chapter seventeen
The day of the barbeque
‘So, this is a big thing we’re asking of you, and it’s absolutely not something we’d expect an answer on right away,’ said Oliver. He leaned forward with his elbows resting on his knees, his hands locked together. He brought to mind a mortgage broker who had just given a lengthy explanation of a complex loan arrangement.
He looked gravely at Clementine and indicated a cream manila folder on the coffee table in front of him.
‘We have some literature ready for you.’ He enunciated the four syllables of the word ‘literature’ with tiny lip-smacks of satisfaction. It was the sort of word that both Oliver and Erika found soothing. Like documentation. Like procedure. ‘It explains exactly what would be involved. Frequently asked questions. The clinic gave it to us to pass on, but if you’d rather not take it now, that’s fine, we don’t want to overload you, because at this stage we’re just, you know, putting it out there, I guess is the right way to describe it.’
He sat back against the couch and glanced at Erika who, bizarrely, had chosen this moment to kneel down beside the coffee table and cut a piece of cheese from the (tiny, Clementine didn’t know they made them that small) wheel of Brie.
Oliver looked away from his wife and back at Clementine. ‘All we’re saying today is: Is this something you would possibly consider? But, as I said, we don’t need any response at all from you, and, by the way if, down the track, you were to say you would consider it, there’s a mandatory cooling-off period of three months. And you can pull out any time. Any time. No matter how far we progress. Well, not quite any time. Not once Erika is pregnant, obviously!’ He chuckled nervously, adjusted his glasses and frowned. ‘Actually, you can pull out right up until when the eggs are inseminated but at that point they legally become our property, um …’ His voice drifted. ‘Sorry. That’s far too much information at this early stage. I’m nervous. We’re both a bit nervous!’
Clementine’s heart twisted for him. Oliver generally avoided hazardous topics of conversation – anything political, sexual or overly emotional – but here he was soldiering on his own through this most awkward of conversations because he wanted so badly to be a father. Was there anything more attractive than a man who longed for children?
Sam cleared his throat. He put his hand on Clementine’s knee. ‘So, mate, I’m just getting my head around this. It would be your …’
‘It would be my sperm,’ said Oliver. He coloured. ‘I know it all sounds sort of …’
‘No, no,’ said Sam. ‘Of course not. I’ve got a good friend who went through IVF so I’ve got a basic sort of understanding of the, you know, ins and outs.’
The ins and outs.
She’d tease him about that unfortunate turn of phrase later on. Clementine knew Sam was talking about his friend Paul, and that in reality Sam had been entirely oblivious to the ‘process’, except for his joy at the outcome: a baby boy for Paul and Emma. Sam loved babies (in Clementine’s experience no man loved babies more; Sam was the first in line for a cuddle of a newborn and would scoop older babies straight from their parents’ arms) but he hadn’t wanted to hear Paul and Emma talking about ‘egg retrievals’ and ‘embryo transfers’.
Erika lifted a cracker between her fingers. ‘More cheese, Sam?’
Everyone stared at her.
‘No thanks, Erika,’ said Sam. ‘I’m good.’
It was clearly Clementine’s turn to say something but there was a constricted feeling around her chest that seemed to be preventing her from talking. She wished one of her daughters would yell for her, but predictably, they were being quiet and well behaved the one time she would have liked them to interrupt.
They seemed to love Erika’s craft table.
Erika would be an excellent mother, a craft-table, watch-your-manners, hand-sanitiser-in-the-handbag sort of mother. Oliver would be a good father too. Clementine could see him doing something old-fashioned and painstaking with a dear studious little boy, like making model aeroplanes.
To their own child, thought Clementine despairingly. They’d be good parents to their own child. Not my child.
It wouldn’t be your child, Clementine. But it would. Technically, as Holly would say, it would be her child. Her DNA.
People do this for strangers, she told herself. They donate eggs just to be nice, to be kind. To people they’ve never met. This was her friend. Her ‘best friend’. So why was the word ‘No!’ so loud in her head?
‘Well,’ she said finally, inadequately. ‘This is a lot to think about.’
‘Absolutely,’ said Oliver. He looked again at Erika but she was still no help to the poor man. She had laid out a line of crackers and was placing a thin sliver of cheese on each one. Who did she think was going to eat them? Oliver blinked once and smiled apologetically at Clementine. ‘Please don’t think this is the end of the road for us if you decide it’s not for you. There will be other options. It’s just that you were the first person we thought of, being Erika’s closest friend, and you’re the right age, and you’re done having kids –’
‘Done having kids?’ said Sam. His hand tightened on Clementine’s. ‘We’re not necessarily done having kids.’
