Sabbatical

California is notoriously unsafe – earthquakes, conspicuous body hair, dangerous surf. One day we’re in Melbourne going about our business, then next thing you know we find ourselves living right near the San Andreas fault which slips and pulls and tears at the earth’s crust a hundred times a day. I’m under the shower when I feel my first tremor. At first I don’t know what it is, and then just as quickly I do. I manage to jump out and wrap a towel around myself while the house is still shaking.

‘Did you feel that?’ says my husband, Toby. We’re both so excited we don’t know what to do with ourselves. I grab my bathrobe and we go outside.

The whole street is out there. Stephanie and Warren, our immediate neighbours, are talking with Gabriella and Liam, the extremely tall patrician-looking couple who live on the other side of them. We’ve actually run into Gabriella and Liam several times before (at Safeway, the cinema, once at Kmart), but they say nice to meet you like this is the first time we’ve met. I am suddenly very aware of my dressing-gown which, despite its cute little kangaroo with joey embroidered on the right breast pocket, looks decidedly shabby now that it’s out of the house. We shake hands and say stupid out-of-towner things about the Governator and earthquakes and how exciting it is to be living in California. Then we take bets on our tremor’s Richter Scale rating, and then the conversation stalls and we all go back inside.

Later that night Toby calls his mother. When he tells her about our 2.4 ‘seismic event’, she bursts into tears and begs him to come back home. ‘What am I supposed to do if something happens to you over there?’ she cries.

‘Well, nothing’s going to happen to us,’ says Toby, ‘so there’s no point worrying about it.’

I look at him and hope really hard that it’s true.

With Toby off teaching at the university, I enrol in sewing classes. This is not something I’ve always wanted to do or anything, but it does feel like one of those wholesome practical endeavours that could tide a girl over until life sorts itself out. I envision being welcomed into a community of tanned blonde vegan women all collectively basting and darning their shapeless hemp garments, united in some great stitching enterprise like a West Coast surfer version of How to Make an American Quilt, but without the doona. Like most fantasies, however, it’s not like that at all.

For starters, the fabric shop lady is really mean. ‘What do you mean you don’t know what you want? I can’t tell you what pattern to buy.’

I feel about as welcome as a strip of bacon at Dharma’s, a local vegetarian restaurant. ‘I was just hoping you could suggest some pattern books for me to look through,’ I say. ‘The ones best for beginners.’

Stephanie, from next door, is somewhere down the back of the shop surveying flannels. She thought she’d come along for the ride, but now that she’s here she’s decided to surprise her husband, Warren, with a new pair of pyjama pants to commemorate their three-month wedding anniversary (though she won’t be coming with me to class; she’s been sewing since before she could walk). Stephanie and Warren are one of those perky Midwestern couples who are never bored on the weekend: on Saturdays they go hiking in the woods, on Sundays they like to go to the beach where he surfs and she jogs along the cliffs. She thinks a five-mile run is fun. I never think running is fun, especially not five miles of it.

After about ten minutes she comes to find me. She’s holding a bolt of red fabric with a fortune cookie print. ‘What do you think of this one?’ I say, pointing at a pattern-book picture of a green A-line skirt that has potential despite its lurid colour.

‘Would you call that green?’

‘More a chartreuse,’ I suggest. ‘Anyway, forget the colour. What about the shape, the basic style?’

‘Yeah, it’s okay,’ she concedes. ‘In a different colour.’

I buy two and a half metres of aqua cotton.

In the car Stephanie says, ‘Aqua’s kind of funky too, isn’t it? For a skirt.’ (This from a girl who thinks nothing of pairing a gray wool crepe business suit with ugg boots.)

‘Yes,’ I agree. ‘But after it’s finished I’m cutting it up to make cushion covers.’ I could explain how I’m only sewing the skirt because the teacher absolutely insisted that I follow a clothing pattern, but I don’t.

Stephanie is rightly confused. ‘Oh,’ she says with that inflected tone that really means you’re completely out of your mind. Though not certifiably crazy, it would seem, because she keeps talking. I expect her to ask me ‘why’ about the cushion covers but she doesn’t. ‘Do you mind if we stop in at Walgreens on the way home?’ she continues. ‘I’ve got to collect some photos.’

