Small Joys of Real Life

by Allee Richards

  When I wake, she’s placed two steamed dim sims in a bowl on the coffee table, a salad on the side. She sits on the couch opposite with her own salad. I feel heavy and ugly, my eyelids the weight of concrete. I can’t be bothered speaking, especially not about anything serious, not even about anything bland. It strikes me now that with Mum here weeks before we planned, I’m going to need to host her. Without a job, I have no reason to leave her for long periods of time.

  ‘When is Ken arriving?’

  ‘The twenty-third.’ Mum is looking around my lounge.

  ‘Why are you here so early?’

  ‘I wanted to see you.’ She’s looking at a particular print on our wall – a photo of a monstera plant, far healthier than any of the actual plants we have in the house.

  ‘What do you want for dinner tonight?’ I ask her.

  ‘I’ll be out tonight so you don’t need to worry about me.’ She pokes a fork around her bowl, spearing individual chickpeas and pieces of cucumber. I wait for her to elaborate on her plans for the evening, but she doesn’t.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I’ve got plans.’ She opens her mouth wide, shovels in the big forkful and returns my stare. ‘Do you think mothers don’t have lives?’ She smiles knowingly. Clearly, she’s hiding something.

  WHAT HAPPENED WITH my father was theft, in the literal and the metaphorical sense. Mum worked in retail in her twenties and climbed her way up to floor manager at the first Myer in Brisbane. I don’t know how she met my father. I assume I asked when I was very young; it seems such an obvious thing to wonder. By the time I thought to ask again we hadn’t mentioned him in years so I refrained. What I do know has been pieced together from years of off-hand comments and a couple of conversations I wasn’t meant to overhear. He came from a reasonably well-off family; my mother did not. He worked at a bank. What he did there I don’t know, I just remember the rectangular name badge. After they were married my father helped Mum open her own store near where we lived in a suburb an hour or so out of Brisbane. It was a homewares shop that also sold jewellery and accessories. Aprons, tea towels, decorated crockery, gift cards. I remember teddy bears with silky fur and sitting on the counter, being smiled at by the customers. Mum had the store for eight years and business was good for most of that time.

  Although the business was in Mum’s name, like many women of her generation she was raised to allow her husband to handle the money. She handled the customers; he handled the numbers. And besides, he had come up with the cash needed to open the shop in the first place. Dad paid Mum a standard wage and himself a modest wage. The store did a steady trade. Customers loved Mum and she loved them. The house they lived in was being paid off and I was born.

  Along with claiming a raft of tax benefits available to small business owners, it turned out my father was also contributing to his super far more generously than the amount that was being paid into Mum’s. Eventually – I’m not sure exactly when because Mum isn’t sure exactly when – he started investing the profit from the business in shares. He made some money and then he lost some money and then he lost a lot. He continued to invest poorly and lost more. His debt was growing and growing. Mum had no idea it existed until the day he told her they’d have to liquidate to pay it off. The debt belonged to the business. Mum’s career and her income were both gone, along with her connection to her community, the source of so many friendships for years. She wasn’t in trouble with the law, the investments hadn’t been illegal, they were just stupid. That’s what a lawyer told her. The house had to be sold as well as the business. When they divorced they were both left with what they had when they entered the marriage. Mum, nothing. (‘Not nothing,’ she would correct me. ‘I have you.’) Dad, some family money.

  One of Mum’s regular customers had a holiday house that she offered us rent-free for four months. That’s when we moved to the Sunshine Coast, just the two of us. I have a few memories of that house. It was old – the couple were intending to either renovate or bulldoze and build something knew – with different wallpaper in every room and thick floral carpet that was always dusty no matter how often you vacuumed. It smelled like mould and the ocean – degradation and freedom.

  The photo of me on my first day of school was taken out the front of that house, soon after we moved. I’m holding a blue backpack with both hands. Smiling widely in a baggy checked school dress reaching halfway down my shins, and a red jumper. Pigtails tied with one red bow, one blue. The fact that Mum had the energy to arrange coordinated hair ribbons at this time now baffles me and breaks my heart.

