by Kris Webb
I laughed. ‘And how’s the Incredible Hulk enjoying the change?’
The Incredible Hulk was our nickname for Max’s boss, Barry, who was one of the mousiest men I’d ever met and who had been transferred to San Francisco at the same time as Max. Being stuck next to him for an entire dinner was the ultimate torture; every conversational gambit was met with a single word or, if you were really unlucky, a nod.
Max and I had long ago decided that no one could be that boring and that this was in fact just a false persona for a superhero – kind of like Clark Kent but less interesting. Adding fuel to our theory was his claim he was highly allergic to any form of shellfish. We had become convinced that this was not an allergy at all, but the trigger to his miraculous transformation into superhero form and that one mouthful of oyster soup would result in his skin turning green, his muscles rippling and stretching, and his conservative Oxford shirts tearing down the middle.
Unfortunately, neither of us had ever been brave enough to test this theory (as to get it wrong would have meant a dead dinner guest) so we had no real proof either way.
‘Barry was sacked about six months ago – no one quite knows why. I’ve actually been promoted to his job,’ Max said.
‘Wow, that’s great news!’ I enthused and then, not wanting to seem like a total uncaring witch, I added, ‘Although I guess not for Barry.’
‘No, I guess not – but maybe he’s off keeping another company safe in a galaxy far, far away,’ Max replied.
I couldn’t help but laugh. One thing Max and I had always had in common was a sense of humour no one else appreciated.
‘And how’s Debbie?’ Max asked, clearly unwilling to give up the topic of mutual acquaintances and friends, which was a big improvement on our earlier stilted efforts at conversation.
‘Oh, you know, Debbie’s Debbie. She just broke up with another guy last night – something about his choice of aftershave.’
There was another long pause and, deciding to make things easy for Max, I tried to wind the conversation up. ‘Well, I guess I should go…’
‘Sophie,’ Max said abruptly. ‘Could I see you?’
My heart skipped a beat. But after the initial feeling of elation that he should want to see me, I realised nothing had changed. I was now a package that included Sarah and there was no point in my seeing Max, given that there was no place for her in his life. I refused even to think about the possibility that I still wasn’t over him. As my father always said, ‘What’s done is done’ and there was no going back now.
‘I don’t know, Max,’ I hedged. ‘It’s pretty hard for me to get out without Sarah.’
‘I want to see both of you,’ he replied firmly.
My mind whirled as I tried to figure out exactly what this meant. ‘Sure,’ I managed to get out, trying to play it cool. ‘Why don’t you drop around some time?’
‘What about now?’ he asked.
‘Now?’ I echoed, looking around at the profusion of baby rugs, vomit cloths and rattles, and down at my very unglamorous attire.
I was unable to think of an excuse quickly enough and before I knew it the words, ‘Sure, come around’ had somehow made their way out of my mouth.
Thankfully Sarah had dropped off to sleep while she was feeding, so after I had given Max the address and hung up, I dumped her unceremoniously into her crib, calculating that I had about twenty minutes before he arrived.
After throwing off my clothes, I jumped into the shower and, with one hand, lathered my hair, which hadn’t been washed in days. With the other hand, I swiped soap across my body. The possibility of shaving my legs crossed my mind, but I quickly abandoned that as too ambitious given that I didn’t even know where my razor was. In record time I leapt out of the shower and grabbed the hair dryer, more to dry my hair than to attempt any great styling. After all, I didn’t want Max to know that I’d had a shower especially for his visit.
Throwing open my wardrobe doors, I wondered desperately what to wear. Karen had sternly warned me to put my jeans at the bottom of the cupboard and not to even think about trying them on for at least six months after Sarah was born. However, this was a crisis, and after all they’d always been a bit baggy before I became pregnant. With one hand I grabbed the jeans off the hanger and stepped into them while the other hand kept flicking through the possible tops. Suddenly I stopped what I was doing and looked down. Not only would my jeans not do up, I couldn’t even get them over my hips.
