The Best Thing (14 page)

‘Why didn’t you and Dad have more kids?’ Today I feel as if it’s all I want to do in life, be pregnant.

‘I’m not sure. I think we got into the habit of just having one. Everyone we knew who had more seemed to be so tied down and so cranky all the time. It felt right, both of us being only children ourselves. That’s what a family
was
—Dad, Mum, child. It seemed like overindulgence to have more.’

The Magninis invade my mind—their noise, their arguments, the crowd of them around the table. I pick up the photo, feel Pug’s arms slide around my waist—

‘And overwork. Babies can be just hard, physical work.’ She
bends to pick up her shoes and her bag. ‘Ha! Beside babies, the HSC’s a doddle!’

[The brain is] like a mushroom swaying in a small sac of fluid. The point at which ‘consciousness’ lies is the point where the brain stem joins the main body of the brain, just like where the stalk joins the mushroom.

When the human head is hit hard, the brain sways back and forth rapidly and much strain is put on that precise point. That point acts as a hinge, and each time it sways violently, more tiny veins are torn and many brain cells killed. At a certain point of trauma, the brain will just ‘black-out’ and the person is knocked out.

There is never a total recovery of these brain cells when the boxer comes to. It is permanent. Mike Tyson will seem to be 100 per cent normal to those around him in a few weeks but in fact, he will only be 99.9 per cent. His reaction time will never be quite as good as it was and his ‘hold’ on consciousness never quite so tenacious.

It will be fractionally easier to knock him out next time and then he might be down to 99.8 per cent. It will be even easier the time after that. And so it goes.

Next day Mum gets home late because she’s been shopping—for presents—for me! She’s got me a bunch of books on pregnancy and birth. ‘Before you get right out of the habit of studying,’ she says, ‘you may as well take some notes from these.’

One’s about eating and exercise in pregnancy, one’s the birth book the birth centre recommended, one’s a book of interviews with Australian mothers about their pregnancies and births. I stand there feeling the weight of the books, their shiny covers. I’m overwhelmed. This is Mum’s response to the ultrasound—
Okay, time to face reality.
Mine was so different, so impractical:
Wow, this is so amazing!

‘And I bought myself one, too,’ she says, pulling out another paper bag and tearing it open. Hers is called
Grandparenthood.

‘Oh, cool, so you’ll be able to find out where to get a mauve rinse for your hair, right?’

‘Yes, and a pair of spectacles that sit on the end of my nose,’ she laughs. ‘It might even have some good knitting patterns in it!’

After tea I sit down with the books. Oh God, there is so much to know! It’s all pretty scary. The actual birth pictures are—well, mind-expanding. Mum looks over my shoulder and says, ‘Well, that’s what we’re
made
for—to stretch that wide. That’s why we’re all concertina’d up inside like we are.’

All the people around the women having the babies look rapt to be there—I mean, none of these people are
models
or anything, just ordinary people. The women are
huge,
and most in the pictures aren’t wearing anything, so their great big breasts are sitting on their gigantic tummies like cannon-balls, and the nipples are huge and dark—they hardly look real. I don’t know how they could stand being
seen,
let alone
photographed
like that.

It’s not just the fact that their bodies are so distorted; their faces show a lot, too. There’s no smiling for the camera—except afterwards, when the baby’s in their arms. You can see pain, effort, distress, exhaustion, and these are just split-second images, no sound, no indication of the length of time the whole process takes—like, how
long
do you have to suffer?

I’m muttering, ‘Oh, God,’ looking through the pictures. I look up at Mum, all the joy at the fantastic-ness of having a baby inside me burnt off by fear of having it come out of me. I can’t believe—but I have to believe, have no choice!—that this will be me in November, that I’ll be this size and shape, that I’ll be squatting or kneeling or standing there with a baby’s head outside of me and the rest of it inside. It just
cannot happen
that that little kicking ghost-skulled creature is going to come sliding out and be another person. But then, where did I
think
people came from before this—a factory production line? Down from the clouds? Why didn’t I ever think of them
coming out of people’s bodies
? It’s not as if I never saw pregnant women, and then saw them pushing the baby around in a stroller—why didn’t I ever properly wonder what went on in between?

‘It’s all right,’ Mum says, smiling at my stunned expression. ‘You get a big prize at the end.’

