I’m extremely nervous about this appointment.
We stop at a red and Annie slaps down the left indicator. Ticking sounds, like the conversation is being timed. ‘How are you feeling?’ she asks.
I slump sideways, my ear on the seat’s headrest. ‘I’m tired.’
‘The book says you’re meant to have pep in your step now.’ Sarah clicks her fingers at me from the back seat, like I’m traffic she’s hoping will speed up.
‘It’s not the same kind of tired,’ I say. ‘I used to feel sleepy. Now I just feel like I have to sit down all the time.’ I close my eyes and let my friends talk about work.
It’s Friday and they’ve both taken the day off for this. Sarah is working from home, officially. She’s logged into her emails on her phone. Annie wouldn’t be able to half-arse her work like that. She works at a community legal centre and, from what I can gather, deals mostly with domestic violence. This had always been her plan at uni, but I suspected – I suppose shamefully – that like so many people before her, as soon as she got a whiff of what she could earn in the corporate world she might change course.
Annie is the only friend I have whose work is so important. She’s also the person who talks the least about it. I don’t know if it’s good that she doesn’t centre herself in her work like some kind of saviour, or if it’s depressing she seems so uninterested in her own life. Maybe the work is so depressing she doesn’t want to speak about it outside of office hours. Annie knows a lot more about the world than either Sarah or me, but she also seems less perturbed by it. If Sarah and I lament something most people like us would agree is bad, Annie will say something to the contrary. Not necessarily justifying it, but just explaining why it is the way it is.
Sarah started her career doing social media for a local eco-business that made plant-dyed homewares. After exploding their online reach, she was poached by a big ad agency. Sarah seems very good at her job. She’d have to be for her boss to indulge how often she’s struck with a last-minute desire to work from home on a Monday.
I listen to my friends talk in foreign acronyms. I feel isolated, as though I’m standing in the wings, observing their real lives from offstage. It’s not a nice feeling, but this is how I’d always felt as an actor, so in a way it’s comforting. When I wake we’re in the sonographer’s car park and I realise I was asleep for most of the drive. I rub my eyes, then check my reflection in the rear-view mirror to ensure that I haven’t smudged my mascara. I’ve put make-up on for the first time in weeks to come here. Sarah is doing the same, peering into the rear-view mirror and running her fingers through her fringe.
ALL THE WOMEN here are pregnant. This makes sense, but startles me still. So many big women in one room – beach balls and bowling balls. Some women are huge, not just their bellies, but all of them. Wide-set with flabby arms and fleshy balloon breasts. One woman standing at the receptionist’s desk is tiny, her stomach an alien appendage, like a basketball stuffed under a t-shirt. I like the big ladies better, I decide.
‘It’s like a dog breeder,’ says Sarah.
When the doctor was arranging my referral to the hospital where I’ll give birth, she started listing the names of midwives there. ‘She’s a really good midwife, you’ll be in good hands with her. She’s a great midwife.’ There are so many women here, I realise now that everyone just has to have someone, good or bad. The doctor also gave me pamphlets and lists. Things I should do and things I can’t. I remember her pointing out some of the specific herbal teas; she said they were poisonous to the embryo. I liked that word, embryo. Eventually I will have a baby but then it was an embryo. My affection made me feel maternal. I have a foetus now, grown from the embryo. While we wait, I flick through a booklet of laminated pictures of developing babies. A seahorse becomes a dugong becomes a beetle becomes a doll with terrible posture, shy and embarrassed trying not to take up space. Sarah reads over my shoulder, pointing out parts of the anatomy.
‘That’s going to be a boy,’ she says.
Then I’m on my back, Sarah and Annie behind me. The sonographer’s name is Sivan. She squeezes lube over my bare belly and runs the thin plastic wand over me. She turns her monitor to me and quickly – I’m not sure what I was expecting; that it might take a long time to buffer, perhaps – the black-and-grey image of my baby is there. A few seconds after the image, there’s sound. The baby’s heartbeat is like lying on a towel at the beach, ear to the sand, listening as someone walks past. Intimate, but removed. Loud, but distant. It’s fast. I hear Annie sob behind me. She blows her nose.
