Not Meeting Mr Right

by Anita Heiss

  Dannie was the least wife-and-mother-like married woman I knew – partly because she hung with me so much. She was doing a media degree part time at uni, so we had common interests still. Dannie was writing a paper about the fuss there had been over whether or not 'God Save the Queen' would be sung at the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne early in 2006, and she had a bit of a rant about it now:

  'It's a song for Christ's sake! Forty-five wars going on around the world, and you've got news anchors on TV reading their scripts like the bloody Queen has been shot or something. I don't think stories like that should even make the news, let alone a headline.' Dannie was a staunch republican. I loved her even more for that.

  She hadn't been sucked into any void of wifedom and motherdom; she was on top of the rest of life's responsibilities as well. The other women at the table could have learned a lot from Dannie.

  After we'd finished our entrees, we moved on again. Vicky was across from me now. She was considered the tramp of the class back when we were at school, because she spent so much time up the Bronte gully with boys from the surf club. The gully was far behind her, though: she had gone on to become a highly paid lawyer with one perfect child and a second husband who was a well-known QC. She specialised in corporate law, and didn't do any pro bono work at all. (I asked.) She couldn't really afford to, she told me, with childcare fees and a huge mortgage on their Point Piper home.

  'There's such a limited number of childcare places in this state that some of us have to pay double just to find someone to mind the kids.' Vicky made it sound as though raising her own child was an imposition. It was an attitude that always made me angry.

  I'd been waiting weeks to have this conversation, after listening to whining mothers on talkback radio and I launched straight in. 'I don't understand women complaining about the government not providing enough day care centres.'

  'Women have to work too.' Vicky sipped her wine.

  'Have to or want to? You wouldn't have to work if you lived somewhere other than Point Piper, surely.' There was no way she was getting away with not admitting it was her lifestyle that meant she had to work.

  'We're part of society – why shouldn't we be out there in it every day?'

  In my mind, there was a difference between participating in society and dumping your kids with a stranger so you could make money.

  'If you choose to bring a child into the world, you should be responsible for raising it. Feeding it, playing with it, looking after it until it has to go to school.'

  'What's your real problem with working mothers, Alice?' Vicky asked. It sounded like a challenge, as if the issue was really about me, and not about working mothers.

  'I don't have a problem with mothers working. I just don't understand how parents can admit publicly that they're pissed off they can't find a stranger to raise their children for $100 a day. Aren't kids supposed to be your most prized possessions? Or are some things more important than children? I wouldn't be off-loading my little one to some stranger to raise, just because I wanted a big house in an expensive suburb.'

  'Ah, but you're single and childless, Alice, it's different for you.'

  'That's right – it should be different for me! I am single and childless, so I can work long hours without it affecting anyone else. I can be – what would you call it? Selfish?' I was getting hot, my face felt flushed.

  Vicky remained cool. She wasn't buying into the argument. Her kid was probably in some private centre that cost a fortune anyway. Vicky would've had a cleaner and probably a cook, dog-walker, social director and third husband on the way. She clearly had more than me – even though as a single woman I was socially permitted to be selfish.

  We'd reached a stalemate – but our time was up. Neither of us bothered with a polite smile; I just stood up and moved one seat to the left again.

  I persevered with the reunion chatter for quite some time, fighting hard to find new adjectives to describe each family portrait and baby photo I was forced to look at over the course of the next hour. I tried to expect the unexpected, as Aria had advised, hoping that among all these women, there might be a Toni- Morrison-reading, Koori-Radio-listening, Villawoodvisiting mother who perhaps sent her kids to a Steiner school or something, and taught ESL to refugees once a week. Anything was possible, wasn't it? I mean, that's the mother I knew I'd be.

  Eventually I found myself opposite Ronelle. She was the one person I'd actually been looking forward to speaking with. Obese at school, she was now the most glamorous and healthy-looking woman at the table. Softly spoken and relaxed, she told me she had three kids, but didn't mention stretch marks or lack of sleep or sore nipples or the need for more day care centres. Instead she talked about her life as a yoga instructor – she'd been to India, done a course, changed her name to something like 'Swami' (I'd forgotten it five minutes later). It was all going well until she asked if I'd like to attend one of her classes 'even though they were for new mums'.

  'You might still get something out of it,' Ronelle said with one eyebrow raised. 'Your bust would look better if you sat straighter, and yoga is fabulous for posture. You'd learn to relax at the same time, too.' So she thought that I needed yoga – that I had a drooping bust line and that I was uptight? My bust was fine, and I wasn't uptight, just annoyed at the lack of interesting conversation so far that evening. I didn't need yoga – I just didn't need to be at the reunion.

