‘What’s the matter, Pet?’ Eric’s reflection looms above hers in the mirror as she turns on the tap and splashes cold water over her face.
‘How long had you been fucking Al?’
She leans forward; the basin is cool against her cheek.
He pulls her up by the hair. ‘How long!’
‘I hate you,’ she whispers, between clenched teeth, and immediately regrets it.
A police siren wails somewhere far away. He balls his right hand into a fist. She cowers against the basin and says over and over that she’s sorry, that she didn’t mean to say it. But it doesn’t help.
42
By the heavy-traffic sounds, it must be morning when she wakes up on the bathroom floor with the taste of rust in her mouth. She lies still for a long time — listening to the rain spattering against the windows, swooshing down the gutters — scared to move in case she can’t. When her thirst and the pressure in her bladder become unbearable, she reaches for the cupboard top. Her hands knock over a stack of aromatherapy soaps, and they fall like dominoes as she hauls herself up. An essential-oil bottle smashes on the tiles; the aroma of Bliss mingles with that of the rain in the air. She pulls her skirt on as she sits on the toilet.
She stumbles to the kitchen, and gulps down two big glasses of water at the sink. There’s a bloody handprint on the wall near the door. A condom lies in the corner like a dead jellyfish, holding about half a bottle-top of semen. She rips off and throws the bracelet at it on the way past.
She walks through the foyer, down the marble steps, and out of the building. And then she runs along the street, across the rain-slicked road, without looking. A car beeps at her. She hears brakes screech and tyres slide, and she tenses for a bang, but there is none. She keeps running — doesn’t look back — through the gardens, across to the tennis courts, where her torn knee collapses under her. She lies on the wet grass, thankful for the pain that has taken the edge off the fear. Now you know what happens to people who fuck me around. She punches the ground, rolls onto her back, pulls up handfuls of grass and throws them away, breaking more fingernails. The gunmetal sky rains and rains.
Every fibre of her cries for Matt, but she drags herself up, and goes to Nana and Papa’s house.
The sideway is slippery: the garden beds are flooding, the geranium pots over-flowing. When Nana sees Brigitte stagger through the back door, she doesn’t yell or carry on. Doesn’t judge. In silence, she helps her undress, wraps her in blankets on a chair in front of the fire, and puts her clothes in the tumble dryer. She cleans the blood from her face, gives her an icepack to hold against her cheek, and wraps a fresh bandage around her foot. Nana doesn’t speak for a long time. When she does, she says, ‘Bloody Melbourne weather.’ Then she towel-dries Brigitte’s hair gently, like she used to when Brigitte was little.
Papa has assembled the plastic Christmas tree in the corner of the room, and trimmed and trapped it with mismatched balls, tinsel, and dusty paper-chains from Brigitte’s childhood. She and Ryan used to help him with the tree when they were kids, and it would stay up until Easter. She sniffs. ‘Please don’t tell Papa.’ Her voice is barely a whisper.
Nana turns on the TV — a soap opera. She puts on a floral apron, and heats some soup on the stove, but Brigitte feels too sick to eat. She dozes in the chair, and when she wakes there’s a game show on, and Nana is folding her clothes.
‘Don’t go back, Brigi,’ Nana says.
Brigitte looks at the tacky Christmas tree, and bites her lip. The mantel clock chimes.
‘You could stay here. Papa’s fixing up the room out the back. It’s as big as a flat.’
Brigitte wobbles as she stands up and puts on her clothes. Nana follows her down the passageway. ‘Please, Brigi.’ She clutches her shoulder.
Brigitte pushes her away, too hard; Nana loses her balance, and bumps against the wall.
As Brigitte walks away, she glances over her shoulder at Nana standing on the front step, wringing the corner of her apron. The doorway is in shadow behind her like a dark aura. For a moment, Brigitte almost runs back to her.
The storm is over. The sky looks finger-painted, like the background of her Lovers print, long cloud smears tinged with blue: peppermint instead of spearmint. She slides her sunglasses on, over her puffy eyes; they hurt her face. She reaches into her handbag, the side pocket, for Matt’s spare key on the J keyring. She holds it in her hand as she limps back to the apartment, her heart hammering.
