by Anita Heiss
A photo of a white station wagon appeared on the screen of Izzy’s phone. It was the third that morning, and only twenty-four hours since she had told Asher she was pregnant. The pic made her smile and shake her head simultaneously. Asher was behaving completely the opposite to what she had expected. His enthusiasm helped her feel even more sure about managing the baby when it came and she momentarily wondered how she could ever have thought about terminating. Nothing in her life had felt as positive as it did that morning.
Izzy felt compelled to call Xanthe who, as it turned out, was doing training at the new ABC headquarters at South Bank, a much sexier building than the old Toowong site. Izzy had thought to ask Xanthe to be Godmother, but realised it was probably too early, and would more than likely look like an attempted consolation prize. Her friend was still desperate to get pregnant. They agreed to meet for coffee at the café below the studios facing the river.
‘Hello lovely,’ Izzy greeted Xanthe with a new spring in her step.
‘You look fabulous,’ Xanthe said, admiring her tidda.
They sat at a table at the back as producers and broadcasters cluttered the front tables planning their future programs. Izzy smiled a hello to a well-known broadcaster from the Speaking Out program, known around the traps for her brightly coloured, but forever-changing fringe. This week it was fuchsia and it was as bright as Izzy felt.
Izzy took a deep breath. ‘I’ve told Asher about the baby.’
‘That’s good, he needed to know,’ Xanthe said, always having been conscious of the moral need to do so. ‘And?’
‘He’s happy, he’s enthusiastic. He’s out looking at station wagons.’ She showed Xanthe the pics on her phone. ‘He’s also a little crazy,’ Izzy laughed, feeling like an infatuated schoolgirl.
‘I’m glad it’s working out.’
Xanthe was genuinely happy for Izzy, but she still felt jealous; it should’ve been her. Her red blood was running green with envy and she hated herself for feeling that way. Xanthe covered what she felt and thought well, though; there was no way she was going to allow her own inability to have children ruin Izzy’s moment.
‘Xanthe,’ Izzy said softly. ‘I know this isn’t easy for you. But I am so glad you are doing this with me. I need you; I need you more than anything to be there for me. You are going to be a great mother when it happens, I know that. But until then, can you help me be one, because I haven’t got a fucking clue what I’m supposed to do.’
By the time Izzy finished they were both crying. Xanthe’s envy had dissipated and she was grateful to be part of Izzy’s new journey.
Izzy’s phone beeped. She assumed it was going to be Asher with another car picture and she reached for her phone excitedly, but it was from Ellen.
Vee’s birthday is coming up, what are we doing? X
Izzy texted back:
Just having coffee with Xanthe, we’ll think of some ideas and email later. XX
The two women spent the next few minutes throwing around venues for Veronica’s birthday. They decided on a Sunday lunch at Sake and said goodbye with a hug that was longer than usual. A bond that had almost broken months before had been strengthened. Izzy walked back to work with a newfound lightness in her heart. The mother-to-be made her way straight to the human resources section to tell them she was pregnant.
Everything felt right. It was time to call Tracey.
‘Hey,’ she said with a feigned sense of confidence when the phone answered. ‘How are you?’ She had virtually avoided any serious or lengthy conversations with her agent for nearly three months, preferring to answer any calls with brief text messages.
‘I’m good,’ Tracey laughed, knowing exactly what was going on. They may have had a contract binding them legally, but having worked together for so long meant there was no getting away with changes in tone and general behaviour. Tracey had known that Izzy would have the baby and had been planning the next move for her client and friend for months. ‘And how are you?’
‘Well, I’m going to be a mum.’ Izzy felt happy when she said it, although still a little fearful of Tracey’s wrath. ‘So we need to talk, I guess, about what the next step is.’ She had her eyes shut, waiting for the sound of disappointment. ‘I can’t sign that other contract now,’ Izzy said, feeling confident in herself for the first time since she’d mentioned the pregnancy to Tracey.
Tracey laughed down the line. ‘Yes love, I knew that all along. I’ve dealt with it.’
