‘A gravy cake, the sort of cake you’d bake a dog for its birthday!’
We laughed until we had tears.
I took that cake in to school the next day and when Ben wasn’t looking I whispered to the teacher.
‘Ben made it himself, so I hope it’s OK.’
‘It looks delicious,’ she said and I hotfooted it out of there as fast as I could.
The week passed uneventfully. As arranged, I didn’t call Clay and he didn’t call me. On Sunday morning, seven days after the revelation and promise to break off his engagement, he called and suggested we go to the beach. Ben and Toby were invited to a birthday party in Bondi Junction so I told Clay to pick me up at the edge of the mall.
‘They’re at the party for two and a half hours,’ I told him. ‘So if we go to Bondi, that will work best for me.’
‘Oh, I was going to take you to Coogee.’
‘Whatever,’ I said. ‘But you need to get me back in time.’
I was nervous. Bad Nikki was teasing me, telling me that he was going to break up with me. I wondered if I should confess my one-off tryst with Jay but decided against it. Clay and I had made no formal commitment to one another and his revelation of a secret fiancée had given me a moral green light to do whatever the hell I wanted. This was how I was dealing with my guilt. With high-horse justifications.
We went to lunch at Coogee because a strong breeze had picked up and we’d have had the skin sand-blasted from our bodies on the beach.
His embrace had been warm but stilted in the car and I had only lightly kissed him on the smooth cheek but my belly had somersaulted when I saw him and I felt a stabbing pang of something in the heart region.
‘So?’ I asked over lunch in a small dark café.
‘Yep,’ he said. ‘It’s all sorted.’
‘How did she take it?’
‘How do you think? Not well.’
I didn’t feel like eating and twiddled a rocket leaf in my fingers.
‘So …’
‘So.’
‘So that’s it? We just go back to how things were? Between us?’ I asked.
‘I hope so,’ he said, leaning across the table to me. ‘I meant it when I said I loved you, Nik. I really do.’
‘I love you too,’ I said, but it just didn’t feel the same as it had in the mountains.
‘I want to meet your boys,’ he said, patting his hands on the table. ‘I really should. I love their mum so I reckon I’ll love them too.’
‘They’re pretty easy to love.’
I told him about the gravy cake and he laughed, and soon the ice had melted and it started feeling normal again, like the fiancée had never existed.
‘You should invite me to your place for dinner.’ I smiled. ‘I’m keen to see if you’re a slob.’
‘Me?’ he laughed. ‘A slob? Come, come. Surely you jest.’
I did jest because everything about Clay suggested he was a perfectionist. His clothes were always immaculately clean and pressed, right down to his Calvin Kleins. His shoes were never blemished and his nails were beautifully manicured. His car was surgically clean.
‘Well, you know,’ I went on. ‘You come to my house all the time but …’
‘I’m in a share-house.’ He shrugged and twisted his mouth up. ‘And trust me, my flatmates are total pigs. Honestly, I can’t stand it. I live in my room. I go to work. Surf. Visit you. And only use that place to sleep. It’s appalling. A health hazard.’
‘So move,’ I said and almost suggested he move in with me, but fortunately bit my tongue; I’d never even considered that possibility and it was a huge step to take.
At home that night, I put the boys to bed in their bunks, leaving the lamp on to throw a beam of light over the poster of Jack Nicholson as the Joker, making him look even more comically menacing.
‘How’s your ulcer?’ I asked Toby.
He pulled down his lip to show me and I nodded and went to get the Bonjela and squeezed some onto my finger and dabbed at the little sore.
‘Ow,’ he shrieked.
‘You know the sting only lasts a few seconds and then you’ll be numb.’
I left the Bonjela on the side table in case he needed it again during the night.
‘Night, boys,’ I said. ‘Sleep now. No talking.’
‘Night, Mum,’ Toby said and blew me a kiss as I got to the door.
‘Hope Shadow doesn’t kill us in our sleep,’ Ben added.
‘If he was going to do that,’ I laughed, ‘he’d have done it ages ago.’
