31
IT’S MY FIRST solo shift at the shop. Bobbi has taken the first week of January off, and I’m in charge. ‘It’ll be slow,’ she assured me. ‘It always is. Call if you have any problems. Or questions. Call anytime. I expect you to text at least five times a day. I’ll worry if you don’t.’ She stocked the biscuit jar with Tim Tams. She must have asked Hayley.
It’s hot, and muggy, and then it starts pouring, which immediately sets the tone of the day. It’s not just slow, it’s deserted. No one has come in. There might be no one left in Melbourne. Everyone is at the beach or holed up inside with bad TV. You should be reading, I want to yell into the bare streets. And not the books you got for Christmas. Those should be finished already. New ones!
I don’t want my first day manning the tills to be Bobbi’s first day of zero takings. I move around the shop with a feather duster, making a list in my head of the books I want to buy. Then I start pulling them off the shelves and stacking them behind the counter. A lovely looking romance. A new Australian debut that sounds funny. A crime novel, for supporting my fellow authors of murder. A memoir by a writer I have long admired. A classic I’ve always wanted to read. A middle-grade adventure, so I can get better acquainted with the children’s book section. I pause, looking at my stack. I am going to spend more than I’ll earn today, even with a staff discount. But at least it won’t be a no sales day.
The phone rings.
‘It’s me,’ Bobbi says. ‘Everything going okay?’
‘Yes! All going well.’
‘Is it dead?’
‘It’s…not super busy.’
‘How dead? How many customers are in the shop right now?’
‘Um…’ I have the door closed for the air conditioning, and I hear it opening. ‘Someone is coming in right now, I better go,’ I say, and hang up.
I look up with relief. A customer at last.
And then I freeze.
It’s Joel. Pushing a pram.
I know a million emotions are crossing my face right now, and that Joel knows exactly how to read them, but I can’t stop myself. It’s Joel and his baby.
‘Hi,’ he says.
‘Hi,’ I say.
He looks uncomfortable, and the silence between us draws out.
‘I work here now,’ I say, in part to fill in the silence and in part because he looks scared about why I’m standing behind the counter.
‘I didn’t know that,’ he says.
‘It’s a new situation.’
‘You quit your job?’ he says, looking concerned. He probably thinks I was fired.
‘I did,’ I say. I almost start babbling about dreams and the future and Marco, but I stop myself. I don’t owe Joel any explanations about my life. And I know he would have told me to tough it out and stay.
We haven’t spoken since the fight at the wedding. That’s the longest I’ve ever gone without speaking to Joel since I met him almost ten years ago. I still think about him, almost involuntarily. Sometimes I’ll read an article and I’ll want to share it with him before I have time to correct the thought, or I’ll find myself having an argument with him in my head. I have thought about him and Bianca and the baby. Whose house did they go to at Christmas, did they pass the baby around or was Joel too worried about germs, did they get so many gifts for her that they don’t know what to do with them all. I went back and forth on whether I should reach out to him after Birdie was born, and I decided on no. Now it feels like I should have.
‘Can I help you to find something?’ I say. Best to just go into customer-service mode.
I want to say something about the pram, about the baby I am assuming is inside it, the literal baby elephant in the room. But it’s his baby, he should say something first. That’s an etiquette rule with exes, surely. He needs to introduce me.
‘I was looking for a book. Bobbi was ordering it in for me. A while ago. I forgot to come in and pick it up. I’m not getting much sleep.’ He looks nervous, saying this, referencing the existence of the baby.
‘Oh right. Um. Congratulations.’ I smile the biggest smile I can before he will question my sincerity, and gesture to the pram. Show her to me, then, I think. Maybe she won’t be cute.
‘Thank you,’ he says. He moves the pram a little, starting to turn it towards me, and then looks at my face, as if trying to discern whether I’m having a breakdown or not.
‘I’d love to meet her,’ I say, since he seems to need encouragement. Meet her? Do you meet babies?
‘She’s asleep. But you can look in,’ he says.
I walk around the counter and peer in. She’s tiny, wrapped up in a pink blanket, scrunched face, full head of Joel’s thick black hair. The most perfect nose. My heart hurts.
‘She’s so beautiful,’ I say. My voice, thankfully, doesn’t waver.
‘She is,’ he says.
She moves then, twitching, and makes a loud grunting kind of noise, and Joel looks as startled as I feel.
‘This is my first solo outing with her,’ he says to me sheepishly. ‘She’s six weeks old. Bianca’s having a nap. It feels sort of illegal that I’m allowed to be outside with her on my own. Like I can’t believe I have a baby.’
I open my mouth to reply. He’s smiling, wanting to share the feeling with me, and I understand it, because that’s how I would feel too. But I’m not doing this, I’m not sharing this moment with him.
‘Birdie is a beautiful name,’ I say, to change the subject, and I do think this, but I’m also being a little bit of a bitch. I want him to know I know about the name. I want him to worry that I think it’s ridiculous. I want to punish him for making me feel like this. I want to remind him he vetoed the name Stevie.
‘Thank you. It’s Bianca’s choice, but it’s grown on me. It suits her,’ he grins, leaning into the pram to touch her cheek with the back of his finger, and, oh, I see it, how tender he is with her, how much he loves his baby, how much he loves being a dad, how much he doesn’t care what I think of her name.
‘So,’ I say. ‘The book.’
I walk back behind the counter and rummage in the shelf for orders until I find it. I take longer than I need to, so my cheeks will cool down and my hands will stop trembling and I can swallow down my feelings. It’s a parenting book.