  'I have too short a concentration span to make yoga work for me, Ronelle, but thanks,' I said, and moved on, even though our time wasn't up, demonstrating that what I said was true.

  After making a monumental effort to adhere to the rotational rule, having spoken to almost everyone, I took a break, leaning back in my chair. The metal was cold on my skin. I looked around the pub. Jack's had been gentrified, like all the pubs in the eastern suburbs had been in the past five years. Dark wood tables and comfy cushioned lounges had been replaced by streamlined chrome tables and chairs. The antique-looking carpet you still find in old people's houses had been replaced with ceramic tiles. The jukebox and dance floor had given way to a roomful of pokies. (I noticed they still had Coopers on tap, though.)

  The space wasn't as warm as it had been when we were young, and while the pub's owners had changed its name, and spent millions on updating the interiors, they hadn't really managed to change their clientele. I scanned the room and saw the same private-school rugby players who'd been drinking there ten years before. They didn't seem as attractive now. Funny that, everyone's a spunk when you're young. That thought brought me back to our group. There had been more of us back then, when we were teenagers. I looked around and counted heads: we were a table of fifteen. Why had only fifteen showed up? Probably because the others were single and out having a raging time meeting gorgeous men, not worrying about their pelvic floors.

  Then I noticed it: each and every woman in the group wore an engagement and/or wedding ring. That's why I was on the outer. That's why I didn't fit in. It was a clear case of 'Us' and 'Them'. I couldn't even pull the race card this time; it wasn't about being Black and white. It wasn't about being rich or poor, as it had been at school. Rather, at twenty-eight it was about the haves and the have-nots. I was definitely a have-not. No wedding ring – not even an engagement ring. No husband. No kids. Not even a date lined up any time in the near future. I had nothing to contribute to this Mothers' Club meeting. No-one was the slightest bit interested in what I did for a living, what I drove (unless it was the latest station-wagon or oversized four-wheel drive with airbags to protect the kids), or where I lived (unless it was near a good day care centre).

  Debra, who had once crushed biscuits in my hair at the school bus stop, arrived late. She hadn't changed a bit. Thin frame, thick hair, bushy black eyebrows, and a sense of self that had always put me on edge. Where did she get that confidence? I knew straight away she'd be married with children. I really didn't care if I spoke to her or not, but she planted herself opposite me just as the main
course was being served, everyone else quickly moving to ensure there wasn't a spare seat across from them. Debra was known as the class bitch at school, but no-one was ever brave enough to challenge her. Dannie had told me that no-one really wanted her to come. I'd had five gins and two glasses of wine by this time, though, so I was ready for whatever she dished out. Biscuits or otherwise.

  'So, how many children do you have, Alice?' Debra had four.

  'None. But here's a photo of my brothers.' Did it sound as weird as I thought it did? Probably. I quickly put the photo back in my wallet and left it there for the rest of the night. Some may have thought it was sad, but my brothers and my dad had always been the most important men in my life. At least I could rely on them to be there for me.

  'But you're obviously involved with someone special, though,' Debra said, looking at my hands.

  'No. I bought this ring as a present for myself.' I was proud of my ability to teach, and that I made a good enough living to take myself shopping at Tiffany's. If I were ever to get a wedding ring or even just an engagement ring, it would come in a pale blue box. Not some chain-store faux suede one.

  'That's funny. I thought Aboriginal women had children young – married or not. We all thought at school you'd be the first to have children.' Bitch! Had they all really thought that?

  Debra was wrong about me being the first pregnant, but she was right about Koori women and kids generally. Fact was, most of the Koori women I knew had squeezed their kids out in their early twenties, some even before that, and none of them had blokes around now. Some of them had never had a bloke around at all. Many of the young girls I knew now were still doing it. It was a hard thing for me to understand, coming from a two-parent family and a Catholic background. We'd always been taught no sex before marriage and no kids out of wedlock. Even as times changed, the morals of the Church were upheld, at least in the Aigner house. Christian values worked for me in a very general sense – do unto others and so on – but I'd had to work out my own beliefs when I left school and started to live the life I thought best for me and the world. I tried to live by the Aboriginal value systems of the past – community benefits over individual gain, cooperation over competition, responsibility over rights.

  Debra was still staring at me.

  'Some do have children young, Debra, because when there's nothing else to do – no employment opportunities for instance – and you have low selfworth, why not create a life – someone who will love you back unconditionally?' She looked at me, unbelieving. I was struggling; she'd dealt me a low blow and I didn't really know how to recover.

  'As for me, I've got plenty of love around me. And plenty of work to do. I'm not looking to fill any gaps yet,' I said, getting to my feet, loud enough for some of the other women to look at me and then Debra, wondering what had sparked the clear disagreement. Debra looked at me with contempt. She was ticked off, but I didn't care.

