‘That’ll be nice.’
‘My parents will be here.’ I’m not sure if he’s saying that makes it more or less nice. ‘What about you?’
There’s a sadness when he asks this, an inhalation of breath that I’d been expecting. I’m acting so much like Annie right now I almost laugh, a private joke with myself. ‘I’ll go to Renee’s birthday party. At the Clarke Street house.’
My logic is that if I can get him to talk about Renee, we’ll be in a sad vein that will make it easy to transition to Pat. I reason that he’ll find it hard to talk about Renee without mentioning Pat. His death, at least. She broke up with him less than two weeks before his friend died. Whenever I saw Travis and Renee together Pat was there too.
What happens next is what I intended, but not what I expected. Travis is pouring his heart out, talking about Renee. How much he loved her, how he had a sense – he didn’t know why – that this might be it. He told his mum he was going to marry her. He didn’t sleep for three days after they broke up.
I feel sorry for him but also think he’s being absurd, talking like what happened to him was a great injustice. He says he hopes every day that he will run into her – on his way to work, maybe, or just shopping for groceries – but he can’t face the party. The idea makes him want to vomit. He’s so dramatic it’s almost comical, but Renee said he was like this: excitable.
I hardly have to say anything to keep the conversation going. I sit, labelling, letting his feelings gush everywhere. After he has gone over their break-up in detail he says, ‘And then …’ He doesn’t continue. I want him to keep going, to talk about what happened after, but he falls silent.
‘It must’ve been horrible.’ I concentrate very hard on my bottle. I count to five in my head, telling myself that at five I will mention it. I will finish the sentence: And then Pat died so soon after that. One, two, three –
‘Let’s talk about something less depressing,’ he says. ‘Do you like The Peep Tempel?’
‘Sure.’ I don’t know who they are.
The second half of the day we spend almost in silence. We listen to two Peep Tempel albums and then switch back to the radio. We learn about how families can navigate their child’s internet use, interspersed with tips on how to make their gardens and kitchens nicer.
At the end of the day Travis thanks me, walks a box of wine to my car.
‘Thanks so much, Travis. I really needed this work.’
‘I really needed the company.’ He sounds flat, unenthused. I don’t know if he’s still thinking about Renee or if he’s sad to see me go.
‘You should come on the weekend,’ I say.
‘Maybe.’ He taps the roof of the car twice as I’m backing out of the drive then steps back and holds his arm up in a salute.
Driving off, I watch him in the rear-view mirror as he walks back inside the house.
I GO TO Renee’s birthday on the weekend hoping to see Travis, but he doesn’t turn up. At first my friends comment on how big I’m getting. Later in the evening they comment on how quiet I am.
‘I’m tired.’ I stay for just over an hour. At home I can’t sleep.
I IMAGINE TELLING YOU I don’t like Travis’s band. I wouldn’t go as far as to laugh at them – he’s your best friend, after all – but we would see them together and you would know they’re not that good. You would nod your head, smiling with your eyes closed, a little exasperated but very affectionate.
I REMEMBER THE night at The Tote, Travis saying that anybody who didn’t like The Drones just didn’t like music and how you reasoned with him, reminded him of a band he didn’t like who most people did. You reminded me of Annie, although less resigned. You said everything as though it was hopeful.
Travis needs you, I think. Someone to temper his hyper-enthusiasm. I try to imagine how the two of you might have met. If you had a class together or if you met through someone else one of you had a class with. I can’t really picture it – how someone as extroverted as Travis and someone as composed as you started talking. I imagine you meeting more and more times, speaking more each time you met. When did you fall in love? I want to ask you these things, not Travis. The way he spoke about Renee, his feelings rolling and rolling, all messy like waves, was absurd. How much he had to say about a two-month relationship with someone who, by the sounds of it, wasn’t even that kind to him. What would he do if I mentioned you? I think he’d probably say nothing.
