The Mothers' Group

by Fiona Higgins

  ‘Digby.’ She bent down on one knee, so that her face was close to his. She’d read somewhere that toddlers felt respected by adults who conversed at their level. ‘How about that cuddle you wanted earlier?’

  He wrinkled his nose. She could see he was considering it.

  ‘Come on, Dig.’

  Suddenly he leaned into her, wrapping his arms around her shoulders.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, squeezing him. His frame felt fragile in her arms. ‘That’s a lovely cuddle.’

  He pulled away from her.

  ‘Rory’s on the mat in the play room,’ she said. ‘He’d love to play with his big brother. But you need to say something to him first. You need to apologise for biting him. It made him feel sad.’

  Digby looked at her, his face deadpan. Then he turned on his heel and marched into the lounge room.

  He crouched down next to Rory, too close for her liking. She resisted the urge to insist that he move away. He leaned into Rory’s face.

  ‘Sooooorry for biting you,’ he said in a singsong voice.

  She sighed, weary. She had nowhere to go now. It would be useless to insist that he apologise again, but this time with heart. She decided to let it go. Pick your battles, the experts said.

  Digby 1, Mummy 0.

  ‘Let’s read a book before breakfast,’ she suggested.

  ‘Green Eggs and Ham!’ yelled Digby.

  ‘Can’t we choose another one?’ she pleaded, even as he thrust it into her hand.

  She propped Rory up onto her lap and wound an arm around Digby. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Green Eggs and Ham, by Doctor Seuss.’

  She could practically recite it in her sleep. Digby giggled in all the usual places. He never seemed to tire of it.

  6.48 am

  As she prepared breakfast, she thought of Willem, en route to Perth. Right about now he’d be somewhere over the Great Australian Fuck-All, or ‘GAFA’ as he called it, accepting second-grade coffee from a surly Qantas steward in business class. As co-founder and Chief Investment Officer of Stanford Investments, a boutique investment firm, he worked in a world that she didn’t really understand. What she did know frightened her: namely, that he was responsible for over $850 million of other people’s money. It was a burden that appalled her with every market fluctuation, but Willem seemed to thrive on it, managing a small team of analysts and traders with almost evangelical zeal. He spent much of his time travelling around Australia and the world ‘kicking tyres’, as he termed it, trying to understand every facet of the businesses in which he invested. These site visits consumed at least two weeks a month, and he was good at it. The firm’s success—driven entirely by Willem and his co-founder, Adam Tran, a friend from university—had enabled him, over a ten-year period, to count himself among Australia’s high net worth community.

  In the year they’d met, the annus horribilis of 2008, the market correction Willem had been predicting for years finally occurred. When the market plunged the clients of Stanford Investments survived the downturn and Willem was amply rewarded. Not long afterwards, he’d presented Miranda with a four-carat diamond engagement ring and a new home on the southern cliffs of Freshwater Beach.

  She stirred the oatmeal and removed it from the stovetop. Digby liked his porridge lukewarm, drizzled with honey. She began to peel a pear, mashing it with a soft banana for Rory. Digby appeared in the kitchen doorway.

  ‘Is breakfast ready?’

  ‘Not quite, Dig. Almost there.’

  He scuffed at the doorframe with his slipper.

  ‘But there’s nothing to do,’ he whined. ‘I’m bored.’

  She smiled. ‘It’ll be ready in three minutes. Why don’t you take your building blocks and build the tallest tower in the world?’

  He scowled at her. ‘I don’t want to build a tower. You’re silly.’

  ‘Please don’t speak to me like that.’

  ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry!’ he yelled, scampering away. He didn’t mean that apology either. She just didn’t know what to do with him.

  Her mother had predicted this, she recalled.

  She continued to mash the fruit.

  Poor Mum. Her eyes filled with tears. She’d predicted a lot of things.

