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Happy Couch Day to me

Happy Couch Day to me

Happy Couch Day to me

Happy Couch Day to me

It’s April Fool’s Day. My birthday again. One year since the couch. Over six months since BJ left. I’m sitting at the dining table and singing to the lump.

I kept it simple at work and spent the day cataloguing. The plastic we use to cover the books smells like brandnew dolls did when I was a kid—the smell would go to my head, deep vinyl, chemical, fresh. I covered new books, tidied shelves, looked forward to the ride home.

The tram is a mobile book club. The woman opposite me was reading
Catch 22
on her Kindle, the bloke standing next to me was into Stephen King’s
IT,
and there were three
Twilights
further down the tram. I’m reading
Up the Duff.
Of course I am.

I had a dinner of leftover risotto. There are dishes to wash but it’s not as though there’s anyone around to say, God, Peta, clean up your mess. So I’m at the table serenading the lump. At twenty-six weeks the lump is looking good.

There’s a knock at the front door.

People who drop in are rude, I’d never do that.

‘Happy birthday, Pete. What are you doing?’ Ruby says. ‘I bought you some dinner if you haven’t eaten.’

‘I have. I was just singing to the lump. It’s Couch Day.’

I switch the kettle on.

‘Are we celebrating or are we commiserating?’

‘We’re celebrating. I’m thinking about writing a memoir.’

She gets the milk, I organise the teacups.

‘You could call it
Time Flies When You’re Being Stupid.’

‘It wasn’t just stupid, Ruby. We did things. We were brave. I was. BJ was. I’ve learned so much.’

‘Yeah, like how to make a girl come.’

I’ve missed Ruby’s crassness. It’s sterling.

‘I’m a girl, Rube. I already knew how to make a girl come.’

There’s a hiss when the boiling water hits the tea bags.

‘I suppose. So it’d have hints about how to do it, this memoir?’

‘Isn’t that pornography?’

Was I just thinking I missed this? We take our tea to the lounge room, sit on the couch under the eyes of Annie Lennox and I want BJ back so bad.

‘I mean,’ Ruby says, ‘you would have found a book
useful. You would have felt less unhinged. You should write it. Although, I’m un-writeable. I mean, how could you get my complexity down on paper?’

She’s an idiot and I love her.

‘Easy. I think of the most obnoxious person I can think of. I give her a big mouth, I make her over the top, but I make people still want to be with her. And I give her a big sister, someone who loves her for the smartarse she is. That’s how. I love you, Rube. Come here.’

Hugging someone when you’re crying only makes you cry harder.

‘God, you’re a sook,’ she says, ‘must be the hormones.’

‘And I said I wasn’t going to cry today.’

‘Happy Couch Day, Pete.’

The Monday after my thirty-sixth birthday, Justine shows up in reception. Blaire gives me her this-isn’t-going-to-become-a-habit-is-it look. Bike couriers look like bad business. I ask Justine if she is looking after Thunder.

‘You’re not letting her sleep outside, are you?’

‘Of course not. I’m offended you’d ask.’

‘Sorry, I should have known.’

When would I learn to give people credit?

‘Relax, I’m joking. You look good. How many weeks?’

Funny how we’re all talking in weeks. Time is measured by what you’re into.

‘Twenty-seven.’

‘Thought of any names?’

Why do people keep asking me that?

‘Stephanie Zimbalist Junior if it’s a girl, and Vlad the Impaler if it’s a boy.’

‘That answer is straight out of BJ’s tool box.’

At the mention of BJ, the tiny little army inside me lines up around my heart. They wear newspaper hats and have their big wooden knives drawn.

‘So, have you come to say happy birthday?’

‘I didn’t know. Happy birthday,’ she says. ‘I came to give you this.’ A small parcel, brown paper, thick sticky tape, French stamps. ‘I don’t know why she didn’t just send it to your place.’

My heart feels like it’s smashing its way up my throat.

I bite my lip. The worry bead is still there. Shine, shine.

My hands tremble, I can’t get into the sticky tape.

‘Can you do it, Jus?’

Justine drops her bag to the floor. It’s full of envelopes. I assume they’re anytime-today deliveries. She rips through the brown paper and down to a wooden matchbox with a coloured label.

‘Go on.’ Justine hands me the box.

I slide the little drawer out. A pair of earrings on a cloud of cotton wool.

‘Wow, they’re beautiful,’ Justine says. ‘Look, they’re the links of a bicycle chain.’

‘I know. Campagnolo.’