December
DAYS SLIP AWAY AT THE speed of hours. Each morning when I wake, it’s with ennui – here’s another eternity to fill with nothing. And yet it’s December, soon I’ll be in my third trimester, and it feels as though that has happened far too fast. My stomach is firm, not fatty. It’s rounded and harder to push on. My baby is lengthening, thinning out. Now it is a papaya and next it will be a grapefruit.
Sarah has me doing pelvic floor exercises, so that I don’t wet myself. We sit side by side on the edge of the couch. Leaning forward, like we’re anticipating something.
‘Like you’re trying not to wee,’ she tells me.
I contract what I’ve always thought was my bladder. It feels awkward and wrong. I’ve no idea if I’m doing it properly, but the ritual feels responsible so I go along with it.
‘One, two, three …’ Sarah counts us to eight. We do it again and again. Every day when she gets home from work.
As well as the pelvic floor exercises, Sarah sings to me. The book says it’s a way for the father to connect to the baby, to make the baby feel an attachment to his voice. Each night she sings a different song, but mostly she only knows the first verse and chorus of anything, so once she’s made it to the end of the first chorus she circles back and starts again.
Suddenly I’m struck with the idea that being this obviously pregnant will help me get a job. Isn’t that who you want handing you a loaf of sourdough? A smiley pregnant woman in a linen apron?
I PUT ON a nice floral wraparound dress – one that used to actually wrap around me but that I now wear with shorts and a top underneath – and take the last of the stack of résumés I printed off months ago. I take the tram north on High Street to Preston, which is not a strip of shops I threw myself at last time. The owner of a cafe congratulates me when I walk through the door. I haven’t yet got used to strangers acknowledging my pregnancy and I’m confused, wondering if she’s referring to the résumés that I’m clutching to my stomach. She tells me to take a seat. I order a cup of tea and place my résumé face down on the table, suddenly embarrassed. An unemployed parent. Instantly I realise the fact I’m this pregnant will mean I definitely won’t get a job. Nobody would hire someone they know is going to leave soon. As quickly as I was convinced this was a good idea, I now realise it’s stupid.
I sip the tea and scroll on my phone. I got a message from Travis yesterday. He sent through four hundred dollars for the labelling. I feel like the amount is absurd, but having seen his family home I don’t feel guilty. I spent a lot of time wondering what I should write back to him, before finally writing a simple Thanks. I want to write something more now.
Keep me in mind for more work.
I had fun, thanks for thinking of me.
Thanks for the cash, but honestly I just wanted you to tell me if you know why your friend died.
The walk home is difficult. The days have already pushed past thirty degrees and my hands are swollen and tender. My feet too – bloated and red like a baby’s. At home I wet a tea towel and drape it over my body. I collapse onto the couch and turn a fan towards myself. I know I should regret not applying for the job in the bakery, but I’m so used to the torpor now I’m not even sure if I’d be able to work again.
‘I’m going to ask Mum for Dad’s money,’ I say aloud to no one.
After he died my father left a smallish lump of cash that was meant for me. I told Mum I didn’t want it. ‘You have it. You put up with him longer than I did.’ She’s mentioned it a couple of times over the years. When I first moved to Melbourne. When I was ne
aring the end of drama school. Any time I went a few months without a job. I always told her I didn’t want it. Eventually she stopped mentioning it. We haven’t talked about it for a few years now. I know that on some level I must have accepted months ago that I was going to fall back on that money now.
Mum and Ken are coming to Melbourne a few days before Christmas and we’ll have Christmas lunch together before heading to the coast for a holiday. While I’m dreading giving Mum so much opportunity to question my choices, at least I’ll have an escape valve: James’s parents live in the town where we’ll be staying, so he and Annie will also be there. I decide that before I ask Mum for money – for my money, I remind myself – I’ll go shopping and use the money from the ad shoot to buy things I need: sensible, mothering things, like a crib and a pram, so that when I’m asking for my money she will see how responsible I am being.
SARAH AND ANNIE come with me to Northland. We used to spend weekends at the Sunshine Plaza when we were teens. We bought cheap make-up with our pocket money. Walked through every level of the complex, even the ones with shops we didn’t need to visit. Sauntering and sipping thickshakes from Wendy’s. Cold in the aircon with our short shorts and thongs. Stopping to chat to people we saw at school every day. Wasting time because we were teenagers and we had so much of it.
