25. Coral

“You can’t be serious,” her Belinda scoffs.

“Mum, don’t,” her daughter replies, not bothering to look up from her phone.
“Claire, you cannot be serious! You’re not naming your child that.” She wants to smack the phone out of her daughter’s hand.
“I knew you wouldn’t approve,” Claire rolls her eyes flippantly.
“What is there to approve?” Belinda can hear how hysterical she sounds but she doesn’t care. “It isn’t a name! It’s an invertebrate!”
The people at the next table snicker.
“I think Coral sounds pretty,” Claire retorts, staring at Belinda as though she’s gone crazy like she always expected she would.
“Coral for a girl and Cory for a boy.”
Belinda shakes her head. She doesn’t want to make a spectacle of herself in the bloody food court of all places, but over her dead body will her first grandchild be named Coral.
“Claire, Coral is something you name your dog, not a child. Why not something nice like Emma, or Elizabeth?”
“I’m not naming my kid after a Jane Austen character! Seriously Mum, leave it alone,” she picks up her decaf iced coffee and takes a big sip.
Where did her Claire go? The one who used to stay up late reading Harry Potter books under the covers. She misses that age. The girl across from her seething with resentment is unrecognisable as her own.
Belinda contemplates what godforsaken thing she must have done in a past life to be punished like this. Arguing with her seventeen-year-old daughter in public after her 18-week scan is not how she had envisioned motherhood when Claire was doing summersaults inside of her.
“Just think about it, okay?” Belinda softly pleads.
“Fine,” Claire sets her plastic cup down forcefully and buries herself back in her phone. An all-too-familiar silence lingers between them. Belinda has come to know the silence well. She remembers throwing icy stares and cold silences between herself and her own mother, long before Claire had mastered it so quickly.
Then again, Belinda’s mother wasn’t around when she got pregnant. They’d only ever shared the chaos of teenage hormones. Her mother copped the whiplash of Belinda’s emotions and meltdowns. She’d never have dared to put her own mother through something like this though. She wonders if she’s killing two birds with one stone with Claire. Double the craziness.
“Do you want to know the gender?” Claire asks all of a sudden.
“I thought you didn’t want to know,” Belinda feels herself getting anxious at the thought of Coral becoming real. Could she come up with a nickname cute enough to appease Claire?
Claire shrugs, “I don’t care.”
“Well, what about Alex?” Belinda asks. As much as she can’t stand that cocky kid she knows it’s the right thing to do.
“Fuck him,” Claire says, putting her phone down and fishing for something in her bag.
“Claire!” Belinda scolds, secretly delighted.
“He’s useless,” Claire sighs, “I’ve been thinking of just dealing with all of this on my own. And please don’t say anything about it yet! I’m still thinking about it. Okay?”
“Okay,” Belinda replies obediently, relishing the thought of slamming the door in that kid's face at her daughter’s request.
Claire places the envelope on the table.
“So, do you want to know?”
“Only if you’re ready,” Belinda says softly. She feels like her heart is about to burst out of her chest with anticipation.
Claire tears the envelope open unceremoniously and reads the details of the ultrasound.
“It’s a boy,” she says, blinking at the little photograph.
“A boy!” Belinda exclaims joyously. Claire’s eyes stay transfixed on the scan, mixed with curiosity and shock. It’s a face Belinda remembers, it’s the same one she had when she realised she was having a baby girl. In front of her eyes, Claire has realised she’s growing a real person. One who will one day sit across from her just as Belinda is sitting across from her right now.
Belinda sets her hand on top of Claire’s and gives her a gentle smile. She can see the tears welling up in Claire’s eyes.
“It’s a boy,” she repeats to her mother. Belinda gives her hand a gentle squeeze.
“It’s Cory,” she says, doing her best to mask her relief.