Small Joys of Real Life

by Allee Richards

  We all laugh.

  The new apartment fills fast with the old furniture. The ceiling is lower than in the old house and the fridge looks huge. The couch takes up one whole wall. The second couch closes off the space and we decide I don’t need it. Trying to fit my old things into a smaller space feels too significant; too obviously a metaphor for life shrinking, closing in around me.

  Annie says I’ll need a new coffee table. Not right away, but the glass-topped one I own won’t be safe once the baby is toddling around. I need to get the heater tested for carbon monoxide and also I need a barrier to stop the baby from reaching it. She walks around the house kicking sharp corners of the skirting boards. ‘I wonder if we can baby-proof that.’

  Baby-proofing, I joke, sounds like you’re trying to protect the house from babies getting in.

  Annie fills the house with indoor plants. She read an article about air pollution and how bad it is for everyone and, of course, if it’s bad for everyone then it’s worse for pregnant women. Apparently six houseplants will cleanse my air. Then she sees the walls have been freshly painted and decides to buy another three.

  Annie makes me feel small, bossing me around like she has to do everything for me. I wish that she could resign herself to these little things, like the way she is when we talk about the world’s bigger problems.

  AT THE END of the day we order takeaway Indian. I tear the side off an empty cardboard box and place it on the kitchen counter, so the curries don’t stain the white benchtop. They look like open tins of paint lined up in a row, dark green, dark orange, brown. Annie and James drink a beer each. We’re exhausted, so nobody talks much and the silence screams of Sarah.

  It’s not like I’ll never see her. It’s not like I ever thought we’d live together forever. She was a shit housemate anyway … A conversation with myself in my head.

  Sometimes I’m happier without James and Annie around and it makes me feel awful to admit it because they do so much for me. I’m not allowed to be irritated with a friend who will offer to go on a lease for me, but I am. Sometimes my envy of Annie scares me. I get jealous of Sarah too, but also not, like when she sinks four champagnes at a wedding ceremony and then vomits in a vase on the table at the reception. It’s easy to see the ways in which I don’t want to be Sarah, whereas Annie is objectively perfect: job; boyfriend with a job; never gets too drunk. But there’s something about her acquiescence that I pity. Has she never felt the desire to veer from what is generally considered acceptable? I’m not sure what’s sadder – if she’s wanted to, but restrained herself; if she has never wanted to; or me, thinking that quitting my job equates to some kind of emotional enlightenment. I feel superior and then like an arsehole. I resent her any time I feel judged for doing what I’m doing and I feel superior to her any time I feel smug for doing what I’m doing. Sometimes I wonder if I’m wildly depressed and actually have been for a long time and sometimes I wonder if I understand more about myself than most people do. I often wondered this when I was an actor. Do actors have more insight into the human condition because they spend so much time analysing people’s motivations? Or are they completely misguided and actually understand nothing?

  THE FIRST NIGHT in my new home I’m awake until late, getting used to the sounds of the building. It’s a quieter street than the old one, which means less background noise for the creaking walls to compete with. I hear my neighbours next door when they flush the toilet. This I don’t mind, signs of life. Someone nearby to hear me scream. It’s the sounds in the walls that disconcert me. Like my body, shifting and moving within yet outside my control.

  I MESSAGE SARAH in the morning.

  Miss you.

  I send a photo of myself seated alone at our old breakfast table. What to Expect is here. I offered it to Sarah, but she’d already finished it, which I know I won’t. I stopped caring what was going to happen two-thirds in. I’ve succumbed to this state. My body is not mine but belongs to my child. Like being an actor, I am a vessel for someone else’s idea.

  My phone chimes with Sarah’s reply.

  Omg I missed you so much I couldn’t sleep last night.

  For the next few days I document my life in five-to-ten second videos that I send to her. It starts with sharing our meals: we phone each other to have company while we’re eating. Which leads to my sharing photos of the books I’m reading. She sends a photo of her drinks. Which leads to us texting when we’re going to bed – a photo of me blowing a kiss. One day Sarah messages me:

  Ok, I’m going to the toilet now.

