Tiddas

by Anita Heiss

  ‘Oh God,’ Veronica cried out, recalling the last time they’d even made love in a way that wasn’t simply about coming, with feeling, with any sense of desire. It had been years. And then it hit her that it had also been years since she’d felt wanted or even appreciated by the man she had devoted her life and her heart to. As rain began to fall, Veronica sobbed uncontrollably in the darkness. ‘Why, why, why?’ she moaned, blaming herself, as women often do, for loving an emotionally inept man who couldn’t love her back.

  Richard being there for Nadine on a daily basis was another painful reminder of the life she didn’t have with her ex; hers had only ever been a life of washing and cleaning and cooking and being mother and wife. It was a life she’d always been content with because she felt needed, loved, even wanted, by at least one of her sons at any given time. It never bothered her until she wasn’t needed or wanted anymore, by anyone. Since Alex and her eldest two sons had left the family home, all that she felt she had was low self-esteem and no sense of identity.

  Veronica hadn’t signed the divorce papers when the courier delivered them earlier in the day. Instead, she’d just collapsed against the wall and wept, feeling a sense of complete personal and matrimonial failure. She had convinced herself long ago the divorce would be her penance for getting pregnant to the first man she met and slept with and then had to marry. And although she loved him, and the children she and Alex had together, she still filled her head with a silent conversation that could only cause more harm to her already brutalised heart. As far as Veronica could tell, the other tiddas appeared to have anguish-free lives. They were happy and content; she was the loser of the group. She didn’t want to add to her own sense of helplessness by exposing herself in all her woe-is-me misery, but she didn’t know how much more sadness she could lug around with her either. Something had to give.

  Inside, Xanthe in her organised way tidied up the living room and crawled into bed, aiming to stay awake until Spencer got home from visiting his brother down at Helensvale. She tried to meditate, to stop thinking about anything at all: next week’s schedule, Ellen and Izzy’s comments about her being ‘upper’, how Nadine had managed to spill a drink on her favourite cushion. Admittedly, she’d offered to pay to get it dry-cleaned, but Xanthe just wished her tidda wouldn’t get pissed every time they got together. As she tried to block everything from her mind, she ran her hand over her belly and started getting maudlin.

  She was thirty-nine; even with IVF she only stood a fifty-five per cent chance of a live birth, not just a pregnancy. Was it even worth the effort? What would Spencer think? Could they afford it? They’d only broached the subject briefly, but this week she’d started researching for the first time. Why couldn’t she just fall pregnant like other women did?

  3

  DAMNING DISCLOSURES

  It was an overcast but warm Easter Saturday. The city was peaceful but the tiddas were all in different states of emotional chaos. Izzy was feeling nauseous; she wasn’t sure if it was from being pregnant, or because she’d decided she was finally going to tell her closest friends she was ‘expecting’. She needed support, help and advice, and she needed to be reassured that whatever decision she made would be supported by her friends. She needed wisdom from the women she trusted most, and women who had already had children, or at least thought positively about having children. She hoped she could count on her tiddas, because she would need the courage to tell her mother and advice on whether or not to tell Asher at all. In the meantime, Tracey had left so many messages on her phone, Izzy’s voicemail was full.

  Veronica was cleaning the house, trying to pass time and not think about the meaningless life she felt she now led. She had taken her anti-depressants, which helped to a degree, but she often fell back into her negative way of thinking. She hated taking the pills. Being married to a doctor, she’d seen and heard about enough women over the years who got sucked into what they thought was helping them, and in some instances was nothing more than a placebo. She was walking every day to clear her head as much as possible, but she just couldn’t stop crying.

  Xanthe and Spencer were post-coital, bodies entwined, physically united, but their thoughts couldn’t be any further apart. Xanthe wondered why they weren’t talking about IVF when she’d broached it a number of times, but knew Spencer was probably more concerned about the next month’s State of Origin match. Spencer stroked Xanthe’s hair and dozed back to sleep.

