Grace Under Pressure, page 6
Christine couldn’t help but grin. Perhaps she was going to enjoy Grace after all. She felt the warmth start in her toes and move slowly up her body. These were the sort of conversations she had once had, in this very kitchen, twenty odd years ago, before the boys ballooned into teenagers. This was the sort of hushed chat she and Alison had shared over glasses of lambrusco before the cancer savaged her friend, breast by breast. These were the sort of conversations smart women had with children at their shins.
She cleared her throat.
‘I breastfed my boys for nine months. It was madness. The cushions and pillows I needed. Each feed was like setting up a fortress. One boy on each side, like little footballs. We called it twinsanity. Nine months and then there was nothing left of me.’
‘The things we do,’ Grace said with respect.
The three women sat at the table in comfortable silence eating their pie and salad, which was punctuated by the sound of Serena’s little foot kicking against the kitchen table and the wafting strains of ‘So long, farewell’ from the adjacent room. It was the sort of silence that her husband would have felt compelled to relieve with an extended anecdote. It was the kind of silence that mothers crave, like the descent of a fleece shawl over a lap, or the gentle whirr of a dishwasher competently doing its duty.
Christine stood to clear the table.
‘Don’t worry, I’ve got this.’ Grace pushed back her stool and instantly bent double.
‘Are you okay?’
Grace vomited, directly over the empty plates.
She levered herself up and wiped her mouth with a clean chequered tea towel.
‘Perhaps the shepherd’s pie was a little brave. Please excuse me, Christine, I haven’t been feeling well. I do hope it’s not gastro.’
Christine grabbed at the plates and took them straight to the sink to wash. As she did, Shelly turned to Grace.
‘Oh for heaven’s sake, Grace. I’m pretty certain that’s not gastro. At what point are we going to talk about what’s really going on?’
‘Yes, Grace. At what point are we?’
The last voice was deeper, distinctly male. Christine turned around and came face to face with the chief antagonist of FenceGate.
Greg Harkness was swarthy and handsome, like a modern incarnation of the Captain, with a dash of Clark Gable thrown in. He stood there in his suit with a small, functional black suitcase next to him. He had bags under his eyes and a much larger bunch of yellow roses in his hand. They dwarfed the two that Christine had placed in a small vase on the edge of the bench.
He cut their reverie short with little more than a curt smile. ‘Hello, ladies. If you don’t mind, I think I probably need to talk to my wife.’
Both Shelly and Christine were out the front door before the von Trapp children made it safely upstairs to bed.
10 Dairy-free Pastry
Reasons not to:
Reasons to:
The vomiting
Heartburn
Mastitis
Pelvic floor/Prolapse?
Feet already big enough I don’t want to have to buy new boots
Cost of nappies/ecological footprint
Stretchmarks
Already have a pigeon pair
Overpopulation
Probably need a bigger car
Tempt fate
Greg
The wonder
Maybe I’ll get it right this time
The flowers Greg brought back with him were a nice touch. Yellow roses had been part of Grace’s wedding bouquet, along with bouvardia. The smell of them helped her thaw.
After this many years of life with Greg, Grace knew one thing for certain. Re-entry is hard.
Grace had thought long ago that if Petra really was interested in a novel business idea, a capsule hotel for travelling spouses might work. That way, any travelling co-parent could check in for five hours prior to their return. They could have a nap, so not a single utterance of jet-lagged exhaustion crossed their lips when they stepped over the threshold. (Food for thought: what is more taxing? A ten-hour red-eye from Hong Kong or being up overnight with two children with croup?) It would have a laundry to clean and press all their clothes, so the reunion isn’t coupled with an avalanche of business shirts stained with Tiger beer and xiao long bao juices courtesy of nights out ‘bonding’ with the South East Asian sales team. And there would be a compulsory PowerPoint presentation to refresh them on key information pertaining to their offspring.
