Free The Pile of Stuff at the Bottom of the Stairs by Christina Hopkinson

the side dish that we’re eating at a beachside café on holiday. He spent his teenage years experimenting with eyeliner and even kissed a few equally hairy-faced men. He has a penchant for exquisite socks and likes to smell nice. I took all this as proof that Ursula had done her job and that here was a truly emancipated man, one who was in touch with his feminine side. In short, a man as different as could be from my father, who has to have a week’s worth of meals labeled and put in the freezer when my mother escapes him to go on a work conference.
    And Joel loved all that was masculine about me. I could read maps and put up shelves. He used to beg me to get naked but for my tool kit, said that me wielding a power drill was as sexy as it got, while at the same time useful as I did all the DIY at his place. I knew more about football and could beat him at tabletennis. He loved that, and I loved that he did—unlike previous boyfriends, he never felt threatened by my competitiveness and joy in winning.
    Then Rufus came. I, much to Joel’s initial envy, got the maternity leave. He expressed jealousy at this fact and said that he was sad he’d never know what it would be like to grow a living creature in his stomach, while never offering to give up alcohol and soft cheese in sympathy. He said he wished he could feel the closeness of a breastfeeding mother to her child, but never bothered to help me arrange the bank of cushions necessary for this unromantic maneuver, or think to get me a glass of water once Rufus had finally, painfully, become plugged in.
    He had a fortnight’s paternity leave, which he kept on referring to as “holiday” and treated it as such. “What are we going to do today?” he’d ask each morning. “Who’s coming to visit?” I could only sit on an undignified inflatable ring due to the macramé performed on my nether regions, while Rufus seemed to be feeding constantly and yet not putting on the requisite weight. I’d listen to Joel telling the world how much he’d never known that such a tiny creature could inspire so much love, while I was thinking about how I’d never known that such a tiny creature could create so much laundry. As Joel would proclaim how much he loved being a father, I’d think, yes, a father, I’d love being a father. He’d never known love like it and I, too, was oozing love, except mine was overwhelming me. Joel’s love for Rufus seemed fun, like a summer affair, all giddy and euphoric. Mine was anxious and exhausting, as my head filled with calculations about feed times and terrifying visions of the accidents that could happen to my darling vulnerable boy. Joel would laugh when I tried to tell him how frightening I sometimes found it to carry Rufus up and down stairs. “What if I trip and fall?” Or worse, unspoken, that some malevolent spirit would cause me to throwhim. “What if someone steals him in the buggy when I turn to reach something down from the supermarket shelves?” I asked. I didn’t understand how it could not have occurred to Joel that a baby of Rufus’s evidently exceptional beauty and intelligence was a magnet for child snatchers.
    Once we had a baby, I used to wonder what I had ever found to worry or argue about before then. Having a baby had opened up huge over-stuffed cupboards of fights to be had. All the love I had felt for Joel seemed to have been transferred to this tiny creature with his little cap of already red hair. The more enchanting I found Rufus, the more irritating I found my husband. He who I’d loved so unreservedly, I loathed. I loathed the way he put on diapers, the way he wouldn’t bother to do up all the snaps on a babygro, the way he’d throw Rufus at me the minute he started crying with the words “I think he needs feeding again.”
    If paternity leave was bad, life got worse when he went back to work. He was at work, I was at home and without it ever being said out loud, this meant that I was responsible for