Page 96 of Thursdays at Orange Blossom House
‘Thank you,’ Patricia says.
‘There’s nothing to thank me for.’ Grace Maud quickly squeezes her hand. ‘Now, where’s my Devonshire tea?’
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Your tummy is huge, Cornelia says as she opens the door to Dorothy and Frederick.
I know, Dorothy says, her hands moving slower than usual. She groans as she steps into the hallway.I don’t think my skin can stretch any more.
‘Hello, Cornelia,’ Frederick says, kissing her once on each cheek.
‘Hi, Mama,’ Dorothy says, kissing her mother on the cheek but not embracing her as she wants to, because the baby is getting in the way.
While they’ve never been a demonstrative family, Dorothy has found herself wanting hugs from her mother lately. She’s tried to figure out if it’s some sort of primal response to the fact that she’s about to be a mother herself. Or perhaps she’s simply scared of the pain and difficulty to come and wants reassurance from the person who used to make her problems disappear when she was younger.
‘Hello, my Dorothea,’ her father says as he appears, putting his arm around her from the side, then shaking Frederick’s hand.
As they walk towards the living room Dorothy tries not to waddle. She’s seen every pregnant woman do it and thought it looked undignified, until she found herself on that same small pendulum track.
When she asked Sandrine if there was anything she could do to stop the waddle, Sandrine merely said, ‘Yes – give birth.’
Dorothy tried again, but Sandrine explained that when you’re in your third trimester your body is doing its best to accommodate the baby and there’s limited capacity for anything else.
‘You have been doing enough postures that you have prepared the best you can,’ she said. ‘You could be stronger, this is true, but the time is past for that.’
Dorothy knew Sandrine was right: she hadn’t done anything much to build her strength before she became pregnant. Not because she didn’t believe it was important, but because she was working long hours, managing the hormone treatment along with everything else, and counting her week as a success if she made it to class. There was no scope to add anything, no matter how helpful it might be.
‘So will yoga help me at all?’ Dorothy had asked.
‘The breathing,’ Sandrine said, nodding enthusiastically. ‘And it will help when you recover. You know your body better now, no? So you will take care of it better. I hope. Won’t you?’
‘I’ll try,’ Dorothy said meekly, although she wondered how she’d be able to do that. She’ll be at home alone with the baby while Frederick goes to work. Her mother has a hundred tasks to do each day; her father is working; Ruth has a family of her own …
This is the part – where she’s alone and not coping – that Dorothy tries not to think about, because remembering to breathe through it, as Sandrine would have her do, will be impossible.
There’s also the part where she’s not only alone but Frederick is working in Port Douglas instead of Cairns, and they have more debt and less time for each other than they do now, and the worries about money and the future and life and health and all the things that Dorothy can find to worry about have increased exponentially with no prospect of them decreasing before the two of them reach retirement. Then they’ll be dead.
These are the sorts of things that crowd into her mind when she can’t sleep because she’s too bulbous. There is, she has found, no comfortable way to lie when you have an almost fully developed small human strapped to your insides. She’s tried to breathe through that as well; and when she can’t, she adds being bad at yoga to her worries too.
All these thoughts Dorothy keeps to herself, because Frederick doesn’t need to hear them, nor do her parents, and her friends shouldn’t be burdened with them. Besides, how can she explain that as she nears the moment she wants most – giving birth – she is so scared of everything that can go wrong in her life? They will think she’s ungrateful for what she has, and they’ll be right. They’ll think she’s not coping and can’t look after the baby. Maybe they’ll be right about that too. Something else to worry about.
As Dorothy lowers herself into a chair she hears her father asking Frederick about work while her mother goes to the kitchen.
Cornelia waves a hand to attract Dorothy’s attention; once Dorothy has settled herself into position she nods and smiles.
I have a plan, says Cornelia, pushing her fringe out of her eyes.
For what?
To help you with the baby.
Dorothy hasn’t said anything to her family about needing help with the baby so she’s not sure why Cornelia is broaching the subject.
You don’t have to worry about that, she replies.
Cornelia frowns.Frederick will be working.
I know, Dorothy says, laughing wryly. ‘You’ll need help.’ Cornelia says this out loud. She only speaks when she’s really trying to make a point.
