On a Saturday when Millie was seventeen days old, Aida roasted a joint of beef. Meaty steam baked her face as she opened the oven to retrieve the heavy tray, and fat spat and hissed at her as she set pieces of potato and pumpkin alongside the beef. She returned the pan to the oven. When the vegetables were done she would make gravy from the pan drippings.
Aida herself wouldn’t eat this meal.
Thomas had not seen his younger brother, David, for many months. When David had phoned a few days ago to say he was coming up to Gawler, and asked would Thomas like to join him in wetting the baby’s head, Thomas pointed out his brother was only nineteen, and perhaps David might like to come over for a meal instead. Besides, Thomas had told David, Elsie would love to see him, too.
As she peeled carrots, Aida listened to Millie’s cries from the bedroom and the muffled sounds of Elsie’s attempts to soothe her. Over the past few days Millie had grown increasingly fussy, spitting up after her bottles and waking frequently, fretfully. They were all equally sleep-deprived, but Aida reminded herself it was Elsie who was recovering from childbirth, and it was Thomas who had to go to work each day. Preparing a tea – even one to which she could not be invited – was the least she could do.
Rounds of carrot skittered in the bowl as Aida slammed it aside. The pitch of Millie’s cries had ratcheted up several notches, drowning out Elsie entirely. Aida pressed her fingers to her temples. Through the window, Thomas was pushing the mower along the fence between the houses. She could make out his mouth moving – he was singing.
Aida sighed. A few potatoes and a piece of meat could be spared, some gravy. She would press them between slices of buttered bread and sit in the quiet, the solitude, of her empty house next door and eat and read a novel in peace. For a couple of hours she would not think of them. Surely she could manage that.
Millie had settled into a rolling wail. The cries suddenly dimmed in volume; a door closed over the top of them. Elsie appeared in the kitchen, her face haggard and wet with tears. Aida wanted to go to her. Instead she stayed at the sink, rinsing string beans under the tap.
‘I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong.’
‘You’re not doing anything wrong,’ Aida said. ‘Babies cry.’
‘It doesn’t seem to matter what I do: I pick her up, I rock her, I change her nappy, I give her another bottle. Nothing works.’
Aida turned off the tap and looked out the window, biting the inside of her cheek against a tremor of panic. If the mother who had given birth to that baby could grow tired and resentful of its demands – what about a person who did not have that flesh and blood connection? Would a carer hold and rock and love a needy baby who was not their own? Or would the baby, without a mother’s arms to cradle it, cry until it ceased calling out, until it believed itself abandoned?
Millie’s cries raked the skin from their bodies, and Aida relented. She dropped the beans, dried her hands on her apron and enfolded Elsie in her arms.
‘What does Dr Spock say?’
‘To hell with Spock,’ Elsie mumbled into her shoulder.
Aida laughed in spite of herself.
‘Goodness, that roast smells good.’ Elsie drew away and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. ‘I’m absolutely ravenous.’
Millie’s cries had changed into desperate, coughing sobs and their hearts broke. Elsie sighed and hauled herself upright, but Aida put a hand on her arm.
‘I’ll go.’
Elsie’s protest was feeble. ‘But you’ve got tea . . .’
‘You top and tail the beans. Then it’s pretty much done.’
‘You’ve made the whole thing, Ay.’
Elsie’s forlorn expression irritated her.
*
David would arrive around six, he had told Thomas. So at five-thirty, in case David arrived early, Aida slipped out the back door, clutching the warm sandwich in a tea-towel, and crossed the yard. Elsie wanted to go with her, to share a quick cup of tea, but Aida insisted she stay and rest while Millie was finally napping. Besides, Aida had tucked a vindicating bottle of Cab Sav – a gift Thomas had received from a travelling rep – beneath her cardigan that would belong to her entirely.
About a year ago, Elsie had planted a row of pittosporum along the front of the house. Nourished frequently with generous doses of fertiliser that Thomas brought home, the plants had sprung up into a thick, leafy hedge and shielded their yards from the street. The well-trodden path between the two houses was hidden from sight.
Aida approached Elsie’s gate between the two yards and felt a heavy sinking in her chest. Thinking Aida was going to feed them, the chooks flapped to the fence.
