Oh.
Right.
She swallowed, closed her eyes. The headache she had woken up with after surgery got worse in the afternoon. She rubbed her temples.
“Don’t make this a big deal. Don’t make it worse than it needs to be.”
“I’m not arguing with you,” Nev said. “If you’re not interested, we’ll go. I just thought it might be nice.”
“Nice…?” Ronnie swallowed. “What part of this is nice? There’s no part of this that I want to remember. I don’t dwell on shit like this. Trying to forget about it and move on as fast as I can.”
“I’m sure that’s very healthy,” Nev quipped. “You might feel differently about the ectopic in the future. Planting a tree would be a gift to your future self. Hedging your bets. If you never need it, grand.”
“Grand? You’re Irish now? Can you please just be a normal fucking person for one second, please? And not try to…” What was Nev trying to do? “This isn’t the Titanic. I don’t want flowers. I don’t want a song. I want to…”
Bloody hell...Nev sounded like she wanted to have a funeral for the embryo.Unbelievable...Ronnie held her cracked ribs to make it easier to breathe. “You’re not even religious! Neither of us are. It was never viable. It wasn’t a person. I can’t believe I have to say this.”
The only baby I lost is Rainbow.
Nev crouched beside the chair, tearing apart a stray azalea leaf until it resembled confetti. “I didn’t say those things. Don’t put words in my mouth.”
She knew Nev was trying to be supportive and she felt bad for snapping at her. She sighed. “I’m sorry. I have to conserve my fucks for living people who depend on me.”
“By all means, do that.”
“I will.”
Clearly this meant more to Nev than it did to her. Nev had seen actual dead babies and Ronnie should give her more credit—the owner of Upsend Downs knew exactly what an ectopic was, but she had never experienced one.
Once Ronnie realized that this pit stop wasn’t for her, she changed her mind. If planting something to watch it grow was important to Nev, Ronnie would do it, but she would complain the entire time. She rubbed her face. She hadn’t bathed in a week and desperately needed something; she wasn’t sure what. “Fine. We’ll do this faggy thing and never talk about it again. Call Gunni, he’ll want to be invited. Play some Enya.”
Nev stood up. “Forget it. Don’t be a nong. That sounded like something your mother would say.” Nev inhaled sharply. Ronnie watched her friend pull an almost empty carton of cigarettes out of a back pocket, put one in her mouth, produce a lighter, then catch herself. Nev returned the cigarette and lighter to her pockets before turning the wheelchair around.
Ronnie held her head. “I didn’t mean it in a derogatory way.”
Now Nev thought she was a homophobe, which was a new low. After making an arse of herself the least she could do was pick a shrub.
As Nev wheeled her between rows, Ronnie felt strange considering qualities of each young tree such as leaf color, shape, size, simple, compound, double-compound branching structure, projected height, and drought tolerance, looking for one that best matched the qualities of the embryo that had almost killed her. Nev was smarter than she was, so it must have occurred to her.
A large sapling in an unusual bright pink pot caught her eye. It was her height, or would have been if she was standing. She didn’t need to look at the tag to know that they had bought it in as a tiny sprout from the non-profit native plant nursery forforty-nine dollars and now that they had kept it for years, priced it ten times higher. “That one.”
“Blue quandong.” Nev crouched to cut off the tag, straightened, then handed the plastic ribbon to her. “My favorite tree.”
Ronnie laughed, then regretted it. “Ow. Is that a thing? Do people have favorite trees?”
“Rainbow does.”
She frowned. When was the last time she thought about her daughter? She should have been thinking about her this whole time. Rainbow was waiting for her at Reg and Blaise’s house at this moment, probably wondering what was taking them so long. Ronnie sent off a quick text to Rainbow using her voice to text ap.
(Ronnie) Hey babe, stopped at the farm with Nev, be there in a bit. Can’t wait to see you!
A moment later her phone vibrated.
(Rainbow) Ok, see you soon. Me too!
The tag said it would be a large evergreen with buttress roots. The blue quandong was a native rainforest tree in a symbiotic relationship with the cassowary; the seeds of its giant, bright blue fruits weren’t viable unless they passed through the gut of an enormous blue-headed bird. “The fruits are the same electric blue as the cassowaries,” Nev added, cheerfully.
“I know what a quandong is.”
