Small Blessings

by Emily Brewin

  ‘Our specialist says to destress.’ Isobel loops her fingers through the mug handle. ‘And, you know, work is quite taxing.’

  Her mother says nothing.

  ‘It’s very long hours and a lot of pressure. There’s a lot of pressure in my job. Too much, really.’

  She gulps her tea, wincing at the heat. On the way here, she’d planned their conversation and it didn’t include this. They should be discussing Aunty May’s hip replacement or her father’s football obsession, even her mother’s medication, although she doesn’t want to talk directly about the cancer. She could barely even say the word.

  But her mother’s silence is like an invite. It makes her talk. And the more she talks the more sense it makes. Work is tough. It’s felt harder too since she considered IVF, since her mother’s phone call. Some days she’s filled with a confusing combination of longing and dread that leaves her exhausted.

  Mostly she’s able to subdue it with a cold drink of water or a brisk walk down Bourke Street. But lately it’s been harder to ignore and sitting here makes it almost impossible. Her mother is dying in a dressing-gown opposite and there’s nothing she can do.

  She stops abruptly, the thought clamming up her throat. Then her phone rings. It’s Penny, telling her she’s booked a bar for farewell drinks.

  ‘Hold on,’ she says tightly down the line.

  Her mother waits, eyes like wet saucers.

  ‘There’s an emergency at work. I’ll have to head off.’

  It takes effort for her mother to lift herself from the table. ‘Belly …’

  But Isobel mouths ‘sorry’ as she collects her handbag from the floor and hurries down the hall.

  Outside, she tells Penny she’ll ring her back then leans heavily against the car until she can breathe again.

  The green olive bobs in her martini, a toothpick speared through its tiny red heart.

  Around the neon-lit bar, people from the office are in various states of letting their professionalism go. Charles from accounts chats up a waitress in a darkened corner, while Madeline laughs too loudly at Bernard, making her seem sillier than usual. Isobel downs her drink when he glances in her direction then does her best not to flinch at the blanching in her throat.

  She spent the best part of the week doing a handover to Bernard, who remained perpetually upbeat despite the chilly reception. He scribbled notes that covered her desk and crowded her office with his tall, lanky body. She hadn’t even left and he was already taking over.

  She tried to remain professional, gave him a wide berth as they navigated the room and avoided his fingers as they exchanged documents. Still, she found herself examining the wayward lay of his thick black hair and the bow shape of his lips when he was reading, and couldn’t help wondering, what if.

  She plucks the olive from her glass and drops it on the bar when no one is watching then wipes the brine off her fingertips with a napkin.

  ‘Isobel!’ Malcolm strides over. ‘Looks like everyone’s here.’

  From her vantage point the room seems a little empty. And Penny is nowhere to be seen, despite the fact she said she was coming.

  A picture from Penny’s daughter was stuck to the wall above her desk. Usually she didn’t approve of children in the office, but the lilt of the little girl’s voice in the kitchen this last week made her feel lighter.

  ‘Here,’ she’d said, a small ink-stained hand outstretched.

  It was a picture of a bobble-headed woman with sweeping eyelashes and bright yellow hair.

  ‘It’s you.’

  She took it. ‘Thank you,’ she said, her chest tightening.

  The picture was the last thing she packed, slipping it into her handbag for safekeeping. She plucked it out again tonight while waiting for the others to arrive. Its round body and stick arms were calming.

  ‘Where’s Penny?’

  ‘Her daughter’s still sick.’ Malcolm gestures to the barman to bring another drink.

  She smooths her dress and shifts on her heels. An image of her mother in cork platforms shimmying across the kitchen worms its way into her head, unsettling things. It’s happening more often since she got sick.

  The barman approaches with the drink while Andrew crosses the floor to join them, a light swagger to his step, calling, ‘Speech! Speech!’

  Her colleagues gather around, glasses in hand, swaying slightly. Bernard stands front and centre, so she has to look sideways to avoid him.

  Malcolm passes her another martini and she purses her lips at the sight of the olive. The crowd falls quiet apart from another ridiculous giggle from Madeline.

