Like a House on Fire

by Cate Kennedy

  You run upstairs to yank the dress over your head and pull your still-damp bathers back on, tugging pins and clips from your hair as you go.

  Then you’re out the screen door, running headlong towards the turquoise-blue, brimming full now, cool and shadowed, like a watching eye about to overspill with glinting, unshed tears.

  Cake

  She’s sitting in the car outside Kidz Rezort. All she has to do, she tells herself, is put the key in the ignition, and turn it. Fire up the car and drive away, like all these other mothers. Liz sits there helpless, though, unable to move, watching them surreptitiously as they walk away from Kidz Rezort and, God, she hates that spelling, that Childcare R Us branding bullshit, that voluntary illiteracy. They’re so breezy, the other mothers. Chatting, some of them, or taking out their phones to check the next thing on their schedule for the day ahead. Holding a latte, or holding a phone, but none of them holding a child’s hand, all of them divested of toddlers and seemingly glad of it. And they might look preoccupied, but not guilty. Nobody looks guilty, do they? Nobody else is eating themselves alive like this, trying not to run to that childproof gate and tear back in there, scoop up their kid from the floor of the Tadpole Room and run screaming out of the place.

  Liz knows that if she did that now, if she was to give in and leap out of the car and hurry back up the path, that would be the end of it. She’d spot Daniel through those soundproof double-glazed doors of the under-twos room; doors designed to prevent the noise escaping, the telltale roars and wails of inconsolable, bereft toddlers scanning the room desperately for their parents. She’d see him red-faced and beside himself, or hunched miserable and bewildered in a corner with a plastic toy shoved into his hand. She’d see the professionally patient faces of the childcare workers glance up at her with expressions that say you again? and look, we’re busy, can’t you pull yourself together? They’re nice enough, the staff — God knows she’s quizzed them at length — but there’s no denying they’re harried. They have to spread themselves thin. And he’s in there, alone, where she’s left him. Abandoned him to a roomful of rampaging strangers: big, chunky, runny-nosed buzz-cut boys in miniature camouflage gear, already seasoned commanders of the play equipment and the puzzles. Not that there’s going to be anybody with enough time to notice that Daniel needs help to get up onto the swing, in any case. But still. It’s guerilla warfare, that’s why they call it a jungle gym, that’s why those boys are dressed like mini commandos. That’s where she’s leaving her baby.

  You can get yourself theoretically ready for this, Liz thinks, you can do all the abstract peripherals — name on the waiting list months ago, three sessions of accompanied play to get him used to the place — but there is still this moment, of holding the car keys after you’ve left your child in there, your breath squeezing and ragged so that soon you’ll have to re-apply the eye make-up you put on so carefully this morning for your first day back at work.

  She won’t return until five. Eight hours. That’s a long time for an eighteen-month-old baby. Isn’t it? Even though he’s not the youngest in there, not by a long shot. That’s what they’ve been telling her, repeatedly, like that’s supposed to make her feel better, instead of worse.

  She digs in her bag for her lipstick, her fingers searching for the small cylinder, and pulls out a crayon, then a battery, then a tampon, then a gluestick. Well, stuff it: let her workmates see her just like this — blotchy and thin-lipped, blouse and skirt not quite fitting her the way they used to. But she can’t arrive too late, not on her very first day back.

  So she sets the betrayal in motion, starts the car numbly and finds reverse, lifts her foot from the clutch and pulls away from Kidz Rezort. Around her in the swirl of peak-hour traffic, she sees other drivers gesticulate as they talk into their hands-free mobiles, or else stare straight ahead through their sunglasses. All of them, she thinks wonderingly, have probably dropped off their children for the day; all of them have put it behind them and are functioning.

  She’s one of them now: out of the baby pool, free and unencumbered and alone, heading off to work. Earning. She punches ‘play’ decisively on the CD player and wonders if she’s the only one on the road who’s singing about driving in a big red car.

  Another set of glass doors: her own boundary gates this time, back at her old office, still with the two dusty ficus trees in the foyer, unchanged; perhaps they’re plastic, she’s never noticed before. Her work colleagues all at the same desks, Stella at the front reception, same smell of cardboard and carpet vacuum powder; only the calendar has been changed. Tim and Dave and Julie all wave enthusiastically to her as she walks with Caroline down towards her old cubicle as Stella calls, ‘Hey, everyone, look who’s back in the land of the living!’

  ‘Here you are,’ says Caroline as they arrive at the desk, and Liz, struggling with monumental time-warp, almost turns to see if she is in fact there, sitting in her tweedy ergonomic chair: her old self, pre-baby, looking up enquiringly, slimmer and with a better haircut.

  There’s a pause before Caroline adds, ‘Well, sit down, then!’

  She does, quickly and obediently. The smell of the place, that’s what throws her, the scent of it all, adult perfumes, air breathed out by computers and printers and photocopiers. Plastic and paper and cold coffee in the plunger, over there on the bench. Dry-cleaned jackets and cool, processed climate control. She fills her lungs with it. What’s he doing, right at this moment? Howling? What’s it been, an hour and a quarter?

  Liz blinks, concentrates on the surface of her desk, all tidied up ready for her; she can see the faint streak marks of the sponge, smell the residual Windex. Whoever’s sat here in her place for nineteen months has obviously liked pot plants — there’s a couple of dead ones left on the windowsill. Same computer, same shiny worn spot on the space bar, measuring out a million incremental small spaces.

  Caroline’s still hovering over her desk, though, clearly expecting conversation. She’s changed her hairstyle. It’s red now, and spiky.

  ‘So, how old’s the little fella?’ she says.

