The Yummy Mummy by Polly Williams Read Free Book Online Page B

“casual” shoes on my coffee table. She buys these neat, elasticized shoes in bulk from the back page of newspaper magazines, the ones advertised by a woman of a certain age golfing.
    “Sorry, I didn’t mean that, just wasn’t expecting you. I thought you were at Lou’s today.”
    “No. She got an emergency appointment at the chiropractor. Bunions playing up again. Anyway, do
I
need to book an appointment to see my daughter?”
    Hardly. Since Evie was born Mum has forsaken knocking. Why bother when she has a spare key and a sweet little granddaughter waiting inside? Any notion of privacy has become redundant. There’s nothing Mum hasn’t seen. She had a good look at my cervical dilation and shoved my bruised nipple indignantly into Evie’s newborn mouth for the first suck. Life has come full circle. After years of my going out and not phoning enough and missing family get-togethers in favor of trysts with unsuitable young men, she is now back on firm ground: She’s needed. I’m her little girl again, in desperate need of firm guidance.
    “What’s that in your hand?” Mum asks, an octave above casual inquiry. “Writing shopping lists now? There I was thinking you were a lost cause.”
    “Very funny.” I quickly shove the list into my jeans pocket.
    “Where have you been?”
    “Oh, a bit of shopping, a walk.”
    Mum sweeps me up and down, eyes like dusters. “Well, that can only be a good thing.” She peers into the pram and tickles Evie under the chin. Evie looks up adoringly, blue eyes unblinking.
    Thud, thud.
Joe, looking harassed. “Did you meet the girls? Too early for Alice to get you drunk, I suppose?”
    “Hilarious,” I say.
    Mum scans our conversation for a window. Finding none, she dissolves over Evie. “Can I?”
    “Of course.” It’s only because Joe is in the room that she asks for permission to pick up Evie. Mum hugs her granddaughter over her shoulder, sinks her nose into the folds of her fat damp neck, and inhales deeply. Evie’s womb-fresh skin makes my mother look ancient, the tendons in her neck like violin strings, hands meat-red and rough. Old person’s hands. They remind me of the unimaginable, Mum dying, lying still on a slab. I try to shake the image from my mind. But it sticks.
    “You all right, love?”
    “A bit tired.”
    “And what about Evie? Coocchi!” She tickles Evie under her chin. “My little sugarplum, are you tired yet? Being so little in this big wide world?”
    I roll my eyes at Joe, who daren’t roll his back in case Mum catches him. He still has that polite new-boyfriend thing going on, even though we’ve been together almost two years. He makes Mum tea. He drives her home. He listens to her talk about garden centers and the problems of growing foxglove in clay soil. He commiserates with her that her two sons hardly ever phone and they live in Australia and it’s very difficult to get the timing right on the phone calls because they surf such a lot and the weather is better and the flights are expensive but still she wishes they’d make more journeys over and what a shame it is that flying doesn’t agree with her. Or surfing. She tried it once but found it terrifying, convinced she’d end up in the jaws of a great white and doesn’t understand the hold it has over her baby boys. She suspects marijuana might have something to do with it.
    Joe goes into the kitchen to make tea. Reassuring domestic clatter: tap running, the click of a kettle lid, thud of Joe’s feet. I check the answering machine—any contact from the parallel universe?—when Mum’s distinctive odor (Estee Lauder’s Beautiful, bathroom cleaner) announces itself behind me.
    “Amy,” she whispers sharply. “Your hair.”
    “What about my hair?”
    “It looks like it hasn’t encountered a hairbrush for five years.”
    Five days actually. “Rushed off my feet.”
    “That’s what it’s like with a baby,” she sermonizes slowly. “That’s what it’s going to be like