Welcome to Your New Life by Anna Goldsworthy

Author:Anna Goldsworthy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Schwartz Books Pty. Ltd.
Published: 2013-02-12T00:00:00+00:00

When you are six weeks old, Mariah offers to babysit, so that Nicholas and I can venture out to a restaurant. We discuss this for some days: it is a curiously threatening idea.

‘Perhaps we could catch up on some sleep instead,’ I suggest.

‘Pathetic,’ he says, but I can see that he is tempted.

We agree to the restaurant, finally, out of a sense of duty. To bookmark this spot; to stake out a small space of adulthood until we are again ready to occupy it. Before leaving Mariah’s house, we double-check that all phones are charged, that she has memorised the latest SIDS prevention guidelines.

‘You do realise I’ve done this before,’ she grins. ‘And he didn’t turn out too badly, did he?’

And so we leave you and drive to a restaurant by the beach, where a waiter seats us next to the open doors and pours champagne.

‘Have a happy night, folks.’

Happy. The surprise is that all this love does not quite equate to happiness. It is richer, darker than happiness. Possibly it is better than happiness. And yet. Around us, people clink their glasses and laugh. Is the rest of the world childless? Or is this what will happen one day? That I will again be able to laugh freely, without my mind listing back to you?

‘How’s things?’ I ask Nicholas.

He takes a sip of champagne. ‘Good, I suppose.’

‘But?’

‘I really like the baby,’ he says carefully. ‘But I’m not sure that I’m quite as obsessed with him as you are.’

I had noticed this. For Nicholas, you have not yet grown into your name, but are still the baby, a thing more than a person, a species more than an individual. A problem to be solved, through expert swaddling and best-practice burping.

‘Just wait. It’ll come.’

‘Are you sure?’

His uncertainty touches me. ‘Remember, I had a nine-month head start.’

He nods and finishes his glass. ‘What about you?’

I am bored by my response, a small word, inadequate to the task.

‘Tired.’

He flips open the menu, impatiently. ‘Yes, I know. I’m tired too, but I think we need to stop saying it.’

He is right. It is too loaded: that one-upmanship of fatigue.

‘It is the true test of a relationship, isn’t it? Can I love my partner’s rest as much as my own?’

He laughs. ‘And the answer to that would be no.’

The waiter hovers. We address ourselves to the menu, but the words swim in front of me, refusing to coalesce into meaning. Perhaps this is what language is to a baby: panko-encrusted pan-fried velouté choux beignet medallions.

‘You first,’ I whisper.

‘I’ll have the risotto, please.’

‘Make that two.’

The waiter gives us a condescending nod and withdraws. We had planned not to talk about you tonight, but not talking about you means not talking at all. And so we stare dumbly at each other, dipping bread in olive oil and blotting it in dukkah.

‘Perhaps we should rethink our approach to sleep,’ he offers.

My mind tracks up and down the netted sides of your portacot, searching for snags. Then it

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