by Kris Webb
After a moment’s hesitation Karen promised me that my décolletage was not obscene. Thankfully, her husband Sam wasn’t home, as I soon realised that in order to give Sarah her last feed I had to unzip the back of my dress and lift the whole thing up to my shoulders. When dressing I’d decided that, as no one was going to see them, pantihose were a much better option than uncomfortable stockings and suspenders, and even Karen was unable to suppress a smile at the very unglamorous picture I presented. As soon as I was finished and had reassembled my clothing, she chased me out the door, assuring me that everything would be perfectly fine.
Feeling like a country cousin who’d just come into town, I pushed my way through the crowds at Altitude, a bar that had become fashionable during my absence from the drinking scene.
‘Sophie!’ Debbie cried, grabbing my arm as I headed past. I hadn’t seen her next to the towering blond man she was talking to.
‘Here,’ she said, shoving a drink in my hand. ‘There was a crowd at the bar so I thought I’d get you one while I was there.
‘Actually,’ she corrected herself, ‘I thought Jason could get you one while he was there.’ She gestured at the Adonis in front of me. ‘Wow,’ she said admiringly as she looked at the front of my dress. ‘That’s got to be the first benefit of having a baby I’ve seen so far.’
Being in a bar with Debbie, attendant men and the various other people I knew, felt like old times. Smiling happily I took a big gulp of my drink, feeling the tingle of the tonic water and the subtle taste of gin as it slipped down my throat. No matter how much I told myself straight tonic water should taste the same as tonic water containing gin, it just didn’t.
Within fifteen minutes of my arrival, I thought I was going to have to call the nearest hospital to have them send someone to deal with the cases of whiplash I was causing. Each time I spotted someone I hadn’t seen for a while the reaction was the same. They smiled at me, obviously saw something in their peripheral vision, looked down, clocked my breasts and then jolted their head back up again to check that it was really me.
Never having been an exhibitionist, I felt I’d come out half dressed and wished fervently that I’d chosen a turtleneck jumper instead of my low-cut dress. I tried to hide the display by holding my drink across my chest, but Debbie spotted me from across the room and frowned her disapproval. Abandoning any attempt at modesty, I resorted to alcohol, and before I knew it, was draining the dregs of my second gin and tonic from around the ice.
Two drinks a night was my self-imposed limit while I was feeding Sarah and my spirits sank as I contemplated the rest of the evening on lime sodas. However, at that moment another drink miraculously appeared in my hand, courtesy of Brian, a friend I hadn’t seen since Sarah was born.
Well, it would be rude not to drink it, given that Brian had bought it for me, I thought as I sipped my first vodka and cranberry juice in a very long time.
‘How are you, Sophie?’ asked Brian after the now-expected double take.
‘Great,’ I answered truthfully as the alcohol began its job of soothing away all my concerns and making me feel that being in this bar with these people was the only thing in the world I wanted to be doing right now. This mildly drunken feeling was the thing I’d missed the most, that feeling that the whole world was my friend.
‘You look fantastic,’ Brian said admiringly, greatly helping my state of mind. ‘You know, I’ve read about women with babies who look sensational but I’ve never met one. I can’t believe I finally know a yummy mummy.’
Despite suspecting that the drink in Brian’s hand was by no means his first, I was pleased by his comment. Yummy mummy indeed, I thought to myself.
The vodka and cranberry juice was gone by the time I left Brian and I felt a flash of resentment at the fact that I was the only person in this bar counting my drinks. Reaching the bar I ordered drinks for a number of people and, about to order a mineral water for myself, changed my mind and ordered another gin and tonic.
I looked around and caught the eye of a man standing nearby. Damn, I thought as I saw him move towards me. Being pregnant had made me careless. I was so used to men spotting my pregnant belly and making large detours around me, that I had forgotten one of the fundamental rules of drinking in bars – never make eye contact with someone you haven’t made a conscious decision to talk to.
Relax, I told myself as he headed towards me. He looked okay and I had to get used to meeting new men.
‘Hi there,’ my new companion said. ‘Having a good night?’
‘Yes, I am, thanks,’ I replied. ‘The music’s good, isn’t it?’