As much as they tried, Grace and Greg could not find their groove. Grace had finally told Greg about their now-lentil-sized stowaway. She did it through hoarse whispers while she cleaned herself up in the bathroom and wiped down the benchtops methodically.
The revelation hung in the air like a stench. Greg simply couldn’t digest it.
‘I don’t understand,’ he said, his mouth opening and shutting like a gormless goldfish.
‘What’s not to understand? I’m pregnant.’
‘How?’
‘Really? Do I really need to explain how it could happen?’ Grace’s nausea began to surge. Her patience for fifth grade personal development refresher classes was limited at the best of times.
‘I just can’t—’
And before he had the chance to finish the sentence, Harry burst in, fresh from a night terror and flushed with feverish excitement at seeing his father at home. Grace was swept up once again in the stations of the bedtime cross: stories, teeth, toilet. She fell asleep while reading yet another book to Harry and when she woke up, she realised that Greg had tucked himself into the spare bedroom downstairs.
* * *
For the next few days, Greg neglected to finish what he’d been saying. Grace chased possibilities around her head. ‘I just can’t … understand how we would be so lucky?’ ‘I just can’t … wrap my head around how we’re going to pay for it?’ ‘I just can’t … believe what your bodies have to go through …’
Instead of directly addressing a predicament produced by a few uncharacteristic moments of mutual hedonism, they reverted to treating each other like colleagues they hoped to impress, rather than their chosen love of fifteen years. What was left was ceramic love. It was hollow, polite … all surface.
By the time Saturday morning rolled around there were the outward trappings of contentment in the house. Jack Johnson was playing over the Sonos, providing a soundtrack about morning light, pancakes and familial contentment. The sun streamed through the window, illuminating the framed photos of Grace and Greg’s pre-children adventures at the Great Barrier Reef and Waikiki. If someone had taken a portrait of them all at the kitchen bench, with Ruby’s dimpled hand grabbing slivers of banana off her father’s plate, it would best be captured by the smuggest of all hashtags: #blessed #Saturdaymorning #pancakebreakfast #dairyfree #GraceHarknesscooks #cookingwithkids. There was nobody to catch Grace retching in the en suite after breakfast.
* * *
Later that morning there was a family amble from neighbouring Manly Beach. Grace carried Ruby most of the way, breathless, while Greg strode on ahead with Harry on his scooter. They stopped to rub the head of the Gloomy Octopus sculpture at Shelly Beach, honed to a mellow sheen by the palms of thousands before them. ‘Why so gloomy, octopus?’ was Greg’s default joke as he chased after Ruby, his hands outstretched, and tickled the milk-bun folds of her neck.
Back at Freshwater Beach, Harry played hide and seek in the sandstone crevices and Ruby dashed fearlessly away from Greg into the shallows. Grace brushed away her irritation when he brought Ruby back to her soaked. She bundled up the dripping clothes, crusty with sand, and placed them in a re-usable plastic bag. Then she extracted the container of organic talcum powder that magically cleared the sand from the creases in Ruby’s thighs. Meanwhile, Greg stared at the horizon, then asked Grace if she could mend the hem on his board shorts later that afternoon.
They had a twilight drink up at the Harbord Diggers, which overlooked both Curl Curl and Freshwater beaches. The Diggers was an old RSL club that had been reinvigorated to cater for local tastes, with multiple restaurants and Scandinavian garden games, craft lagers and a coffee cart – just in case someone on the Northern Beaches couldn’t go an hour without access to a perfectly made flat white.
The Diggers was the natural meeting place for Freshwater families. There were the husbands in polo shirts in shades of sea foam and board shorts from Billabong (someone had endorsed them on Beaches Mums two years ago as a Christmas gift for her hard-to-buy-for spouse, and soon every second dad from Fairlight to Collaroy was opening them on Christmas morning). Then there were the wives. Most were beach-bleached, or had spent enough time in a salon like Shelly’s that they looked the part. They were all sporting a variation of activewear, whether they had been to Pilates that morning or not, or slim jeans, white sneakers and Breton-striped sleeveless shirts with sunglasses perched high on their heads like a permanent second set of eyes.
