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At the window (not my window, I’m not a partner at Craven and Proctor) I press my forehead against the cold glass and stare into Collins Street. It’s busy down there: pedestrians, taxis, vans, trams. Umbrellas. A cyclist hops the kerb and locks his bike. Could be a woman.

Library days: check emails, find out who’s in, who needs what, and who can wait another day. Find those lost books.
Civil Procedure Volume Two, Trusts, Australian Master Tax Guide 2012.
Circulation lists, law lists, user lists. Lists, lists, lists. No wonder I love my job. The relocation is planned for the week after next. New shelving, new compactus, new desks, chairs, carpet, window. A brand new view.

Fridays are for maintenance: sticky tape, barcodes, updates. To make up time I work through lunch and the afternoon disappears.

Jackie, Jacqui and Trish, the personal assistants at my
end of the building, have their coats on and their bags slung over shoulders. JJ&T, as they’re known, have the same hair—long, tied back—are the same height, and have nearly fifty years of experience between them.

‘Goodnight, Peta,’ times three.

‘Night, girls.’

‘Don’t forget to go home to that spunky husband of yours.’ Jackie has always liked Mark. She would. Her husband, Sean, is just like him. Only he’s shorter, and better at being home for his wife’s birthday.

‘Yeah, or he’ll find someone else to come home to.’ Jacqui is a year and a half into her divorce.

‘Not everybody’s husband does that.’ Jackie is one of those women who always sticks up for men.

‘Mine did.’

‘And you’re better off, Jacq,’ Trish loops her arm through Jacqui’s.

They’re looking at me, waiting for comment.

‘Where would Mark meet anyone new?’

Possibly at the pub in the hotel next door. Jukebox, karaoke, happy hour is between six and eight. If he’s lucky there’ll be a beautiful girl out the front and he can offer her a lift home.

‘Yeah. You and Mark will be together forever. With the amount of time you two spend at work nobody else could possibly come into view,’ Trish says. She isn’t called Point Blank Trish for nothing.

‘You’d think.’

‘We know.’ Three tram tickets on show, they leave.

I work until the windows go dark and the buildings are silhouettes of rectangle black. Office lights glow white and tram tracks shine like silver thread sewing up the
city. Punch Mark’s number into the phone on my desk.

‘Hi. I’m going to be home late.’

‘I was about to tell you the same thing,’ he laughs and the warmth of his voice settles round my shoulders. ‘They want to close before the weekend.’

‘The weekend is in seven hours. And you can’t work Saturday. We’ve got your dad’s seventieth.’

‘Carole Smart wants it finalised early Monday by the latest.’

Carole Smart is Mark’s managing partner. She’s not Ms Smart or Carole or Caro.
Carole Smart is on line five, Carole Smart is in conference room three.
People say Carole Smart like the Terminator says Sarah Connor.

There’s no arguing with her. I can’t argue with anything related to Mark’s career. When I married him I married his law firm. Do you, Peta Wheeler, take Mark Boyd and Agnew, Philips and Stoltz as your lawfully wedded husband?

At least I have Mrs Dalloway. She’s almost a hundred according to the cat-age calculator on the internet. Mrs D curls into my lap and we watch re-runs of
Murphy Brown
and
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
when Mark’s not home. We’ve watched a lot of them.

‘Do you want the good news or the bad news?’

He picks the bad news first. Always does. I do the opposite, hoping the happy vibe will get me through whatever is coming.

‘I hit a cyclist.’

‘Are you okay? What happened?’

‘Nothing much.’ Nothing to do with any leather couches. ‘I’m fine and the cyclist’s okay. I gave her a lift into town.’

‘Only fair. And the car?’

‘There’s a scratch. It’s not deep and there’s no dent.’

‘So, what’s the good news?’

‘I’m ready to have a baby.’

I think.

