by Kris Webb
Debbie’s low wolf whistle broke the silence and the eyes of all the waiting patients turned to her. Oblivious to their attention, she urgently beckoned me over to where she was standing.
‘All I can say is that I hope that’s Dr Daniels!’ she said loudly, not taking her eyes off the wall.
Where I would have liked to have seen photos of my soon-to-be obstetrician nursing cherubic babies he’d carefully brought into the world, there were different shots of a man, presumably Dr Daniels, engaged in various life-threatening activities, ranging from parachuting to bungee jumping.
Great, I thought. I was putting my unborn child in the hands of an adrenalin junkie in the middle of a midlife crisis. Well, maybe not a midlife crisis, I corrected myself, looking at the photos of the decidedly attractive man who didn’t seem much older than me.
I am a strong believer that young, attractive male doctors should be sent to some remote corner of the world until they are old enough not to have an effect on their female patients’ blood pressure. Years ago I made an appointment to have some ugly warts on my foot removed. However, after meeting the doctor who was six foot two and blond, I was totally incapable of unveiling my festering foot and ended up limping out of his surgery with a list of vitamins, having claimed that I’d gone to see him because I was feeling run-down.
‘Debbie,’ I said fiercely, ‘if you attempt to pick up the man who is going to be spending the next seven months prodding intimate parts of my body, I will never forgive you. Understand?’
Taken aback by my intensity, Debbie held up her arms as if to ward off a blow.
‘All right, all right,’ she said. ‘My hands are definitely off.’
As it turned out, I had more immediate problems. After Dr Daniels had ushered us into his room and we’d had a quick chat, he asked me to take off my clothes from the waist down and lie under a sheet.
I momentarily registered that he looked even better than his photos, before resolutely crushing the thought and focusing on the framed qualifications on the wall.
‘Why don’t I leave the room for this bit?’ Debbie suggested, a note of panic in her voice. ‘Just give me a shout when it’s time to do the X-ray thing over Sophie’s stomach.’
‘Oh, we won’t be doing an external ultrasound today,’ Dr Daniels replied calmly as he pulled on a pair of latex gloves, seemingly oblivious to Debbie’s distress. ‘An internal camera allows us to see the baby much more accurately at this stage.’
‘Don’t worry,’ he said to me. ‘It won’t feel any different from a Pap smear.’
Given that I wasn’t in the habit of taking my best friend along to my Pap smear appointments, his statement didn’t give me a whole lot of comfort. This added a whole new dimension to my friendship with Debbie. It even made the time she had vomited in my bed after a particularly big night seem like she had been doing me a favour.
I tensed as I felt the cold metal instrument.
Obviously in search of something other than Dr Daniels and my sheet-clad body to look at, Debbie’s eyes fixed on what looked like a television screen beside the bed. ‘What is that thing flashing?’ she demanded.
‘That,’ Dr Daniels said, ‘is the baby’s heart beating, and if you look you can see its arms and legs too.’
‘Oh my God,’ Debbie breathed. ‘There’s a baby inside you.’
I couldn’t speak as I looked at the fuzzy shape on the screen. While riding the emotional roller-coaster that had been my life for the last two weeks, I’d been focused on the changes, mainly bad, that a baby was going to make to my life. But as I stared at the tiny outline that, while admittedly blob-like, did look something like a baby, the whole thing felt real for the first time.
I had always felt vaguely envious when I saw a hurt or upset child run into its mother’s arms and it was bizarre to think that I would now be that mother. I vowed to myself that I would give my child all the love I could.
Dr Daniels broke the silence. ‘Within the next few weeks the baby will develop all its remaining parts, so that by the time you are twelve weeks pregnant every single organ and body part, down to finger and toenails, will be fully formed,’ he said. ‘All it will have to do after that is to get bigger.’
Glancing away from the screen, I was amazed to see Debbie wipe a tear off her cheek. Even more amazingly she wasn’t even slightly embarrassed but instead smiled at me.