I stay in the car while she goes into the drugstore, an enormous windowless square of a building that dominates an entire block. Heat radiates from the car park like a mirage. A notice on a power pole reminds customers to sign up for next week’s free cholesterol and blood sugar check. There is a line of cars waiting for the disabled parking spaces out the front. A red Chrysler LeBaron convertible pulls in. The driver’s got to be at least one hundred and five. He reminds me of my grandmother’s Gold Coast friends, all sun dried and leathery, getting around in bold Hawaiian prints.

Stephanie is talking on her mobile phone when she comes back outside. She starts up the car and spends the whole drive home saying things like ‘uh huh’ and ‘really’ and rolling her eyes at me and mouthing ‘sorry’ like she’s actually stuck to the apparatus and can’t remove herself. She’s still talking when we pull into our street. She holds up a finger to indicate she’ll be off any minute, but I tell her not to worry. ‘Thanks for the lift,’ I say and run inside before she can park and follow me in.

There are five other women in my sewing class: Chandra, Lindsay, Sydney, Kaye and Meg. We’re all occupied with remedial projects (a doona cover, a purse, two pairs of drawstring pants, my skirt), except for Lindsay who struggles with darts on a vintage jumpsuit. ‘Why won’t they line up?’ she says, exasperated. She has bleached white hair and wears dark red lipstick. She bought the pattern on eBay.

Our teacher, Liesel, doesn’t want to hear it. ‘If you’re going to buy these old patterns you have to use old techniques. You can’t just throw it on the machine and expect it to work out. Here, give it to me.’ She sits down and starts unpicking Lindsay’s seam with her miniature seam ripper that’s part of her new Swiss Army Knife Sewing Kit that she just bought that afternoon. ‘Isn’t it cute?’ she says, showing me the way the different sewing implements slide in and out just like a real Swiss Army Knife but without the knife part. There’s even a tiny rotary cutter and a mini tailor’s chalk.

I spend the first class pinning my pattern to the fabric, then cutting it out. Forty minutes in I have a headache. I go home completely exhausted. I drive past Warren and Liam talking in Liam’s front yard. Warren shoots me a wave.

‘How was it?’ calls Toby as I lumber through the front door. He’s in his tracksuit in the kitchen, listening to the baseball while whisking scrambled eggs.

‘Yeah, good,’ I say. ‘I saw Warren and Liam. Just now. In Liam’s yard.’

Toby pretends not to hear me. We’ve had this conversation before.

‘I just don’t get it,’ I continue. ‘Stephanie said they all went out again the other night.’ I know it’s uncool to want Liam and Gabriella’s approval, but I can’t help myself. ‘Why are they so interested in Stephanie and Warren, but they won’t give us the time of day?’

Toby starts dicing mushrooms. ‘Is that really what you want?’ he says. ‘To hang out with the neighbours on triple dates at Soif? You don’t even really drink. What are you going to do at a wine bar?’

‘I still think they should invite us.’

‘Why? It’s not like they owe you anything.’ He starts singing to himself as he tips the mushrooms into the hot frying pan, swivelling it so they sizzle as melted butter coats the bottom.

I could kill him.

‘What?’ he asks, all innocence.

‘Don’t give me that. You know what. And I don’t think inviting us along is so peculiar. We’re new to the area. It’s the right thing to do.’

Toby scoffs. ‘Right thing, my arse. If the tables were turned there’s no way you’d be over there knocking at their door with your plate of biscuits, inviting them to the movies or whatever. You just don’t like being ignored.’

‘How can you say that? That’s so not true!’ I protest, though we both know it is.

I sulk all the way through dinner, taking the time to carefully organise my little mushroom pieces into their own pile on the other side of the eggs. The cutlery makes an annoying scraping sound as it grates against the plate. Finally Toby loses his patience. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘What do you want me to do, go over there and demand they be our friends?’ He raises his fists. ‘Play with us or I’ll beat you up.’

He could be ten years old again. I can just see him in the playground hustling the other kids. I blow him a kiss. ‘You’re so cute,’ I say. ‘It’s like we’re still in school.’

‘We are still in school,’ says Toby.

My sister leaves a message on our answering machine. We’ve been quarrelling via email ever since we left, but this is the first time she’s actually called. She probably heard about the earthquake from Mum and is scared we’re all going to die before making up. She doesn’t want bad blood. I stand there listening as she stumbles her way through, explaining how she hates leaving messages on answering machines and how she’s sorry for saying I abandoned her and would I please call her back. I want to but at the same time I don’t. Mostly I just feel guilty for going away. I glare at the blinking light like she can see me.

