by Nicki Reed
‘Call Loz.’
‘Rube, it’s eleven o’clock. I’ll call Loz tomorrow. Are you going home or staying here?’
‘I’ll stay here. We can try again in the morning.’
On the tram with Ruby I make another couple of attempts.
Message send failure.
Message send failure.
‘Maybe she has a new phone.’ Ruby is making faces at a school kid two seats away.
‘That’ll be it. Loz will have the number.’
‘So you’ll ring her from work?’
‘Or text her.’
The tram stops behind a car trying to make a righthand turn. The people standing lean forward, take up the hard braking, lean back. Choreography. The driver is on his bell, ding, ding, ding. I love that Melbourne sound, it reminds me of umbrellas and galleries and autumn leaves the size of dinner plates.
‘I thought you didn’t want to text,’ Ruby says.
‘I like what we wrote. It’s concise.’
‘And also, you won’t have to hear her reaction.’
‘And I won’t have to hear her reaction.’
‘You are too easy, Peta.’
‘I cannot wait until you’re messing up again.’
‘Pete, you’re taking all the fuckedupness, nobody can get near it.’
The woman sitting opposite is eavesdropping. She turns her iPod down and there’s a drop in its buzzing. I signal to Ruby that the woman is listening.
‘So, what do you reckon, Peta?’ Ruby lowers her voice, leans forward. ‘Do you think, if we’re going to abort foetuses, we should be able to eat them, or at least use them for pet food?’
Who needs BJ’s T-shirts?
‘Fancy asking a woman who is twenty-eight weeks pregnant that.’
‘If not pet food, maybe we could use them to feed the Third World.’
The woman’s eyes bulge. ‘Well!’ she shakes her head at Ruby and finds another seat further down the tram.
‘Bye,’ Ruby calls out. ‘What were we saying? Oh yeah, how you’re making all the mistakes this year. It’s nice being in the right. Although at times I haven’t known what to do with myself and, now I’m with Mark, I can’t see any big messes in my future.’
‘I love how you say Mark.’
I don’t think I ever said his name the way she does.
‘What do you mean?’ Ruby is blushing.
‘It’s so loving. So squidgy.’
‘Like how you say BJ? Like how you couldn’t leave that bike alone?’
‘Thunder. Now let me read my book.’
Where is Loz? Why doesn’t she answer her phone? What is the point of all this technology if nobody uses it?
I have thirty-three unread emails and none of them personal. I tick off each as I go. Thirty-three emails in sixty-five minutes. Not bad.
Try again to send the text.
Message send failure.
Jesus. Motherfucker. Shit.
Ten past nine, twenty past nine, nine-thirty, nine fortyfive. At ten o’clock I make the rounds of the office, three floors, collecting for Julie on level thirty who is going on maternity leave on Friday. Having one pregnant woman collect for another may have made people more generous.
At ten forty-five I call Ruby at work. She can’t talk.
Rearrange my stationery drawer.
At eleven o’clock I head downstairs for a coffee. Decaf is not proper coffee. It may taste the same (it doesn’t) and it may have a similar mouth-feel (as if) but it’s lost its kick and my brain knows it.
I’ve made a deal with Anna. One proper coffee a day or two decaf. Today it’s decaf. Takeaway cup in hand, I enter the lift and receive a judgmental look from a woman I don’t know.
I smile. ‘Decaf.’
She nods. I’m deemed safe and we both relax. This is crazy.
Back at my desk I try Loz again. She picks up.
‘Hi Loz, do you have BJ’s number?’
‘Peta? Not on me. On the fridge, though.’
For fuck’s sake.
‘Are you home? Could I come round?’
‘Sorry, I’m doing a prac. I’m going to be here all day.’
‘Okay, Loz. It was just a thought.’
‘Wait. You could use the spare key, let yourself in. It’s under the Elvis gnome.’
‘Really? Okay. Thanks.’
‘The number is on the Vincent postcard.’
‘Thanks again, Loz.’
‘No problem. Go get her, Pete.’
If I leave now, if there’s a tram at the stop when I get there, I can be at Loz’s in less than half an hour. I can have the number, call BJ, tell her, beg forgiveness, propose, and be back in time for lunch.