  Meanwhile Ellen woke up in her new flat with a six-pack lying next to her in bed. His hairless butt faced upwards, the word ‘Rockstar’ tattooed in red ink stretched across the biggest bicep she’d ever seen. The electrician, known only to her as ‘The Sparky’, had come over on Thursday afternoon to do some wiring in the bathroom, and hadn’t left since. I’m reno-dating, she thought to herself.

  Nadine sat on her back veranda watching the kids and Richard work in the vegie patch – there were now a dozen pumpkins she had no idea what they’d do with. Pumpkin scones, pumpkin bread, roasted pumpkin, dip, soup, curry, what else? Was there a pumpkin cocktail she didn’t know about or should invent? She observed the action through dark glasses, with blurry vision and a pounding head – a normal Saturday morning for her. Although only a passenger, Nadine wasn’t really looking forward to the long drive into Paddington, and hoped they made a good Bloody Mary at Eurovida.

  ‘I just don’t understand why he doesn’t want to talk about IVF as an option.’ Xanthe was on the verge of tears as the girls listened again to her conception problems.

  ‘Isn’t it too early to be thinking about it though? Have you actually been trying naturally for that long?’ Veronica asked.

  ‘We’re both thirty-nine,’ Xanthe took a deep breath, ‘and they say a woman’s fertility drops at thirty-six, and we’ve been trying for a year. In reality, we probably should’ve started talking about this six months ago, two years ago even.’ Xanthe was agitated, angry with herself for being so career-focused she’d almost forgotten about having the family they’d both talked about before even getting married.

  ‘For what it’s worth, I don’t buy all that test-tube crap,’ Nadine added coldly, as if they were talking about choosing a brand of toothpaste, not a method of conceiving. ‘Just relax and let it happen naturally,’ she added unsympathetically, still wearing her sunglasses and twirling the celery in her Bloody Mary.

  Veronica glared at Nadine for being so insensitive, and Xanthe struck back with anger and sarcasm in her shaky voice. ‘That’s easy for you to say, when without any effort you had two children who you don’t even seem to like half the time.’

  There was silence all round as Xanthe’s words hit everyone with the same degree of ‘Ouch!’

  Xanthe retracted her statement immediately. ‘I’m sorry, really. I shouldn’t have said that. This whole situation is making me nuts. But that’s no excuse, I really am sorry, Nadine.’ Xanthe reached across the table, and put her hand on top of Nadine’s in a warm display of apology and friendship.

  ‘Like water off a duck’s back,’ Nadine said generously. ‘No offence taken, darling, you’re right. I don’t like them half the time, you can borrow them whenever you like. And then you’ll prefer contraception over conception, believe me.’ Although she loved her kids, Nadine knew she was a crappy mother a lot of the time. She was trying to lighten the mood, but it didn’t help Xanthe.

  Two waitresses brought a round of coffees and breakfasts and the atmosphere immediately became less tense. The table was alive with colour and aromas: Middle Eastern fruit loaf, grilled chorizo, eggs, macadamia and cranberry granola, and another Bloody Mary for Nadine. The girls started on what looked to be the perfect Easter feast and while the conversation slowed, it hadn’t ended.

  Spreading the pineapple honey quark on her toast, Xanthe continued, ‘What about you, Vee? What do you think I should do?’ Xanthe was determined to walk away with some clarity on the issue, at least for herself. She needed to put her mind at rest. If her husband wasn’t interes
ted in IVF, and her dearest friends thought it was a bad idea, then maybe she should just let it go. ‘I value your point of view, Vee.’ Xanthe also assumed that having been married to a GP for so long Veronica might have some added insight.

  ‘Medically, I think IVF is an important option for couples who might otherwise never be able to have children. I know how distressing it was for Alex when he had to tell couples they were in infertile and couldn’t conceive.’ Veronica momentarily thought back to the years when she and her husband still talked about his working day, and he off-loaded the stress, without breaking confidentiality; he appreciated his wife’s sympathetic ear. That had been many years ago, but she’d never forgotten those times. ‘To tell someone they’ve run out of options when it came to having their own child was one of the hardest things about his job, I think.’

