while then.’
‘Six months. I am getting used to Ay-dree-in. Anyway, it is not wrong, it is just another version of my name. But raisin, raisin is incorrect. I checked how to pronounce your name. There are a lot of Youtube videos about how to say Irish names, in fact.’
‘Am I the first Róisín you’ve met?’
He nods. ‘Most of the people I work with are American.’
‘Ah. They usually get my name wrong too.’
He looks her up and down a little, then looks around at the park. He has very good posture, she notices. City bred. City-level confidence.
‘Which way do you normally go?’ he says, indicating the path.
‘Oh, any old which way,’ she says, feeling a little embarrassed, cursing herself internally for being unable to make even the smallest of decisions. ‘Let’s go towards the pond,’ she says. ‘There’s a coffee cart there too, so that might be good, maybe.’
Walking side by side now, it’s more comfortable, although she thinks about pace, wondering if she is walking too slowly or too quickly for him. She tries to think of things to ask him, but everything going through her head seems basic and obvious and stupid.
‘So do you like living in Ireland then?’ she hears herself say.
‘Everything except the weather,’ he says, smiling. She waits, but he doesn’t say more.
‘I lived in Paris for a year, actually, when I was younger.’ She is speaking again. ‘I was in the 13th, in a chambre de bonne, tiny wee place.’
‘You can get good Chinese in the 13th.’
‘Yeah. I spent most of my time in the 10th though, that’s where I was studying, and there was this amazing falafel place on Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis. I ate falafel almost every single day I was in Paris, I’d say.’ She laughs, she doesn’t know why. She wants to put her fist in her mouth. Why can’t she say anything normal, or cool?
‘I lived in London for a year before I came to Dublin,’ he says, completely ignoring her falafel talk. ‘I thought Dublin would be very similar, but actually,’ he pauses.
‘It’s different,’ she says.
‘Yes.’
They are at the pond now. They stop in front of some ducks. Over on the other side, a woman is giving bread to her toddler to throw in the lake. They watch the toddler toss the heel of a loaf into the water, almost hitting a duck. Róisín tries to think of something else to say.
‘It’s not good to do that,’ Adrien says, half under his breath, watching the woman across the pond.
‘You mean give them bread?’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘It’s bad for them. It can hurt their stomachs.’
Róisín knows this, and she likes that he knows this too. Maybe they are a match. Maybe they are two of a kind. A match made in heaven. Maybe this is the one.
‘I got in trouble once,’ she says, ‘For actually saying that to someone who was feeding them bread. It didn’t go down well, in the end. I had to leave.’
He doesn’t say anything for a moment and she worries she has said something stupid, revealed herself to be strange or off-putting. But then he says:
‘I had heard the stereotype that Irish people like to fight, before I came here. But now that I have been here a few months I can see that it’s not really true. It’s more common to be, comment on dit, passif-agressif.’
She laughs, relaxes a little.
‘That’s true,’ she says, ‘You’re not meant to say things directly. More in a roundabout way.’
‘Comme un rond-point?’
‘Yes,’ she says, ‘Just like a rond-point.’
‘Hmm,’ he says, ‘I struggle with that.’
They look over at the woman and toddler again. The ducks are going mental for the bread. Róisín doesn’t mean to talk but she feels her mouth moving without her will, blabbering to fill the silence.
‘I found it strange when I went to Paris—all that directness, I mean, the way people are so straightforward. Well, also, because I was around a load of English people who were on the same course as me, and they’re even worse for the directness, would you believe. You’d think they’re joking when they’re actually being serious. But the Parisians also—and I don’t mean this in a bad way, just that it’s different—but like, I learned that if I was at someone’s house and they offered me a drink I had to say yes the first time if I actually wanted it. You have to say no a few times here first. Like, say no at least twice and then the third time you can say yes. You’re meant to let the host convince you into having a cup of tea, otherwise you’re being sort of rude, you’re being pushy. You’re meant to pretend you don’t want it at first.’
She manages to stop talking, but to her surprise he looks genuinely interested, like he wants her to continue. ‘Really?’ he says. She reddens at the feel of his gaze.
