The Mistake

by Katie McMahon

  ‘Sweetheart?’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t talk to her.’ He looked up from his phone. His legs were extended on the coffee table.

  ‘Not that.’ Heavens, they had more going on than Adamdick. ‘Listen. We need to think about the girls’ school fees,’ she said. ‘Kate offered, yesterday, to pay, and I really think we should accept. I know you don’t want to ask your mum and dad, and I can understand that, but—’

  ‘Bec.’ He closed his eyes briefly. ‘We cannot, I will not, accept money from my parents or from Kate or from anyone. The kids are our responsibility, the fees are my responsibility, and that’s all there is to it. I will not bring our children up to think that you can allow other people to bail you out.’

  ‘She’s their aunty! And it’d just be for a term, or two at most, and . . . and how can you let their little worlds be so ruined? What’s responsible about that?’

  ‘You’re being melodramatic, Bec,’ he said, calmly. He moved his feet off the coffee table, set them on the floor in front of his chair.

  ‘And I notice, Lachy, the firstborn son, isn’t going to suffer.’ Her voice was shrill and ugly.

  ‘Bec,’ he said, like a school headmaster. ‘Really. Bec.’ He was always so measured and right in arguments. It drove her insane. (And in fairness, Stuart adored all three of his kids. In fact, she teased him that Essie was his favourite, but even that was only ever a joke. He said Mathilda had the makings of an excellent surgeon, but Lachlan was likely never going to be ‘driven’ enough, which was fine, because surgery certainly wasn’t the career for everyone and Lachlan would find his niche.)

  ‘All right. Sorry.’ She took a breath. ‘But the girls. You know how happy they are. And this, the poor little things, it isn’t their fault.’ She was ranting again, by the end, but maybe he should just ask himself where the fault actually lay. Not that she didn’t believe him. Not really.

  ‘Bec, please don’t put me in this situation,’ he said. He leaned forward. ‘Please. Please don’t.’

  ‘I’m not putting you in any situation!’ She was leaning forward too. ‘They’re my kids, she’s my sister, no one’s asking you to do anything. We’re all just supporting you – I’m going out to work, Stuart. I’m . . . cleaning and cooking and trying to find Mathilda a second-hand blazer and lying awake thinking about the electricity bill while you faff around with the camellias and then snore your head off.’

  ‘I’m not going to change my mind.’ His voice was still level, but she could tell she’d hurt his feelings. She was glad. Just to get some cut-through.

  ‘Well then,’ she said. She raised her eyebrows, as if it was a challenge. ‘I suppose I’m going to have to meet with Briarwood.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ he said. But sadly. There was a silence. He nodded a tiny bit. ‘All right. Thank you, Bec. Thank you so much. For all you’re doing.’

  He reached his hand across the coffee table towards her. She stared at it for a couple of seconds.

  ‘I love you so much,’ he said.

  Maybe it was just a few kisses, she thought. Maybe her marriage was solid.

  She wrapped her fingers around his.

  *

  On Monday, which she kept thinking of as her Last Day, she dropped the kids off at Briarwood – ‘Bye, darlings! Have a lovely day!’ – and then semi-snuck into the Staff Only toilet. She checked her make-up, and told her reflection there were much worse things going on in the world. Then she went to the office and asked if she could please make an appointment to see the Business Manager.

  Mary from the Office said, ‘Why, of course, Mrs Henderson,’ in a compassionate way. Bec got the feeling that Mary from the Office knew exactly what meeting the Business Manager meant. Mary from the Office must have seen this all before. ‘How about three o’clock tomorrow? Just before pick-up.’

  But Bec was due to finish work at three. ‘Actually, Mary,’ she said. ‘I won’t need to take up too much time. Could we make it 3.15?’ The kids finished at 3.30.

  ‘Certainly,’ said Mary, writing the time down on a little card. ‘There. Save you making two trips.’ She handed over the card with an air of immense satisfaction.

  Bec smiled in a way that conveyed that pick-up was a nightmare, and also that Mary from the Office had made her week – nuanced, eyeroll-y smiles were Bec’s forte – and walked to her car.

  She sat in it for several minutes. Then she locked the door.

  *

  ‘Hi, Ryan. It’s Bec Henderson here.’

