Chocolate Cake for Breakfast (38 page)

‘I expect you’ll change your mind about that over the next couple of months,’ said Em. ‘Being nine months pregnant isn’t all that much fun.’

‘It’s got to be more fun than labour. There was someone having a baby at the birthing unit this afternoon, and it sounded like they were trying to eviscerate the poor woman.’

‘What does eviscerate mean?’ Caitlin asked.

‘It means you cut a hole in someone’s tummy and pull all their insides out,’ I said.

She grinned widely. ‘Gross.’

‘Helen,’ said Em reprovingly. ‘We’re eating.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Labour’s not that bad, sweetie.’

Mark’s eyes and mine met across the table in silent mutual scepticism.

‘I came out of
your
tummy, didn’t I, Mummy?’ said Bel, twitching a wrinkle from her blanket.

‘Yes, you did.’

‘But I came out first,’ said Caitlin. ‘The first one is always the most special.’

‘You’re both equally special,’ said Em. ‘And you will both go to your rooms if you’re going to argue about it.’

‘I can’t,’ said Bel. ‘My arm is broken. I could
die
in my room by myself.’

‘I doubt it.’

‘I might!’

‘Well, anything is possible, I suppose,’ said Em.

‘How long were your labours?’ I asked her.

‘Let me see,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘With Caitlin I started having contractions around seven at night; my waters broke at four . . . And she was born at nine seventeen in the morning. Bel was quicker, of course, being the second one.’

‘You were in second-stage labour for more than
five hours
?’

‘That’s not bad, for a first baby. I was lucky.’

‘Proper full-on contractions?’ I asked. ‘For all that time?’

Em nodded.

‘And it wasn’t that bad?’

She shook her head, smiling.

‘Dad?’ I asked suspiciously. ‘Is this true?’

‘Not having been the one doing it, I couldn’t tell you. But I must say it didn’t look like a whole lot of fun from where I was standing,’ said Dad.

‘I
knew
it!’

‘It’s just the price humans pay for walking on our hind legs and having large brains,’ said Dad. ‘Very poor design, really – mothers with narrow pelvises and babies with big heads. I read somewhere that childbirth used to kill about one woman in ten. The rate of stillborn babies would have been much higher again, of course.’

‘One in ten?’ Mark repeated faintly.

‘About that. Not really a problem if you’re thinking survival of the species, but pretty rough on the individual. Don’t worry, Helen, medicine’s come a long way in the last couple of hundred years.’

‘Dad, I’m not scared I’m going to die. I’m just scared it’s going to hurt a lot.’

‘And she’ll probably get torn from arsehole to breakfast,’ Caitlin put in, carefully pushing her green beans to the side of her plate.

Mark choked.

‘Pardon
me
?’ Em said.

‘Granny said it.’

‘Granny,’ said Em grimly, ‘is an old witch.’

Getting Bel to bed that evening was quite a performance. Her favourite pyjama top wouldn’t go on over the cast and nobody could find
The Children’s Treasury of Verse
, without which it seemed her life was barely worth living. The book was eventually retrieved from under the couch, Caitlin provided Mabel the china doll on a short-term loan, and Bel, with the air of a princess granting a rare favour, chose Mark to read her a bedtime story.

‘This one?’ he asked, picking up the
Treasury of Verse
.

‘No,’ said Bel. ‘
Sleeping Beauty
.’

‘So why did you need the other one?’

‘I just did.’

So Mark read
Sleeping Beauty
, and I sang ‘Doe, a Deer’, ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ and ‘I Kissed a Girl and I Liked It’. Then we were dismissed, and made our way downstairs to send up Dad and Em.

‘I suppose I’d better think about heading back,’ said Mark.

I sighed. ‘I wish I was coming with you.’

He stopped at the bottom of the stairs, out of sight of the living room, and put his arms around me. ‘Ten more days,’ he said softly.

I was reading in my fold-out bed in Em’s sewing room when someone tapped on the door. Murray, who had been stretched out beside me, slithered rapidly over the side of the bed and vanished.

‘Come in,’ I said.

Em pushed the door open and looked around it. ‘Everything okay, sweetie?’

‘Fine. Is Bel asleep?’

‘Out like a light,’ she said.

The baby began its nightly tattoo against my abdominal wall, and I smiled. ‘Hey, settle down, you little punk.’

Em sat down beside me and laid a hand over my stomach. ‘It really is magical, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘That’s a little person in there. It can hear your voice, it has its own heartbeat . . .’

‘He pushes back when I push on his feet.’

‘He?’ she asked.

‘He – she – who knows?’

‘I’d really appreciate it if you had a girl. Then I could empty three cubic metres of pink baby clothes out of the garage, give it all to you and put away the camping gear.’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ I said solemnly.

‘Thank you. Sweetie, try not to worry about labour. You know Granny – upsetting us all is her favourite pastime. It’s nice for her to have a hobby, really. It gives her an interest in life.’

‘True. Em, thank you.’

‘For?’ she asked.

‘Everything. You’ve always been so nice to me, even when I was a complete toe-rag.’

‘You were not!’

‘Yeah, I was.’ Imagine trying to iron out the kinks in a new relationship under the suspicious glare of an angry teenager. It was no thanks whatsoever to me that my father wasn’t currently shuffling around the house eating baked beans cold from the tin and going on sad, furtive little dates with unsuitable women from the Lonely Hearts column of the paper.