‘Right, that’s it,’ says Toby, after I’ve played back the message for the hundredth time. ‘If you’re not going to call her back then we’re going out.’

It’s only nine pm, but everything is closed except for Kohls.

Toby needs jeans and socks and I go hunting for bras. Kohls is so low-rent, there’s no one monitoring the number of items you take into the dressing-room. I load up twelve bras and a couple of pairs of underpants. They’re vaguely matching, though not really because I like big old-lady up-to-your-armpits knickers and they don’t really sell them as matching sexy lacy lingerie sets.

The change room is strewn with other peoples’ cast-offs, remnants of the disenchanted. I hang up my undergarments and begin the trying-on process. This living overseas business is much more exhausting than I ever imagined. Everything little thing is different. Even the bra sizes. At first it’s exciting because it’s like watching a movie as a special VIP guest – you get to sit up the front and everyone wants to know what you think – but after a while you’ve had enough of the questions and not knowing what’s going to happen next and you want to go home, except the lights don’t come up and you begin to suspect the movie might never end and all you’ve got to eat is popcorn.

I contemplate hanging the unwanted bras back on their hangers but I’m too frustrated to fiddle with all those wide comfort, no-slip straps. Instead, I bury them amongst the other garments so you can’t see them. I do such a good job I almost convince myself I was never there.

Toby is waiting for me when I come back out. ‘Did you have any luck?’

I hold up my granny-sized underpants.

‘They’re lovely.’

‘I know,’ I say, pressing them up to me like I’m checking the size. ‘I thought I’d get a couple of pairs in different colours.’

Toby gets a funny look on his face.

‘What’s the matter?’ I ask him. ‘Are you embarrassed?’ I wave the knickers around a bit and start singing ‘I’m Too Sexy’.

He shakes his head. ‘No, don’t.’

It just makes me sing louder: ‘Too sexy for my knickers, too sexy for this shop...’ Which is when I see Gabriella and Liam approaching.

‘Shit.’ I scrunch up the underpants and try to relax as my face turns strawberry pink, but they walk right by like they’ve no idea who we are. We both stare as they continue out the nearest exit.

‘What was that?’

Toby shakes his head. ‘I have no idea. Maybe they didn’t see us.’

‘Yeah, maybe.’

Toby’s eye twitches a little bit. I can tell he doesn’t believe it either. ‘They’re probably just preoccupied and didn’t expect to see us here. You know what it’s like when you run into people out of context.’

‘Yeah,’ I say, though I’m sure I don’t. And then I try really hard not to take it personally as I imagine letting down the tyres of their car.

Stephanie pops over to show me Warren’s new red fortune cookie pyjamas. They are drawstring pants with two inches of gold Chinese silk trim at the cuffs. I think fortune cookie patterned pyjamas are ridiculous, especially for a grown man, but Stephanie is extremely proud of herself. ‘They only took me a few hours,’ she declares.

‘Wow,’ I say, paying special attention to the drawstrings. ‘How did you get them through such tiny holes?’

She laughs and makes me turn the pants inside-out so she can show me all the finished seams. It’s like seeing the intricate underbelly of a Californian freeway system with its concrete pillars and support beams and homeless people camping beneath the overpasses.

‘That must have taken you hours.’

‘It did, but you have to bind the stitches properly,’ she explains. ‘Otherwise they’ll scratch.’

I offer her iced tea but she’s already late for a community meeting about the proposed Safeway expansion. They want to put in two more freezer aisles, enlarge their Whole Food section and build a multi-level parking structure. Her ponytail whips about as she speaks. ‘They think they’re Wholefoods, but they’re not Wholefoods and they never will be Wholefoods. They’re just trying to cash in on the alternative scene here. Vultures. Even if they stocked the same produce as Wholefoods, these large multinationals can’t be trusted. Did you see that movie, The Corporation? I mean, hello. We should be in charge of the company, not the other way around. There’s so much propaganda. We’ve got to get some real information out there, an honest voice. People are so misinformed. So, we’re having a barbecue this Saturday. A three-month anniversary party. I hope you two can come?’

It takes me a moment to realise she’s invited us around. ‘Of course, we’ll be there,’ I finally reply, the good neighbour smiling at the gate.