  It was amazing, really, how easy it was. Like jumping into the swimming pool: it wasn’t the actual jump, it was all the thinking about it beforehand. Once you were doing it, it just seemed inevitable. The Briarwood car park was going on as usual. A maintenance man was wheeling a barrow of agapanthus along the side path.

  ‘Bec.’ Ryan’s voice was warm and familiar. He sounded so pleased to hear from her: pleased and surprised, she thought. ‘Whatcha up to?’

  ‘I’ve just dropped the kids at school.’ She glanced at her own face in the visor mirror. ‘I’m on my way home now.’

  She was think-hoping he might tell her to pop by his place. (Popping by being so much more casual, and so much less like infidelity, than arranging a tryst in advance.)

  That is simply illogical, you adulterer, said Stern Voice. Bec was beginning to feel that Stern Voice was an old-fashioned, slut-shaming woman. Stern Voice was probably deeply repressed and in need of scream-therapy or something.

  Ryan said, ‘I’m heading up the mountain in a little while. Want to come? I need a bushwalking buddy.’ He left a short pause. ‘And I reckon we’d have it all to ourselves, Bec.’

  Bec thought of all the things she needed to do before she picked the children up. She had to vacuum the bedrooms, drink at least one cup of tea with Stuart, do the online shopping for the week, go out to K-mart and buy some navy-blue pants to wear to work the next day, make sure three suitable tops (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday) were ironed, go over exactly what Adamdick had said, negotiate dinner, clean at least the kids’ bathroom, do the washing, speak to her mum, maybe talk to Kate – of course she should be the one to tell Kate, what had she been thinking? – and (just as bad) review the bank accounts and then draft a list of dot points to discuss with Briarwood.

  ‘A walk sounds so nice, Ryan,’ she said. ‘But I’m actually starting a new job tomorrow. I need to, you know, get organised.’ She laughed, as if she started new jobs all the time and this was just a bit of a drag because it interrupted her usual nature-appreciation-with-handsome-young-men routine.

  ‘Or later in the week,’ he said. ‘What if I scout it out today, and then we go another time? On Friday? Reckon the weather’s gonna be better then, anyway.’

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘That sounds really nice.’

  ‘It’s a date,’ he said. ‘Well.’ She heard him swallow. ‘Not exactly a date, I guess, Mrs Henderson.’

  Bec chortled merrily, as if Ryan was just the darnedest li’l thing in the world, and then, as they talked about where and when to meet, she kept her voice straightforward, like she was booking a restaurant. She sounded pretty convincing, actually.

  All her years in Sandy Bay were paying off.

  *

  On Tuesday morning, she woke at five-forty. She had less than four hours, now, until she was due at the clinic of Dr Daniel Gilbert and Associates.

  Daniel Gilbert was an acquaintance of Stuart’s; he was a dermatologist. He thought the situation with Stuart was ridiculous, and that the whole ‘culture of complaint’ was ‘out of hand.’ Bec was going to be working as his medical receptionist.

  Bec had known Daniel Gilbert since medical school. He had been the kind of guy about whom Kate would have said, ‘As if,’ and Bec would have replied, ‘Don’t be mean. He’s nice,’ even though, in truth, she had never known him well enough to tell whether he was nice or not.

  Anyway, Bec could work school hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays and a full day on Wednesdays. It would b
e, she knew, a dream job for many women with school-age kids, and she tried to feel more grateful. Her terror was shameful, really. She tried to feel less ashamed. Then she tried to accept herself without judgement even though she did feel ashamed. Then she sighed and wondered if she should see Ryan on Friday. After a while, she got up.

  Just before nine, she arrived at work, and stood near a chair in the waiting room. The receptionist behind the counter gave Bec a be-with-you-in-a-minute nod and then said, ‘Thank you for holding,’ into a headset. She had exactly the capable, distant air Bec knew she herself lacked, and also a lot of hairspray. Bec wondered what to do. Surely no one would expect her to go around to the other side of the counter and start reception-ing?

  A door opened, and Dr Daniel Gilbert appeared.

  ‘Bec! Or should I say, Dr Henderson! Looking well!’ Quick flick of his nimble little eyes. ‘Now, I trust you’re not going to be bored out of your brain.’ Bec could only hope the hair-sprayed receptionist was too busy in her headset to hear him. ‘Come along with me,’ he said, merrily.