My voice is low. I’ve worked with enough women to know that making babies doesn’t always happen as expected. I don’t want my co-workers asking how it’s going, how I’m feeling, or saying better luck next time. ‘So we’re at the starting line. Good, because I don’t want to be last.’

‘It’s not a race, Mark.’

‘Yeah, but if we get onto it now, we won’t be too far behind Alex and Rob. It’s better if we can have people close to us going through it at the same time.’

Huh. Going through it suggests an ending. There’s no finishing line with parenting. Even when Mum was dying she was taking care of me. Mark and I are in our midthirties, we’re used to projects completed. How will we manage the ongoingness of parenthood?

My best friend, Taylor, was the first in our group to have a baby. Alienation came in the shape of a baby capsule and maternal health centre visits and a husband never home. She lived for her mothers’ group. Eight women she didn’t know, their newborn babies their only link. It was about survival.

Mark is in a building across the road. He’s close. He thinks we’ll be okay. I go with the feeling.

‘Anyway. I think I’m ovulating.’

‘Are you coming on to me?’

‘Something’s wrong.’

‘What?’

‘Pee-Wee, I can’t. It’s the pressure.’

I climb off him. He’s right. There’s not a lot of sexiness in ovulation calculation.

Still, when you hand in your notice, you want to walk out the door that minute, not hang round updating your procedures manual and training your replacement. I want to make a baby tonight while my feet aren’t cold.

‘But the mucus…’

He’s been reading about conception on the internet again.

‘Mark, there are words that should not be said in the bedroom. Words like fallopian, ointment and mucus.’

‘Spermicidal.’

‘Extemporaneous.’

‘Stop it, you’re making me hot.’

I’m feeling weird, bashful. I put my trepidation to the side. ‘Do it.’ I take his hand and place it between my legs. ‘Here, like this.’

‘Ah, mucus.’

‘Stop it. I can’t make a baby if I’m laughing. Be serious.’

I hold his hand in place and push myself onto it and only think of the couch—her hands, they knew—for only a second.

‘The sperm doesn’t come out of my fingers, Pee-Wee.’

‘Shh.’

I’m holding my breath. My face prickles. I let my breath go a little, take another breath and hold it until I come.

‘Do you think I could get some of that?’ he says.

I’ve left the ensuite light on and I can see his face. He’s smiling his wonderful smile. I climb back on top of him. ‘Lie still.’

We’re lips and tongues and teeth. Soon the kissing stops because things have got too intense. We keep our faces close, and I come hard, with my mouth open on Mark’s chin.

‘Bombs away,’ he whispers but it feels like shouting.

After, we stay that way. Nose to nose, like Lego.

I tried counting law reports. Tried imagining I’m asleep and seeing if it takes. Mark’s on his side, snoring into the curtains. He’s like a little kid, the way he drops off and doesn’t wake up until morning.

No sleep, more maths. How many times have Mark and I had sex? I haven’t been carving notches into the bedpost—seventeen years of notches there’d be nothing left but splinters. Three times per week, multiplied by weeks in a year, multiplied by seventeen years. It might
be about 2,600. Mental arithmetic is not my best feature.

But it was like it was a first time. It was real.

Mark has rolled over, has a heavy arm around me.

I’m imagining the sperm, that one little swimmer making contact and how nothing is going to be the same. It already isn’t. We’ve reached a new level and I’m not sure I want to be on it.

‘What happened to you last night?’

He’s smiling. Mark and I have been asking each other that question the morning after for years. We vary our replies. Oh, was that you? Nothing much. Wild, wild sex, the wildest, how’d you know?

‘I had it off with a lovely man with intelligent fingers.’

‘And did you make a baby?’

Jesus. Did I?

‘Mark, it might take more than one go.’

‘That’s okay. We can have fun trying.’

He looks up at me from the kitchen floor where he’s tying his laces. He’s sitting on the tiles, Mrs Dalloway sharing his patch of sun, and his boyish face seems extra innocent this morning. His eyes are blue, a colour beyond suspicion. Mine probably look muddy. He’s going for his run and I’m going shopping.

