Guido's face had closed like a window when the blinds are pulled down. I searched his eyes but only saw myself reflected back. Then he said something that astounded me.
'How do you feel about it?'
This was the first time he had ever asked me such a question.
For hours the night before I had been rehearsing this scene. I was prepared for 'Oh no, how could you have let this happen?' or 'There goes our freedom!' or 'Why would I choose you to be the mother of my baby when I could have any woman in the world?' But not, 'How do you feel about it?'
I searched myself, sitting there in our favourite cafe, trying to find the right words – well, some phrase that Guido would be pleased with.
My heart was pounding painfully. My toes curled up inside my sandals. I looked into his face. His eyes were narrowed. This was a test, I knew it, and my answer would determine whether Guido would want to continue with me or not.
The thought of not keeping the baby had flitted across my mind only once, making me flinch.
'Wonderful,' I blurted. It was true.
He smiled. It was a beautiful smile.
Now you'll gush and spoil the moment, said the voice.
My hand inched towards his, closed over it. He didn't take his away.
I couldn't believe it – I'd got the right answer. He'd given me a tick! A warm sweet feeling started in my stomach, trickling down through my legs. I forgot to breathe as images rushed through me like a fast-forwarded film – a laughing baby snuggling into my lap, Guido's arms around the dark-eyed child, ourselves on holiday in a snapshot some tourist kindly took for us.
But then Guido withdrew his hand. He started playing with the sugar packets and frowned. 'Will I still come first?'
'What?'
He said nothing. He was still playing with the sugar packets. A corner tore and sugar spilled on the table.
'But what do you mean?'
Now he looked at me. 'You 'eard me.'
Then I got it. It was hard to believe my ears. Even the voice was speechless. I looked around for just a moment, making sure he wasn't addressing any other person. Then I whispered, 'First with me, do you mean?' I laughed too loudly and lunged forward, clutching both his hands. 'Of course you will. How can you even ask? What an amazing thing to say! I'm so glad I'm having your baby, Guido. I'd been dreaming of this, I mean before I even knew, not that I planned it or anything – oh god, you know what I mean it's just . . . I never wanted a baby before I met you, imagine it, a little boy just like you, I love you so much . . .'
Guido was watching me now, sitting entirely still. His scrutiny of my face was methodical and intense, as if I were a new magic trick he needed to learn. For once, this was an easy test. All I had to do was show him the truth of me. How much I loved him. How right it felt to commit myself to him until the end of time. I didn't even have to think about it. I had never been so sure about anything in my entire life. A fire of courage was burning in my belly. Maybe that was the baby. Maybe that was me. It felt magnificent.
He must have learnt what he needed because suddenly he nodded and squeezed my hands. 'Va bene,' he smiled. He gestured to the waiter. 'An espresso for me and a café latte for the signorina.'
When he said caffe latte, he didn't even grimace. Milk coffee after ten o'clock in the morning was considered unsophisticated, I'd learnt, so normally I drank espresso like him, or macchiato. I stroked his fingers. The steady warmth inside flared. Maybe he didn't mind the latte now because it would be good for the growing baby. Was it possible? Did he really choose me to be the mother of his child?
I would keep working at Wanganella Public until the week before the baby was due, we decided. The Education Department granted three months' maternity leave, and then, well, who knew what might turn up? Maybe we'd go to Italy and see Guido's childhood home, maybe we'd even live there for a while, and I could learn Italian and walk down those narrow cobbled streets holding my child's plump little hand and we'd stop at the cake shop where Guido said you could buy those delicious bugie, the 'little lies', which are ropes of the lightest, crispiest pastry you ever saw, woven together like girls' plaits and sprinkled with sugar. We'd buy two each for morning tea, just for us, and then we'd stop and get the prosciutto and a nice ciabatt a for Daddy's lunch and perhaps that strong, nutty kind of lettuce that he liked. Ruccola, that was it.
My parents seemed appalled by the news. At first. Dad made the quickest recovery. 'My little Rachel!' he said.