‘Dude, who uses hankies anymore?’ says Sarah, then, ‘Can you see the nasal bone?’
Sivan nods. ‘Yes, that’s here,’ she says.
Sarah moves in closer to the screen and Sivan points, explaining what we’re seeing. She repeats ‘normal’ and ‘healthy’ so many times I begin not to believe her.
‘You’re a bit further along than I’d thought.’
‘Look how tiny it is.’ I stare intently at the monitor, as though I haven’t heard. A pantomime to prove I’m a loving parent, if a disorganised one.
‘I’d say you’re either fourteen or fifteen weeks.’
‘I’m twelve.’ I say this confidently, eye contact resumed. I had sex with Pat twelve weeks ago and there was no sex for months before that.
‘We start counting from the first day of your last period,’ says Sivan, ‘because there’s no way to know exactly what day the sperm fertilised the egg.’
This makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is that this had in some way started fourteen weeks ago, when I’d only met Pat once and we hadn’t yet slept together.
Sivan tells me the foetus is the size of an orange. I stare at the image on the screen. It looks smaller than that; a passionfruit, maybe. I’m startled when the ultrasound is over. Just like the abortion, I think. I had a clear idea of what this was going to be, but no idea how long it would take.
Annie and I wait by the entrance while Sarah uses the bathroom. I look around at the women waiting – more beachballs, different ones from before. Mostly accompanied by men, some with other children in tow. They cradle babies with one arm. One lady cleans her toddler, sweeps a wipe all over his face one-handed, pinching it in at the end of his nose and mouth. Women straighten clothes on their kids’ wriggling bodies. They wear nice maternity dresses. I’m wearing a t-shirt that says Show Me Your Riffs. These ladies have big nappy bags. I’m holding my wallet in my hand.
Sivan enters the waiting room and calls out a name. The woman who stands has no other child with her, but she does have a husband. She looks older than me. I wonder if Sivan will tell her she’s doing fine too. I guess she has to. Even if we give birth to kids with heart disease or to future murderers, we’ll all be fine because, of course, we all have to be.
AT HOME WE sit in the backyard. I’m in the hammock, Sarah and Annie on chairs with cracking vinyl and rusted legs from years of living outside. Annie has made us all a spritz with orange juice instead of Aperol and mineral water instead of prosecco. Sarah has added a big splash of gin to hers.
‘I just wish there was something obvious like my hair changing colour so that everyone would realise I’m pregnant without me having to tell them.’ I reach for my glass on the ground beside me, pick out a wedge of orange and stick it between my teeth and my lips, suck it like it’s a dummy. I think about how what I said isn’t really true. I would’ve had to hide from Travis if it were true.
Annie stands and starts inspecting our garden, pulling weeds from the cracks in the paving.
‘I think you’re really robbing yourself of an opportunity here,’ Sarah says eventually. ‘Seeing people’s faces when you tell them.’ She jumps up and stands on her chair, lifts her arms high in a V-shape. ‘Everyone, I am with child. Also, the father is dead, he topped himself.’ She performs an elaborate bow and almost topples off the chair. I wonder if she’s already a bit drunk.
‘I’m not telling anybody who the father is. I will
lie about that.’ I avoid looking directly at either of my friends, but still I can sense their reactions. Annie looks sad. Sarah is concentrating on her glass, which she is topping up with more gin.
THE SUN AND the bottle of gin dwindle lower and lower, until eventually it’s time to head out. We’re going to see Gabriella Cohen play at the Northcote Social Club. Sarah and Annie bought me a ticket, a plot to make me go out disguised as a nice gesture. The plan is to meet our other friends at the pub and have dinner before the gig. I know the chances of someone asking me why I’m not drinking when I’m seated at dinner are higher than if I’m standing, watching the gig. I tell Sarah and Annie I need to have a quick rest first. I almost have to push Annie out the door to get her to leave without me. I’m aware my friends are probably complaining about me right now. I also know they’ll be forgiving too. They’ll tell themselves they don’t know what it’s like to be pregnant, or this tired. I tell myself this too.