I have to fill out forms and supply my Medicare number like I’ve been a naughty girl. I bet if men became pregnant, the morning-after pill would be free with the Sunday paper.

I don’t know if I’m going to take it. I have five days to decide, with a success rate of seventy-two per cent. Or it’s the other way round. Facts are not staying in my head like they did before the couch.

‘What’d you get at the chemist?’

I had meant to throw away the evidence but I folded it into the console, with my spare lipstick, Panadol and safety pins, and forgot about it.

‘Jelly beans. See?’

I offer him the bag. He knows not to take a red one.

‘I thought it might have been a pregnancy test kit.’

‘It’s only the day after.’

‘Yeah, but you like to be prepared.’

‘What can I say? It’s my Girl Guides background. While I was being prepared, you were setting fire to termite mounds and breaking and entering.’

‘You make it sound as if we did that all the time,’ he said. ‘It was once. And it wasn’t a house. It was the canteen at the BMX track. We had so many chips I still can’t eat chicken flavour.’

We’re driving to Mark’s sister’s place for the party. Doncaster is rolling hills, wide roads, not a soul on the footpaths. Pine trees. Margie decided it should be at hers: the house is big and they’ve got the new outdoor entertaining area. We’ve got an outdoor area too but our garden is not as big as Margie’s.

Really, Margie wants Keith’s seventieth at her place
so she can regulate everything: the paper hats, seating arrangements, the time people go home. She’s the matriarch. Mark’s mother drowned when the family was on holiday up at the Murray. He was six. He doesn’t remember much—the sun and the water and a lady police diver.

‘What would Dad say about that? The theft and the gluttony.’

Before his retirement Keith was a policeman.

‘He’d haul me into the nearest cop shop. Even now.’

When I met Mark I adopted his dad.

I was five and Ruby was three when Mum drove our father to the train station. Mum said our father was a Ruth Park kind of bloke, Darcy Niland’s Mac, and he was born in the wrong era. He wanted sweat, a slim paypacket and no responsibility.

I don’t know if I remember this or if the image is something I’ve constructed from Mum telling me. We’re sitting in the car, outside the station, it’s a Sunday morning, a breeze is making the trees in the park opposite twist and shimmer in the sun. She leans across and kisses him goodbye, have a good day, for the last time. He plucks a couple of lollies out of his pocket, tosses them onto my lap. And while I’m beaming at my good luck I miss my last look at him.

Mum thought she could change him. But she grew up— pregnancy does that to a girl, she said—and let him go.

We stayed our little family of three. Mum died five years ago—cancer—so Ruby and I are down to each other. But we’ve both adopted Mark’s dad.

We pull into Margie’s street; cars are parked on the nature strip, double-parked in the bowl of the court. Streamers
and balloons—the place is bursting blue and white, the colours of Keith’s footy team. We troop down the side of the house—nobody uses the front door.

In the kitchen Margie is directing traffic. ‘Stephen, can you get the spare chairs from the garage?’

‘Righto, love.’ I hear him but I don’t see him. Not unusual. Her husband keeps his distance when Margie is in hostess mode.

‘Mark, can you tell Dad to put his shoes and socks back on?’

‘Well, hello to you too,’ Mark kisses his sister on the cheek and heads out the back.

Margie is basketball tall and footballer wide—not fat, solid. She has white-blonde helmet-shaped hair and always wears orange. Someone must have told her she looks good in it. She probably does but I can’t tell.

‘And Peta, if you can put this,’ a salad, ‘and this,’ a bowl of bread rolls, pre-cut, ‘on the table, that’d be great.’

I don’t mind being pushed out the back. I can pass on a big hello with Margie. If it was just me, if I had to, I’d use the front door and hope she wasn’t home.