  ‘Oh Vee, I want to have a baby so badly, and IVF means there’s one more option for me doing that.’ With that, it seemed as if Xanthe had made up her mind that it would be the next step in trying. The only step. The last step. But she couldn’t take the step without Spencer.

  ‘Then I think you should investigate how to go about it, and if it’s right for you, then go for it.’ Veronica appeared fully supportive as she dug deep into her granola.

  Xanthe felt happy, positive, supported and mostly grateful to Veronica, and expressed her gratitude with what she thought was a compliment: ‘I want to have a healthy family like yours.’

  To everyone’s surprise Veronica burst into tears.

  ‘Oh God, what’s wrong?’ Izzy asked, quickly grabbing a tissue from her tote and handing it to Veronica.

  ‘What did I say?’ Xanthe felt guilty – and perplexed – at inadvertently upsetting her dear tidda.

  ‘Everyone’s healthy, but there’s no family anymore. I’m so sad all the time. I have no life. I have no purpose. I have nothing.’ Veronica cried harder and put her head in her hands; her wedding, engagement and eternity rings still on her left hand looked like they’d just been cleaned.

  ‘I signed the divorce papers recently,’ she sniffed, ‘and it was as if the marriage meant nothing.’ She blew her nose hard and reached into her handbag to search for a hanky. ‘I’m sorry, Xanthe,’ Veronica took a breath, ‘I didn’t mean to interfere with your conversation this morning.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Xanthe said, touching her tidda’s forearm. ‘I’m worried about you. We’re all worried about you.’ Xanthe looked to the other women for support, which they returned with smiles, nods and words of agreement. ‘It’s just that you seem so much wiser than me, having kids so young and raising them and making a home life while we were all still at uni or working. It just feels like you’re the big sister I never had.’ Xanthe was sincere, and for the first time articulated what the other tiddas had also always felt about Vee. The role of the ‘wise one’ was not something Veronica had ever considered, but it was a mantle that gave her some strength now. Not one to hog attention, however, she wanted to turn the spotlight back on Xanthe.

  ‘Please, let’s talk about you, about you having a baby,’ Veronica managed to get out in one breath. ‘At least you’re doing it the right way around, Xanthe,’ Veronica added, sounding more like her mother – or the big sister, as it were. ‘Not like me, getting married because I was pregnant.’ She burst into tears again.

  ‘You loved each other when you got married, Vee. You know that, he knows that. You had two decades of marriage which many people today don’t have.’ That was what Xanthe was thinking about when she said she wanted a family like Veronica’s. The foundation was there, even if Alex had decided to walk away from it later on.

  ‘And the kids turned out great, they’re perfect,’ Izzy said.

  ‘Perfect!’ the other women echoed seriously.

  Even though they all got bored over the years hearing about how ‘perfect’ Vee’s kids were, they knew that her success as a mother was the most important thing in her world. She measured her own self-esteem by how her boys were doing; and her tiddas all acknowledged Veronica’s sons were well-mannered, wonderful young men because of their mother. Apart from leading sporting and debating teams at school, as Veronica’s sons matured into young men, they would do anything around the house she asked them to without effort or argument. They always offered a seat and a cuppa to the tiddas when they visited, and would often take the time to yarn with their mother after their father abandoned her. By most standards of Australian males, Vee’s boys were perfect, and all the tiddas knew it.

  ‘Yes, but there’s no family left now,’ Veronica sniffed some more. ‘He’s gone, they’ve gone and all I have are divorce papers, and a mostly empty house.’ She felt gutted, her heart ripped out, no spirit left in her. ‘I’m just so sad all the time,’ she sobbed again.

  ‘Ah, but you’ve got the Lexus!’ Ellen grinned at her friend in an attempt to lighten the moment.

  ‘And the boys adore you, and John will probably never move out of home,’ Izzy said.

