His Brand of Beautiful (20 page)

It took Christina two weeks to get an appointment to see Doctor Busby, and in that two weeks every time Tate rang, she ached to tell him the news, but didn’t. For three hours after the second blue line appeared in the window of the pregnancy test kit, she’d walked on sunshine. For every hour since, she’d rowed up shit creek.

She told herself that Tate had so much on his plate with PR for the live cattle export trade lobby, and it wasn’t like he could do anything about the baby from Canberra or Darwin or Binara. The news would only be a distraction he didn’t need.

She told herself she should tell him in person, face to face. Not over the phone. And it wasn’t like she’d told anyone else. Not Lacy. Not Michael. Not Richard nor Saffah.

I wanted you to be first to know, Tate. And I wanted to tell you in person.
That was the way to start the conversation, she told herself. Once he came home.

And maybe by then I will have figured some perfectly good explanation for why I lied
to you.

The thoughts spiralled through her head as she parked the Golf one road back from Doctor Busby’s rooms and walked the rest of the way.

“Christina Clay?” Doctor Busby called from the doorway.

Christina slapped the
New Idea
back on the reading pile and picked up her handbag.

Doctor Busby had shaved his beard since their last routine fibroid appointment and he’d done something strange with his hair. All that was left were two wispy grey rainbow shapes over his ears. He’d re‐decorated too. Paint the colour of stepped‐on spearmint bubblegum ravaged every wall.

Christina followed him past the rooms of the ear, nose and throat surgeon who shared his building, listening to the sound of muted voices behind closed doors.

“All the brochures said you Antipodeans had summer year‐round. I left Yorkshire for this muck and now I can’t find any bugger who’ll give me my money back,” he ushered her into his office and closed the door.

Christina smiled politely. She’d heard his banter before. His room smelled of antiseptic, reverse‐cycle heating turned up too high and steam‐cleaned carpet. Over the top of all that was a sweet scent she couldn’t quite place.

“Take a seat, Christina. Do you have a referral for me?” He eased into a deep‐seated chair behind a desk that she thought would make a superb shelter in an earthquake.

Perhaps I can get one like it for when I next see Tate.

Digging her GP’s letter out of her handbag, she handed it across the desk, sat, and spent the next twenty seconds trying to decipher the navy motif on Doctor Busby’s badly-tied tie.
Fairground clowns? Gargoyles?

The same watercolour crowded the framed certificates and medical credentials on the wall behind his head: swallows playing in an English country garden among tall pink and white flowers she thought might have been foxgloves. Each time she saw that picture she wondered if he’d painted it himself. He looked the type to spend his Sunday afternoons painting small birds. He probably liked a harmless hobby that didn’t require him to break terrible news to broken women.

He glanced up then, smiled, and years dropped from his face. “You’re looking well, Christina? Pregnancy must agree with you?”

Lily Malone

Doctor Busby had a manner of speaking that turned everything he said into a question. When she’d first met him she never knew when he expected an answer. Now she knew to wait for the pause.

He surveyed her file. “It was four years in March since we took out those fibroids?”

“And your last scan was clear?”

“And can you tell me when your last period began?”
Pause
.

“Around May 15. I can’t remember exactly. You know they haven’t been regular since—” her gaze collided with the huge blue tissue box on his desk. The first time she’d been in this room she’d worked her way through half a box while he explained the term
products of conception
, “—since the miscarriage.”

He tapped something into his computer, fingers soft and white, nails blunt. “That makes you about ten weeks now. Due on February 22?”

“You miscarried, Christina, at eight weeks?” He scrolled back to the top screen. “Any pains this time? Any bleeding?”
Pause
.

“No. It’s not like last time. Last time I threw up morning and night for weeks, well, you know. Until...”

“Go‐od.” He gave the word two syllables, finishing on a lower pitch, two‐finger‐typed another note, staring at the keyboard. The angle gave him triple‐chins.

“Are you worried about miscarrying again?”
Pause
.

She shook her head once, a fast jerk to the left. “I think I’ve been in denial. I mean—I never dreamed I’d get pregnant so fast once I started trying. I haven’t used birth control for years. I didn’t get any of the signs, like morning sickness. I mean… I’ve lost weight, not gained it.