This was a matter of serious concern. However, I didn’t have time to wallow in depression and after a quick look at my watch I grabbed my white three-quarter maternity pants and a bright pink shirt.
Somehow I had always been under the impression that the moment my baby was born I would be able to relegate my maternity clothes to the bin and start wearing normal clothes again. Wrong. I was still wearing all my elastic-topped trousers, although I was now able to wear normal shirts (with the notable exception of the figure-hugging ones), which had helped my sanity slightly.
My emergency house-cleaning technique – aka throwing everything into the cupboard and shutting the door – allowed me to get the place looking in reasonable shape in under five minutes and I had just thrown the last toy under the sofa when the doorbell rang. I pushed my hair back behind my ears, took a step towards the door and then paused, turned back and grabbed a book off the shelf, which I put half opened on the sofa. I didn’t want Max to know that the most intellectual thing I’d managed to read since Sarah was born were the change table instructions.
Max stood on the doorstep looking exactly as he had when I’d last seen him.
The first thing that hit me was a feeling of familiarity – almost as though the last year hadn’t happened and he was just picking me up to go to one of our old breakfast haunts. That feeling was quickly replaced by the realisation of how much my life had changed since those days and how much Max had missed.
‘Hi,’ I greeted him nervously. After hesitating for a second, I stood back and invited him in.
Looking as apprehensive as I felt, Max stepped inside and looked around.
‘This place is great, Sophie,’ he said. ‘It must be nice finally living by yourself.’ He realised what he’d said as soon as it was out of his mouth and smiled apologetically. ‘Sorry, it’s kind of hard getting used to the fact that you’ve got a baby.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I answered. ‘I still struggle with the concept myself.’
‘You look terrific,’ he said. ‘I didn’t really know what to expect, but being a mother obviously suits you.’
‘Thanks,’ I replied. ‘It’s not always easy, but so far the good bits far outweigh the bad.’
The stilted conversation lapsed and I tried desperately to think what to say to this man with whom I’d spent two years. As I was frantically considering and discarding topics, I noticed that Max was looking at me strangely. My first thought was that I’d forgotten to do up the zip on my trousers in my mad rush to get ready, but a quick glance established that this was not the case.
With a flash of horror I realised why Max was staring. I was so used to rocking back and forth with Sarah in my arms that I was still doing it, even though she was fast asleep in her bedroom.
Get it together, I told myself fiercely. Max was going to think that I’d lost my mind if I didn’t manage to act slightly normally.
‘Sarah’s asleep,’ I said, in case he thought I had just shut her away in a cupboard. ‘Would you like to see her?’ I added tentatively.
‘Yes, I would, very much,’ Max replied.
I led him up the stairs, opened Sarah’s door and stepped back. Max stood in the doorway looking at the crib for a moment and then walked slowly across the room. He didn’t say a word, just gripped the edge of the crib and stared at his daughter, who was fast asleep, both her arms flung up beside her head. Her long dark lashes rested on her cheeks, and with her loose dark ringlets she looked the spitting image of Max.
I hadn’t realised befo
re I had Sarah that everyone who sees a new baby is desperate to determine who it looks like. The fact that Sarah looked like a smaller and (I hoped) more feminine version of Max and not at all like me had caused great problems for my visitors, who had flailed around desperately looking for some feature of Sarah’s which they could attribute to me.
After what seemed to be a very long time, but was probably only a couple of minutes, Max loosened his grip, turned and walked back down the stairs into the lounge room.
I followed him down, but before I could say anything Max blurted, ‘Look, Sophie, I’ve got to go, I’ll give you a call.’
Speechless, I watched him practically sprint out the door and down the path. I frowned, trying to figure out what exactly had gone wrong.
TEN
Several days later I was still shaken by Max’s visit. I was angry that he had decided to intrude into my life and then disappear once again.
I decided, though, that there was no point in looking backwards. I had a beautiful daughter, a great place to live and a good job to go back to when my money ran out (which was looking like being sooner rather than later).
