Well.
It’s probably only interesting to me. I won’t go on. I explained data matching to someone at one of the rooftop parties, in what I thought was very concise detail, but David could tell the poor man was desperate to get away from me and bored to death.
The Friday-night drinking seeped into Saturday night and Sunday night and eventually every night. I never missed a day of work, but I often slept away entire weekends while David was out diving, exploring fascinating shipwrecks. Stella became his dive buddy. She was not an air pig and breathed like a normal person. I’m sure those breasts helped with buoyancy.
I kept forgetting my contraceptive pill because I was so often tipsy or drunk and then, one day, I told David I might as well stop taking it altogether and we would try to have a baby.
David was thrilled. I can still remember how he looked at me when I told him. It showed me I was making the right decision. This would save our marriage. I could see he loved me again in that moment. It was him again. It was us again.
As you know, I was not especially keen on children, but David adored them. He smiled at babies on buses. He talked to toddlers in cafés.
I assumed I would like the baby when it came. I saw the baby as the missing variable in a tricky equation. A baby would make David love me. A baby would bring me my mother and my auntie. A baby would bring me my mother-in-law and father-in-law.
The months went by and I didn’t become pregnant.
I continued to drink. There were no public service announcements on the radio about not drinking when you are trying to conceive. People knew about fetal alcohol syndrome so my plan was to stop drinking after I missed my first period. To be honest, I was relieved at the prospect of having an excuse to stop drinking. I was starting to suspect my drinking might be the cause of my constant fatigue and low-level depression, but it didn’t seem to occur to me to just stop.
I was as surprised as every woman is when she stops avoiding pregnancy and doesn’t immediately become pregnant. I don’t know if I was disappointed each month, because there was always that tiny sense of relief, but I was bemused.
After a year, David said I should get some tests done to find out what was wrong with me. It was Stella, who was studying obstetrics, who said at one of the Friday-night parties that actually the man should be checked out first because it was an easier, less invasive test.
That’s when we learned David had a zero sperm count.
There was zero chance of me becoming pregnant.
David had never failed a test in his life. He’d never failed anything. He’d never had his heart broken, never lost anyone he loved, not even a pet. His mother insisted that when David learned to walk, he never fell. Michelle said it was so funny, he just stood up and began strolling about the place.
I went to touch him, to offer comfort. He tossed my hand away.
He was furious. He had no coping mechanisms. I could see he badly wanted to blame me for this, but there was no rational reason to do so.
He said, “Don’t you pity me.”
And then I saw it come to him: a reason to be angry. He said, “I bet you’re relieved. You never wanted children anyway. I overheard you tell that woman at Baashir’s party.”
I was shocked. I couldn’t believe he’d never brought this up before.
I said, “Why would you have married me if you wanted children and you thought I didn’t?”
He didn’t answer. He said he was going for a swim and he didn’t invite me to join him.
I watched him from the balcony as he walked across the scrubby dunes toward the sea, a red towel over his shoulder, his head bowed in an unfamiliar defeated way, and my heart broke for him, but it also occurred to me that the reason he’d never asked me about my feelings toward having children was because my feelings were never especially relevant.
I went back inside because our phone was ringing.
It was Auntie Pat telling me Mum was unwell and had been refusing to go to the doctor for months now. Auntie Pat said I should come back to Sydney right away, because Mum had read her own cards and determined she was dying, and Auntie Pat was so angry she could wring her bloody neck.
Chapter 94
Ethan is thirty and he’s still alive. Each night he goes to bed and thinks: Still here, lady!
One month down. Eleven to go.
Most of his friends have stopped talking about it. The women at work who gave him self-defense presents no longer seem especially concerned.
All the online chatter seems to have died down again too. He’s noticed before how fast the world moves on from a story without any further “bombshell” developments. His feed will be filled with articles about a missing person, a murder or a scandal, and then nothing, and you don’t even notice until one day you think: Wait, did they ever find that missing person?
Presumably not.
His anxious plane friend hasn’t forgotten. Leo checks in every four or five days since Ethan’s birthday, which is nice, although obviously there is some self-interest involved because his forty-third birthday is approaching, at which point he needs to avoid a workplace accident.
Only eleven months before I prove her wrong, Ethan texts back to Leo’s most recent message. Normally Leo responds with a thumbs-up emoji, but this time, to Ethan’s surprise, he says, Fancy a drink?
They meet in the early evening at the Robin Hood Hotel: casual, laid-back; seems very unlikely anyone will try to assault Ethan at this time or location.
Ethan gets there first, and Leo arrives a minute later, stressed about something to do with parking and immediately launches into a story about how he recently got in touch with an old friend with whom he was “effectively estranged for many years.”
“Good for you,” says Ethan. He has no idea why Leo is telling him this story, but it seems appropriate to clink his glass against Leo’s in a celebratory manner.
“Thanks!” Leo beams. “So, the reason I mention it is the lady’s brooch.”
It’s really hard to keep up with this guy.
“Brooch?” Ethan has to think for a moment. “Is that…jewelry?”
“Yes, she was wearing a brooch, and it had some kind of symbol on it that I vaguely recognized, so I thought it had something to do with me, very narcissistic, I know.”
“Okay,” says Ethan.