‘Sorry,’ she told them, holding her sandwich tighter. ‘This is my comfort food.’
It didn’t happen often that Thomas and Elsie entertained like this – once every few months, perhaps. There were times, too, when Aida could even be included – a couple of the local wives knew Aida to be a friend of Elsie’s – the miner’s wife from next door – and her presence, should she be in attendance on more than one occasion, invited no curious probing or extended explanation.
Aida unlocked the door and stepped inside, kicking her shoes off. The floor was gritty beneath her feet and after setting the wine and sandwich on the table, she went to the laundry for a broom.
It was different with family. Maintaining the pretence felt more difficult with people who had known them their whole lives; family were the people who, no matter how infrequently one saw them, always felt deserving of an explanation that wasn’t a lie. Elsie’s mother and sisters, for instance, had never met Aida. Nor, in this instance, could David. It was simply more manageable this way.
Aida sloshed Cab Sav into a tumbler and sat and ate her sandwich alone. It might be more manageable, but that didn’t make it easy.
*
‘Glasson residence, Dorthea speaking.’
Aida clutched the phone to her ear and tried to will the words from her throat, but it felt as though there were marbles blocking the way.
‘Is anyone there, hello?’
Aida considered hanging up. Set the phone back in its cradle and no one would even know she had called. Maybe she could take a few days to herself; clean the house, shop for food. Give Thomas and Elsie some space. Maybe that was all she needed.
Aida pressed the mouthpiece tightly against her chin.
Earlier she had heard coming from next door the sounds of Thomas’s exclaimed greeting, laughter from an unfamiliar male voice. She had peered through a crack in the curtains, but she couldn’t see across to the other front door. The car on the street was a dusty blue wagon.
‘Hello . . . ?’ Her mother’s voice moved away from the phone. ‘I don’t know, John, I can’t hear anything.’
Resting the phone in the crook of her shoulder, she felt the phantom weight of Millie’s head nestled into her neck. Sometimes, Elsie put the baby in the pram and parked it under the gum tree. Said the fresh air was good for her lungs. Even when she wasn’t in her arms, Elsie always knew where her baby was. Elsie was always doing the right things for her baby.
Aida did not know where her baby was.
The scent of Millie lingered on Aida’s clothing: Lux soap and milk. The sourness of bottled milk – Aida realised that’s what her baby would have smelled like, too. Elsie said the doctors had told her that her own milk wasn’t good enough, but Aida pictured the swollen, vein-tracked redness of Elsie’s breasts, the greasy damp spots that darkened the fronts of her dresses, and pressed her fingernails into her palms.
Two years ago, only a few nights after she had finally returned to her parents’ house from the lying-in home, Aida had awoken in her childhood bed in the dark, sweating and painful with fever. She had removed her nightdress and unrolled the bindings from her chest. The last few strips had been gluey across the front and she had flinched as she peeled the last strip away from her nipples; it had come away with a soft un-sticking sound. Aida remembered holding the strip and seeing the yellowish stains on the fabric. Her milk. Her baby’s milk.
As she stared at the stained binding, Aida had felt a strange sensation in her breasts. A tingling rush, as though the flesh was gathering up like fabric into smocking. And as she watched, her nipples drew out and creamy beads formed at their tips, then dripped and landed on the barren roll of her belly, sliding down her skin and into her underwear. Mixing with her tears.
Her mother’s voice came tinny through the earpiece. ‘If there’s someone there I can’t hear you. Speak up, please.’
What kind of a life was this? There were courting couples, there were husbands and wives – but Thomas, Elsie and Aida? Aida didn’t know if a word existed for what they were.
Aida swigged the last mouthful of wine, and said, ‘Mum, it’s me.’
‘Aida?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Oh my goodness. Has something happened?’
‘Everything’s fine.’ It was like a reflex, wasn’t it? How are you / I’m fine. But she wasn’t fine. The only reason Aida was calling her mother, whom she had barely spoken to for over a year, was because she felt as though she was unravelling. Soon there might be nothing holding her together. And she didn’t know why.
‘I thought I might come and stay for a while.’