  The whole thing descends into us recording our own farts and messaging those to each other. It’s delightfully disgusting and helps me to miss her less.

  When I’m not messaging Sarah, I spend my time shopping for healthy food. I no longer want to eat dim sims; the thought of them actually makes me sick. I cook myself nice meals that I eat in small doses. With the move done now, I notice the absence of Mum and take comfort in the fact that I miss her. With everyone back at work, the sudden lack of company is depressing, but also hopeful. Family gives you an automatic comfort, a rhythm to your life.

  I manage to fill the days by making schedules out of nothing. I schedule Education Time in which I try to learn things about the world so I can be an informed parent. I listen to the news until the point it depresses me and then I read. I work my way through the Zadie Smith novels I’ve owned since uni. Inevitably I fall asleep while reading; this is Relaxation Time. I walk laps around my neighbourhood – Active Time. Mum and Ken bought me a pram for Christmas. It sits by the door of my flat, perpetually ready to leave. I practise pushing it back and forth on the spot, but it doesn’t move comfortably on the carpet. My bike, too, is rested against the wall in my courtyard, collecting cobwebs. I long for the weightlessness of riding along flat roads and spend the afternoon looking up baby bike seats online. I buy more jumpsuits, watch my bank balance deplete and spend afternoons folding the baby’s small clothes into drawers.

  None of it is particularly exciting, but I find comfort in my routine and I feel more relaxed than I did last year.

  I’M SURPRISED TO realise how put out I am that Fergus hasn’t contacted me since I returned from the coast. We haven’t spoken since the day at Sunnyside. I think a lot about whether I want to see him. I did enjoy his company on the beach. Having sex would be nice. But then I hold my hands on my stomach and remind myself I shouldn’t.

  When I ring him, it’s deliberately impulsive, I dial before I can stop myself. He sounds happy to hear from me, but neither of us mentions how long it has been since we last spoke.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about you,’ he says.

  I don’t respond, unsure if this is teetering into phone sex or love or breaking this off – whatever this is.

  ‘I’m on production week for a musical,’ he says. ‘Been doing fourteen-hour days back to back, but we open Thursday. Do you want to come to opening night? I can get two free tickets to the show and the after party.’

  I don’t really want to go. I’ve never liked musical theatre. But the party means free food, free booze for my plus-one and also something to do. An excuse to make my friends spend time with me.

  ‘Can you swing three tickets?’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  TWO NIGHTS LATER we’re going – Annie, Sarah and me. I haven’t been to an opening night in a long time and the buzz in the foyer intoxicates me a little. The three of us have a daggy portrait taken in front of the media wall. There are small bowler hats on sticks, matching the costumes from the show. Sarah places one on my large belly.

  The musical is about a young, tap-dancing girl who moves to the big city to become a star. I never had to act this archetype, thankfully. I’ve pretended to be a nurse, a teacher, a housewife and a writer, but I think this role would be beyond me – trying to understand why anybody would want this life. Especially this life. Musical theatre is even more gruelling than talking theatre, with six-month seasons.

&
nbsp; The show is sexist and culturally insensitive, but the tap dancing is good. It’s pure escapism that requires me to abandon every critical faculty. I don’t like this kind of show, but I do admire its lack of pretension. Actors I worked with – those who worked in ‘serious theatre’ – and writers I met love to call themselves artists. They talk about creating empathy and telling the stories of our time in order to understand it. They say, ‘We tell ourselves stories in order to live,’ as though what we do is a great triumph of catharsis for the human race. Actually, we tell ourselves stories in order to live with ourselves. If you are an artist, you are actively participating in the distraction of thousands of rich people who should be very worried. Does Greta Thunberg go to the theatre? I doubt it. I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad thing. Writing and acting might even be noble pursuits, distracting a doomed race. What I don’t like is pretending that what we’re doing has any grand meaning. Musical theatre, at least, knows that it’s a glittery, smiley distraction.

  Annie, unsurprisingly, has trouble succumbing to the escapism. ‘What does Fergus actually do?’ she asks me at interval.

