‘No, weak regular tea will be fine. Thanks.’
‘So what do you feel like eating?’ Phoebe went on, refilling the kettle.
‘Just pass me a loaf of bread and some peanut butter,’ said Gemma.
Phoebe turned to look at her. ‘You haven’t been craving peanut butter, have you?’
Gemma blinked. ‘Not particularly,’ she said vaguely. ‘Why?’
‘There have been some studies linking overconsumption of peanut butter in pregnant women to the increased incidence of anaphylaxis from peanuts in children.’
Gemma was not exactly sure what Phoebe had just said, except somewhere in there she was pretty sure she was being accused of being a bad mother. And the baby wasn’t much more than a peanut itself.
‘How do you know that?’ Gemma asked her. ‘Or, more to the point, why do you know that?’
Phoebe shrugged. ‘I read an article about it.’
That still didn’t answer the ‘why’ part. ‘Well, Phee, I’m not drinking, smoking or using any illicit substances,’ said Gemma. ‘So if you’re going to take peanut butter away from me as well . . .’
Phoebe was already at the pantry door. ‘Say no more.’ A few moments later she popped a funky resin platter on the table in front of Gemma, on which she had artfully arranged a few slices of bread, a small pot of peanut butter, a matching resin-handled spreading knife, and a tiny bunch of grapes with a couple of fresh figs for garnish. It was very Martha Stewart, and not a little disturbing. The bread of course was some kind of weird brown loaf impregnated with birdseed, when Gemma craved the soft white artificial stuff. But she wasn’t about to risk another lecture from Phoebe about the possible harm she might be doing to her unborn peanut.
‘So,’ said Phoebe, taking the Turkish-bread installation back to the kitchen, ‘I take it Mum and Dad don’t know yet?’
‘Don’t you think you would have heard by now if they did?’
‘That’s an understatement.’
‘I was going to tell them when I was down for Dad’s birthday, but when Luke didn’t come I chickened out.’
‘That’s why you were so subdued that weekend,’ Phoebe mused as she busied herself making the tea.
‘Yeah, and I didn’t even know he was planning his great escape at the time.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, he took off while I was in Sydney.’
Phoebe frowned. ‘What, just like that? Where did he go?’
‘Don’t ask me,’ said Gemma. ‘I haven’t heard from him since.’
‘But what was the last thing he said to you?’
‘I believe it was something along the lines of “I won’t be able to pick you up from the airport, babe”,’ Gemma said wryly.
Phoebe carried a tray with a teapot and cups over to the table. ‘Hold on, I’m not getting this . . .’
‘No kidding. Phee, he just took off. He disappeared. When I got back from Sydney all his stuff was gone. He didn’t tell me anything, he didn’t tell them at work, he just left.’
Phoebe was staring at her in disbelief. ‘Bastard.’
‘Yeah, well, they seem to be drawn to me.’
‘But someone can’t just vanish into thin air like that.’
‘Apparently they can. His mobile went out of service completely after a few days; I wouldn’t be surprised if he tossed it. I called around, but we didn’t know that many people in Brisbane and no one had seen him or heard from him. If they had, they weren’t telling me. I got in touch with some of his old friends here in Sydney as well, but they claimed they hadn’t heard anything either.’
‘So where do you think he could be?’
Gemma shrugged. ‘At first I thought he might have gone through with our original plan and travelled further north looking for work. So I called every resort listed, and all the islands, but no one had heard of him. I realised after a while that he was long gone, and there was no reason for me to stay up there on my own. Besides, I couldn’t make the rent. I had no choice but to come back.’
Phoebe was pouring the tea, mulling it all over. ‘I thought you said everything was going great with you two?’
‘I thought it was,’ said Gemma. ‘But I can see now, in hindsight, he’d been pretty twitchy ever since I found out I was pregnant.’ But of course in true Gemma style she had ignored that and carried on regardless. God, she was an idiot sometimes. ‘Anyway, clearly I’m better off without him.’
‘Better off without a father for your baby?’