‘Well, it might not be too much like that anymore, actually.’ She thinks. ‘No, probably not.’
The toddler across the pond has fallen over and is crying. His mother picks him up and takes him away. The ducks squawk after them.
‘But when I moved to Paris I was young,’ Róisín says, ‘I was in my early twenties. I hadn’t, I hadn’t even spent that much time in Dublin really, at that stage.’
‘Ah, so you are a paysan?’
There is a twinkle in his eye and he is standing close, a little closer than before, she notices. Maybe she has not ruined things with her blabbering. Maybe he even finds her blabbering charming.
‘We call that a culchie,’ she says.
‘Culchie,’ he repeats, and then sounds out the word again, as though he is enunciating for Duolingo, ‘Cul-chie.’
She laughs, and he looks at her, and laughs then too. She relaxes some more. She can be unserious with him, she feels.
‘There is something I should probably tell you, before this goes any further,’ he says then, and of course, of course there’s something—he doesn’t do monogamy, he has six months to live, he’s only into very specific sexual acts and she needs to sign a contract before they move forward. She is already dreading the thought of more swiping and admin.
‘Okay,’ she says, and she has turned her face towards him, she has already put a wall up, and she will keep her face exactly as it is, no matter what he says.
‘I have a small baby attached to my torso.’
She fails to keep her face exactly as it is.
‘What?’ she says, and he says again, the words:
‘I have a small baby attached to my torso.’
‘I don’t understand,’ she says, ‘What you are trying to tell me.’
He repeats the sentence a third time and she is looking at him, and he looks totally normal, he looks like a totally normal person standing in front of her.
‘You’re going to need to show me what you mean,’ she says.
He doesn’t seem overly surprised by this request, and obliges, gestures towards some bushes nearby. ‘Let’s go there,’ he says. As they are walking towards the bushes Róisín catches the eye of a woman with a stroller, and then they both look away from each other. Adrien goes through the bushes first. Róisín looks around to see if anyone is watching her before following him through to a small clearing, surrounded by brambles. He stands at a very polite distance from her.
‘I would prefer, maybe, no touching straight away,’ he says.
She doesn’t know what to say to this, but he waits, he is waiting.
‘Okay,’ she says.
He opens his coat and gently lifts up his T-shirt. And yes, there, at the side of his abdomen, just between his hipbone and ribs, is a small baby. Partly inside his body, partly outside. More like a foetus than a baby. A growth. But a growth that is moving: little limbs waving ever-so-gently, as though through water. Its little head is nestled just underneath Adrien’s lower ribs; its tiny feet dangle on top of his hip bone. Belly the size of a plum, the kind of belly you’d want to give butterfly kisses to. Most of it is inside of him, just the front of its body out to the world. It is so small, maybe only the length of her hand, she thinks, were she to put her hand there. Tiny scrunched face, closed eyelids—the baby is sleeping. Róisín notices how the baby’s skin is lighter than the skin of Adrien’s belly, and hairless too, distinctive in how hairless it is in comparison to the man-body it’s attached to. She notices now that Adrien has an extremely hairy belly. She has not finished looking but he rolls down his top, straightens his coat. It feels like a long time since she looked at his face, although it must only be a few minutes.
‘It’s a condition,’ he says, ‘It’s called Torso Baby Condition. It used to be called Torso Baby Disorder but they changed it.’
‘Right,’ she says.
He still looks like a normal human in front of her, albeit with a well-fitted coat, suited to his frame, to his needs. What does he do in summer, she wonders, what does he do in changing rooms? What does he do in bed? What if he rolls over and kills it?
‘I see,’ she says.
‘I’m perfectly healthy, by the way,’ he adds. ‘It’s just something I was born with, like the way some people are born with birthmarks, or moles.’
Róisín thinks of her birthmark, the red splotch on her upper arm.
‘It’s a baby,’ she says.
‘Well, yes,’ he says, ‘Mais, tu sais, functionally, it’s just like a birthmark. It doesn’t stop me from doing any of the things I want to do.’