Eric’s not there.
She rings Matt, and hangs up when he answers. Her mobile rings, and she turns it off. Nausea swells inside her, and she rushes to the toilet to vomit. She smells bad — even the aromatherapy scents can’t cover it — like sour milk and off meat. Standing makes her woozy, so she sits on the shower floor while she washes her body gently and thoroughly with rose soap. It stings between her legs.
She dries herself, slips her bathrobe on, and peeks out under a blind slat in the lounge room. A black car parks across the road in front of the gardens. She checks the window latches, takes out Matt’s key, and curls into a ball under a blanket on the sofa. Despite a Valium and a sleeping tablet, sleep drags its heels in coming, but when it does it stops her shivering. The blast of a car’s backfire drags her back. She pulls up the blanket, shuts her eyes tight, and clutches the key in her hands. Through shallow sleep and restless dreams, she runs and runs.
She wakes with the letter J imprinted on her palm. She puts the key back into her bag. The room spins, and she steadies herself against the wall as she hurries to the toilet to vomit again. A headache throbs in her right temple. Something’s wrong. Maybe Eric hit her too hard this time. She pulls on jeans and a T-shirt, and goes outside for some fresh air.
43
Breathe, breathe … God, she’s going to vomit in the waiting room. She leans forward, resting her head on her knees; perspiration trickles down inside her T-shirt. The person sitting next to her moves away. There’s no air. If the doctor doesn’t call her within one minute, she’s out of here. Sixty cat and dog, fifty-nine cat and dog, fifty-eight cat and dog, fifty-seven cat and …
‘Brigitte.’
When Doctor O’Meara asks what happened to her face, Brigitte says she fell down the steps. She bursts into tears, and the doctor passes her a box of tissues. She takes a couple, and describes her symptoms — in between sobs — convinced that it’s a brain haemorrhage and that she hasn’t long to live.
‘Have you missed a period?’
She stops wiping her eyes with the tissues, and looks up. The doctor is wearing Christmas tree earrings with little red lights. ‘I’m not pregnant.’
‘You’re not sexually active?’
‘Um yes, but — ’
‘What contraception are you using, Brigitte?’
She shakes her head. ‘I’m not pregnant.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I just — it was only a couple times without …’
‘All right. How about we do a urine test? Just to be sure.’ The doctor swivels around on her chair, and takes a specimen jar from the cupboard. ‘All you have to do is go to the toilet and wee into this jar for me.’
Brigitte takes the jar to the bathroom. She’s shaking so much, she gets urine all over her hands. A poster about foods to avoid during pregnancy is Blu-tacked to the toilet door.
Back in the consulting room, the stick Doctor O’Meara places in the jar of urine turns blue. ‘It’s positive.’
What? No! Brigitte stops rocking on her chair.
‘This is not good for you, is it, Brigitte?’
She shakes her head, and pinches the bridge of her nose.
‘We’ll need to do a blood test to be sure.’ The doctor’s conservative little heels click as she walks across the room, opens another cupboard, and takes out a syringe.
; ‘So this might be a false alarm?’
‘Urine tests are not 100 per cent accurate, but they’re more likely to show false negatives,’ Doctor O’Meara says matter-of-factly. The lights on the Christmas tree earrings flash every time she moves her head.
‘So I might be OK?’
‘I think the test is right.’ She tells Brigitte to make a fist, and wraps a band around her arm, pulling it tight. Her deodorant is jasmine-scented. As she draws Brigitte’s blood, she says, ‘If somebody is hurting you, we could contact the local domestic-violence service.’
‘I told you, I fell down the …’ The room fades to a fuzzy, sepia-tinged outline.
‘Brigitte? Brigitte!’
She’s sliding down the chair. Doctor O’Meara catches her under the arms as she faints.
***
The doctor’s receptionist phones at quarter to five with the blood-test results. Brigitte’s heart thumps as she hears the word ‘positive’. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
God, she needs a drink. Where’s the bottle of Johnnie Walker that Sean bought? On top of the fridge. There’s a little bit left. She looks at the striding man in top hat and tails on the label, and hears a stupid nagging voice in her head — she tries to shut it out — telling her it’s bad for the baby. Shut up, Johnnie Walker.
