Expecting Emily

by Clare Dowling

  Sometimes Emily wished that she’d married a right little gossip, someone who would indulge in all kinds of bad-mouthing and speculation with her. It wasn’t half as satisfying doing it on one’s own, and she just ended up feeling mean.

  “Are you sure?” Conor asked again, edging towards the door.

  “Go, Conor. You’re off the hook!” If he stayed, he would just be watching her all the time and looking up that book of his and asking her all kinds of stupid questions about her perineum.

  “Just say the word and I’ll stay,” he said coolly. “It’s my baby too.”

  It was hardly Eamon Clancy’s.

  “Yes yes yes,” Emily said, trying to smile nicely. She didn’t want to row with him before he left. If he got killed on the drive down she would never forgive herself. Mind you, when Conor was annoyed he tended to drive slower.

  “I’ll be home at midnight,” he promised. “But don’t wait up if you’re tired.”

  “Good luck tonight.”

  He kissed her and left. Emily plumped up the cushions under her feet. The headache was receding. She would do a bit of work before Neasa arrived.

  She reached for a file and patted her bump. “And I don’t want to hear another word out of you.”

  “I’m really sorry, Emily.”

  “No, don’t be, Neasa, no, no, that’s ridiculous, no . . .”

  “I feel terrible.”

  “No, no, it’s nothing to do with you, no, no, no . . .” She was trapped in a vicious cycle of no’s. She had to break it.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Yes what?”

  “Yes, they’ve passed me over, yes, they’re pigging bastards, yes, yes, yes . . .” It was happening again. She decided to stop speaking altogether.

  Neasa was watching her carefully for signs of unhingement. “Would you like a drink?”

  This required a yes or a no answer. She wasn’t going down that road again.

  “Maybe.”

  “I’ve brought a bottle of wine. And some snacky things. Are you hungry?”

  Another trick question. “Possibly.”

  Neasa efficiently unpeeled a miniature bottle opener from her heavy, jangling key-ring. Her key-ring also held a miniature pair of scissors and nail-clippers. Nothing remotely useful such as an actual key, which she always put in her pocket. She got two tumblers from the sideboard, poured wine, then dumped a packet of salt & vinegar crisps into a clean ashtray.

  “There are bowls in the kitchen, Neasa. And proper wine glasses.”

  “You can’t be left alone at a time like this. And if you can’t think of yourself, at least think of the baby. Cheers.”

  Neasa drank her wine. Emily looked at the crisps. Ten years of friendship and not a word to say. That’s what happened when boyfriends complicated the picture.

  What Emily really wanted to do was ring Conor’s mobile just as he was tuning up with the orchestra and cry lustily down the phone to him.

  “Gary didn’t want to take it from you, Emily.”

  Like this was somehow to his credit.

  “But he did,” Emily said a bit spitefully. God Almighty, she was allowed a bit of spite at a time like this, surely? Neasa seemed to think so too. She bowed her head in acknowledgement.

  “You deserved it. Everyone knows that. Gary does too.”

  He had probably heard the news in Emily’s office. Emily knew very well that the pair of them went at it like knives the minute she vacated her swivel-chair. She had found a pubic hair there once the exact shade of blond as Gary’s large head. And the cheese plant was haemorrhaging leaves. How the partners would love to know that their most recent addition was lifting his leg all over the office furniture!

  “Are you over the shock?” Neasa asked eventually.

  “I can’t seem to feel anything below my hips.”

  “That’s par for the course,” Neasa said knowledgeably. “Remember when my grandmother died?”

  “God yes,” Emily said. “Your leg gave way at the graveside.”

  “They didn’t even ring you, did they?”

  “No.”

  “The pigging bastards.” Neasa thought this might be a good time to threaten to hand in her notice. Emily was so white. And she hadn’t even given out about Gary, which was very nice of her. Neasa had even been prepared to join in, a little bit.

  “You could sue,” she suggested instead. “Discrimination against pregnant women.”

  “Or just sexual discrimination.”

  “Get them on both counts. And Crawley on sexual harassment.”

  “He doesn’t sexually harass me.”

  “Oh, of course, you’re pregnant.”

  Emily didn’t seem that enthusiastic about suing. Neasa was relieved. Gary would have a fit.

  “I mean, it’s not as though he said to me ‘You’re going to get the partnership’,” Emily gulped. Crawley’s words were ‘you could be in line for it’, if her memory was correct. And the year before, it had been ‘you never know’, or something equally vague. In fact, he had never really promised her anything at all. Everything was just a distant possibility. If she put in the required work, of course.

  Her face felt a little hot. “Why do you think I didn’t get it, Neasa?”

  “They’re a law onto themselves, those bastards,” Neasa spat. “You wouldn’t know.”

  “But why do you think I didn’t get it?”