Clay and I went back to normal. It all fell back into the routine of work, school, stolen lunchtimes, the occasional coffee with Girl George and lots of long heart-to-heart phone calls to Kate in the Highlands because I missed her so much.
It was a few weeks later that I began getting the uncomfortable feeling that someone was missing. It’s hard to explain, but when I walked the boys to school one morning in November, as I watched them walk ahead of me, I turned around to see where ??? was. Like there should have been another person with us. I felt like an amputee with a phantom limb. Yes, there was a phantom limb haunting me: that was how I felt. So weird. Maybe I was missing Clay – though it wasn’t like he’d ever walked to school with us. He’d become a big part of my life so it was only natural, I guess, that I might miss him when he was not with me. Perhaps I wanted more of him than the thrice-weekly get-togethers. He still hadn’t met the boys, but his work schedule had been brutal and he was getting harder and harder to pin down.
I was crossing the road again on the way home by myself when the sensation hit me again; and it was even stronger and stranger. It was an overwhelmingly creepy feeling that someone was with me. Like a guardian angel or a ghost. A trickle of apprehension ran down my spine. Had something bad happened? Had someone somewhere died? Was I being followed by a ghost? I had had a similar feeling once before when I was a teenager. I’d woken up one morning with the whispery shadow of my boyfriend just frittering away, like a dream had followed me out into reality. Murray Johnston. Later that day I’d found out he’d been killed in a car accident (hence my pathological fear of driving). I’d always believed that the essence of Murray had lingered in this world just long enough to visit me to say goodbye, and just thinking about him all those years later hurt, like someone jabbed a red-hot poker into my eye. I was suddenly terrified that something bad had happened to Clay.
All morning I felt more and more uneasy. It was Tuesday. Melbourne Cup day. Kerri-Anne Kennerley or someone who looked just like her was in a fancy hat on the television, champagne flute aloft, going through the odds on various horses. This was a national day of celebration. The whole of Australia got pissed and made an arse of itself. It was kind of expected – the corks start popping at breakfast time and even the news reporters on television seemed drunk by mid-morning.
Girl George was collecting me at eleven. I felt a bit sick at the thought of the impending champagne glut, like a pre-emptive hangover. Maybe I was coming down with something that I’d picked up in the surgery. It wouldn’t have been the first time. I got dressed in a tight black mini-skirt and black jacket, black stockings and the only pair of heels I owned. Although I was hobbit-short, I hated being uncomfortable so jeans and sneakers were my usual uniform. That day, though, for the Members’ Moët Stand at the Randwick racecourse, I thought the stilettos were the way to go. I made a mental note not to get rolling drunk because if I fell over I’d break my neck.
I was staring into the bedroom mirror applying my pink lipstick when I looked into my eyes and I suddenly saw the spectre, the phantom, the mysterious spirit that had been stalking me. It was me. It was inside of me. I knew that look. My eyes gave it away. My face was glowing. I felt a wave of bile rise to my throat and dropped the lipstick, kicked off the shoes and ran like a madwoman down to the surgery. In the back storeroom, I rummage
d about until I found what I was looking for. Hand wedged into my coat pocket, I raced back upstairs to my bathroom, doing crazy calculations in my head as I ripped the package apart. I held the thing between my legs and peed into the toilet. I waited, holding my breath. My period was due. Or was it overdue? I thought hard: so hard my brain began to throb. I was always shite at remembering the dates and usually just had it spring upon me at the most inopportune times, like when I was wearing white pants. It might have been a day or two late but I already had the overwhelmingly wild feeling that I was harbouring an alien life form. Waiting. Waiting. I washed the pee off my fingers, heart racing, throat constricting. And there it was!
The thin blue positive sign.
There had been someone else hanging around. A goddamn embryo. A person. I was fricking pregnant! Sheesh. Well. Goddamn it all. A little Clay. Oh my God. Oh my God. I was pregnant. I wanted to scream. Really loud. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to cry. I just stood there. Frozen to the spot, stockings around my ankles.
