The Mothers Read online

  Grace lined up her fresh cache of drugs on the bathroom bench, then peeled off her stockings and underwear and turned on the taps. She had made it a habit to shower before the hormone injections. The drum of water on her back helped her relax. She stepped out, dripping, onto the bathmat and opened her medicine cabinet in search of deodorant. Here we go, she thought. Day One. Again.

  The shelves of her bathroom cabinet looked like they belonged to someone with a flourishing anti-ageing obsession. But unlike her friends, it was the ageing of her insides rather than her deepening lines and crow’s feet that most occupied Grace’s mind. Instead of employing salicylic acid and weighing up the merits of smearing caffeine onto her cheeks, she was squinting at the fine print on bottles of maca root and taking vitamins to thicken her uterine wall. From the aerial view she had of her stomach now it appeared thick enough, poking out beneath breasts whose nipples were slowly starting to point south. She examined her face, turning her head from side to side. There was a definite softening around the jawline. And her skin was slackening. She pinched her cheek and watched its surface crinkle.

  This is why we have children, she thought darkly. To distract us from the ravages of time.

  Yet, she worried about ageing only in so far as she feared it was an outward sign of the gradual winding down of her ovaries. She had never been vain, though she knew she had always been considered pretty. Her skin was pale and clear and her cheeks high and flushed with a natural rosiness. These features were helped along by her long, swinging platinum hair, which she mostly wore pulled back in a ponytail. But her weight dragged down her self-esteem. Childhood teasing had lacerated her confidence. The common schoolyard scars might have healed over time were it not for the cruelty of an aunt Grace had overheard one afternoon.

  ‘You should be relieved, Fiona,’ the aunt had told Grace’s mother, ‘that your daughter is too heavy to ever be a target for predatory men.’

  Grace wasn’t so big, not really—more voluptuous than anything. Dr Li had reassured her, when she asked, that it shouldn’t affect her fertility. Still, Grace had been taught to hate the excess kilos she carried. Even now she averted her eyes from the naked body in the mirror as she rubbed cocoa butter into her arms and chest before wrapping a towel around herself. Then, guiltily, she crouched and reached into the back of the cupboard under the basin, keeping her ears pricked in case she heard Dan’s footsteps approach. She slid aside a box of soap and spare toothpaste and pushed her hand through the folds of old towels until her fingertips felt the dry cardboard of an airfreight envelope. It was stuffed with bubble wrap and had a hard, glass heart. She dug inside the package until her fingers closed around the small bottle with a pipette’s rubber stopper for a lid.

  She unscrewed the top and squeezed the stopper so it emptied itself of air, then she drew in fluid the colour of ear wax. Grace brought it to her nose and sniffed. It was an indefinable aroma—chemical, but also organic, like rotten fruit that was starting to ferment.

  She had placed the order through an obscure website late one night in a pique of desperation. The bottle had arrived alone and unmarked, like a prop from an espionage film. The instructions on the net said to add three drops to a glass of water in the morning and at night. Grace hadn’t been able to bring herself to use it, yet she hadn’t thrown it away either. The website, which mostly sold regulated medicines at massively discounted prices, promised an eighty per cent success rate for women who were—in their words—‘reproductively challenged’.

  While the package worked its way across the Pacific Ocean, Grace reassured herself that she would Google each of the ingredients and if any of them sounded even mildly nefarious, she would bin the whole potion. But the bottle was plain, with no hint of what was contained within. She rolled it in her palm. On the one hand, medical history was littered with accidental successes—during her teaching years she had lectured students about Alexander Fleming and his fortuitous penicillium spores, and Joseph Priestly whose recreational enjoyment of nitrous oxide gave the world anaesthetic. On the other hand loomed the spectre of armless thalidomide babies and uterine tissue dissolved by primitive abortifacients.

  ‘Grace,’ Dan called. ‘Are you all right?’

  With a jerk and a shiver, Grace shoved the package back between the towels. She focused on performing the now familiar series of injections and pill-popping, wincing as she always did when the needle punctured her skin. Her rump was tender and still tinged purple where the bruising from the last battery of injections had not yet healed.