  It was almost a year since she’d died, exactly one month before Rory was born, succumbing to the breast cancer that had metastasised into her brain, liver and lungs. She remembered that day, the moment when she realised her mother was dead. The nurse’s platitudes about how she was free of pain now, that she’d gone to a better place, how peaceful her death had been. That it was a rare blessing to die at home. Miranda had wanted to strike her. All she knew was that her lifelong confidante, the one person who understood her better than she understood herself, was gone. And since that day, everything around her had felt like a cheap counterfeit of another, more authentic world in which she had once lived.

  When Willem had walked into her life, her mother had been newly diagnosed. As their romance progressed, her mother had become brittle, short-tempered and humourless. It was hard for Miranda to determine whether her mother’s opposition to Willem was the chemotherapy talking. In the week before she’d died, Miranda had sat by her mother’s bedside in her childhood home. The leafy streets of Strathfield always seemed a world away from Miranda’s inner city life. But its memories were comforting: hot Christmas dinners and lopsided party hats, Easter eggs hidden in buffalo grass, territorial magpies swooping from majestic jacaranda trees. And on this particular day, for reasons she couldn’t understand, Miranda had laid down next to her mother and held her tightly. Then she’d taken her mother’s frail hand and pressed it against her pregnant belly.

  ‘Can you feel the baby kicking?’ she’d asked.

  The corners of her mother’s mouth had turned upwards.

  ‘Don’t let Digby bully the baby,’ she’d murmured.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me.’ Her mother’s voice was no more than a whisper. ‘Toddlers are selfish. I want you to enjoy being a mother for the first time. Ask Willem for help. Don’t let him shirk his responsibilities.’

  Miranda had nodded, trying to conceal her anxiety.

  Three days later, when Miranda’s maternity leave had officially commenced, Willem had terminated the nanny’s contract without consultation. When Miranda had ventured to ask why, he’d waved a dismissive hand at her. ‘Well, you won’t be working for at least a year after the baby is born,’ he’d said. ‘It’d be overkill to have you and Yasmin looking after the children.’

  One week later, her mother was gone too.

  7.08 am

  ‘Muuuuuum.’ Digby bolted into the kitchen. ‘Rory’s eating one of my toys.’

  She ignored him. ‘Time for breakfast now, Dig. Sit up, please.’

  She ushered him towards the dining room and went to retrieve Rory from his playpen.

  As she leaned over the wooden rail, it was immediately obvious that Rory had something wedged in his mouth. His cheek bulged and a string of drool stretched to the floor. She turned him onto his stomach and prised open his lips, causing him to gag. With a wheeze, he spat out a small wooden peg, one of eight from Digby’s miniature tool set.

  ‘Oh, honey, that’s not for eating,’ she said, lifting him up. As she walked towards the dining room, she tried to quell her anger. She’d packed away the tool set the night before, just as she did every night—lining up the eight wooden nails in the toolbox alongside the hammer and the screwdriver. Only Digby could have opened the toolbox. He knew that Rory wasn’t allowed to play with it, as its pieces were too small, an obvious choking hazard. But he’d gone ahead anyway, presumably feeding a nail through the playpen’s bars to a captive Rory. Most of the time Digby was just an irritating toddler, but actions like this felt premeditated.

  She ignored him as she strapped Rory into his highchair.

  ‘Where’s my porridge?’ Digby demanded.

  ‘How do you ask nicely?’

  ‘Where’s my porridge . . . poo-lease?�
�� Digby giggled.

  She had an overwhelming urge to dump it over his head.

  ‘Yuck,’ he said, as she placed it in front of him.

  ‘Excuse me.’

  ‘Yuck, yuck, yuckety-yuck,’ he sang.

  She removed the bowl from his placemat and put it next to hers. Then she began to spoon mashed banana and pear into Rory’s mouth.

  ‘Would you like to try some of Digby’s porridge, Rory? Digby doesn’t want it . . . Here we are, Rory . . . oooh, yum yum.’ She scooped up a large lump of porridge. Rory leaned forward towards the spoon.

  ‘But it’s mine,’ yelled Digby.