‘Can you believe that, Sophie? The baby is what, the size of a prawn?’ She looked at Dr Daniels for confirmation and received a somewhat uncertain nod. I doubted he’d had babies compared to crustaceans before. ‘But everything is there. That is absolutely incredible.’
I smiled back at Debbie, suddenly glad, despite everything, that I’d brought her along.
When Max called later that day and invited me out to Manchetti’s, obviously in a last-ditch attempt to change my mind, I knew I couldn’t put off telling him any longer.
Manchetti’s was a little Italian restaurant around the corner from my flat. Max and I had been in the habit of eating there a couple of times a week. Max loved to cook, while for me it was a chore best avoided. As a result, we’d developed a pattern of eating in when we were at his apartment in Manly and eating out whenever we stayed at mine.
Apart from our favourite dessert there was nothing very remarkable about Manchetti’s, certainly not the service. Max and I had come to the conclusion that Sydney waiters had developed a restaurant equivalent of ‘chicken’, where the first waiter who actually responded to the needs of a patron was the loser.
All was forgiven, however, come dessert time. The house specialty was lime cheesecake and I was very happy to support the claim on the menu that it was the best lime cheesecake anywhere outside of the village in Italy where the recipe had originated. In happier times, Max and I had even considered a pilgrimage to Italy to make the comparison for ourselves.
But even the lime cheesecake couldn’t help me this time and I had picked my way through a dinner that tasted like cardboard, hardly saying a word. Max obviously assumed that I was unhappy about him leaving and was trying desperately to keep the conversation alive.
Eventually the bill arrived and I realised I was out of time.
‘I’m pregnant,’ I blurted, interrupting Max’s story about something that had happened at work that day.
Max sat back in his chair and looked at me with an unreadable expression on his face.
‘You’re sure?’ he asked slowly.
I nodded.
‘How did it happen?’ he asked. ‘I thought you were on the pill.’
I tried to ignore the accusatory tone of his voice. ‘I was,’ I replied. ‘I always thought that the manufacturers were just covering themselves saying the pill is only 99 per cent safe, but maybe not.’
‘Jesus,’ Max swore, running his fingers through his hair. ‘Are you going to have it?’
‘Yes,’ I replied, trying to stop my voice trembling. ‘That’s the only thing I am sure about at the moment.’
Part of me had hoped that Max would tell me that, despite the lousy timing, having a baby was something marvellous and we’d sort it out together. But any visions I’d had of us living together with a white picket fence and a dog called Fluffy were quickly crumbling into dust.
‘This is an absolute disaster,’ Max mumbled, eyes focused on the breadcrumbs he was grinding into the tablecloth with his thumbnail.
‘Really,’ I answered, but my sarcasm was wasted on him.
He looked up finally and I could now read his expression, which was unmistakably angry.
‘Listen, Sophie, maybe you should think about this some more. A baby changes everything.’
My patience suddenly evaporated.
‘Max, I’ve done little else but think about this since I found out. Of course I thought about an abortion – I just can’t do it.’
I pushed back my chair and picked up my handbag.
‘Just get on your plane tomorrow and don’t worry yourself about it. This is
n’t something I did deliberately to trap you. I’m not asking you for anything. I just thought you had a right to know.’
Without waiting for a reply I headed for the door, the image of his face in front of my eyes. Within a block, tears replaced my anger and I leant against a tree until my sobs subsided.
As I entered our apartment building I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror that ran the length of one wall. My face was red from crying and my eyeliner had smudged. I wiped my eyes in an attempt to repair some of the damage, hoping that Debbie hadn’t invited tonight’s date home. I decided that if she had, I’d pretend I had a migraine and go to bed. I just couldn’t face being sociable tonight.