  When she opened the bathroom door she smelled spices heating in a pan. Dan appeared and pressed a stemmed glass into her hand.

  She furrowed her brow. ‘Wine?’

  ‘Apple juice. From the health food store. Nothing but the best for our blastocyst. When that little guy is implanted your insides are going to be so nutrient rich he’ll grow up to be Batman.’

  A hundred watts of guilt radiated through Grace’s body, but she hid every one of them beneath a smile. ‘To baby Batman.’ She clinked her glass against Dan’s, and as the chime of the toast rang out, Grace felt almost confident. Doctor Li had shut down her plan for DHEA but offered HGH in its place. Hope was not lost. Medical science had yet more tricks in its black bag, and she was comforted by the thought that if that ran out, there was always the little glass bottle, nestled between the towels, secretly waiting in her bathroom cupboard.

  Two

  The ute reared up, bouncing as its nose scraped the ramp that led into the shopping centre car park. Priya Laghari steadied herself against the dash, her brown eyes flicking down to Nick’s phone lying in the centre console.

  ‘There’s one,’ she said, pointing to a free space in a back corner.

  The car park was a grim place, rinsed of all colour by the elements and marred by graffiti. Nick pulled into the damp corner spot that sunlight never reached.

  ‘Back in a tick,’ he said as he climbed out.

  Priya watched her husband jog up to the cash machine, her tongue pressed against her teeth in anticipation. She waited until he was punching in his PIN before inching forward and unclipping her seat-belt. There was a cold, pointed stone in the pit of her belly. For a week now she felt like it had been wearing a hole in her stomach lining. Through the imaginary opening leaked a vague but very real sense of impending doom. The feeling never left her yet she couldn’t catch what was at its root, like grit in her eye that wouldn’t wash away. Suspicion. It made her twitchy.

  Her hand closed around Nick’s phone. He had been sneaking glances at it all day. He’d slide it up out of his pocket and run his eyes over the screen, then shove it back in a series of rapid movements, as if she wouldn’t notice if he did it quickly.

  Over the years she’d almost completely rid herself of the habit of going through his phone and she felt ashamed any time she slipped into her old ways. Snooping was a hangover from a rough patch during their first year of marriage when Priya discovered he had been sending flirtatious messages to women online. Under duress, he told their therapist he’d been briefly overwhelmed by the permanency of marriage. He said he felt he couldn’t talk to anyone and so he’d acted out, seeking flirtations with glossy-lipped avatars and engaging in lewd texting with anonymous women who were eager to please and expected nothing in return.

  It was a temporary panic, he insisted, and one she had thought they were well past. The counselling had worked, and seven years of marriage had slipped past.

  Then, just last Thursday, as he’d got up from the couch to make microwave popcorn while Priya was selecting a movie, she’d idly picked up his phone to scroll through his photos. She swiped her thumb over the screen, but couldn’t get access. It was now protected by a PIN.

  That was all it took for a seed of doubt to drop into the pit of her stomach. Within moments it had sprouted tendrils of fear. She hadn’t intended to look through his messages, but now that she couldn’t, her suspicion was awoken. Her cheeks flushed with annoyance that left a
n aftertaste of fear in the back of her throat. She counselled herself not to jump to conclusions. She would simply crack the code and reassure herself she had nothing to fear. After all, they read each other’s mail and shared a bed and a bank account. What could he possibly have to hide?

  Frowning, she’d tapped in the first four-digit number that came to mind. 1203. Her birthday. Nothing. Then she tried his birthday. When that didn’t work, the vague annoyance began to crystallise into something resembling alarm.

  She considered a few more significant dates. His mother’s birthday? Their anniversary? If she got the third guess wrong she’d be locked out and he would know she’d been snooping. She was frowning at the locked phone when she heard the microwave ping, followed by the sound of the waxed bag being torn open and the patter of the popcorn being poured into a bowl.

  ‘Perfect every time,’ Nick announced from the kitchen. ‘Leave no kernel unpopped.’

  She put his phone facedown back on the table, then smiled as he entered the lounge room carrying a big, brimming bowl.