I thought about it. How was it even possible? I was on the pill. It didn’t make sense. But it didn’t have to make sense because it was right there in front of me. Real. A real positive sign.
I laughed. What else could I do? I felt strangely elated. There’s something moving and beautiful about the moment when you discover that you’ve created life. I touched my belly.
‘Well, hi there,’ I whispered.
I did not know how Clay was going to deal with this bizarre turn of events. I didn’t know how I was going to deal with it.
Girl George arrived in a red 1967 Mustang that she had borrowed from her new boyfriend, who was overseas on business that week. Clay drove a crappy old Toyota thing. I didn’t really get why Girl George was such a rich-bloke magnet. I think it was the shampoo-commercial hair. Despite working and not starving, I was still not really able to afford a trip to the hairdresser. Rich guys liked good hair. I knew I would never have good hair. I had flyaway frizz that was pretty dead from years of bad home-dye jobs.
‘Hot chicks need a hot car!’ she declared.
‘I’m pregnant,’ I blurted out.
She laughed and doubled over, then stood back up and frowned. ‘Shit, you’re serious.’
‘Deadly.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Well I literally just washed the pee from my fingers. I’ve done three tests. All positive and I haven’t really had time to weigh up all the options. But I’m feeling clucky and—’
‘Stop it! Shut up!’ She put up her hands. ‘Stop it. You cannot have a baby. Look around at this unit. You’re on your own!’
‘Clay and I have said the L word,’ I groaned. ‘It’s getting pretty serious.’
‘Not have-a-baby-together serious!’ she said.
‘Well, I don’t know,’ I said back, pouting. ‘I’ll have to talk to him.’
‘It would be a gorgeous-looking little thing,’ she mused, looking thoughtful. ‘Hang on!’ she said and slapped a hand to her cheek, melodramatically. ‘What about that fling with Jay the rockstar?’
‘Don’t even!’ I shouted at her and then calmed down. ‘We used condoms. I was careful. So just don’t even. In fact don’t ever mention it again. Erase it from your brain. I have.’
‘Sorry,’ she said, raising her sleek eyebrows.
We drove to Randwick in pensive silence.
‘I need some champagne,’ Girl George finally said.
Champagne. I too was looking forward to a tall cool glass. But just one. I was seriously considering having this baby. Even if Clay ran a million miles, dumped me or insisted on an abortion, I was already considering just leaving Sydney and heading somewhere cheap to live and having the baby on my own. I knew I was not being rational. We’d only been seeing each other for about six months, but I felt a strange and strong compulsion to have the child. I was already thinking of it as a baby, not a cluster of parasitic cells. I’d done the abortion thing before, when I was a messed-up teenager. Then, I’d really not given myself an option. I was cold and calculated about the whole thing and did what needed to be done but now that I was a mother of two beloved boys, it was much harder to think about that as an option. I loved my boys so much and to think that I was harbouring another little person like Ben and Toby made me want to hold it and love it and …
‘Oh my God. I’m pregnant,’ I kept muttering under my breath.
They served Moët and I sat on my one glass for close to an hour. It made me feel nauseated.
The local races rolled out predictably with horses all running around the track being whacked by tiny, squeaky jockeys. People in hats cheered. Others threw their little betting slips to the ground while expelling great gusts of disappointment. It really wasn’t much fun stone-cold sober.
A few famous faces swanned about in the private tent and I spent the day picking lightly at the nibbles and letting myself have just one more champagne, which I nursed until it was flat and warm and then I tipped onto the grass. I was already thinking of names for my new child, calculating dates, wondering how to tell my sons. How would I explain this to my parents? What was Clay going to think of this news? How would he take it? I was nervous and sick and terrified and excited all at the same time. I wanted to cry.