It’s April, I’m wearing two layers and the kids are showing off in the pool. Kids are impervious to cold and common sense. Black hair slicked to their faces, blue-eyed, shoulder-deep in the water, all Margie and Stephen’s kids look the same. Jasmine hops out and gives me a wet hug. I kiss the top of her head, salt water. Keith is sitting on the steps of the pool, his feet and ankles getting a soaking.

Ruby is on the deck. ‘You got your orders then? I’m to see Keith doesn’t have too much to drink. You want another one, Dad?’

Keith shakes his head, nods towards the house. ‘Thanks,
Roo, I’ll wait. Wouldn’t want to get in trouble.’

He’s the only person Ruby will let call her Roo.

‘I thought we were having lunch yesterday.’

Ruby works in a building two blocks from mine. She’s a Resolution Advisor, which means she gets to employ her gift for bossiness and being right. We have lunch at least once a week.

‘Sorry, Rube, I was late and worked through.’

‘You? Late?’

‘It happens.’

On mornings after adultery.

‘You could have called.’

No, I could not have called. She’d have known about the couch, would have sensed it in my dial tone. Couldn’t have texted. Those little letters would have screamed
I did something like sex last night.

I’m about to kiss Keith hello when Mark’s best friend, Ravi, his wife, Theresa, and their week-old baby arrive. Everybody moves back into the kitchen. Handshakes and kisses all round.

Ruby is first to congratulate Ravi and Theresa. She asks for a hold. She sits at the dining table and Theresa, first laying a bunny rug across Ruby’s shoulder, hands her the baby. The men disappear back outside. I wish I could disappear, too, but if you wear dresses it’s impolite to turn your back on a new mother and baby.

With a child in her arms, Ruby looks peaceful. And Ruby never looks peaceful. She’s action-ready. She wears her hair in a short, dark bob, her clothes are non-iron, and she always has a lipstick in her pocket. She runs on coffee and the smell of traffic. I don’t get it. Can maternal instinct skip a sister?

Ruby doesn’t know that Mark and I have been talking babies. If I tell her it’ll become more real.

‘Pete, smell his head.’

‘Why? Does it smell like cake?’ I lean down, sniff.

More like internal organs.

‘I can’t wait to have one,’ Ruby says. I’m not going to point out she needs a man first. She has plenty of access.

‘Me too,’ I swallow my Diet Coke and hope I sound credible. There could be a Mark Junior on his way right now and ambivalence is as close to maternal as I can get.

Ravi hands Theresa an orange juice, kisses her on the forehead before joining the men outside. That’s my cue. I follow him out to find Keith.

When he sees me, Keith downs the last of his beer and deposits the bottle in a recycling bin Margie has prettied up with a plastic tablecloth. He nods at his mates. ‘I’ll be back.’

Business shirts on weekdays and polos on weekends— Keith always wears a collar. He hugs me and his silver chest hair pokes out from the top of his shirt, tickles my ear and cheek.

‘Happy birthday, Dad.’

‘Happy birthday, yourself. How’s my girl?’

‘Don’t let Margie hear you say that.’

Margie is not happy I’ve adopted her father. Years after I formalised the process—I made adoption certificates, one for me and one for Ruby and we gave them to him for Christmas—she’s still doubtful.

‘Don’t worry abut Margie. What’s wrong?’

One look at me and he knows something is up. This man. I’m going to cry and I’m against tears on special occasions. Across the backyard, pine trees screen the
neighbour’s tennis court fence.

‘Dad, Mark wants a baby and I don’t feel ready.’

‘Have you told him?’

‘Sort of.’

The tennis court fence has a ball snagged up high, near the south-west light. They’re big lights. You could probably see them lit from our house.

‘Peta, you and Mark need to talk about this. Properly.’

‘We never get time. We should tape our discussions so we can pause, press start and get back to where we were. We’re always rehashing. I’m not making sense.’

Keith is sitting on the low wall that surrounds the pool. He pats the wall and I sit by him. He takes my hand. He’s my dad all right.

