Small Joys of Real Life

by Allee Richards

‘You only had morning sickness with one of the boys, didn’t you, Carol? Was it Pat?’

  Carol blinks. The pause before she answers feels unusually long. ‘No, that was Mark.’

  ‘What do your other sons do?’ I ask.

  The word ‘other’ rings in the air for a few seconds before Carol replies that one is a teacher and the other a GP.

  ‘We haven’t told them,’ Carol says. ‘We just wanted to meet you first, to … to … We will tell them.’

  I get the sense she stopped herself from saying that it was to check that I’m not insane, dangerous, awful. I don’t blame her. ‘Take as much time as you need,’ I say.

  Pat’s parents exchange a look – the kind of look that is exchanged between me and Sarah or Annie, or between James’s parents, Ian and Maureen. A look that’s heavy with conversations I haven’t been present for and is therefore impossible for me to interpret.

  Carol lifts her tea and takes a sip. Jim smiles at me and the crow’s-feet at his temples slope downwards. In that moment he looks exactly like Pat. I take a deep breath and remember the things I wrote out to say.

  ‘I don’t expect anything of you, or anything from you. I decided to have this baby because I want it. I have a lot of help around me, and any involvement from you is for your sake, not mine.’ It comes out too quickly. I don’t leave any space between my points. Travis smiles at me after I’ve said it, but Carol and Jim just nod. Carol’s mouth is a small, clenched frown, like maybe she hasn’t smiled ever. They don’t respond and I’m unsure whether to go on or change the subject, though talking about anything else would be impossible. Any of the most obvious and easy conversations to grab at – what do you do for work? – seem wildly inappropriate. And we can’t talk about the only thing we have in common, their dead son. I imagine asking them, So where was Pat working when he died? The thought makes me shudder. I’m too embarrassed even to ask Travis this. We sit in our silence like it’s bad weather, our bodies all bound up tight, closed in on ourselves for protection.

  When the waiter comes over to ask if we would like to eat, I’m relieved when Pat’s parents say no. Carol looks like she hasn’t eaten in some time. Her skin looks as heavy as a theatre curtain, hanging off her bones, and has a grey tinge, except under her eyes, where it is pink, almost translucent, rubbed raw. She asks the waiter to top up her teapot with more water. I use the interruption as an opportunity to go to the bathroom.

  I look determinedly down at my hands as I wash them in the restroom – I’m afraid if I look at my face in the mirror, I’ll see I look sweaty or dishevelled. My forearms look so meaty compared with Carol’s bony body.

  When I return Jim is asking Travis about his work. Carol is looking down at her lap, as though she’s mentally drifted somewhere else, although the moment Travis finishes she lifts her head to look at me.

  ‘What are you doing for work now, Eva? Have you continued acting?’

  I tell her about Kate. I make it sound like I actually have a job in casting.

  ‘I didn’t know this.’ Travis has turned to face me. His upbeat interest clashes like an out-of-tune key change. Carol looks perplexedly at Travis for a moment, as though she’s worried that her informant isn’t good enough.

  I explain that my mum is moving down from Queensland. They ask about growing up there and I mention Sarah and Annie. I don’t mention my father and they don’t ask. The interaction reminds me of meeting a new boyfriend’s parents. Trying to represent the shiniest, least blemished angle of my life. I will reassurance to flow out of my forced smile, but I realise as I’m talking that they don’t seem to be taking much in. Or if they are, they don’t really care; their expressions are opaque. I’m talking, but I’m disassociating. Thinking how poorly I was taught to act grief. The absurdity of all the wailing we did in drama school. But also, I realise, how necessary. Carol and Jim are as expressive as concrete pillars. Not entertaining for an audience.

  Desperate for something to fill the air, I ask if they are still working. I mean the still to refer to their age and possible retirement, but as I say it I realise it sounds like maybe they can’t work because of their grief. And I realise that maybe this really is the case.

  ‘Jim is still working but I’m not.’ Carol is stirring her tea even though she hasn’t added milk or sugar.

  It’s the slowest cup of tea of my life. Eventually we’re saved by the waiter arriving with the bill. Travis pays, which strikes me as strange, and suddenly I’m overcome by how strange it is that he sat through the entire event at all.

  When we stand from the table there’s a moment where I wonder if we will hug. I don’t make any moves and neither do they. But on the street outside the cafe, before they leave, Carol touches my arm.

  ‘I have some baby photos of Pat,’ she says. ‘I thought you might like to see them.’

  ‘I’d love to.’