  Before starting, Isobel pulls the spiked olive from her glass and hands it to Malcolm. Then Marcus appears. She’d hidden her relief behind a false frown when he told her the night before he might not make it. But here he is, and his proximity to Bernard is distracting. She’s hardly aware of making a speech.

  When it’s over, her colleagues clap politely before getting on with the business of drinking. When Malcolm taps his glass again they seem surprised, then slightly surly. He bumbles on, tipsy, about her dedication to the firm and her solid reputation until the others start to chat amongst themselves.

  She shifts her glass uneasily from one hand to the other and watches Marcus greet Bernard. She’s momentarily terrified Bernard might let something slip. That somewhere in between saying hello and shaking Marcus’s hand he might mention the hotel room they’d ended up in that night five years ago. She scans the bar and the long tables at the rear for colleagues who, with one too many drinks under their belt, might rekindle the office gossip. And suddenly the scale of what she’s got to lose teeters above, threatening to fall.

  The crowd falls silent again and she focuses on Malcolm’s speech to keep her steady. It’s glowing but lacks the personal touch he adds to other farewells, the hilarious stories about nights out and descriptions of other halves, the jokes and the tears. Towards the end he makes a frighteningly silly reference to the office party in question, but Marcus just smiles while Bernard stares hard at his shoes.

  She’s desperate for another drink, something sweet and milky perhaps, while Malcolm wraps up. ‘What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.’

  She has to think about it.

  ‘Something T.S. Eliot once said,’ Malcolm grins, raising his glass to her.

  The bar blurs until all she can see is Marcus’s fuzzy outline.

  ‘Get this woman another martini!’ Malcolm shouts over the applause. And what should have been a fond farewell to an esteemed colleague ends up being a messy Friday night drinks.

  Rosie

  ‘CODE YELLOW IN AISLE THREE, code yellow, aisle three.’

  Rosie sighs and puts the plastic ‘check-out closed’ sign on her conveyor belt. She doesn’t know why Dulcy doesn’t just get off her own arse and go to aisle three. It’s not like they’re run off their feet.

  She glances at the clock on the wall above the sliding door. Half an hour till knock-off time and she can hardly wait. Dulcy had called as she was walking out the door for TAFE. She can’t really afford to cut class but they need the money. She’s going to take Petey away next summer holidays, come hell or high water. There are five months left to save. The savings jar on the fridge is barely half full, and much of that’s silver.

  She’s taking him to the Gold Coast. Dulcy’s sister took her kids there last year and they loved it. She’ll take him to Sea World and Movie World and that place with the observation deck. Her friend Bea moved up there a few years ago so they’ll visit her too.

  She needs to spend some proper time with Petey. He’s getting so big. If she goes to uni after TAFE or gets a better job there’ll be even less time. It’s never-ending. She rubs her eyes as she unlocks the green storeroom door in search of the mop. Some days the future she wants feels like a ridiculous dream. Too far out of reach for someone like her.

  Inside, the mop’s filt
hy and threadbare and she struggles to fill the bucket. Code yellow means an idiot’s knocked something slippery on the floor, usually dishwashing liquid or yoghurt or cooking oil. Oil’s the worst. It’s a bitch to soak up. Aisle three is sauces. It’s an aisle she knows well cause Petey loves spaghetti. There’s Asian stuff too, soy and oyster sauce and weird-sounding pastes. She brought a fishy one once but couldn’t get past the smell. Plus, she had no idea what to do with it.

  ‘Jesus.’ A woman scrambles about on the floor trying to pick up pieces of a smashed jar while white sauce pools around her. She’s making the mess worse.

  ‘It’s fine. I’ll sort it,’ Rosie says as she pushes the bucket and mop towards it. The last thing she needs is the woman slipping over. That’d mean an incident report and then she’d never get to Mr Granthall’s by nine. Dulcy loves a bit of protocol.

  The woman doesn’t listen. She’s down on her hands and knees, getting sauce all over her tracksuit pants.