  Neasa shifted indignantly. “Well, this is the thing, isn’t it! You work so hard! In at nine every morning, you drag the secretaries out of the bathroom, set up the Internet server for everyone, chase up the bad payers – my God, you even re-organised the entire filing system last year!” She gave a delicate shudder. “Nobody else could have done that! You even make the coffee!”

  “I also sell land,” Emily said quietly.

  Neasa realised what she’d implied. “Of course you do! Acres and acres of it! That goes without saying! I just meant that you do that on top of everything else. In addition.”

  “Has Gary ever made the coffee? No, no, it’s not an accusation. I’m just wondering.”

  “To my knowledge,” Neasa said slowly, “he has not. He certainly might have at some time in the past but I’ve, ah, never actually witnessed it.”

  They were speaking like solicitors. It was terrible, like they were on different sides of a courtroom – not that either of them had ever been in a courtroom. But they had got their law degrees together, meeting that very first day in college, Emily sick with nerves and Neasa sick with a hangover. It was unthinkable that a man should come between them now.

  “Oh fuck them all anyway,” Neasa said in a rush.

  It unleashed something in Emily. Two fat tears slid down her face. “I really wanted this!”

  “I know,” said Neasa, crying now too. She could never watch anybody crying, even on the telly, without joining in. “It’s very unfair, isn’t it?”

  “It’s the lack of respect, Neasa. They didn’t even bother to let me know!”

  “I know, I know!” Neasa bawled. “They’re so spineless!”

  “There’s lawnmower petrol in the garage – will we go and burn Crawley’s house down?”

  “We could,” Neasa gulped, doubtfully.

  “I know. I wouldn’t normally. It’s my hormones. They’re all over the place. Did you know that my hair is falling out?”

  Neasa’s hands flew protectively to check that her own was still in situ. If it ever fell out she might as well commit suicide.

  “You’d never notice, the way you comb it over like that,” she said loyally.

  Emily cried harder. “Thank you. And have you seen my ankles?”

  Neasa tried to lie again but her natural brutality got the better of her. “I know. They’re huge,” she sobbed.

  “Thank you! And Eamon’s after bankrupting himself and Liz too.”

  Neasa had to think for a minute. Oh yes, that horrible, jolly builder married to shrewish Liz. Neasa stopped crying. Otherwise she�
�d be puffy for two days.

  “More wine,” she pressed.

  “I can’t. I’ve already had one glass and I’m not really supposed to be drinking at all according to Conor’s book.”

  “Shut your face, Emily, and have a half glass. The baby won’t die.” She saw Emily’s expression. “Jesus Christ, sorry. I’ve an awfully big mouth.”

  “You haven’t. It’s all right. Don’t be silly.”

  “Emily, why do you always say everything is all right when it’s bloody not?”

  Emily blinked. Somehow this conversation had sneakily mutated into an entirely different conversation. This always seemed to happen to her. Well, this time she would retaliate. She would fight her corner fair and square.

  “Oh, leave me alone. I’m pregnant!”

  Neasa didn’t push it. There was a fine line with Emily, not that you’d think it to look at her. Anyway, Neasa was a bit drunk. Her natural honesty tended to flourish under the influence of alcohol and there was no telling what she might say. All her deepest thoughts and feelings about herself and, unfortunately, others tended to come out.

  “I might get pregnant,” she said airily. This took her as much by surprise as Emily. Obviously the thought had been festering all day.

  “You?”

  “What’s so odd about that?”

  “No, it’s just that, well, you don’t particularly like children.”

  “Other people’s children,” Neasa said haughtily. “It’ll be different with our own.”

  “Our?”

  “Me and Gary, of course. He’s talking about a future.”

  She looked at Emily fiercely, defying her to say something mean and nasty about Gary.

  “Well, if that’s what you want,” Emily said.

  “Why wouldn’t I want it?” Neasa challenged.

  “Then I say good luck to you,” Emily said sincerely.

  Neasa deflated a bit. You’d think that Emily might at least be a little bit anti-Gary after the partnership and all that. She was just so fair and nice. It wasn’t natural.

  “Can I have a feel?” Neasa asked politely.

  Emily had a strict policy about people feeling her bump. It was amazing the liberties friends and even total strangers took. Once, a woman had planted her hand on Emily’s midriff in the supermarket, clucking and benign, as though Emily were public property.

  “Just to see what I might be in for,” Neasa added.

  “Of course you can.” Emily generously hitched up her baggy t-shirt. Neasa bent over to have a good look.

  “Your belly-button’s gone sideways.”

  “I know. It’s weird, isn’t it?”

  “And look at all those veins!”

  “Conor said if you look closely, you can actually see a map of Munster.”

  Neasa was rapidly having second thoughts. She didn’t say anything about the stretch marks. It was like an army of slugs had marched drunkenly across Emily’s belly.

  “My hands might be cold,” she said, trying to get out of it now.