Em giggled. ‘You did cause a certain amount of sexual frustration, I will admit.’

I think it says a lot for how much I love my stepmother that I managed to repress a shudder. ‘Em,’ I said, ‘if the baby decides to come early and Mark
is
away, would you be there with me?’

Her eyes filled. ‘Oh,
sweetie
,’ she said tremulously. ‘Of course I will.’

36

ON MY LAST MORNING AT WORK I CLEANED AND EMPTIED
my ute, finding a selection of hair ties, socks and, sadly, a Thermos flask of soup that had slipped beneath the driver’s seat about seven months ago. Even before finding the flask I was feeling a bit flat – last days are melancholy things. You realise that Monday will roll around with a whole raft of fresh crises that you won’t know anything about, and that everyone will cope just fine without you. The clients who only wanted to see you will attach themselves perfectly cheerfully to somebody else, and you’ll inevitably drift out of touch with your workmates.

These gloomy reflections were interrupted by Thomas, who appeared at the back door and said, ‘Can you go and vaccinate Hamish’s herd with the TB read?’

‘Sure. When?’

‘The cows are waiting on the yard.’

I looked at my watch. ‘I’m seeing Mrs Stewart at ten.’

‘I’ve rung her and changed it to eleven,’ said Thomas.

‘But she’s got her book group at ten thirty – we organised it specially.’

‘Well, she said eleven would be fine.’

I went, muttering darkly, and was asked when I got there what the hell had taken me so long. It would, I thought, be nice not to be Hamish’s vet anymore. It would also have been nice to say goodbye permanently at the end of the call, but you can’t have everything.

Mrs Stewart brought me a pair of tiny crystal vases as a goodbye present, Briar Coles dropped in to present me with my very own framed picture of her horse, and a delightful woman whose dog had chronically infected ears brought in a basket of scones with cream and jam and a knitted baby’s jacket. It was all very touching, and after work, when my colleagues presented me with a Merino-wool baby’s blanket, a copy of Jamie Oliver’s latest and shiniest cookbook and a card that sang ‘Brown-Eyed Girl’, I wept gently into my sparkling grape juice.

‘Cheer up,’ said Richard bracingly, folding over a slice of pizza and stuffing it into his mouth. ‘You can always come back. Nick’ll have to give you a job, seeing as you’re related to half the clients.’

‘Helen can come back any time she likes,’ said Nick. ‘Relations or no relations.’

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘I’m so jealous,’ said Keri. ‘No more work, living with Mark Tipene . . . Shopping with Mark Tipene’s credit card . . .’

‘That’s right,’ I said, wiping my eyes. ‘I’ll just float from lunch date to hair appointment to Pilates class.’

‘You might want to wash the cow shit off your neck first,’ Nick said. ‘Pass the pizza, would you, Richard?’

‘I’ve been in the clinic all afternoon,’ I said. ‘Could you not have mentioned the cow shit earlier?’

‘It’s only a little smear. And it brings out your eyes.’

‘Thank you. That’s so sweet.’

‘So you’re heading up to Auckland tomorrow?’ asked Anita, who had come back in to say goodbye. She captured a passing toddler and held a tissue to his face. ‘Blow. Through your
nose
, Liam, not your mouth.’

‘Sunday,’ I said. ‘Mark’s playing in Brisbane tomorrow night, and I’m going to an antenatal weekend thing.’

‘That one Janet Bennett runs?’

I nodded.

‘I wonder if she’s still showing the same DVD of a woman giving birth. It was enough to give you nightmares – this awful-looking woman with pubic hair down to her knees, squatting over a video camera.’

‘Please, we’re trying to eat here,’ said Thomas.

‘And she’ll read you a little book about poo,’ Anita continued.

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Because you’ll have to change shitty nappies,’ said Keri.

‘No, because chances are you’ll squeeze one out during the birth.’

Thomas looked like he was going to faint, and I said, ‘There’s just
nothing
good about childbirth, is there?’

‘It’s worth it,’ said Anita.

There were six couples at the antenatal class when Alison and I got to the scout hall the next morning, none of whom I knew. We sat on cushions in a circle on the floor with the draughts whipping around our ankles and introduced ourselves, and then listened as Janet spoke at some length about our rights. We had lots, apparently, and it was our job to be our babies’ advocates. We could refuse blood tests if we wanted to – although why you’d want to was beyond me – and we should insist on being treated with respect and empathy at all times. Then she touched lightly on the desirability of a medication-free birth and we paused for tea and biscuits.

‘This is
dire
,’ I whispered to Alison.

‘Sh!’ Alison hissed back. ‘She’s just behind you.’

Breastfeeding was the first topic after morning tea, and we brainstormed a long list of all the reasons to breastfeed if we could, while Janet wrote them on a whiteboard. ‘Bonding – between – mother – and – baby,’ she said, scribbling hard. ‘Strengthens – baby’s – immune – system. Cost – yes, that’s right. Formula isn’t cheap. Excellent stuff, guys. And that’s not all. Breastfed babies have lower obesity rates. They have a
fifty
percent decrease in cancer rates. They’re brighter than bottle-fed babies. But you mustn’t feel guilty if it doesn’t work for you.’