She realises she is not even looking at his face as he speaks, she is looking down at his coat again, at the area where the baby is. She forces herself to look back at his face and sees that he is studying her. He has had this conversation before, she thinks.
‘It’s just a part of my life,’ he says. ‘It’s not a disability. I don’t call it a disability. I live a normal life. I do normal things. The only negative impact it has on my life is that sometimes women find it strange.’
‘No shit,’ she says.
Somewhere in the bushes, a small animal moves, a bird, or maybe a mouse. She remembers where they are. The pond, the ducks, the crying toddler, all feel very far away now. Light moves across Adrien’s face. The sun has come out, it is making its way through the trees. He puts his hands in his pockets. She sees that city confidence again.
‘I’ve had some bad experiences,’ he says. ‘It is worse, in fact, the longer I wait before telling someone. I have concluded that it is better to tell people very soon. It is better to say on the first meeting. I don’t want to waste anyone’s time, my time, or your time.’
She had felt so prepared when she walked out the door of her flat this morning.
‘What do women usually do?’ she asks. Maybe this will help her, to know how others have reacted, to show her how she should.
He seems frustrated by the question. She notices in herself, and finds interesting, that she cares a little less now about whether he likes her or not. She doesn’t mind if she frustrates him. She wouldn’t mind frustrating him further.
‘Does it matter what other women have done?’ he says. ‘We’re here now. You and me.’
‘But like, have you been on a second date?’
He laughs then, and looks at her the same way he did when she said she was from the country. ‘Je suis pas vierge, putain. I have been in relationships, of course. It’s just, when it comes to the beginning, to dating, it is better for me to tell you now, than to tell you in a few weeks, or months, and then you, comment on dit, ghost me.’
The sky has clouded over again. It’s good she brought her umbrella.
‘Oh, okay,’ she says. ‘Right.’
Somewhere nearby, on the other side of the bushes, laughter. A moment later, the sound of a bicycle bell.
‘It’s a lot to take in,’ she says.
He nods.
‘Most people don’t have this, like,’ she says.
He nods again. She is still the one saying stupid and obvious things, and he is standing there so comfortable and steady in himself, just waiting for her to catch up. How can this man be so sure of himself, Róisín thinks, when he is so strange, so different to the people around him? It’s almost offensive, the level of comfort he has with himself. She looks at her shoe, where a wet leaf has attached itself. Fiddles with the straps of her tote bag.
‘I’m sure you have questions,’ he says. ‘Feel free to ask me what you want. Don’t worry about offending me. I’ll answer as best as I can.’ His face is open, waiting. ‘And,’ he adds with a grin, ‘You don’t have to ask me three times.’
She half-smiles.
‘It’s a bit strange,’ she says.
‘Plenty of people are a bit strange,’ he says, ‘You just don’t usually find out until later.’
‘Can I see it again?’ she asks.
He opens his coat. She notices how loose his T-shirt is, the way it hangs, you’d barely notice. He lifts it up and yes, there it is, just as before, the baby. Still sleeping. Tiny cherubic cheeks. It moves its lips ever so slightly, and a small bubble comes out. Róisín wants to reach out, see if the baby will curl its hand around her little finger. Maybe Adrien sees her desire because he pulls his top down again, says, ‘We don’t need to disturb her right now.’ The pronoun drags in her mind: her.
‘Alors,’ he says, putting his hands in his pockets, and asks her again, with all the nonchalance of a waiter taking an order. ‘Des questions?’
She tries to pick one.
‘Is it growing? Is it going to be a toddler one day?’
‘No, she stays like this.’
‘Like a bonsai tree.’
‘Yes.’
‘There’s no nappy,’ she says. It’s not a question, but she wants to know.
‘No. She is a part of me, she gets her food through me, she evacuates through me. She doesn’t need anything, she doesn’t need milk, or toys, or anything else, she is just there.’
‘Like a foetus.’
‘Well, in a way, yes.’
‘But you call her a baby.’
He’s not getting impatient with her, even though he must have gone through this before. That’s another plus, she thinks. That and the fact that he doesn’t give bread to ducks.