‘Thank you! You are the deadliest agent in the country.’
‘Yes I am,’ Tracey said, and continued in her professional tone. ‘I’ve repackaged our pitch, and am planning on getting a new sizzle piece together with you in full pregnant bloom. I think we should go for a mainstream, early hours working mothers’ show. Strategies for making your family first priority while living your own career dream.’
‘I love it,’ Izzy said, ‘and I love you.’
The women chatted about the plans for the next few months, but Tracey also wanted all the goss on Asher and the new car.
‘I expect the ins and outs of everything,’ she said.
Back at home in Paddington, Xanthe could still feel something in the pit of her stomach that couldn’t be considered joy. The emptiness of being without a child still haunted her, as did Spencer’s continued insistence that he didn’t want to try IVF. ‘We do it naturally or not at all,’ he said. And in his stubbornness, refused to say any more. Every time she thought of his absolute ‘no’ she felt devastated all over again. She reached into her handbag and pulled out the pregnancy test kit she’d been carrying round for days. She walked into the bathroom and prepared herself for another disappointment.
10
A BIRTHDAY, A BALL AND SOME BAD BEHAVIOUR
Even though for the bulk of her life Veronica had been a selfless mother and wife, she enjoyed playing chauffeur, doing tuckshop, overseeing teenage sleepovers and being one of the lesser ‘yummy mummy’ soccer mums. Decisions about the children and anything to do with the home she had mostly made alone; she selected the gardener, the plants, the pool cleaner, the carpet, the schools, the tutors and the holiday destinations. She had always thought it was because Alex had trusted her judgement. In reality, it was because he never really cared about what happened at home, as long as it happened without fuss. Only now was she realising that her ex was a self-absorbed narcissist.
Veronica had always been the emotional rock for her three sons. By the time their father left they were young men, which was a blessing to Veronica who was on the verge of a breakdown and had to consciously pull herself out of bed every day. She focused all her strength on calming their anger while trying to pick up the remnants of her own heart. The boys hated their father for deserting their mother for another, much younger woman.
The bond between mothers and their sons was a mystery to many and Veronica’s relationship with hers was no different; her boys were loyally protective of the woman who had always been and would always be there for them. They didn’t talk to ‘the prick’ (their new title for Alex) for months, and only at their mother’s insistence did they refrain from bad-mouthing his new partner. Even in her darkest moments, Veronica remained dignified, discouraging her sons’ ill feeling towards the man who had given them life, who had once loved her, and whom she thought she still loved. Although her tiddas believed she was completely justified in doing so, Veronica never commented on the woman who ripped their family apart. In her head, the best she could do was imagine slapping her across the face; just once, but very, very hard.
Although living essentially alone now, Veronica had always loved her life in The Gap. It had been her home away from Mudgee in the decades since she and Alex moved to Brisbane. Marcus was already two years old back then. They set up home in Nina Street and stayed put. The suburb had grown and thrived around her, and even though it was now the second biggest after Mount Gravatt, it was still small enough to feel like a community. With its mix of young families, single parents
and retirees, it was her home. And aside from the occasional bogan burn-outs that frightened her, the place she raised her family was still quiet and peaceful. She felt safe and happily cocooned among the double-brick 1970s houses, and the new estates springing up nearby.
Her two-storey, architecturally designed house was nestled in a peaceful, leafy cul-de-sac close to the local shopping village and public transport, although she mostly drove the gold Lexus her ex left in the garage and which she’d claim in the divorce settlement. With her fondness for the best of both worlds, Veronica loved being close to the city while still being able to live in a semi-bush setting. The scrub turkeys that roamed the streets never bothered her like they bothered Alex, or Izzy. The screaming galahs and cockatoos made her smile, but drove Alex insane. The crows perched along the wires and rooflines entertained her, but Alex wanted to bait them. When she realised he was so annoyed all the time because he didn’t actually want to be there at all, she started to purposely feed the birds that would flock to their house. That was the nastiest premeditated thing Veronica ever did in her entire life.