‘How’d…’

‘I’ve been reading her cycling magazines. Just think, these could have been ridden up the Pyrenees.’

‘Wow, you have been reading them.’

My fingers have taken leave of their senses. Justine helps. The earrings could mean she’s coming back. That she’d be on my doorstep when I get home, cold in the April air, hungry and a little cranky. I’d soon sort out her mood. I know it’s a leap, but it’s better than thinking she’ll be away forever.

‘Well, I’m going to have to say thank you, at least.’

‘At least.’

She looks at the lump.

‘Any ideas?’

‘None. Just be honest.’

Paris is eight hours behind, so I can call after work and I won’t be getting her out of bed. Or I can text her. A jokey, avoidance-style text.
Hey remember that time you got a black eye and I smashed the toilet?

‘You’re not going to text, are you?’

The corner of Russell and Bourke streets comes to mind. BJ on texting as a mode of withholding.

‘You’re right. I’ll try to stay awake tonight.’

Taylor and Ruby take me to my favourite restaurant for my birthday. I love its packing-case walls, and the mathematical impossibility of its many tables in the small front room.

Ruby has chosen tonight to begin spotting women for me.

‘With BJ gone, you need to keep the practice up, or you’ll get rusty.’

‘Rusty?’ I picture my vagina rusting over, red-flaked, oxidised. ‘Thanks for the image, Rube.’

‘There’s one.’

She points to a woman standing outside the restaurant. The woman glances at her watch, taps her foot.

‘Putting aside the fact I want BJ, that woman looks straight to me. By the way, I heard a new term on JoyFM.
Non-heteronormative.
I like it. It suggests wiggle room.’

‘I have got to start listening to your radio station. Nonheteronormative. That could be all of us.’

‘My point. Anyway, BJ sent me these, Campagnolo,’ I say. ‘I’m going to get her back.’ I feel like I’ve got lemonade in my blood, that I’m carbonated. I can’t sit still.

‘Just because she remembered your birthday doesn’t mean she wants you.’

The waiter arrives. Ruby orders a Heineken for herself and an orange juice for me. I wait until he’s gone to respond.

‘Really?’ My elbow on the table, I twist an earring. ‘When you split up with any of your exes, did you send them a birthday present?’

She grins. ‘I sent dog shit to that idiot Trevor. Express Post.’

‘Oh, really, what sort of dog was it? There was no card, but that’s okay. I know she wants me. This is the beginning.’

‘Here’s Taylor.’

Ruby moves across, Taylor kisses Ruby and me on the cheek and passes me a present. Careful with the wrapping paper, Dali’s clocks dripping time, I open it. Another novel by Carol Shields. I’d read
Larry’s Party
and had talked about how brilliant it was to anyone who was close enough.

‘Thanks, Taylor. I’m having the best birthday.’

She raises her eyebrows, looks at Ruby, who shakes her head. ‘You need to finish it before the baby comes. You won’t have time after. You’ll be lucky to read a whole book before it goes to school. Unless it’s Dr. Seuss.’

‘Well, that can’t be right. What about all the hours it’s sleeping?’

‘Haven’t they taught you anything in antenatal classes?’

‘She still hasn’t enrolled,’ Ruby says.

Little sisters.

‘Peta, you’re on your own. You need to get practical with this.’

‘I have been.’

Attached to the change table in the corner of the spare room is a mobile that slow-spins farmyard animals. The spin is like my mood: I’m pregnant and I’m ready, I’m having a baby and I’m not ready. Spin. Spin.

Ruby nudges me and nods in the direction of the door. The waiting woman has entered the restaurant with another woman. A BJ type. Taller with short blonde hair. She’s wearing a black military-style jacket with brass buttons, black boots with chrome eyelets. She looks ready for anything.

‘Closer, Rube,’ I say in a whisper and try not to stare. ‘How about I go to the toilet so you and Taylor can talk about me?’

‘Good idea, take your time.’

Ruby and Taylor see me coming and stop talking. Fair enough. I resume my seat.

‘So what did you decide?’

‘She’s looking you over, Pete.’

‘As if I’m in any condition to start anything. Or steal someone’s girlfriend. No way. They seem pretty entrenched to me.’ Ruby sneaks a glance. ‘Taylor, don’t you think BJ’s telling me something by sending these?’

‘Maybe.’

I sip my orange juice, peering at the faux BJ over the rim of my glass. ‘You’ll get splinters in your bum sitting on the fence like that.’

‘It’s not fence-sitting, Peta. I can see why you think
the earrings are a positive, but she doesn’t know about the baby yet.’