  I already had my mother nagging me about breeding and maintaining the race. ('Wouldn't it be lovely to have a little brown Koori kid around the house?') All the other women in her ceramics class had photos of their grandchildren. ('I just need one photo in my purse, Alice.') She said she was the only Koori woman without grandkids. ('It's our job as the matriarchs to have families, Alice.') Now whitefellas I didn't even like were on my case about it too.

  Dessert was being served and I moved four seats away, so I could sit alone. Half the table, the 'responsible homemakers and mothers', were outside, irresponsibly sucking on cigarettes. Yeah, get lung cancer and who'll look after your man and kids then? Dannie was happily engrossed in conversation with two other women and looking like she was having a great time.

  I repeated my mantra, I love being single!, over and over.

  ***

  By ten pm I love being single! had become I hate school reunions. The more I drank the more difficult it became.

  'Here's one of Lulu as a princess and Davey as an elf – aren't they cute?' Another couple of photos were shoved in my face.

  I looked around the table at all the women, now totally sloshed. It was their one big night out and they were going to make the most of being kid- and husband-free for a night. It was funny that I'd been at all worried about what to wear to the reunion. My 'competition' hadn't worried at all. They might have been happy with husbands and children and shared mortgages, family holidays and family rooms, but they also bore a few more laugh lines than I did, and some were in need of serious tszujing from the Fab Five. These minor details at least brought me momentary comfort. It always bothered me to see women in bicycle shorts, t-shirts and thongs out shopping, though I realised that mothers had more important things to worry about than coordinating outfits. It was okay to look sporty or beachy, I thought, but not both at the same time, and regardless of priorities and income, one should never leave the house without a bra and lipstick. It was like going to work without cleaning your teeth.

  'You haven't changed at all, Alice.' At last some positive recognition! It was Leonie. We had been good friends in Year 8 but then drifted apart. I faked a modest smile.

  'Thanks, it's the eye cream and citrus face peels,' I said, trying desperately to make my existence as a single woman with a disposable income sound a little less pathetic and perhaps even indulgent. If I could make my life sound like an attractive option to just one of these women I would be happy.

  'You never got that chipped tooth fixed, did you?'

  I gasped. My god, she wasn't complimenting me at all.

  'Not that you needed to. It's like a signature look for you.' I rarely even thought about the tiny chip on my front tooth. It had happened in second class. I was laughing so hard I hit my mouth on a chair. I usually have to point it out to people, it's so not there. I was so pissed off that I felt like chipping her tooth, the married, mortgaged, motherly bitch!

  Dannie could see I was distressed, having difficulty just being there, let alone having a good time. She handed me a glass of water.

  'Why did you come?' she whispered sympathetically.

  'You dragged me here, remember? You didn't want to come on your own.'

  'Oh, come on, Alice. You've never done anything you didn't want to in your life. You can't blame me. Why did you really come?'

  'Because if I didn't people would've talked about me.'

  'Don't be ridiculous.' She was right. They wouldn't have talked about me. They hadn't been talking about anyone else. They were lovely women, and genuinely keen to catch up and share baby photos and birthing tales, because that's what normal women our age did.

  'I'm not normal!' I said.

  Suddenly I wanted my own special moments to share: the moment when I 'just knew'. When I'd met 'the one'. The wonderful roller-coaster ride from wedding planning to broken waters.

  I felt a growing desire to fit in with this group, this new community I'd never been part of. I was part of the Koori community, my local community in Coogee, and the school community (as a teacher, of course, not a parent) – but I'd never been a member of the 'married with children community'. Now I wanted in.

  I wanted more than that, though. I wanted to prove it was possible to maintain your identity and keep up to date with current affairs even while changing nappies and doing tuckshop. I knew I could manage it. I wouldn't be like they were. I was up to the challenge.

  A man, marriage, career, kids and happiness: I could have it all, I decided. I would have it all.

  'I'm going to get married,' I blurted.

  Dannie shook her head. 'Listen, you're just pissed, Alice. You love being single. You're always big-noting about how good you've got it. A husband and kids? That's not for you.'

  She didn't understand my resolve: I was already excited about the new path my life was going to take – until I was momentarily side-tracked by another conversation about pregnancy.

  'I just loved the feeling of Sky and Fern as babies inside me,' someone said, and another round of discussion began, not about the appalling choice of names (there'
s a conversation I could've participated in), but about what it felt like to have a rug rat moving inside you. Shouldn't those kinds of things be kept private? Did these women have no sense of decorum? Obviously not. I tried to imagine what they were describing, but the only thing moving in my gut was the baby octopus I'd had for dinner, and if I were to break my waters now they'd have a very high alcohol content.