  ‘You’ll have to get out of the way.’ Rosie rattles the mop in an effort to scare her off. She can’t see the woman’s face but something’s not right. ‘For fuck’s sake,’ she mutters before taking a careful step into the sauce and bending down to the woman. ‘C’mon, I’ll give you a hand.’

  The woman lets herself be tugged upright. Her arm’s nothing but skin and bone under Rosie’s grip and her ugg boots are soggy. She lets Rosie lead her towards the tomato sauce shelves where she reaches up to tighten a thin ponytail on top of her head.

  ‘Wasn’t packed properly,’ she says shrilly.

  Rosie ignores her. She’s definitely going to be late getting Petey now. She tries to push the sauce and shattered glass into a pile but the mop’s bloody useless.

  ‘Rosie?’ The woman stands straighter.

  She looks at the woman properly for the first time.

  ‘Fuck, mate, I didn’t recognise ya. You’ve changed.’

  Her mind goes into rewind then freezes. ‘Kelly?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  The woman grins; there are gaps where a couple of teeth are missing.

  Rosie steps back, glass crunching beneath her runners. ‘You’ve changed too.’ It’s an understatement. She tries hard to see the clear-eyed sixteen-year-old beneath the pockmarked skin of the woman in front of her. It takes a while, but finally she catches a glimpse.

  Kelly blinks hard. ‘How’s things?’

  She feels Kelly’s eyes run the length of her body. Rosie used to do the same when she was sizing someone up. There’s an art to observing the small details. Like the way a person holds their head, bent slightly to show weakness or held high so you know they won’t be easily suckered.

  Back in the day, she could take one look at a bloke and tell you if he was worth scamming. Blokes were easier than women, especially when you played dumb and needy. Nothing melts a guy’s heart like a brainless teenage girl. Joel reckoned she should be an actress.

  ‘Good,’ she says, once she gets over the shock. The sight of Kelly in front of her is unnerving. She’s not supposed to be here. Rosie just wants to mop up the mess she’s made and walk away. She pushes the slush in Kelly’s direction, hoping she’ll get the hint.

  ‘Where’d you go?’

  ‘Huh?’

  Kelly sniffs. ‘Ya just disappeared.’

  Rosie hears Dulcy counting change to a customer at the counter and a man coughing in the next aisle. She’s not telling Kelly anything.

  ‘Everyone thought you got arrested.’

  The lights above them illuminate the bright products on the shelves and the scrappy lino floor until all Rosie can see is a wash of colour and the dark outline of Kelly.

  ‘Joel went fuckin crazy. Mono had to give him some free gear just to calm him down. Thought he was gunna kill someone.’

  Suddenly the aisle is too wide open.

  ‘He’s out of jail now, ya know.’ Kelly wipes her nose on her sleeve. ‘Got out a month ago, on parole or something. I haven’t seen him but.’

  Rosie clenches the wooden mop handle until her fingers turn white. He’s out. She knows now for sure, although she’d suspected as much, what with the phone calls and that night at the station. It makes her sick to think about. She’d almost convinced herself the footsteps were imagined. And maybe they were … He’s already sending her round the bend.

  ‘You right?’ Kelly stares at her with what might be concern.

  Rosie can see the teenage version clearly now. The blue eyes and heart-shaped face that used to flush when she smiled. Rosie spoke to her sometimes, gave her tips on how to sweet-talk guys. Kelly got good at it too. Good enough for Joel to take an interest. It was a betrayal, his thing with Kelly, but Rosie didn’t give a rat’s by then. Plus, it wasn’t the first time.

  ‘You still using?’ Kelly’s eyes are on her again, measuring her up.

  ‘I’ve gotta get back to work.’ Dulcy can clean up this crap herself, she thinks, I’m going home. She turns to go, leaving the mop standing upright in the bucket.

  ‘I’m at the same place if ya need any,’ Kelly calls loudly. ‘Come see me sometime.’

  Isobel

  ISOBEL PACES THE LENGTH of the house. In the entrance, downlights illuminate framed prints on the wall. Abstracts. The dealer had assured them they were a good investment but she thinks they are ugly, too messy and chaotic. She picks her phone up from the sideboard in the hall and checks in case he’s texted back. He hasn’t.

