Honk If You Are Jesus

by Peter Goldsworthy

I was a little surprised to recognise Peter Raines, the ultra-short Professor of Surgery, emerging from the scrub room.

  ‘Peter agreed to act as your assistant,’ Hollis Schultz murmured, the first I knew of such an arrangement.

  ‘There won’t be a lot of knots to tie,’ I warned.

  A nurse set down a box pedestal on the other side of the operating platform; Raines climbed on to it, bringing him to eye level. I seemed surrounded by short men, by pygmies. Tad, another of the race, winked at me from his corner. I remembered an amusing piece of gossip he had brought home: that Raines was lobbying to sink pits, or trenches, into the theatre floor for his surgical assistants to stand in. Bringing them down to his level. I couldn’t judge the truth of this; I didn’t know him well; we had not scrubbed together before.

  Hollis Schultz stood behind me, on tip-toe, as I swabbed his wife’s abdomen. A small pool of antiseptic collected in her navel, slowly rising and falling with her breathing. I dabbed it dry.

  ‘You might see more on the TV monitor,’ I suggested.

  ‘I’d rather look over your shoulder, if that’s okay.’

  I soon forgot him, even forgot the tickle of his breath on my neck. This was my method of letting go: losing myself in the movements and rhythms of surgery. Problem, solution. I sliced a keyhole navel-incision for the telescope and video camera; pumped in a little air to inflate and separate the organs, then stabbed a second incision above the pubis for the insertion of forceps.

  ‘Forceps.’

  Raines slapped the instrument into my glove. From here I was operating by television: steering the instrument into position, securing the left ovary. Tad’s serum assays hadn’t lied; Mary-Beth was on the brink of ovulation: three button mushrooms were erupting from the surface of the left ovary, two more, I shortly discovered, on the right. Her perfect innards looked much the same as anyone’s; much the same as mine. Murmurs came from the small audience — Scanlon and Schultz now among them — clustered about the monitor. Professor Raines, standing tip-toe on his pedestal, tour guide for the night, began describing the various bits of anatomy on view. I sliced a third incision midway between the first two; slid in an aspiration needle and guided it gently, ever so gently into the largest of those glistening champignons.

  ‘Bullseye,’ Raines, staring at the monitor, announced.

  ‘Suction,’ I told him.

  This was slightly malicious; he was forced to step down off his soapbox to press the suction pedal. I still had my eye to the telescope; I heard rather than saw the collection tube fill with fluid at my elbow.

  Schultz left the monitor and began breathing in my ear again: ‘Is there an egg?’

  ‘Too small to see.’

  Tad replaced the collection tube with another; as I rotated the ovary again I could hear him fussing at the side table with his microscope. I was preparing to aspirate the third champignon when his voice reached me: ‘Bingo.’

  Schultz was still moving restlessly about, from the TV monitor to Tad’s microscope and back to me.

  Tad announced the second successful ovum capture: ‘Two out of two.’

  Schultz breathed in my ear: ‘So it’s a success?’

  ‘So far so good. I’ll tap the other ovary. It’s nice to have a few back-up eggs.’

  ‘In case of breakages,’ Scanlon said.

  He was bent over the microscope opposite Tad, peering through the accessory eyepiece.

  ‘We can always freeze the spares,’ I told Schultz.

  ‘Why don’t Tad and I get these upstairs?’ Scanlon said at length. ‘You finish up, Mara. I’ll get things organised. You come up for the fertilisation.’

  ‘Now?’ Schultz said. ‘You’re going to fertilise the egg now?’

  ‘The sooner the better.’

  ‘I’ll close up if you like, Mara,’ Peter Raines offered.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Thanks. I like to finish a job.’

  ‘Then we’ll see you later,’ Scanlon said.

  ‘I won’t be long.’

  In fact, I was another hour. It was some foolish point of pride: too many cooks were crowded into that small theatre; I was unwilling to allow my pygmy assistant, standing tip-toe on his dais, to tie those last few sutures.

  When I arrived in the Cell Lab on the sixth floor, the fertilisation was near complete.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Scanlon said. ‘We couldn’t wait any longer.’

