They sat in silence for a while, watching the preparations for some sort of performance that was obviously about to take place in the center of the marquee.
"Patrick seems like a good man," said David. "He's got a son too, hasn't he? From a previous marriage?"
"Jack," said Ellen. "He's at a party today. His mother died when Jack was little."
"Testing," said someone over a microphone. "Testing, two, three, four."
"So obviously the relationship is a bit complicated," Ellen heard herself say. This was what happened when you talked for too long to a stranger at a bus stop. The conversation suddenly took an inappropriately intimate turn.
"Why?" said David. Ellen was a bit thrown by the question. Wasn't it self-evident? Most women she knew would have said something like, "Oh, well, yes, of course, I can just imagine, my sister's friend dated a widower and it was a disaster..."
"I just mean, I guess, that his first wife passed away, and that--"
She was interrupted by a high-pitched shrieking sound from the sound system. Everyone winced and stuck their fingers in their ears.
It finally stopped and someone said, "Apologies!" over the microphone
David said, "I don't think you've got anything to worry about."
"Why?"
He turned to look at her. "Ellen," he said. (She thought it might have been the first time he'd used her name, whereas she'd been "David" this and "David," because she always overused people's names when she didn't know them that well.)
"The man was hanging curtains for you this morning."
"Yes, I know--"
"That's a mongrel of a job. As my dad would have said."
"Is it?"
"And he was pretty keen to show me the ultrasound pictures. Doesn't look like a complicated relationship to me."
The marquee filled with the sound of a thrumming guitar. Three flamenco dancers stalked onto the stage flicking their gorgeous dresses and tossing their heads, their beautiful young faces fierce and regal.
"Ole!" said Ellen's father. He lifted his hands above his head and pretended to click imaginary castanets. It was a profoundly dorky dad-like move that would have caused any self-respecting teenage son or daughter to die with shame.
"Ole," said Ellen agreeably.
She settled back in her chair to watch the dancing, and as she did she felt one last, lingering doubt about Patrick's love--a doubt she didn't know she'd had--quietly drift away.
So this was what it was like to have a father.
"Knock, knock?"
It was Tammy's voice outside my hospital room.
"Don't mention--" I said to Kate. It wasn't so much that I thought Tammy would judge me, although of course she would, but that I knew she'd be far too interested, too intrigued and fascinated. She'd gasp and shriek and ask question after question. She'd want to explore my motivations and Patrick's reactions for hours at a time. She'd never let the topic die.
"Of course not." Kate put down her knitting. "I won't even tell Lance."
She would tell Lance. She would tell him as soon as they got home tonight. There was no way you could keep that sort of secret from your partner.
But I had a feeling that although Lance would think I was one crazy bitch for a while, and he'd be glad he never dated me, and he'd feel sorry for Patrick, in a few years' time, if Kate happened to bring it up, he'd say vaguely, "Oh, that's right, what was that story again?" He wasn't the type to hoard personal information, and I also felt that some sort of innate integrity or morality or dislike of gossip would prevent him from telling people at the office. Anyway, I had a feeling that I wouldn't be going back to work there. Things were going to change.
"What up, bitches," said Tammy.
Kate and I rolled our eyes at each other: Tammy and Lance still insisted on trying to talk like Baltimore drug dealers.
Tammy reverted to her normal voice. "Look at you two grandmas with your knitting."
She tossed a pile of mail on the bed in front of me. "By the way, Janet and Peter said hi."
"Janet and Peter?" I said blankly.
"Your neighbors," said Tammy. Ah, the Labrador family from next door. I tried to visualize their faces and couldn't. Perhaps I'd never really looked at them.
"I went over there for dinner last night," said Tammy.
It was interesting, watching someone else living in my home and living my life, showing me how easy and natural it could be. She wouldn't have hesitated when they asked her over. "Sure! What will I bring?" she would have said.
"They're fun," she continued. "We played Monopoly with the kids."
"I hate Monopoly," commented Kate, picking up her needles again.