‘It’s worth it?’ I say doubtfully.

‘Honey-girl, the birth itself is
nothing,
let me tell you.’

‘Gee.’
What have I got myself into?
I don’t ask that question out loud, though, for fear she’ll tell me the answer.

Dad and Mum negotiating downstairs. It’s like opening the freezer door, listening in. Cold, cold air. I wish they’d get angry and say what they’re thinking, instead of talking about use of the car, and electrical appliances, crockery, CDs.

Mum’s got it all sorted out and itemised. Every time she brings up an item, Dad says, ‘Oh no, God, you keep all that,’ and she says ‘I’ve sorted out your share—it’s in the study. I want this to be absolutely fair.’ She wants the study cleared by the end of the month. She had a chuckle with me when she was talking about this meeting—‘I want the Lewises’ house to be so chockablock with his stuff that Ricky can’t
stand
it! I want it to be really
inconvenient
—everything’s suited him right down to the ground so far.’

‘Except Josh and Ambra?’ I said hopefully.

‘Josh and Ambra are with Rob, in the flat. Ricky and your dad have got all the privacy they want now. More than they can stand, I hope.’

Friday night. It’s exactly two weeks since I last saw Pug. I can think about that time, running away from him, without groaning and actually covering my face with my hands, but I still do it in my head. Then I’m lost, don’t know what to think. The wish to see him is exactly balanced out by the instinct not to, the voice that says a sharp ‘No!’ and halts me in my tracks.

The phone rings. Mum’s in the bath.
This’ll be Dad.
‘Hullo?’

‘Mel?’
No, I’m not ready.
‘It’s Dino.’

‘I know. Hi.’ The effect on my heart! I’ve read you get extra blood when you’re pregnant. Your heart enlarges to take on the
extra load. Well, it certainly feels bigger, sounds louder.

‘Hi. I got your number out the book. Is that okay? Is this, like, an okay time to ring you up?’ I can hear traffic in the background. I can picture exactly where he is.

‘Yeah, well …’

He clears his throat. ‘Haven’t seen you for a while, that’s all.’

‘Well, I’m kind of … kind of grounded.’

Silence. ‘They found out, hey?’

‘Yeah, for jigging school and all that.’

‘How long for?’

‘My dad says indefinitely, so … I don’t know what that means.’ I’m not sure I know what
anything
means, the way my brain’s scrambling.

‘D’you … d’you want me to come round and talk to ‘em?’

Oh
God,
no! ‘Um, I don’t think that’d make much difference.’

‘They’re really pissed off, huh?’

‘Yeah, pretty badly.’

‘Shit, I
knew
it was a bad idea, keepin’ it all secret like that. You shoulda introduced me to ‘em right at the start.’

‘Maybe. I don’t know.’ I really want to
not be having this conversation.
If he’d just come out and ask for the truth, I’d be able to tell him, but as long as he goes on believing my lies, I’m caught in them. And I don’t like the feeling.

‘Hey, this is terrible. I miss you, mate. I shouldn’t’ve let you go off like you did, all upset, and sick and that. I should’ve walked you home—I feel bad about that.’

‘I feel bad too, Dino. But I don’t know what I can do.’ That’s true enough. ‘They’re not letting me out of their sight.’

‘Bugger it.
Bloody
telephones. I feel like, if I could just get to
see
you, you know?’

‘I’m stuck, though. I can’t see a way to get around it.’ That’s true, too.

‘There’s got to be
some
time when they ease up a bit on you.’

‘When they trust me again, you mean?’

‘Yeah. As soon as you get a break, Mel, come around, will you?
‘Cause, mate, I’m … I’m goin’ a bit crazy here, you know? You know?’

‘Feel a bit that way myself,’ I admit.

‘Yeah? Oh, man … this sucks, so much.’ I can hear him shifting in the phone box, thumping something with his fist. ‘As soon as you can, okay?’

‘As soon as I can.’

‘Promise me. Shit.’

‘I promise. I will. I’d better go.’

I stand at the bottom of the stairs, my hands on the big wooden sphere on top of the newel post, my head on my knuckles, the bones digging in. It’s because I’m three months
gone,
I tell myself. The first thing to go must be your ability to make decisions … And he would be walking home in the cold, or maybe along King Street unable to stand going back to that room,
going a bit crazy
… I torture myself playing back his voice, his breath, evidence that he breathes still, that he hasn’t just conveniently disappeared off the face of the earth.

