Let Down Your Hair (23 page)

The taxi purred off, leaving me in Freya’s front garden. The fresh, biting air smelled of moss and wet wood. A trail of cobblestones wound among ferns and trees to a lamp lit on the porch. Empty and dry as a long-dead moth, I headed for the light.

A bungalow emerged piece by piece through the garden, made from the same stones as the path. An old-style lantern hung from a bracket by the front door, beside a brass bell that made a deep and resonant
dongggg
when I rang it. Through a yellow glass panel I saw a light go on, and then the approaching shape of Freya.

Freya overtook Fran in height at ten, and kept on growing, developing heavy breasts and broad hips and shoulders. Her hair was Fran’s color, and when I’d last seen her it was shoulder-length and straightened with tongs. Now it was wavy, and so long and thick it looked like a big auburn rug. Her face was rounder than her mother’s, but she had the same unhurried gait and shrewd, composed eyes.

“Hi Sage.” Her voice was matter-of-fact, as if I’d come to borrow a book. “Come in.”

I stepped onto a colorful rug on a floor tiled in slate. To my right, through an arch, was a cozy living room with a piano and shelves filled with ornaments and books. Freya led me further to a large bedroom with a built-in wardrobe and a creamy sheepskin rug. The comforter on the queen-sized bed was printed with green ferns that echoed the living fronds brushing against the windows.

“I hung some clothes in the wardrobe,” said Freya. “Too small for me, too big for you, but they’ll do for a week or two. Brett can give you some shifts at the cafe until you find a job.”

I laid my flip-flops at the foot of the bed. On one of the two red pillows sat a toothbrush still in its wrapper and a folded pair of flannel pyjamas. “Cafe?”

“Brett owns a gallery cafe called Molehill. I teach drawing in the studio upstairs and we exhibit the work of local artists in the cafe.”

I imagined myself living here among the ferns with Freya and Brett. Doing housework, waiting on tables in a gallery cafe, looking for a more stable job. For the first time in weeks, the muscles slackened round my bones, like elastic stretched too far.

“The bathroom’s just next door,” said Freya, glancing at the clock. “Anything else you need?”

I realized with a start that I was keeping Freya up. “Sorry, Freya. This is great. There’s nothing else I need. Thanks so much for putting me up.”

Freya smiled. “Not a problem. Great to have you here. Goodnight, Sage.”

“Goodnight.”

She left for her room. I turned off the light, and slid beneath the covers fully dressed. Cradling a pillow against my unborn children, I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

When I woke, mid-morning, a sun shower was making the fronds by my window bob and dance. Inside me, all was quiet, as if a storm had passed. I waded to the wardrobe across the sheepskin rug, and chose a dress made from violet crushed velvet which was probably knee-length on Freya. On me it hung like an oversized smock, and swirled around my calves like a soft purple ocean.

Down the hallway, sunlight streamed into the kitchen through red and white checked curtains. Terracotta herb pots lined the windowsill, giving a fresh, leafy scent to the air. The table was made from pale, knobbled driftwood, and on it, propped on the fruit bowl, was a key and a note saying
Help yourself to breakfast
. At the bottom was Freya’s cell number and a hand-drawn map showing the route to Brett’s gallery cafe.

I helped myself to juice and a bowl of organic muesli, and then rang Ryan’s phone to leave him one last message. I wanted to say I had important news, and if he didn’t want to talk to me, he could contact Dr. Fran Mackenzie. His phone rang on and on without switching to voicemail, and eventually the line disconnected. I hung up, with a click that felt like breaking a bridge. For a few long minutes I sat and stared at a knot in the tabletop. Then I limped back to bed and pulled the fern-printed covers over my head.

The next time I woke, the rain had stopped, and drops clung to the ferns like crystal beads. I put on some tights, donned a much-too-big jacket, and stuffed tissues in Freya’s shoes until they fit.