God, what has she done this time? She remembers Matt’s horrified face when she told him she wasn’t on the pill. Stupid, Brigitte, so stupid.
Hang on — Matt never has to know about this. Nobody has to know. She’ll just get rid of it, and everything will be as it was. She pours a drink.
Johnnie Walker nags: maybe now is the right time. Leave Eric, make a new start. Everything happens for a reason, doesn’t it?
It’s not the right time! It would be too hard. I’m a stupid stripper, for God’s sake. The child would grow up to hate me. Having it is not an option, so I’ll never know, will I? I never want to have a baby. So shut up, Johnnie Walker!
But how can she destroy this natural, innocent life growing inside her? Stupid, stupid, stupid, Brigitte. She takes a big drink. Sorry, baby. No, you’re not a baby. Just a bunch of cells — too small to be anything yet. But still, she can’t finish her drink. She goes to the bathroom, rubs some arnica cream on her bruises, and lies on the floor. The cold of the tiles eases the pain in her head. Doctor O’Meara said migraines were common during pregnancy.
She dreams of her high school boyfriend’s old house. He’s been hitting her again, calling her ‘frigid Brigitte’ because she won’t have sex with him. She rings Joan from the phone on the little green table in his hallway; there’s blood on the receiver. Joan says she’s too busy to come get her: it’s your problem; sort it out yourself, Brigitte.
But he’s hurting me, Mum, Mummy … Please don’t leave me here. The phone turns into a child’s toy.
She wakes on the bathroom floor again. It’s dark. The light hurts her eyes when she turns it on. She opens the cupboard under the basin where she keeps her anti-inflammatories, sleeping tablets, sedatives, and other assorted prescription and non-prescription medication. But she listens to Johnnie Walker and closes the cupboard door, leaving them untouched.
She starts when her mobile rings on the bedside table. It’s Ryan.
‘What’s going on, Brigi?’
‘Nothing.’ She gets up from the bed and walks through to the lounge room. ‘I thought you were angry with me.’
‘More worried than angry. You OK?’
She peers through a blind slat. It’s raining again, and car and streetlights spill like a Monet painting across the road. She can’t see any black cars.
‘Nana’s worried about you.’
‘Did she tell you to call?’ The gardens are deserted. A possum, illuminated by a streetlight, lopes along the path and tries to scuttle up an elm tree, but is thwarted by a tree-band.
‘Do you want some help getting out of there?’
She shakes her head, and doesn’t answer.
‘Is Sean there?’
‘Sean’s not talking to me.’
‘Go to Nana and Papa’s.’
A pause.
‘Brigi, I’m coming down.’
She takes out Matt’s key, turns it over in her hand. ‘No. I’m fine. I’ve met somebody.’ She balances the phone against her ear as she wraps a blanket from the couch awkwardly around her shoulders with one hand, still holding the key in the other.
‘Can you go to their place?’
A dark figure in a bomber jacket walks along the path though the gardens. It looks like Eric. ‘I have to go, Ryan.’
‘Brigitte — ’
‘I love you.’
‘Don’t you hang up on me, Brigi—’
44
The Fertility Clinic. Stupid name — it should be called The Knocked-up and Desperate Clinic. Sparse Christmas decorations are draped around the reception desk. Brigitte has a referral and an information brochure from Doctor O’Meara in her bag, but she’s too scared to read it, doesn’t want to know about the procedure. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. What is she doing here? She wants to run out, call it off. But she does as she’s told: she sits on a hard plastic chair, fills in the forms, and stares, without seeing, at the fish swimming aimlessly through bubbles in the tank while she waits for the counsellor. The smells of disinfectant and air freshener make her sneeze.
The counsellor doesn’t really counsel — just asks questions about Brigitte’s health and medical history. And why she wants to have an abortion. She says she’s lost her job, she can’t afford to take care of a baby, she’s too young, it was unplanned: excuses as empty as the fish’s eyes. Her voice sounds like somebody else’s — tinny, far away, as if through one of those string-and-can phones that she and Ryan used to make when they were kids.