  ‘You’re the kernel king,’ she said, with fake cheer.

  He crashed onto the couch, oblivious, and crammed a handful of corn into his mouth. ‘What are we watching? Not another arthouse snoozer, I hope.’

  ‘You loved that baroque architecture documentary we watched last week,’ she said, wounded.

  ‘You’re right,’ he replied, kissing her. ‘You make me a better, more cultured man.’

  ‘Hm,’ she said, shrugging off his embrace.

  Ever since then, she had become a lot more interested in his phone, and he, it had seemed, had become more protective of it. This was her first time alone with it in a week.

  After checking Nick was still hunched over the cash machine, she hastily tapped more combinations into his phone. They were weird things, wild guesses, like 1717, his old football jersey number repeated, and 2626, the number of his favourite player. The digits vibrated, clearing the input field and denying her access. She made a third guess: 0709 was the date he’d picked up Jacker from the lost dogs’ home. Success. The phone opened with a triumphant jingle.

  Priya looked up. Nick still had his back to the car. She narrowed her eyes and homed in on the large blue checks of his flannel shirt, which she swore looked bulkier than usual. Nicholas Archer was a tall, hulking man—the type of man that women in their sixties would call a hunk. He ate bird-like serves of food and snacked on boiled eggs, which he bit into like apples, because he was vain and gained weight easily. His outfit of choice was a singlet and an open shirt. Had he been working out? She tried to think of the last time she felt his shoulders. It had been a while.

  Chewing her lip, she raced through his photo album. It was a chronicle of various houses he was working on. They progressed, like a flip-book, from timber skeleton to completed home. Next she went to his apps, looking for anything with a suspicious icon. Love hearts. Lightning bolts. Flames. Something that could signify a portal to connect with the opposite sex. His selection was harmless enough. Run tracker. Bureau of Meteorology. AFL. Sportsbet.

  She opened his text messages. The last one was from her.

  I’ve confirmed Dr Carmichael for Sunday. 11am.

  They’d been trying for more than a year to get in to see Doctor Carmichael at the Empona IVF clinic. A month ago they’d received a call: she had an opening in April, and now, just as Priya’s anticipation was reaching a climax, here was a new threat to her happiness.

  The other messages in Nick’s inbox all looked innocent enough. One from his boss, Hector, relayed the details of a house in Wolli Creek that needed a granny flat. Lee Bridges from the football club wanted a lift to Thursday night’s training session because his car was in the shop (‘Fucken fan belt!’). She slid through more names, in search of women. Lorna. Lorna? Oh, that friend of his mother who needed a door hung. Kim B was Lee’s wife; Priya clicked open that message just to be sure.

  Thanks N. Lee will bring oranges. We got a new esky too, so no need to borrow.

  All above board. Priya could see Nick plucking his banknotes from the machine and tucking them into his wallet. There were many more names. But he was coming now.

  She was about to stash the device back in the car’s console when she spied a hive-shaped icon made of yellow horizontal bars, and a label: Bumble. What the hell was Bumble? Fear was scratching at her insides, but she had to put the phone away.

  It looked like a finance app. Maybe something to do with stocks.

  The hexagonal interface filled her head with menacing memories of that day with the wasps back when their marriage was still new. The unpleasantness of the sexting was behind them, but there was still an undercurrent of tension. The experience had taxed their love, leaving it depleted. To combat it, they had thrown themselves into renovating their house. They shared a passion for the creative, hands-on work. It had been a warm spring day. The air was full of bugs and Nick had been tearing down the back wall to the thundering sound of Metallica. When he sunk the claw of his demolition bar into the timber, a lone insect had emerged from the cavity. One became two. Two became four.

  Priya, in gardening gloves, her arms full of old wood, watched on but didn’t register what was happening. Nick swung the pointy end of his bar into the wall again. As the metal sliced through the dried-out boards and crumbling plaster, more of the yellow- and-black drones appeared.

  ‘Nick, be careful,’ Priya had called over the blare of the stereo. His goggles were dusted with splinters and other particulate matter. ‘Nick! Is that a nest? Nick!’