  The excuse was plausible; time was of the essence in these matters. Besides, I loved the man. I would have forgiven him anything. I bent and admired his handiwork through a microscope: an egg with a full genetic complement.

  12

  A week later I reinserted the fertilised egg — a healthy, growing blastocoele, pinhead size — painlessly, uneventfully, without need for anaesthetic, through Miss Tennessee’s cervix.

  I celebrated the positive pregnancy test with Tad a week after that: champagne before dinner, a bottle of Krug Rosé, his favourite. He extracted the cork, and poured the creamy, foaming liquid into a pair of crystal flutes which he had also supplied.

  ‘You realise this is very much our child,’ he said, passing over a glass.

  ‘Then here’s to us,’ I said.

  We clinked vessels, and sipped, Tad briefly. He still had more to say: ‘There’s an amusing symmetry to it, chérie. I provided the sperm cells — in a sense. You retrieved the eggs.’

  I rested the cold rim of the glass against my lips, allowing the tiny, fizzing bubbles to tickle the inside of my nose. He was smiling at me, thick-tipped, but there was a darker undercurrent here. I didn’t find it quite so amusing: the spinster and the ‘tragic deviant’ (his words) had somehow joined forces to produce a baby.

  He still wasn’t finished: ‘We manufactured these cells, Mother, as surely as if they popped out of our own gonads.’

  ‘Scanlon helped,’ I reminded him.

  ‘Speaking of whom — where is the man? He should be celebrating with us.’

  Since the fertilisation, Scanlon had dropped from sight. Hourly during that first week I had climbed the fire stairs to check the growing blastocoele, and dawdle in the Cell Lab partly in the hope of seeing him. Once or twice I pushed at his office door: locked. His staff claimed, whenever questioned, to have ‘just’ seen him, that I must have ‘just’ missed him. I knocked on the door of his home each night: no lights were burning, no doors opened. At the end of the week he rang me, long distance, seeming at first more interested in the progress of the fertilisation than in me. Once again his excuses were entirely plausible. He was ‘terrible’ on phones, he apologised. And too busy to see me, snowed under with Tiger interviews. He hoped we could ‘find time together’ soon.

  ‘He’s in Tasmania this week,’ I told Tad.

  He laughed: ‘Let me guess: the Tiger is going home?’

  ‘Scanlon has won some award down there. Tasmanian of the Year. There’s to be a civic reception in Hobart. The keys to the city.’

  ‘What a thrill that must be.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with Hobart.’

  ‘For a weekend. If you take a couple of good books.’ He sipped at his pink fluid again before continuing: ‘Or a congenial companion. Is Heather Sims with him?’

  ‘I suppose. It’s her home town. Why?’

  His eyes slid away from mine: ‘Nothing. Nothing at all. Tell me, how is Mary-Beth taking the good news?’

  ‘Thrilled, sums it up. Mary-Beth wants to take me shopping on the weekend.’

  ‘Maternity clothes?’

  ‘And a few things for me. She plans to improve me. A crash course in fashion sense.’

  ‘You could do worse, chérie.’

  I shrugged: ‘Maybe. I’ll need something to wear at the party.’

  ‘What party?’

  I glanced at him across my champagne: ‘Surely you’ve received your invitation?’

  He shook his head: ‘It must be in the post.’

  I laughed: ‘I’m sure it is in the post. You played
your part, Daddy.’

  He smiled, and raised his champagne flute: ‘I’ll believe an invitation to the White House when I see it. But here’s to moving up in the world.’

  We sipped, together.

  ‘Let’s enjoy it while we can, Tad. I’m still worried about birth defects. Using laser light bothers me, there’s a possibility of gene mutation. We’re stumbling about in the dark.’

  ‘You’ve arranged an ultrasound?’

  ‘Next week. Even that is too early to see much.’

  ‘You’ll be able to see if it doesn’t have a head.’

  ‘Don’t joke. Please.’

  I performed the scan myself; this was my baby in many senses — or mine and Tad’s. I wanted no intermediaries at First Glimpse. Especially if it had no head. Or arms, legs — whatever. Also, to get any kind of image at seven weeks takes some expertise. The human embryo is little more than a fish, a fingerling glued to the uterine wall. A leech. I spent some time sliding the probe across Mary-Beth’s oiled, water-bloated belly, eyes on the screen, pausing occasionally to select an image for printing.