I don’t really feel like resting, but I have nothing else to do, so I lie on my bed and think about the friends I’ll be seeing. We’ve known Renee, Matthew and Ginnie – the Clarke Street house – for years now, we met all of them at uni. Others, like Travis, are people who come and go. We’ll see them out and drink with them a lot for a couple of years and then things will shift, move on a little, and it’ll be other people we’re drinking with. It was people we knew through uni, or work, for the first years. Now that we have careers, as opposed to casual jobs, it’s rarer for people to bring colleagues into the fold and often the new friendships we make, like with Travis, start from having dated someone. I used to go out a lot and now that I’ve retreated I wonder how much I really miss these people. I ask Sarah about them in the mornings after she’s been out. I don’t think it’s perfunctory; it’s not that I don’t miss them at all. But when I do, I have years of memories to indulge in. Dancing in the rain, soaked and steaming high at Golden Plains. Driving to Turpins Falls every day during semester break then cramming for exams all together in one lounge room – sharing Modafinil, cigarettes and coffee. Hungover, floating on inflatable boats on the Goulburn River on New Year’s Day. A line of six of my friends standing and applauding from the front row of my first opening night. The memories make me feel full and warm. They fill the longing, dull the ache, soothe the soul, any of the clichés. I am lonely, but what I’m longing for isn’t friends.
I always thought my adult life would be cleaved like this, with socialising on one side and children on the other. I guess I thought I wouldn’t be lonely on this side because I assumed there would be a man with me, which is an odd assumption, given when I grew up it was just me and Mum.
If it wasn’t for the promise of seeing Travis, I’m not sure I’d bother going tonight.
I EVENTUALLY MAKE it out of the house, still in plenty of time for the gig. Rather than joining the others at the pub I cycle to the Social Club and go straight to the band room. I stand alone watching the support act – an all-girl rock band, as all support bands seem to have become in the past year. I look around for anybody I know, but the people here are strangers – although, at a glance, they could be my friends: late twenties, same cut of jeans, faded surf tees and shaggy heads.
Eventually my friends arrive. Matthew, Ginnie, Renee holding hands with Sarah. A friend of Renee’s whose name I can’t remember but who I know I’ve met before. Travis enters with James and they go straight to the bar. I watch them waiting in line. I don’t notice Annie until she’s right next to me.
‘Feeling better?’ she asks.
‘Not really.’ I smile at her.
Everyone I know greets me excitedly and, seeing their faces for the first time in a while, I remember how much I like these people. The fondness I felt for the memories of them is just a shade of what I feel now. They’re all about three pints deep – affectionate and not too interested in actual details about my life, although most of them ask either how or where I’ve been. Renee keeps her arm around my waist. We stand, interlocked like schoolgirls, facing the stage. The support band – called I Sit Down When I Pee – are playing a track about periods with a simple, repetitive chord progression. The vocals are more like loud talking than singing. Travis is now standing a few feet nearer the front with James. He’s drinking a pint, his free hand in his pocket. At one point James makes Travis laugh. He looks significantly more relaxed than when I last saw him at the party in Coburg. At the end of the set he and James turn around and come to stand with Renee and me.
‘Do you want a beer?’ James asks us.
‘I’ll come with you.’ Renee takes James’s forearm. ‘Let’s go to the front bar, this one is about to be slammed.’ She starts to pull him away.
‘You guys okay?’ James points between me and Travis.
‘I’m fine.’ Travis tilts the half-full glass in his hand, glances up but then looks back down, avoiding Renee.
‘Do you want anything?’ James asks me. ‘Water?’
I shake my head, then quickly turn to Travis to check he isn’t wondering why James would only offer me water. He’s not.
The room is filling up as more people arrive for the main act. I watch the crowd for a while. I invent a game to play by myself – if anybody else here was pregnant, who would it be? It’s not entertaining, though, as nobody looks like they would be. I turn to Travis. ‘How’ve you been?’ I ask. I feel self-conscious about my body. It’s like I’m going through puberty again, I’m so aware of the size of my breasts.
