Australian Love Stories (24 page)

And so we made a kind of mantra, Charlie and I.
Are you okay?
one of us would say to the other. Sitting on the sofa watching
TV
. Texting on the way to work. At parties, wandering into different rooms and then finding each other again. Brushing
a hand. Stroking a cheek. And once, I remember so clearly, Charlie called it
an ego thing
.
You know, just wanting to replicate your own miserable self.
He must have seen the look on my face because he flushed very red and asked me to forgive him in that low, quiet voice that always tells me I have touched something deep inside him. We curved our bodies together and held each other close.
Are you okay?
he said. I didn't tell him, I never told him, how I sometimes screamed at the sight of my menstrual blood. How I gazed at babies in shops, talked to them, patted them, until mothers edged away from the slightly crazy lady. How I sometimes sat in a chair staring at unyielding walls. Or how, just once, I stripped in front of a mirror and plunged my fingernails deep into my flesh.

My mother and our friends knew to stop asking. For that, at least, I was grateful.

And then one night I woke to find an empty space beside me, groped my way dopily to find him. He was hunched over his computer and when he turned to face me, his eyes were wet with tears.
It's my fault,
he said,
all my bloody fault,
he'd been reading all about it on the net,
years of cigarettes and too much booze and even though the tests said
…
I've let you down so badly and I'm such a useless fuck
. I could have said
it's no one's fault
or
you mustn't even think that
but instead I cupped his face and told him he was all I ever wanted. Needed. Craved for.

When you touch me
, he said,
I feel so much at peace
.

And as the weeks became months and the months became years, my life began to feel like an old time movie, in which the leaves of a calendar are ripped off and tossed aside by some cruel, invisible hand. At some point I must have stopped rubbing my belly, as if trying to comfort someone. He must have stopped
saying
Tonight's the night for sure.
And we must have decided, without talking about it, not to talk about it anymore.

At my mother's seventieth birthday party, when Charlie and I were fifty, I saw him hoist someone's tiny child onto his lap and listen to her babbling. I stood at a doorway, watching: the way the child's feet dangled in the air; her look of fierce concentration. Charlie's arm around her waist; his steady, patient breathing; his nodding in time to words I couldn't hear. He glanced up and caught my eye and I saw such softness, such tenderness, in his face. For the child or for me, it was impossible to tell.

And that night, when he entered my body, he kissed me on the forehead and told me I was all he needed.
Forever.
And when I came, slow and dreamy, safe in his arms, he couldn't stop laughing.
You made a mooing noise,
he said.
You've never done that before.

I remembered the great fat tongue and the giant udders and telling him I loved him as he sprawled on the sofa with his blast of a poem. And so I wrapped my arms around him and mooed again, loudly, playfully, stupidly, to stop myself from washing him with tears.

Small Expectations

RAFAEL SW

1.

You went to a Mothers' Club. Well I called it a Mothers' Club, scathingly, in an attempt to draw your attention to the ridiculous nature of what you were doing. Like most of my tactics, it didn't work. You said it was called an ‘Expectations Club' and you said it with a majesty that Dickens himself would have been proud of. Then you went out. Holding your belly in a way that was new for you, reminding me of those wizened men around our suburb with their hands on the small of their back. I'd offered to drive, but you said the exercise would do your legs some good. I imagined how they would look when they got swollen and heavy. Varicose, thighs like ricotta cheese. By the time I stopped imagining you were long gone.

I was on my third cup of coffee when you returned. My nerves or the noise made me jump a little when you closed the door, even though I'd heard the reassuring domestic birdcalls of your key in the lock and you taking your shoes off. It was five-thirty on a Sunday afternoon and I had no idea what you had to talk about with real mothers that could go for the length of three cups of coffee.

‘Any left?' you asked, and raised your eyebrows toward the coffee pot.

‘No,' I said, too quickly. ‘But sit down, I'll make some more.' And we brushed past each other on my way into the kitchen and your way out; strangers on trains.

‘So,' I said, after a while, the coffee dripping to itself, and you sitting at the table with your hands folded just under your navel. ‘How was it?'

‘Really good,' your eyes were bright. ‘Yes,' nodding to yourself. ‘The girls are really lovely.'

‘Girls?'

‘People. Women. You know.' And I nodded, wondering why I'd assumed it would be teen mums that needed this kind of group. ‘They're great. All so supportive.' I didn't say anything. When I took your coffee over, you looked up. ‘But there is one problem.'

‘What?'

‘I'm going to need some new clothes eventually.' And you smiled a little.

‘Okay. What? Why?'

‘Well that's one of the main topics of conversation. Some of the more, developed, girls there go through clothes every couple of weeks. I'll need a change eventually. That is, unless you want me to go out wearing some kind of muu-muu…'

‘No,' I tried to laugh, or take a sip of my coffee. ‘But you're not even. You know. You're not even, showing.'

I couldn't even remember where that phrase came from. Perhaps my mother's romance books from the fifties.

You laughed. ‘But you want me to fit in.'

‘You're going back then.'

‘Of course.'

I looked at you in your dress that wasn't billowing at all. Your body an empty ship.