  ‘Eighteen months last Tuesday,’ Liz answers.

  ‘Ohhh! Is he really cute?’

  ‘He sure is.’

  Caroline props her hip against the edge of the desk. ‘Got any photos?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve got a couple here, I’ll just …’ She unloads her mobile phone from her bag, her diary, some pages of notes to herself, and finally the compact red photo album she’s brought so she can show everyone at once.

  ‘Are they photos?’ calls Stella, beaming as she comes over. Now Julie. The women flip through the pictures, exclaiming over her son.

  ‘Look at him here in this one, on the swing!’ they say. ‘Here he is swimming!’

  ‘He can’t actually swim yet,’ says Liz. ‘He’s just in the baby class.’

  ‘That curly hair! He’s so adorable!’ cries Julie, squeezing her eyes shut.

  Liz glances up across the desks and sees something pass between Tim and Dave — an eye-roll, a resigned grin. Then the faintest headshake, unmistakable to her. Disdain.

  ‘I bet you’ve been counting the days!’ Julie goes on. ‘When I had Toby, I couldn’t wait to get my brain working again after all those months home bored out of my skull.’

  ‘Oh God, yes!’ says Stella, ever competitive. ‘You forget, girls, when I had my kids there wasn’t any of this coming back to work. You were just stuck there, getting driven up the wall.’

  ‘It just sneaks up on you, doesn’t it?’ says Julie. ‘Baby brain. Head turned to mush.’

  ‘Yep,’ says Caroline, ‘it’s the monotony that gets to people, they reckon.’ She closes the photo album with a sigh and gives it back to Liz. ‘I mean, it’s wonderful and everything, but the day comes when you just want to get your own life back, right?’

  They’ve all said their piece and now
have turned to look at her expectantly. Liz can’t remember the last time she’s had three adults waiting on an answer from her like this. It’s not something you’d think you’d ever lose the knack for.

  ‘Yeah,’ she blurts. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they’re right, of course they are. Here she is after all back in the land of the living, ready to make jokes about midnight feeds and daytime television and projectile vomit, ready to roll her eyes and give a dismissive headshake, a theatrical shudder.

  ‘I mean, with mine,’ Stella says, watching her hopefully, ‘it was honestly like someone had thrown a grenade into the house. I mean, your marriage is never the same. It’s just very, very hard to adjust. Isn’t it, Liz?’

  No smiles now. Now it’s the we’re-here-to-listen faces, still and avid for meltdown details.

  She feels a jolt, a strong kick, of defensiveness. Like a power surge. ‘Actually,’ she says, ‘I’ve quite enjoyed it.’

  There’s some alliance that wavers and falls at her words: she can feel it as their eyebrows go up in surprise.

  ‘Well, that’s good,’ says Julie at last, flatly.

  ‘I mean,’ she fumbles, feeling her face flush, ‘I’m very glad to be back, of course, but I actually like staying home. I’ve liked it, I mean.’ She senses, as they nod and smile, that this is not the answer they want.

  The three of them return reluctantly to their own desks and for the next hour, as she starts scanning the backlog of spreadsheets on her computer that will bring her up to date, she senses a card being secretly circulated around the desks. There will be a cake, she thinks, at morning tea. That’s the way it’s always gone. Cake from the supermarket, in the end, because Tim and Dave complained once that they were outclassed when it was their turn to make one, and it was fairer to just buy one. So it will be lamington fingers, drowning in sticky, sugary coconut; or a shining chocolate mud cake on a plastic plate; or a fluffy block cake with orange icing crumbling like a sandcastle. These are the cakes that have marked each office birthday and celebration, cakes that leave a fur of sugar on your teeth and a pile of brightly coloured crumbs, cakes you need to empty the remains of into your desk bin when nobody’s looking.

  But she’s mistaken. At midmorning, as her colleagues mill with coffee mugs around her desk to present her with the card inside an office envelope, smiling and joking, Julie clears her throat. Card, but no cake. Some momentous new development to announce.

  ‘We’ve got a new office policy, Liz, to have birthday and welcome-back cakes on the first Wednesday of each month,’ Julie begins. ‘We were just having cakes all the time. Too many celebrations; we had to cut it down.’

  ‘Right,’ says Liz automatically. ‘Good idea.’

  ‘So because we just had a farewell cake this month for Sandy who was doing your job, we’ll have a cake for you Wednesday fortnight, OK?’

  Liz picks at the envelope flap self-consciously. ‘You don’t need to get a cake.’

  ‘No, we will, because it’ll be for Dave’s birthday too and you can share.’

  The card is a tall cartoon bird wearing a sheepish smile and holding a suitcase under its wing. Welcome back! says the caption inside, surrounded by signatures.

  ‘I thought that was appropriate,’ says Stella, tapping the card, ‘since it’s a stork, and you’ve been on maternity leave.’

  Tim sips his herbal tea, and Liz instantly remembers his sacrosanct ceramic jar of special imported teabags in the kitchen. ‘That’s not a stork,’ he says. ‘It’s a spoonbill.’

  Tim hasn’t changed an iota in eighteen months. How could she have forgotten this need for constant, ridiculous, social smiling?

  ‘You should see the photos of Liz’s little boy,’ says Julie, ignoring him. ‘Danny.’

  ‘Daniel,’ mutters Liz, but they don’t hear her.

  ‘You remember we’ve got that meeting this afternoon, don’t you?’ says her boss, Frank. ‘Sorry to throw you in the deep end, but that’s what got scheduled.’ He grins. ‘See, got to crack the whip now. Got to get you back into gear again.’

  ‘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 o
ffice. 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.