Outside, chill, bright air sparkled in my lungs. The tree ferns looked like lacy green parasols, and a bird was singing what sounded like a single note, repeated on a flute. I followed the cobblestones, feeling empty but clean, as if the rain had rinsed everything away.

The cafe was about fifteen minutes’ walk from the house, down a path like a ribbon of bare earth beside the road. My healing feet began to hurt again, but it was a bearable, tingling hurt that lessened as I walked. The path ended at a much wider country road, with a strip of little shops.

Molehill stood two stories high between a nursery and a secondhand bookshop. From a pole above the entrance, a square wooden sign swung gently. On it was a mole with a paintbrush in one paw, standing on a stylized green hill.

Inside, the walls were exposed stone, with a fireplace at one end and windows that opened onto forest. One side was lined with benches, currently half-full of customers reading or talking over coffee and cake. The other side had couches, sculptures on pedestals, and racks of bright clothing. On the walls were a mixture of framed art and shelves, on which sat pottery, glassware and books, with titles like
Nurturing your Organic Garden
and
Reiki for your Animal Companion
.

I was thumbing through
Painless Childbirth: A Guide for the Goddess Within
when a thin, loose-limbed man in a mole-printed apron approached me. “Are you Sage?” When I looked surprised, he added, “I recognized Freya’s dress. Hand-made by Karen, one of our local dressmakers. I’m Brett, by the way.”

He held out a hand and I shook it, touched by the way he’d said “our” local dressmaker, as if mountain folk were all a big family. He looked older than Freya, maybe late thirties. He wore his hair in a ponytail, and loose cotton pants and an unbleached kurta with yin-yang symbols embroidered around the neckline.

“I was just about to have a chai,” he said. “Want to join?”

“Sure. Thanks.”

Brett settled me at a bench and brought out a teapot and two cups. He sat opposite me, his posture upright yet relaxed.

I sipped my spicy drink, conscious of how much I owed Brett. Opening his house to a stranger, offering her a job, giving her free chai. “Let me know when you want me to start work,” I said.

“Here, you mean? No rush.” He waved at the tables, as if to say they mostly looked after themselves. “Take it easy for a week or two. Do some tai chi. I run a class upstairs on Mondays, and you’re welcome to come.” He waved his other hand at a spiral staircase. At its foot was another wooden sign, with a mole holding an arrow that read
Studio
.

I glanced around the room. “Is all this art done upstairs?”

“Some of it. The life drawings are.” He checked the clock. “Freya’s running a life drawing class there now, actually.”

My heart gave an enormous thump. Ryan had once mentioned modeling in the mountains. Might he be up there now, wearing his robe, spreading his scarlet blanket on the floor? “Do you think Freya would mind if I went to her class?”

“Not at all. Do you draw?”

I hesitated. “A bit.” I gulped my chai. “Thanks for the tea. And … everything.”

“My pleasure.”

I ran up the stairs to a bright, airy studio. One corner was filled with equipment—pottery wheels, jars of brushes, paint-spattered easels—and the other had a pinboard covered with flyers that flickered in the breeze from the heater. The artists were arranged around a white wooden stool that held a bowl containing grapes and two red apples.

Freya looked up. “Sage,” she said. “Welcome. Get yourself an easel.”

“Brett said this was a life drawing class,” I said, deflated.

“It is.” She set a timer with an irritated click. “The model hasn’t shown yet, so we’re doing still life and hoping she turns up.”

She
. My heart dropped another notch. “When was she meant to be here?”

“Half an hour ago.” Her voice was disgusted but resigned, as if this had happened before. “If she’s not here in the next five minutes I’m canceling the class.”

I picked up an easel and joined the circle. My fellow artists ranged from late teens to late seventies, and their faces looked focused and calm.

The timer beeped. “OK everyone,” announced Freya, “looks like she’s not coming. Let’s just pack up.”

They started packing up, with discontented murmurs that made me wish there was a way to help them out. My mouth sprang open of its own accord. “Would you like me to model for the class?”