"Anyway, we're planning a welcome home party for you," said Tammy.
"A party?" I said. "I don't really do parties."
"What are you talking about?" said Tammy. "I was telling Janet and Peter about that Halloween party you had years ago. Remember? It was one of the best parties I've ever been to."
I did remember. It was when Patrick and I had just started dating but before we'd moved in together. I'd gone all out and decorated my flat with pumpkin lights and cobwebs. I even put dry ice in tubs for a creepy, smoky effect. Everyone dressed up. Patrick came as Dracula and kept bending me over so he could sink his fangs into my neck. I was Morticia, with a long black wig and a spider choker around my neck. I remember the photos: You'd never seen a happier Morticia.
But the girl who hosted that party doesn't exist anymore, I thought.
"You made pumpkin pie," said Tammy. "It was divine."
"I've never eaten pumpkin pie," said Kate.
"I'll make it for you," I said, and suddenly I was listing the ingredients in my head: cream cheese, cinnamon, ginger. And then I was struck by how very much I wanted to make pumpkin pie for Kate and Lance and Tammy and maybe even the family next door, to see people enjoying my food and asking for second helpings. How long had it been since I'd been the hostess, since I'd cooked for someone?
I remembered the Anzac biscuits I'd baked in Ellen's kitchen and I shuddered at the memory. I picked up the mail to distract myself.
"Apparently Janet's brother has taken a shine to you," said Tammy. "So we're going to match you up at this party."
"Janet's brother?" She was talking nonsense. "I've never even met her brother." As she talked I sorted my mail: Bills. Junk mail. More bills.
"He met you once on your way out," said Tammy. "He thinks he's seen you before, at Avalon Beach, boogie boarding? Could that be right?"
I picked up a letter addressed to me in neat handwriting that was vaguely familiar. I noticed there was a strange bulge in the bottom right-hand corner of the envelope.
"I tried boogie boarding a few times," I said. I flicked the envelope back and forth between my fingertips as I remembered that woolly-haired man at the beach, the way his shadow fell over me that morning when I lay in the sand in my red dress, the day after I'd turned up at Patrick's parents' house when Ellen was there.
Then I thought back to the man carrying the wine, coming up the path of the next-door neighbor's as I'd left for the pretend fortieth birthday party. I remembered how he'd looked at me as if he knew me.
I morphed together the two images from my memory and saw that they could easily be the same person. It gave me a peculiar feeling, as if I needed to go back and examine my whole life and look for all the things I'd missed.
"But he's got a girlfriend," I said, remembering the way he'd put his arm around the woman he was with, and how bereft I'd felt when I'd seen it.
"He just broke up with someone," said Tammy. "He's back on the market. You'll have to move fast before he's snapped up by someone else."
"What's he do for a living?" said Kate. "Or is that a superficial question? What are his dreams, his hopes?"
"Wait for it," said Tammy dramatically. "He's a ... carpenter."
"He is not." Kate dropped her knitting.
"He is!"
"Be still my beating he
art!"
I laughed at them. I'd forgotten that sort of laughter. Silly, girly, helpless giggling. I thought I'd grown too old for giggling, but actually you never really grow out of it. I should have known that. When Mum was in her seventies she used to meet up with her old tennis club once a month for lunch. I was staying with her once when it was her turn to host, and I remember walking in the front door and hearing peals of laughter coming from the living room. They sounded like teenagers.
I'd forgotten that the best part of dating wasn't the actual dating at all but the talking about it: the analysis of potential new boyfriends with your girlfriends.
"Can I come to this party?" said Kate. "So I can meet the carpenter?"
"Of course," said Tammy. "I wonder if we could think up an excuse so he'll need to do some actual carpentry at the party?"
"Like putting up a bookshelf?"
"Ideally something that makes Saskia seem helpless and vulnerable."
"So much for feminism," I said.
Kate snapped her fingers. "A disabled ramp! For her wheelchair!"
"They say I'll be walking by the time I go home," I said. They were going to try to get me on crutches next week.
"Oh," said Kate, disappointed. "Are you sure?"