Annie is cynical, Sarah is hungover and I am content in their company. An expensive swimwear store advertises that if you don’t buy food you can afford their bathers and look good in them too. Annie is quizzing Sarah on legislation, asking about guidelines in advertising material.
‘Stop walking so fast,’ says Sarah.
Both of them cheer up when we enter the baby store.
Sarah holds up a pair of tiny Converse high tops. ‘You have to buy these!’ She uses the small shoes like finger puppets, tap dancing them on my shoulder.
‘I’m having a baby not a toddler.’
Little jumpsuits increasing in length inch by inch are lined up in rows – tiniest to still tiny. So many phases to pass through so fast. Just like pregnancy, where every two weeks is a new fruit. It strikes me now how often I’m going to have to do this. How quickly a baby grows and how many new clothes I’ll have to buy. Maybe that’s why there are so many women pushing prams around the shopping centre.
My friends coo, holding out t-shirts the size of hankies. Sarah comes at me with a pink jumpsuit, lays it over my belly. ‘Does it fit?’ Annie takes a photo of us, both turned to the camera, both laughing. Sarah’s index finger pointed at my round belly.
We race prams up the aisles. Taking the corners fast, telling ourselves we’re testing the steering. They’re all so large, the tyres thick like mountain bikes’. I say they remind me of SUVs and jokes about soccer practice are made. I want something small and easy to use. I use the word ‘zippy’ to the sales attendant. We take up much of her time and eventually leave without buying a pram. We do buy a crib, though. Pale slats of wood. A sweet jail for the white stuffed rabbits in the store, their blue and pink bows their prison uniforms.
It’s a long time since I’ve done this: browsed shops, happily spending money. We stop at the food court before we leave and share a large serve of fries. Annie rips open the paper bag and we pick at the fries like birds. I look at the teenagers seated around tables together, not eating. Looking at their phones and sharing so much. ‘Have you seen?’ they say, passing the screens to their friends. ‘Yeah, I’ve seen it. Did you see Jake’s comment?’ My friends are looking at their phones too. But we’re silent, private in our scrolling. I know they’re most likely just reading emails, nothing I’d be interested in, but suddenly I’m wondering if maybe they have their own secrets. I try to imagine what kinds of things they might hide from me, but I can’t. I never told Sarah or Annie about labelling the wine with Travis. I’m afraid they might judge me for spending time with him, given I haven’t told him about Pat. But this isn’t a secret. Just something I’m not mentioning. If either of them heard about it and asked me, I wouldn’t lie. Secrets are more protected, covered in untruths.
‘Have you felt the baby kicking yet?’ Sarah asks.
I realise my hand is resting on my bump, absent-mindedly.
‘No, not yet.’
‘That’s completely fine,’ she says. ‘All the books say not to worry. It might not happen for a while.’
I DO THE rest of my shopping online. I feel calmer this way. I don’t have to move, don’t have to remember my pin number, and everything looks nicer onscreen, photographed with studio lighting.
I spend long mornings in bed, thinking about Travis and how we will not be friends much longer. He’s not going to visit me and my crying newborn. We’re hardly friends now. I think about messaging him every day. I type out texts that become so long they’re more like letters. I spend time editing them and then I delete them. There’s no chance of me getting drunk and deciding to send them. No chance of Travis finding my phone and reading them. But still I delete them. And still I write them. It must be cathartic, because I keep doing it.
ONE DAY IN THE MIDDLE of the month there is a knock on my door and it’s Mum, two weeks earlier than expected. I’m wearing a dressing gown with tea spilled on the lapel and here’s Mum on my doorstep looking tired but happy in a maroon dress that’s wrinkled – not because she doesn’t iron, but because when travelling she wears clothes that are deliberately wrinkled so that it doesn’t matter if they get creased in her bag. She’s not wearing make-up and her hair is a sleek grey bob. She must have stopped dying it. Maybe she’s trying to look more like a grandma.