  He hacked at the wall again, this time ripping the nest right open. The angry, buzzing swarm spewed out.

  ‘Shit.’ He dropped the iron bar. ‘Wasps.’

  One minute he’d been striding around the backyard looking every bit the hero of a beer commercial, the next he was being bundled into the back of an ambulance, shrunken and white. Priya was left to pace the fluorescent hospital waiting room for thirty minutes. When the doctor gave her the okay she burst into Nick’s room and kissed him all over his face.

  ‘I’m such an idiot.’ His voice was a frayed whisper.

  ‘It was hard to see to the nest.’

  ‘No, not that. Well … not only that. The messages—’

  ‘Sh.’ She laid her head on his chest.

  The near-tragedy brought them closer. Nick was off work for two weeks, weak and grateful for Priya’s care. As he healed, they healed. And like the venom in Nick’s system, the bitter hurt Priya had felt diminished and then disappeared. Months later, she stole a glance at his phone one last time to confirm the messaging really had stopped. It was clear. Her worry was subdued and she was reassured she could trust him again. Until last Thursday.

  ‘Ready?’ Nick said, clicking in his seat-belt.

  ‘Mm-hm.’

  As he backed out of the car space she slid her phone from her bag and Googled the Bumble app. A voice in her head whispered: Please not again.

  ‘What the eff?’ Nick’s tone made her jump.

  ‘What?’ She guiltily pulled her phone to her chest.

  ‘Chewing gum,’ he growled, lifting his foot up. A string of grey goo stretched from the sole of his shoe to the pedal. ‘Hang on.’

  He wrenched on the hand brake and swung open his door, scraping the bottom of his boot against the bitumen and cursing quietly to himself. ‘They need to do something about this ghetto.’ Behind them, a horn honked. ‘All right!’ he shouted. ‘Some people,’ he grumbled as he got back in the car.

  His focus once again on the road, Priya was free to peer at her phone. Bumble, as she feared, was a dating app. Not a stock-market monitor. Not a bee-keeping advisory service, as some part of her subconscious had desperately suggested. Disappointment flooded her senses.

  ‘Shit.’ Nick slammed on the brakes. They both jolted forward. Two teens on skateboards sailed across their path. ‘Hey!’ Nick yelled. They laughed. One stuck up a finger. Nick flexed his own fingers, then gripped the wheel ha
rder. ‘Sorry.’ He placed a hand on Priya’s knee. ‘I’m on edge. I can’t stop thinking about the appointment tomorrow.’

  Priya raised her hand to shield her eyes from the sinking sun. ‘I hate it here,’ she said, scowling at the grease spots and stray pieces of litter rotting in the gutters of the neglected mall. The ugliness was absolute.

  Alongside the dirty white mouth of the shopping centre was an advertisement for a new kind of cider. Shot on the beaches of Bondi, it urged drinkers to ‘kick back with a sixpack’. It took in a panorama of sand, waves and an ocean pool of rippling teal. The exported images felt a million miles from the Sydney Priya knew. The glittering harbour’s sails and bridge were as foreign to her as it was to the tourists it attracted, with their walking sandals and their bum-bags, eating double-decker ice-creams. She looked at the ad and wished she were there, with a scoop of strawberry melting into the fluffy white sphere of coconut. Nose rouged by the sun. The beachy smell of sunscreen in the air.

  ‘Are you still cooking something for Mum’s tonight?’ Nick asked.

  She looked at him and instinctively pulled her phone closer to her chest. ‘Yes. Why wouldn’t I?’

  ‘Didn’t you say you needed pomegranate molasses? Should we stop?’

  Pomegranate molasses was the secret ingredient of her famous chocolate mousse cake. The first time Nick took her home to his parents, tugging her gently by the hand as she trailed behind him, his mother, Kayla, had looked Priya over with barely concealed dislike. Priya had self-consciously rubbed her arm, feeling the woman’s blue eyes on her dark skin. Dangling from her hand was a bag containing a Tupperware container, which she placed on the table. When she removed the lid to reveal a passionfruit sponge, Kayla had visibly brightened. Priya was still unable to enter the Archer household without a baked envoy to clear away resistance.