  She looked at him. ‘Well, Digby, if you would like your porridge back, I suggest you think of some different words to use at the breakfast table.’

  Digby pouted.

  ‘Like, “Thank you, Mum”, for example.’ She slid the bowl back in front of him.

  He seized it with both hands and, with a swift jerk, hurled it across the table. It smashed against the wall behind her. Porridge oozed down the edge of one of Willem’s Namatjiras. Rory began to cry.

  She stood up and yanked Digby out of his highchair. As he flailed in her arms, kicking his legs into hers, she tried to brace against his weight. Her stomach muscles were not what they used to be and, since she’d had Rory, there had been little time to focus on rebuilding her core. The daily physical exertion of tackling Digby, now a strapping eighteen kilograms, was aggravating her already sensitive lower back.

  She hurled Digby onto his bed with as much force as she could muster.

  ‘Food is not for throwing,’ she hissed. ‘And wooden nails are not for feeding to babies. Think about it.’

  She drew the curtains, turned off the light and slammed the door shut.

  ‘Muuuuuum,’ Digby wailed. ‘It’s dark.’

  She stomped back to the dining room and sat down. Her legs were trembling, her hands too. She closed her eyes and tried to steady her breathing. Digby’s pitiful wailing made her wince; she knew he was afraid of the dark. But how else would he learn about consequences?

  She opened her eyes and forced a smile as she looked at Rory. ‘Now,’ she said, picking up his plastic spoon, ‘let’s finish breakfast.’

  7.32 am

  Digby had gone quiet in his bedroom, hiding under the doona, she presumed. Rory crawled around in his playpen, swiping at the surfeit of toys that jangled, buzzed and spun on demand. She stood at the kitchen bench, dicing the potatoes for dinner that evening. Her day was a never-ending cycle of menu planning, meal preparation and washing up, punctuated by altercations with Digby over food. He hated this, he hated that. This was too hot, that was too cold. That tasted slimy, this looked yucky. He wanted only fruit, or no fruit at all. Willem couldn’t understand why it wore her down so much. But that was unsurprising: he was never home for three meals a day, seven days a week.

  She wondered how her mother would have dealt with Digby. She’d had two children in quick succession. And yet she’d never known what it was to be a stepmother, Miranda mused. Surely that was different? One thing was for certain: if her mother had recovered from the cancer, things might have been different for everyone. For her father, who lived alone in Strathfield now, hardly ever leaving the house. For her brother who, without the gentle guidance of their mother, had simply drifted away from the family. And certainly for Miranda.

  She picked the potato peelings out of the sink and tipped them into the garbage bin, turning her attention to the carrots. Willem had no idea how hard she worked at home. In fact, he often contrasted his own frenetic working life with the apparent simplicity of her home-based tasks. He’d offended her the night before while protesting about his impending week of travel.

  ‘What I wouldn’t give to stop travelling for a week and just spend it with the kids,’ he’d said over dinner, leaning back in his chair and draining his glass of pinot. ‘It’s fucking chaos out there in the real world, you know.’

  She’d bristled. ‘You can have the kids for a week anytime you like,’ she replied coolly. ‘Personally I’d love a week in an office. Or on a plane.’

  He looked hurt. ‘Miranda, I know it’s hard for you.’

  ‘Do you?’

  He pushed his chair back and stalked into the kitchen. She could hear him uncorking another bottle of wine. He returned with the bottle and two fresh glasses, poured her a glass of shiraz and pushed it into her hand.

  ‘How do you think we can afford all the things you enjoy?’ he asked.

  She blinked, stung by the inference.

  ‘I didn’t realise my patterns of consumption were so excessive.’

  ‘Come on, Miranda. You know what I mean. I don’t work as hard as I do just for me.’

  She doubted that. She saw the fervour in his eyes when he talked about his next big investment target, the exquisite thrill of chasing a ‘hundred bagger’. It was almost a form of white-collar gambling, she’d often thought, a socially acceptable addiction to making money.

  He was waiting for her to speak, but she said nothing.