The high priestesses of the Sancti-Mums would be sipping kombucha in artfully crumpled linen in shades of sand and shale, or semi-ironic dungarees. Grace found herself perched next to Amber at one point while their children played an intense game of giant Jenga with mallee blocks. Amber had swanned in from a yoga class and was pressing Grace for where to find the best stone-ground bread on the beaches (Berkelo, at the bottom of William Street in North Manly with their khorasan flour, malt and honey loaf). Amber then helpfully pointed out that the kombucha they sold at the Diggers wasn’t real kombucha – you could tell because it wasn’t cloudy and didn’t have any floating tendrils. That’s where the real goodness is. Grace put hers to the side, asked the right sort of questions about Amber’s proposed yoga space and took a sample of thyme oil Amber insisted would help the kids’ breathing, if she put it on their big toes overnight.
One of the wives who flocked towards Grace was Stella Prentice, the head of marketing for Fresh is Best. Stella had the flighty energy of a racehorse – and just as much money invested in her appearance. She was one of Grace’s biggest fans, but also liked to remind Grace that she technically reported to her.
Stella was the kind of person who would publicly tag her peers and friends online in adjective-heavy celebrations of their achievements, and was constantly posting memes of pop feminist adages like ‘A rising tide lifts all boats’. She once confessed to Grace that she refused to put anything in writing that wasn’t positive, in case it was forwarded somewhere and reflected poorly on her – yet she had no problem delivering the most cutting asides, particularly if she thought it would help gain someone’s confidence. Nothing bonds two women like mutual derision. Grace knew this too, and hated it about herself.
Stella pulled Grace aside while attempting to reapply hypoallergenic sunscreen to her daughter’s limbs.
‘Grace, darling. Thank you for recommending this sunscreen on that Insta story last week. It’s hard to believe the kind of chemicals some people are happy putting on their family, right? Thank heavens for you! And those ice cream recipes you sent through are a triumph. That twist on chunky monkey! So clever! I’m just wondering if we could put activated charcoal in one of them? That ash grey would be such a great tonal match for the brand palette. I think it would really pop on the gram – don’t you?’
Grace tried to keep her face straight and her mind focused. Yes, it might look nice. But it would also have the texture of dirt. ‘Let me see what I can do for you, Stella. Anything for you, you know that.’ She grasped Harry as he tried to squirm away.
Stella reached over and kissed her cheek. ‘You are a living doll. Any chance you can change that ancient grains recipe for this week? I have an inkling that millet will work better than quinoa in that harira. I think that’s more the current mood, don’t you? Can you retest it tomorrow and send it through so we can shoot next week?’
Grace tried to keep the smile fixed on her face. Yes, she could. Except the recipe was fine as it stood, the smell of the harira simmering would make her insides tilt, Greg would moan that soup was a precursor to a meal, not the main event, and Harry would flat-out refuse to eat anything with that many spices in it. At least Ruby could be trusted to demolish it. And she was sure there were a few other mums in her orbit who would gratefully receive the donation of dinner.
Grace negotiated an hour of time without the children on Sunday morning so she could duck to Fresh is Best for supplies. ‘Have fun!’ Greg called after her. It took all her self-control not to point out that she was working, and that groceries didn’t really count as recreational shopping. She left Greg to walk the children to Berkelo for nitrate-free bacon and biodynamic egg rolls for breakfast.
When Grace stepped back into the house her arms were full. She had a new sort of kombucha with proper floating bits, and some Balinese-style Jamu tonic to sip, which would undoubtedly stain their glassware orange, but would look terrific in the backdrop of the blue-themed photos she needed to produce later that week.
Harry was nowhere to be seen. She presumed Greg had given him the iPad and he was hiding upstairs with it. She needed to resend him the most recent government screen-time guidelines. The last report, sent to her by a well-meaning peer, revealed some terrifying links between screen time and stymied development of frontal lobe white matter. Grace made a mental note to send it to him later that week. Meanwhile, Ruby was sitting in in the middle of a pile of Lego, coughing. Greg was up at the island bench, glued to his laptop.