‘Phee, he was hardly “father of the year” material. Like you said, he’s a bastard. And I’m beginning to think I’m a bastard magnet. If there’s one in range, he’s drawn to me.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ said Phoebe. ‘I seem to remember it was you doing the chasing.’
‘No . . .’ Gemma denied weakly. Had she?
‘You were always complaining how you were the one who had to keep calling him. That he never returned your calls . . .’
‘Where have you been, Luke? I’ve been trying to get on to you since last week.’
‘I didn’t realise I had to report in, babe.’
‘But don’t you ever check your messages?’
‘This conversation is totally not cool, Gem . . .’
Gemma sighed, pushing the prize-winning peanut butter platter aside. She was feeling a little queasy again.
‘So when do you plan to tell Mum and Dad?’ Phoebe asked.
Gemma looked at her. ‘I hadn’t exactly planned –’
‘Come on, Gem, you can’t keep a baby from them.’
‘Watch me.’
Phoebe was visibly horrified.
‘Look, I just need some time,’ Gemma explained defensively. ‘I have to get my shit sorted out before they find out, or else . . . well, you know what they’re like, Phee.’
Gemma and Phoebe’s parents were typical of first-wave baby boomers – the very model of a modern middle-class family. For Gary and Trish Atkinson life was for living; it was not meant to be a hardship like their parents had made out. Of course if they’d stopped and thought about it, they would have realised their parents had not chosen to live through two world wars and a depression, but that having lived through two world wars and a depression their perspective had been reasonably and irrefutably shaped by those experiences, particularly as compared to their children, who had very little experience of genuine hardship. First-wave baby boomers had a perspective all of their own. They could do anything they wanted, be anything they wanted, and have anything they wanted. And although they had scorned the conservative aspirations of their parents’ generation while they were busy getting high and discovering the soundtrack of their own, they had quickly signed up for mortgages once their free university degrees had landed them plum jobs with nice salaries, thank you very much. They might as well be paying off a house for themselves than for some greedy capitalist pig landlord, after all.
And their children were going to be brought up differently too, with the freedom to be themselves, their self-esteem nurtured, not restricted by gratuitous discipline, knowing they were deeply loved and cherished just for being who they were. But they were also going to make sure those same children were given the kinds of opportunities they had never had. While they believed absolutely in the principle of public education, and did not begrudge supporting it with their taxes, if they could afford to send their kids to private school, why shouldn’t they? It was the only guaranteed way to nurture each and every child’s special and unique potential.
So the Atkinson brood was amongst the very first of the hot-housed generation of kids raised by the new breed of permissive, indulgent, ‘modern’ parents who wanted to give their children everything and not have them endure even the slightest inconvenience or hardship throughout their young lives. The same parents who were confounded when those same privileged, indulged children appeared ungrateful and barely spoke to them, or else never left home and were incapable of standing on their own two feet.
Firstborn Ben had done exactly what was expected of him and completed a business degree straight after school, providing himself with formal qualifications to step into the position for which he had been groomed all along in the family’s property development venture. Gary and Trish were so proud of their handsome son they bought him a BMW on graduation, completing his transformation into the very model of a modern eligible bachelor. He dutifully played the role for close to a decade – skiing in winter, yachting in summer, the obligatory three-month Kontiki tour through Europe, the swag of girlfriends – until he found himself a pretty ex-model to marry. In truth her modelling career consisted largely of discount store brochures and shopping mall catwalks, plus a walk-on role on Home and Away, so she was more than happy to become known as ex-model Mrs Leisa Atkinson on the social pages for which they were frequently snapped. As a wedding gift, Gary and Trish had given them the deposit for their first apartment in Bondi, but once baby Jasper came along, Ben and Leisa decided to move across the bridge and raise their family in Mosman, a stone’s throw from the breathless grandparents. Leisa grew her hair into a blonde bob, completed the set with a baby daughter, Emily, and had recently acquired a black Mercedes four-wheel drive to ensure her family’s safety on the dangerous northern peninsula roads, particularly now with all the travelling involved getting Jasper to soccer on the weekends.
And then there was Gemma.