  The truth was, she couldn’t wait for him to go away again in the morning. At the beginning of their relationship, she’d anxiously awaited his return from business trips. She’d prepare in advance, visiting the hair salon, the beautician, the pedicurist. Waiting for that delicious moment when he would pin her to the bed and make love to her. He’d been as confident and skilled in bed as he was in every other part of his life. Experimental in a way she’d never been, with a penchant for sex toys and role-plays. She’d been hesitant at the beginning, feeling a little ridiculous in costume. But once she’d got over her awkwardness, she’d been surprised by her own audacity.

  As soon as she’d fallen pregnant, however, within two months of their marriage, things had changed. Despite what the magazines said about the rewards of sexual intimacy during pregnancy, she just couldn’t stomach it. Willem had started travelling more, trying to stay ahead of the global financial crisis. And so Miranda had grown to know Yasmin far better than she cared to, up until the day when Willem dismissed her. After that, her fairytale life had started fraying at the edges.

  Miranda winced. She’d caught the edge of her finger on the potato peeler’s blade. Blood smeared across the tip of a carrot. She held her finger under the running water in the sink and watched the blood disperse. Involuntarily, she thought of Sandra, his first wife. Willem had experienced a level of tragedy she’d never known, she reminded herself. She ought to cut him some slack.

  7.50 am

  She finished the carrots and submerged them in a saucepan of cold water. The effect of the aspirin and her second cup of coffee had kicked in, and she felt human enough to be generous to Digby once more. She bundled Rory into the stroller and opened Digby’s door.

  ‘Let’s go out,’ she announced. Digby had pushed his train table beneath the window and was standing with his head under the curtains, nose pressed against the glass, whimpering. She wondered how long he’d been there, the picture of vulnerability in his pyjamas, and how many passersby had seen him.

  ‘Dig, let’s go to the park,’ she said. ‘You can have a packet of sultanas on the way, if you put your clothes on nicely.’

  She hated resorting to bribery, but it was usually the only strategy that worked.

  He slid down from the train table. ‘Okay.’

  They walked to the park most days, even when it was raining. She’d discovered soon after Yasmin’s departure that if Digby wasn’t exercised in the morning, he wouldn’t sleep in the afternoon. By dinner time, he’d be pacing the house like an angry lion.

  As they walked their familiar route to the park, an elderly man sitting at a bus stop hailed Digby. ‘Hello there, son,’ he said.

  Digby immediately hid his face behind her legs.

  ‘Say hello to the gentleman, please, Digby.’

  Digby clung to her leg, refusing to look at the man.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s still a bit early for him.’
>
  Excuses, excuses. She was always making them for Digby, explaining away his behaviour.

  To a casual observer like the old man, they appeared a picture-perfect family: mother holding hands with the toddler, pushing baby in the pram. Singing and clapping, stopping to peer at flowers, birds and stones. No one was privy to her impatience, her resentment. She didn’t want to go to the park, she didn’t enjoy walking at a glacial pace. Her days were filled with activities she’d rather avoid, if given a choice. But choices were a thing of the past, an indulgent feature of her life pre-children.

  At the park, she went through the usual motions: monitoring Digby on the climbing frame, high-fiving him as he slid down the slippery dip, pushing him on the swing. Sometimes she’d pass the time of day with the other women in the park, as they shepherded their children from one piece of equipment to another. Behind their dark sunglasses and fixed, tight smiles, did any of them feel the way she did?

  Since Rory had started crawling, the park had become more challenging— she now had to keep a close eye on both of them. She could never wholly trust Digby to respond to verbal commands, so she had to be in constant reach of both. Sometimes, when Digby was in a reasonable mood, she would permit Rory to sit on his lap on the slippery dip.

  ‘How about you and Rory play trains on the slide together?’ she suggested.

  Digby kicked at the pine bark beneath the swing set. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Thank you, Dig,’ she said.

  He climbed to the top of the slide and waited while she positioned Rory on his lap.