  “Oh go on.”

  Neasa put her hand down squeamishly. Emily’s belly was as hard as a rock, not at all nice and squishy and soft. Then Neasa felt something poking through the hardness right under her hand.

  “That’s the baby’s bum,” Emily told her.

  That was enough for Neasa. She snatched back her hand. “Obviously, it’s something Gary and I will have to talk about.”

  He would be at home now, maybe even cooking a nice romantic dinner. Neasa, in the throes of drink, had a wild urge to be with him. Still. She mustn’t let on. She was here for Emily.

  “Oh go home, Neasa. You’re dying to.”

  “I am not! Well, if you’re sure you’ll be all right.”

  “Yes.” There was no lawnmower petrol left anyway, now that Emily thought about it. Not that burning Crawley’s house down had been a remote possibility. She had only said it really to sound dangerous and exciting. Because surely a blow like this demanded some kind of drastic action? Instead of just crying and bitching around the house, which was all she would end up doing. Before going meekly in to work tomorrow, of course.

  “Well, I just won’t!”

  “Won’t what?” Neasa was looking anxiously at the door.

  “I won’t go in to work tomorrow. That’ll show them!”

  “It would,” Neasa said dubiously.

  “Decided then,” Emily said, wondering how long she would be able to stick it out in the morning, looking at the clock every ten minutes, before finally giving up and going in. She wished her parents had been members of any other cult but the good, loyal, hard-working Catholic Church. And Emily had never perfected the art of rebellion.

  Emily’s mother Pauline was very fond of saying that one should count one’s blessings. She had applied this maxim to the instance when the chimney had caught fire one Christmas. “At least it didn’t spread to the roof.” Then it had. “At least the whole house didn’t go up.” Then it had. “At least nobody was hurt!” she’d shouted, daring somebody to fall down dead.

  The blessings thing went naturally hand in hand with the need to be grateful for what one had. This could be liberally applied to any situation, and was. The time Liz had decided to cut Emily’s hair, for instance. By the time she was finished, Emily looked as though she had been through extensive chemotherapy. “Be grateful she didn’t cut off your ear,” Pauline had said, kindly.

  Situations that defied blessings and gratitude generally fell into the ‘expect not and you won’t be disappointed’ category, a kind of useful, catch-all phrase. Emily was very familiar with this from the time she had been studying for her Leaving Certificate. In fairness, her Trojan work had been noted, encouraged and praised. But all the good had somehow been wiped away by the advice not to expect seven A’s, that way she would be spared disappointment. In the event, she got only six.

  Sometimes, harassed, Pauline would get confused and mix up the three. “Be grateful that your blessings are not disappointed!” she would shout. “At least your expectations won’t be grateful for what they have!”

  The household was routinely weighted down under blessings, gratitude and disappointment. Everybody else seemed happy enough with this state of affairs. But it seemed to Emily that it kind of quenched any hope, ambition or hand in one’s own fate. Once she had voiced this.

  “Can we not expect anything?”

  “What?” Pauline was startled.

  “This disappointment thing – I was just thinking that maybe a bit of disappointment is okay. It means that at least you’ve tried for something.”

  “What are you talking about, Emily?” Pauline was busy dishing up dinner from seven different pots and pans and it required considerable concentration.

  “She’s off,” Liz said, as though Emily routinely upset dinnertime with philosophical discussions, which she didn’t.

  “I’m just wondering, that’s all.”

  A piece of pink, wet ham landed on her plate.

  “It’s just a saying, Emily.”

  “But why do people say it?”

  Pauline was impatient. “I don’t know! It wouldn’t be a saying if it didn’t have truth in it!”

  And they had all looked at Emily as though she were being very unreasonable. She had kept any other thoughts on disappointment and ambition to herself.

  She hadn’t told her mother or Liz or indeed any of the family about the potential partnership. She was fiercely glad now. She would have proved the thesis that anybody who dared to aspire higher would be brutally and swiftly squashed. Proper order, too.

  At least I know before Crawley tells everyone tomorrow, she thought – oh Christ. She was doing it. She had said At Least.

  Furious, she dragged herself off the sofa before she started naming Conor and the baby amongst her blessings. Upstairs, she went through her wardrobe. It was divided neatly into ‘Before Pregnancy’ and ‘Pregnancy’. She shunned the flowing, suitable, sensible maternity dresses and trouse
rs she usually wore in to the office. From the other section, she took a skin-tight red lycra dress and laid it on the bed. She would go in to the office tomorrow (after making them sweat for a few hours first, of course) in all her red glory, her belly sticking into Crawley’s face. She would wear matching violent lipstick and high heels. And she would refuse to make the coffee. She would do nothing except what was required of her and she would be sure that everyone saw her reading the ‘Situations Vacant’ at tea break. She mightn’t even wear a bra!