Like a House on Fire (17 page)

‘No problem,' she says.

Once they leave her cubicle, she phones Kidz Rezort.

‘I'm just wondering if he's settling in OK,' she says, keeping her voice down.

‘He's fine,' says the reassuring voice at the other end. ‘He's riding a scooter across the play area right now.'

‘That's great. Just checking,' she says.
Swallowing down the desire to spit:
Do you think I'm an idiot? He's eighteen months old. He can't even balance on a fucking tricycle yet. You're looking at the wrong kid, you negligent morons.

‘Thanks for that,' she says in a cheerful inane sing-song. Got to keep them happy with her, got to have them onside. She hangs up and rests her fingers again over the keyboard, hearing her breath going in and out, in and out, staring at the glowing screen.
Delete
, she presses. Punching the key like a bird pecking.
Delete, delete, delete
.

There's a pamphlet in her bag called
Returning to work after maternity leave.
She picked it up at the Infant and Child Welfare Centre and knows it off by heart, especially the front page.

A woman, younger than her, lifting a laughing baby into the air. No bra-strap showing through her shirt, no midriff bulge. Shiny hair.

Being a stay-at-home mum can begin to seem mundane and repetitive to many women who have experienced the challenges of a satisfying job and the stimulation of daily adult conversation
,
it begins
.

Baby brain, Julie had called it, the clichéd term, the enemy hormones, the surprise attack to halve your IQ. Actually Julie's coming towards her now, threading her way down the aisle between the desks, carrying another orange envelope. More spreadsheets maybe, thinks Liz. But Julie holds the envelope up and smiles.

‘Hope this doesn't seem rude,' she starts, ‘but can you put in three dollars? For the morning tea.'

‘For the …'

‘The once-a-month morning tea. For next month. See, we started out taking it in turns to make a cake, then some people said they were too short of time to do that and started buying cakes.'

‘Yes, yes, I remember. I was here.'

‘Oh, right, sorry. Anyway, once we'd started with that, it didn't seem fair that some people were taking the time to make them at home and not others, so we decided we should all just buy them and we'd all put in three dollars a month so it was equal.'

‘Sure, yep. Here you go.' Liz fishes out her wallet and finds a five-dollar note, snaps it shut before she has to look at the photo of Daniel tucked in there. His shy smile like a boobytrap. He'd have his thumb in his mouth right now. Not smiling, that's for sure.

‘I'll just get you your change,' says Julie.

‘Please, don't worry about it.'

‘No, no, look, it's right here in the envelope.'

God, these endless extended moments where you're left in limbo, the time dangling like a suspended toy on a piece of elastic. She'd forgotten. She's been taken in by a stupid pamphlet. She holds out her hand for the coin, unable to keep her feet from jiggling with impatience. Julie folds back the envelope flap and stands there, still hovering.

‘OK, so what sort do you want?' she asks.

‘What sort?' Liz blinks.

‘I'm buying it next month, from Cake It Away, and you can have carrot or hummingbird or chocolate mud.'

Liz stares at Julie's plump mouth working.
Her mind's a desperate blank, scrabbling to summon a response. Baby brain. It must be.

‘Um … I don't mind, Julie. Whatever you think.'

Julie looks dubious, then her face clears. ‘I'll ask Dave.'

She wanders off down between the desks with that leisurely amble they all seem to have. Liz can't remember noticing it before now. All the time in the world, here in the office. Once you're clocked on, it's the calm progression from in-tray to out-tray via the full range of possible distractions. Spin it all out. She has a sudden vision of herself at home, hastily mashing vegetables in the kitchen as Daniel hangs onto her leg, angling herself to keep him away from the oven, picking him up and hauling wet washing out of the machine with one arm, balancing his weight on the crook of her hip. She wants that weight now, God, she craves it, settled firmly into her side; she's unbalanced without it. In fact, her arms hesitating over the keyboard, haphazardly recalling how to set up a mail merge, feel weirdly light and empty. She'll ring Kidz Rezort again. No, no way in the world can she ring them again. Do it. Don't do it. Delete, delete, delete.

There's a manila envelope in her top drawer. She finds it as she's checking in there for some scrap paper, and pulls it out and opens it. Inside, notes in her own handwriting.

It gives her a shock, seeing it there. With sudden clarity she remembers the day she jotted them down — sitting breathless and uncomfortable, eight months pregnant and with a hard insistent baby head pressing down on her pelvis, readying itself — projecting her anxiety into worrying that the person taking over her job wouldn't understand the importance of what she was leaving them with.

Liz looks at her own notes now, underlined here and there for emphasis.
Delete fourth Excel column before printing for subtotal!
they say.
Account for Henderson's
must be in triplicate and invoice photocopied!
Underlined, she thinks with amazement. And those conscientious exclamation marks, as if it all urgently mattered. As if it meant something, as if things would fall apart without her, as if anybody could give a flying toss. She might as well have been sitting here, she thinks, with plaits and a school tunic on, so distant and foolish and naive do those exclamation marks seem now.

Rewarding as caring for a baby can be
, says her pamphlet,
it is often a relief to exchange it for a return to the paid workforce where your expertise and skills are valued.

Jesus, now what? It's Stella this time leaning on her desk, smiling like the bearer of wonderful news.

‘I hope you didn't bring anything from home,' she says, ‘because we're taking you out to lunch!'