‘We’re a bit clueless,’ Joel smiles, looking at it.
‘This one is meant to be the best,’ I say, though I have no idea. I hesitate. ‘Did you want to look at any of the picture books?’ I say. I might be walking away from this interaction with a shredded soul but damn it, I’m going to upsell him. He is not getting out of here spending less than sixty dollars if it kills me.
‘Oh.’ Joel pauses. ‘Yes. Maybe I should.’
‘You know what the studies show.’
‘What do they show?’ He frowns. Joel is easy to bait with any mention of ‘studies’. Although he’ll probably want to know what journal it was published in, when it was published and the methodology used.
‘The more books you surround your child with, the more successful they’ll be in life. And it starts when they’re babies. I know correlation doesn’t mean causation but…’
‘I better look at the picture books then,’ he says, smiling.
I hand him The Gruffalo , Where Is the Green Sheep? and Magic Beach . The more expensive hardcover version of each.
‘Start with these.’
He dutifully adds them to the parenting book on the counter.
‘And what about some cute socks for Bianca?’ I add. Now I’m pushing my luck. I hold up a hot-pink pair that say ‘Prose over bros’ and Joel gives me a long, pained look.
‘Okay, I’ll get those too,’ he sighs.
I’m very pleased with the total when I hold out the EFTPOS machine for him to tap.
‘Look. About the wedding,’ Joel says.
‘Mmm?’ I say, focusing very hard on watching his phone bump against the screen.
‘I hate that we left things like that.’
Not quite the apology I would have liked, but it’s something.
I look up at him. ‘Well, we never had a big, ugly fight like that when we broke up. So maybe it was the closure we needed,’ I say.
It didn’t feel like closure at the time. It felt like ripping open old wounds. But it feels a bit more like closure now.
‘Maybe,’ he says. ‘But I shouldn’t have yelled at you. And I lied. When I said I never loved you. I did love you. You know that.’
‘I do,’ I say. ‘But thank you for telling me.’
‘I just wanted you to know, so you didn’t think that what we had didn’t matter, that the whole time was a waste.’
‘I never thought it was a waste.’
I put his books in a bag. ‘Here you go,’ I say, sliding them across the counter.
‘And I read the acknowledgments. Of your book. It was really nice, what you wrote there.’
‘Well, I kind of regret it, if we’re being honest.’
He smiles.
‘I figured. But, still, it was nice.’
He’s still standing there. Is he waiting for me to hug him? I have promised myself that I will never touch him again.
‘Well, it’s nice to see you,’ I say. ‘And Birdie. Let’s…not be afraid to see each other again.’ This is my vague way of telling him he’s welcome to start coming over to Hayley and Luke’s house again.
‘Thanks, Anna,’ he says. He looks pleased. Like he thinks he’s done a good, selfless act. He’ll be telling himself what a good guy he is all day, probably. I bought the books she recommended and the ludicrous socks and I told her she wasn’t a total waste . No. I’m not going to think mean thoughts about him anymore. I’m not going to imagine the possible mean thoughts he has about me. I’m not going to think about him at all.
That night, I tell Mac about meeting Birdie.
‘How did you feel?’ he says.
‘I felt okay,’ I say.
‘Really?’
‘I felt a bit…sad, I guess, or not sad, but there was some leftover grief there.’
‘Did you—’ Mac says, and hesitates.
‘Did I…?’
‘Did you wish it was you? Who had the baby with him?’
‘No,’ I say. I’m not sure if this answer is honest or not. I don’t feel any desire to be with Joel anymore, but in an alternative universe, did I wish my life had gone down that path, with him? Maybe. If I knew, if I had some absolute guarantee, that I would still get to have that in the future, then no, I wouldn’t wish it with Joel at all. But I have no guarantees. If it was Joel, or nothing, then maybe. I don’t know.
‘Do you think he was the love of your life?’ Mac asks.
I hesitate.
‘No. I did, for a long time, but now I don’t. And it’s not just that we broke up. I don’t think he ever made me feel how the love of my life should make me feel. And anyway, the psychic told me the love of my life was Patrick. So either way, I’m screwed.’
We always talk during my night and Mac’s morning, because it works best for our schedules. And it’s always talking. Not video calls. Messages and phone calls. Words and voices. He says he’s becoming a morning person for me.
‘Should we record our conversations and make it a podcast?’ I say to him. ‘A writer and an actor discuss movies and life. The hook is you’re famous.’
‘I am not famous,’ he says.
‘You’re as famous as people I see making stuff and calling themselves famous.’
‘You saw my apartment. I’ll show you my bank account and you’ll see I’m not famous,’ he says.
‘Fame isn’t about money.’
‘Then what’s it about?’
‘Power? Attention?’
‘I think it’s mostly about money.’
‘Do you want to be famous?’
‘Fuck no.’
‘You must. A bit. You’ve tasted fame.’
‘And it tastes bad.’
‘Oh, come on. When people are lining up, after the show, to see you. That feels good.’
‘That feels good, yeah, but that feels like a reward for the work, for the performance. Not for being famous. I love the work.’
He’ll always choose his work , I hear Luke saying.
‘What do you love most about it?’ I ask.
‘I don’t know. All of it. No, that’s a lazy answer. I love. Hmmm. Sometimes you’ll be working and working on finding a character, and you’ll do the smallest thing, a head tilt, a movement, say one line a certain way, and you’ll just know: oh that’s it, I’ve got it, they’re here, I’ve found them. That moment of discovery. That’s what I love most,’ he says.
‘What do you love most about writing?’ he adds.
‘The same thing. That moment.’