  Mum got a job in a store much like the one she had owned. She never liked the Sunny Coast, I always knew this. But I’d been made to move once. She didn’t want to uproot me and make me go to a new school. Once she’d saved some money we moved from the decrepit holiday house to a modest rental where we stayed for good.

  Between then and my father’s death nine years later I saw him rarely and Mum and I talked about him even less. I’d meet him in the school holidays. Mum would drop me off at a shopping centre between Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast. She would sit with me in the food court until she saw him approaching from a few hundred metres away, then she would stand and walk away. He would escort me around the shops and buy me clothes and takeaway McDonald’s. He’d ask me how school was. I’d answer in monosyllables.

  He died of a heart attack when I was fifteen. On the day of his funeral I’d assumed Mum was just dropping me at the funeral home, but when we arrived she turned the car off, then sighed heavily before getting out. I was thankful she did. I’d been nervous of what people would think of me if I didn’t cry, but Mum didn’t cry either, so I felt an iota of ease. People kept offering her their condolences and she just smiled in a strained and sad way. I remember feeling baffled by how gracious she was to all the people who’d loved him. When they said, ‘Sorry for your loss,’ I wondered which loss they were referring to. We never spoke of him at home. If he had to be mentioned she referred to him as ‘your father’ – he was mine, not hers. His funeral was the first time I realised that maybe she didn’t hate him; maybe she loved him. I sat through the service and heard people I didn’t know talk about a man I didn’t know and I tried to recall my early memories of him. The time before the betrayal. Could I recall a trip to the beach or him making me dinner, driving me to birthday parties, the kinds of banal acts of love that I remember my mother doing a thousand times? I couldn’t. To this day he is a vague figure who lurks in the corner of my memories, his face obscured.

  Years later, when I was in drama school and had to use grief as a memory to motivate emotion, I considered whether I regretted a lost opportunity for a relationship with him. Did I carry guilt?

  Yes.

  Could I use this feeling to inform my work on stage? This curdled feeling – the sadness and anger that sloshed around in me like oil and water – could it be distilled into a facial expression, a posture?

  No.

  This was possibly when I started to question the technicalities of acting. Was it really possible to replicate an actual life? It always felt like we were acting just one thing, when in reality we were feeling everything all at once.

  I’VE HEARD PEOPLE SAY THAT becoming a mother changes your relationship with your own mother, instantly and forever. People also say that women become mothers when they find out they’re pregnant, while men only become fathers when their babies are born. I’ve decided at least one or both of these generalisations is bullshit, as my relationship with my mother is unchanged. Over a week and a half we cycle through the same conversations, never coming to any different conclusions. She insists that I adhere to rules about pregnancy that existed when she was pregnant with me. If someone is smoking in a public space she takes me by the shoulders and pulls me away. She encourages me to walk every day. We amble very slowly along the creek all the way to Coburg Lake. She brings bottles of water with her everywhere we go.

  She starts early on the subject
of the father.

  ‘I’m not allowed to become stressed at the moment, Mum.’

  ‘You’re about to learn a new meaning of the word stress. And you’re going to keep learning that for the next eighteen years.’ She narrows her eyes at me. ‘Make that thirty.’

  She moves on ever so slightly by asking if I’m trying to meet someone new.

  ‘I’m trying to save money.’

  ‘If you don’t go out you won’t ever meet anybody.’

  ‘I could go on a dating app.’

  She scrunches her face at this. Not complete disgust, but distrust. The face she’d make if her meal is a bit too salty. On this topic I realise I haven’t thought about Fergus in some time. I have the thought, then drop it easily.

  Mum wants me to act again and doesn’t believe the pregnancy should hold me back. ‘There are so many ads for prenatal vitamins. I see them every day.’

  ‘Pregnant people in ads aren’t actually pregnant; I’ve been pregnant on television before, remember. Anyway, I want to find something else.’

  ‘Get a job in casting.’

  This isn’t the worst idea and I make a mental note of it without telling her.