I mentally patted myself on the back. While my conversation wasn’t exactly breathtaking, it was better than asking him if he had kids.
‘Yeah, it is,’ he said. ‘My name’s Nick, by the way.’
‘I’m Sophie,’ I smiled.
‘I’d like to dance, but all my marathon running has hurt my knees. If I danced I’d have to ice down my knees afterwards, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to walk for days,’ Nick volunteered. ‘I’ve just had an arthroscopy on my left knee. When I went to the physiotherapist he tried to tell me I couldn’t do anything active for months, but I said to him, “I’m an athlete, I have to exercise.” I’ve got good genes, though – my dad died recently at eighty-nine and my grandfather was ninety-four when he died.’
‘Right . . .’ I ventured.
Oblivious to my lack of enthusiasm, Nick continued on with the saga of his running career. If this was the singles scene, then I’d take an evening with Baywatch any time.
How could I get rid of him? I discarded the idea of showing him my stretch marks, although only after having given it serious consideration. Getting another drink was the only option, I decided, looking at my full glass. Swallowing the contents in one gulp, I leapt in as soon as Nick drew breath and said, ‘Lovely to talk to you, Nick, but I’ve got to get another drink. I’ll catch you later, okay?’ and dived back into the crowd.
As I shouldered my way back through the throng towards my friends, Vicky arrived with a tray of vodka jelly shots, a house specialty. She wouldn’t take no for an answer as she moved around the group with the tray, dispensing the dollops of vodka-infused jelly which sat in small plastic cups, a toothpick sticking out of the top.
Just one wouldn’t hurt, I told myself as I expertly cut the jelly away from the cup with the toothpick, upended it on the back of my hand and swallowed it in a single gulp. Eating jelly shots was definitely an acquired skill and could go horribly wrong. I still shudder to recall an occasion years ago when I’d been with a man I desperately wanted to impress, and had ended up with jelly half in and half out of my mouth for what seemed an eternity.
Our group grew increasingly raucous as the drinks kicked in and the music thumped in the background. There was nothing like Friday nights, I thought in a pleasant fog as I accepted another jelly shot. People were in high spirits, the reality of Monday morning seemingly an eternity away.
Altitude had a long bar running its length and various tables dotted around. A song finished and a short, dark-haired girl jumped on a nearby table with a microphone in her hand and, to the delight of everyone around her, proceeded to sing ‘Stands to Reason’, a song which had recently rocketed to the top of the charts.
The girl looked very familiar and I racked my mind to think where I had seen her. Suddenly I realised she was Fleur Stanhope, the pop star who had made the song a hit. I recalled now that she lived in Sydney. Open-mouthed, I watched the rest of the performance, impressed that I was in a bar so cool that singers popped in to perform impromptu renditions of their hits.
After she’d finished, I rejoined a large group of my friends who were standing off to one side. ‘Can you believe we just heard Fleur Stanhope sing?’ I gushed during a pause in the conversation.
‘What?’ asked a small man called Laurence who sported slicked-back dark hair.
‘Fleur Stanhope,’ I repeated. ‘Wasn’t she great?’
‘Oh,’ I replied inanely, belatedly remembering that the place I’d seen Joyce Johnston was at the supermarket near home, not on television. My gin and vodka haze was not thick enough to prevent me seeing the amused glances exchanged. Muttering something about going to the bathroom, I turned to leave. Unfortunately, as I did so I tripped over nothing and lurched away.
Finding myself adrift amongst groups of loud drinkers I didn’t recognise, I decided that the quiet of the toilets might not be such a bad idea. A cubicle at the end was vacant and I headed towards it. However, as I turned into it, the room seemed to tilt and I hit one side of the door and then the other as I tried to fit my body into what seemed to be an impossibly narrow space.
Finally managing the manoeuvre, I closed the door and leant against it, trying to figure out what was going wrong. Deciding that going to the toilet was way too difficult, I pulled the door open and walked back out. A woman with big breasts, hair standing in peaks in several places and eyeliner smudged around both of her eyes, looked back at me in the mirror. Thinking optimistically that I might be able to repair some of the damage with a comb and some lipstick, I opened my handbag. Wedged in on top of everything else was a breast pad in its plastic packet. For a moment the gin and tonics and vodka shots were swept away, and I remembered with a jolt what I’d managed to forget for the last few hours. I was a mother, who was due back to look after her daughter – I looked at my watch – one hour ago.