  He led Bec very briskly along a short corridor – she’d forgotten all about the I’m-so-important doctor-y pace – and into an office. A woman sat with her back to them.

  ‘Michelle’s a gem, Bec,’ he said. ‘She keeps us all on track.’ Michelle was the practice manager. Bec’s boss.

  ‘Yes. Dr Gilbert said you’d be coming in.’ Michelle turned around and closed her eyes briefly. She sighed and stood up. ‘We’ll start you on scanning.’ Bec followed her around a corner to a fluorescent-lit alcove, where Michelle rattled off instructions as if she was being forced to go over things Bec should already know. Bec stared at the scanner and the tottering pile of documents. It would be ridiculous to cry.

  Turned out, boring was the last thing being a medical receptionist was. It was really hard. The phone rang constantly, and the doctors roamed about requesting appointments or photocopies or to know the whereabouts of spare batteries or envelopes or nursing staff, and all the while patients waited at the counter, and no one except Michelle and Sandra (the hairsprayed receptionist, who luckily was lovely) seemed to realise that it was Bec’s first day and she hadn’t had any training.

  By three o’clock, when she said her tentative goodbye and thank you, she was exhausted. And she still had the Briarwood meeting.

  It was beyond gruelling. All the politeness (‘Oh, well yes, of course I’m biased but I’d have to say Mathilda’s always been bright!’) and the ruthlessness (‘And you’re aware the term two fees fall due, in full, on May fifteen?’) and, underneath, her own barely contained panic. The fifteenth of May was only two weeks away, and unless something drastic changed, there was no way they would have the $7,000 for term two by then.

  But she nodded (‘Just one of those little hiccups!’) and smiled (‘Such a lovely school community, isn’t it?’) and hoped (‘I can’t see that being too big a problem’).

  She was halfway through that sentence when she realised she was lying.

  As she drove home, with the kids in the back, she remembered she had to work again the very next day. In less than seventeen hours, she had to be back there, dressed in the navy-blue trousers and a different boring top. And in the meantime, she had to cook dinner and check soccer gear and make lunches and change Mathilda’s dentist appointment and find an old family photo for Essie’s show-and-tell and get everyone to bed. That was the bare minimum. It was crushing. And she was only one day in.

  No wonder people cared so much about money, she thought, as the traffic lights changed. They weren’t being greedy. It was simply to survive.

  *

  ‘Shepherd’s pie,’ said Stuart, on Wednesday. ‘Your mum emailed me the recipe.’

  Bec had just arrived home from work. She was thirsty. School bags were all over the dining-room floor. Lunch boxes would be inside, their congealed hummus and slimy cheese waiting. And screwed-up jumpers that would need ironing.

  Stuart was peeling potatoes, even though it was almost six o’clock. Of course, he was already an expert on potato varieties. He’d only been helping with the cooking for a week, and knew more about Desirees and Kennebecs than Bec ever had. Too bad he couldn’t empty a school bag. Or have dinner on the table at a reasonable hour.

  The children trailed out of the lounge room and gave Bec dragging, sticky hugs.

  ‘Why don’t you go and get your jammies on?’ she said. ‘Dinner’s a while off.’ There was a chorus of dissent.

  ‘Nope!’ Bec stood up straight so Essie was forced to get off her. ‘I do not want to hear it.’ It felt like a burn, a literal, physical burn, to talk to them like that. She’d been missing them all afternoon. But she was so tired. ‘Showers. Pyjamas. Right now.’

  They drifted off. Essie and Lachy just looked mutinous, but Mathilda was bravely holding back tears. Bec would give her a big fix-everything hug, just as soon as she’d had a glass of water and at least half a cup of tea.

  ‘How did you go with the locum thing?’ she said, walking past Stuart to the sink. She turned on the tap, and hoped she sounded rational rather than desperate. After the Briarwood meeting, Bec had suggested he go and earn some money by working somewhere rural for a few weeks. Somewhere surgeons were in very, very short supply.

  ‘No go.’ His tone was flat. ‘I’d have to sign something that says I haven’t had any issues with a hospital, that I’m not aware of any complaints against me.’ He was still chopping potatoes. ‘I kind of knew that, anyway.’

  ‘Well, how many did you check with?’

  ‘I rang three agencies.’ He sounded heavy and sorry, rather than terse and defensive, but at the same time, she could tell that he didn’t care that much. ‘But it’d be standard.’