  I smile at her and we still don’t hug, but she leaves her hand on my arm. Her hand is cold. I imagine the blood no longer pumping around her body, her heart as inexpressive as she is. She looks me in the eye. ‘You’re about to become happier than you’ve ever been.’ And finally, she smiles. A moment ago I would’ve thought a smile would look as absurd on her as a false moustache, but she looks beautiful. Her muscles realign and settle on her face. I feel the relief wash over me like a cool change. Maybe it’s the relief of seeing her relax. Maybe it’s because this is over now. Or maybe it’s because someone has reaffirmed for me what I’ve wanted to be true for so long.

  EVERYTHING IS SMEARED NOW. I played and replayed the same small interactions so often that, filtered through my memory, they took on the meaning I wanted them to have. It wasn’t the truth, but it was a version of events I’d worn in. I’d written the script of our story and now I’ve gone and thrown all the pages in the air.

  April

  THREE DAYS BEFORE MY DUE date Annie arrives on my doorstep a howling mess. She’s broken up with James. At first I think she’s telling me that he broke up with her. When I realise it was her, I’m baffled, even irritated; I hadn’t known she was going to do this.

  Sarah has to move Annie’s things out of the Collingwood house by herself – I’m simply too big to help. Instead I sit with Annie in my apartment. James has gone to his parents’ place. The idea is to give Annie space, but she says she can’t stay there. She shudders when she says it.

  Annie’s things, packed into boxes, gradually fill my lounge room. All the baby’s things are moved to my room. She keeps saying sorry. Promises me she’ll find somewhere else to live.

  ‘I’ll be the one saying sorry once the baby is born,’ I reassure her.

  I’m actually happy she’s here, despite the state she’s in. The only thing I mind is the extra obstacles for me to navigate. Every time I knock something over I’m worried it might be expensive, but she never seems to notice, let alone care. She spends days on my couch, staring into space. Not eating. She hardly talks and when she does, she repeats the same few statements she’s said ever since she showed up.

  ‘Four years pass, then five. You think, surely at some point I will want to be with someone else? And then one day I was talking to him about something going on at work and I realised I had no interest in hearing his opinion, and I was looking at him and I realised: Oh no, wait – this is what it’s like when you don’t want to be with the person you’re with. All that time I spent wondering about it was such a waste. I should’ve been enjoying him while I still could.’

  I think of the night she lingered here after dinner and the night of her award. I try to remember any time recently when she has expressed affection for or interest in James and I can’t. I feel bad for not realising this sooner but, also, Annie rarely expresses much enthusiasm for anything. I feel uncomfortable, deep in my bones, at this realisation because, if Annie wasn’t happy, what hope is there for any of us.

  I don’t say much. I make lots of cups of tea.

  We spend our days waiting. Waiting for it to be evening, whe
n Sarah will come over with takeaway and a bottle of wine, which Annie drinks quickly. Sarah stares at the wine glass longingly and occasionally remarks, ‘I hope I don’t miss you too much longer.’ She hasn’t had a drink since she got fired and is setting up a website to start working freelance as a social media consultant. Several of her old accounts have already told her they’ll move wherever she does.

  I have this image of my two friends waltzing across a ballroom. Sarah barrelling towards destruction and Annie with her shit together. Then they swap. As I picture them turning in circles again and again, the image grows bigger and bigger until the dance floor is infinite and this is what the rest of our lives are going to be – taking it in turns to fall apart.

  ‘I feel awful,’ says Annie.

  ‘So do I,’ I say.

  She most likely thinks I’m referring to my physical discomfort, which would be truthful, but I’m thinking about Pat’s parents. I tell Annie about meeting them, but she doesn’t say anything; she just looks sad. It’s the first time she’s never had any advice to offer me.

  ‘The shock has to wear off one day.’ She says this out of the blue, hours after our conversation, and I’m not even sure what she’s referring to. It’s true of both of us.

  We’re waiting for me to go into labour. Waiting for one or, ideally, both of us to feel better. At least the baby has finally turned. The day after Annie arrived I had an appointment with an obstetrician at the hospital, who was pleasantly surprised. She told me a caesarean might not be so likely now. It’s as though there wasn’t enough room on my plate to worry about one more thing. Annie’s misery nudged the baby in the right direction.

  On my due date we wake up and eat breakfast together. My bag for the hospital is at the door. Once we’ve rinsed our dishes we look at each other, staring for a few moments, and then we’re laughing, unsure what to do with ourselves.

  We spend the day the same way we’ve spent the preceding days: sitting, staring, uncomfortable. I feel as if a small weight of sadness has lifted. Maybe replaced by anticipation.

  I KEEP THINKING of what Annie said to me when she came to my flat the night Sarah got fired. That every day, there are people living with decisions they regret.