California is America’s thirty-first state, with a population of nearly thirty-six million people. At its widest point it is 250 miles across, though its famous coastline (770 miles in length) is actually significantly shorter than Alaska’s. Still, cars rust in the streets here if they’re left outside too long (the sea air) and home owners insist on planting roses mere blocks from the beach. Our front yard blooms bright coral and peach, a legacy of the previous owner’s triumph over nature. I like to drink tea and stare at the flowers out our kitchen window.

The phone rings and I answer it without thinking, which is probably just as well as it’s my sister and I really should have called her back by now (though obviously I haven’t). ‘So how have you been?’ she says.

Because we’ve been fighting I’d imagined this conversation as tense and angry and loaded with recriminations, but in fact she sounds totally normal and nice and I find myself chatting away, completely forgetting about how mean she is and selfish and so unsupportive of everything I do. I tell her all about the bras and the neighbours and the sewing class and all the hundreds of different kinds of breakfast cereals available here, my current favourite being Honey Bunches of Oats. Then it’s her turn to talk and she informs me that she’s three months pregnant and they’re going to call the baby Lucy if it’s a girl and Milo if it’s a boy, though they’ve decided to wait and find out the old-fashioned way, which prolongs the suspense but makes decorating the child’s bedroom slightly tricky, and a part of me wants to thump her for being so patient and good-humoured, listening to all my drivel, when all the time she had this major news up her sleeve.

‘What do you mean you’re pregnant?’ I say stupidly, because I’m embarrassed and also a little bit shocked to find out like this and I haven’t had quite enough time yet to digest the information and be enthused.

‘What do you mean, what do you mean?’ she replies, which flummoxes me into, ‘I don’t know.’ And then there’s a great long silence, which I break by saying ‘Gosh, that’s great news,’ and I mean it absolutely but it comes out sounding so stilted and forced that she tells me to stick it and hangs up the phone.

I dial her right back. ‘Don’t hang up on me,’ I say.

‘Well don’t be such a hag,’ she responds.

Normally this kind of exchange might signal the resumption of hostilities, but I’m in no mood to keep arguing, especially when we both know it was really my turn to call. ‘I was just surprised,’ I tell her. ‘But I mean it. It’s fantastic news.’

That’s all it takes to get over the hump and she effortlessly switches gear, going on to tell me how excited she is, and how scared she is, and how incredibly excited.

Toby barely gets in the door from work before I’ve told him. ‘Kirsten’s pregnant,’ I say. ‘Three months.’

His face freezes. Deer in the headlights. It’s the same look he gets when I make the mistake of asking him for wardrobe advice.

‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘It’s good news.’

‘You’re happy?’

‘Of course I’m happy. Why wouldn’t I be happy?’

‘No reason. It’s just you two have been bickering for weeks. But that’s great. Wow. Three months. Is she showing?’

‘I don’t know.’ I forgot to ask. ‘I assume she’d have a bump. I think three months is long enough for a bump.’ And then it sinks in, the reality of the situation, and I go from feeling happy to sad as the bigness of it settles over me, that my sister is pregnant in Elwood and I am here in California, marking time on the other side of the world.

At sewing class Liesel spends nearly the whole two hours carping about her husband. ‘He did some terrible things. Affairs, lying, absolute toe curlers. I should have left him years ago.’

‘Well, why didn’t you?’ asks Lindsay, the vintage pattern eBay girl.

The whirring of sewing machines stops as everyone pauses to hear Liesel’s reply. I’m poised for an epiphany, something about the sustaining power of true love, but Liesel says it was simple economics. ‘My neighbour loaned me this book, I Will Never Leave You. It goes through everything: financial security, emotional support, the children, extended family. They make you draw up these lists, what you’ll gain, what you’ll lose, how you’ll make ends meet; and I couldn’t. Without him I’d have had no money, which is useless. So I stayed. The irony of course is that now we really are in love, after all those years of tolerating each other. Though it’s not easy,’ she insists. ‘Marriages take work, girls. Don’t forget it.’

About half an hour later her husband drops in unannounced with a bunch of peonies, her favourite flowers. Liesel gushes like a schoolgirl, calling him Honey and Sweetie, declaring they’re the most beautiful peonies she’s ever seen. This is evidence, she says in front of him, that a real man can change.