  If she were at work she could confront him. If she were at work she could ask him to come by her office. But it’s his office now and, anyway, she only has a vague notion of the things she wants to say.

  She’d texted him fast, before she could change her mind again. Then had regretted it. I’d like to talk was all she’d written. Innocent enough, depending on how he deciphered it. But with their history, it could mean anything.

  With hindsight, their affair seemed so clichéd it made her cringe, the office fling like one of those horrible American telemovies. Until recently, that is. Now it feels vaguely sad as well, causing a mess of emotions to drain through her each time she injects the IVF hormones or sits in the stillness of the house.

  Until recently, she rarely considered the abortion. She hadn’t agonised over it at the time or lamented it later. It was the right thing to do, it was. But the sadness isn’t rational, and she finds herself calculating how old the child would be now and what it would look like. It has the same hair the as her mother and her, and Bernard’s eyes.

  She wouldn’t know what to say if he texted her back. All she knows is there’s a growing compulsion to tell someone about the pregnancy, to have it known. Bernard seems the logical choice, even if it is a bit late for disclosures.

  She sighs, stares at her phone and blames the text on having too much time on her hands. It never occurred to her that occupying it might be difficult. At work, her days were mapped out with meetings and schedules. Without them, there’s little to propel her through the day.

  Her life is so unbusy now she’s beginning to see the holes in things. The greasy streak Ly, their housekeeper, left on the splashback beyond the kitchen bench, and the pale yellow spots Marcus leaves on the toilet seat, not to mention their neighbour’s obsession with his leaf blower, the stench of the garbage truck on Tuesday mornings and the blatant lack of family photographs hanging on their walls.

  She noticed this while walking to the front door to collect the post last week. If someone visited, which rarely happened, they’d wonder who lived in the house. She spent the rest of that day gathering evidence of her life with Marcus, stopping momentarily to gaze at an old family photograph she’d forgotten she owned.

  It was taken in front of an unruly Christmas tree when she was ten, her parents kneeling on the floor, their children’s skinny arms draped easily around their necks. In it she looks at her mother rather than at the camera, a big-toothed grin on her small triangular face. It makes her chest ache, and suddenly she’s glad she sent the text all over again.
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br />   She heads back to the kitchen, with its stainless-steel surfaces and chrome appliances, to drop a slice of spelt loaf into the toaster. Then she plucks an avocado from the ceramic bowl on the counter and cuts it slowly, listening to the knife on the wooden chopping board. Her phone beeps. She drops the knife and grabs it.

  Won’t make appointment tomorrow, a text from Marcus says. Can’t get out of the meeting. Sorry! Will pick you up tho.

  She tries not to let it bother her, that and the fact it wasn’t Bernard, and spreads avocado thick and fibrous across the toast.

  Recent conversations with Marcus have revolved around dates and blood tests and ultrasound sessions. Mostly it’s one-sided, but he listens. The stimulation hormones she’s been injecting daily make her touchy. Between the irritation and the sadness and her imminent egg retrieval appointment there isn’t much left for Marcus. And alone in the kitchen, her mobile silent, she begins to sense he might feel the same way.

  The hospital door opens, wide as a welcome and full of promise. A blast of warm air greets her as she walks in, as does the faint pong of disinfectant. She’s grateful for it. It makes her feel safe.

  She adjusts her handbag on her arm and hopes she wasn’t supposed to bring a change of clothes. The woman on the phone said they would give her a hospital gown and she cringed inwardly at the thought. She couldn’t help thinking of all the other women who had worn it before her.

  She swallows and does her best to approach the reception desk with a cool composure. The woman behind it is probably in her mid-twenties. She guesses ages now, estimating fertility, staking it against her own. Sometimes she pictures her eggs as a cluster of tomatoes withering on the vine.

  ‘Isobel Hutchins.’ Her voice takes on an affected tone. ‘I’m a patient of Doctor Vann.’

  The young woman gives her a bright smile and bats her thick black lashes. Definitely extensions. ‘Great.’ She types something into the computer. ‘Have you fasted?’

  ‘Yes.’