‘Pretty good.’ He takes a sip of his beer. ‘The girls said you’re not acting anymore?’
‘Not really, no.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’m not sure. Let me know if you hear of any jobs, I guess.’
He nods but doesn’t say anything. I think his expression is sympathetic. Maybe it’s just vague. I know I’m not going to ask Travis about Pat here, in public, when he seems to be in a good mood. But I’m happy to be talking to him. It feels like progress, whatever that is.
‘Have you played here before?’ I ask.
‘No.’
We lapse into silence and Travis looks around the room. I follow his gaze, wondering if he’s looking for someone. I spot Renee and Sarah speaking, their faces only inches apart. When I turn back to Travis he’s looking the opposite way.
One of the first things Renee told me about Travis when she started dating him was how excitable he was. ‘You know how Sarah never asks what you’ve been up to, or how you’ve been, but immediately launches into some anecdote about some person she saw and something that happened? That’s him! He loves the most mundane shit.’
When I’d first met him, this impression proved true. Although back then mostly what he was excitable about was Renee. Their relationship only lasted two months. I don’t know him well, but what I do know is that he’s funny – or used to be, anyway. He likes to muck around, but he’s also quick to be earnest. I’m not sure I’ve ever met anybody else who’s so earnest and yet simultaneously hates on so many things. I’ve heard him wax lyrical about being open-minded and non-judgemental, and then the next moment state that anybody who gets a purebred dog is a moron. His values come from a good place, but I’ve never heard Travis say anything challenging. His beliefs are the common collective sentiments, regurgitated with no variation, not a lot of depth. Sarah met him before I did and I remember when I asked her what Renee’s new boyfriend was like she said, ‘He’s a bit of an idiot, but he’s harmless.’
Gabriella Cohen takes the stage and the crowd applauds. She doesn’t say hello, but immediately starts a track.
‘Ever seen her play?’ I keep my eyes on the stage but turn my head slightly towards Travis.
‘A few times,’ he says. ‘My old housemate used to date her, actually.’
‘Oh.’ I wonder if he means Pat. I suppose he must prefer to say ‘old housemate’ rather than ‘dead housemate’. I close my eyes and breathe evenly. He’s probably had lots of housemates. I open my eyes again and wat
ch Gabriella. I try to picture her with Pat. Her brown hair is wavy and she looks French. From here her skin looks as clean as her headshots. I close my eyes and breathe.
‘Are you okay?’ Travis asks.
‘Yeah.’ I open my eyes again. ‘I just feel a little sick.’
‘Do you need to sit down?’ Travis looks around, but there are no chairs.
‘No, I’m fine.’
Gabriella finishes a track. ‘How’s everyone doing?’ Her voice is droll, twangy.
Travis hits one hand against his pint glass.
‘I’ve been, um, feeling really sick a lot lately.’ I stare ahead at the stage, talking to Travis but looking at Gabriella.
‘Oh?’ I can’t tell if he is confused or uninterested. I pause, waiting for Gabriella to start playing again before I speak. She starts another track, without her guitar this time. She has a tambourine in her hand and dances behind the mic stand.
I close my eyes and count to ten in my head. ‘Yeah, I’m pregnant.’
‘Oh, wow.’ He turns to me. I glance at him side on, then look back to the stage. I breathe quicker for a few seconds and then, purposefully, much slower.
‘Congratulations?’ His inflection is upwards.
‘Thanks.’ I do a small nod to myself, as if in agreeance.
I go to place my hand on the orange and then immediately feel like that’s over the top and take it away. I keep my gaze fixed on the stage. Travis too seems to be transfixed by Gabriella and yet I can’t help but feel watched. My glass is empty, but I tip it all the way up and wait for the final two drops of water to slowly make their way to my mouth. After a couple more tracks, Travis goes to the bathroom. When he returns, he stands on the other side of the room.
Small Joys of Real Life Page 6