I forgot about the envelope with the familiar handwriting until later that night after they'd left. I turned it over and saw the sender's details on the back:
Mrs. Maureen Scott.
Patrick's mother. Of course. She was like my own mother. A card sender. When I was with Patrick, Maureen had sent countless cards for the smallest of reasons. Dear Patrick, Saskia and Jack, Thank you for the lovely evening on Saturday night. We thoroughly enjoyed Saskia's "Thai Beef Salad." It was delicious.
Why was she writing to me now? To tell me, enough was enough? You broke my grandson's arm, you evil bitch?
I opened it. The pale purple stationery with a border of lavender sprigs looked familiar. She'd probably been using the same notepaper for years.
I read:
Dear Saskia,
Jack wanted to send you this "get well card" (he bought it himself with his own money) and I promised I would find your address and post it to you. Patrick doesn't know he has written to you, so I would be very grateful (given the current circumstances) if you didn't write back. I should have said this before, Saskia, but you were a wonderful mother to Jack, and as his grandmother, I should have done more to make sure you stayed in touch. I'm very sorry. I will always regret this. Jack has grown into a lovely young boy. He is a credit to you.
I hope and I pray that you can find a way to move on with your life now, and be happy. I know that's what your own mum would have wanted.
With love,
Maureen
The card showed a picture of a giraffe sitting up in bed with a thermometer in its mouth. Jack had written:
Dear Saskia,
Get well soon. I'm OK. My cast comes off next week.
Dad won't let me visit you. Sorry about that.
Love from Jack
P.S. I remember the cities we made out of Play-Doh. They were awesome.
P.P.S. Here is another lucky marble for you to make up for the one I lost.
At the bottom of the envelope was a marble.
I held it up to the light and studied the intricate, intertwined paint splashes of color, and my eyes blurred.
I cried for such a long time. There were no wrenching, painful sobs, just quiet, cleansing tears, like a long, soft rainfall on a Sunday afternoon.
When the tears finally stopped, I blew my nose and turned off the light, and I slept more deeply than I think I'd slept in years. I don't think I dreamed at all. It was like I was an animal that had gone into hibernation for the winter. Waking up was like emerging from a deep, dark cave into the fresh spring air.
I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands and smelled undercooked bacon and bad coffee. Sally, the wonderfully grumpy aide who brought in my breakfast most mornings, was standing at the end of my bed. She dumped the tray on my table with her usual ungracious clatter and raised her eyebrows at me.
"Sleep well?" she said.
"Wonderfully," I said.
Chapter 27
Before meeting your baby it is impossible to know how profound the feeling of love is and how intense the anxious feelings about your baby's survival and well-being can be.
--Baby Love, "Australia's Baby-Care Classic,"
by Robin Barker
Yes, that is my nose, and yes, it's very funny. Now could you focus?"
The baby let go of Ellen's nose and placed her palm over Ellen's mouth.
Ellen pretended to eat it. "Umm, umm."
The baby grinned. She turned her head and fastened her mouth back around Ellen's nipple, sucking with greedy concentration, one finger lifted in the air, as if to say: Hold that thought. I'll be right back with you.
Ellen closed her eyes briefly as she felt the tingling warm rush of a thousand tiny magnets pulling down the milk. Six months ago she'd never felt this; now it was as familiar a sensation as a sneeze.
Except that every time, it still felt marginally extraordinary.
For a few minutes Grace fed, her tiny hand circling as if she were conducting a symphony. She tipped her head back and her eyelids fluttered as though the music was touching her soul.
"Where's my little girl?"
At the sound of her father's voice, the baby swung her head so fast in his direction she wrenched on Ellen's nipple and droplets of milk flew.
"Hello, my little Gracie girl, hello, hello, hello!" Patrick crouched down on the floor next to where Ellen was sitting. The baby crowed and gurgled and wriggled in an ecstasy of love. Patrick held out his hands and looked up at Ellen for approval.
"It's OK. She was just snacking really."