Next, a gynaecologist examines her internally. He treats her with as much compassion and dignity as a farmer might treat one of his calving cows. His gloved hands are big and cold and rough. He hurts her, and she bites her lip so hard it bleeds.
Finally, the receptionist makes an appointment for the operation. They have times available on Thursday and Friday next week; after that, they’ll be closed for Christmas. Brigitte’s driving test is on Thursday, so she books in for Friday morning.
She walks, drifts, without noticing where she’s going, from East Melbourne to the city. Families with young children are lined up to look at the Myer Christmas windows. She pictures Matt standing in line, holding a child’s hand. She blinks away the image, and goes into the store. Carried along by the crowd and a wave of Christmas music — ‘Winter Wonderland’ — she finds herself in the baby section. She smiles at the little grow-suits and booties and hats. How could anything ever be so tiny? She reaches out to touch a bunny rug on the shelf: a yellow one, with a little blue dinosaur embroidered on one side. She holds it up to her cheek. She has never felt anything so soft, and wonders what it’s made of.
‘When are you due, love?’ A sales assistant startles her, and she drops the bunny rug. ‘Your baby — when’s it due?’ She picks up the rug and hands it back to Brigitte. ‘You’re not showing yet — so, June, July?’
Go away stupid woman, leave me alone.
‘A winter baby. Lovely. You’ll be needing that bunny rug.’
Brigitte almost smiles.
At the apartment, she lies on the bed, cuddling her yellow bunny rug. She’s sick, with a migraine and waves of nausea rolling over her. Soon it will all be over. On Friday, the baby will be gone. If that’s what you want: Johnnie Walker again. Shut up! It’s not a baby yet. It’s nothing. Stop fucking up my head. In fact, it’s such an early pregnancy — only six weeks — the doctor at the Fertility Clinic said they’ll need to do a test on the tissue afterwards to make sure they get rid of it. It will be that hard to tell. There’ll be no little arms and legs being torn apart o
ut of her womb. No telling if it’s a boy or a girl.
She hears the shower stop running, then the sounds of towelling and grooming, and of jars and bottles clinking. The toilet flushes. Steam and a waft of expensive cologne follow Eric out of the bathroom. He looms in the doorway in his white underpants, a drip mark on the front. She wants to scream at him to leave her alone, go away, go play Nintendo or something. But she’s scared that if she makes him angry he’ll hurt her again, and hurt the baby.
‘Get up and pack your stuff,’ Eric says.
‘What?’
‘The Death Rowe tour. We fly out tonight.’
‘I’m not coming.’
‘Yes you are. Booked you a ticket. Can’t trust you to stay on your own anymore.’
She buries her face in a pillow.
‘I said Get up and pack now!’
She doesn’t deserve this.
Johnnie Walker says: Get Doctor O’Meara to refer you to the domestic-violence service. Or go to the police, tell them about Eric, make sure he never hurts you again. Matt even knows a cop, remember? You’ll be OK.
Brigitte gets up and packs her duffle bag.
‘What are you doing, Brigitte?’ Eric says as she walks through the lounge room, her bag over her shoulder. ‘Flight’s not for hours.’
‘I’m leaving.’
‘No you’re not.’ Eric lunges, but she moves too quickly for him.
‘And I’m not coming back.’ She slams the door behind her.
From the street, she looks back once and sees Eric standing at the open window, his gut wobbling like the half-set jelly at the Gold Bar, swearing at her. People on the street look up at him. He coughs, and yells that she’s really going to get it when she comes back. She runs like a frightened rabbit.
She doesn’t stop to catch her breath until she reaches Gertrude Street. Halfway between Nicholson and Brunswick, a black limousine crawls along the curb, then stops beside her. This is it. The instant where it ends badly. Lucky she didn’t make it to Matt’s. I never deserved him. She shouldn’t have listened to Johnnie Walker. She freezes, holding her breath, bracing herself for what happens to people who fuck me around. The window slides down, and she sees his slick, brown hair, dark eyes, black suit. Her stomach liquefies, and she closes her eyes. Blood spatter. Body dump.
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