  ‘Fits the cast for mics.’ He definitely described his work in more detail when we were at the beach, but I’ve forgotten the specifics of it. I feel Annie watching me, waiting for me to go on.

  After the show we attend the party in the theatre’s large function room. Sarah and Annie take glasses of wine from a tray passing by. I shuffle us around the room, chasing the canapés. I run into someone I knew from drama school. I can’t remember his name, but I remember his face, and Sarah and Annie are talking to one another, saving me from having to admit that I can’t introduce him.

  ‘I heard you quit the biz.’ He gestures to my belly when he says it.

  ‘What have you been up to?’ I ask.

  ‘I’m on Harry Potter; my swing is filling in for me tonight so that I could come and see Lola perform.’

  I don’t know who Lola is. ‘How is Harry Potter?’

  ‘It’s a long season. But, you know, what’s the alternative? Auditioning for three years and not getting any work?’

  ‘Right,’ I say. ‘So at what point will you realise you have the worst job in the world?’

  He laughs, claps me on the shoulder and says he has to go talk to Lola. I feel bad after he leaves. I’m almost tempted to chase after him, to tell him that, actually, I admire the work he’s doing. But there’s probably no way I can articulate my thoughts on non-art theatre without offending him more. Social anxiety firmly settled now, I want to leave. We haven’t seen Fergus yet and Annie thinks we should wait. Sarah turns away to chase one last free drink. While she’s gone, Fergus finds me and Annie. He kisses me on the cheek, introduces himself to Annie and asks if we liked the show. Annie tells him she thought it was culturally insensitive. He agrees with her and they talk about representation in musical theatre, whether it is better to abandon shows altogether or attempt to modernise them. I only half listen; I’m scanning the room for the guy I went to drama school with, trying to remember his name. Eventually Sarah returns with two wines. She drinks most of one in one long gulp, then pours the remainder of it into the other glass – two glasses of wine looks like one quite quickly. I laugh; luckily for Sarah, Annie is engaged enough in her conversation with Fergus that she doesn’t notice.

  ‘I think I’m going to head off,’ I say, interrupting them. ‘I’m tired.’

  Annie nods. ‘I’ll come with.’

  ‘Thanks for coming.’ Fergus hugs each of us. ‘I’ll speak to you soon,’ he says quietly into my ear.

  Sarah tips her head back and downs her big glass of wine.

  The three of us are quiet on the tram back north. I’m observing the drunk people here. Their bodies are flung around like rag dolls whenever the tram stops. ‘I’m a Capricorn,’ one drunk says to another. ‘I say what I want.’

  ‘Fergus is nice,’ Annie says. I turn and see she’s watching me watching other people.

  ‘Yeah, he’s nice.’

  I’m aware of Annie studying my reaction. I keep looking down the tram, even once the drunks pile off together. Annie and Sarah both get off in Collingwood. Annie is going home and Sarah is meeting other people out. I continue on to Thornbury alone. I take my phone out to message Fergus and thank him for the tickets, and see he’s already sent me a message.

  What are you doing?

  On the tram home.

  Can I come over?

  I’m too tired to even entertain the thought, although I do entertain it a little.

  Not tonight.

  MY RELATIONSHIP WITH FERGUS BEGINS to resemble what it was at the old house. I don’t love the sex, but I don’t hate it, and I’m bored so I keep inviting him over, almost every day.

  It’s harder to get into a rhythm now. Hard to find a position that I’m comfortable in two days in a row. We try with me on top, my heavy belly resting on his lean one, but my leg starts to cramp.

  ‘Lie on your back,’ he suggests.

  ‘I can’t breathe if I do that.’

  I lie on my side and he awkwardly manoeuvres himself between my legs. It works for about twenty seconds and then it doesn’t.

  ‘Can you use your mouth?’

  I can’t. I just can’t get myself there, my belly presses hard into the bed. He wants to go down on me but I’m too self-conscious. I soak through three pairs of underwear a day lately. In the end I’m on my hands and knees, Fergus behind me. Unsexy, but convenient. When the baby kicks I can’t help but take it as a request for us to stop. I don’t come easily like I did in the second trimester. Actually, I hardly come at all.

