Perfect Skin by Nick Earls Read Free Book Online Page A

No, a need for it. We’ve thought it through –   the Bean and me – and we choose disposables.
    I know all about the landfill issue. I know that I’m responsible for a couple of cubic kilometres of it, and I know that the plastic parts of the Bean’s disposables might outlast us both by thousands of years, but that’s the way it is. Build on it.
    I imagine that I’m not the only parent in town who’s made this choice. And that in the outer suburbs, new housing developments are being built on quietly settling piles of grungy nappies, plus non-biodegradable packing material, betamax VCRs, lava lamps (from both times they were in), toasters that were fine until the catch stopped staying down, fungoid futons, coffee makersthat seized up because no-one ever cleaned them.
    I can imagine aliens landing quietly by night, core sampling this in someone’s backyard and leaving, analysing what they’ve got and wondering if it’s a treasure trove or a very sad fallen civilisation (stricken by bad appliances and worse bowel control). And I’m thinking this while I’m gazing at the nappy shelves, imagining the aliens deciding that our planet sucks, and I’m quietly singing the Lemonheads’ ‘It’s a Shame About Ray’. Great song, but I’ve really got to lift my game.
    I pick up a couple of thirty-six packs, and go to meet the Bean at childcare.

4
    On Saturday I take the Bean down to the uni lakes. I want her to see the ducks, but when we get there she’s less excited than I’d hoped. I’m not sure that she’s up to wildlife yet.
    There is one thing I like about that, though. An upside to her not giving a shit about the ducks. It shows that she can tell me apart from them. She looks at the ducks with a minor version of her straining-to-poo face, and she looks at me as though I’m one of the good guys. The reality-checking device, the one that’ll see her right. An entity she can trust. Of course, I’m not unique in that. I think she trusts Elvis, too, and while I’m tossing bread to the ducks he’s going insane about a medium-sized stick.
    Soon he’s flopped beside us, panting, since it’s simply too hot to keep up any reasonable level of stick madness today. He looks at me with his big eyes, checks all’s well.
    I think you’ve got them under control, buddy, I tell him.
    Then I talk more about the ducks, the trees, the buildings, as I hold the Bean in a standing position and use one of her hands to point. One day the content will count for something, and there’s plenty I’ll be able to tell her, all kinds of things to explain that she doesn’t understand yet.And about much more than scenery, when the time is right. But for the moment she’s just propped up there, bow-legged and pale and passively pointing. The Bean and her silly flowery hat and her perfect skin. Her chubbed-up pale limbs, yet to be shaped by any serious function. Soft all over, other than when she head butts. The Bean and that excellent musty baby smell.
    I try to mop up some drool and she puts my hand in her mouth and bites. There’s something tiny and sharp in there, and when she lets me look I can see the white point of a tooth coming through a raised, red bud of gum. I get a little excited, she thinks I’m an idiot, Elvis jumps up and comes back with a stick.
    I’ve brought the camera with me, so I sit her down and try to line up something that will capture the moment of tooth discovery. Even though I know it’ll probably end up as nothing more than a picture of a baby with spit down her front. But I guess you can never have too many of those.
    Smile. Smile, I say, and earn a look of great curiosity. You have to smile now, I urge her, but she reverts to the straining-to-poo face.
    No, smile. Just a quick smile first. Please. What can I do to make you smile? Okay, there’s three bits of string and they