The alcohol and its effects surged back, but the memory of Sarah didn’t disappear. Abandoning any attempt to restore my appearance, I stumbled back out into the bar in search of Debbie.
‘There you are, Sophie,’ Debbie said before I’d gone two steps. ‘I’ve been looking for you. Laurence said you might need a hand.’
‘I’ve jush realised the time, Debbie,’ I slurred. ‘I’ve got to go in case Sarah wakes up an neesh feeding.’
‘Okay,’ Debbie answered, obviously agreeing with my decision. ‘Come on, I’ll take you back to Karen’s.’
I allowed myself to be led out of the bar and deposited in a taxi which was mercifully cruising by, the rush on cabs not yet having started. Debbie slid in beside me and I dimly heard her telling the cab driver something, before I put my head on her shoulder and instantly fell asleep.
What seemed like two seconds later, the cab pulled up and Debbie shook me awake. ‘Come on, Sophie, we’re here,’ she said, pulling me out of the taxi onto the footpath.
‘Do you have a key or do we have to wake Karen up?’ she asked.
At Karen’s name my memory stirred. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a key. I’m going to sleep in the study with Sarah.’
‘Thank God for that,’ Debbie muttered as she felt around in my handbag for the key, which she pulled out and put in the lock.
Helped by Debbie’s guiding hand, I made it down the corridor without dislodging any of the pictures on the walls, and into the study. Spotting Sarah’s portacot I lunged for it and hung onto the top looking at my beautiful daughter fast asleep.
‘Sophie, do not wake that child,’ Debbie whispered fiercely in my ear as she prised my hands off the cot and sat me down on the mattress on the floor. After pulling off my shoes, she pushed me onto my back.
‘Go to sleep, Sophie. I’ll call you tomorrow.’
My eyes clanged shut and I was lost in dreamless oblivion before she’d even left the room.
The sound of a baby’s crying reached me as though from a great distance. Rolling over I pulled the pillow across my head in an effort to shut out the noise. It didn’t go away, however, and I was gradually pulled up through the layers of sleep to consciousness. With a start I realised that it was Sarah crying, and the realisation of where I was hit me a fraction of a second before the crushing headache.
I had no way of knowing how long it had taken for Sarah’s crying to wake me. Karen’s kids’ rooms weren’t far from the study, though, and I picked her up in a panic, desperate to quieten her before she woke the whole household. Past experience had taught me that nothing but milk could pacify Sarah at this hour and I went to pull up my shirt to feed her.
‘Shit!’ I realised that I was still wearing my dress. Laying Sarah, who was now hysterical, on the mattress, I struggled with the zip at the back of my dress, finally pulling it over my head.
A beautiful silence descended as I held Sarah to my breast and she started feeding. In an attempt to try to calm the vicious thumping in my left temple, I closed my eyes and leant against the wall. I must have dozed off and was woken when Sarah made a noise. She had finished feeding and was looking up at me, obviously trying to figure out was going on.
It was as I lowered her back into her cot that I suddenly realised the milk Sarah had just drunk must have had an awful lot of gin and vodka swishing around in it. Panic and guilt hit me simultaneously as I tried to think what effect my binge would have on my poor, trusting daughter.
My first thought was to wake Karen and find out how serious she thought the situation was. However, some perspective returned as I visualised myself leaning over Karen and Sam’s bed and shaking her awake to tell her I’d fed Sarah after a night on jelly shots. I’d never heard of a baby having its stomach pumped because of an overindulgent mother, so I figured that there was nothing more I could do tonight.
Lying down, I tried to go back to sleep, but despite the heaviness of my eyelids and the thumping inside my head, I tossed and turned for the next couple of hours until I heard the sound of someone in the kitchen.