‘What would they think if I just stopped coming all of a sudden?'

‘I don't know.' And I didn't.

You told me once, long ago (I think you were drunk) when I commented on how skinny you were, that it was because you'd had an eating disorder as a child. This was when we went to a lot of parties as a couple, back when our friends still threw parties that were worth going to. There were plenty of times we'd caught a taxi home together in a kind of gutter romance. But when I woke up the day after your Expectations Club and heard you moving somewhere in the cold white of the bathroom, I thought you had gone back to that. I didn't know why. I was probably half-asleep. The splashing woke me up fully though. I pulled some shorts on and knocked on the bathroom door.

‘You okay?'

‘Yes, of course, sorry did I wake you?'

‘No, no,' I said, trying to figure out what time it was. ‘What are you doing?'

‘Having a bath. They said it's relaxing.'

‘Oh. Right.' I stood back from the door a little, to give you space. ‘And is it?'

‘I guess so. Yes. It's pretty nice.'

We stayed there like that. I leant awkwardly against the wall and listened to the water. It occurred to me that we'd probably never had a bath together. We'd showered together all the time when we were first dating, as a way of getting clean and dirty at the same time. But a bath had never occurred to us. The porcelain would look dull against your skin. I wondered how long you'd been in there for, and if you were becoming wrinkly yet.

‘That's good.' I said. ‘Hey, what's the time?'

‘Not sure, when I got in it was a bit before six.'

‘Right,' I said, ‘And you don't need anything?'

‘Nope.'

‘Okay. I'm going back to sleep.' But I didn't.

‘It was really good,' you said, when I asked about the club meeting the week after. I'd stopped being critical about it once I realised how serious you were. The whole situation in fact rapidly dropped into seriousness in a way that worried me and shut me up. ‘Everyone is so supportive and friendly. And beautiful. God, you should see how some of them carry themselves.' We were lying in bed which was its own kind of carrying each other. I nodded into your chest and hoped you were smiling. ‘At the start we went round the circle and everyone said what their expectations were for the club.' I chuckled a little.

‘Wait,' I said, ‘what did you say?'

‘I didn't know what to say at first. You know how I am with public speaking.' I looked at you but it was hard to see your face in the dark. ‘But in the end I just told them the truth.'

‘The truth?'

‘A kind of truth. The truth of my feelings anyway.' You paused. ‘I said that I'd come with the expectation that I would learn what it feels like to be a real mother.'

‘But,' I said, probably too softly for you to hear.

‘And I'm so glad I did. Because apparently that's a real problem. Women who have all the, I don't know,
paraphernalia
, but don't feel like a real mother yet. Even right into the quickening, it just doesn't seem real, or they don't feel like it's theirs. Sometimes it's only right at the moment when you hold your child for the first time.' I stroked your hand. ‘I'm not alone.'

‘No,' I said.

You said you wanted to be alone for the test. This was fine, as I knew almost nothing about the process, whether we were hoping for a plus or a minus sign, the strange maths of our own devising. We weren't ready for what you were hoping for. Months later I'd wonder if I should have come in with you, or at least asked to see the result. But by then it was too late. The thing about love is that it doesn't need proof.

2.

I didn't tell anyone about you at work. I imagined my boss coming to my table with one of those horrifically jubilant
Congratulations!
cards, and how I'd have to look pleased, as if I had any say in your swelling emptiness. For a brief moment I wondered if our branch covered paternity leave, but then I realised what a terrible fraud that would be. And what if they wanted to see photos when I came back? What if they asked about our little bundle of joy at Christmas parties? I was doing outbound calls and my cubicle seemed too bright. I called one customer and heard a child crying in the background and almost asked how she could bear it. How could any of us bear it?

We'd just been shopping for new clothes, but you veered toward the food court.

‘I just need to take the weight off my feet,' you said, a phrase I suspected you'd picked up from Expectations, but I didn't say anything. ‘The desserts looked nice, at the Indian place.'

I looked at where you were pointing. There were no customers and the two women behind the counter were blatantly watching me help you sit down. I felt like I was manhandling a stolen suitcase of other people's money. ‘Can you grab me two?'

‘Sure,' I said, but when I got there, they had only one type of dessert left. So I chose three gulab jamun, and they said they'd bring it over to the table for us. You ended up eating your way through seven, although I made sure that I didn't look like I was counting. Your licked your sticky fingers gleefully. Like a child, I thought. They removed each plate as soon as a new one arrived as if they were on your side. When you saw the receipts you pretended to be surprised and I did you the courtesy of providing an excuse.

‘We didn't have much lunch.'

‘No,' you said, holding your stomach and getting gently to your feet.

The Club had become a weekly thing. I'd been drinking far too much coffee but at least I was making dinner. There were only a few meals I could do, but I could do them well. The water was boiling and I threw a pinch of salt in it. The television was watching me, but I had the sound off so I could listen to the radio. The smell of basil made me dream of an Italy I'd never seen. I wondered if you would come home and sense my wanderlust. I dropped the pasta in and looked at the bubbles and briefly thought of water torture before I wondered what the hell was wrong with me. But the spitting of the pine nuts on the stove distracted me from ever finding out.