'But you hardly know him!' cried my mother. 'And what will you live on? And who will look after the baby?'
'I will.' My hand went to my stomach instinctively.
'But you're hardly established in your career – what, are you going to depend on Guido to keep you?'
'What would be wrong with that?'
Deborah rolled her eyes. She started to say something but Dad tapped her arm. 'I'm sure they'll work it out together,' he turned to me, 'won't you, darling?' He grinned. 'Remember when we began, Deb? We lived on baked beans and beer.'
Mum didn't smile. 'And it was bloody hard traipsing to work every day with the carry cot and a baby and all the baby's things and taking the train and being exhausted by nine in the morning and then worrying all the time whether she was all right and trying to look after all the other children as well—'
'It's okay,' I said quickly, because Dad's eyes were beginning to fill. He was coughing to cover it up. 'I'll get childcare or something.'
Mum rolled her eyes again. 'Childcare is expensive, or haven't you noticed?'
'Well, maybe you and Dad could, you know, help too, with minding it or whatever . . .'
Mum stood up and her chair clattered against the wall. She began clearing away the coffee cups.
'It'll all be fine,' said Dad, taking my hand. 'Fancy, my little Rachel!'
And it was fine, the pregnant part, at least. In fact, the whole pregnancy felt like my finest hour. I was queasy and tired for a couple of months but the knowledge that I was no longer just me, that I had this miraculous little piece of company inside, caused such stunning happiness that practically nothing could dim it for me. I felt lit up, like one of those enormous Christmas trees they put up in Martin Place.
My breasts continued to burn and swell, demanding attention. I examined them daily, as if they didn't belong to me but were just borrowed for a while. I could see bluish veins developing and the nipples grew darker, more prominent. It was hard to believe that my body was doing everything it should to become a baby-making machine. Just like a real grown-up woman. My breasts tingled, my belly was full and the empty space in the pit of me almost disappeared. Weeks went by without the voice.
'You're eating for two now,' people told me. In the staffroom they always gave me the biggest slice of cake.
'Here, I brought you these organic bananas,' Maria would urge me, 'the potassium is great for the baby.'
As I munched carrot cake and drank caramel milkshakes I felt virtuous, almost worthy, for the first time in my life. Each mouthful was helping to build my baby. Why, I only had to keep breathing to be doing my duty. Whatever I did for myself was also, mainly, for someone else. I never wanted to stop being pregnant.
When I was five months along my parents gave us enough money to put a deposit on a house. It was money that Great Aunt Leah had left my mother, money I knew she was keeping for her retirement.
'Oh, no, thank you,' I said. 'No, I couldn't possibly. I would feel awful, taking your nest egg, sorry, no . . .'
'It's family money,' said Mum and Dad together. 'Don't be silly.'
They had found a nice little three-bedroom fibro house for us near Cuthbert Street, close to my work, and if we were quicksticks, they said, we might be able to snap it up before auction. There was even a pool in the backyard and a sand pit. Dad had been so enthusiastic he'd already had an inspection done and discussed a price.
I wrung my hands. I had been looking forward in a vague kind of way to moving out of the neighbourhood I had lived in
forever, and into another. In my fantasies I'd been imagining a small flat with a cheapish rent, something very unsuitable and temporary, where we could tack up hemp weavings on the walls and fling about those Indian-covered cushions with little winking mirrors sprinkled among the swirls like treasure. We could be a free young couple, at least for a while, discovering how we wanted to live. Maybe we would go to Italy. Maybe I would be a different person over there, capable, adventurous, not sorry.
'You don't want to throw away good money on rent,' said Dad.
'And you'd be at the mercy of landlords who can jack up the price any time they like,' said Mum. 'Why give money to the capitalists when your family can provide you with a home?'
It was true. And entirely sensible. The only responsible thing to do. And how lucky was I to receive such a generous offer! A family home. I felt a door closing in my chest. It was like the Door of Death.
'Of course we must take it,' said Guido when I told him of the offer.
'But it's my mother's nest egg—'
'Egg?'