Sarah was still sleeping as I pulled on the clothes I’d left in the room the night before and stumbled out. Karen was standing at the coffee machine in a pair of jeans and white T-shirt, looking like someone out of a breakfast cereal commercial.
‘Good morn –’ Her greeting trailed off as she registered my hungover appearance.
‘Hi,’ I answered glumly, sitting down heavily on the bench seat running the length of the table.
‘Big night?’ Karen asked cautiously.
‘You could say so,’ I answered. ‘I don’t know what happened; one minute I was finishing my second drink and contemplating the rest of the evening on soft drink, and the next I’d had half a dozen jelly shots and God knows how many gin and tonics. Karen, I honestly forgot about Sarah for a couple of hours.’
Karen was about to speak but I interrupted her. ‘And the worst thing is that I fed her a couple of hours ago before I even thought about what the alcohol would do. Could it hurt her?’ I was almost in tears.
Karen sat down and put her arm around me. ‘I don’t really know, but I don’t think it will do anything worse than give her some heartburn and make her feel a bit off-colour for the day.’
‘Did you ever do it?’ I asked, hoping to hear that my lapse was normal.
‘Well, no . . .’ Karen said. ‘But I know a few women who did,’ she continued quickly. ‘And their babies are fine. When Sarah wakes up you can give her the bottle you left, and by her next feed most of the alcohol should be gone anyway. In the meantime, I think you need a very strong coffee.’
After I’d drunk my coffee and refused all offers of food, Sarah woke up. She was uncharacteristically grumpy and every time she cried I felt a stab of guilt. She wouldn’t drink much of the bottle of milk, so I decided to head home, wanting to deal with my first hangover in over a year and my unhappy daughter in my own home.
Mercifully, Sarah fell asleep as soon as we arrived home, and I wasn’t far behind her. When we both awoke it was almost eleven. For ten minutes I told myself I wouldn’t go to the King Street Cafe, that I’d plead illness or a death in my family, anything that would prevent me leaving the house within the next week. Eventually, though, I dragged myself into the shower, pulled some clothes on and tottered out the door with Sarah in the baby
sling.
For the first time in months I was the last to arrive at the cafe. As I walked in the door Andrew leapt to his feet with a salt shaker in his hand and everyone burst into a rendition of ‘Stands to Reason’.
I glowered at Debbie from behind my sunglasses for several seconds, realising that I should have expected the story of my exploits last night to have reached the cafe before I did. Despite myself I started laughing, then sat down beside Anna, trying to decide whether one fried breakfast would be enough or whether I should order two.
FIFTEEN
Debbie had insisted that I go to the meeting with David Fletcher. She had justified this at great length on the basis that (in her words) my skills of tact and persuasion would be much more use than her rather blunter approach, given that we had to convince David to make a strong commitment on the basis of a mocked-up baby book and some pretty vague prices. However, I had my suspicions that her reluctance to go had more to do with the fact that David had rejected her advances, a situation Debbie was very unaccustomed to dealing with.
If I was going to attend my first business meeting post-baby, I was determined to at least look the part. So the day before, I showed up at my hairdresser, hoping a cut would restore the damage done by motherhood. You’ll notice I say ‘cut’ and not ‘trim’, having once been chastised by a hairdresser who was hurt by my having called his masterly re-creation of my existing style a trim.
Real estate agents say that the three most important factors for property investment are location, location and location. I believe that this is equally true for hairdressing salons. I am constantly amazed that hairdressers set up their flashy salons on busy streets with huge plate-glass windows which allow everyone to see exactly what is going on inside. When I am sitting in the chair, half my hair wrapped in aluminium foil and the rest of it plastered to my scalp, I do not want anyone I know to peer in the window and wave at me.
My theory is that all hairdressers are privy to a closely guarded secret imparted to them when they finish their apprenticeship, regardless of whether they work in a cut-price joint in suburbia or a swanky establishment in the middle of town. That secret is that they must make their clients look as ugly as possible before they start to cut their hair. And so they dress you in a big black waterproof poncho, wash your hair (ensuring that any makeup runs in the process), wrap your hair in a bottle-green towel and then put you in front of a huge mirror under fluorescent lights that turn any facial blemish a bright red.