WITH EACH SPRING DAY THAT passed, there were a few extra minutes of daylight, which suited us perfectly, because progress in the cheese room was slow and our to-do list was long.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the nursery was quickly finished. From the get-go, Mum had been determined that it was the priority, and despite my efforts to tell her that the bébé wouldn’t mind if the walls didn’t match the bed sheets, she was taking her grandmothering duties very, very seriously.
And she’d taken to life in France surprisingly well. She navigated the country roads like a pro and managed to accomplish tasks that I’d been putting off since arriving here. After finishing her work in the nursery, she’d moved on to the cheese-room renovations, coordinating deliveries of new appliances and bossing around workmen in her rudimentary but very practical French. Seeing what she was capable of simultaneously impressed and stressed me. I wondered if she’d always been so efficient and perhaps I just hadn’t realized it. Does that mothering gene surface when the baby does? I wondered. Perhaps it’ll skip a generation, and I’m destined to always rely on Mum for help. I couldn’t help but feel a little inept in her shadow.
Gradually, though, things in the cheese room were slowly taking shape. Theoretically, all that we needed in order to open was the oven and more furniture, which I still needed to hunt down either on second-hand sites or at the local trash-and-treasure markets. While we were close, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t quite right.
“It’s just a little cold,” Mum said one afternoon while Ray was installing the dishwasher, and I was sitting in the sun taking a tea break.
“Turn up the heater, then,” I said, annoyed at the prospect of standing up.
“Not physically cold, just, you know, cold. Not very inviting. For a café, it’s a little stark.”
I felt hurt.
“But it’s not finished yet,” I told her.
“I don’t know if an oven will necessarily change that,” she said.
“Just you wait,” I told her. “It’s meant to be a clean space, nothing too frou-frou. It’s not an English tea shop; it’s more of a café, or rather a hybrid French–Australian cheese-tasting room and café all in one. It defies categorization, really,” I explained, feeling like my pitch was getting more confused with time.
“Well, I’m just saying that it could do with a little something extra,” she said matter-of-factly.
I looked around and wondered if she had a point. “I’ve still got some decorating to do,” I told her. And although I hadn’t planned anything in detail, I figured a quick hunt around Instagram would be enough to give me some ideas to cosy things up a little.
“And when will the cheese cabinet arrive?” she asked.
Oh shit!
I’d totally forgotten about the cheese cabinet. Serge had offered to order it for me but I told him I’d take care of it.
“It should be here any day now,” I lied, panicking. I wondered if I could blame this slipup on “baby brain.”
“Good. You wouldn’t want Serge to think you’ve forgotten him,” she said.
“Hah,” I laughed uncomfortably, pulling out my phone to find out where I could order a damn cheese cabinet to be delivered in the next few days. I’d been so focused on the café side that I’d completely forgotten the point of this whole venture was to help sell Serge’s cheese. How could I have been so thoughtless?
“And perhaps a couch or two in the corner against those walls would be nice,” Mum added, still pacing around.
“Mum, stop. I’ve got this,” I told her, adding “find some damn couches” to my to-do list.
She looked at her watch and reminded me it was time to get to the doctor.
“Ah, shoot, I totally forgot,” I said, wondering if anything else important had slipped my mind.
“That’s why I’m here, darling. To make sure you don’t lose your head in all this.”
In the doctor’s waiting room, I had one of those “What on earth am I doing here?” moments. I had to be the only patient in the room under sixty, and Mum and I were definitely the only ones without walking canes.
“So, tell me about your doctor,” Mum said, looking around skeptically.
“He’s fine,” I told her. “A little old, perhaps. Anyway, he just gets me through the monthly checks. He won’t be at the delivery. I’ll just have a midwife, and a doctor on call if I need one.”
When it had come to choosing a GP, Serge had mildly insisted we meet with his family’s old doctor, Doctor Gerard. I’d blindly agreed, as I didn’t really mind whom I saw. What I hadn’t realized was that Serge’s old family doctor was extraordinarily, well, old.
When I first met him and shook his hand, I could feel him shaking and figured he must have been at least eighty. How is he still practicing? I’d wondered. His office looked like it’d been untouched in decades, and I didn’t even see a computer. The bookshelves, however, were lined with medical books, which instilled some confidence, although I didn’t dare look at when they’d been published.
Age aside he was delightfully sweet, and after our first appointment, I hadn’t had the heart to find somebody else. Besides, women had been growing babies for much longer than even Doctor Gerard had been around.
“And is it normal for French partners not to attend these appointments?” Mum asked, reminding me that Serge wasn’t by my side.
“Of course not. French men are generally very supportive. Serge just has a lot going on right now,” I said in his defense. I wasn’t sure why I was sticking up for him, though. After reassuring me multiple times that he would come, he’d pulled out at the last minute because Cecile the goat had apparently gone missing. It’d taken a lot of deep breathing during the drive over to stop myself from bursting into tears.
And now the lump in my throat was back.
Thankfully, we were called in shortly after.
“Good news,” Doctor Gerard said in French after we’d sat down.
I looked at him, feeling nervous. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“We’ve got a new ultrasound machine,” he said, rubbing his hands together.
Mum looked to me to see whether she’d understood correctly. “I’ll get to see the baby?” she asked, rubbing her own hands together with glee.
“Le bébé, yes!” he said excitedly.
“Oh, great,” I said flatly, devastated that Serge was going to miss another opportunity to see his child growing. Now that Mum was here, he seemed to have happily handed over the role of looking after me to her. He was working even longer hours, and when I did see him our interactions were efficient and practical—mostly discussing what we’d done in the cheese room and what was left to do.
“Shall we do the ultrasound first, then?” Doctor Gerard asked. “Get to the more boring bits after.”
I wasn’t sure how comfortable I was with Doctor Gerard referring to a medical discussion as “boring,” but I, too, was eager to see the baby.
Seconds into the scan, and just as I was about to tell him we were keeping the sex a secret, he blurted out, “Oh là là. Elle est grande, votre fille!”
“Elle? It’s a girl?” Mum echoed, squealing. “What brilliant news!”
“We weren’t planning on finding out the sex,” I told Doctor Gerard, crestfallen.
“Why on earth not?” he asked. “How will you know what color clothes to buy? Not knowing is very unpractical.”
I shrugged. It seemed the concept of gender neutrality was lost on my old doc.
“So, you’re certain?” I asked him. “About the sex.”
“Mostly, yes. I guess we will know for sure in a couple of months,” he said, laughing. “Anyway, all looks good as far as I can tell.”
The remainder of the appointment passed in a blur as I was consumed by excitement about having a baby girl.
As we walked out, Mum said, “Serge is definitely going to regret not coming now.”
Although she didn’t mean anything by it, her words stung.
I couldn’t help but wonder what else Serge might end up regretting if he continued to remain so absent.