panic! at the nail salon

It’s my mother’s 70th birthday on Sunday, and we’re throwing a big lunch. I thought I’d get my nails done to make sure I look presentable for a special occasion – especially with Christmas around the corner. Lately, I’ve felt sluggish and frumpy, unable to dress for my body, for the heat. I envy people who look well groomed and put-together; I almost never do.

There’s a little nail salon at our local shopping centre, and although I hadn’t made an appointment today, the staff invited me inside and let me know which booth I could settle into. I put my bags down on the floor. I sorted through a tub of plastic nail-polish samples, torn between a deep, sparkly green and various shades of glitter-flecked gold. I waited for the painkillers I’d taken at home to kick in, dull the prickling in my neck and spine. It should have been easy, relaxing. But as I sat in the air-conditioning, listening to Christmas carols playing gently from a TV screen – set against one of those AI-generated backgrounds, fake snow drifting through a fake sky onto the pillowy white branches of a fake fir – I began to cry.

Earlier in the year, back in September, I’d caught up with a family member who’d just moved back to Australia after a year in Europe. We talked about our plans for the end-of-year holidays, how and when we might catch up again after so long apart. We were sitting in a Melbourne café tucked away in a side street. It was cold that day. I was drinking a decaf cappuccino from a chunky mug. My hair was flat and fuzzy from wearing a beanie.

‘By the time Christmas rolls around,’ he commented, visibly doing the maths in his head, ‘you should be very pregnant.’ I tried to fix this image in my mind: a vision of myself with a round, obvious bump. Summer in Queensland. Hot weather. The peace that would come with passing those crucial milestones. I tried to imagine it. It seemed so far-fetched, so far away. I couldn’t.

I couldn’t.

A couple of nights before that, in my hotel room, I’d crawled into the king-sized bed, much too large for me by myself, and tried to doze off among an archipelago of pillows. I often have trouble winding down after a big day, and it had been a big day. Anticipating some difficulty getting to sleep, I pulled the curtains shut, placed a glass of tap water on the bedside table. My body just couldn’t seem to cross that threshold into the dark chamber of rest, however, so I did what I often do when I’m alone: I put on some soft music.

‘This is ridiculous,’ I remember thinking to myself, propping my iPhone against a folded blanket near my belly. I knew what was growing inside me had no ears yet – no sense of anything whatsoever, actually – but I played some music to us both anyway. I wanted the baby to know it was loved and cared for. I was scared, because I’d been here before, that we wouldn’t have much time together.

I was right.

I don’t know why the AI snow in the nail salon – softly falling, falling – triggered this memory from months before, but as my eyes started to brim with tears, a young man pulled up a chair in front of me and asked me to place both my hands on the table between us.

Taking my fingers in his, he filed each nail into a perfect crescent and applied a clear base coat, swiping from cuticle to tip.

We didn’t speak.

He nodded each time I needed to swap hands, moved my wrists back and forth to find the best angle for his work.

I watched the women around me sitting like queens in their leather armchairs, seemingly impervious to the workers crouched at their bunioned feet buffing callouses off their heels. They flicked through magazines from the newsagent next door, scrolled their phones. Another wandered in with a pram and sat at the back of the salon, nestling a newborn in her lap, tiny and doll-like beneath the fluorescent lights.

I tried not to notice.

I looked back down at my fingers, cradled in the manicurist’s hands. I looked at his nails, short and ordinary, as he applied one layer of gold polish, then a second. Indiscernible carols leaked through the nail salon’s sound system. Snowflakes kept drifing across the flatscreen TV affixed to the wall.

Eventually, the young man told me to let my nails cure beneath the IV lamp another two times – 60 seconds each. Strict instructions. I repeated them back to him. He nodded again. Afterwards, he inspected his handiwork, tilting my hands back and forth between his. My nails, gold and sparkly, looked beautiful.

As I took out my credit card to pay, I said, ‘Thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.’ But he’d already moved on to the next customer, was pulling out a chair as she put down her bags.

I drove home. I nibbled the corner off a sleeping tablet. I lay down in the dark of our spare bedroom to rest. One of the cats jumped down from a high cupboard where he’d been sleeping to lie along the length of my body in the cool air. I felt sad but calm.

You never know, I thought as I drifted off to sleep, one manicured hand resting against the curve of the cat’s spine, who’ll be there to hold you.