  I’ve decided I won’t tell our child that heaven exists and that you are there. I’ll let it learn the nice stories, tell it things I know and show it photos. I’ll let your parents do the same. But I’m not going to suggest that you are somewhere else, conscious. Because if you were, you’d be sitting with the regret that you should feel for having done what you did. And the truth is that everything you felt when you were alive didn’t die with you: it has moved into those you left behind. Your parents. Travis. I haven’t met your brothers but I’m sure it’s in them too. If I go too far down this path, I envisage our child as a growing manifestation of your sorrow. I know it won’t just be that, though. It will be an accumulation of your sadness and my sadness and my love and determination and whatever else I’m about to find out.

  I know that I am being unfair when I think these things. That you would be horrified by what you have done to your parents and that to be able to do what you did requires a feeling, or a lack of feeling, that is unimaginable to me. I’ve given myself permission to feel angry at you, and also regret for that anger. Sadness and determination. My different feelings are like outfits in a limited wardrobe. Each day I wear one, soil it, then put it aside in favour of another. It doesn’t sound nice when I put it that way, but cyclical is better than where I was before: wearing down the one costume until it hardly resembled clothes. It’s made bearable, too, because one of those outfits is hope. For me, for your parents and, most of all, for our child.

  I HEARD A story recently that made me think of you. And like any time I think of you, this story made me both happy and sad. A man and woman meet overseas in South America, where they are both backpacking. They sleep together then go their separate ways. A few weeks later the woman finds out she’s pregnant. She flies home to Sweden to get an abortion and, as a courtesy, she messages the man she’d slept with to tell him she is having the termination. He writes back, sympathetic, and offers to share the cost. Weeks go by and she’s still pregnant. She decides she’s going to keep the baby. She contacts the man again to tell him of her decision, assuring him that as this is a choice she has made herself and not something they planned, she does not expect him to be involved. His initial response is brief and noncommittal, but after a week he contacts her to say he’s always wanted children, would like to be a part of his child’s life and, while it is a bit forward of him, would she mind if he flew to Sweden to be there for the pregnancy and birth? They’re both hesitant, but they also recognise that they each have a right to this child’s life. He arrives in Sweden and they start seeing each other casually. Her belly swells as they gradually get to know one another. Late in the pregnancy, at seven months, she miscarries. It’s sad, hard, horrible. They grieve together.

  All of this happened five years ago and the couple are still together today, happily married. They have no children yet, but it’s on the cards.

  I THINK OF sealed envelopes and fresh sheets. Moist black earth patted down, dotted with green. Dabbing at chipped paint on a wall with a brush. Ice cubes falling into a clean glass. Threading the needle on a sewing machine.

  There are so many ways a life can go.

  I’VE TOLD TRAVIS I WILL let him know when the baby arrives. I wonder how much longer he will act as a conduit between Pat’s parents and me. I wonder when they will come to meet the baby. He tells me that they’re doing well. They’re settling into the idea and have even bought the baby a few things.

  When I’m three days overdue, he messages to ask if I’m okay. I say that I am. We’re both overly polite. A couple of days ago, late at night, Travis sent me a long, rambling text about how terrible I’ve been, followed by a clipped apology the next morning.

  Sorry. I’m just so angry that he died and now I have someone

  to channel that anger into, but I know that’s unfair.

  I didn’t reply. Not because I’m mad that Travis is mad at me, but because I don’t feel I need to hold his hand through this. I can’t help but be a little amused by how the tables have turned: Travis always texting me now, anxious about what I’m doing.

  A GIFT ARRIVES one day, via the post, from James. A kookaburra hand puppet. There’s no note, but I message him to say thanks. I don’t say goodbye, although it feels a bit like what this is.

  Good luck, mate. Lucky kid has three legends to raise it.

  Later the same evening I’m dozing on the couch when Annie’s voice wakes me.

  ‘Maybe I made a mistake. Maybe if I’d waited, I would’ve circled back and loved him again.’

  I turn around and see she has the kookaburra on her hand. She’s not animating it or moving it, just holds it up still and proud. She looks completely clueless. How I imagine I would look if someone started explaining astrophysics to me.

  The gift made me sad, too. I like James. I’ll miss seeing him so much and I don’t like to think of him heartbroken. But I’m also reminded of Sarah the night of her work Christmas party. How firmly I had to hold my hands on the shoulders of her stumbling and useless body. That’s my job now, too. Annie is plastered with grief.

  ‘You can’t spend the rest of your life saying you’ll get around to doing something you know will make you happy,’ I say. ‘You just have to do it.’

  ‘But I’m not even happy.’ Her response is crushingly immediate.