The room went still. Heads swiveled from me to Freya, whose brows had risen to her hairline.

“I’ve done life drawing,” I said, my words stumbling over each other, “and if you’d like me to, I think I can do it.”

Freya’s brows descended, and her eyes turned cautious. “Are you sure? I thought you’d probably had enough of …” She paused delicately. “… that kind of thing.”

That kind of thing
. Exposing my body to strangers? Being looked at while naked, or half-naked? I thought about my brief stint at Wild Thing dressed in the black vinyl lace-up. And my job with La Carina in hot pink lingerie, shivering in front of Owen and Peter. Or even my walk through the city at night, plagued by whistles, lewd comments and car horns.

I looked around the studio. Classical music was playing, and an urn was simmering on a table by the door. Beside it were two platters, one with scones and cupcakes, the other with crackers, fruit and cheese. Next to the podium, warm air poured from a heater, riffling the hair of fourteen artists. Five were men—two young and dressed like Brett, one middle-aged, and two older, one with a jaunty fisherman’s cap, and one with a Santa Claus beard. All fourteen were looking me up and down, but not in a way that made me uncomfortable. The model was off-limits, and they all knew to mute signs of sexual appreciation.

“I’m sure,’ I said finally. ‘Whereabouts do I change?”

Freya indicated an area fenced off by bamboo screens. Minutes later, I slipped out and sat on the podium, naked under Freya’s purple dress.

“Four five minute poses,” said Freya, setting her timer.

I pulled off the dress, and sat on the stool, cupping the fruit bowl and twisting a little to the left. The breeze from the heater made the hair on my neck tickle, but I breathed deep and managed to stay still.

“Lovely!” said a fiftyish woman in a smock, picking up a smeary box of pastels.

When the tea break began, she offered to fetch me a scone and a cup of tea. At the end of the class, three more artists came up and invited me to model for their classes.

The beige bricks of the Community Center provided little insulation from the heat. A ceiling fan blew heavy, humid air among the artists, their faces smudged with charcoal where they’d swabbed their sweaty brows. My left foot was sliding on a stack of old phone directories, and the piano stool beneath me felt damp. One of my hands sat beside me on the stool; the other was curved around my belly, now swollen like a giant egg and resting on my thighs. From time to time I felt rubbery prods and wriggles from the two tiny bodies inside.

My lower back had long since started to ache. I shifted a bit to ease it, glancing longingly at the turquoise robe waiting nearby. The robe was the latest of my small but growing wardrobe, bought mostly from markets and Molehill. On it sat the plain blue glasses I’d chosen from the range of bargain frames at the optometrist. My hair, lush and glossy from pregnancy hormones, now fell to below my shoulders, but I’d pinned it up, because artists liked to draw the place where my head met my neck.

“How are you going, darling?” said Marianne, the teacher, earnest and willowy in her kimono-style dress. “Let me know if you need a break, OK?”

“OK.”

Artists loved a pregnant life model. Since my bump started showing, I’d been offered so much modeling that I barely had to work in the cafe. Several teachers were hiring me on a monthly basis, to document the swell of my stomach. I now knew all the buses that wound through the mountains, and had started to learn how to drive.

Living with Freya and Brett made me feel as though I’d been transported to a different world. I woke every morning to birdsong and ferns, and ate the vegetables they grew in their back garden. In the daytime, I served soup and cakes to patrons at Molehill, or sat naked among artists, listening to paintbrushes tinkling into jars half-full of water.

Fran came to lunch every Sunday. For the first three Sundays she didn’t mention Andrea, and I didn’t ask. On the fourth Sunday she brought the university paper, which said that the Head of Women’s Studies was laying charges against a male student who’d hacked her computer and vandalized her office. The suspect was thought to have seduced her granddaughter to pursue a personal vendetta.

