Exclusive extract from Broken (Macmillan Australia) by Ilsa Evans , the Great Read in the September 2007 issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
She’d worn white to her wedding. Huge clouds of frosted white that billowed around her in the wind like fairytale snow. Against her waist she held a bouquet of milky roses that dripped with clusters of tiny white gypsophilia. And the limousine was white too, inside as well as out, so that when the door opened and she looked out at the guests milling around the church steps, she merged perfectly into the background but for her red-lipped smile. An elaborate concoction of alabaster and lace.
Just before she entered the church, the photographer darted forward and took a shot when a gust of wind wrapped the white satin around her body like a sheath, picking up the veil and spreading it across the cloudy sky behind. In the photograph, now living in an embossed gold frame, she has one hand up trying to harness the flyaway veil, and the other holding her bouquet down by her side so that the blooms brush against the cobblestoned portal. And she is still smiling, a broad, open-mouthed smile that shows all her teeth and beams a message of delight so uninhibited that, even trapped in time, it remains infectious.
Because everything lay before them. Not only the rest of that day, with its intoxicating focus and whirlwind celebration, but an entwined future that could be clearly seen ahead. And they would be joined now not just by the strength of their emotions, but by priests and promises, and a piece of parchment that could be framed in matching gold.
They had already put a deposit on their own home before the wedding, and two months afterwards were able to move into a brand new clinker brick in Mont Gully, a relatively new suburb in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs nestled between Wantirna and Boronia. Mattie’s preference had been for nearby Box Hill, where she had grown up, which boasted numerous beautiful old-world Californian bungalows with deep verandahs and stained-glass windows. But, as Jake pointed out, for the same price as one of those they were able, with the help of their bank, to buy a twenty-five square, four bedroom, two bathroom house on a new estate. A house that nobody had lived in before them, a house that they could decorate to their own taste, with a garden they could start from scratch.
They did the long workday commute to the city for the first year. Driving in together, parking in the basement car-park beneath Jake’s accountancy firm, and Mattie catching a tram up to her secretarial job in the Defence Department near Spencer Street. Then Jake joined a firm in Ringwood and for a while Mattie caught the train into town by herself. That was when they started planning for a baby.
And by then the brand-new, character-less house had been transformed into a fine residence. A beautifully manicured garden nestled all the way around the brickwork, edging the cobble-stoned driveway and forming a mounded figure of eight around the wrought iron letterbox. Inside, tasteful furnishings were enhanced, here and there, with a nice antique piece, and gold-framed prints complemented the colours of the walls and curtains and carefully chosen knick-knacks. While wall-to-wall thick cream carpet muffled sound and aided the illusion that, when that front door closed, they were all alone.
Max was born exactly two years after they moved into their own house. From the moment she discovered she was pregnant, Mattie read everything she could find about babies. It was like a compulsion, a thirst for knowledge that was rarely satiated. She discovered what to expect during labour, the importance of breast-feeding, the need for pelvic floor exercises. She learnt about jaundice, and nappy-rash, and how the fontanelle, that tiny stretched canvas of vulnerability would depress if the baby was dehydrated.
The only thing she didn’t discover, because words couldn’t describe it, was the feeling she would experience when the baby was placed on her belly. That minute scrap of humanity, with bloody streaks across a wrinkled, marbled body.
It was contentment like nothing she had ever known. Almost spiritual in its intensity, with a liquid joy that ran through her veins, quickening her pulse and making her nerve-ends tremble. Touching the baby, stroking his damp hair and caressing his rounded belly filled her with awe. She laid a finger across his palm and his impossibly small fingers immediately wrapped themselves around it with a grip that spoke of dependence and responsibility. She smiled at him, delighted, and he gazed wetly up at her as if he, too, was struck by a sense of transcendental wonder. Of recognition.
After a while, Mattie tore her eyes away from the baby and looked up at Jake, sitting on the side of the bed with his face mirroring the same marvel. Their eyes met and tacitly acknowledged the miracle they had created. Life. An independent human being capable of loving and being loved. A member of a family, part of a team. Their son.
Mattie’s second pregnancy was so entirely different from her first that it was difficult to even think of it as the same condition. Instead, it was like an illness that ravaged her body, assaulting her with new side effects at every turn. From morning sickness that lasted a full six months, to fluid retention, to pre-eclampsia. In the last three months she even developed carpal tunnel syndrome, which forced her to sleep with her arms strapped into splints, so that she lay as if crucified, arms spread, eyes staring at the ceiling, with her belly growing ever larger by the week.
She moved into the spare room halfway through the pregnancy, because the nights had become an endless stretch of restlessness during which the minutes slid past in slow motion, and Jake being next to her was just one more burden. She became slow, and dull, and depressed. Plodding through each day and doing just enough to survive. Weighted by gravity and fluid and unshed tears.
Then it was over — eight weeks before it should have been. And Mattie would have given anything to have the pregnancy back, because suddenly she learnt what unbearable really meant. It was watching a tiny baby with transparent, blue-tinged skin struggle for life. It was not being able to hold her when she was in pain. And it was knowing of the risk that she could be lost simply because she had been born too soon.
It was an accident — just one of those things. Mattie was standing on top of the kitchen step-stool, reaching awkwardly into the overhead cupboard for something or other. Max was in his highchair nearby, eating diced pears out of a yellow plastic bowl hat had suction cups underneath to secure it to the tray. When she fell, catching one leg under the steps and carrying them down with her, she hit her head sharply against the stove corner and lost consciousness. And by the time she opened her eyes again, it was all over. The ambulance ride, the ruptured placenta, the emergency caesarean. She was the mother of a baby girl who was fighting for her life in the neo-natal nursery and things would never be the same again.
Book Club questions
Is fairytale romance necessary to falling in love and getting married or is it a shallow delusion that can only lead to disappointment?
Every woman firmly believes that she’d leave an abusive husband — does reading Mattie’s story make you less certain?
Why did Mattie keep the abuse hidden?
Do you stay in a bad marriage hoping it will improve or should you end it as soon as possible?
Is there still a sense of failure associated with a marriage ending or, in these times with a high divorce rate, is it more socially acceptable?
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