  From time to time she lifted her head from the pillow: ‘Everything okay, Mara?’

  ‘Head back. Relax your tummy muscles. Everything looks fine.’

  She stared at the ceiling: ‘Should I be having other tests? What if there is some kind of defect?’

  ‘Don’t worry. Everything that can be accounted for at this stage is accounted for.’

  Head. Trunk. Two arm-buds, two proto-legs. I waited, immensely relieved, for the films to be developed as she dressed: yellow pleated skirt, yellow and cream blouse. Even the simple things look good on the Miss Tennessees of the world.

  Hollis Schultz was waiting in the anteroom; he rose eagerly as I entered. His wife might have delivered an actual child that day rather than its first grainy black and white image.

  He uttered familiar words: ‘Everything okay?’

  I beckoned: ‘Come and see for yourself.’

  He followed me into the viewing room; as the films emerged from the developer I pressed them against the screens. Mary-Beth joined us; we stood for some time in front of the glowing images. Each dark square of film was surrounded by a margin of white light, a rectangular halo.

  I pointed out the few visible features. Mary-Beth listened in silence, but there was a glow to her face, a radiance that was more than reflected light from the screens. Her husband, oddly, did not seem quite so pleased.

  ‘Are you certain there’s nothing wrong?’ he repeated, as if hoping otherwise.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong,’ Mary-Beth said. ‘And now we’re going to set a date for that shopping expedition, Mara. No more excuses. You need something for the party.’

  13

  A long white car collected me the following Saturday, a uniformed driver pulled open the door, Miss Tennessee was waiting inside. No concessions had yet been made to maternity in her own choice of clothes: pencil skirt, tight blouse. If pregnancy showed anywhere it was in the face: there was a hint of roundness, a new suppleness, as if the hormones of early pregnancy had deposited a little softening fat.

  We drove due east to the coast, then north along the esplanade. The sea spangled in the morning sun. Dark heads bobbed in the tumbling foam closer inshore; surf and sail-board riders twisted and skittered across the waves further out. Blueness and brightness drenched the glassy car; I felt almost optimistic about the ordeal of shopping as the chauffeur angle parked in a taxi rank on the mall.

  I stepped out after Mary-Beth; we walked some distance among the milling shoppers, leaving the driver in his car. Buskers were making music here and there, or spruiking outside shops for business. An earnest young woman thrust a leaflet into Mary-Beth’s hands; she glanced at the inscription and passed it to me: ‘Isn’t that a nice thought? I wonder if she’s from the Church.’

  Jesus Loves You, I read, beneath a picture of a cross. I flipped the leaflet over: But Everyone Else Thinks You’re a Cunt.

  I balled the leaflet, and dropped it into a passing bin before she could inspect it further: ‘I don’t think so.’

  She slipped her arm into mine again; we walked on, together. A teenager was shouting into a payphone receiver further along the mall: ‘And don’t ever ring me here again.’

  Inexplicable events, both of these: signs of unpredictability, as if natural law were breaking down. Or so I might have thought, if I had been in any way superstitious.

  As we walked, heads turned about us, the men’s especially: their eyes seeking out Mary-Beth’s eyes, or sliding up and down her elegant body; absurd tom cats, still no doubt watching from behind after she had passed, sniffing the air as their wives tugged at their sleeves, tugged them back to the real world.

  I couldn’t have stood it: all that attention, that invasion.

  I followed her in and out of various small fashion houses. She insisted I try things; I insisted nothing suited. And so she would try enough garments for both of us, still making no concessions to maternity.

  It occurred to me as I trekked through the boutiques in her wake that she was lonely, that she had no women friends. Her visits to me, professionally, and the two occasions I had dined at the White House had apparently qualified me for the role of Best Friend.

  ‘Mara, we should stop somewhere for a coffee. There’s a little bistro on the mall I’ve always wanted to try.’

  We turned in beneath a striped canopy. The cafe was packed, blue-rinsed heads mostly: Gold Coast widows, with clutches of boutique bags sitting on the floor beside their blue-veined feet. We found a corner table; ordered cakes, and cappuccinos, the most expensive coffee and cakes I have ever eaten.