I fumed, but the thought of confronting her in my condition was far too much to face. Instead, I told Fran to tell her I intended to do all I could to clear Ryan’s name. Fran agreed, but warned me it could be two years before the case went to trial.

Ryan’s number no longer rang when I dialed it. His department said he’d been expelled for misconduct, and they weren’t allowed to issue contact details. I sent a terse letter to Shell and searched for mentions of him online, but as weeks turned to months he receded into myth. The only connections now between my world and his were curved lines of charcoal and the two squirming babies in my womb.

The timer beeped to mark the end of my twenty-minute pose. A couple of artists exhaled, as if they’d been holding their breath.

“Just beautiful, sweetie,” said a sixtyish woman with square, spotted hands. “It’s really special, drawing a pregnant model. How far gone are you?”

I’d been answering this question daily for about five months now. “Eight months. But it’s twins, so I look really huge.”

She unclipped her drawings and rolled them up. “Boys? Girls? One of each?”

“I didn’t find out. But I’ll know soon. My cesarean’s scheduled for next week.”

Her benevolent smile flattened with disapproval. “Why a cesarean? Too posh to push?”

I put on my robe with an irritated sigh. My pregnant belly was a magnet for unwanted opinions and advice. “Because it’s twins, and one of them’s breech.” In my last ultrasound, the babies had been lying head to toe, like the yin-yangs on Brett’s favorite kurta.

The woman took a breath, preparing to mount her soapbox. “You can birth a breech baby naturally, sweetie.”

As she launched into a diatribe on medical intervention in childbirth, something tightened below my popped-out navel, like the stretch of a thick rubber band. The feeling lasted for about twenty seconds and then dwindled away. Just a Braxton-Hicks contraction. I’d been having them for a few weeks now.

I nodded wisely and made my escape, pretending to look at the drawings. After eight or nine easels, I felt another contraction, strong enough to make me stop and catch my breath. The nearest artist brightened, assuming I’d stopped to look at his work. He was also sixty-something, with an eager face and a fringe around his domed pink scalp.

“Some really
great
poses from you today.” He peeled back the pages to show me his drawings. “I reckon you’ve
doubled
in size since I drew you a few months ago. Take a look!”

He leafed through his sketches of models past. A cello-shaped woman reclining with a rose as if in a Rubens painting. A bearded old man with knobbly limbs and a spherical pot belly. A muscular woman with piercings and tattoos. A lean young man with a fountain of dark, springy hair.

My heart slammed into my rib cage. “Hang on!” I said, but he’d already turned to a woman with braids pinned to her head.

“
Here
you are!” He beamed and tapped a drawing of me at three months pregnant. “See how much you’ve grown since then?”

I almost snatched the book from his hands. “Sorry,” I said, trying not to sound as frantic as I felt, “can you turn forward a few pages? Please? I thought I saw … someone I know.”

He flipped back the way he came and my hand shot out and pinned the book open. Ryan looked thinner, and his hair was limper than I remembered, but it was definitely him.

“Oh,
that
guy. Bit of a misery guts, but he was a great model. I was going to hire him for the sculpture class I run at the community college.”

As he babbled on and on about his sculpture class, the tightening below my navel began again. At its peak it was strong enough to flush my cheeks and make me bend in the middle.

The man’s enthusiasm stalled. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, fine,” I said, in a breathless voice. “Just a Braxton-Hicks contraction. False labor. About that model. Did you get his number? Because—”

“Are you sure it’s false?”

“
Yes
. Look, I need to get hold of that man. Urgently.”

“Oh.” He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “I was going to hire him, so I probably
did
take down his number. What’s his name?”

“Ryan. Ryan Prince.”

As the man rootled in his satchel, the sixtyish woman bustled up. “Did you say you’re having contractions, sweetie?”

“Yes, but—”

“See?” She gave me a wide, indulgent smile, as if she’d won the argument. “Your babies want to be born naturally. They can sense that scalpel coming, so they’ve decided to come early.”