48.
Bonjour Loz, I’m getting better at remembering the French I forgot. Simone is teaching me. She’s pretty amazing you know, the things she can do with metal are fantastic. Although, she does go to bed early and expects me to come with her. I told her she is too old. She says the sun is better at the start of the day than the end and she doesn’t want to miss it. I thought I’d better give you a landline in case I lost my phone: it’s 8907 0910. I don’t know what the prefix is—you’ll have to work it out. Stay frosty, BJ
‘Bloody Simone. Amazing, is she? I’d like to do some fantastic things with metal to her.’
‘Handcuffs, Pete?’
I jump. Tingles in waves across my arms, knees, hot and numb. Tears. Not sad, they come all by themselves. I’ve lost it.
In her old kitchen, on the other side of the black marble bench, wearing her jacket, her hair longer but not long, messy and bluey black, is BJ. She has a new piercing, a small silver stud in her nose. It suits her. She is beautiful.
‘You’ve changed.’
‘So have you. That’s not breakfast, is it?’
She’s trying to be angry.
‘I was about to tell you but you had to go.’
‘You should have told me, Pete.’
‘I kept getting message send failure. I thought there was something wrong with your phone.’
‘It’s fine. Did you try turning yours off and on? So. When’s it due?’
‘July. You look beautiful.’
‘No, you do. Fat, though. Is your head pregnant?’
I haven’t sworn for days, weeks. And it’s BJ, the girl who showed me how: ‘Fuck, I love you.’
She leans across the bench. I reach, but the lump is stopping me. She hops up, swings her feet around and sits in front of me, a black leather packet, sitting on the bench like she did in my kitchen. She’s wearing her Spikey bangle. Forever.
‘I fucken love you, too.’
Her big smile is back. I can feel mine.
The kiss has been so long in coming, months, I want to slow it down. Want my lips to remember. The creak of her jacket, the beat of my heart, the shriek of the kids playing in the backyard next door, air pushing out of her nose onto my cheek. I hear everything.
I open my eyes. She opens hers and we see each other. She smiles. I glimpse the slimmest collection of baby crow’s feet. She smiles bigger. I laugh. Cry. Hold her hard and bawl into her shoulder.
She’s off the bench. Her head on my chest, my chin rubbing her head, sliding rough across her hair, I remember this. My arms around her tight.
‘How about it?’ she says. ‘I’ve never made it with a pregnant woman. Let’s have a shower—God knows I need one—and fuck in Loz’s bed.’
‘I’m not showering with you. It’s too dangerous, especially now.’ I pat the lump. ‘We’ll go home.’
‘But that’ll take ages.’
Petulance. I’ve missed it.
‘What are you, four years old? Stop stomping. We’ll get a taxi.’
‘Can we have a bath?’
‘You just want to see me naked.’
‘Yep.’
She’s as fit as ever. I’m round, I have veins. I can’t see it if I look straight down, the lump has obscured my vision, but I’ve seen in the mirror and I have a lot
more hair there. The midwife is going to need a machete to find her way in.
The bath is run and BJ helps me in. She can’t take her eyes off my belly. ‘God, you look amazing.’
‘I look fat.’
‘You look incredible.’
She steps in. Bathwater spills, a tide of bubbles and a rubber duck.
‘Look what you did.’
She stands up. Water runs down her, bubbles like angels’ wings from her shoulder blades along her arms.
‘Turn around,’ she says. ‘No, wait, you scooch up a bit and I’ll get behind you. I want to wash your hair. Wow, it’s grown.’
‘You can say that again.’
‘Yeah, I noticed. S’okay, I like a challenge.’
We shampoo each other’s hair. I wash BJ. When I wash her arms and hands and fingers, I have a memory of Mum doing the same to me, and me doing the same to Ruby. Soap around Ruby’s little fingers, me showing her how to blow bubbles. One day I’ll be doing the same with the lump.
BJ is captivated by my breasts. ‘They’re so heavy…And the nipples, they’re so big…Their colour, the way they’ve changed…It’s spectacular.’