‘She’ll find out when I ring her tonight.’

The waiter has brought our meals: lasagne for me and pan-fried gnocchi for Ruby and Taylor. Ruby reckons only Trotters makes it as well as she does.

‘Good,’ Ruby says. ‘For some reason—call it a personalbest, track record—I thought you weren’t going to tell her.’

She helps herself to some of my chips.

‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Ruby.’

I had considered it for an instant. Standing behind benches, open doors, jewellery displays—like Elaine in
Seinfeld,
head shots only.

‘She’s looking again.’

‘She probably wants to bash you up for staring at her.’

‘Who?’

‘The woman in black.’

Taylor looks around the full restaurant. ‘Ruby, it’s Melbourne. Everybody’s in black.’

‘The faux BJ, just there.’

‘She’s coming over.’

‘I’m going to the toilet.’

When you’re pregnant you can go to the toilet the minute you get back and nobody thinks anything of it. I stand too quickly and bump my chair over. The woman catches it before it hits the floor.

‘Is this yours?’ she says to me.

Her eyes are blue water, you could drop your clothes and dive right in.

‘Technically, it’s the restaurant’s.’

‘Wonderful, engaging small talk, Peta.’

‘This is my sister, Ruby,’ I say to the faux BJ. ‘If you’d
like to beat her up while I’m upstairs,’ the polite way of saying toilet to a stranger, ‘I’d appreciate it.’

‘Oh, you’re with your sister. I’m with mine. She’s pissed off at me because I was late. Flat tyres are no excuse, apparently.’

‘Sorry. I don’t want to be rude, but I really have to go upstairs.’

My hands on the basin, I’m close to the mirror, my nose touches the cold glass. She isn’t BJ. You are to keep it real. No more stupid.

Back downstairs, the faux BJ and her sister have joined their table to ours. I’m going to kill Ruby.

The sister holds out her hand and I shake it. ‘I’m Jane,’ she says. ‘We were out celebrating my birthday—yours, too, now. I’m thirty-four. You?’

She lifts one of my chips.

‘Thirty-six. Old enough not to be pushed around by my little sister, but what are you going to do.’

‘She’s younger?’

I swallow my mouthful of lasagne. ‘Hear that, Ruby?’

‘The light is poor and you’re in your second-trimester glow.’

‘When are you due? My best friend just had a baby,’ smiles the faux BJ.

‘Um, I’m twenty-seven weeks.’

I don’t do maths when I’m cornered.

‘So you’re well past halfway. Are you feeling a bit more like your old self?’

My old self? Like a woman in trouble, talking to a gorgeous stranger. Urgent, urgent, urgent.

‘Sorry, I don’t know your name.’

‘Claire.’

She puts out her hand. Her eyes. A swim is in order.

‘Why have you not beaten up Ruby?’ I love looking at this faux BJ. But not for herself.

‘I’m a lover not a fighter.’

‘Jesus. That was bad.’ Ruby finishes her drink, dumps her glass onto the table. Foam slides down the interior and makes a sudsy pool at the bottom.

‘If we’re going to make this movie,’ Taylor taps her watch, ‘we have to get the bill now.’

‘I’m too tired. Do you mind? Could we see it next week? Or maybe you and Ruby could go?’ I sling my bag over my shoulder, the new proactive Peta. ‘And I’ve got to make that phone call.’

At my car, a couple of streets from the restaurant, I hear my name called. In the reflection of the driver’s side window Claire is walking towards me.

‘Peta, I wondered if we could go out some time?’

‘Umm, I don’t know. I’m…’

‘How about I give you my phone number? You can decide later.’

Sounds reasonable. She knows I’m pregnant and I guess she knows there’s nobody in the picture. Who knows what Ruby told her while I was in the toilet?

‘Actually, Claire, no. I’d better not.’

‘Just a coffee?’

‘I’m not doing coffee with anyone who looks like you. It won’t be just coffee. It turns out I’m more suggestible than I thought. But thanks, Claire. Really.’

She doesn’t look upset. She was probably just giving it a whirl. Good for her.

‘Well, happy birthday, Peta. I better go.’

Jane is on the other side of the road, arms crossed, foot tapping. I shrug, do a little wave. She shakes her head and she mouths:
sisters.

Time to ring BJ. I’m ready. After a close call with somebody just like her, I want her more than ever.

But no. What if a baby is the last thing she wants? It makes sense. She’s twenty-three, in a cool leather jacket, cruising the streets of Paris. I don’t fancy driving in the dark and tears—I’ll wait until I’m home.