I would have liked to drop a penny and make a wish, but they don’t have pennies here anymore.
Every seventh or eighth wave, salt sprays my trainers and ankles. The wind pinwheels – eyes closed, I careen down a hill on a bicycle, my hair whips sideways across my face – and then the wind is behind me, pushing me like a bully.
Rock cuts into my left ass cheek but I don’t move. I fear I’ll slip. I fear if I start slipping, I won’t try to catch myself.
Flinging coins into the ocean for wishes is stupid, anyway. No one does that.
The night it happened, he brought home fresh pasta: tag-illia-tell. Tag-lee-at-ell? Eyebrow cocked and – when I said it right – he said, darling, you’re so cute when you try, but leave this intellectual stuff to your man, okay? I know you can’t speak-ay Italiano-ay like me.
We ate different shapes to spice things up and wrote food critic reviews into the air – penne was robust, spaghetti lackadaisical, bowties erudite. Buttered pasta was the only thing besides toast that I could keep down. He added parmesan and chilli flakes to his. That night, he asked if I could stand basil.
I contemplated.
It’s fresh, he said. He walked to the sofa, dangled the bunch upside down a foot above my head and gave a hypnotic wave.
Yes, go on. I’m feeling adventurous.
Garlic?
Saliva pooled under my tongue. I put my hand to my mouth.
Joking. I’m sorry. His arms wrapped double around my head. My nose pressed into the divot at the base of his throat – mellow aftershave, sweat, sun – and the basil at my temple, secure in his fist, sweet and earthy.
Without discussing it, we knew it was the Thursday, the one in September – a spring heatwave and he was waiting on a new phone. His old one was fried at the weekend by our toddler niece dunking it into in an ice bucket.
On that Thursday, we came home at the same time with each other’s favourite dinners. Sorry, I thought it was my turn? we said, and he was kissing me. He squashed the shopping into the wall and hoisted me onto the counter. His knee banged into the cabinet, his hands went under my shirt, and he carried me to bed.
We weren’t trying, exactly – we just weren’t being careful. When I took my last pill, I held up the empty packet and said, So? What do you think? He told me not to bother. We’d been together for five years. Our families were teasing us. We cut back on drinking, just in case. We were renting, but the landlord liked us. We were both underpaid at steady jobs, and we had some dreams beyond those jobs.
He crawled up the mattress, his hands on either side of my head, and he lowered himself on top of me. The film of sweat between our bodies, the heat of him, the way I gripped the back of his neck and said yes to a question he hadn’t asked.
A kookaburra cackled through the open window.
The sun pools like an egg yolk and a cargo ship will overtake it. It’s too hazy to see the island but I squint for the lighthouse. It’s a boring sunset, the sky gradient gold to blue.
When I first moved here, we went to the beach daily – even in winter when the wind made my ears hurt. For my first Fourth of July here, we had a barbecue with his family at the playground across the street from the beach. It was unnaturally cold, even for winter, and we were the only people. The kids were happy until it started to rain at mealtime. We ate sausages and hamburgers on soggy buns in our cars, spilled potato salad on the seats, windshield wipers in a frenzy, honking to each other across the car park. A kid on my lap, the smear of ketchup on the dashboard we didn’t discover until September, the wet kiss on my cheek and being called auntie – but the rain wouldn’t break. We went to his parents’ house where we kept drinking until I sang all sixteen verses of “Yankee Doodle” and had the kids stomping on the chorus so hard that his great aunt’s china rattled in the cupboards and the dog howled.
It wasn’t fireworks, but it was close.
The egg-yolk sun is a sliver. Tears stream down my cheeks, and I need to blink but I won’t.
Green flash. That’s my third. This one is lucky, I tell myself.
Lucky for what? I ask myself.
I don’t understand the people who live here and never go to the beach.
Two nights before it happened – macaroni night – he led me outside. He made me cover my eyes, and he guided me over hot paving stones. I heard the car boot open. Surprise!
A tangle of wooden slats, wheels, and boxes – his colleague sold it to us criminally cheap. The stroller was a little beat up, but the crib was solid wood. There was a congratulations card with a baby zebra on the front. Her five-year-old had written his name in red crayon.
He carried everything in, leaning the crib pieces against the wall by our dining table and bringing boxes to me. I pulled out onesies and tiny pants. They were all freshly laundered and folded.
What are we going to name her? I asked.
Carbonara?
Ha. I pressed a shirt against my cheek.
Wait, her? He dropped the playpen – kelly green with jungle animals, wadded into a roll and secured with a My Little Pony belt.
Him or her. I don’t know. It feels like a girl, maybe? I shrugged.
Don’t do that to me. He stomped over and ruffled my hair. You know I don’t like it when you know something I don’t.