Grace deposited the string bags next to him, transferred the organic lamb pieces and drinks into the fridge and then went to check on Ruby.
‘Greg, how long has she been coughing?’
‘A few minutes. She’s fine.’
‘Are you sure it’s not a Lego head? Have you been watching her while she plays?’
Greg continued scrolling.
‘She doesn’t eat the Lego anymore, Grace. She’s not that little.’
Ruby hacked again. Grace picked her up and noticed a creeping rash over her hands.
‘Oh god. She’s got a rash. I hope it’s not hand, foot and mouth.’
Greg blanched and finally looked up. ‘I can’t do that again.’
Grace agreed. ‘Yes. It’s not ideal.’
Out of all of the childhood illnesses, hand, foot and mouth was potentially the most akin to a biblical scourge. The last time it went through the house they had shed all the skin from their feet in the aftermath. Grace was fairly certain they would all be immune by now, but you never knew.
Grace pulled up Ruby’s shirt and noticed the rash all the way up her stomach. Ruby continued coughing, as if she was a kitten working on a hair ball.
‘Has she eaten anything?’
‘Yeah, she was starving and there was no food in the house, so I gave her some of my danish.’
Breathe.
‘You gave her pastry?’
‘Yup. She loved it!’
‘GREG. OUR DAUGHTER IS ALLERGIC TO DAIRY.’
‘It’s just a pastry, Grace. It didn’t have any custard on it.’
Grace was trying very hard to stay under control.
‘What do you think puff pastry is made of? Butter is dairy.’
Greg hated being told he was wrong about anything. He doubled down.
‘She’ll be fine. You mollycoddle her. Besides, there was no food.’
Grace hated being told there was no food in the house.
‘Did you check the freezer? THERE IS ALWAYS FOOD IN THE FREEZER.’
‘It’s terrifying in there.’
Grace grabbed Ruby and walked outside, practising her calming, four-second in, eight-second-out breathing. How a man who was an executive for a fast-moving consumer goods firm, who was working overtime to put robots into fridges, couldn’t manage to defrost one of the dozen meals in there, including bulk-made white bean, miso and macadamia patties, was beyond her.
She rubbed Ruby’s back repeatedly and dosed out the antihistamine. As she paced the backyard rubbing her daughter’s back in concentric circles, she wondered if the vomiting would come next and the bluish face to follow. She felt her insides quiver with all the feelings that came home with the bassinet and footsie pyjamas. The confusion, the ignorance, responsibility and more than anything – the cold blank terror. She had never had a job before where the stakes included death. She hadn’t realised how heavy that mantle would feel. Grace stared down into the face of her daughter.
Ruby began clearing her throat, and Grace sighed with relief. She sat down with Ruby on the grass and gave her a squeeze. There would be no need for the EpiPen or to call the ambulance. This time.
‘Grace?’
Grace turned and greeted Greg with a forced smile. If she tried hard enough, they could come back from this. She would make a nice dinner. They would sit down and watch Netflix. It would be docile and easy. They would talk later. They would find their groove. They could make a plan. She kissed Ruby on the head and walked slowly inside towards her husband.
‘Yes?’
‘I just got a message from the Thailand team. I’m going to have to fly out tomorrow morning. They need me in Phuket for this trade show.’
Grace’s stomach dropped.
‘Again? I thought you said last night there would be no more trips for a while?’
‘What do you expect me to say, Grace? It’s an Asia Pacific role. This is what’s expected of jobs at this level. That’s what it takes for us to live in this house.’
Grace felt a surge of nausea rise again. There was no more skirting around the issue. ‘Greg. We still haven’t talked about the elephant in the room.’
Greg was silent.
Grace continued. She looked outside to where Ruby was now pretending to feed her dollies. ‘With the way things are, I don’t think we can manage more.’