'It's money my mother was saving for her retirement.'
'Ah, Rachel, you will see that when you 'ave children, you want to give everything to them. That is just the way. You will want your child to 'ave a better start in life than you did.'
'Yes, but couldn't we just rent instead for a while, and save? I know we'd have to work hard but just for a bit until we know where we want to live. I don't want to spoil my parents' retirement when they could perhaps go on a holiday, treat themselves. I'll feel guilty, I know I will, guilty and burdened and sorry—'
'That is selfish, Rachel, you cannot think only of yourself now. You must think of the baby, and of me. We will be a family!'
'Oh, yes, of course I—'
'This is a very good start for us. Is not practical to refuse. Is childish. Rachel, I would like for us to own this 'ouse. Just think, I could write my poetry without distraction, no petty matters of money, l'affitto every month . . .'
'You mean the rent? But we'd still have to pay the mortgage, it'll be huge—'
'It will be okay, you will see, and as I 'ave told you, we must not turn away good luck or it will come back to curse us. You see, we 'ad this luck with Fiji and look, now we get the 'ouse as well!'
'And our baby.'
'Yes, of course, the baby – you see, all will go well.'
So we moved into number 53 Beatrice Street the following month. There were three bedrooms, a sunroom, a palm tree and a pool. I was afraid of the pool. It needed to drink the right balance of chemicals every few days or it turned a slimy green. It was like having a big demanding person at the bottom of your garden, sulking. You couldn't ignore it. But you were supposed to be pleased about it. Grateful. I had never been any good at chemistry at school. The man at the pool shop said you had to put hydrochloric acid into the pool to stop the bacteria proliferating. Acid! Isn't that something serial killers use to burn the face off their victims? Perhaps, the pool man said, but judging by the sample you've brought from your pool, you'll need a good couple of litres. Be careful, he added, lowering his voice like a wizard in a fairytale, the acid and the chlorine together are an explosive mixture.
The big blue bombs of chlorine were heavy. Once, I felt a sharp stab in my side when I was carrying a container from the garage to the pool. What if it harmed the baby?
'I'll take over the pool,' said Guido. 'You shouldn't be lifting anything heavy,' and his arm muscles flexed beneath his shirt.
All that week at school, when the children were busy writing in their books, I let that sentence float in my mind, 'I'll take over the pool', and a thrill began to thrum right where the baby curled inside me.
We spent hours making love, in all kinds of positions, mainly with me bent over the large velvet armchair. I didn't buy the black lacy underwear I'd fantasised about, though. Somehow the idea of the pool with its acid and the Hills hoist in the garden and my growing belly kept me shy as I had always been. I learnt to make veal parmigiana and chicken cacciatore. Guido said they tasted buono but he laughed at how long I took preparing them. He said I was like a scientist measuring up the exact amounts of ingredients. Sometimes I wished he would go out in the afternoons so that I could work alone, making my usual mistakes, like having to throw out two litres of milk and semolina because the balls were too hard or the white sauce developed nasty lumps. I wished I was one of those wild, free kind of cooks who crack open eggs like champagne and throw spices around without fear. But I wasn't. Sometimes, too, I'd try to wake up earlier so there would be time to at least put mascara on before he saw me. It was so different living with a man – there was no time to arrange myself or stop my lashes from disappearing, or cover up my absurdities. There was nowhere to hide while I recovered from things.
When I went to school Guido worked at the desk he bought for the sunroom. It was a big expensive oak desk that took up half the room. In the corner I put a traveller's palm like the one we'd admired in Fiji in a lovely terracotta pot. He wrote in a blue and white exercise book that he'd brought with him from Italy. When it was almost finished I bought him a typewriter. I gave it to him for his birthday, with a gold ribbon tied around it.
'A typewriter,' he said. He sighed, and opened the drawer of his desk. Inside there were brochures full of typewriters. The one he had circled was far more complicated and fancier than the one sitting in front of him.
I was so annoyed with myself. Why did I think I would know enough to buy him something so important? I looked at the price of the circled one. I couldn't have afforded it.