‘Surprise!’ She hugs me. Mum is not one for surprises and she only hugs on occasions that really call for it, which I suppose this is.
‘I was just about to get changed.’ Already, I am lying.
I’m conscious of her alone in the house while I shower. Conscious of the dark layer of dust on the windowsills and skirting boards.
I retrieve the one nice dress I can still fit into from the bottom of my washing basket. It feels moist and grubby. I flap it like a sheet a few times, loosening the dust, hoping to de-wrinkle and air it out.
‘I can’t believe you bought a crib!’ Mum says when I walk out to the lounge.
‘I’m getting ready.’
‘Look at you.’ She hugs me again. There’s something affected about her manner. When someone who doesn’t usually hug hugs you twice in a short period of time you should feel nervous.
‘I thought you weren’t arriving till the twenty-third?’ I say.
She breaks away from the hug, but keeps her hands on my shoulders.
‘I thought I’d surprise you.’
SHE’S STAYING IN the St Georges Motor Inn at the end of my street. It’s a brown-brick building with a tall wall surrounding it and would be attractive enough if it weren’t for the huge yellow-and-black signage that’s always flashing Vacancies.
‘Why are you staying here?’ I ask.
‘It’s cheap and it’s close to you.’
‘You could’ve stayed with me.’ I would’ve dusted the skirting boards.
‘I don’t want to be a bother.’
‘It wouldn’t be a bother if you’d told me.’
Mum’s luggage is open on her bed and she starts to hang her clothes.
‘These dresses are so great for travelling.’ She runs a hand swiftly down each one, inspecting it before placing it in the cupboard.
We catch the tram to Fitzroy North and get morning tea at the bakery on Scotchmer Street.
‘This is quirky.’ Mum pulls her chair in close to our table, making room for customers passing behind her.
‘You know that book I bought you last Christmas? The author’s husband designed this store.’
‘Oh, okay.’ She looks up and around the bakery, from the ceiling to the counter. ‘That’s random.’
When our drinks and pastries arrive, she sits up a little straighter. ‘Now …’ She pours me a glass of sparkling water. ‘You are eating meat, aren’t you? Y
ou have to eat meat.’
‘I’m eating meat.’
‘Good. And what vitamins are you taking?’
I repeat what I’ve already told her over the phone. I’m eating the right foods, drinking lots of water, taking the prenatal vitamins. She lists. I list.
Thankfully she doesn’t ask about Pat. Not yet.
Afterwards, we go across the street to the IGA. I follow my mother through the aisles, bored and impatient. She compares prices before putting anything in her trolley.
‘This supermarket is expensive,’ she says as she fondles mangoes. ‘No wonder your generation is broke.’
‘I don’t usually shop here.’
‘Good,’ she says. ‘Now, what have you been craving?’
‘You don’t need to buy me food, Mum.’
‘No, but I’d like to.’
‘Dim sims.’
‘You like those, do you?’
She reads the ingredients on each of the packets of dim sims in the frozen food section. ‘Are you sure you want these?’ she asks before she puts the packet in the trolley.
I try to help her with the bags on the tram, but she insists on carrying them herself.
‘I’m pregnant,’ I tell her. ‘I’m not dying.’
‘I’m old, but I’m not dying either.’
Back at my house she unpacks the groceries, telling me to relax and rest. When I’ve visited Mum on the Sunshine Coast as an adult, I’ve marvelled at my ability to revert to being a child in her presence. Waking in the morning and parking myself on her couch, switching on the TV and flicking channels until I find something merely watchable. Asking her what’s for lunch rather than looking myself. Or if I did look, I’d stand with the fridge door open, staring, asking her what was for lunch. This transition into the old version of ourselves is harder here. As she unpacks the shopping, Mum opens almost every cupboard trying to work out where things go. I’m conscious of my pantry’s lack of order. The pantry moths’ glossy webs in the muesli and flour. She refuses my offer to help and I don’t insist. I’m tired. I fall asleep to the sound of her chopping vegetables.
Small Joys of Real Life Page 11