She was the black sheep her family had to have. There was no way she would ever reach the dizzy heights Ben had scaled. Not that she wasn’t smart enough; she was smart enough to know that she didn’t want to throw another log on the bonfire of their vanities. And she set about making it her life’s purpose to prove it. She was asked to leave a couple of the best ladies’ colleges, and finally was forcibly removed from another. She experimented with alcohol, drugs and sex, had brushes with the law, moved out of home at the tender age of fifteen with the first in what would prove to be a long line of no-hoper boyfriends, only to return after a couple of months and start the hoopla all over again. All the while Gemma seemed to take strange delight in watching her parents squirm and blanch as they continued to make every excuse under the sun for her. They were always there to pick up the pieces, or more correctly pick up the tab, paying her debts and her fines while continuing to finance her increasingly hedonistic lifestyle. It became almost a sport for Gemma: she really wanted to see if she could break them. When would they say enough was enough? Apparently never. They were either idiots, or, worse, what Gemma secretly suspected and even quietly feared, throwing money at her was easier than trying to have a meaningful relationship with the person she really was.
Of course she absolutely ruined things for poor Phoebe. The reins were wound in so tight around her younger sister she could barely sneeze without her parents knowing about it. But somehow Phee managed to survive pretty much intact while keeping everyone happy, which appeared to be Phoebe’s specialty. She was school captain and dux, while excelling equally in sport and music, later graduating from university with first-class honours in law. Gemma didn’t know how she did it all with such grace.
‘You have to learn to work with them,’ Phoebe used to tell her, ‘not against them. They’re not trying to control your life; they just want you to be happy.’
‘I am happy,’ Gemma always insisted. ‘Very happy.’
‘But couldn’t you try being happy in a way that would make them happy too?’
Gemma doubted it. She sometimes felt as though she’d landed from Mars into this strange family where she just didn’t fit. She knew she wasn’t what they hoped her to be. Despite all their protestations, her parents expected their children to fulfil their own hopes and dreams. And Gemma was not going to give them the satisfaction.
The prospect of another grandchild would be too much for her mother to ignore. Her need to take over would consume her; but Gemma hadn’t even decided what she was going to do yet – only that she would go ahead and have the baby. Keeping it was a whole other can of worms, one she was not ready to open yet. The only thing she was sure of was that the more people who knew about the pregnancy, the less chance she had of making her own decision.
‘You can’t tell them, Phee,’ she said seriously. ‘Not yet anyway, not till I’ve at least got a job and somewhere to live.’
Gemma was watching Phoebe closely, watching her put all the pieces into place, waiting for the penny to drop . . .
‘Um . . . what are your plans in the meantime?’ Phoebe asked tentatively.
‘Well, I was kind of hoping I could crash here . . . just short-term.’
Phoebe missed a beat. ‘Oh . . .’
‘I know it’s a lot to ask –’
‘No, no, it’s not,’ Phoebe said weakly. ‘It’s not that . . .’
‘It’s Cameron, isn’t it?’ Phoebe’s husband. The original man of steel. Or he’d probably prefer titanium or something more upmarket. ‘I know he doesn’t like me, Phee.’
‘Maybe that has something to do with you throwing up on his shoes the first time you met him.’
‘He still hasn’t gotten over that, eh?’
Phoebe shrugged. ‘It’s just that he likes his privacy . . . likes things to be a certain way . . . He’s very . . . particular.’ Phoebe sighed heavily. ‘What the hell. You’re my sister and you need us. Cam’s just going to have to handle it.’
Balmain
Helen was sitting on the back step nursing a cup of tea between both hands, gazing out at the yard, waiting out the time till she could pick up Noah from preschool. The lawn desperately needed a mow, the edges a trim; a passionfruit vine running rampant over the shed needed to be tamed. The whole yard was looking sad and overgrown. Not that it had ever been a picture – she and David weren’t exactly your House and Garden kind of people. Helen thought it was probably because the house wasn’t actually theirs. And now she didn’t know how much longer she’d be able to hang onto it. It had been going round and round in her head for weeks now, and she was still no closer to a solution. Mostly because she hadn’t really done anything about it. Except mull. And that was getting her nowhere.