My skirt comes along quickly. It’s not very complicated, barely a few seams, a zip, and it’s done. Liesel makes me try it on. I swirl around in front of the full-length mirror noticing the way it adds at least five kilos to my hips.

‘I love it,’ she says.

I think it looks disgusting, but now that it’s finished I admit I’m loath to cut it up for a home decorating project.

Liesel holds her hand to her heart. ‘Of course you can’t,’ she says. ‘After all your hard work.’ She makes me swirl around again. ‘It’s a reflection of your unique spirit. It has your aura and energy.’

Toby agrees. ‘Don’t cut it up. It’s your first skirt.’

‘Maybe we should frame it?’

‘I think you should be really proud of yourself.’

‘Of my unique spirit?’

‘Don’t be such a bitch. The woman’s just trying to encourage you. What do you want from people? You’ve got to take the strokes where you can get them.’

It’s true. He’s right. ‘You’re right.’

He shrugs. ‘So what are you going to make next?’

‘I was thinking maybe something for the baby. Perhaps a little non-gender specific romper.’

‘Nice,’ says Toby. And then he settles back on the bed and chats with me as I spend what’s left of the evening trying on the skirt with pretty much everything in my wardrobe.

We can smell the barbecue before we actually get there, the distinctive aroma of charcoal lighter and burning meat having pervaded the street all morning. I’m wearing my aqua skirt with a leather jacket and cowboy boots, a fluorescent urban cowgirl look.

Stephanie opens the door. We follow her out to the back deck where Warren is tending the grill. ‘I like your skirt,’ he says as he hands me a beer.

‘That’s not a skirt,’ says Stephanie. ‘It’s cushion covers.’

‘I think that was a little hostile,’ I say to Toby later.

‘She’s from Wisconsin,’ he reminds me. ‘Don’t read too much into it.’

We circulate. The party is dominated by Warren’s surfing buddies. Lots of fleece tops, lots of sun-damaged skin. ‘So you’re the new neighbours?’ one of them remarks.

‘That’s us,’ we answer in unison, then run away as soon as we can, taking refuge on the opposite side of the garden behind the clothes line still hung with Stephanie’s pink Nike running gear.

It’s funny to realise that you’re the new neighbours of your own new neighbours. It’s strangely reciprocal, almost a bonding experience to have that status in common, except that you still can’t really stand each other and now you both know it. Nevertheless, it actually makes me respect Stephanie and Warren a little more, knowing that behind all their tree-hugging West Coast karma talk of big hearts and Warren’s almost pathological insistence on engaging strangers in drinking competitions (albeit with organic beer), they’re just as judgemental as the next couple, or at least as judgemental as us. I feel strangely off the hook now, as though I don’t have to try so hard to fake it, to pretend to fit in.

A languid breeze gently riffles Stephanie’s leggings. Warren stabs two sausages with forks and holds them out in our direction.

‘Uh-oh,’ says Toby. ‘Here’s trouble.’

I turn and see that Liam and Gabriella have arrived. They’re dressed in coordinated outfits, she in a white shift with a navy jacket, he in a white shirt and navy shorts. They stand there with their lime-wedged Coronas, tastefully hovering above everyone else, about as comfortable as two swans in a dreck-infested duck pond.

Toby recognises the opportunity to align himself with my cockeyed social ambitions. ‘Shall we go over and say hello?’ he says. ‘Do our civic duty?’

For about half a moment there I’m right into it. I mean they’re effectively ambushed in that position so, like it or not, they’d probably have to speak with us. But then it dawns on me that I’ve actually got no interest in talking with anyone who looks that uncomfortable nursing a beer, especially when they’re wearing regimentals.

Stephanie’s voice sounds concerned when we say we’re taking off, the trill of faux disappointment. ‘You’re going? Already? But you only just got here.’

‘You know how it is,’ I say. ‘Things to do.’

She nods. She knows.

Toby loops his arm through mine as we wend our way back through the spaghetti straps and sun-bleached hair, past the folding table spread with salsa, guacamole and corn chips, around to the side gate.

As we leave I imagine us from the perspective of a satellite photograph, two tiny specks in a Californian backyard, part of that great throng teetering there on the North American Plate.

‘I’m calling Kirsten,’ I say as we step through the back door.

Toby kisses me then pulls a beer from the fridge. ‘Put her on speakerphone,’ he suggests. Like me, he needs to hear a voice from home.