‘Who was that?’ I straighten up. Mum’s all towelling bathrobe and turban at the top of the stairs.

‘Nobody.’ I know she knows I’m lying.

‘Your “young man”.’

I nod, sigh, turn away from the stairs, away from her enquiring eyes.

‘Any progress?’

I squawk ‘No’ into my hands.

‘What was that?’ her voice prods.

‘No progress, no progress. Nothing you need to be told.’

‘Oh, I’m not worried about
me
.’ She goes into her bedroom.

‘Neither am I,’ I mutter at the ceiling. If anyone ever asks me, I’ll tell them my mother coped with the family breakup disgustingly well.

There may be a gradual development of dementia with impairment of memory, emotional lability, slurring of speech and ataxia.
Fatuous cheerfulness may occur, with little insight into the severity of the mental disability, but there may be significant mood swings with irritability and violent behaviour. Tremor, ataxia and spasticity, either pyramidal or extra-pyramidal in type, a condition similar to Parkinson’s Disease (especially of the post-encephalitic type) sometimes occurs. The tendon reflexes may be exaggerated and the plantar reflexes extensor. Epilepsy has been described, but somewhat surprisingly, is quite uncommon.

All weekend I’m walking on glass expecting the phone to ring again.

‘Come up to Newtown,’ says Mum on Sunday. ‘I’ll buy you lunch.’

I make doubtful noises.

‘Come on,’ she says. ‘You need to get out of this house, out of your own brain.’

‘I suppose. Is there anywhere besides King Street, though? I get sick of going up there.’

‘Well,
I’ll
be there today to make it different for you. How about that?’

‘Oh, big treat.’ I feel so depressed and fatalistic I hardly even
care
that we might meet Pug.

We don’t, and that depresses me even more. I try to eat a mound of salad and drink a milkshake (‘a big calcium pill for my grandchild’s bones,’ grins Mum) while I stare out the window, my eyes flicking from face to face.

‘Dave and I made a few decisions on Thursday night that you should know about,’ says Mum when her coffee comes.

‘Yeah? Like I go to Ricky’s place every second weekend?’

She cracks up. ‘I hardly think! No, about the house.’

‘What, you can’t just draw a chalk line down the middle?’

‘Very big on the black humour today, darling.’ She pats my hand. ‘In fact, it could hardly be neater. The house just paid off, the child just flying the nest—’

‘I haven’t flown
yet
!’

‘Officially you have, not being at school any more.’

‘Have I?’

‘For most purposes. You can stop being a dependent child just as soon as you apply for the single mother’s benefit at Social Security. Assuming that’s what you’re going to do. This is why I’m telling you this, so you
can
decide.’

‘What did
you and Dad
decide, though?’ I’m not looking out on the street any more. He could park himself with his nose against the window and I wouldn’t see him.

‘We’re selling the house, and splitting the proceeds.’

‘When?’

‘ASAP, as they say. Open for inspection next weekend.’

I push the half-finished milkshake away from me. ‘What … what are you planning to do with your proceeds? Fly off overseas?’

‘Buy a house. One
I
like. I have to find it first.’

‘You don’t like our house? You don’t want to buy Dad’s half?’

‘I don’t, no, I have to say.’

Long pause.

‘What if the house
you
like only has one bedroom?’

Mum smiles, reaches for my hand. ‘I don’t know, Mel. What if it has?’

‘Then there won’t … then there’ll only be room for—for you.’ Tears spill down my cheeks. I pull my hand out of Mum’s and reach for a paper serviette.

She watches me for a little while. ‘This is why, you see, you have to know. Who’s going to decide first? Do I factor you in or out of my house? Are you going to strike out on your own or plump for staying with Mum?’

But it’s not even
that
I’m crying about. And I’m crying, I’m crying. When she stops talking I put my head down on the table and sob. After a while I feel her hand on my hair, stroking.
Cry as long as you like,
her fingertips say. So I do. I don’t try to talk for a long time.

Finally I sit up. She offers me her serviette, mine being a sodden ball.

‘It’s just …’ I risk a look at her. She’s listening, sympathetic. ‘Feel like I’ve got no-one,’ I get out.