‘Darling, you’re not ready to have children. I said the same thing to Mark but he told me to mind my own business.’

‘He didn’t tell me.’

Keith has a kind face and Mark’s blue eyes. I love him.

‘There’s nothing else?’

‘No, Dad. Nothing.’

He knows I’m not being truthful. It’s not thirty-seven years of policing and gut instinct. It’s that he cares.

‘Peta, I need some advice.’

Keith is asking me for advice?

‘There’s a woman at the Community Centre. Catherine. I met her in my French class. We’ve been having our lunch together, feeding the ducks, going for walks. She hasn’t done much for my French, put it that way. Anyway, I’d like to take it further.’

Now Keith’s looking towards next door’s tennis court.

I’m a little afraid to ask. ‘What do you mean, further?
Just so I know exactly what we’re talking about. Otherwise I might assume the wrong thing. Like a timeshare in Caloundra or something.’

‘Close. I want to ask her if she’d like to go on a road trip. Next year. I’ve looked into hiring a Winnebago. I’d be a good grey nomad.’

Is that all?

‘You are a lovely man, you’re respectful, you have a family. I expect you’ve shown her photos of the grandkids. She knows you’re not an axe murderer. Ask her. The worst she can do is say no.’

The tennis court has him fascinated. ‘What if she says yes and she wants to be intimate?’

‘Dad, would you like to be with her in that way?’

‘It’s crossed my mind.’

He’s blushing. So good to know you can still be interested at seventy.

‘Ask her tomorrow.’

He wraps an arm over my shoulder. ‘Margie might not like it. Me away for a couple of months. She likes to look after me.’

‘Dad, you’re talking about a road trip, not space travel. Everyone, including Margie, wants you to have someone special in your life.’

‘Thank you, Peta.’

From inside the house Margie and the kids are calling, it’s time for lunch. We stand. He kisses my cheek and tells me that when I’m ready to talk about the other thing he’ll be there. Keith is smart and he is always right. No wonder Margie hates me. I wouldn’t want to share a man like Keith either.

After lunch the men and boys go to the park to kick the footy. Jasmine stays with us. We clear the table and make the usual noises about women being stuck with the cleaning up. Margie makes the most noise but also does most of the cleaning: ‘Here, Peta, let me do that,’ and ‘Ruby, go and sit down, I’ll finish here.’

Ruby and Theresa sit in the lounge room, Jasmine and I follow them in to play Uno. I used to let her win but these days I’ve got a feeling she’s letting me. Theresa feeds the baby. The baby has a blanket up to his face, only a tiny frown and the top of his nose are visible. He’s making little sounds of suction and slurping. Theresa is looking at him, Ruby is looking at him, and I can’t stop looking at him either. He’s like an open fire, not much action but endlessly interesting.

Birthdays in Mark’s family come with an odd tradition. They don’t just sing ‘Happy Birthday’, they also sing the Carlton Footy Club song. I used to not sing along, but Margie would glare at me. These days I sing it for Keith and for Mark and the kids, especially Jasmine.

Seventy years is a long time to be on this earth, it is special. I bought him a hand-carved box at Warrandyte market and filled it with seventy reasons why I love him. Little curls of paper with things like,
your sense of wonder in the world, how big your bombs are
—
the splash is high as the fence, how you let me adopt you, that I care what you think so much,
that kind of thing.

Before bed, when Mark is in the shower, I take the tablet. I don’t bother reading the instructions, all the small print about time and effectiveness. I’m in time. It will be effective.
On Sunday we both go to work. We drive in silence. Mark’s not saying much because he has contracts on his mind. I’m not saying much because I can’t bring myself to tell him about the tablet. Mark drops me at my building.

We have lunch at McDonald’s—it’s the only place open on the weekend at our end of town—a Big Mac meal each. Mark has his upsized. He’s brought documents and a highlighter. I chew and watch him read, line by line.