The man finally emerged with an address book. “What was his surname again?”

“Prince.”

“Hmmm.” He licked his finger and turned back through the book toward P, one frustrating page at a time.

The woman had taken out her phone. “What’s your husband’s number? I’ll tell him to come straightaway.”

“I’m not married.” My palms itched with the desire to snatch the address book and scour every page for Ryan’s number.

“Your partner then. Come on, sweetie, you don’t want to go through labor alone.”

“Hang on!” cried the man, tossing his address book aside. “That was the class I did at Blind Creek! I didn’t have my address book, so I wrote his number in my sketch book.” He flipped through the drawings of Ryan. “Here it is! I’ll copy it down for you.”

A fourth contraction, so powerful that when it ended I found myself folded in half and clinging to the easel. The entire class was open-mouthed and bubbling with anxious questions.
Do we take her to hospital? When
’
s she due? Should we call a doctor?

“Can I have the timer, Marianne?” The sixtyish woman again, speaking as if she was now in charge. “I need to measure the time between her contractions.”

The timer went off. “I’ll get the number from you after class,” I said firmly to the man, waddling back to the stage. Pieces of masking tape had been stuck on the piano stool to help me reproduce my earlier pose.

Marianne caught my elbow, shaking her head. “I can’t let you keep on modeling, darling. Not if you’re in labor. It’s a safety issue.”

“But I’m
not in real labor
.” As I said the word
labor
, a pop in my loins sent a warm gush of fluid down my thighs. My heartbeats blurred into a deafening roar as a puddle grew beneath me. Clutching my belly as if it were bursting, I lumbered at speed toward the changing area.

Safe behind the curtain, I braced against the wall until the next contraction struck. When it ended, I put on my robe and grabbed my phone: a cheap, no-frills handset in a pleasant sage green.

“Hi Freya.” My voice wavered under the weight of my news. “I’m having contractions, and my waters just broke.” Freya had agreed to be my birth partner.

“I’ll grab your hospital bag and be there in ten,” said Freya, and hung up.

The sixtyish woman pulled open the curtain. “Come on, sweetie.” She seized my elbow. “I’m taking you to hospital. Do you have a doula?”

I stared about wildly for the man with the sketchbook. He was zipping his portfolio folder. “Have you got that number?” I called, an edge of hysteria in my voice.

“I figured you had more important things on your mind,” he said, with a maddening wink at my belly.

“
Wait!
” I shouted, but he headed for the door, with a wave and a call of “Good luck!”

“Come on, sweetie,” repeated the sixtyish woman, bending to gather my things. “You’re having a baby.
Two
babies. It can wait.”

“No, it
can
’
t
wait.” My voice started shaking. “The man in that drawing’s the
father of my children
.”

“And he left you when you were pregnant?” The woman sounded appalled.

“
No
, he …” Another contraction, so painful that I doubled over again, barely able to breathe. When I opened my eyes, the man was gone and Freya was standing in the doorway. She took in the situation, and shooed away the woman away with the cool authority she’d inherited from Fran.

“Ready to go?” she said. When I nodded, she picked up my bag and helped me to the door.

The man with Ryan’s number was in the carpark, putting his folio in the boot. I clutched at Freya’s arm and pointed. “Freya,” I said, in low, urgent tones, “that man has Ryan’s phone number. We need to get it. Now. Before he leaves.”

“And you need an emergency C-section. I’ll see to it later.”

Pain flooded me, not a contraction, but something deeper that I felt in every cell. “Please, Freya.
Please
.”

Freya took out her cell phone, photographed his numberplate, and unlocked the doors of her car. “I’ll find him, Sage. I promise. Now for God’s sake,
get in the car
.”

She half-lifted me into the back seat, looped the seatbelt around my huge belly, and jumped into the driver’s seat. I dug in my nails and gritted my teeth as the next contraction juddered through my body like a jackhammer.