Page 17 of Special Delivery
‘No, I’m not,’ he said, his expression dissolving into blankness.
Poppy studied his face for a flicker of emotion. Nada. This was the guy who’d held her hand when she’d pushed a human out of her vagina and he couldn’t even break a smile in her company and offer a pat on the back.
‘Do you even remember the birth?’ she asked. ‘Or do all the labouring mothers blend into one? Like a giant conveyor belt of screaming women?’
James looked at her, confused. ‘Of course I remember.’
‘Then why can’t you be nice?’
James zipped up his backpack and started towards the door. ‘I’m not here to be nice,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘I’m here to do my job.’
CHAPTER 9
There was no time for coding courses. Hell, there was hardly time for hair washing. At this point, Poppy couldn’t decipher whether Maeve’s gas was burp-related or fart-related, let alone decipher HTML. Twelve weeks into parenthood and Poppy was surviving on a strict diet of coffee, tea and fork food. She hadn’t used a knife in three months. She might never ever use one again.
Poppy eased the pram through her front gate, her eye catching on her elderly neighbour who sat on the verandah next door in a wicker armchair.
‘Morning, Mary.’ Poppy lifted her hand in a wave.
‘Morning, love,’ replied Mary cheerfully.
Poppy had met Mary during her first week in town. She’d been exploring the street and her eighty-nine-year-old neighbour had beckoned her over. Mary had proudly informed her that she sat on her verandah every day so knew everything about the street, including that its newest resident was asoon-to-be single mother. ‘I knew from how often your mother visited,’ she told Poppy, tapping her nose. ‘If there’d been a man, he’d have been out of there like a shot.’ Mary seemed delighted about this situation, declaring conspiratorially that as single girls they should stick together.
Mary had invited Poppy to join her on the verandah for some of her famous jam drop biscuits and proceeded to regale her with a detailed recount of her life, which revolved around her dynasty of grandchildren and great-grandchildren, who all had nineties sitcom names like Bobby, Jimmy, Davy, Mikey and Katie. Her other passion was buying useful (read: useless) trinkets via mail-order catalogue. Her latest purchase—a rainbow-hued silicone tea cosy—was proving far more practical than the word-of-the-day toilet paper which, as Mary put it, was ‘more arse than class’.
Any remaining spare time of Mary’s was consumed by her zealous commitment to neighbourhood snooping. Thanks to Mary, Poppy knew that number seven had a pool, number three played jazz too loudly and someone in number eleven was possibly having an affair. Everyone was aged over sixty-five apart from the woman in number five, who dressed entirely in yellow and regularly washed her (yellow) car in a (yellow) bikini. It wasn’t necessarily useful information, but the gentle meandering of Mary’s conversations amused Poppy, whose grandparents had long since passed away. She’d found herself looking forward to her regular chats with her neighbour.
As Poppy came to a halt in front of Mary’s front gate, her neighbour hoisted herself up in her armchair to peer at the pram. ‘How did our girl sleep last night?’ she asked.
‘Woke three times,’ replied Poppy. ‘Or maybe four?’
‘Good girl,’ clucked Mary. ‘She’s learned her day from night already.’
Poppy was continually bemused with how people were overly keen to praise her daughter for all manner of things—her blinking, her burping, her sneezing. Lauding her for waking up four times during the night, however, felt supremely disingenuous when a full night’s sleep was clearly the actual goal.
‘You’re doing a wonderful job,’ added Mary kindly.
Poppy wanted to smile, for Mary’s sake, to make the old lady feel as though she’d done a good job of allaying her fears, but she couldn’t. Her neighbour had no clue if she was doing a good job of mothering. No-one knew. No-one was watching her stumble in the darkness trying to find the bassinet. No-one was making sure Maeve latched on properly. For all they knew, Poppy could have been feeding her daughter Fanta from a bottle, setting her up for a lifetime of sugar addiction and expensive dentistry.
The hardest thing was that even Poppy didn’t know if she was doing a good job. She wouldn’t know for years, and—horrible thought though it was—she might never know. She might be on this hamster wheel of guilt and fear and self-doubt for the rest of her life, always second-guessing whether she’d made the right choice for her daughter, wondering whether bringing her into the world without a father was ruining her life from the start.
She wanted her old boss to walk into her house with a spreadsheet and a PowerPoint presentation and say, ‘These are your KPIs, Poppy. Achieve these targets and you will raisea healthy, well-adjusted child.’ Poppy could work with KPIs. She could work longer hours, she could read more reports, she could pore over the data sets until her eyes watered. It was what she was used to. But her metrics and optics and vision statements wouldn’t work here. For all the love and energy she’d thrown at it, her big shiny career was worthless now. The only thing she could rely on now was her breastmilk—and that, to be perfectly frank, had the pong of old yoghurt.
She finally forced a weak smile as she pushed the pram down the road. ‘Thanks, Mary. You’re always lifting my spirits.’
The first autumn leaves littered the ground beneath her feet and an icy breeze tickled her bare hands. Maeve was wailing irritably in the pram, a lopsided beanie on her head. Poppy had no idea why she was crying. Her daughter was fed, changed, wearing mittens and three layers of clothing—all organic cotton and wool, like an Eastern Suburbs ski bunny ready for schnappy hour.Maeve, she wanted to say,smarten up. Actually, she didn’t want to say that at all. In fact, the only thing worse would be saying,Let it all out like Mariah, while wearing a hot-pink golf skirt with leggings underneath. And yep—she looked down at her hideous, saggy leggings—she was halfway there. Why did no-one warn you that when you became a parent you becameyourparents? What kind of messed-up Freudian crap was that?
Poppy hitched up her leggings and turned onto the walking track that skirted the golf course. The air was thick with mist and pine. Mercifully, the track was deserted, free of judge-mental ears. Thank goodness capitalism had burrowed through the Blue Mountains to the Central West, forcing people offwalking tracks and into offices by 9 am sharp. Poppy checked her watch. Minus the crying, the day was running to schedule: breastfeed, walk, breastfeed, coffee, breastfeed, breastfeed, more breastfeeding. It didn’t calm her anxiety.
Suddenly a kelpie bounded out of nowhere. ‘Argh!’ she yelled as it jumped up on her, leaving streaks of mud down her leggings. ‘Get off!’
‘Ga-ga!’ cried Maeve, suddenly delighted. Her curious eyes were fixed on the dog and its thumping tail.
‘Sorry!’ a man yelled, running up to them. ‘Ran away before I could get the lead on.’
‘You!’ Poppy scowled at the too-tall silhouette jogging towards her. ‘Your dog jumped on me!’
Her former midwife came to a stop in front of her. His hair was dishevelled from the breeze and his long-sleeved t-shirt was a stark white under his puffer vest. ‘Oh,’ James said, without enthusiasm. ‘Hi.’ He’d clearly forgotten her name. His eyes whisked from left to right as if computing the fastest getaway route. He didn’t even have the decency to look embarrassed. ‘Eileen’s only twelve weeks old,’ he said, by way of unsatisfactory apology. ‘I’m trying to train her.’ He held up the leash as proof.