‘Well, it’s called Torso Baby Condition,’ he says. ‘I don’t know, it’s just called that. I wasn’t in the room when the doctors were deciding the name.’
‘Do you want children? Wait, can you have sex?’
‘I can have sex, of course I can have sex. Children, ah, I don’t know. It is maybe a bit soon for us to talk about this, non?’
‘You think it’s too soon to talk about children?’
‘Ouais, un peu.’
‘You’ve just told me that you have a baby.’
‘It’s called—’
‘Torso Baby Condition, yes, it’s a baby on your torso, that means you have a baby, and I, I don’t want a baby.’
It’s the first time she’s said it out loud, ever in her life, and she knows it’s true.
‘It’s just not for me,’ she adds.
He looks a bit thrown for the first time. Maybe the other women didn’t say this to him. She hadn’t even planned to say it herself. Something has relaxed in her chest and when she looks at him now she feels a tenderness, a desire to reach out. Because it must be lonely for him, she thinks, going through life this way, so different from everyone else. He steps a little closer to her, puts his hand on her shoulder. The first touch. She doesn’t move away.
‘We haven’t even got a coffee yet,’ he says. ‘Let me buy you a coffee, at least?’
Those beautiful brown eyes, even more beautiful up close. Small flecks of yellow around his irises.
‘I’m not sure I want one,’ she says.
‘Maybe get one just to have,’ he suggests. ‘In case you want it later.’
‘But then it’ll have cooled down,’ she says. ‘I definitely don’t want lukewarm coffee.’
‘Well then you’ll have to drink it now, I suppose.’
‘Okay then,’ she says. ‘Coffee. Coffee sounds good.’
They exit the bushes, him following her this time. They follow the path around towards the coffee cart, shoulders brushing off each other. The coffee cart has croissants, she remembers, he will probably make fun of how bad they are. They pass the pond, where new people are feeding the same ducks.
‘Do you have to eat for two?’ she asks, and almost goes to lightly elbow him in the side, before she remembers. He laughs a little, out of politeness, probably. He must have heard all the jokes before.
‘I eat well,’ he says. ‘Well, as well as I can here.’
‘In Dublin.’
‘Yes.’
‘Where the food is bad.’
‘Yes.’
‘Because French food is the best in the world.’
‘I’m glad I don’t have to convince you.’
They are at the coffee cart. The barista has long fake nails, all different colours. They join the queue, peruse the chalkboard menu.
‘Why don’t you sit down?’ Róisín says to Adrien, putting her hand on his arm, as though they have known each other for a while, as though they go to the park every Sunday to go into the bushes together to inspect his torso and then get coffee. ‘Get settled on one of the benches. I’ll bring us over our drinks.’
‘Okay,’ he says, touching her other hand, lightly, briefly.
‘What would you like?’
‘A flat white. Oh, and get a babycino, also.’
‘A babycino?’
But he has turned already and is walking towards the area with benches. Maybe the babycino was a joke, she thinks. She looks at the menu again, ponders what she would like for herself. There are only two people in front of her now. She needs to decide.
She glances behind her, to see where Adrien has sat. Ah, there he is, or rather, there they are, for she sees now that Adrien is sitting with their little girl, Ciara-Mathilde, who is growing up so fast, three years old already, oh how time flies. She’s sitting on his lap in her favourite red dungarees, rubbing her little face against his beard and giggling. A group of people walk past Róisín, blocking her eyeline. After they pass, she sees it is just Adrien again, sitting on his own on the bench, waiting for her. No baby. No toddler. He smiles at her. Another group pass by and then, the scene has changed again: Adrien is older now, his hairline receding slightly, and there is a sulky teenager beside him. Ciara-Mathilde, in her Doc Martens and denim jacket, shoots her mother a scathing look. Oh how she wishes she’d never been born. Another few people pass, blocking Róisín’s view, and there, look, now it’s true, Ciara-Mathilde was never born at all, Adrien is sitting on his own again. The queue has moved. Róisín is next. The barista looks at her expectantly.
‘What can I get you?’
‘Actually,’ Róisín says, ‘I’ve changed my mind.’