  ‘I just want to find something I can do that I don’t hate and that I can fit around …’ I stumble on the word family; it seems to refer to something much larger than my own circumstances. ‘Something that I can fit around a baby,’ I finish.

  We always disagree at the same points then leave it there. Watch the ducks on Coburg Lake and eat the sandwiches she’s made.

  Almost every afternoon she leaves me alone, tells me I need sleep. If I insist I don’t need sleep she says that she needs sleep. One afternoon I leave her at the motor inn, then, instead of walking home, I cross the road to the KFC and sit in the window. Only ten minutes later I see her standing on the opposite corner. A car arrives and she gets in.

  My first thought is that she’s having an affair, but I don’t believe it for a second. It’s a cliché, that’s the only reason I thought of it. Apart from not thinking she would leave Ken, the only way she could meet someone living in Melbourne would be online and I can’t see her doing that. I try to consider any possibility, no matter how far-fetched, but there are only two I can imagine. Either she is organising some kind of surprise for the baby – buying a car seat or a pram – or she’s sick and going to see a specialist. Given the frequency of her heading out alone and her lack of flexibility and the lies, the latter seems most likely, but it’s too awful to imagine so I try to put it from my mind and hope to God she’s having an affair.

  I don’t ask her outright where she’s going, but the next time she suggests we part for the afternoon, I whine and tell her I don’t want to.

  ‘Why are you being so needy at the moment?’

  I poke her on the shoulder. ‘Beep!’ I use a high-pitched voice. ‘Beep! Beep!’

  It’s a game we played when I was little. When I misbehaved she’d say, ‘Don’t push my buttons, Eva!’ and I’d run at her, my little index fingers high in the air: ‘Beep-beep! Beep!’

  ‘Just you wait,’ she says to me when I do it now. She smiles at me with so much love.

  THE HARDEST PART OF TELLING Mum about you isn’t even that you’re dead. Because that, at least, is concrete. If I told her about you, surely she would ask me what you did, and the truth is I don’t actually know what you were doing when you died. I know what you used to do and what you’d been studying. You talked about your degree and your old furniture making. You didn’t talk about what you’d been doing day to day in those three weeks I knew you. Maybe it was nothing; maybe you were that depressed.

  It’s embarrassing to admit that I don’t know what you did, but also that was the great thing about you. Spending time with you wasn’t an exchange of tired niceties. It was an exchange of odd facts and laughter. Conversations just pinged between us. We didn’t need to reach out for the easiest topics.

  Telling her about you would be like trying to describe a dream. Something I enjoyed so much that if I tried to put it into words, sentences, paragraphs, the holes in the timeline, the gaps in the logic, would become chasms. They’d spread so far apart, the threads of the narrative I have would disperse. I’d be on the precipice of a vast gorge.

  Right now, I feel as though I’m on a narrow hiking trail. Annie and Sarah are with me, one walking ahead and the other behind. I’m surrounded by bush. Isolated, but safe. I can’t see that far ahead, but I can see where I need to step next.

  WHEN I DO END UP asking for the money I’m defensive and irritated.

  We’re in Sivan’s clinic waiting for her to arrive. I’m on the examination table, ready for the ultrasound. I’m relieved that Sivan is doing this second scan, as every time I visit or speak on the phone to the hospital, I’m with a different midwife. I’m grateful for this shred of consistency. Mum’s in a chair, looking at her phone. She’s wondering about the weather for tomorrow. There’s a storm coming and she doesn’t know if we’ll be able to walk in the morning.

  ‘It says the cool change will come through at three o’clock, but it’s going to be nice early. I’m buying an apartment.’ Her eyes are still on her screen. Her two statements roll together seamlessly with no pause, like she’s trying to force some obvious metaphor about a storm.

  ‘Are you selling your house?’ I ask.

  ‘That’s Ken’s house – it’s his to sell. I’m using the money your father left and buying a small place in Coburg. I’m going to move to Melbourne.’

  ‘That’s my money!’ I don’t raise my voice, but I turn my head sharply to look at her. We are exchanging affronted stares when Sivan enters and asks how we are.

  ‘We’re fine!’ says Mum, overly cheerful.