Our life must be difficult for you, I said.
You have no idea. We rubbed noses. His facial hair tickled my chin – he needed to shave. He’d been so busy at work trying to get a raise before the baby.
A dog barks. I can barely hear it with the wind. The sand looks further away than it seemed when I clambered out to the end of the groyne.
Picking my way back, I stumble and land on my knee – that’ll be a bruise, maybe a gash; I don’t know and I don’t care. I’ve been tired since it happened. I’m slow.
The waves are high, the kind that you have to duck or they’ll knock you over. I want them.
The night it happened, we ate our tagliatelle and high-fived because I officially and successfully stomached fresh basil.
You’re doing great, he said. He brought over the list on the fridge:
I’m so proud of you. He kissed my forehead. Your first greens.
Shut up.
An hour later, we added chocolate brownies to the list and this was more important. He pulled me to my feet and we danced to a jingle for heartburn medication.
There are two kids with boogie boards and a few couples further up the beach. I kick off my trainers and strip down. I’m wearing dark blue knickers – still, just in case – and a white bra.
I sprint into the water, chest hurting, and remember to take a breath right before I dive. Salt burns the scrape on my knee and, for a perfect eight seconds, everything is silent except that rushing noise I’ve learned to love. It used to scare me, but not much scares me now.
The night it happened, I fell asleep on the sofa. My back hurt and he put a pillow on his lap and had me lay down. His fingers worked on me while I snoozed and he scrolled on his phone.
He woke me up to go to bed. I felt dizzy and he said I got up too fast. I skipped brushing my teeth. I said I felt funny. He brushed my hair and told me I needed rest.
I dozed, but fitfully; an hour later, I was in the bathroom and saw blood.
No sound, no lights, nothing to catch my attention – but there he is. I somehow knew he was here. He points and shouts.
A wave crashes into the side of my head and sends me tumbling. My shoulder hits sand. I didn’t have time to breathe. I come up sputtering on salt water, and I can feel the heaving start in my stomach. I hold it back and gulp air. I plug my nose and bob under another wave and he’s splashing in after me wearing denim shorts and a t-shirt.
He reaches me and we duck together. We surface and he holds onto my arms. I don’t think he’s dashed after me in his clothes because he worried he’d have to save me – I think he’s given up on what people think, too. He’s smiling. I love the way the water sticks his eyelashes together.
When I close my eyes – beneath the water, at the doctor’s, in bright sunlight – a short video plays for me: the way he picks up his tiniest niece. She reaches. He bends and his hands are perfectly placed for her to shuffle two steps in. His fingers curl around her body and she waves her arms.
He lightly throws her – enough to make her hair fan out from her face, enough to make the banksia and the patio and our laughing faces whirl, but not enough to scare her – and he hugs her close. She pokes the buttons on his shirt, puts her finger in her mouth, and turns to watch the older children chase the dog.
My favourite part is the way that he waits for her to walk into his hands before lifting her. Her other uncles swoop her up straightaway. They’re not wrong, but he does it better.
The night it happened, the first towels he found were our beach towels. He half-carried me to the car and drove with the windows down. The streetlights whirled past me: bye-bye baby, bye-bye baby.
They rushed me in; they did a scan. There was no heartbeat. They kept checking and I heard a high-pitched ringing that I thought was from a machine, but no one else could hear it. He squeezed my hand until my fingers went purple. They brought me back to the waiting room where I did my very best waiting doubled over on a plastic chair. A drunk with a cut on the eyebrow was seen. Indignity seeped through my clothes.
He shouted at the receptionist, who said she’d have him removed by security if he did that again, but a minute later they showed us to a room which I paced while he sat on the edge of the bed. The nurse would be back to check very soon. We are sorry; we are understaffed. There is nothing we can do.
I don’t know what it’s called when there’s a baby growing inside one second and – in a rush of blood and a few clots and more stabbing pain – then it isn’t. Like time or a gallstone, is it called passing? I was crying, and then I wasn’t. He tapped at the bathroom door and told me to say something, anything. Darling, you’re scaring me.
I sat with my back against the door.
The nurse is on her way. Can I come in? Please.
The door wedged open a crack and stopped.
I’m fine, I said. Wait for the nurse.
I couldn’t let him see it. It was killing me and I couldn’t let it kill him too.
He asks me what I was doing. Watching, I say. Thinking. Looking.
Those are good things, he says. I’m glad you’re out of the house.
We take big breaths and duck under a wave. He keeps hold of my hand.
I was thinking, I say when we surface, about throwing coins into the ocean. I was thinking about how it’s the world’s biggest wishing well.
Does that mean that capsizing pirate ships are lucky?
Maybe, I say.