  Later, though, she says, ‘At least I can go to Finland now.’ She’s scrolling on her phone, the smallest microtone of positivity in her voice.

  ‘Were you thinking of moving to Finland?’

  ‘I only thought of it then.’

  I feel abandoned already, just by the suggestion. I sit with the feeling for a moment and realise what I actually feel is jealousy. ‘I can’t move to Finland.’

  ‘If I move to Finland, you can move to Fi
nland.’

  ‘I wonder if they have soap operas in Finland.’ I too start scrolling.

  ‘I thought you didn’t want to act?’

  ‘Maybe if I was in Finland I would want to act.’

  I used to say that moving overseas was what people did if they didn’t have any real interests. I think I said that, though, because I was afraid that’s what I was – a person without a passion. But, as every man who’s ever become prime minister, received a Logie or a Nobel prize has put it: ‘It wouldn’t mean anything to me without my wife.’ And I have two wives. Maybe that’s the more important part.

  DAYS PASS AND I’m barely able to move. My feet are at their most tender. I’m swollen like a puffer fish and angry like one too. My baby is a bowling ball. It feels as heavy as two bowling balls. I can feel it inside me, weighed down. Sometimes I’m worried my insides – my bladder and intestines – will fall out the bottom of me. All the anxiety I’ve been carrying is eclipsed by desperation for this to be over, a bleak silver lining.

  Annie plays Crowded House. ‘You need to relax,’ she says. ‘That’ll bring on labour.’ Then one morning she blares Courtney Barnett.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I yell over the guitar and twangy vocals.

  ‘Maybe we can blast the baby out of you!’ She thrashes her head around and I laugh at her.

  It doesn’t work.

  I lie on the couch, my good friend here, in an entirely different but equally real sort of pain.

  I’M SIX DAYS overdue. If I reach ten my doctor will induce labour. I rub my hands up and down over my large stomach, comforted for a moment by my baby’s instincts. If I was looking at this situation from outside, I’d be nervous to arrive, too. None of us know what will happen next.

  Acknowledgements

  THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK you. The entire team at Hachette. Vanessa Radnidge, you were handballed this book and you caught it with such kindness and handled it with such skill. Louise Sherwin-Stark, Fiona Hazard, Daniel Pilkington, Emma Harvey, Bella Lloyd and Layla Saadeldine, you’re all brilliant. Ali Lavau and Bec Allen for your wise editorial brains (I realise it’s clunky to use handballed and handled in the same sentence, thank you). Extra thanks to everyone at Hachette involved in the Richell Prize and the judges of the 2019 prize – Robert Watkins, Hannah Richell, Sarah Schmidt and Steve Sines – I am so honoured my book is one small part of such a special legacy. Robert Watkins, again, I will remember your encouragement and belief in me for a long time. Grace Heifetz, for being a great agent and great to be around in general, I can’t wait to do it all again. Erin Sandiford, for the same reasons, you are my favourite thing about Australian publishing. Alissa Dinallo for the perfect cover. The fiction editors who published my stories and supported my career in its earliest days – Elizabeth Flux, Oliver Reeson, Khalid Warsame, Ash Hanson, Maxine Beneba Clarke, Amy Baillieu, Lachy McKenzie, Aviva Tuffield and Rebecca Starford. Morgan Rose for being a mentor – officially, then unofficially – and providing some very direct feedback that lead to the eventual publication of this book. Robyn, Laura, Dom and Brad for reading my stories and writing your own; extra thanks to Robyn for being one of the first people to read a part of this story. The judges of the 2020 Victorian Premier’s Award for an Unpublished Manuscript – Ellen Cregan, Luke Horton and Natalie Kon-yu – and to The Wheeler Centre for administering the prize. My colleagues – you light up my life. My friends, old and new, thank you for being so intelligent and so weird and so keen to drink beers with me all the times I don’t want to be writing. Mostly, thank you for being so understanding of all the times I can’t be drinking beers with you while I’m at work. Life would be so tepid without you all. This book is a treatise to the life sustaining joy of female friendships, so extra thanks must go to Soph, Bec, Lauren, Jasmin, Thea, Jamaica and Erin (again) – without you I’d’ve crumpled to a sack of bones on the floor some point in my twenties. Fierce baby-catcher, Alice Pemberton, for some last-minute fact checking and for being a great new friend also. My family, you’ve been my cheerleaders since forever and I really hope you like the book. Failing that, I hope it’s at least more entertaining than all the ballet concerts you sat through. Thanks also to my newer, second family, the O’Connors, for your support and your kindness. And finally to Scott, for reading all my stories and for being here with me, every single day.