  Veronica smiled at the thought of the baby of the family living in the huge house with her. ‘John is a good boy. I don’t want him to move out. I probably wouldn’t eat much if I didn’t have to cook for him and his mates.’ Veronica finally smiled, realising the joy being a mum brought her, and it spurred her to get back to the topic of Xanthe’s IVF commitment.

  ‘Enough of my misery,’ she said, wiping her nose, ‘let’s talk about beautiful things like babies, because they can turn out to be like John. And my kids are my greatest achievement in life.’ She smiled again, feeling that she had done at least one useful thing to date.

  Ellen moved some of the plates and empty coffee cups to the table next to them, looking as if her mind was miles away.

  ‘You’ve been very quiet this morning, Isobel,’ Nadine said to her sister-in-law in a somewhat serious voice.

  Only Izzy’s mother called her Isobel and that was reserved for when she was in trouble as a child and teenager. Izzy started tearing a serviette into tiny pieces.

  ‘What is it?’ Nadine asked, concern in her voice. ‘Don’t make me go home and get Richard to call his little sister for a chat.’

  Oh God, that was the last thing that Izzy wanted. She hadn’t even thought about how her brother might react. His little sister pregnant to someone he’d never even met. He’d never liked any bloke she’d introduced him to in the past and that was usually a nothing situation. Telling him about the baby would almost be worse than telling her mother. She didn’t want to tell either of them, and was only telling the girls because she was desperate. Keeping it to herself as she experienced a whole range of body changes was sending her quietly insane.

  ‘Izzy,’ Ellen said firmly, knowing her friend well enough to see something was wrong.

  Izzy dropped the serviette on the table as a wave of nausea swept across her. It was the sickest she’d felt since watching the distinct pink stripe appear on the pregnancy test stick. She closed her eyes and thought back to the warm Wednesday morning when she’d sat with the bathroom door open in her flat, waiting, waiting, waiting. Squatting over the toilet trying to pee on the stick had been awkward, but it was nothing compared to how awkward she felt when she’d been bluntly told three times, by three different sticks, that she was pregnant. Tears of shock had fallen that morning, but she hadn’t cried since. She blew air out her mouth again as she noticed her tiddas glaring at her with anticipation.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Xanthe asked.

  Izzy took a deep breath and struggled to look Xanthe in the eye; she knew what she was about to say was going to hit her tidda like a ton of pregnancy tests, none of them with pink stripes. ‘I didn’t know we were going to be talking about all this stuff today, important stuff, I mean your IVF plans, Xanthe.’ She turned to Veronica. ‘Or your sense of loss, Vee.’

  Veronica felt tears well again as Izzy looked at her with sympathy in her eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry, really I’m sorry it’s me and not you,’ she said directly to Xanthe.

/>   ‘Sorry for what? What’s you and not me?’ Xanthe asked, articulating everyone’s confusion.

  ‘It’s just . . .’ Izzy was stalling. The inevitable announcement would upset one of the people she loved most in the world.

  ‘What?’ Xanthe’s mind was racing. What could her tidda possibly have done to make her seem so angst-ridden?

  ‘I don’t know how to say this, and I really wish I didn’t have to.’ Izzy got that pre-vomit saliva build-up in her mouth and thought she should bolt from the table, but she swallowed hard and hoped it would stay down.

  ‘For fuck’s sake Izzy, just say it, we’re all worried now,’ Ellen said, echoing what the others were thinking.

  Izzy took a deep breath. ‘I’m pregnant,’ she said matter-of-factly. She sighed with relief and looked straight into her coffee cup, which was firmly gripped in both hands. She was grateful for the release, but still she felt like she’d just confessed to a serious crime.

  Silence fell as heavily on the tiddas as the humidity that usually blanketed the city in summer. The women looked anywhere else than at Xanthe. Izzy was pregnant. Xanthe wasn’t. Izzy never talked about wanting kids; her career, her media projects were her babies. It seemed like forever before someone said something.