The front door closed softly behind her as she left. I was left with the residue of her words. Not sharp, nor blunt, just matter-of-fact as if what she had to say was the most obvious thing in the world.
The conversation had started out all right. We talked about the usual: our lives, work, my relationship, her singledom, and the high cost of the housing bubble. But we got into trouble when the conversation turned to babies.
“I’m looking forward to turning forty-two in a few years,” she said, tugging at a fine blonde hair that had escaped her usually manicured ponytail. “By then it will all be over – the wait, the hope. One way or the other I’ll be pregnant, or not, and then I can get on with my life.”
The afternoon sun, filtered by the eucalyptus tree outside the kitchen window, stroked the crown of her golden head. We pondered the latest IVF statistics for a while, noting with solemnity the page nine news that we’d well and truly passed the fertility cut-off age of thirty-five and had already lost over 90% of our eggs from our ovarian reserve. She was single and registered on RSVP, dating only men of a suitable age with a suitable desire to start a family as soon as practically possible. Men were talked about in terms of their baby-making and relationship potential, screened out with impunity as if RSVP was a project with a tight deadline. I wondered if she felt the gnawing feeling that I did, deep behind my breast bone, but I didn’t ask.
I was a sloppy IVF recipient, being overweight, stressed by work demands and uninformed about the magical herbal properties of dandelion and red clover tea. I tolerated acupuncture, but made no other effort to create a healthy vessel for a child to grow.
She commented on my love of art and film and coffee dates in any number of stainless steel city cafes, as if it was something to be ashamed of.
“I can’t imagine you as a mother,” she said, taking a sip of lemon ginger tea at my newly installed granite bench.
I expect she thought I was independent and might not manage the demands of a little one, the constant ferrying to and from sport events and the wakeful nights where a little baby’s screams would enter my quiet repose. Perhaps she was right – I’ll never know. The words hung suspended in the air without further explanation or comment. It wasn’t the sort of line of enquiry or statement of fact that I wished to pursue, or even dispute, with her or even myself. I didn’t want to give credence or energy to this bold and uninvited statement of personal opinion. But yet, when she left, the words stayed, hovering above me like an indoor cloud. They stung my eyes and soaked into my skin like a fine mist.
“I can’t imagine you as a mother.” I turned the words around in my head like a mantra as I packed the cups into the washer.
Underneath my white cotton shirt, brown and yellow stains evidenced the after-effects of the daily home needling ritual. My weekly work routine accommodated a morning detour to the local clinic for blood tests. More needles. On Friday afternoons, the acupuncturist would lay me down on his cool table and whisper words of comfort, my head turning to face the wall as he used my body as a pin cushion. The skin pushed back against the cool silver rod in defiance until the needle edge slithered its way in and found its resting place just below my belly button, radiating a small circle of tingling warmth.
“Relax,” he’d say, “just a little prick.”
And my partner worked. He worked at a desk job all day and on the home computer at night. He had more than once told me that he might be too old for a child now that he’d reached his fourth decade. Clinic visits interrupted his work commitments. Cycling tournaments and family weddings took precedence over any discussions about future family plans. I’d leave the bathroom holding another negative pregnancy result and sit alone on the old lounge, the rims of my eyes the colour of the faded red velour.
* * *
Ten years on. It feels like a lifetime ago. I hear she has a husband and child now. Her project management skills were always exceptional. In my mind’s eye I see her standing behind the lemon trees in their dark backyard with her daughter beside her, pointing out the glistening constellation of dots that mark the ‘saucepan’. Words from all those years ago likely forgotten.
It’s Saturday, cleaning day. Last Tango in Paris sits on the kitchen bench, patiently waiting to be returned to the last DVD store in the city. The Art Almanac, left open to a Howard Arkley retrospective, is bathed in the unswept dust of the morning toast crumbs. The cat bowl has tipped over again. I sigh.
Over the wooden fence, the smooth roof of a car glides backwards and forwards a few times, then stops. The passenger door slams. My nephew has come to visit – a twelve-year-old internet junkie. Between sittings at the computer absorbed in Minecraft, he throws back the remains of a burrito and talks about his desire to become a famous musician on YouTube. He is supposed to be doing homework and struggles with spelling. He whines that the local swimming pool is his third choice of watering hole when I invite him for a swim, but he reluctantly agrees to accompany me to walk the dog as long as he can wear headphones. If baby-making had been successful the first time around, I’d have an eighteen-year-old by now. An adult human being. It seems incomprehensible.
On good days, the boy-man visits galleries with me and likes it. Afterwards we make twee Musically clips together on his hand-me-down smart phone, and he demonstrates how to cartoon my face on Prisma, the art app.
And when the night comes, I laughingly tuck him under a quilt on the old couch as his mouth tautly stretches into a grimace. I make my way along the long hall in padded feet to the bedroom, eyes momentarily closing as I drag my fingertips along the smooth walls, following the sweet frangipani smell of burning candle wax from the half-closed bedroom door.
These days, the old words have largely dispersed, seeped out of my body like the sweaty after-effects of a long gym workout or a hot night sweat. The rain brings rainbows.
I can’t imagine myself as a mother. I push the door aside and slip under the heavy weight of sheet on my side of the bed. I take my tortoiseshell reading glasses out of the case and prop a book up on bended knees. My new lover turns to smile at me with his lopsided half-asleep grin. My lips curl upwards. Being an aunt and looking at art is fine, and finally that’s ok.
Jane Winton