‘Oh,’ said Oliver. ‘Sorry. Gosh. I thought, that is, Erika was definitely under the impression –’
‘You said you’d rather poke your eyes out than have another baby,’ said Erika to Clementine in that truculent way she had when she could disprove something with facts. ‘I asked you. It was last September. We had yum cha. I said, “Are you done with babies?” You said, “I’d rather poke –” ’
‘I was joking,’ interrupted Clementine. ‘Of course I was joking.’
She hadn’t been joking. Oh God, but was this her only way out now? Would she have to give birth to get herself out of this situation?
‘Well, you can certainly still donate eggs if you want to have more children,’ said Oliver. Three deep, corrugated lines furrowed his forehead, like a cartoon character frowning. ‘The clinic does prefer known donors to have completed their families but it’s, ah, it’s all there in the literature.’
‘You said that you’d rather poke your eyes out than have another baby?’ said Sam to Clementine. ‘You really said that?’
‘I was joking!’ repeated Clementine. ‘I’d probably had a bad day with the kids.’
Of course she’d always known this was an issue. Her deluded hope had been that he’d just, well, get over it. Every time the girls were badly behaved, or when the house seemed too small for the four of them and they kept losing things, or when they worried over their financial situation, she secretly hoped that Sam’s hopes of another baby were gently, sensibly fading away.
She should never have told Erika she was done with babies. It was a flippant remark. A carefully constructed flippancy was her default position with Erika. She should have confided that Sam didn’t feel the same way, because there had always been the risk it could come up in conversation, just as it had today.
She rarely shared information like that with Erika. She deliberately withheld herself. With other friends she didn’t think twice, she chatted about whatever came into her head, because she knew they’d probably forget half of what she said. There was no one else in the world, not her mother or her husband, who listened so ravenously to what she had to say, as if every word mattered and was worthy of being filed away for future reference.
As a child, whenever Erika had come to play, she would first do a peculiar audit of Clementine’s room. She’d open every drawer and silently examine its contents. She’d even get down on her hands and knees to look under Clementine’s bed, while Clementine stood, mutely infuriated but, at her mother’s request, being kind and polite. Everyone is different, Clementine.
Erika had obviously learned some social niceties as a grown-up, and didn’t go through her cupboards anymore, but Clementine still sensed that avaricious gleam in Erika’s eyes whenever they were in conversation. It was as though Erika’s desire to look under Clementine’s bed was still there and so was Clementine’s mute outraged resistance.
But the really ironic thing was that it now appeared Erika had the same policy of not sharing anything important. She’d kept this huge secret for the past two years, and Clementine’s first reaction had been to feel hurt by the revelation: Oh yes, it was all fine for Clementine to lord it over Erika from up high on her friendship pedestal, graciously bestowing gifts: Why yes, Erika, you may be the godmother of my firstborn!
So, okay, fine then, if their friendship was an illusion and had no substance to it, on either side, but now Erika was asking something you asked only of a dearest friend.
She looked down at the cracker in her hand and didn’t know what to do with it. The room was silent except for the gentle babble of Holly and Ruby in the next room, doing their craft like little angels, as if in rebuke to Clementine. Look how darling we are. Give Daddy another baby. Help your friend have a baby. Be kind, Clementine, be kind. Why are you so unkind?
A crazy, complicated symphony of feelings rose in her chest. She wanted to throw a tantrum like Ruby, to fling herself to the floor and bang out her frustration with her forehead on the carpet. Ruby always made sure it was carpet before she started banging her head.
Sam moved his hand from her leg and shifted slightly away from her. He’d left a triangle-sized piece of cracker on Erika’s spotless white leather couch. Oliver removed his glasses and his eyes looked bruised and tender, like those of a tiny animal emerging from hibernation. He polished them with the edge of his T-shirt. Erika sat immobile and upright, as if at a funeral, her eyes following something past Clementine’s head.
‘That’s Dakota,’ she said.
‘Dakota?’ asked Clementine.
‘Dakota,’ said Erika. ‘The little girl from next door. Vid must be getting impatient. He’s sent her over to collect us for the barbeque.’
The doorbell rang. Erika jumped violently.
Sam leaped to his feet like a man whose name has finally been called after a tedious wait in a bureaucratic institution. ‘Let’s go have a barbeque.’