Patrick took the baby into his arms and buried his face in her neck. "Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of a yummy, yummy baby."
Ellen refastened her bra and the buttons of her shirt, watching Patrick.
"Good Lord, I've never seen such a besotted father," Anne had said the previous night after watching him play with Grace. She sounded mildly disapproving, even cranky. Ellen wondered if it was regret that Ellen had missed out on a besotted daddy, or envy because Anne had been a single mother, or if she thought there was something unmanly or unseemly about Patrick's behavior.
"Sorry." Patrick stood up with the baby on his hip and kissed the top of Ellen's head. "Hello, you."
"Oh, yes, don't mind me." Ellen shrugged.
She didn't think it was unmanly. She couldn't get enough of seeing Patrick interact with Grace. The very first moment she'd been wheeled back into her hospital room and seen him cradling the new baby to his bare chest (the nurses had told him to give Grace skin-to-skin contact while Ellen was in recovery, and so he'd unbuttoned his shirt and tucked her up against his bare chest like a sleepy koala), she'd felt such a powerful rush of feeling--something like lust--except not. It was just like the breastfeeding, an entirely new sensation. She wondered if it was biology: the satisfaction of seeing your mate bond with your offspring, so you knew that he would be likely to stick around and keep clubbing lions and tigers for you. Or was it because she was identifying with Grace, and Patrick was filling Ellen's repressed need for paternal love?
Whatever it was, she was grateful for it. Now all that fuss over whether or not Patrick still had feelings for Colleen seemed so silly. Ellen looked back tenderly and condescendingly at herself a year ago: all that unnecessary drama! There was enough love to go around for everyone.
There was even enough love to cope with last Monday morning's phone call from Harriet to say that Jon's new wife was pregnant with twins.
(Nearly enough love anyway. It helped to imagine how badly Jon would cope with sleep deprivation. He'd always liked his sleep. She hoped his twin babies would be healthy and lively, particularly at three a.m.)
After Harriet's phone call it had occurred to her how rarely she thought about her
ex-boyfriends now. Gracie's arrival had kicked them clean out of her head. It used to be that a big part of her satisfaction with her love for Patrick was because it compared so favorably to her feelings for her previous partners. It was like she'd entered their relationship in a permanent contest with all her past relationships. Yes, yet again, we're the winners! Look at our superior sex life! Look at how happy we are!
Except no one was watching (not anymore) and no one cared.
Now her love for Patrick was just a fact, an intrinsic part of her life, as if it had always been so.
She did sometimes wonder if all this blissful contentment might be due to the fact that breastfeeding released the "love hormone"--oxytocin--which increased trust and empathy and reduced fear.
Oh, well. She was going to breastfeed for as long as Grace wanted. ("Promise me you won't be one of those freaky hippie mothers still feeding her when she starts school," said Anne. "What's wrong with that?" asked Ellen innocently.)
Grace Lily Scott, named in honor of her maternal great-grandmothers, was born on Valentine's Day by a planned C-section. A natural birth wasn't an option because of the baby's "low-lying placenta." For a while there, that had seemed like the end of the world. Ellen had always imagined herself having a drug-free, natural labor, using the hypnosis skills she'd successfully taught so many other mothers-to-be. It had never occurred to her that she might not even get to try a natural birth.
"Yes, I can see you'd be upset," said Julia at the time. (She had just recently moved in with Stinky and was incandescent with happiness, due also to the news that her ex-husband's new wife had left him for another man: karma of the most satisfying sort.) "It's because a cesarean doesn't fit with your brand identity. You should be having a home birth with chanting and candles and incense."
"It's not exactly that," sniffed Ellen, although Julia was exactly right.
"I always knew you'd be too posh to push," said Madeline, before admitting that she was just jealous, because her sixteen-hour labor to bring little Harry into the world wasn't exactly one of her favorite memories. (Madeline had also recently admitted that the reason she never asked Ellen about her hypnotherapy work was because she thought Ellen didn't consider her "spiritual or deep enough" to understand. Ellen had been astonished.)