While there was nothing I could do about the situation with Max, something I could tackle was the jeans problem.
Even without Andrew’s reminders, I realised that to ever be able to go to the beach again in anything more revealing than shorts and a T-shirt was going to take some physical effort. However, Andrew’s program for me to return to the land of the taut and terrific was the stuff horror movies are made of and if he’d had his way I would have been doing sit-ups as I was wheeled out of the delivery room. So I had found it hard to contain my delight when Dr Daniels had told me sternly that I was to refrain from any sit-ups or strenuous activity for at least six weeks after Sarah’s birth. He explained that this was in order to allow my stomach muscles, which had separated during my pregnancy, to heal (I hadn’t had the courage to ask him to elaborate on this horrifying description).
Dr Daniels seemed to mistakenly think my relieved smile meant I thought the whole stomach muscle problem was humorous, but after I had asked him to put his instructions in writing, he looked as though he was giving some serious thought as to whether he should refer me to a psychologist for treatment for post-natal depression. Somehow I couldn’t summon up the energy to explain to him that, given my history of inventing all kinds of excuses for avoiding twenty-kilometre runs, I needed documentary evidence to convince Andrew.
Andrew had grudgingly accepted the ban on sit-ups (although only after suspiciously perusing Dr Daniels’s name and qualifications at the top of the page) but had still managed to produce a program that looked as though it would also be suitable if I resolved that climbing K-2 was my next goal.
I decided that right now a body inspection would be a good place to start and, despite the fact that Karen had also warned me against this, stripped down to my underwear and stood in front of the mirror. Ignoring my breasts, not an easy task, it was not a pretty sight. My pregnancy book had exhorted me not to feel embarrassed about any stretch marks but to bear them as ‘a badge of motherhood’. Sometimes I had the distinct feeling that the author of the book was having a serious laugh at her readers.
Despite all the promises I’d heard that breastfeeding would ‘strip off all that extra weight’, there was definitely an additional layer around my middle and over my hips. Ignoring the layer, however, I could see no way that the extra roll of skin, which didn’t seem quite to have contracted to its pre-baby size, was going to disappear. My knowledge of biology was pretty elementary, but I was reasonably sure that there was no connection between stomach muscles and skin, and I failed to see how even an Andrew-driven sit-up regime could snap that skin back to where it used to be.
Before Sarah was born I had allowed myself to be reassured by the spate of articles which had appeared in magazines featuring before and after pregnancy photos of glamorous celebrities. All of them looked at least as good, if not better, than before they’d had their little bundles of joy.
I was suddenly suspicious now. There was no doubt in my mind that those paragons of womanhood would have been able to avoid any extra padding, but I was sure the skin-stretching issue was one even they must face.
Marching into the spare room in my underwear, I rifled through the stack of old magazines in the corner until I found the ones with the articles that I had remembered.
‘BABIES – THE 21st CENTURY FASHION ACCESSORY’, ‘FROM SUPERMODEL TO SUPER MUM’ the covers declared. I snorted as I reread what had sounded perfectly feasible pre-Sarah. While I loved my daughter dearly, anyone would have a very hard time convincing me that a four-kilogram package which could cry, vomit and poo within the space of ten minutes was a cooler thing to be seen with than a Gucci handbag.
But it was the pictures I was most interested in. I looked at them again and had to admit that the featured celebrities did look pretty damn good post birth. But something was odd. After looking at them closely for several minutes I realised what it was. In all the photos the mothers’ midriffs were cleverly concealed. Even the bikini shots, which had particularly impressed me previously, were frauds. In all of them babies were positioned squarely in front of their mothers’ stomachs. I rifled through the stack of magazines again and found some more articles complete with swimwear shots – exactly the same technique had been used.
‘Ah ha!’ I exclaimed triumphantly.
My discovery hadn’t done anything to improve my chances of being able to walk down a beach in nothing but a bikini (actually, come to think of it, I’d never been game to do that even before I became pregnant). But at least I didn’t feel like I was the only modern woman who had let the side down by not looking better after having my baby than I had before.