  ‘This is nice,’ my new Best Friend said. ‘We should have done this before.’

  She was forced to raise her voice to be heard. We might have been sitting in an aviary: dozens of high, gossiping, bird voices. How happy these women were, I thought: these widows, freed at last from the ballast of their dead husbands, like balloons, rising and growing.

  ‘My friends here are mostly Hollis’s friends,’ MaryBeth was saying. ‘Business friends. What I miss most are days like this. Out with the girls. Shopping, gossiping. Lunch.’

  I was right — she was lonely. She sipped at her cappuccino fluff, delicately.

  ‘I hope you won’t be angry,’ she said, ‘but I bought you something. Secretly. A gift.’

  I snorted: ‘Why would I be angry?’

  ‘You can seem rather … disapproving, Mara. I am just a little afraid of you sometimes.’

  She was smiling, afraid of nothing: ‘Sometimes you make me feel … as if I’m too frivolous.’

  ‘I’m sorry. If …’

  She covered my hand with her own, completely in charge. I had always thought her one of that race of women who can never be too rich, or too thin — a cartoon woman. There seemed something new in her: a dimension of depth, or thickness.

  ‘I’m not expressing this well. In many ways we are opposites. I know that. But that makes for richer friendships. We can learn from each other, don’t you think?’

  Without waiting for an answer she reached down among the parcels at her feet, extracting a garment which she unfolded and held against her chest.

  ‘The satin jacket from that little Italian place. It does suit you, Mara.’

  I was trapped: ‘Thank you.’

  ‘There’s one other thing,’ she said, and paused, still smiling disarmingly.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I want you to meet my hairdresser. I have some ideas for your hair. Something a little different. Would you trust me on that?’

  I almost laughed out loud. How had I come to this: sitting over cakes and cappuccino with a Miss Tennessee Semi-Finalist, trading beauty tips?

  ‘You should meet my mother,’ I said.

  ‘I would like to, Mara. Now I want to talk about shoes. You need something to set off the jacket. I know a place …’

  Her party the following week was a great success.
I can’t speak for my new clothes. Apart from Tad’s cocked, amused eye as I dressed and Mary-Beth’s gush of praise when I arrived, no one commented. Tad had forgone his weekend Brisbane trip to escort me; he deserted me as soon as we arrived for more congenial company. For a time I bounced aimlessly among the chatting groups of guests. Scanlon was nowhere in sight, and by ten I’d had enough. I left early, unable to manufacture small talk in sufficient quantities to sustain my side of the various conversations that entangled me.

  Tad remained, drinking heavily, talking loudly, thrilled to have been invited, his spirits high. I didn’t hear him come in.

  14

  Three weeks later I repeated the ultrasound scan, hearing again the familiar refrain as I wiped a smear of conducting oil across her smooth belly: ‘Everything okay?’

  ‘I haven’t started yet,’ I said.

  Everything seemed in place: head, arms, legs, scrotum. Scrotum? For some time I stood paralysed, staring at the screen, disbelieving.

  Mary-Beth lifted her head, her belly tightened, the image blurred and vanished: ‘What’s wrong?’

  I began sliding the probe across her oiled skin again, trying to think, mouthing the usual recorded messages: ‘Everything’s fine. Don’t worry. Relax.’

  How much of my surprise had been transmitted? Mothers have a sixth sense for this kind of thing: an ear for the slightest omission, hesitation, nuance.

  She lifted her head again and looked into my eyes: ‘If something’s wrong, I want to know, Mara. I’m not an idiot. I have a right to know.’

  Things were not so much wrong, as impossible. How to tell her? I regurgitated more soothing noises: ‘The baby looks a bit bigger than expected.’

  She was mollified, temporarily: ‘Hollis wants to see the pictures again,’ she said. ‘He’s such a worrier.’

  She was speaking for herself, projecting her own anxieties on to her husband.

  ‘Slip your clothes back on. The two of you can wait in my office. I’ll be along when the films are ready. In a few minutes. Alison can fix you both a coffee.’

  I sat alone in the viewing room, re-examining the printed films. Was it possible that I was looking at an artifact, a flaw in the developing process; that it wasn’t a penis-bud sprouting between those tiny legs?