Of all the tiddas, Veronica appreciated wildlife the most. She would often take herself to the walking tracks of D’Aguilar National Park. And while all the locals and her neighbours were afraid of the ghost gums come storm time, she wasn’t. Veronica always had faith that if the big wind blew it would blow away from her house. She had an afternoon tradition of sitting outside reading by her pool, admiring her roses in winter, the jacarandas in springtime and the palm trees all year round. She would even sit there when it rained, and because The Gap was storm city – it was often sunny everywhere else but raining at her place – she saw a lot of water fall and nourish the landscaped gardens around her.
Strolling local streets made Veronica appreciate how the natural environment had changed over time. On her walks she often considered the local parks named after whitefellas or British places – Aberdeen Court and Glenferrie, for example, as well as the many streets with Murri names – Currawang, Murrua, Yuruga, Cooinda, Bombala. She didn’t know many Murris in her suburb, but there were two sisters she regularly saw walking the bike path of an evening. They were always laughing with each other and sometimes had an extra person with them; every time Vee saw them she wished she could join in. In her head she had scripted what she wanted to say: ‘I’m a reconciliationist, I respect the Turrbul owners, I signed a hand for the Sea of Hands when it came to Brisbane, and I only watch NITV.’ Veronica desperately wanted them to know her best friends were Kooris from New South Wales, that she called them her tiddas, and that she too cried when Kevin Rudd said ‘sorry’. She wanted to explain that growing up in Mudgee and reconnecting with her Wiradjuri tiddas – Izzy, Ellen and Xanthe – in Brisbane, meant that she had always had her radar up in terms of culture, heritage and politics. She wanted them to know that her tiddas always said she had a ‘black heart’ in a good way.
But she never said any of it. She was always too insecure, too scared, not of them, but of rejection and the impact it could have on her already fragile self-esteem. Veronica knew that she would sound like a try-hard, a desperado, someone without their own identity wanting to latch onto someone else’s place in the world. She’d heard Izzy and Ellen talk about whitefellas like that, and she didn’t want these local Murri women to think that about her. She reasoned they might not want to let her into their tight group anyway, that even if they did they would probably dump her like Alex did, because she wasn’t good enough. Veronica kept the negative conversation with herself on a loop in her head, and would walk past them smiling, hoping that one day they would stop to talk to her.
A lot of the local area had been badly damaged during the big storm in November 2008, when ferocious winds hit The Gap like a mini tornado. The suburb had been left looking, in the then PM’s words, like a ‘war zone’. Hailstones made their way through Veronica’s dog door in the kitchen shortly after their dog fled through it. But she was out helping those whose houses were flattened in School Road as soon as the clean-up began; partially because she was a Good Samaritan, but also because such community efforts were a rare break in her otherwise mundane life.
‘Routine’ was how Veronica usually described her life to others. Every Monday she did her groceries at Aldi in Ashgrove where she found the cheapest cling wrap this side of the Brisbane River. Leaving with the plastic roll and anything else she could get on sale, she’d take herself for a coffee at Tutto Café because she loved the prints of the Colosseum and the Eiffel Tower. The images would transport her to Rome and Paris in the time it took her to drink a latte and eat a piece of carrot cake. It’s not that she wanted to escape The Gap forever, but family holidays were always back to Mudgee and in later years up to Bali, and she’d never been to Europe. Even though she had planned the trips, she did so knowing that they were about what Alex really wanted and designed to appease growing boys who didn’t really want to go anywhere with their parents at all.
When her boys were at school the Gap Tavern was her main social gathering place. The mothers with sons at Ashgrove State School and Marist Ashgrove – which had graduated the likes of Kevin Rudd and John Eales – would meet once a month at what they called the GT for a ladies’ lunch. The gatherings had died down since the boys had all finished and even now Vee only went there on Monday nights with John. Barra-Monday was their thing, a sacred mealtime ritual mother and son shared. On Friday nights, though, like any healthy young fella, John didn’t want to be with his mother; he’d rather be on Caxton Street or at the Normanby Hotel with the other young partygoers. Veronica couldn’t expect her baby to hang out with her on weekends either, so she spent those days cooking up a storm, preparing platters of food for when he arrived home with mates.