  Bec drank some water, then rinsed out a cloth. She tapped over to the dining table and started wiping it. Those crumbs were from breakfast, for heaven’s sake.

  ‘OK.’ She didn’t look at him.

  ‘What?’ He sounded mystified.

  ‘Well, we need money.’ She used her most patient voice, but made self-righteous swipes with her cloth.

  ‘Right,’ Stuart said, cautiously.

  ‘You weren’t aware of that?’ Now she sounded like a silky prosecutor going in for the kill.

  ‘I was. Yes.’ His voice was tentative.

  ‘So?’ She scooped up the cloth with a flourish, and straightened her back. ‘What do you suggest we do, Stuart?’ Why was she being so horrible? And worse, why wasn’t he telling her to stop being horrible? When she was moody and mean, he usually said, ‘Bec. I am absolutely not having this conversation with you now,’ or something like that, and left the room. Where was his fighting spirit today?

  She went back to the sink and made a big show of wringing out the wiper. He turned to watch her.

  ‘Did Essie eat much of her lunch?’ she said, with her back to him.

  ‘Sorry, Bec, but I’m not sure.’ He sounded so humble that she felt, if possible, worse. She wanted the old Stuart back. (‘Bec, you can see I haven’t got to the school bags,’ he would have said, casually. Or – in an edge-less voice – ‘What’s wrong, Bec? Can you just say it, please?’)

  ‘Well.’ She let the cloth flop into the crumb-ridden sink, turned, and spoke more softly. ‘Looks like the girls change schools. Won’t be the end of the world.’ She was bluffing, though. She thought he’d tell her to stop being ridiculous, that there was no way they’d cause such disruption to their daughters, that yes, she was right, this was actually an emergency, they should speak to Kate immediately.

  ‘These Dutch Creams are perfect for mashing,’ he said. His desperate little smile took away the comforting anger and replaced it with something worse. Pity, maybe. Or terror. Or scorn.

  ‘Lovely.’ She patted his back as she crossed the kitchen. She prepared her own cup of tea, and remembered all the times he’d come home from work exhausted, and dinner was done and the kitchen was clean and the school lunches for the next day were made and the washing was
folded and put away, and the showered, pyjama-ed kids were waiting charmingly in bed so he could swan in and kiss them goodnight while she made him a drink.

  She sat down at the kitchen table with a sigh, and shucked off her shoes. Only two days in and she was sighing just like Michelle.

  ‘Stu?’ she said. ‘Do you think you need to see someone? You know, to talk things through?’ When he didn’t answer, she made a patient-slash-impatient ‘well?’ gesture – palms to the ceiling, hands apart.

  ‘Bec.’ He looked at her with such an expression of dismay and disbelief that she turned her eyes down.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘But you know. Kate did say. About the fees. And we could ask your parents.’ Her voice was hard again, by the end. Because, $7,000. Even ten. It was so little, in the scheme of things. He could earn that in a week.

  Stuart’s head snapped up from its contemplation of creamy root vegetables.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ he said. ‘On both counts. It is out of the question.’

  Once upon a time, she would have given him a serve about his macho pig-headedness and his I’m-in-charge attitude. (‘Stuart, this is a conversation. I’m not your registrar! And I certainly hope you don’t take that tone even with him. No doubt it’s a him!’) But that Wednesday she honestly didn’t have it in her. In fact, it was sort of a relief to hear him sounding more like his usual self.

  *

  In the night, she lay awake, and thought about the mean way she’d spoken to the children and how Stuart had left wet washing in the machine for hours and she’d forgotten to fill in Michelle’s ‘Wednesday Closing Reception Tasks’ check-list and had she turned off the treatment-room heater? God. Had she? And should she go with Ryan on Friday and Kate was seeing some sort of scammer and Briarwood and Bec should certainly be the one to talk to her and they only had six weeks of re-draw left on their mortgage and she’d have to sort Essie’s sports gear in the morning and Kate might say she was uptight and Stuart was probably depressed and should she go on Friday and she must get Mathilda’s iron level checked and what if he never worked again and $7,000 was hardly anything, really, when it came to the girls, and should she go on Friday, not that she begrudged Lachy anything, and she needed to finish his swimming registration, and had anyone been feeding the fish?