“I’m sorry, I’m babbling. The answer is yes, and
no
. I wasn’t worried at all about miscarrying until I knew I was pregnant. Since then I’ve been counting every unit of alcohol I’ve had since June and Googling the risks of taking Panadol when you’re pregnant.”

“Panadol is pretty safe.” His chins wobbled into a smile. “Every expectant mother goes through that guilt and it’s worse when a woman’s miscarried before. Statistically a previous miscarriage puts you only very slightly at higher risk of miscarrying again, compared with a woman who has never miscarried. You’re fit and healthy, Christina, don’t beat yourself up. Nine months is way too long to spend tying yourself in knots.”

The tight feeling in her spine relaxed a notch.

“Now if you can hop yourself up on that table, Christina, I’ll have a look at you.”

And it ratcheted tight again. Sweat broke across her lip. She unbuttoned her jacket and it seemed to squeak in protest as she laid it over the chair. The edge of his examination table imprinted the back of her thighs and she swung her legs up and laid back.

“Don’t cross your ankles please, Christina.”

He took her blood pressure first while she stared at the pattern on his tie and hoped the frantic rush of her pulse wouldn’t wreck his measurements.

Castles!
The tie waved as he bent over her.
Twin battlements and a lowered
drawbridge.

“Now if you can tuck up your shirt for me?”

He folded the waist of her trousers down and she tugged at her shirt, exposing her abdomen to fingers soft as floured buns. The prodding took forever.

“Well that all feels fine.”

There was a tube on a shelf near his ultrasound machine. When he reached for the gel, a wave of nausea rocked her. She inhaled air infused with the sweet scent of his breath and she recognised the smell, finally. Barley sugar.

“This might be a bit chilly.” He spread gel over her skin.

The device carved a path over her stomach like the prow of a boat through water.

She tried not to breathe or blink or do anything except stare at the exact point where spearmint paint met antique‐white cornice, listening with every cell in her body.

Then she heard it.
Pow. Pow. Pow.

All the air rushed from her lungs and she felt tears overflow, slide down her cheeks.

My God, Tate! It sounds like a hammer. Like our kid’s a fucking carpenter.

“Doctor Busby? Is that normal? I mean, that heartbeat? It’s so fast.”

“Perfectly normal. Everything looks good.”

He ripped paper towel from a dispenser and wiped gel from her abdomen then helped her sit. She adjusted her clothes and returned to her chair. Her legs felt like matchsticks.

He loaded forms into a printer, and it sputtered to life. “This is for an ultrasound.

They’ll get an exact date for you and test for Downs Syndrome. You have to be between eleven and thirteen weeks so make the booking as soon as you can. How old are you now, Christina?” He scrolled back up her file and didn’t wait for an answer. “Oh. Happy birthday for yesterday.”

She flapped her hand at him, stole a tissue from his box and blew her nose. He typed some more. The printer whined and chugged. “This is a referral to an obstetrician colleague of mine who does a lot of work with my fibroid patients. You don’t need to see me again until our routine check‐up after you’ve had your baby. All being well.”

“What about exercise, Doctor Busby?”

“You’re not planning on running a marathon?”
Pause
.

“I’m entered in the City to Bay.”

“Let your body be the guide, Christina. Gentle exercise is a good thing. I’d probably suggest
walk
the City to Bay, don’t run. But then look at me.” He tapped the cushion of his stomach. “We Englishmen have never been much for running. We’re happier watching the cricket over a pint.”

****

The fastest route home from Doctor Busby’s clinic passed the Blue Box Bar, North Adelaide side of Adelaide Oval. Christina would have detoured but she didn’t want to risk North Terrace where traffic was hamstrung by work on the new tramline.

The lights turned orange as she gained speed down the hill and for a second or two she thought she could chance the red. At the last minute she chickened‐out, braked so hard her handbag slid off the passenger seat. Now she sat tapping her boot on the floor‐mat watching suits cross the road, willing the light to turn green before her memories could turn red.

There were people entering the Triple B for an after‐work drink, ducking between a pair of spiked yuccas. When she and Bram had been regulars here, those yuccas had been cordylines but the blue ceramic pots hadn’t changed and if she wound down the window, she was pretty sure the music would be the same, too. Billy Idol. Duran Duran. Aha. Pseudo Echo.
Politicians knew shit about classic rock.