Liz remembers the place they take her. There's pokies in the other room and the bistro's got a nine-dollar lunchtime special. It's crowded with other office workers. Liz is keyed up, berating herself every few minutes for not coming up with a fast excuse for Stella. Her brain has let her down, it's AWOL, it's definitely elsewhere. If she'd pleaded another plausible engagement she could have slipped away, made it back to the childcare centre in her lunch hour and just checked that he was alright. Reminded them that he needed a drink before his sleep, and that he took a while to settle. Then she could have driven back to the office, and nobody would have known. She might have seen him, calmly asleep after all on those bloody gym mats they used for cots, safely cocooned in a blanket. Instead she's here confronting a slab of lasagne oozing bright orange grease, surrounded by white noise, poker-machine din, and Caroline, Julie and Stella. They're being good sports, Liz thinks. They're doing their best, they're being as sisterly as they can. She must try, she really has to. She takes a bite of lasagne and thinks straight away:
those cheats.
She recognises immediately the instant curly lasagne noodles, the cheap bottled pasta sauce with herbs and red wine, and the shredded supermarket mozzarella. At home, on the single income, they've been living on this homebrand stuff.

‘I love Italian,' says Caroline. ‘How's yours?'

‘Delicious,' Liz says.

‘I bet it's a long time since you've sat down and had a decent lunch with the girls, isn't it?'

‘Yeah. It sure is. Thanks for inviting me.'

She hopes they've remembered to get his own blanket out of his bag. Her book says the smell of something familiar is comforting. Maybe she could text them. No, can't text them.

‘So what cute things is Danny doing now that he's a toddler? Is he talking yet?' asks Caroline.

Liz puts her fork down, swallowing, smiling. ‘You know what, he does this great thing,' she begins. ‘You know that song? The one that goes:
If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands
?
We make up all these different verses — stick out your tongue, stamp your feet, point at the sky — and even though he can't talk he'll do all the actions. He'll have this expression on his face …'

She finds herself singing a quick snatch of the song, sticking out her tongue, pointing at the sky. They're looking at her, nodding and smiling, but after a couple of lines, their smiles get a little stiff. Even though Liz sees Caroline glance rapidly at people at other tables around them, it's like strings somewhere are jerking her hands into action, and once she's started she can't stop. She gets to
If you're happy and you know it, then you really ought to show it, if you're happy and you know it, clap your hands!
before whatever spell has caught hold of her lets her go, and she can drop her own hands back into her lap, queasy with mortification.

Sneaking a look at the others, she remembers an occasion a few years ago when a new comedian appeared on TV and they all thought he was hysterically funny. For a surprise she'd organised tickets for the four of them to see him live at a local club, only to find that his stage act was almost identical to what they'd already seen him do on TV.

Caroline, Julie and Stella had laughed dutifully enough, but their faces had shown a kind of pained disappointment, something faintly aggrieved. She sees the same expression in their faces at this moment. That's her, now, she realises. Someone they expected to be entertained by, who actually doesn't have any new material after all.

‘I weaned him, you know, to come back to work,' she says suddenly. Where had that come from?

‘Well,' says Julie, still looking disapproving, ‘it's about time, don't you think? A whole year and a half? I had Jake on formula by eight weeks. You've got your own life — they can't be dictating it.'

‘Finally managed it just five days ago, really,' Liz adds. At night, at feeding times, Daniel's been looking at her and the bottle in her hand with a baffled uncertainty that stabs at her heart — she can actually feel it, beating swollen and too big for her body, as his hand knocks the bottle away and dives to the collar of her shirt. A terrible, abject longing swamps her now as she thinks of breastfeeding, the two of them lying on the bed, Daniel's hand dreamily stirring the air as she sings,
The wheels on the bus go round and round …

Dictating what? she thinks, gripping her cutlery. Nobody's been dictating anything.

She looks away from their patient, indulgent smiles down at her lasagne, cuts off a corner and shoves it in her mouth.
Shut up
,
she tells herself savagely.

‘Has anyone got a dollar change if I put in ten dollars?' says Stella. ‘Because I'm heading back early to build up my flexitime.'

‘But you know dessert's included,' says Julie. ‘I'm having the lemon cheesecake.'

‘What else is there again?' asks Stella.

‘Where's the dessert menu gone?' says Caroline.

Liz concentrates on swallowing the claggy paste of cheese and pasta in her mouth.
God in Heaven
, she thinks, forcing it down,
if anyone else mentions fucking cake again today I'm going to burst a blood vessel
. There's a whole afternoon to go, back in the land of the living, stretching before her like an endurance run, something she's been talked into, something that's meant to prove something.
You signed up
, she rebukes herself.
No point aiming this seething fury at anybody but yourself. You and your rampaging, roller-coastering, oestrogen-soaked, mush-brained hormones.
Put your phone with its two hundred pictures away, back in your ridiculous cavernous mummy-bag, and agree to orange poppyseed
.

At three o'clock Frank comes to take her to the meeting. They walk down the hall together. Her shoes are hurting. Maybe the ligaments stretching have made her feet a size bigger. She clacks along gingerly, feeling the pinch at each step.

‘You're OK, aren't you?' says Frank.

‘Sure!'

‘I mean, I can sympathise with you. It's a hard adjustment to make.'

She hesitates, remembers Frank has two kids, or is it three? Met his wife once, at the staff Christmas dinner. Evie. Evelyn. Ellen. God, her memory.

‘It is, after you've been in one routine,' she agrees gratefully, ‘and then you're suddenly shoved into another. I mean, look what we expect!'

He nods. ‘That's what I mean. Having to walk into a room full of pretty competitive strangers, all with their own agendas. That's a bit of a tough gauntlet to run, doing it cold like that, getting thrown into the mix.'

Fresh guilt throbs in her like a toothache. She hadn't expected it would be Frank who understood, but no doubt he's dropped his own kids off enough times at childcare and felt the same thing.

‘And just leaving him there in that room,' she says, fighting off hot tears, ‘shoving him in there and expecting him to cope, when he's just a little baby. That's it. It's hard. Really hard.'