The morning after it happened, the hospital released me and told me to follow up with my doctor, but I should come back if I had a fever. They were doing tests and they’d call if they found anything unusual. It was a freak accident; I was far enough along. It was unlucky.
The nurse gave me pamphlets and squeezed my shoulder. It’s not your fault, she said. She told me that we could try again whenever we felt ready.
We weren’t trying, exactly, I said, and then I wondered why I had said anything at all.
The nurse squeezed my shoulder again and that was that.
We squinted at the sun in the parking lot. He’d gone home to get me clean clothes. He’d already called work – both his and mine – and I slept most of the day.
He woke me at three to make me drink some water and have a snack.
I don’t know how I can face anyone, I said. I mean, ever. How do we talk about this? We told people.
I don’t know, he said. We’ll find a way. Maybe we can tell our mums and they can tell people for us.
Yes, I said. Moms are good for that sort of thing.
We don’t have to do anything now. He passed me another biscuit. We can hurt. That’s ok. Now eat.
He pulls out a wet handful of change from his pocket.
No, forget it. I don’t want to. I fold my arms.
Why not? He says.
It’s stupid. It’s an ocean, not a well. And it’s not even a penny.
So?
It breaks all the rules.
Says who? He takes my wrist, turns my palm over, plops down two twenty-cents and a five-cent. He wraps his arm around my shoulders. A wave knocks into our knees and I stagger. He holds me close.
Go on, he says.
I take a twenty-cent coin and turn it over.
I guess platypus can swim, I say.
He grins.
I fling it as hard as I can, which isn’t far with my lousy arm, but the dusk light makes it look impressive. We don’t see it land.
That’s my girl. What did you wish for?
I can’t tell you, I say. But I didn’t wish for anything – at least, not in the way that I wished for special toys or an adventure when I was a child. I’d like to believe that whoever is out there granting wishes doesn’t need them to be specified like that. Or maybe I’m afraid I’ll jinx it. Or maybe I don’t believe in wishes. I can’t decide.
You do one, I say.
He takes the other twenty-cent and pauses. We sway in the water.
I made him cut out the labels in my clothing while I was in the shower on the third day after it happened. My wardrobe was a mix of hand-me-down maternity and next-next-sizes up. It was all too much. We weren’t growing anymore.
Two weeks after it happened, I still looked pregnant. In the driveway, I caught a glimpse of myself in the car window. It made me stop. This happened every time I saw my reflection. I turned sideways, hitched my work bag out of the way, and pressed my shirt against my ballooning stomach. If anything, I looked more pregnant, which didn’t make any sense and kept me awake at night. I kept having dreams that the hospital called and said it was a mistake, my baby was just fine, and your due date is Mother’s Day. How exciting. Your families must be so happy.
He was already home. He was barefoot and he greeted me with a chocolate cupcake and flowers.
I asked why.
He said it was Valentine’s Day. Remember?
The days had dragged and smudged. It could be next Christmas.
I’d been back to work for three days. I called in advance to the woman who was the work mum. She’d been in accounts for at least a decade and called everybody darling. She accompanied me to a meeting with my male manager. I said let’s not kid anyone; I’m not here because I’m ready. I’m here because I need distraction and you guys aren’t going to keep paying me forever. I’m not myself, but I’ll try my best. Work mum squeezed my hand.
I ate the cupcake on the spot and he said I was a good girl. He sent me to a bubble bath. He made us quiche and we drank wine.
We turned off our phones.
We ate by candlelight.
We talked about travelling.
Dusk settles and he hasn’t thrown it. He’s taking too long. I want – more than anything – for him to say something profound, something I can hold onto.
Aren’t you supposed to throw it over your shoulder? He finally asks.
Maybe at the Trevi Fountain, I say. Why?
He looks into my eyes and drops the coin. We look down where it glints between our feet once and vanishes and another wave tumbles into us.
We hold hands and trudge through the sand. I put my clothes back on and he does his best to squeeze out corners of clothing while it’s on his body. I get into his car with him. He starts to back out, stops, looks at me, and asks me how I got here. His hair sticks up at all angles.
You’re right, I say. I pull my keys from my pocket. I’ll see you at home.
We were two days short.
Two days more, we would have been stillborn. Instead, we were a late miscarriage.
Two days more would have been a funeral. There would be pieces of paper, a life and death noted, a name registered.
Instead, we became a false start.
We were a match that sparks but doesn’t catch.
The salt and sand rake at our skin when we strip. He wraps a towel around himself to put our clothes on the line. I stand at the door in my wet hair and nothing else. He hangs up his shorts and I say it’d be funny if his phone had been in his pocket all along. He gives me a look and says no, it’s in the glovebox of the car, thanks very much.
We shower and for the first time since it happened, I let him touch my belly. He holds me from behind and says thank you.