Lily Malone

Drivers turning across traffic had the green arrow now, the light above her lane still glowed devil‐eyed red.

Bram’s political aspirations began here. What she remembered most about the Blue Box Bar was the night their relationship ended.

Bram hadn’t been in their normal spot, and she’d been running late. She had to fight a path through the Friday evening uni crowd—sweat and
Lynx
clogging her nostrils—until one of the Young Liberals told her Bram was in a room at the back. When she finally found him, Bram’s back was to the door and he’d been deep in conversation with a walrus‐nosed stranger, a huge man wearing a suit the same grey as depression.

She’d been about to call out a greeting, poised with her hand on the doorframe.

Then her eyes had met the stranger’s, and something about him skewered her in place. He had fingers like sausages and he’d thrust the biggest of these at Bram’s chest. She’d heard every word.

“Mercury Developments is our largest campaign donor and what do I see on the Channel 10 news tonight, Abraham? An interview with your tree‐hugging little squeeze who’s there telling all of Adelaide some rare frog is more important to McLaren Vale than a new housing estate!”

Bram flapped his hands like a panicked penguin. “I’ll talk to Christina, Jack.”

“Do more than fuckin’ talk.” The sausage stabbed. “If your missus gets any more airtime for her Greenie rants, you—”
stab
“—won’t have to worry about pre‐selection because you—”
stab
“—will be the guy handing out how‐to‐votes for Brendan McPhee.
His
missus runs a fuckin’ coffee shop. She ices fuckin’ cakes.”

“Okay, Jack. Okay. Jesus.” Bram rubbed a hand through his hair.

Walrus‐nose wasn’t finished. “And get her to tone down her fuckin’ clothes. No punter will listen to your policies about health and education if they’re more interested in where your missus buys her fuckin’ shoes.”

“Yeah. Okay, Jack.” Bram’s hands patted the air at his hip. They were still patting as Christina backed silently out of the Blue Box Bar, and out of his life.

Six weeks later, she’d lost Bram’s child. It was the only thing of his she’d had to show for four years of her life.

The traffic lights turned green.

****

When her ringtone burst into life just before nine‐thirty that night, Christina jumped so hard she nearly sewed her index finger into fleecy fabric. Beside her, the phone vibrated, bumped against her dressmaking scissors. Her stomach clenched.
Tate
? Then she saw the caller ID

and cut Jagger off mid‐note.

“Hey, sweetie.”

“It better be good!” Lacy pounced. “I waited at our tree for fifteen minutes.”

Shit
. It was a running night.

“Lace, I’m so sorry. I had a physio appointment and I forgot to call. I’ve been working on labels with the graphic designer, all the stuff for this launch. Things are manic.” Head jammed to the side, Christina clamped the phone between the point of her shoulder and her cheek so she could keep her hands free.

“Physio? You poor old crock. Turn thirty‐five and everything falls apart. So did he find anything wrong?”

Christina cleared her throat. “He thinks I might have tendonitis in my right Achilles.

It’s been hurting like hell. He gave me a set of exercises and said rest it is the best thing. So I don’t think I can run in the City to Bay now, Lace. But I should manage to walk.” She pressed the pedal on the sewing machine and the Bernina purred.

“What else is wrong?” Lacy shrilled.

Christina lifted her foot from the pedal and cursed beneath her breath. Lacy knew her too well. “Nothing.”

“
Nothing
? That new‐fandangled sewing machine gizmo of yours may be the quietest on the market but I know it when I hear it. It’s Wednesday night.
Sons of Anarchy
starts in exactly three minutes and you’re sewing? You never miss
SOA
and you sew when you’re trying to put off thinking about stuff you don’t want to think about.”

“Sheesh, Miss Marple. I’m just mending a curtain.”

“Are you cheating on me with all your single mates? Is that why you stood me up?

Am I only good for cups of tea and scones now? We didn’t even have champagne for your birthday. I didn’t get leprosy, I got married.”

Christina chuckled. Even when the world was black, Lacy could make her laugh. “I’m having an alcohol‐free week that’s all, not an orgy.”