‘Are you on drugs?’
‘No, Pete, I’m just getting a better idea of what the whole thing is. Life, I guess. How it’s a fucken miracle.’
‘A fucken miracle. That’s what Ruby says. I think you’re a fucken miracle. Can we go to bed now?’
My heart’s banging. Sweat on my face and along my hairline. My legs are trembling. If I craned my neck I’d be able to see BJ’s face over the lump. She sits up and places her hands on my belly.
‘Hello, baby. I’m BJ.’
Why won’t she just kiss me?
The baby is an aspect of my body that is utilitarian, like a cupboard. Better stop. If I’m thinking my body is a cupboard, BJ might start thinking it, too. She’d never want to stay with a cupboard. BJ is too cool for cupboards.
‘Have you felt it kicking?’
‘A little.’
‘I had no idea how sexy pregnancy was.’ She curls into me and, jet-lagged and freshly fucked, falls asleep.
Bent into her shape, listening to her breathe, my arm around her chest, I slide a hand across a nipple, soft, barely there. It hardens. I remember my lessons. You can’t make someone stay. They have to want to.
‘Mmmm.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.’
‘I’m not awake, keep doing that.’
Her back arches. She pushes her breast up into my hand.
‘I missed you,’ I say to the tiny hollow behind her ear, my lips tickled by the bristle on her nape. I let go of her breast, slide my hand hard down her chest, her stomach, to between her legs.
‘Ssh, I’m sleeping. I’m having a wonderful dream.’
‘Let’s see if you can come in your sleep then.’
In the spot where Thunder used to live is a pram. In the cupboard where BJ kept her spare tyres, bike clothes, helmet, shoes, is a yet-to-be-assembled highchair and my going-into-labour bag.
Trying not to freak out about having BJ back and the sick chance of losing her.
49.
The Saturday night after BJ gets back, we’re going to Trotters to celebrate. Carole Smart is coming. I ask BJ if it’s all right if Ruby comes along.
‘Do you think she’ll behave herself?’
‘We’ve moved on. Now that Ruby is with Mark, her head’s in North America.’
There’s so much BJ doesn’t know. Me too. ‘Tell me about Simone. She was good to you.’
And she’s not here.
‘Simone’s so laid back she makes Valium sleepy. After Melbourne and you and the girl from the pub and the phone call, she was what I needed.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Forty-two. That’s nearly twenty-five years of experience.’ BJ smiles. That dimple.
‘Fair enough. What’s happening with her now?’
‘She’s got motor neurone disease. She was diagnosed last year. She’s moving to Helsinki. She wanted to experience those summers where it’s daylight all day and night. She had this thing about the sun.’
I try not to think about somebody else kissing the places I do. ‘What did she say?’
‘Just stuff—that there are plenty of dirty fish in the big blue sea, that you were probably working out some kinks, that you’d be there when I got back and could I hand her that oxy torch, no, not that one, the red one and stand back a bit.’
Just stuff is right.
BJ hasn’t driven for months and wants to feel some rubber on the road. We get to Carlton super quick, the needle of the tachometer hitting places it never hits when I’m driving.
‘We’re early. Let’s fuck in the back seat.’
‘God, you pregnant women are insatiable.’
‘Help me?’ My belly is too big to squeeze between the seats.
She drops the driver’s seat horizontal and I bend past it into the back seat. She replaces the seat and climbs in with me.
‘I’m too tired after that.’
Back-seat sex is a young person’s sport, like roller derby and sexting.
‘Lie on your side,’ BJ says, ‘and move back a bit.’
Her knee is between my legs, mostly so she can fit on the seat, but it’s making an impression. I grab her by her belt and pull her into me. We kiss. There’s a knock on the window. The door opens and we nearly tip out onto the footpath, my head hanging over the seat, out the door.
‘Unhand that woman, boy.’
‘For God’s sake, Ruby. You could have just met us there.’
‘And miss this?’
BJ is out of the car first. They catch up a little while I extract myself from the back seat and compose myself. BJ never has to worry about dishevelment.
‘Love the shirt, BJ.’
She’s wearing her A bird in the hand is sexist but not a bad idea T-shirt.