Doriemus won the Melbourne Cup. My horse came dead last. I blamed Girl George. She’d slapped down a small fortune on it: she ‘knew’ that horse was going to win because these things were apparently always ‘fixed’ and she ‘knew’ someone who ‘knew’ someone who ‘knew’ someone and that horse was definitely going to win. It’s not gambling if you know you’re going to win. Fortunately, I only lost ten dollars. On our way out of the racecourse we stepped over drunken chicks lying in the dirt, spread-eagled and showing off the razor-stubble on their bikini lines. George left the Mustang in the car park because she was way too pissed to drive, and we shared a cab home, dropping me first.
Sam brought the boys home to me after school. I made dinner and played Scrabble with them. Toby was getting good with spelling words. I had decided to wait until I was three months along before telling anyone else, and I’d sworn George to secrecy, for what that was worth. I still couldn’t work out why the pill hadn’t worked. I’d been on it when I’d fallen pregnant with Ben as well, although I was not as careful about taking it back then. I wondered if I might have had some odd chemical, hormonal make-up that made me more fertile while on the pill. I decided to stop taking it immediately. Obviously.
I was sitting at Bronte Beach, looking out at the speckled blue sea and the saggy-boobed topless mothers playing with their babies in the rock pools. Clay’s warm muscled thigh was pressing sensuously against mine. A seagull squawked overhead and the sound of waves crashing against the sand was soothing my nerves, which were jangling like loose change around my body. He put a hand on my knee and kissed me on the cheek.
‘Sorry I haven’t called you this week. I’m having some trouble at work … it’s … well, it’s serious,’ he said. ‘I’m thinking of packing up and heading to the hills sooner rather than later.’
I needed to pee.
He took my hand and played with my fingers. I stared at his neat nails, his silky tanned forearm and my freckled one.
‘I’m thinking of studying,’ he said. ‘Maybe psychology or something.’
‘I’m pregnant.’ It just came out like a sneaky burp.
‘Oh,’ he said, soft as breath, and his hand went limp.
We sat in silence with just the waves crashing in the background. I left the silence vacant so he could gather some thoughts. I really felt like throwing up.
‘And how do you feel about that?’ he finally asked.
‘A bit freaked out,’ I said warily. ‘But kind of happy too.’
Tears were creeping out the corners of my eyes. He looked at me and put his head to mine, forehead to forehead. ‘I’ll go along with what
ever you want to do.’
He was such a good man.
‘I think I want to have it.’
More silence. More tears. He put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me close.
‘The Blue Mountains move is sounding more and more like a good idea,’ he said and I felt a wave of relief in my belly.
Was he really talking about moving up there together? Like a family?
‘It’s way cheaper up there and a nice place to bring up kids and …’ I thought aloud.
‘It’s going to be OK,’ he said, nodding his head, staring out at the silvery horizon. ‘Don’t worry.’
Leura is a little town just shy of Katoomba in the Blue Mountains. Prettier than the postcards. Tendrils of smoke curled and coiled from chimneys because even in summer it got cold at night. The sentries of pine trees were so very European and the turn-of-the-century stone holiday houses of the then rich and famous were stunning. I felt like we had just stepped off the train into the pages of the English magazine Country Life.
We needed this break. After working like a demon for nearly a year, I was ready to relax. This was our first little family holiday and the boys were so excited they were bubbling up with it.
The caravan park was neat but I felt it was a little overpriced. Ben, Toby and I booked into a small four-berth caravan – a little cubby house – and unpacked, and then we strolled up and down the main street of Leura, taking in the quaint little shops and soaking in the mountain ambience. Two hours away from downtown Sydney but it felt like another world. Slower. Cleaner. Safer.
We caught the train up to Katoomba and navigated our way down the main street, a long downhill track, past funky vintage shops and real estate agencies. I looked in the windows to see how much rental property went for and I was surprised at the value for money. I could get a little house with a garden for what I paid in the city. My belly made a low growling noise, reminding me that dinner needed to be arranged. We wound our way back up the hill to a pizza place. The smells coming from inside were the decider and we took a table out the front so we could watch the passing parade of Katoomba pedestrians, an eclectic mix of hippies, urbane artists and tourists.
Madness, Mayhem and Motherhood Page 18