To my surprise, Debbie was alone. Even more surprisingly, she was sitting on the sofa reading. The last book Debbie had finished was The Catcher in the Rye and that had been for our senior exams when we were seventeen. I didn’t need much more evidence that she had been waiting up for me.
She took one look at me. ‘Didn’t go well, then?’
Not trusting myself to speak, I shook my head. I slumped into a chair and managed, ‘He told me it was a disaster.’
Debbie handed me the tub of chocolate chip ice-cream she had been eating. ‘Here, the doctor said you need to eat a lot of dairy products.’
The ultrasound photo of the little life inside me was still sitting on the coffee table and I picked it up.
‘I don’t know what I expected Max to say, but it wasn’t that.’
‘It certainly doesn’t sound like his finest moment,’ Debbie said dryly. ‘What happened then?’
‘Not much. I just said it was my problem and I’d deal with it by myself, and then I left.’
As if on cue, my mobile rang. Debbie reached for it and switched it off. ‘I think you need to decide just how you’re going to manage this before you talk to anyone – especially Max. Have you thought about how you can support a baby by yourself?’
It was a logical question, but I still couldn’t help bursting into tears again. Lately it seemed to be my response to everything.
Debbie perched on the side of my chair and put her arm around my shoulder. Gradually my sobs slowed down and stopped. When that happened Debbie stood up and walked out of the room. She returned a couple of minutes later, bearing a bottle of red wine, two glasses, a pen and a block of paper.
‘I’m not great at emotions, so what I think we need to do is to look at this rationally,’ she said in a businesslike tone as she pulled the cork from the bottle. She poured two glasses of wine, one enormous and one tiny, and pushed the small one across the coffee table to me.
‘How much does a kid cost, anyway?’ she asked, pen poised over the paper.
Neither of us had the faintest clue about what having a child entailed, let alone how much it cost. However, by the time the doorbell rang an hour later, we’d managed to fill a page with figures and Debbie had practically emptied the bottle of wine.
I looked at her.
‘Do you want me to answer it?’ she asked.
I hesitated momentarily. ‘No, I can manage.’
‘Okay, well, I’ll make myself scarce,’ Debbie said. ‘Just yell if you need any moral support.’
Max was standing on the doorstep, looking as though there were a lot of places he’d rather be.
‘Come in,’ I said, standing back as he walked inside.
He perched awkwardly on the sofa he had thrown himself across on hundreds of previous occasions, and I sat in the armchair opposite.
‘Sophie, I’m sorry I handled things so badly in the restaurant,’ he began. ‘You just took me by surprise. I’ve been walking around for the last hour and I’ve had a chance to think about things. What I want you to know is that I will help you support the baby.’
Any last glimmer of hope I’d had disappeared. Financial assistance was not what I wanted from the father of my child.
‘Max, I don’t want your money,’ I said flatly.
‘Just think about it for a minute, Sophie,’ he said. ‘You’ve got a good job, but can you really afford to bring up a child by yourself?’
I just looked at him, not trusting myself to speak.
He turned his eyes away and then looked back at me. ‘Sophie, I care about you a lot, but I don’t want a wife or a child. Certainly not now and maybe never.’
I’d thought that I’d been hurt all I could be by Max, but I was wrong. Surprisingly I felt no urge to cry, just anger at how easy it was for him to walk away from the situation. The last thing I wanted was for Max to be sending me cheques to support a baby he didn’t want anything to do with.
‘Don’t worry, if you don’t want to be part of this baby’s life then I don’t expect you to foot the bill,’ I said coldly. ‘I can manage by myself.’
‘Look, don’t make a decision now,’ he said. ‘Let’s talk about it some other time and see what we can figure out.’
‘I won’t change my mind,’ I said evenly.
There wasn’t much more to say after that and Max left.
He called me the next day on the way to the airport, wanting to talk about money again. I’d spent the night crying, but on the phone I was calm and rational, explaining again that I didn’t want him to be financially committed to the baby and that I thought it would be easier for both of us if we didn’t stay in contact.