When the boys were young, the GT was also where the family would go every Friday night as a treat. The patriarch was often missing though; patients still in the surgery, a conference in another city, or one of a dozen other reasons. Veronica never considered that all the time he wasn’t with the family he was with another woman. Why would she think that? Didn’t they have everything they needed with each other? She was a devoted wife, a loving homemaker, a caring but not helicopter mother, and a friend to anyone who wanted her to be.
The tavern wasn’t a flash establishment, not compared to some of the bars Izzy and Ellen would hang out in, like French Martini, but to Veronica it was the perfect setting for laughter, stories, families and friends. It was a place where mothers talked to each other about school and their kids, their husbands being painful when sick, and at times their own lack of self-esteem. It was a time that Veronica looked forward to because she loved hearing about what was happening in the other women’s lives, and it was a place where she could find someone else to take an interest in the decisions she made around the house; carpet, drapes and recipes did matter to others, just not the people she lived with in Nina Street.
She occasionally went to the GT nowadays with a handful of the mothers she still saw from school, but her social life was more often than not just a soy chai latte and chips with aioli at Tara, a local café within walking distance of her home. She went there on her own, taking with her whatever book was on the list for book club or whatever the hot pick for the week was from the library. Veronica often saw another woman there doing the same, but they never spoke. Veronica was friendly but she wasn’t forward, so they would just smile an ‘I-like-my-me-time’ smile, sip their lattes and get on with their days. To mix up her routine, Veronica would sometimes go to the Coffee Club and face the busy street, all the while trying to hide from the owners of Tara, for fear she would be seen as betraying them. By all accounts Veronica was the most loyal person anyone was likely to meet, and she prided herself on that.
The familiar ‘ding’ of the front door opening rang across the living room and a bag was thrown on the floor in the entranceway, seconds before a body came through the arch.
‘Hey,’ John said to his mother who smiled back at her six-foot ta
ll baby son. He walked over and kissed his mum on the cheek. ‘Sorry, I’m all sweaty.’
Ellen and Xanthe just watched the love between mother and son, then waited for him to make his way around the table. John always greeted them with a peck and smile. Marist schooling had created real gentlemen of Veronica’s boys; it was just a pity her husband hadn’t gone there.
‘Hi, Aunty Ellen, hey, Aunty Xanthe.’ The young man, stinky from soccer training, had always called them aunty.
‘There’s some apricot chicken in the oven for you when you’re ready. Do you want me to put some rice on?’
‘Nah Mum, you know I don’t do carbs of a night. I’ll eat the chook though, thanks, it’s my favourite.’ John walked towards the stairwell. ‘I’ll jump in the shower first though.’ As he left the room Ellen’s eyes followed his muscular calves and broad shoulders.
‘What a lovely boy,’ Xanthe said. ‘So polite. I can only hope to have a son half as charming.’
‘Yeah, lovely all right. He’s HOT!’ Ellen said.
‘God, you are terrible. He’s half your age!’ Xanthe sounded disgusted. ‘And he’s like our nephew!’
‘And he’s my son, if you don’t mind,’ Veronica chuckled, having learned not to take that kind of comment from Ellen too seriously. She may like to play the field, but Veronica knew Ellen wasn’t poaching from a kids’ footy field.
‘Take my comments as a compliment, Vee, he has your genes!’ Ellen walked to a window overlooking the quiet street. ‘It really is gorgeous here, it’s such a pretty, leafy suburb.’ Ellen was impressed every time she visited Veronica’s, even though she could never live so far from the river herself.
‘It’s actually the green that I love the most about living here. It’s refreshing to get out and walk every day around here,’ Veronica said, always happy when someone else recognised that life in the ’burbs could be inspiring too.