‘Thank you, I made it myself. I hear you’re with Mark.’
‘Yes. When he’s not in Chicago. He says this is his last trip.’
‘I’m sure it will be, Rube.’
Back in the upstairs toilet at Trotters, Ruby and I have left BJ and Carole to order our dessert. We’re talking through the closed door.
‘Hurry up.’
‘Rube, why would she want this?’ My hands are on the lump.
I flush, open the door. We swap.
‘You are not giving her credit.’ Ruby’s turn to talk through the door.
‘She’s too young. I don’t want her stuck with a baby at twenty-three.’
‘Why not? You are at thirty-six.’
‘It’s different for me, it’s mine. This baby is nothing to her.’
‘Why?’ Flushing. The door opens. ‘Because she’s not carrying it? That is so fucken dumb I want to punch you.’
She’s washing her hands, taking her frustration out on the soap, taps, paper towel. ‘Listen, Peta. I am not carrying your baby, nor is Mark, and that means a helluva lot to us.’
‘You don’t know what this is like. She’s been back for a week, less, and I’m beside myself thinking she’s going to leave. That she’ll rejoin her life, uni, study, her job, and meet someone more suitable.’
‘Someone less of a dickhead, you mean? Don’t tell me I don’t know what it’s like. Mark used to be with you, he didn’t leave you, you left him. What if he meets another you in Chicago? I know what love is like, Pete. It’s ace and it sucks.’
‘What’s ace and sucks?’
BJ is at the door and, with us in it, the room is too small for her to enter. ‘Mum sent me up to find you. Come on, Pete, nobody likes being left on their own with their mother.’
‘Sorry, Beej.’
‘We’re having a discussion,’ Ruby says.
BJ is already down the stairs. I turn to Ruby: ‘You know Mark wants you. He’s going to change his job for you. He would never have done that for me.’
‘And she’s back here with you. She can’t take he
r eyes off you and she can’t keep her hands to herself. Didn’t you say Simone is forty-two? BJ has no problem with age gaps. It looks like she prefers it.’
After dinner, walking back to our cars, Carole Smart puts her hand on my arm.
‘Peta, I’m sorry I made that dinner party so difficult.’ She and I stop walking, the others continue.
‘We all made it difficult. It was too early. BJ and I put too much pressure on everyone. We just wanted to show how good we were.’
‘And you did, but I didn’t want to believe it.’
‘Because of Serena?’
‘Yes, I prejudged you. I’m sorry. I should have trusted Belinda. She’s not seventeen anymore, she knows what she wants. And you did leave Mark. You’re not Serena.’
‘Thank you, Carole.’
No, I’m not Serena. And BJ’s no misadventure. But I’ve made mistakes. And I’ll make others. I’m bound to.
Top Ten Things A Twenty-three-year-old Should Be Able To Do:
1. Study for exams without being interrupted by a crying baby or a stressed-out and overloaded firsttime mother.
2. Have a post-exams blow-out, an AFL-style mad-Monday bender, without having to come home halfway through to bring the wife milk, bread and disposable nappies.
3. Not have to share fridge-door space with ultrasound photos of her girlfriend’s unborn child.
4. Smoke, take ecstasy, etc. I was never big on drugtaking when I was twenty-three, but I could have been.
5. Feel invincible.
6. Have sex with somebody fit and energetic. There are veins I never had—well, I guess I had them, but I can see them now: little blue road maps to nowhere, up my legs, across my thighs and breasts.
7. Go see the world.
8. Or in BJ’s case, more of it.
9. Not become bored.
10. Or broken by responsibility.
50.
‘Let’s go for a walk. We can go to the park and watch the kids playing. Absorb some good parenting.’ BJ’s lacing her boots up.
‘God, do we have to?’
‘Yes. When we get back, I’ve got a couple of DVDs for us to watch.’
She’s brought my shoes. I can’t button my coat anymore, can’t button anything unless it’s maternity clothes. How has Hollywood made motherhood look glamorous? There is no glamour in the oversize yolk in the front of my so-called jeans and there is nothing sexy about being unable to tie your laces without heavy breathing.