  Fergus keeps turning up. He lists new positions we can try as he’s unlacing his shoes.

  ‘How do you find this stuff?’ I ask one day when we’re eating lunch afterwards.

  ‘Do you realise how many women write about it online?’

  This is how it’s different from before: we spend time together, and it’s this part I enjoy, eating noodles on my couch. We start watching a television series together. Not Friends – something with fifty-minute episodes. I usually fall asleep and when I wake, he’s headed off for his evening shift.

  One day I even go to his house. When I visit anyone’s house for the first time, I picture myself living there and then judge the person according to how much I enjoy the imagined life. He lives in a semi-detached brick place on one of Carlton’s long, straight streets. It’s filled with nice furniture, which, unlike mine, is nicer the closer you look. I inspect the wood of a tall record shelf and he tells me his friend made it from rescued Tasmanian oak. A dark leather couch is shiny and unscratched. On the wall there’s a large framed print of a dense forest. It matches his houseplants, which are bursting out of clean pots. The house is perfectly arranged and clearly expensive, and I feel attracted to him in a way I never have been before, picturing my life like I did when I was younger – cool, and casually rich. My materialism bemuses me. I’m probably not as perturbed by it as I should be.

  I wonder if his housemates know about me and, if they do, what they know. I picture Fergus laughing over wine in this kitchen as he tells them what it’s like to have sex with a pregnant woman. I feel a twinge of annoyance. Then I realise that if one of them were to walk through the door and have no idea who the pregnant woman sitting in their house was I would be hurt.

  We don’t talk about what it is we’re doing and I don’t think much about it. Most of the uneasiness I feel is not about our feelings but about the sex. How each time we do it now, it ends up with him masturbating, his gaze fixed on my stomach. His face goes dark red before he comes and he looks too intent, unhealthily serious.

  I bring this up at dinner one evening when Sarah and Annie are eating at my place.

  ‘That’s so normal,’ Sarah says. ‘Remember Ryan? He had a fetish for sleeping with pregnant women – specifically women pregnant with someone else’s baby.’

  There’s silence except for the sound of snow peas crunching;
we’re eating stir-fry. If my friends and I are going to talk about this – my sleeping with a man who’s not the father of my child – we should do it now. It’s unlike my friends – or anyone, I assume – to never ask what is going on with someone I’ve been seeing for this long. But I’ve never been pregnant before. I search their faces for judgement. Sarah looks expectant, clearly hoping I’ll elaborate, Annie is very interested in her bowl. The conversation moves on to Sarah’s new housemates at Clarke Street.

  ‘They’re all always working,’ she says. ‘When they’re not working, they go for runs. Renee is joining a junior board for an arts festival.’ She shudders exaggeratedly and repeats, ‘Junior board.’

  ‘Why do you care?’ asks Annie.

  ‘Corporate art wank pains me.’

  Sarah leaves after dinner and Annie stays to do the dishes. ‘I spoke to Renee,’ she starts. I think she’s going to say something about Travis so I stop wiping the bench and turn to her. ‘They invite Sarah out with them, but she never goes. She’ll only go out with her work friends because they’re the ones with good coke. She crashes into the house wasted at five in the morning, then is a bitch to them on Sundays when they won’t spend time with her.’

  I’m not really sure what Annie is telling me. I don’t know if she’s venting or we’re teetering into a bigger, more serious conversation. ‘Why do they care?’ I ask.

  ‘You heard her tonight.’ She turns to face me now, her hands still in the sink. ‘She’s bagging them out because they’re not getting hammered with her. Like it’s an affront to her if someone wants to go for a run in the morning.’

  ‘They knew what Sarah was like when they said she could live with them.’

  Annie doesn’t say anything. There’s just the sound of cutlery sliding around the bottom of the sink. Annie’s frustration with Sarah is similar to Sarah’s frustration with her housemates. Annie takes it as an affront that her friend isn’t living her life the way she is. She drains the sink and takes a dish towel to start drying.