'It doesn't matter,' he said bravely. 'I will use this.'
He did use it. I grew to love the typewriter, even if it was the wrong one. When it was clattering cheerfully, I knew he was absorbed and happy. I liked hearing his presence, the sounds of his existence. We left notes on the typewriter for each other. At first it was just things like – late home today, staff meeting, or need milk. But then it became like something alive, a genie in the machine, the translator of things we found hard to say.
I was sitting in the garden under the stars, Guido wrote one night, and I watched the moon rise over our pool. It made a ladder of light across the dark to the bedroom. I wanted to climb it and wake you, see the moon touch your face, the end of light's journey. But I stayed here, in the shadows.
'Oh Guido, that's so lonely,' I exclaimed next morning when I saw it on the typewriter. 'Why didn't you wake me? I would love to talk to you in the moonlight.'
Guido shrugged. He put his finger to my lips. 'Is not meant to be lonely. Is, 'ow you say, longing. Some things can't be changed. I didn't want it to be. Leave it.'
'I love you more than the moonlight,' I wrote the next day.
'I love you more than the idea of moonlight,' he wrote back.
'Is that a symbol?' I asked. 'I mean, like the possibility of hope?'
He shrugged. 'I don wan to explain.'
The next week I wrote, 'I love you more than myself. '
Underneath he typed, 'More than the baby?'
I saw it in the afternoon as I was putting down my bag. Maria had come home with me for a cup of coffee. Guido looked past me up the hallway, watching her peering into our rooms. He reached across and tore out the sheet of paper with his words on it, crumpling it in his fist.
'How long is she staying?' he whispered to me.
On Sunday afternoons we drove to the beach. If there were good songs on the radio, we'd sing all the way. At first I just listened to Guido humming, but when I joined in with the words, he told me I had a lovely voice. It was dolce, he said. When we arrived at the beach we'd stop only briefly to drop our towels on the sand, and race each other to the sea. I loved the first dive under a wave, the sudden drenching quiet. Under the water we were as light and easy as the tiny fish flashing past. After our swim we'd lie on our towels, letting the sun dry the water off . We lay for hours, the sun like the sea, wrapping itself all around us. I loved his body warming so close to mine.
When we lay in our bed, the sound of our skins brushing together was the rolling of the sea and I felt I'd known him forever, he was as old as my dreams and now we'd weave new ones together. We would make a new family, new lives. La famiglia Leopardi! And if we could lie like this always our love might last, and only death could come between us.
As we were lucky enough to have three bedrooms, Guido said, we should have one each. 'We both need privacy,' he told me, six weeks after we'd moved in, 'with space for our own work. You can have the room with the double bed.'
I felt a twinge of grief. 'But we'll still sleep in our . . . in my room, won't we?' I said. 'That's our bed.'
Guido smiled. 'Of course!'
He continued to read and work companionably in the sunroom, but if we had an argument he'd take everything into his room, his typewriter, his pens and paper and poetry magazines, and close the door firmly behind him. In the drawers of his bedside table he kept all his books and secret things.
'Never let the sun go down on an argument,' my father said. Having separate rooms meant, occasionally, that this happened. I could never sleep on those nights and I'd pace the hallway, listening to Guido's snores as he lay on his lonely single bed.
One morning I left a poem of my own on the typewriter.
When I left you this morning
you were curled like a new moon
cuddling dreams.
I wanted to roll myself into a ball,
a warm sun,
and fit neatly into the cave
of your belly.
We could have been a circle,
a universe.
I was late to school because I lingered too long at the desk. I was looking at my poem. Funny how the words no longer seemed mine. They possessed authority, typed like that, with the gravity of men in dark suits. Nothing I had ever said had seemed so correct.
Guido's respect for privacy was as solid as the wall that separated our rooms. I understood after a while that he didn't want me climbing over it, and he didn't want to have to keep rebuilding it. He kept his feelings inside this fort like a small army of well-trained soldiers. It seemed easy for him. He wanted me to do the same.
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