  ‘Have you felt the baby kick yet?’ Sivan asks me.

  I shake my head. I’m utterly shell-shocked and I think Sivan mistakes this for fear.

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s different for everyone,’ she says. ‘Some people don’t feel it until much, much later than this.’

  I haven’t been worried about the kicking, but everyone keeps asking me about it so I wonder if I’m meant to be. I find Sivan’s insistence off-putting. Not as though she’s saying, ‘Everyone else is normal,’ but like she’s saying, ‘Some people are even more abnormal than you.’ She asks Mum if she is excited.

  ‘Yes, oh yes, I can’t wait,’ she says, before going on to mention how her generation never got all these scans like we do today.

  When the baby appears on the screen I start to cry. Sivan smiles, misinterpreting my tears. I envy my child, curled up on its own away from everyone. Mum leans in close to the ultrasound and grabs my hand. The baby’s heartbeat is amplified. The sound of a water bottle shaking, again, again, again.

  ‘Gosh, that’s fast, isn’t it?’ Mum says.

  My own heartbeat feels faster.

  Sivan points out the curve of the baby’s spine, the heart, the arms and legs, a hand. She measures the body parts. She lists all the organs. Everything is correct, everything is as it should be. The baby is an ear of corn.

  ‘You’re doing great,’ she says to me with a big smile.

  BACK AT THE motel our conversation goes in circles, like most conversations we’ve had since Mum arrived, but louder. She’s using my money to put a deposit on an apartment, she will move here, Ken will visit every month or two. Mum will work part time and help me raise the baby. She should be able to handle the small mortgage, but Ken will step in if she needs help. She reminds me I said I didn’t want the money. I remind her I wasn’t pregnant when I said that.

  ‘You said you had enough money,’ she tells me.

  ‘Because I thought I could have this money.’

  ‘I don’t think you realise how hard raising a child alone will be, Eva. Do you know why I didn’t drink for ten years of your life?’

  ‘Because you were taking care of an infant?’

  ‘No, because I thought if I got drunk enough I’d probably kill myself. I was ba
rely holding on. I never liked it on the Sunshine Coast, you know that.’

  This is true but also thrown out as a reminder of my debt to her, everything she gave up for me.

  ‘What about Ken?’

  ‘Eva, I’m not sure why you’re saying I should do what makes my partner happy.’

  ‘I’m saying you should do what makes you happy, not what you think is best for me.’

  ‘Well, you’re not really telling me that, because you’re saying I can’t have the money.’ She signals the end of the argument with a key change. Tone and volume both lowered – ‘I’m doing this’ – pace decelerating – ‘for you.’

  It ends in tears – mine. I sit on her motel bed sobbing loudly. She pats me on the back but doesn’t hug me. More like the mother she used to be. Kind but practical. Less indulgent.

  Given only days ago I was worried my mother might have a potentially terminal illness, I should feel relieved and grateful she’s not dying. I realise that is what I should be feeling.

  I’ve been self-righteous in our argument. Going back on my word. Blaming her for a decision I made without thinking through the consequences. ‘It’s my money,’ I kept saying, emphasis on a different word each time until eventually it was every word. ‘It’s. My. Money.’

  Eventually I leave. I don’t look at her on my way out and I feel awful for it.

  ‘Sarah!’ I scream when I get home. I go to her room, but she’s not here. I ring her, sitting on her bed. I’ve hardly spent any time with her since Mum arrived. I get her voicemail but I’ve no idea what to say so I just groan then hang up.

  She rings back a few seconds later.

  ‘Where are you?’ I ask.

  ‘I’m at my work Christmas party. Where are you?’

  ‘I’m coming.’

  ‘Okay, but wear something hot.’

  I open Sarah’s closet and find a fitted black dress stretchy enough to expand over my abdomen and thickening arms. It’s not weather appropriate, though; the sleeves are long. It will be hot in the wrong sense of the word. I order an Uber then realise I need to save money and cancel it; the cancellation costs me ten dollars. I walk to the tram stop instead. I glare at the motor inn through the window of the tram as I pass by.