So she cleaned. She cleaned out cupboards and wiped down shelves, benches, walls, architraves, skirtings, windowsills, anything listed on the back of the bottle of Spray’n’Wipe. It was full of useful suggestions. Helen had sprayed and wiped parts of her house she had never thought to spray and wipe before. And it gleamed. Even Noreen had remarked how immaculate the house was looking, although she’d said it as though it was weird. Or as though Helen was weird. Clearly she was not grieving the way Noreen and Jim expected, and they intended to do something about it. And for some reason they chose Noah’s birthday, of all times, to bring it up. It was a hard enough day as it was; Helen felt it was somehow wrong that birthdays and holidays kept on coming after someone had died. Christmas was almost another year away, mercifully, and she fully intended to ignore her own birthday this year. But she couldn’t ignore Noah’s fourth birthday, and she didn’t want to. She’d even bought him Wastelanders figures, a vexed issue that had been under discussion for a while. The Wastelanders were all Noah could talk about and all he wanted, but David had been ambivalent, despite the fact that Noah only knew of them at all because of a daily five-minute cartoon on the ABC. Surely if they were on the ABC they were okay? David was inclined to agree, except they were made in the US, and he had an inherent distrust of anything that came out of the US. However, Helen believed even David would have softened under the circumstances and she went ahead and bought Noah three figures and the DVD. The look on his face as he opened them was enough to convince Helen she had done the right thing.
Jim and Noreen were invited for lunch in an attempt to make it a little more festive, but as soon as Noah was absorbed playing with the presents they’d brought him, Jim took Helen aside. They were prepared to look after Noah, he told her, so Helen could go back to work and things could get back to ‘normal’. She’d had enough time off, he declared; she
needed to get out of the house, to have something to occupy her. Helen wanted to tell him she had plenty to occupy her. There were lots more surfaces to wipe for one thing; hadn’t they ever read the label on the back of the Spray’n’Wipe bottle?
The thing Jim should have realised, the thing she shouldn’t have had to explain, was that she cleaned solely for the reason that it gave her something to do during those long, dire hours after Noah was tucked up in bed. There was no one singing out, ‘Put the kettle on while you’re up’; no one to split an after-hours, adults-only chocolate bar with, before hiding the wrapper so Noah wouldn’t discover it in the morning; no one to commiserate with about the abysmal shows on TV while they sat and watched them anyway. There was no one simply to pass the time with.
So Helen cleaned till midnight, and often much later, because she couldn’t go to bed until she was completely exhausted. If she wasn’t completely exhausted she’d just lie there, staring at David’s pillow, still in the same pillowcase because she couldn’t bring herself to change it, her mind drifting to an image of him, stepping off that kerb, probably daydreaming so he didn’t see the bus coming, didn’t even look. It made her so angry that if he were here she’d want to shake him and tell him what his momentary lapse of concentration had done to their lives.
And then she hated herself for being angry with him, and hugged his pillow and cried herself to sleep.
It was better to stay up late cleaning.
She couldn’t explain it to Jim and Noreen. They had trouble enough understanding why she couldn’t go back to work, yet it was obviously untenable. Nursing meant shifts around the clock, and she had no intention of leaving Noah for whole nights and days with his grandparents. She had no intention of leaving Noah, full stop. Except for preschool, where she hovered long after the other parents had left, and was first back in the afternoon to collect him. She couldn’t help it: she was filled with an overwhelming sense of dread that something was going to happen to him. After all, it was becoming increasingly evident that something bad seemed to happen to everyone Helen cared about. She woke some nights with her heart pounding in her chest, the image of a bus still vivid in her mind’s eye, bearing down on Noah, standing alone, his eyes huge and wide and terrified. Sometimes David was holding him, sometimes Helen was running towards them, but she never made it to them in time. Sometimes Noah was sitting beside her as she drove the bus straight at David, which made her break into a sweat, jumping out of bed and pacing, breathing hard, till there was nothing she could do but go and find the bottle of Spray’n’Wipe and get to work.
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