As I’d already tried on my jeans and done an inspection of my body in the cruel daylight, I figured that I might as well complete the trilogy of things promised to drive a new mother to deep depression and weigh myself. I strode determinedly into the bathroom, stood on the scales, took a deep breath and looked at the dial.
The needle was positioned firmly at seventy kilos.
Some of the women in my prenatal classes had put on little more than the combined weight of the baby and all the accompanying bits and pieces, and one woman had actually managed to weigh less at nine months pregnant than she had before she’d conceived. No one had ever referred to me as being ‘all baby’, as I had heard those women described, but I’d managed to avoid falling into the whole eating-for-two trap, had kept myself pretty active and had hoped that the fallout wouldn’t be too disastrous. But the reality of five extra kilograms was staring me in the face and I decided now was the time to address the situation.
My last birthday present from Andrew had been a six-month membership to a gym with a day care. No time like the present, I figured, and marched into the bedroom to get dressed.
There was no way I was going to wear my disgusting maternity bike pants, but I decided it was way too soon to consider something as bottom hugging as a pair of little gym shorts (even if I could squeeze into them, which I seriously doubted). My old running shorts with the stretched waistband seemed like the ideal compromise and I slipped them on. A top was the next dilemma. My sports bras looked ridiculously small compared with my generous new shape, so I settled for an aerobics bra which didn’t have any cups in it, with a big T-shirt pulled over the top.
I loaded Sarah into the car and drove to the gym. Given that the time of day didn’t mean a lot to me at the moment, it hadn’t occurred to me that my sudden desire to hit the fitness trail had come at five-thirty, which meant that I arrived at the gym just as hordes of office workers descended. Turning around and heading back to the safety of my home seemed a very appealing option, but I summoned up a mental picture of the number on the scales and pushed on.
My local gym was a small one, which meant that all the staff had known me there and, more importantly, known my limitations. As a result I had always been pretty muc
h left to my own devices, unless I tragically mistimed my visit and found myself there at the same time as Andrew. Unfortunately, though, that gym didn’t have anywhere I could leave Sarah. Determined that I wouldn’t be able to use the baby as an excuse not to exercise, Andrew had bought me a membership to the very large and very slick gym outside of which I was now standing uncertainly.
The entrance was taken up by a long reception desk at which three tracksuited staff sat. Feeling somewhat out of place, I presented my card to the nearest official-looking person. He swiped it and looked up from the computer with a big smile.
‘Good evening, Sophie, how are you doing?’
‘Good,’ I stammered, thinking that Andrew had peppered the place with spies, until I realised my name would have come up on the computer screen.
‘Could you tell me which floor the day care is on?’ I asked.
‘Sure,’ he replied. ‘Head up to the fourth floor and follow the signs.’
There was an escalator behind the front desk and I headed towards it, stopping suddenly as I realised that I’d never taken a pram on an escalator and wasn’t quite sure whether I could do it without causing serious harm to Sarah and myself.
However, I had no time to ponder the situation any further, as a tide of keen exercisers swept us onto the escalator, where I managed to balance the pram precariously until we reached the top. Not wishing to tempt fate, I decided to abandon the remaining escalators for the safety of the lift, which I spotted at the opposite end of the floor, and I manoeuvred the pram towards it, dodging sweaty bodies as I went.
Pre-Sarah I’d always been a morning exerciser and I now remembered that one of the major reasons for this was that in the evenings gyms were full of beautifully groomed people who had no intention of raising a sweat. The whole concept of a gym as a pick-up place had never really made sense to me. I never feel less alluring than when I am exercising under fluorescent lights with my hair pulled back in a rubber band and sweat running down my face. Any spare energy I have is always needed to draw oxygen into my lungs, not make small talk. But at this time of day the place was full of women in designer exercise wear with full faces of makeup and hairstyles I’d be happy with if I was heading out to a black-tie function. Judging by the chatting going on across the stepping machines, their efforts were paying off.