He called each day from San Francisco for the next week but I didn’t change my mind and eventually he stopped calling.
THREE
My obstetrician had explained that the first three months of pregnancy was the most likely time for something to go wrong and had suggested that I not broadcast it before then. That was fine by me. At this stage, the looks of pity from people when I told them that Max and I had broken up were enough to deal with.
Despite women now having the vote and careers, surprisingly little seemed to have changed since the days of Jane Austen. The unspoken conclusion everyone obviously came to was that Max had refused to marry me and so we’d broken up, leaving me firmly on the shelf at age twenty-nine. Lacking the energy to clarify the situation, I usually left people to think what they liked and was dreading having to reveal that I was ‘in the family way’.
The one person I knew I had to tell was my father, who had moved to London with his English wife seven years earlier. The day after Max left the country, the telephone rang at the time my father usually called and I hovered uncertainly over the receiver until the answering machine clicked in. It wasn’t uncommon for us to miss each other, I told myself guiltily, as I listened to the familiar voice leaving a message. I’d call him the following night when I felt more like talking. However, it was almost a week before I finally picked up the phone and called him.
‘Sophie!’ he exclaimed with pleasure on hearing my voice. ‘How are you, darling?’
‘Pretty good, Dad,’ I lied. ‘How are you and Elizabeth?’
We talked for a couple of minutes before Dad asked the question I knew he’d been waiting to tactfully ask.
‘And how are you about Max?’ he ventured. ‘Are things getting any easier?’
Dad tried to play the role of both parents, which he generally carried off surprisingly well, but it had always been glaringly obvious that discussions about my relationships were something he felt uncomfortable with.
‘Ah, no, they’re not actually, Dad,’ I replied. ‘In fact they’ve just got a lot worse, because you see I’m . . .’ I took a deep breath and launched into it. ‘I’m pregnant.’
The pause couldn’t have been more than a second but it felt like an eternity.
I managed to see past my own misery for long enough to feel bad for my father. What on earth do you say to your unmarried daughter who has just broken up with her boyfriend and now delivers news like this from the other side of the world?
‘Oh, darling,’ he replied. ‘Does Max know?’
‘I told him last week,’ I answered. ‘But what he says can’t change anything. We’d already broken up because he didn�
�t feel he could commit to me long-term. The fact that I’m pregnant doesn’t change that, and anyway, I don’t want to live the rest of my life wondering if he’s with me because he truly wants to be or because he was forced into it.’
‘I guess you’re right,’ my father said slowly. ‘But bringing a child up by yourself is one of the hardest things you can do. You have no idea how many nights I lay awake wondering whether I should have just married someone who could have been a mother to you, even if she wasn’t the love of my life.’
My eyes filled with tears. My father’s life had changed totally the day my mother was killed in a car accident when I was two. Not only did he lose his wife, but at thirty-four he was suddenly faced with raising a young daughter alone.
Dad never talked much about the years without my mother, or about the problems he faced looking after me, and I had a sudden picture of all the decisions he had had to make alone as I was growing up. For the first time I glimpsed how lonely and difficult the years ahead could be. I felt sick to my stomach.
Despite a number of subtle, and not so subtle, invitations, my father had refused all offers of permanent female company and I had been convinced that he would never marry again. Elizabeth had changed all that when they met at a barbecue when I was eighteen. She was out from England to do a year’s teaching in Australia and she fell in love not just with my father but also with his country.
Elizabeth was definitely not a wicked stepmother and I loved her from the second my father nervously introduced us. He seemed to find a new lease of life with her. Within a month they were throwing legendary dinner parties which went until four in the morning, and within six months they were married.
‘But if you had married just anyone, you wouldn’t have found Elizabeth, Dad,’ I said.
‘No, but would things have been different for you if you’d had a mother all those years?’ he said in a tone that made me realise this was something he still worried about.
